This program looks at the Pioneers of the SDA church and the development of the Godhead in their understanding. Plus it addresses the question of Who is the Alpha and Omega of Deadly Heresies that Ellen White spoke about? Is it the Trinity doctrine? 

<p>This program looks at the Pioneers of the SDA church and the development of the Godhead in their understanding. Plus it addresses the question of Who is the Alpha and Omega of Deadly Heresies that Ellen White spoke about? Is it the Trinity doctrine? </p>

<p>Free sharing permitted under the Creative Commons <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/">BY-NC-ND 3.0 (US)</a> license.</p>

Revealer Films

The Godhead: Joel's Journey

Joel Ridgeway

Why I Left the Anti-Trinitarian Movement

Father God, Lord, we just pray that you'll be with us now as we explore this deep, deep topic of the Godhead.

Lord, I feel very insufficient at this moment to share this.

How can we, as created beings, think to understand God?

I just pray that you will stand here and speak, and that it will be not my words but your words.

We ask this, Lord, in the mighty name of Jesus.

So I don't claim to have to be any kind of authority on the Godhead.

But I have had the unique experience of being in both sides of the camp.

I just pray that as I share these things with you, as I share with you my experience, my journey, that you will learn something from my experience and not make the same mistakes that I made.

But why write another book on the Godhead?

It documents the evidence that the Lord showed me as I sought to understand the truth about God.

So it's really my testimony, you could say.

And Secondly, it's written by someone who has been an anti-trinitarian and therefore I can see things from their perspective.

Often when I read books about the Godhead, sometimes their arguments didn't make sense to me because they were coming at it from a different angle.

The more I study about the Godhead, the less I feel like I understand God, if you know what I mean.

The more you know, the more you realize how much you don't know.

But this picture that you see here of light coming into a canyon really sums up my experience.

Because figuratively speaking, while we're here on this earth, we're all down in this dark canyon.

Not until we are translated will we be able to bask in the undimmed rays of the glory of God.

Till then, there are many things we must accept by faith.

This book has been reviewed by Pastor Athol Tolhurst, who was the former Undersecretary of the General Conference, who has since passed away.

His insight was greatly appreciated, and he's also written the foreword for this book, of which I'm very grateful.

So let me now take you back on a bit of a journey just to show you my background, where I came from.

I was raised by God-fearing Seventh-day Adventist parents.

I want to pause here to acknowledge the amazing job that my parents did in raising me.

If it wasn't for their hard work, I would not be standing here before you today, I can assure you.

But I was raised believing the traditional understanding, the traditional view of the Godhead which the church holds today.

3 eternal persons, self-existent in 1 Godhead.

But in the early days I never really studied these things for myself.

I just accepted it because my church taught it, That's what my parents taught me and I just believed it.

Then in my teens, my family were introduced to this non-trinitarian view of God.

In this teaching, God the Father was the supreme God, self-existent, eternal.

The Son was also God but he was a lesser God in some way.

He was literally begotten or brought into existence by the Father, far back in the ages of eternity and he inherited all the titles of deity from his father.

The Holy Spirit was not a person like the Father and the Son, but the Holy Spirit was the spirit, mind, and power of the Father and the Son.

I resisted the idea at first, it just didn't seem right to me.

But I studied it, I studied it, and listening to lots of videos, DVDs, studying with friends, it didn't happen overnight, it was a long process.

Eventually my whole family changed our view to the anti-trinitarian view of God.

I became a staunch anti-trinitarian and I used to love to debate with people.

I used to get on internet forums and share my ideas and many people couldn't answer my arguments.

I thought I was closer to God because the anti-trinitarian concept of God seemed to help me to understand God more.

The literal father-son relationship was more realistic to my human understanding and I thought it seemed to help me understand the greatness of God's sacrifice.

After the novelty of this whole idea, this new belief wore off, I found myself no different spiritually than I was before.

In fact, it developed a critical spirit in me of the church and of others and actually ended up dragging me down spiritually.

And then there was those nagging problems in the back of my mind.

Problems like clear Bible and spirit prophecy statements that just didn't fit.

Either we had to explain them away as with less clear statements, or we had to say that the quotes had been tampered with.

And then there was that Ellen White statement where Ellen White says that the nature of the Holy Spirit is a mystery and here we were trying to explain it.

And then this it was claimed that this teaching brought people closer to God.

In fact this is 1 of the main arguments that it brings forward today, that you can relate to him better when you believe this doctrine.

They will say that believing in a three-person Godhead means that you believe in a make-up gospel, an artificial gospel and they will say that if you accept their teaching, the teaching of what's called the 1 True God movement, that's what they're calling it now, that it will take your relationship with God to the next level.

This is what they teach and this is what I believed that it would do for me.

But I did not see any proof of this in the lives of the people that held this doctrine.

True, I saw many people that were godly and sincere in their belief, but I saw many people who are very dogmatic and un-Christ-like in their behavior.

