What Is Being Taught in Sunday School?

ARE your children among the many millions who attend Sunday school? Do you yourself attend an adult Sunday school? Over the months and years, what has your family learned?

Have you learned who God is, what his purposes and requirements are? Have you learned why man dies, where the dead are, why God permits wickedness, how he will rid the earth of the horrible conditions existing today? Have you learned what the destiny of man and the earth is? Have you learned what the hope is for those who love God and want to serve him? Have you learned what God requires of you?

Study Courses

The course of study you and your children follow in Sunday school may have been prepared by your own religious denomination. Or it may be provided by sources that specialize in publishing Sunday-school courses for many denominations. Among Sunday schools in the United States, many study the Uniform Series of International Sunday School Lessons. The 1970 International Lesson Annual provides a full year’s course of study.

Yet, just what have such courses taught you or your children about God and his purposes? It might startle you to look in this Sunday-school Annual and examine it carefully only to discover that many vital subjects such as noted above are not seriously treated. But surely such doctrines regarding God and his purposes belong in any course that is designed to give accurate knowledge of the Bible. Such matters bear on your eternal destiny, involving life and death.

Had the Bible not contained so much material explaining vital doctrines, we would need only a fraction of its 66 books, its 1,189 chapters or its 31,173 verses as found in the King James Version. Or do modern critics know better than God what man needs? If much of his Word was unnecessary, would God have inspired its writing? The truth is: “All Scripture is inspired of God and beneficial for teaching, for reproving, for setting things straight, for disciplining in righteousness, that the man of God may be fully competent, completely equipped for every good work.”​—2 Tim. 3:16, 17.

The doctrines that are touched upon in the Annual are treated delicately, open-endedly, or only in part. Apparently the editors have taken great care not to offend any denomination. But in doing so they water down the Bible’s forceful message and offend the Author of the Bible, Jehovah God.​—Isa. 29:13, 14.

Trinity Teaching

One of the central teachings of the churches that is included in the popular Annual has to do with the relationship of God, Jesus Christ and the holy spirit.

In God’s Word, the Bible, it is simply and clearly stated that Jesus Christ is God’s Son. Never did Jesus claim to be God. He always showed that God is his Father. And the Bible teaches that the holy spirit is God’s active force.

When Jesus was baptized in the river Jordan, God said from heaven: “This is my Son, the beloved, whom I have approved.” (Matt. 3:17) Jesus said: “I seek, not my own will, but the will of him that sent me.” (John 5:30) He also said: “The Father is greater than I am.” (John 14:28) The apostle Paul stated: “The head of the Christ is God.” (1 Cor. 11:3) The apostle Peter said to Jesus: “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” (Matt. 16:16) And Acts 2:1-4 shows that God’s spirit is not a person, but a force, because people were “filled with holy spirit.” If it were a person, as Trinitarians claim, could it be ‘poured out’? Could others be “filled” with it? No, you cannot ‘pour out’ or be “filled” with another person.

However, the Annual says, in reference to Peter’s words at Matthew 16:16: “As we use those words today, we tend to read into them the familiar trinitarian formula of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit that developed later.” Yet, the Annual admits: “Actually, this may be sound theologically; but in that day, among the Christians, the title ‘Son’ referred not to the second person of the Trinity, but to the Jewish Messiah.”

This admits that the men whom Jesus taught had nothing to do with any Trinity teaching. That teaching was “developed later” by those who fell away from the Christian faith. But the Annual prefers to set aside the plain Biblical teaching that Jesus is not God, and that the holy spirit is a force, not a person. It accepts the false doctrine of the Trinity.

Satan the Devil

The Bible also clearly teaches that wickedness originated with a mighty spirit creature who rebelled against God. He is called Satan and Devil. (Rev. 12:9) Jesus believed in the existence of Satan. When tempted by Satan, he replied: “Go away, Satan! For it is written, ‘It is Jehovah your God you must worship.’”​—Matt. 4:10.

