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When teaching the people about His Father, Yahshua said, “Think not that I am come to destroy the Law, or the prophets; I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil. For I say unto you, That except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the Kingdom of Heaven.” (Mat 5:17, 20)
As we read through the Gospels, we find that Christ was often accused of violating the Law of Moses, and He would respond by either proclaiming His authority, or denying it as in the passage above. When doing the former, proclaiming His authority, He would say something such as this part of an exchange with some unbelieving Israelites: “‘Your father Abraham rejoiced to see My day; and he saw it, and was glad.’ Then said the Jews unto Him, ‘Thou art not yet fifty years old, and hast thou seen Abraham?’ Yahshua said unto them, ‘Verily, verily, I say unto you, Before Abraham was, I am.’” (John 8:56-58)
We are all familiar with the Sermon on the Mount, in which many of Yahshua’s statements were spoken according to this pattern: “Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth, but I say unto you, That ye resist not evil; but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.” (Mat 5:38, 39)
What we read of Yahshua’s experience, many of us who follow after Him encounter as well. The Reformers stood up against the authority of the papacy, teaching contrary to long-established truths, and drawing controversy with their focus on faith rather than works, and the nature of grace. As we see from the Gospels, though, new teachings may seem to go against good doctrine as well as bad. The Reformers were countering the falsehoods of a fallen religion, while Yahshua’s teaching was intended to expand upon, and contextualize, the inspired writings of Moses. In both cases, however, the perception was the same.
New Light will never go against Old Light. However, New Light often seems as if it does. This is necessarily true, because if the Old Light were properly and broadly understood, there would be no need for the new. Those who intend to be followers of Christ, therefore, and worship the Father in spirit and in truth, must have an open mind, and must be willing to challenge long-held beliefs and “obvious” Christian teachings.
Yahshua declared that those who would enter the Kingdom of Heaven must have righteousness that exceeds that of the Scribes and Pharisees. To us, that seems like an obvious statement, considering the negative light in which the Gospel often casts them. We need to understand the cultural context, however, to really grasp the impact of that idea. The Scribes and Pharisees were seen as the good and holy members of society. These were the ones seemingly close to God and, rightly or wrongly, were deeply respected as role models.
Such a statement today would be as if we were to say to a devout Roman Catholic, “If you wish to enter the Kingdom of Heaven, you must be more righteous than the bishops,” or to a Seventh-day Adventist, “If you wish to be saved, you must be more righteous than our Pioneers, and even Ellen White.”
The road narrows. The light grows brighter. The 144,000 are called to a translation into our Heavenly bodies without feeling the sting of death. There will be nothing in us on that day that Satan can use to condemn us to the grave, even momentarily, for we are approved, sealed, by the Father and Son. None among the most popular heroes of faith, not Paul, not Ellen White, not Martin Luther, escaped the grave. This is not a charge against them – it was not their calling to live in this last generation. For us, though, we are required to reach higher by standing on the pillars that they have built for us, and to be “perfect” before our Father in Heaven. This is not hard; this is not difficult – it is impossible. Yet we are promised it will be so. Nothing is impossible for our Father, or for His Son, or for His Son who dwells in us by His Spirit.
Think on these things, believe on these things, and by your faith, it will be so unto you. Regardless of what the traditions of men have said, it is not “by your traditions it will be unto you.” No, it is by our faith – that is your determining factor. The doubts and skepticism of others, the unbelief of the sinners and the theological musings of nominal Christians, these have no power to diminish by the least degree the power that the Father and Son have pledged to bring forth in your life. Yah can do all things without limit, except for your faith. And when your faith has no limit, then Yah’s ability to work through you, even to the working of miracles and the preservation of perfect righteousness, is similarly without limit. This is the mind of Christ manifest in you.
But we have some challenges. We have some things to learn, and some things to unlearn. We have writings that are true, but generally misunderstood, and we have prophecies that are conditional on factors that have never been met. By the grace of our Father, The Holy Spirit is our Comforter, and for all who wish to understand, we can heal them of their misunderstanding.
As I mentioned last time, this week we will be talking about Ellen White’s statements. As with Christ’s teachings about Moses’ Law, there are certain things that are correct, but not stated in the best way for the current generation with its narrower road and brighter light. Moses said, “An eye for an eye.” This is not wrong as a limit to the administration of justice; for an eye, you may not take more than an eye. But there was a better way to which Yahshua’s followers were being called. Should they have His Spirit, they would not want to take an eye for an eye. Instead, they would offer forgiveness. They would bring healing, even if they themselves were injured in the process. That is not a new idea, certainly, but it is something that Moses’ Law did not emphasize enough for that age. It was fitting for the traveling tribes escaping Egypt, but not sufficient for drawing people out of the Synagogues and into the spiritual Body of Christ.
