This study guide is meant to accompany the Seventh-day Adventist Sabbath School lesson for the 2nd Quarter of 2025. The format of this guide follows a similar pattern for each week’s lesson: an introduction to the topic, a short discussion on several verses or a bullet list of concepts for a passage, followed by questions in bold type. Please read through the Biblical passages, and then prayerfully consider the bolded questions. Perhaps you’ll find better questions that should be asked, and answered!

From the inception of the Advent movement, disciples of Jesus Christ have found challenge and hope, warning and encouragement in the prophetic messages of Jewish and Christian scriptures. But we are not the first. Jews in Jesus’ day looked for the prophesied Messiah. The early church heeded Jesus’ prophetic warnings in Matthew 24 to leave Jerusalem. Centuries later, the Protestant Reformation, in its hermeneutical (interpretive) revolution, began mining Daniel and Revelation, yielding treasures that had not been understood before. And just because some prophecies—sealed up at the time of the writer and beyond—were only to be fully comprehended at a later time does not mean the first century apostles and disciples were without prophetic hope. They built their entire theological framework around Jesus as a fulfillment of their historical and literary forefathers, both functioning as foreshadows of salvation.

It could be argued that prophecy began with the very opening words of the Bible: “in the beginning.” If there is a beginning, perhaps there is to be an end. Just a few verses later in Genesis 3, after the fall, we read a foretaste of what God would do to defeat the deceiver, and its deathly effects in our new world: He would send an offspring of the woman to crush the serpent’s head! The irony is that such violent imagery finds fulfillment in the actual work of atonement—Jesus’ self-sacrifice—at the cross and beyond in His ongoing ministry for us today from a throne of grace, and in the future when He sits on His glorious throne, God having put all things under His feet. The terrible results of sin and death are always accompanied by the hope-filled strains of a gloriously renewed, eternal future.

In our chaotic, fragile world, properly understanding the role of prophecy, its various contexts and genres, and applying consistent principles of interpretation are vital. Adventists know well from our history the disappointment associated with incorrect conclusions. The Christian world is rife with teachers of prophecy, many looking at events in the tumultuous Middle East as a direct fulfillment of final events before the 2nd Coming of Jesus (or “the rapture”). Three times in Matthew 24 we’re told to beware the deceptive power of false Christs and false teachers. It behooves us to study humbly, expectantly, and diligently that which God has revealed to us. Be prepared to learn new things, to relinquish any faulty views, and to strengthen those that comport with the Truth. With new insights come new responsibilities and obedience to our Creator.

I pray that your study this quarter will take you well beyond the Adventist Quarterly. Let us remember that whatever illumination it might provide is always derived from the source of life: Christ Himself, understood through Scripture and the Spirit’s presence in study.