And then I looked at the youth of the people that believe this doctrine and many of them are just as worldly as their more liberal counterparts.

In my own life I first thought I was closer to God but as I said it was short-lived.

And I met many, many sincere upright godly people who believed in a three-person Godhead, much more in fact than were in the 1 true God belief.

So all these problems combined with some providential circumstances that brought me in close connection and association with some godly people who believed in the 3 eternal persons of the Godhead.

And the ideas they shared with me really challenged my view on God and sent me back to the drawing board to study this topic for myself.

Now there is a rumor going around And that is that I was desperate to get married.

And the person I wanted to marry was a Trinitarian.

And so I changed my belief to accommodate her.

Now I want to set the record straight, that is not true.

My wife-to-be had nothing to do with me changing my belief.

In fact, I changed my belief before I fell in love with Hannah.

By the way, it's Hannah's birthday today.

In fact, it was 1 of my Bible teachers at the school I was attending at Highwood that really impacted me the most.

If it was not for his wisdom and encouragement and insight, I definitely wouldn't have even started on this journey that I started.

So I'm going to share with you some truths that the Lord taught me in my search for truth.

During this talk I'm going to be quoting a lot from the writings of Ellen White.

And I believe that Ellen White is inspired of God.

And I believe that in these last days the Lord gave the church the gift of prophecy because of all the winds of doctrine that were blowing that we would need the extra guidance.

However, the Bible will be the basis of our discussion today.

So tighten your seat belts as we go into a journey back in time, far beyond time in fact, to a point that we don't know, back in time, to ask the question, who is God?

But first we need to realize that the ground that we're about to tread is holy ground.

As I studied this topic I came face to face with my own inability to understand God.

How can we, the creation, think that we can understand God, the Creator?

In fact Charles Wesley once said, you show me a worm that understands man and I will show you a man that understands God.

But this was a tough pill for me to swallow in the early days.

Because you see, I wanted all my questions answered.

But I had to come to the realisation that some things are simply not revealed.

And most of all, we need God to guide us in this matter.

The Pioneers and the Alpha and Omega of Deadly Heresies

There were 3 questions that I had to understand and solve in my mind to understand the truth about God.

And they were, firstly, is Christ the eternal God like the Father?

Secondly, is the Holy Spirit an individual person in his own right?

And thirdly, is the Godhead part of the pillars of our faith which the Lord led our pioneers to establish?

Now, we've looked at the first 2 in the previous session and we saw very clearly from inspiration that the answer is a resounding yes.

This is a very big emphasis in the 1 True God movement, the pioneers and the Godhead.

This presentation is based on chapters 7 and 8 of my book where I go into this in much detail.

If you want to get copies of the quotes and letters that I refer to in this presentation, you'll find them all in the book.

So why is this such an important question for me in my journey?

This idea of the Godhead being part of the pillars of our faith.

Well consider this statement here by Sister White.

She says, Men and women will arise professing some new light or some new revelation, whose tendency is to unsettle faith in the old landmarks.

Their Doctrines will not bear the test of God's word, yet souls will be deceived, false reports will be circulated, and some will be taken in this snare.

For years I believed that our church had forsaken the old landmarks established in the early days by accepting a false view of God.

And this is the punchline which the 1 True God movement will be put forward to you in the context of the history of our pioneers.

They will say that the church has apostatized from the truth.

So the question we need to ask is, what are the old landmarks?

Because This is key to understanding what Sister White is saying in these quotes.

Well thankfully God has not left us to guess regarding this question.

In the book 1888 Messengers on page 518, Ellen White clearly defines the old landmarks.

She lists 5 doctrinal pillars of our faith as the landmarks and they are number 1 1844 and the cleansing of the sanctuary, number 2 the 3 angels messages, number 3 the physical sanctuary in heaven.

And number 5, the non-immortality of the soul or the state of the dead.

And then she says, after listing these here, she says, I can call to mind nothing more that can come under the head of the old landmarks.

All this cry about Changing the old landmarks is imaginary.

So no mention of the Godhead here, is there?

But I can think of many more key doctrines of our faith that are not listed in this list.

Yeah, well, what about salvation through Jesus Christ alone?

What about the Bible as the inspired word of God?

Because these are not landmark statements for the Seventh-day Adventist Church.

A landmark is a reference point that helps you orientate yourself when you're navigating.

And these doctrines are landmark doctrines.

They are distinctive doctrines that stand out that separate the Adventist Church from all the other president churches out there These 5 points are unique to Seventh-day Adventists.

There is no church that has all 5 of these pillars.

Notice that righteousness by faith is not even in there.

We're going to talk about more of this later.

This was something that was added to the foundation.

So where did the understanding, where did the pioneer understanding of the Godhead come from?

You know, Ellen White writes that the pioneers spent many days and nights in prayer, studying the Bible to cement these landmark truths that she listed here.

I was led to believe, as an anti-trinitarian, that the Godhead was part of those doctrines that were established in the early days.

