2022-04 - Life Everlasting:
On Death, Dying, and the
Future Hope
Introduction to the 4th Quarter Sabbath School Lesson
Everlasting life! Oh, if we can comprehend this in the lessons that Christ gave! The questions that the disciples brought to the Saviour after the crowds had dispersed and the teachings that He then explained more fully to them are essential for the multitudes today to understand and obey. Practical godliness must be learned. Those who study and practice the teachings of Christ will gain an essential education in Bible knowledge. By the standard of the word of God every teacher will one day be measured by the greatest Teacher this world ever knew. Belief in the grand truths He presented will work a reformation in all who truly receive them. {CT 362.1}
Satan is the author of death. What did Christ do after He brought Satan under the dominion of death? The very last words of Christ while expiring on the cross were “It is finished” (John 19:30). The devil saw that he had overdone himself. Christ by dying accomplished the death of Satan and brought immortality to light. {CTr 287.3}
In all ages Satan has persecuted the people of God. He has tortured them and put them to death, but in dying they became conquerors. They bore witness to the power of One mightier than Satan. Wicked men may torture and kill the body, but they cannot touch the life that is hid with Christ in God. They can incarcerate men and women in prison walls, but they cannot bind the spirit. {CC 360.5}
Through trial and persecution the glory--the character--of God is revealed in His chosen ones. . . . They follow Christ through sore conflicts; they endure self-denial and experience bitter disappointments; but thus they learn the guilt and woe of sin, and they look upon it with abhorrence. Being partakers of Christ's sufferings, they can look beyond the gloom to the glory, saying, "I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us" (Romans 8:18). {CC 360.6}
Here are the trophies which Christ took up with Him and presented to the universe of heaven and the worlds that God has created. Any affection that ever they had for Lucifer, who was the covering cherub, is now destroyed. God gave him a chance to work out his character. If He had not done this, there might have been those who felt the accusation he brought against God that He didn't give him a fair chance was justified. {FW 74.3}
The Prince of Life and the prince of darkness were in conflict. The Prince of Life prevailed, but at an infinite cost. His triumph is our salvation. He is our Substitute and Surety, and what He says to him that overcometh tells whether man has anything to do or not. How? "To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with Me in My throne, even as I also overcame, and am set down with My Father in His throne" (Revelation 3:21). {FW 74.4}
As penitent sinners, contrite before God, discern Christ’s atonement in their behalf, and accept this atonement as their only hope in this life and the future life, their sins are pardoned. This is justification by faith. Every believing soul is to conform his or her will entirely to God’s will, and keep in a state of repentance and contrition, exercising faith in the atoning merits of the Redeemer, and advancing from strength to strength, from glory to glory. Pardon and justification are one and the same thing. . . . {CTr 150.3}
Justification is the opposite of condemnation. God’s boundless mercy is exercised toward those who are wholly undeserving. He forgives transgressions and sins for the sake of Jesus, who has become the propitiation for our sins. Through faith in Christ the guilty transgressor is brought into favor with God and into the strong hope of life eternal. . . . {CTr 150.4}