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It Is Written

Sabbath School 1st Quarter 2026: Uniting Heaven & Earth: Christ in Philippians and Colossians

Eric Flickinger

Clinton Wahlen

01 Persecuted but Not Forsaken

02 Reasons for Thanksgiving and Prayer

03 Life and Death

04 Unity Through Humility

Welcome to Sabbath School brought to you by It Is Written.

13 lessons, 13 weeks, where we look at how God wants to unite heaven and earth.

We're looking at Christ In the books of Philippians and Colossians, a powerful picture of Christ and the gospel and what God desires to do in my heart and your heart so that our lives, by the grace of God, can be used by Him to change the world.

We're going to begin with prayer and we'll dive right in.

Father, we thank you for drawing us together today.

We ask that you will bless our time together and that as a result of our studies, you will work in our hearts to make us more like Christ.

We ask your blessing on us today and we thank you in Jesus' name.

Well, we're grateful that you are here, but we are also grateful to have the author of this quarter's Sabbath school lesson with us.

Waleen is an Associate Director of the Biblical Research Institute, and he has an area of expertise in New Testament and in hermeneutics.

It's a delight to be here with you, Eric.

So this is going to be an exciting quarter, but before we delve right into week number 1, you're an associate director of the Biblical Research Institute.

Now that sounds like a really fancy place full of all sorts of great ideas and theological depth and so forth.

I assume it's more than just people sitting around and thinking a lot.

Well, we do spend a lot of time thinking, but also studying the Bible.

What a wonderful opportunity we have to research and study the Bible.

Though it is a book of many ages ago written, there are many new things.

And archaeological discoveries all the time enlighten it further.

We have a newsletter we publish 4 times a year called Reflections.

In fact, Elder John Bradshaw, in a recent article, has the lead for our Reflections issue recently, navigating differences of opinion in the last day church.

And we'll get into that as we study the books of Philippians and Colossians, there were differences in the church of that time too.

And there are lots of materials on our website, adventistbiblicalresearch.org, free, some books free to download.

Also our bookshop where we have additional books.

We've published recently on a couple of volumes on the Trinity, on ethics and technology, on what it means to be a human being.

So you all produce a great deal of material for us to be able to benefit from as we look at these different themes from a biblical perspective, which is fantastic.

Now, this quarter, we're looking at uniting heaven and Earth, as we mentioned, going into the books of Philippians and Colossians.

How did this quarter's lesson, how did what we're studying right now, kind of come into being?

How did it get to where we're holding it in our hands right now?

Well, it's a process, as you might imagine.

So about 5 years ago now, I was asked specifically to write this series of lessons on Philippians and Colossians.

And I have to say, it wasn't something I thought about doing myself.

But as I got into it, as we do sometimes when we study the Bible, it became more and more exciting, and I realized there is a lot here to share.

And I had a wonderful time writing the series of lessons and the companion volume, Uniting Heaven and Earth.

This was a wonderful study of how God wants to draw heaven near to us.

What a wonderful idea it is to think heaven is very near.

And so we have the study lesson that we're going to be going through.

There's the companion book that you just mentioned.

We're watching the program, we're making the programs right now.

So there's a lot to study to get out of this quarter.

Lesson number 1 is called persecuted but not forsaken.

We think of Paul as this great in Christendom.

He made so much of a difference, he wrote so much of the New Testament, but he didn't always do that from a place of freedom.

He didn't always do that able to go as he wished and say what he pleased and so forth.

And you think it must have been difficult for him.

It would be difficult for, I think, any of us.

But how did Paul relate to his imprisonment?

Well, it brings now right down to earth the idea of uniting heaven and earth, doesn't it?

Because even in the prison cell, Paul sensed the presence of Jesus.

And we start here because he wrote 4 epistles while he was a prisoner in Rome during this period.

Philippians and Colossians are 2 of them, and the other 2 are Ephesians and Philemon.

And he wrote them while he was not under, not in this dark dungeon-like prison we sometimes imagine, that came later, but he was under house arrest.

And he was free, actually, to receive visitors.

We will look at that probably in Acts shortly.

Because as you said, we've got 4 books in the Bible in the New Testament that were written from that type of situation that he found himself in.

We're looking specifically this quarter at the book of Philippians and Colossians.

So Paul had different relationships with those 2 churches, with those 2 cities.

Break down the relationship that he had with Philippi and with Colossae.

Well, with Philippians, he established this.

You might remember that they wanted to go further into Asia and the Holy Spirit said no and they then you know had to shift gears and Paul had a vision in the night that people were calling, come to Macedonia and help us.

And this is what led them to cross into Europe from Asia to Troas, the port there, and then they didn't stop there, but they went to the chief city of that area, which was Philippi, a very special city, actually.

If you were born in that city, you were automatically a Roman citizen.

They spoke the official languages, Latin.

They didn't have the taxes that other places had imposed on them.

And because Paul personally established it, he had a very close connection with the people in Philippi.

Now, when we come to Colossia, this is different.

This is hundreds of miles away, further to the east, what is today Turkey, present day Turkey.

It hasn't really been excavated, just started, is now starting to be excavated, but we don't really know that much about the city from excavations.

Most of what we know about it is from this letter in Colossians.

And so we can actually learn quite a bit about this interesting city from what Paul wrote to them.

He established it through other coworkers, but he had this connection.

So the church in Philippi, he started, and As you said, he chose this city.

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Series

Sabbath School 1st Quarter 2026: Uniting Heaven & Earth: Christ in Philippians and Colossians

01 Persecuted but Not Forsaken

Parent Series

Sponsor

Recorded

Other Teachings in Series

01 Persecuted but Not Forsaken

28m

02 Reasons for Thanksgiving and Prayer

28m

03 Life and Death

28m

04 Unity Through Humility

28m

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