Michigan Camp Meeting 2019: As a Witness, Matthew 24:14

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Michigan Conference of Seventh-day Adventists

White Out: Whatever Happened to the Gift of Prophecy?

Mark Howard

Satan’s Last Deception

What the Bible Says About Prophets

Ellen White or Sola Scriptura

Can a Plagiarist be Inspired

Reading Ellen White - Part 1

Reading Ellen White - Part 2

Father in heaven, we are just so thankful for this privilege we have of being together at camp meeting.

We know your Spirit has been present, Lord, and I pray today it would be no different, that the Spirit of God would open our understanding and speak to us personally, Lord.

We want to know how we can be closer to You and more fully reflect You to those around us.

We want people who come in contact with us to know that we know and have spent time with Jesus.

So, Father, this is our prayer this morning.

We pray it in His name and for His sake, Jesus Christ, amen.

Now today we're picking up, this is part 2 of reading Ellen White.

And we're going to take some of the principles, this was a hard 1 today.

There's a lot I'm covering in not just reading this I'm kind of merging things together what I'm saying is We're gonna look at some of Ellen White statements on different different topics and apply the hermeneutical principles so you get an idea how to rightly divide the Word of Truth versus wrongly dividing.

But there are just so many things that I had to choose what to cover and there's a lot of things that I would have liked to go into, but there is time that explanation takes.

So you'll just bear with me with what I do share.

I do want to start out with this, though.

Hermeneutical principles or principles of interpretation that help you to interpret what you're reading don't do much good if you're not reading.

Principles of interpretation for what you read only help what you read.

And I'm going to tell you that I'm concerned that Seven-Day Adventists are not availing themselves of this gift that God has given.

I've been reading Ellen White's writings.

I'm not saying that's all you need to read, but I'll be honest with you, I don't read a whole lot other than that in the Bible, just because of sake of time.

And I'm gonna tell you that I've read stuff again and again and I get new stuff out of it every time.

And so when people say, yeah, I've read that before, like really?

Yeah, I ate spaghetti 20 years ago, I'm not going to eat again.

Let me show you this statement found in the book Testimonies Volume 4, page 390 and 391.

It says, the volumes of Spirit of Prophecy and also the testimonies should be introduced in every Sabbath-keeping family, and the brethren should know their value and be urged to read them.

They should be in the library of every family and read again and again.

Let them be kept where they can be read by many and let them be worn out in being read by all the neighbors." Now that's interesting, isn't it?

Now she continues on and then a paragraph later says this, many are going directly contrary to the light which God has given to His people because what?

They do not read the books which contain the light and knowledge and cautions, reproofs and warnings.

So, inadvertently, I may be going contrary to the will of God simply because I won't avail myself of the light He's given.

And I know that you can't meaning folks, you don't want to be going contrary to the will of God.

You're here because you want to do the will of God, but part of the thing that aids us in that is availing ourselves of the light God gives in His Word and through this gift of prophecy.

Now I want to review our basic rules of interpretation that we're going to look at this morning.

We talked about 4 rules of interpretation, You'll find them on the screen.

We want to consider the internal context, that is what's involved in the very statement itself or readings, clause, wording and phrases and all that stuff.

Consider the external context, anything external, other passages, cultural settings, etc.

We want to learn to differentiate between policy and principle because principles change over time, I'm sorry, policies change over time, but the principles behind them stay the same.

And then we want to be willing most of all to follow the truth Jesus said that if we will to do his will, God makes his truth known to us.

And I've got to take a breath trying to talk too fast thinking of what I'm going to cover here.

But we're going to apply these principles in a few different statements so that you get an understanding.

We looked at them and we gave some examples yesterday.

But I want to give you some examples, some more practical examples today.

The first 1 is a series of statements that Ellen White made on eating eggs.

And I think this is very, it may be confusing at first, but it should be very helpful.

Now here's a statement we find in Testimonies Volume 2, page 399.

And Ellen White says here, eggs should not be placed upon your table.

Now the first thing you want to understand is the way the testimonies were written.

Some of them were written for the whole church, but many were personal letters to personal people who had specific issues to their case.

And so when Ellen White, the Lord had led Ellen White, and she talks about this in another place, to reprint those testimonies for the benefit of others who may be struggling with the same problems but to remove the personal information.

And so that's why you'll find Brother A and Sister B and Brother C.

And incidentally, Brother A isn't Brother Andross.

So if you go through a series of testimonies, just as ABCD, and just randomly put in there.

But the point is, the personal information is taken out.

What we need to understand from the get-go is, that testimony was written to a specific case that may not fit me hand in glove.

I don't know, and it doesn't say right here why the eggs were an injury to the children, I don't know the situation of that family.

But just looking at that statement again, We're going to contrast it with some other ones.

Now I could take this statement right here and say, look, saints, it's clear through inspiration.

God told Ellen White we shouldn't be eating eggs.

This is in Testimonies, Volume 9, page 162.

While dangers have been given regarding the… I'm sorry, while warnings have been given regarding the dangers of disease through butter and the evil of the free use of eggs by small children, yet we should not consider it a violation of principle to use eggs from hens that are well cared for and suitably fed." Now notice this, same statement, eggs contain properties that are what?

Eggs contain properties that are remedial agencies in counteracting certain poisons.

So in the first statement, hey, eggs should never appear on your table.

And now here's a statement from the same prophet that says, you know, There are limitations I would put on this and we could conjecture as to cholesterol and you know things like that.

She says, eggs that are taken from hens that are suitably cared for should not, you shouldn't consider that a violation of principle.

So it sounds like a contradiction, doesn't it?

We find this in Counsels on Diet and Foods, page 204.

Writing to a specific individual, I'll explain in a moment, put into your diet something you have left out.

Do not for a moment suppose that it will not be right to do this.

Now why might the person have supposed it might not be right?

Well he read another passage somewhere and she's trying to clarify the situation.

I'm going to explain in a minute because I know right now you guys are scratching your head and say, well now that's crazy.

Series

White Out: Whatever Happened to the Gift of Prophecy?

Reading Ellen White - Part 2

Transcript

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

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