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Though written on the other side of a long expanse
of time, the words of the Old Testament prophets echo, even loudly, today.
Though these prophets spoke to their own era and their own people, their
messages aren't just interesting historical asides, tidbits on the lives
and toils and loves of another people in another place and in another epoch.
They have been preserved for us today because they have messages for us today.
And however different the style, the context, and the specifics, the messages
almost all come down to one thing: God is calling us to die to self and surrender
our sinful, wicked ways to Him; a God who forgives, heals, restores; a God
who will ultimately bring us into an existence so wonderful that our imagination
can't even begin to dare envision it.
Yet, as always, people have a hard time listening, accepting, believing.
Maybe the news, that of a God willing to forgive, to heal, to pardon our
sins, is simply too good for people to easily believe? More than likely,
however, people simply enjoy too much "the pleasure of sin for a season"
(even though the season always changes), and thus these people don't want
to heed God's merciful, loving voice.
Nevertheless, He calls anyway. And we hear His pleas, His shouts, His begging,
all through sacred Scripture, including the book of Amos, the subject of
this quarter's lesson study. In the Old Testament, as in Amos, these calls
often come in the form of the prophetic messages, which usually begin with
diatribes against the continuing sin and apostasy of God's people, and often
are followed by vivid descriptions of where the continuing sin and apostasy
will lead. To the uninitiated, the Old Testament can sound like a fearful
book expressing the thoughts of a fearsome God. Those, however, who know
this God personally know, in fact, that the opposite is true. The strong
words and warnings of the prophets are nothing but the pleadings and admonitions
of a loving and caring God. Out of infinite love and care, He is trying to
save a people who, due to the nature of a fallen world, are utterly incapable
of saving themselves.
Even amid all the gloom and doom and warnings of judgment and locusts, plagues
and armies, captivity and fire, the fibers of hope, of promise, of salvation,
of redemption, and of restoration are always woven through these messages.
And that's because, in the end, when all is said and done, one universal,
irrefutable, and eternal truth provides the foundation of all truth and reality,
and that is: Our God is a loving, saving, healing God who calls out to us
these simple words: "Seek Me and live."
EDITOR'S OVERVIEW
"A Higher View of Things"
I n 1884, British clergyman and amateur mathematician Edwin Abbott wrote
Flatland, a book about the incredible adventures of A. Square, a rather flat
character who lived in two dimensions only. For A. Square, the universe consisted
of a single plane; reality (and that's all reality) went either north and
south, or east and west. The notions of up and down, height and depth, were
inconceivable.
A. Square once visited Lineland, whose inhabitants lived in a single straight
line alone; this meant that, for them, reality existed as forward or backward
only. Linelanders could not even begin to conceive of anything such as width,
and when A. Square tried to explain that there was a greater dimension to
reality than a mere line, the notion was rebuffed by Linelanders as absurd.
A. Square then visited Pointland, where all reality consisted only of a single
point: There was no forward or backward (as in Lineland) or no width (as
in Flatland), and trying to convince anyone in Pointland otherwise was as
futile as trying to convince those in Lineland that sideways existed.
Then one day A. Square was visited by someone from Spaceland, a person who
lived in three dimensions. A. Square thought it ludicrous, this notion of
a reality beyond the two dimensions that made up the universe as it appeared
to him. However, only after a visit to Spaceland, did he eventually accept
what he called "a higher view of things." In fact, he tried to convince his
Spaceland guide that there could be dimensions of existence beyond even
Spaceland, a notion that his Spaceland guide rejected as "utterly inconceivable,"
just as Pointlanders did with the idea of forward and backward, as Linelanders
did with the notion of sideways, and as A. Square first did with the concept
of height.
This quarter's study deals with the Old Testament book of Amos, which reads
almost like Abbott's Flatland, in the sense that it tells about Someone,
in this case the Lord, trying to help a people understand a reality that
goes beyond what's immediately accessible to their senses. The Israelites
were living only for the moment, within the narrow confines of their little
world, where things seemed (and we stress that word seemed) so good. The
reality, of course- which was greater than the narrow view of reality that
they knew- turned out to be radically different from how it appeared. And,
like those in Pointland, Lineland, Flatland, and even in Spaceland, they
wouldn't easily listen to the One who tried to give them a broader, wider,
and more encompassing perspective.
And, no doubt, Leo Van Dolson, the author of this
quarter's Bible Study Guide, would like us, as we study these lessons, to
ask ourselves the crucial question: Are we limiting our view of reality to
only what we see, or will we open our hearts to the One who has, through
the revelation of His Son, given us "a higher view of things"?
Clifford Goldstein
Contents:
(all lessons may not be posted)
Giardina Sabbath School
Study Helps
Jerry Giardina of Pecos, Texas, assisted by his wife, Cheryl, prepares a
series of helps to accompany the Sabbath School lesson. He includes all related
scripture and most EGW quotations. Jerry has chosen the "New King James Version"
of the scriptures this quarter. It is used with permission. The study
helps are provided in three wordprocessing versions
Wordperfect; Microsoft
Word; RTF for our MAC friends; and
HTML (Web Pages).
Last updated on September 22, 2001
Editorial Office: 12501 Old Columbia Pike, Silver Spring, MD 20904.
Principal Contributors: Leo R. Van Dolson
Editor: Clifford Goldstein
Associate Editor: Lyndelle Brower Chiomenti.
Editorial Production Manager: Soraya Homayouni Parish.
Art and Design: Lars Justinen.
Pacific Press Coordinator: Paul A. Hey.
Copyright © 2001 General Conference of Seventh-day Adventist.
All Rights Reserved.
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