In just the same way, and it is necessary that we do this, we must look at the writings of the past, as inspired as Moses, and say, “This is good, but we are called to an even higher standard of righteousness.”
Consider this statement: “God loved the world so dearly that He gave His only-begotten Son that whosoever would accept Him might have power to live His righteous life. Christ proved that it is possible for man to lay hold by faith on the power of God. He showed that the sinner, by repentance and the exercise of faith in the righteousness of Christ, can be reconciled to God, and become a partaker of the divine nature, overcoming the corruption that is in the world through lust.” [Selected Messages, Book 1, p. 223]
We would say that all of this is certainly true. And yet, the fact that you “can” be reconciled to God is not going to redeem anyone. Will anyone receive the Heavenly inheritance because it was demonstrated that it was “possible” for him to do so? That fact that you “might” have the power to live Christ’s righteous life is as true for you as the most unrepentant infidel. Statements such as these may be useful for someone in the world, someone in need of hope that if they come to Christ, He will accept them. Inasmuch as they are used in this way, that is good; however, by themselves these true statements do not particularly benefit the saint. It was sufficient to believe this for the judgment of the dead, but no one who is translated without seeing death is going to be saying, “I can be righteous. I have received power from Heaven so that it is possible for me live a sanctified life.” That is not a testimony of victory.
Clearly, Mrs. White is using the language of the Bible in some of these statements. We read, for example, “Thy Word have I hid in mine heart, that I might not sin against thee.” (Psalm 119:11) We were talking last week about it rarely being necessary to go to the “original languages” in order to understand the Scriptures, and that the best policy is to always take it just as it reads.” This is one place where the original language, though, rather than giving a contrasting meaning, actually strengthens what is being said. The problem here is not the Hebrew-to-English translation, but the fact that English itself has changed.
The expression in the Psalm for “I might not sin” is actually closer to “I will not be sinning.” It is a denial of the continuation of an action in the future, not an expression of doubt or uncertainty. “Yah’s Word have I hid in my heart, so I will not be sinning against Him.”
In the New Testament, Paul writes about, “knowing this, that our old man is crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin.” (Rom 6:6) The word “might” appears here as well… so, which is it? Is the body of sin destroyed, or not? In the born again believer, we know that it is, for Paul tells us, “ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God.” (Col 3:3) There is no maybe, possibility, or “might” that it is not so. The Scriptures teach certainty that the body of sin is dead with Christ, so that we do not serve sin, and that the Word hidden in the heart of man causes him to cease transgressing the Law. These things are plain in the original languages, and they are plain in English as well, but probably more so when they were first translated. Unfortunately, the newer translations seem to go with the shift in language as well, rather than the original force that was intended.
The word “might” today often conveys the possibility of uncertainty. Originally in English, it was more along the lines of “I am able.” If I say, today, “When you stand in front of me, I might see you,” you could reasonably question whether or not I have some kind of injury, because my words convey the possibility that I am blind, or maybe have deliberately closed my eyes. On the other hand, if I say, “When you are in front of me, I am able to see you,” I am not conveying any possibility of failure to do so even though I am using very similar language. When the Scriptures say, “I might not sin,” it is more accurate to read that as, “I am able not to sin” in just the same way as saying, “I am able to see,” or “I am able to walk.” It is an expression of something that anyone hearing me would expect me to actually do, not just potentially, but in my daily, regular experience.
I am not saying here that Mrs. White is conveying any doubt about the Christian ceasing to sin. In many places she is very direct, saying in one often quoted passage regarding baptismal converts, “Find out by close questioning if these persons are really ceasing to sin, if with David they can say, I hate sin with a perfect hatred.” [Letter 26, 1887] What I am saying is, there are times in which she will make a statement, or quote a passage, that some have used to justify ongoing imperfections of character, or to claim she is allowing for deliberate sin in the life of the born-again believer. That is not, at all, the case, and as members of this last generation of saints, we must not be afraid to say, “You have heard it said this way, but I say unto you, here is a better understanding.” That is the authority necessary to be an evangelist in this world, and it is not disrespectful to the prophets that have gone before us to understand them in the setting of their time, and to know how to teach the same principles in a manner appropriate to the 11th hour of the Harvest.
