Lesson 9: End-Time Deceptions – Discussion Starters

Is Satan more ready than ever? Wouldn’t you think that with more than six thousand years to fuss over and ponder about his great loss of power, Satan would just give up and stop pestering God’s followers? Why doesn’t he? What does he do instead? Long ago, while he was still in heaven but storming inside about how God was trying to stay in control of everything, what was the most effective tool the devil seized in order to confuse and win over God’s created beings in heaven? What can we do to arm ourselves in order to reject this tool and turn to God instead?
The grandest deception. Take a moment to look at the “two great errors” Satan selected as he set about to arm himself for the greatest conflict of all time. What were those two errors? Once we realize how vast Satan’s thinking is and how much he stirs up conflict to undermine the work of God, do we shake with fear? What are some ways you can think of to cause human beings to deny that Satan exists? How do the faithful ones take it as absolute truth that the evil one continues to exist? How did some faithful Christians turn away from Satan to the point of overcoming him? What is our only fail-proof source of power to overcome the evil one?
The two great evils. In I Corinthians 11, Paul almost seems to be tossing a strain of well-deserved scorn in Satan’s direction. “It is no great thing” he comments or, like yesterday’s teenager would say, “It was no big deal” for Satan to take on the appearance of righteousness. Why? In 2 Thessalonians 2, the epistle comments that there are some “lawless ones” who will turn away from the saving law of life, instead, refusing to give themselves to God that they might be saved. The “two great errors” are well-known to Seventh-day Adventists today. What are they? _______________ of the soul; and ___________ sacredness. What is devastating about these errors?
The immortality of the soul. Is it true that people are so afraid of death that they welcome accounts of people they believe did not die? The lesson for the fourth day of the week highlights the power of “conversations” with the dead. Or, in other cases, the restoration of a person who was thought to have died but then has the ability to think and speak and live again. I haven’t picked up any statistics on this, but my guess is that the account of a person who returns to a normal or almost normal life after being declared dead is rarer than stories we hear all the time about the person who “goes to heaven” at death. What is the greatest theological stumbling block in a person’s belief that we are not dead when we are pronounced dead?
Sabbath and the theory of evolution. How can choosing the first day instead of the seventh as a day of worship cause us to lose our way in seeking to honor the God who created us? Why has Satan been so successful in drawing Christians of all persuasions away from the seventh-day Sabbath established by God Himself some six thousand years ago? Unless we accept creation week of six literal days, does the Sabbath have any eternal value? Should we spend more time telling people about the truth of the Sabbath day? Or about the falsity of Sunday as a permanent memorial of creation? How should we do this?
The counterfeit trinity. What is the “counterfeit trinity” and how was it established? Carefully read the notes for the sixth lesson for this week and ask yourself: How successful has the devil been in taking some of the characteristics of God and mixing them with his own traits? Should we be more–or less–emphatic in revealing the way the deity has been re-imagined to support a religious movement that bypasses Jesus Christ and His teachings? What will be the internal–and external–consequences when we stand for the truth when major powers that have given themselves over to false teachings are out to get rid of us?

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Lesson 9: End-Time Deceptions – Discussion Starters

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