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Advent HOPE Sabbath School

Matthew Priebe

Animals, Ethics and Christianity

Exodus chapter 20 verse 10 For the seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord thy God.

In it thou shalt not do any work, thou nor thy son nor thy daughter, thy manservant nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor the stranger that is within thy gates.

For in 6 days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day.

Wherefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day, and hallowed it." This is a verse that should be known to every Adventist.

It is the hallmark of what we believe as Adventists.

In it is contained the testimony that God created everything in this world.

There are also other aspects of this verse that we sometimes gloss over and that have an impact on the creation truth and on the Sabbath truth that we have come to honor and obey as part of what we believe.

We're going to be looking at this verse, And in expansion, everything that we've talked about will be leading toward this meeting that we've come to today.

God has created the animal life that we see around us.

We have shown multiple examples this morning and this afternoon of the way that God has created the animal life and shows that it is his creation.

Now, in this meeting, this is the first time I've ever given this meeting in this way.

I have put together this meeting over the last few weeks and months, and This is its unveiling, so to speak.

I have not had a chance to practice this meeting at all.

And so I've been giving the other presentation that you've seen for about a year.

This is far more complex in its PowerPoint presentation than anything I did this morning.

I'm having transitions that have to be exactly at the certain word and various things like that.

So this is a much, much tighter presentation than the 1 I did earlier.

And so I'm going to be tied much more closely to my notes than I was earlier.

You saw me free-forming it a great deal this morning.

You're not going to see that anymore because I have to be exactly where I need to change it and things like that.

So I hope you'll bear with me a little bit on that.

And like I said, we'll be done at sundown and there'll be time for questions as long as you want afterwards.

1 of the most deeply held beliefs, 1 of the most deeply held beliefs of mankind is that human beings are the absolute masters of the earth.

In our society, many of the practices that we do impact upon the lives of animals in a variety of ways.

What is our duty as Adventist Christians to the animals around us.

Is there any debt we owe them, or are we free to ignore the results of their actions?

And again, the lights, if possible, it's better to be dim because the most of the presentation will be seen up there.

This presentation that I will be going through is an attempt to answer that question from the Word of God.

There is a text that we as Adventists are very familiar with.

In Matthew 5, 48, Jesus tells His disciples, Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect.

Now, this does not mean that we will be exactly perfect and absolutely perfect in the same way that God is, but instead we need to have the same type of character as God.

God's motives, values, and way of dealing with us, as shown by the life of Christ, are to be our motives, values, and way of dealing with others.

The importance of having this experience is found in Christ's object lessons, page 69.

When the character of Christ shall be perfectly reproduced in his people, then he will come to claim them as his own.

Everything we do should be measured by what Christ would do in the same situation.

The character we develop now will be taken unchanged into heaven.

It doesn't matter if a person dies and is resurrected or is amongst the final generation that lives to see his coming.

All will have the character we have developed here taken straight to heaven.

We are to make every effort to live on earth as we will live in heaven.

Every right principle, every truth learned in an earthly school will advance us just that much in the heavenly school.

So it becomes our duty to discover the right principles that have been revealed for us to learn.

We will focus on 1 of those principles here.

Now we begin with 1 of the most famous texts in the Bible.

I have found that virtually every Christian is familiar with it, as are many non-Christians.

In Genesis chapter 1 verse 26 we have this verse, and God said, Let us make man in our image after our likeness, and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.

This is the text always used to show that whatever we do to the animal creation is accepted and sanctioned by God.

It is the divine mandate that justifies any action that we choose.

But are we completely sure we have applied this verse correctly?

The answer to that question will determine how we apply that principle, the dominion principle to our daily lives.

In Colossians 1 verse 16, for by him were all things created that are in heaven and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones or dominions or principalities or powers.

All things were created by him and for him.

Everything in this world has been created by and for God, including ourselves and everything around us.

All of the animals were created by Christ.

As Psalms 50 verses 10 and 11 shows, God claims all animal life as his own.

For every beast of the forest is mine, and the cattle upon a thousand hills.

I know all the fowls of the mountains, and the wild beasts of the field are mine.

In Genesis, Christ did not give us ownership of the animals.

Now, what does the word then dominion really mean?

We need to find out what it meant to the original writers and readers of the Bible, given in context.

In 1 Kings 4, verses 24 to 25, we have the same Hebrew word, dominion, that we found in Genesis.

For he had dominion over all the region on this side of the river, over all the kings on this side of the river.

And he had peace on all sides around about him and Judah and Israel dwelt safely every man under his vine and under his fig tree King Solomon's Dominion is regarded here as a very positive beneficial thing further in Psalm 72 verses 2 to 17 is a model of how a good king is to rule over his subjects.

He shall judge thy people with righteousness and thy poor with judgment.

The mountains shall bring peace to the people and the little hills by righteousness.

He shall save the children of the needy and shall break in pieces the oppressor.

He shall come down like rain upon the mown grass, as showers that water the earth.

In his days shall the righteous flourish, and abundance of peace so long as the moon endureth.

He shall have dominion also from sea to sea and from the rivers unto the ends of the earth.

For he shall deliver the needy when he crieth, the poor also and him that hath no helper.

He shall spare the poor and needy and shall save the souls of the needy.

He shall redeem their soul from deceit and violence and precious shall their blood be in his sight.

And he shall live, and to him shall be given of the gold of Sheba.

Prayer also shall be given to him continually, and daily shall he be praised.

His name shall be continued as long as the sun, and men shall be blessed in him.

All nations shall call him blessed." Now I'm sure that we would agree that these passages describe a king doing everything exactly as he should.

He has dominion over his subjects and they praise him for it.

This is a beautiful description of what dominion means to God.

Verses 4 to 8 are mentioned in Patriarchs and Prophets, page 754 to 755, as a promise that was given to David, which finds its complete fulfillment in Christ.

Christ is to have dominion from sea to sea, from the river unto the ends of the earth.

As David says in Psalms 103, verse 19, the Lord hath prepared his throne in the heavens and his kingdom ruleth over all.

He has dominion over humans in the same way that we have dominion over the animals To understand how we should exercise our dominion.

We must first understand how he exercises his dominion over us This is the dominion principle God is over us in the same way that we are over the animals.

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Animals, Ethics and Christianity

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