However, the Sunday-school Annual states: “In New Testament times Satan was thought of as head of a host of demons who helped him in his evil work.” But rather than believe what Jesus and those first-century Christians personally believed and taught, and what God’s own Word the Bible says, the Annual comments: “It is difficult to think of Jesus being tempted by such a figure in actual form. . . . In attempting to describe a spiritual experience one often must use concrete symbols.”

Hence, Satan is reduced to a mere figure of speech, someone that did not really exist. But who should know best whether he exists or not? Does not God know? Did not Jesus also know? And does not God’s own inspired Word tell us better than today’s critics who want to water down the Bible?

Making You Part of a Doomed World

The International Sunday School Lessons Annual for 1970 also says: “God reconciles the world to himself, not just the church or the individual believer. . . . we believe that there is one God and that all the world is his. . . . Jesus never wavered from his conviction that this is essentially a good world. He never taught that men should withdraw from it.”

But what if it is not God’s purpose to convert this wicked world, but to destroy it instead? If this is so, then those who attend Sunday school are not being taught the truth. They are being asked to become part of a world that is doomed to destruction by God himself.

Who rules this world of mankind that is not doing God’s will? Is it Jehovah God? No, it is ruled by Satan the Devil. Remember, the apostle John declared: “The whole world is lying in the power of the wicked one.” (1 John 5:19) Jesus called the Devil “the ruler of the world.”​—John 14:30.

The Bible clearly says that God’s kingdom, his heavenly government, “will crush and put an end to all these kingdoms, and it itself will stand to times indefinite.” (Dan. 2:44) If the kingdoms of this world were God’s, why would he destroy them and replace them with his heavenly kingdom for which Jesus taught Christians to pray?​—Matt. 6:9, 10.

Jesus said of himself and his followers: “They are no part of the world, just as I am no part of the world.” (John 17:16) So he did not love the wicked world. He set the example for his followers by not getting involved in its affairs. Why, at one time when some people wanted to make him a political ruler, “Jesus, knowing they were about to come and seize him to make him king, withdrew again into the mountain all alone.”​—John 6:15.

Hence, the attempts of churches and their Sunday-school courses to involve people in the affairs of this doomed world are really apostasy in God’s sight.

Do you want your children to learn to be part of a world that God will destroy soon? Or do you want your family to learn about God’s purpose to establish a new order, a Paradise here on earth where God-fearing persons will live forever in peace and happiness, where sickness, sorrow and even death will be things of the past? As the Bible says: “God himself will be with them. And he will wipe out every tear from their eyes, and death will be no more, neither will mourning nor outcry nor pain be any more. The former things have passed away.”​—Rev. 21:3, 4.

Can the Truth Be Found?

This article has reviewed only three of many Sunday-school teachings that are outright contradictions of God’s Word. Other important Bible teachings are also left in confusion. That is why if you ask those who go to Sunday school to answer questions such as those raised earlier in this article, you will usually find they cannot answer or cannot back up their answers from the Bible.

However, many persons will say: “Why bother about doctrines? They only lead to confusion. You could never sift through religious confusion and find the truth even if you tried.”

But does the Creator of our mental faculties and our desire to worship share that attitude? Definitely not. Instead, He says: “‘Come, now, you people, and let us set matters straight between us,’ says Jehovah.” (Isa. 1:18) If it were impossible to “set matters straight,” why would the psalmist pray: “Teach me to do your will, for you are my God”?​—Ps. 143:10.

Then, too, if the truth were beyond men would Jesus have said: “You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free”? (John 8:32) Jesus knew the truth. So did his followers. Your having God’s approval depends upon your taking in knowledge of the truth about God!

So do you think it pleases God to have men teach in God’s name, yet teach thing contrary to God’s Word? Is that what you want to learn? Is that what you want your children to learn? If not, how can you learn the truth?