What I am going to do now is talk, briefly, but hopefully very clearly, about four types of statements from inspired writings, specifically from the Spirit of Prophecy works, that should be approached cautiously, considering the times at which they were spoken and the circumstances involved. This is not a reason to “disbelieve” Ellen White, but just as we don’t go around today teaching the doctrine of An Eye For An Eye, we need to understand how to take perfect principles out of wording that is just slightly less than perfect, so that our understanding may be full.
I will talk about each of the four types of statements in three parts: a) The reason why the type should be used cautiously, b) An example or two from her writings, c) the Biblical precedent, because this is still, ultimately a Bible study, and we are to be certain that all of our beliefs and teachings come forth naturally from the Word of Yahweh.
Statement Type 1: Ellen White grew beyond her own previous views and opinions.
This is probably the easiest one to explain and demonstrate. Ellen White did not enter the prophetic office with a fully mature understanding of every aspect of righteousness. And you might ask, “If Yahweh was guiding her, how could she possibly make a mistake?” Well, Yahweh is guiding us, and we are still told to “watch and pray” (Mark 13:33) regarding errors from which we need to be cleansed.
Probably the best known example of this is Mrs. White’s changing view on clean vs. unclean meats. In her early ministry, she wrote to someone teaching against the consumption of pork, “I saw that your views concerning swine’s flesh would prove no injury if you have them to yourselves; but in your judgment and opinion you have made this question a test, and your actions have plainly shown your faith in this matter. If God requires His people to abstain from swine's flesh, He will convict them on the matter […] If it is the duty of the church to abstain from swine’s flesh, God will discover it to more than two or three. He will teach His church their duty.” [Testimonies for the Church, Vol. 1, p. 206] She did not exactly condone it here; what she was opposed to was making it a test for the Church, which is still a very good principle, and it should never have been on the SDA “checklist” of faith; however, in her later work after health reform came into greater focus, her statements about the evils of pork in particular were quite pronounced.
I could give additional examples regarding matters such as dress, but the idea here should be obvious enough. And so far as a Biblical example goes, we have several, but in the interest of time, here is a useful one: “Now it came to pass, as David sat in his house, that David said to Nathan the prophet, ‘Lo, I dwell in an house of cedars, but the Ark of the Covenant of Yahweh remaineth under curtains.’ Then Nathan said unto David, ‘Do all that is in thine heart; for God is with thee.’
“And it came to pass the same night, that the Word of Elohim came to Nathan, saying, ‘Go and tell David My servant, ‘Thus saith Yahweh: Thou shalt not build me an house to dwell in. And it shall come to pass, when thy days be expired that thou must go to be with thy fathers, that I will raise up thy seed after thee, which shall be of thy sons; and I will establish his kingdom. He shall build me an house, and I will stablish his throne forever.’” (1Chron 17:1-4, 11,12)
At times, even the prophets of Yah need to be corrected.
Statement Type 2: General circumstances have changed, making certain instructions no longer applicable.
Sometimes the situation that inspired the prophetic utterance is no longer a valid concern. Here is one such example concerning health reform: “The salads are prepared with oil and vinegar, fermentation takes place in the stomach, and the food does not digest, but decays or putrefies; as a consequence, the blood is not nourished, but becomes filled with impurities, and liver and kidney difficulties appear.” [Counsels on Diet and Foods, p. 349]
It may be that vinegar production in Mrs. White’s day was not as hygienic as it is today, but modern vinegar is actually used to preserve food. Its acid kills off microbes that causes decay in vegetables, for example. In addition, there are different types of vinegar, such as that made from apple cider, which have some very positive health benefits. Does that mean we are disregarding Heavenly inspiration? Does this mean we have to choose between Adventism and modern medical findings? Certainly not… there is a balance that must be struck, if we are to handle the truth maturely. Many of Mrs. White’s statements, particularly concerning health, and sometimes food in general, are no longer useful. And of course, we need to be very careful with this, because if anyone is seeking an opportunity to throw away good principles and indulge their appetites, the first place they are going to begin is the downplaying and disregarding of some very good and healthy ideas that we have been blessed with through the Spirit of Prophecy.
