1 Peter 4:17: general suffering or Investigative Judgment?

 

This year 2017 had the Sabbath school quarterly on 1 Peter and 2 Peter coming from the hand of an Australian professor at Avondale College.

 

The lessons are sometimes crispy and well presented. It fits very well in with explanations of the way Adventism has presented itself on the issues of sanctification and other matters.

 

There is one downside that should be listed and mentioned. It is the author’s dealing with 1 Peter 4:17-18.

 

He seems to bring in the idea that a general suffering of all good people is in mind here and that is where one will get started on understanding the phrase “judgment will start with the house of God”.

 

In the SS lesson on 1 Peter on June 16th 1923 at page 28

 

4. "In the typical service; only those who had come before

God with confession and repentance, and whose sins,

through- the blood of the sin offering, were transferred to the

sanctuary, had a part in the service of the day of, atonement.

So in the great day of final atonement and investigative

judgment, the only cases considered are those of the professed

people of God. The judgment of the wicked is a distinct

and separate work, and takes place at a later period.

`Judgment must begin at the house of God; and if it first

begin at us, what shall the end be of them that obey not the

gospel?' "-"Great Controversy," p. 480.

 

Our 2017 Australian professor did not bring out this connection in his dealing with the word Judgment of the People of God since he linked it to the ongoing suffering of God’s people from Adam to the Eschaton.

 

An interesting phenomenon here in South Korea is, that even though Goldstein et al left the SS as it is untouched or unimproved? the Korean edition updated it by revising it and placed the Investigative Judgment significance in for their readers in South Korea!