GYC 2025: Seeing the Invisible

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Generation. Youth. Christ. (GYC)

Ellen White? Why Should I Care?

Mark Howard

01 Is Ellen White Even Biblical?

02 How Inspiration Works

03 How to Avoid Misreading Ellen White

04 Was Ellen White a Plagiarist?

05 Why I Believe In Ellen White

James White made an interesting observation and explained 1 of the challenges Ellen White faced in her ministry.

He says of Ellen White, What she may say to urge the tardy is taken by the who?

And what she may say to caution the prompt zealous incautious ones is taken by the tardy as an excuse to remain too far behind.

You ever notice that the people who need the counsel the most are the ones who don't take it to heart.

Sometimes Ellen White, she writes something because maybe somebody's tardy all the time.

And she says, hey, you need to be on time.

They're like, wow, I got to be an extra 15 minutes early.

Roger Coon had shared the idea of of what if Ellen White wrote 2 testimony letters and they got switched and the way he called it the the 5 mile testimony in the 2 mile testimony.

So you imagine that she writes to a church that that's Church A is 5 miles away from where they ought to be.

And so she writes a two-mile letter to Church B, but Church A, it's like, hey, you guys really need to get it together.

And Church B, You guys are doing good, but then what if the letters are switched?

And so Church A takes the letter to heart, but they get the wrong 1.

But Church B went over to the other side like they overdid it.

This can happen when it comes to reading Ellen White because Ellen White wrote varied counsels to different situations that do not apply equally to every individual, that do not apply equally to every church.

And so we have to understand how to apply them correctly or we'll go over the mark or we'll come short of the mark.

I want to start out in the gospel of Luke chapter 10, Luke chapter 10, verse 26.

Well, this was not 1 to get behind on because we've got a lot of stuff to cover here.

That was just practice flipping in your Bible.

And now we're going to go to Second Timothy, chapter 2 and verse 15.

Luke 10 is where the young man comes to Jesus and asks him the question and Jesus asked him a question back and he says what is your, what does it say in the scripture, what is your reading of it?

And then the man says thus and so and Jesus says you've answered rightly now a lot of people pass over that but the simple point is just cuz you're reading the Bible doesn't mean you're reading it right Jesus said there's a right way and there's a wrong way I'll pit Today in the Christian church it's like, ah, however you want to read it.

There's a right way and a wrong way to read and interpret.

And just because you're reading doesn't mean you're interpreting right.

So Paul, when he counseled young Timothy here in 2 Timothy chapter 2 and verse 15, he says this.

Now, the New King James, I'm reading in the New King James, it says, Be diligent to present yourself approved to God, a worker who does not need to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.

I believe this is another, I'd have to go back and check, but I believe this is another place where you've got a word that, now this word in the Greek might be shared in more places.

But rightly dividing the word of truth, let me read a different translation here.

The new American standard I have here says to accurately handle the word of truth.

But we have to know what we've taken from this.

What we as Christians have taken from this is that Paul is counseling Timothy to rightly interpret what you're reading.

So you can read it, but just reading it doesn't mean you're making the right application of it.

And so in Christian circles, we have specifically theological circles, we have what we call rules of interpretation.

There are some guidelines for when you're reading how to come up to the correct interpretation.

If you don't come up to the correct, if you don't come up with the correct interpretation, then you're not rightly dividing.

You're wrongly dividing the word of truth.

And then you need to be ashamed, especially if you're a minister.

This is what Paul's telling Timothy, a workman who doesn't need to be ashamed.

Because you're rightly interpreting the word of truth.

Now, It says in the beginning of this text to be diligent.

I prefer the King James here where it says, study to show yourself approved.

There are a lot of people who simply, I'm gonna go over rules of interpretation, but if you miss everything else, here's the bottom line.

If you spend so many people say, well, you must have gone to seminary and you looked into all this.

You know how I know what I'm presenting in this seminar?

For those who just checked in for this particular seminar.

I said earlier and I'll give more of my testimony tomorrow morning, but my family left the Adventist church over the Ellen White and Desmond Ford and all of this stuff.

And when I came back in the church, I had to know why the church taught and believed thus and so.

And the only way I was going to get there was personal study.

And truth be told, you can come to seminars all day long and become seminar junkies and never know what you need to believe if you don't study.

And so a lot of what I share today, I'm gonna share certain statements, and you're like, well, how was I supposed to know that statement?

Like, they're only secret things that ministers are allowed to know.

But I learned them when I wasn't a minister.

And incidentally, I remember having to look stuff up.

Does anybody here know what microfiche is?

It's this stuff that goes in, yeah, a couple of us are like, this is before Internet, this is before, you go to the library and they'd have these little rolls of translucent slide stuff and you put it in and you've got to go scroll through the anyway.

So what I'm just saying is you have an advantage to study.

The Ellen White app, I remember buying the Ellen White CDs when they had the Ellen White CDs.

In fact, they had an abbreviated version on floppy disks.

You remember I showed you a little bit, there were 50 floppy disks and you load them 1 by 1 into your computer, right?

Now we've got them on our phones, the app for free.

$200 was a lot of money in 94 for those who remember that far back and I remember G anybody know the name G Edward Reed brother Reed used to speak on on spirit of prophecy would talk about the value of having those writings when it was $200.

And so I remember saying once, you know, if you don't have the money, go sell something insignificant like your bed and buy it.

I did not sell my bed, But I mean, I paid the $200 for that.

I'm just saying we have so much advantage in the ability to study.

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Series

Ellen White? Why Should I Care?

03 How to Avoid Misreading Ellen White

Transcript

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Parts

01 Is Ellen White Even Biblical?

1h

02 How Inspiration Works

52m

03 How to Avoid Misreading Ellen White

43m

04 Was Ellen White a Plagiarist?

54m

05 Why I Believe In Ellen White

45m

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