So far as Biblical precedent goes for moving “beyond” a once applicable teaching, there are probably too many to list. Circumcision, (Gal 6:15) animal sacrifices, (Heb 9:11, 12) and the wearing of certain kinds of ritually significant clothing (Num 15:38) – these don’t have a place in the New Covenant. There was nothing wrong with the instructions… we aren’t throwing away the Old Testament. However, a change in circumstances renders the instructions no longer active. We still have a record of them, because we have much to learn from them, but we do not practice temple-related ceremonies, (1Cor 6:19) nor do we stone disobedient children to death any longer. (Deu 21:18-21)
Statement Type 3: Recipients’ circumstances have changed, making the statement no longer applicable.
This is similar to type 2, but instead of a general change in the state of the world or knowledge, something changes about the nation, or people, or Church, that receives the prediction, blessing, or warning, and therefore the prophecy’s fulfillment changes. This is what we are generally indicating when we refer to “Conditional Prophecy,” and because we have spoken about it in a number of previous studies, we do not need to take a great deal of time with it beyond outlining the basics.
Here is where the CSDA position becomes controversial, because a traditional Adventist is going to read a statement such as the following with a great deal of certainty: “Sooner or later Sunday laws will be passed.” [Last Day Events, p. 128] So familiar to Adventism is the teaching that the Mark of The Beast is a National Sunday Law that even many non-Adventists know this about the Church. If you’re an Adventist, you are keeping the Sabbath and waiting for it to be made illegal, and anyone who thinks or teaches otherwise is just denying the Scriptural truth of the end times… so goes the historical teaching of the Church.
Here are the problems with the traditional view… at least, two of them. First of all, the prediction was correct, and in fact has already come to pass. In the United States, Sunday laws have been passed. They lasted for a while and then, due to a variety of reasons, they were either repealed officially, or fell out of enforcement altogether. Most modern SDAs don’t know this; they think that a law concerning Sunday Sacredness is some great and evil thing coming upon them that the world has never seen before. No… Mrs. White was quite correct, and Sunday Laws have indeed been passed, and enforced. It never became the Mark of The Beast, however, and that is where it falls short of its role in last day events.
Second, the Sunday Law prophecies were given to a Church that had restored Sabbath-keeping to the world on a fairly noticeable scale and, looking at the signs of their times, could tell that they were about to be persecuted for their faith. Not their actions, now, but their faith that led to those actions, and that is the key. If there is no faith behind the actions, the actions don’t matter. If there is an outward keeping of the Sabbath, but there is no righteousness by faith, if there is no Christ-like Spirit, if in fact the Church has become the very persecuting power that they once warned the world about concerning the papacy, then their spiritual circumstances have changed. According to the Bible, this doesn’t just allow, but it requires a change in the way that the prophecy given to them will be fulfilled. This is not a matter of interpretation, negotiation, or supposition. This is what the Word of Yahweh tells us.
“At what instant I shall speak concerning a nation, and concerning a kingdom, to pluck up, and to pull down, and to destroy it, if that nation, against whom I have pronounced, turn from their evil, I will repent of the evil that I thought to do unto them. And at what instant I shall speak concerning a nation, and concerning a kingdom, to build and to plant it, if it do evil in my sight, that it obey not my voice, then I will repent of the good, wherewith I said I would benefit them.” (Jer 18:7-10)
Does this make Yahweh a liar, because He does not always do what He has declared? Certainly not. Does this make Ellen White a false prophet because she predicted a Sunday Law which, today, would not test the spiritual condition of Sabbath-keeping Adventists? Certainly not.
We use the example of Jonah, who said, “Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown.” (Jonah 3:4)
There is no condition indicated here; it is “implicit,” which means that it is automatically understood to be a part of the statement. Ellen White said, “Sooner or later Sunday laws will be passed,” in the context of the Mark of The Beast. The prophet Jonah said, “Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown.”
Some have said, “You can’t prove that all those statements of Ellen White about the Sunday Law were conditional.” My reply is often to ask, “Is it a prophecy?” If it is, then it’s conditional. Jonah did not need to say, “Forty days and Nineveh will be overthrown, but if you repent, He will spare you.” And Jonah is not the only example of a prophet who understood this. Consider King David. After discovering that his affair with Uriah’s wife had resulted in a pregnancy, the prophet Nathan (of whom we have spoken before in this study) came to him and said, “Yahweh also hath put away thy sin; thou shalt not die. Howbeit, because by this deed thou hast given great occasion to the enemies of Yahweh to blaspheme, the child also that is born unto thee shall surely die.” (2Sam 12:13, 14)
What did David do? He did not merely accept the prediction. No, understanding that Yah holds the power of mercy, he fasted for seven days, praying for the child’s life. In this case, the child did die, but David knew that the will of Yah is often responsive to His people’s pleas. This is the basis of prayer, in fact… the idea that the will of Yahweh, even the proclaimed will of Yahweh, is subject to our petitions.