If you read the writings of the proponents of this doctrine this is what they'll tell you.

They'll tell you that and they'll quote the pioneers saying that they studied and they prayed and these truths were established then.

But when I looked into it I discovered something surprising.

I discovered that James White, Joseph Bates, Uriah Smith, and other very prominent leaders in the Advent movement came from the Christian Connection.

This is the first religious movement in America.

Now, what did they believe regarding the Godhead?

This is a quote from an old religious encyclopedia published in 1882 and it says, commenting on the Christian connection, their only authoritative rule of faith and practice, yet the general characteristics of their belief may be determined.

They were anti-Trinitarians, yet called Christ a divine saviour and acknowledged the Holy Spirit as the power and energy of God." Isn't that interesting?

This is exactly what the SDA, Seventh-day Adventist pioneers, believed.

And when you compare the writings of the Christian connection with the writings of the pioneers, you'll find that they both believed that Christ was literally begotten of the Father, and that the Holy Spirit is not a person like the Father and the Son, but the power and energy and mind of God.

I have all the quotes in my book, by the way.

The Pioneer understanding is not part of the distinctive doctrines of the Adventist church.

This doctrine, along with other doctrines like Sunday worship, were brought with the pioneers from the President churches, which they left.

So we need to be very, very careful when we accept this doctrine as truth, because it's not a distinctive doctrine and it's a hand-me-down from the President movement.

So we need to be very, very careful when we accept this doctrine as truth.

Because it's not a distinctive doctrine and it's a hand-me-down from the President movement.

We can't just accept it because the pioneers believed it.

They were advancing in their belief and understanding of God just like we are.

And what's more, the pioneers did not have a set doctrine on the Godhead, contrary to popular opinion.

Take a look at the 1872 Fundamental Beliefs.

This was the first statement that the church released in the early days.

And the preamble says this, In presenting to the public this synopsis of our faith, we wish to have it distinctly understood that we have no articles of faith, creed, or discipline aside from the Bible.

We do not put this forth as having any authority with our people, nor is it designed to secure uniformity among them as a system of faith, but is a brief statement of what is and has been with great unanimity held by them." So this statement of beliefs was not binding, it was developing.

These 2 points are the section in the 1872 Statement of Beliefs that deal with the Godhead.

Number 1, there is 1 God, a personal spiritual being, the creator of all things, omnipotent, omniscient, eternal, infinite in wisdom, holiness, justice, goodness, truth, and mercy, unchangeable and everywhere present by his representative, the Holy Spirit.

Number 2, that there is 1 Lord Jesus Christ, Now, does anyone disagree with this statement?

There's nothing in our current church's belief that would disagree with this statement.

It's very broad and open to individual interpretation.

And this is because the church as a body was still developing in this area of the Godhead.

They had come together on the common ground of the landmark doctrines that we read earlier.

The other areas of the faith were still in development.

Let's take a look and see how the pioneers developed in their understanding of doctrine.

Prior to 1846, Ellen White, which was Ellen Harmon at the time, and most of the pioneers still worshipped on Sunday.

Joseph Bates was actually the 1 that introduced the Sabbath to the Advent movement.

They resisted at first because they thought that Bates was focusing too much on the fourth commandment.

But then God showed Ellen White in vision that the fourth commandment was actually the center of the 10.

And after that they accepted the Sabbath.

In the early days the pioneers did not think it was wrong to eat pork.

And James White says here, "...we do not by any means believe that the Bible teaches that it's that's pork's improper use in the gospel dispensation is sinful." but then God showed Ellen White in a vision that meat especially unclean meat is wholly unfit for human consumption so the pioneers abandoned the practice of eating meat and particularly pork and then as the church grew that many of the pioneers had an incorrect understanding of the law of God and righteousness by faith.

Ellen White said that many had lost sight of Jesus.

So God sent a message to the pioneers through Elders Jones and Wagner to help them to understand the truth regarding salvation.

Series

The Godhead: Joel's Journey

The Pioneers and the Alpha and Omega of Deadly Heresies

Transcript

Description

Parent Series

Sponsor

Recorded

Apologetics

Mystery of the Godhead

57m

Faith That Endures

Truth is Quiet and Easily Ignored

1h

Present Truth

35m

The Three Angel's Messages

08 The Spirit of Babylon Part 1

1h 6m

Come Lord Jesus

05 Heppenstall vs Andreasen on the Atonement

58m

The Godhead

3. The Godhead: A Historical Narrative

46m

SWYC 2007 Plenary Sessions

Changing The Times

1h 10m

FYI 2009 Seminar by Dwayne Lemon

Get to Work! (The Three Angels’ Messages)

58m

Time No Longer Part 2

1h 20m

Mark Howard: White Out? Whatever Happened to the Gift of Prophecy?

Betrayed with a Kiss

1h

Every Wind of Doctrine

2. The Third Person of the Godhead

1h 15m

Fundamentally Flawed? Considering Challenges to Truth

Trinity

49m

Sound Doctrine