We read, “And if we know that He hear us, whatsoever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we desired of Him.” (1John 5:15) There are times when the “bigger picture,” which we cannot see, prevents the response to our prayers that we would like, such as in the case of David here, or Paul’s prayer for healing in 2Cor 12:7-9. We must acknowledge that our prayers do not “control” the divine hand.
So, the Biblical precedents here are built into the explanation. Jonah predicted the fall of Nineveh, which was conditional. Jeremiah, in addition to explaining the principle, warned the people not to rely on Jerusalem’s resistance to Babylon, even though it had been predicted never to fall. King David, again, was promised that the Kingdom would never be taken from his family, and yet one generation later under Solomon the kingdom was split into two. Ezekiel predicted that Israel would return to faith, be assaulted by Gog and Magog, and repel them with a blast of fire from Heaven. This last one will be fulfilled, absolutely, but for Spiritual rather than earthly Israel, as John tells us in Revelation 20.
Every prophecy given to man is conditional, and Ellen White herself sums this up quite directly, saying, “It should be remembered that the promises and threatenings of God are alike conditional.” [1Selected Messages, p. 67]
We cannot be dogmatic about prophecy, especially received prophecy. One of the objections to this teaching I have sometimes seen is the question, “What about Daniel’s 2300 Day prophecy? That had to come to pass exactly as it was recorded, otherwise Christ could not have come. Surely, that one is not conditional, so you can’t make a general statement that all prophecy is subject to human behavior.”
Two weeks ago, I made this statement: “The ‘obvious’ and broadly accepted interpretation of a revealed prophecy is actually very rarely correct, historically speaking, and the longer-ago the prophecy was given, the more dramatically its details change when it finally comes to pass, a fact seldom acknowledged by mainstream Adventists.”
The key word there, and maybe you missed it then, is “revealed” prophecy. The 2300 days was not a revealed prophecy. It was never delivered to a people. We have Daniel’s record, but while Jonah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Ellen White, etc. were told to spread the message to others, Daniel was told the opposite: “But thou, O Daniel, shut up the words, and seal the book, even to the time of the end; many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased.” (Dan 12:4)
This makes Daniel’s prophecy entirely unique in almost the entire sacred record. Here we have a prophecy that was given, but not delivered, and therefore, not received, by any people. It was conditional in its subjection to Yah’s will, not to human behavior. It was understood by Christian reformers in the 1800s, after it had already come to pass… and our Father did it that way on purpose. It could not depend on Israel remaining faithful, because it was sealed up. Note that Jeremiah’s explanation of prophetic conditionality begins with the phrase, “At what instant I shall speak concerning a nation…”
When the people of that nation receive what Yah speaks, that brings the conditionality into the realm of human effect. That is when our faith affects the manifestation, as the Ninevites did with Jonah's prophecy. If you keep reading that chapter from Jeremiah, you will find that the prophet is specifically instructed to deliver the warning to Israel to see if it will repent. In His mercy, Yahweh explains to Israel how prophecy works so that, when prophesying destruction against them, they will turn from their ways and subvert the otherwise inevitable effects. And Jeremiah is clear to point out that it works both ways, not just for warnings of judgment, but for promises as well. SDAs benefit from their understanding of the Sunday Law. It gives them comfort to “know” that their future is sure. Unfortunately, that which was intended for comfort has often become ear plugs to the Spirit's leadings, and an assurance that any deviation from orthodoxy is the sure sign of a heretic. That was never its intention, and in fact is misuse of prophetic work. A Seventh-day Adventist is a Christian who is a Sabbath-keeper and is eagerly awaiting the return of Christ; that is what it means, and does not require any other doctrinal position in order to be an applicable description. When we tell mainstream SDAs this, of course, and attempt to explain the Scriptural definition of “prophecy,” we are often treated in just the exact way that Israel treated Jeremiah.
Obviously, there may be much more to say about this in the discussion to follow, but I think the principle has been laid out very plainly here. Very briefly, let us deal with the last kind of statement.
Statement Type 4: The wording does not always reflect the language of the 144,000.
This is probably another controversial and “tricky” area, and so, in order to deal with that I have actually already spent the most time on it. While I will summarize it here, much of what needs to be understood of this has been covered in the lead-up to the four types of statements. Quotations from Bible translations, statements of opinion, and doctrines that are “weaker” than they need to be for the translated saints, these fall under this fourth category. I have already spoken of Mrs. White’s use of terms like “can,” and “may,” and “it is possible.” The words are true, but they can be used to subvert the intention of the Spirit for a people who will not see death.
Another quick example of trouble that I sometimes have with the “wording” of the Spirit of Prophecy is found in places like this: “The Lord loves those little children who try to do right, and he has promised that they shall be in his kingdom. But wicked children God does not love. He will not take them to the beautiful City, for he only admits the good, obedient, and patient children there. One fretful, disobedient child, would spoil all the harmony of heaven.” [An Appeal to the Youth, p. 61]
We don’t see this statement quoted a whole lot, and understandably so. And the fact that she is speaking to a child here, explaining things in the simplest terms possible, in my mind that just makes it worse. I know this is a statement made by a prophet of Yahweh, but please, fathers among us, don’t use this line of reasoning with your children. The Love of Yahweh is not conditional on our behavior; the foundation of our faith rests on that knowledge. And yes, we can understand that she means, and talk about the manifestation of God’s love, or the effect of God’s love, and we know that this was written by a mother to her son, with whom I am sure she had countless talks and their own personal “language,” but to send this out into the world without a caution is, assuredly, a mistake. I am certain she did not intend that paragraph for mass publication, but here we are.
There are things that Moses said that the 144,000 will not say. There are things the Old Testament prophets and the apostles have said, that we will speak with greater clarity, and more perfect speech. There are things that Ellen White has written that I would not teach as Biblical truth. There are just some statements that I can’t justify in light of the full force of the Bible. The salvation of Yahweh is always assured; that is eternally true, and any wording that doesn’t properly reflect this must be refined. The life of Christ in us guarantees an experience of victory over sin. This is said more strongly in some places of her writings than others… and as I’ve pointed out, sometimes this is just because the language itself has changed over time, or she is quoting the wording of a Scripture that is imperfectly understood by modern readers.
In any case, it is said that the 144,000 will follow the Lamb wherever He goes. They will be presented faultless before the Throne. Therefore, they will attain a purity of speech, and a clarity of understanding, that at no point in human history has been held by a group of people. Individuals here and there, such as Enoch and Elijah, may be held up as prototypes, but here we see a sanctified nation of redeemed humanity, and it is a sight that has never before been seen. The writings we have received from inspired sources, which is what this series has set out examine, are tools that facilitate this grand purification, but if even the tools are imperfect, the divine Hand that holds them, and uses them to shape us, is without flaw, and without weakness.
It is into Yah’s hands that we commit our spirits, even as Yahshua declared on the cross, and so we must rest the matter.
In conclusion, finally, I will say this: I do not condemn, or even heavily criticize, Mrs. White for these statements we have examined today. I don't agree with their use for a general audience across all space and time, and there are a number of reasons for that. However, I believe the intent behind them. In fact, that is the overall theme here – I believe her inspiration in every case, but sometimes the wording was not perfect, and we can demonstrate this. Sometimes the intent was not far-reaching, and we can demonstrate this by what she voluntarily withdrew. Sometimes she did not know the impact of her words, and how they would be used to actively stifle the Church’s ability to obtain New Light, such as some aspects of diet, religious duty, and of course the Trademark Law. We cannot blame her for this. The wording of Peter, Paul, James, and John have been used for hundreds of years to deny truth rather than proclaim it in like manner.
The Scriptures are perfect, even while man’s use of them has been imperfect. But not any longer. The 144,000 will have the best possible understanding of the Word of God that a mortal man may acquire before translation into glorified bodies. But we are not Gnostics; it is not the knowledge that will save us, but our faith that drives us to seek out and apply the knowledge to the way we think, and the way we treat ourselves and other people. That's it... that's the Faith of Jesus and the Commandments of God right there, and the Bible, and Ellen White's writings, are effective tools in learning how to do that.
As a Church, we have the benefit of what is written for our salvation. What Christ has done for us, and what we do in response, that is the Commandments of God and the Faith of Yahshua. That is what matters.
David.
An Enduring Witness
“We shall not be accepted and honored of God in doing the same work that our fathers did. We do not occupy the position which they occupied in the unfolding of truth. In order to be accepted and honored as they were, we must improve the light which shines upon us, as they improved that which shone upon them; we must do as they would have done, had they lived in our day.” [4SP 186]