ASI Scandinavia 2013: Transforming Grace

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ASI Scandinavia

The Bible or Ellen White?

Jonathan Karlsson

Part 1: The Prophetic Gift and Ellen White

Part 2: How Inspiration Works

Part 3: Balanced or Lukewarm

For those of you who don't know me, I work as a Bible worker in Finland at the moment.

And it is a very challenging work, but a very blessed work as well.

So I'm going to share something that is very close to my heart and I'll share some of my own testimony concerning the spiritual prophecy and Ellen White and we'll try to in this presentation I'd like to go into a little more of depth of how to have a balanced view of Ellen White because I believe and we'll look at that later that there are extreme views on both sides and We will look at it, and I believe that we'll see from the scripture actually what what a prophet is and how we should read Ellen White, so I'd like to pray before we start and let's get right into it.

Heavenly Father, we thank you so much for giving us this opportunity to study your word.

We pray for your Holy Spirit's illumination so that we may understand the things that we are going to read.

So I was raised in an Adventist family but During my teenage years I felt the Bible was extremely boring, nothing interesting at all.

I drifted away from God and I was brought back through some ways that I can't take time to explain right now.

But during the preparations for my baptism, I had come across some of the websites out there that attacked Ellen White.

Have any of you ever been to such a website ever?

There are at least lots of them out there and I came across this and it was because I was discussing at a forum and some person said well Ellen White is a false prophet, look at this.

When I was reading these things, I was thinking, wow, why didn't anyone tell me about this?

And I was looking into all this and I started to have questions about it.

And I told my pastor that, I actually printed the objections.

And I came to my pastor and I put them on the table of the pastor and I told the pastor, I want an answer to every single 1 of these questions before I get baptized.

And yeah, I guess the pastor really got to work.

It was actually the pastor's wife that helped me out.

And A week later, she had studied into all these subjects and we went through these different points, point by point.

And as I was reading them and as I was reading the things in the context, I was very convinced that whatever motive was these people had, they were not, that had written these web pages, they were not pure.

They were not honest in their way of presenting the material, in the way of presenting Ellen White's writings.

And so, needless to say, I got baptized and I praise the Lord for that.

During the years, The writings of Ellen White have been an extreme, extremely great inspiration to me in my ministry.

If I get discouraged, that's where I go and I get encouraged again.

It's meant so much to me in sermon preparations and all these things that I have a passion for this subject.

But I also know that there are, as I said, extremes in this regarding Ellen White.

And I think that we will want to look at what Ellen White actually means by what she says and how we can have a clear view of what the Bible says about prophets.

Now my clock is falling down so I won't see what time it is.

Otherwise I'll keep you here forever and you won't get any supper.

Basically this is what I'll talk about but this is in more depth so we won't go into all of it, and I'll just share some of my own experiences.

But what I want us to look at in this presentation is first of all the question of what is a prophet?

And then afterwards we look at Ellen White and we'll see, we'll look at the tests of a prophet in the Bible and see if it corresponds with what the Bible actually says.

So I've done it this way so we don't even have to have our Bibles here, isn't that lazy?

If you have your Bible you can turn to it but if you look at that in the first verse or first paragraph there 1a or it says Hebrews Hebrews chapter 1 verses 1 and 2.

Let me let me just share when we come to the question what is a prophet There are so many interesting ideas out there of what a prophet is.

I was actually at a pastor's meeting not too long ago and there was this prophet there that didn't belong to my church at all.

But this prophet came and they, the prophet went around all of the pastors around there and she put her hands on each of us and she put oil on our heads and then she said some kind of, you know, I almost considered Christian horoscope, you know, a little bit, something that was said, a bit general, some general information that, oh, you have some difficulty in your life that you need to let go of, you know.

And when she came to me, she said that I needed to stir up the gifts within me.

Thus says the Lord, stir up the gifts within me.

And when she was saying the gifts, she was thinking of speaking in tongues and these kinds of things.

So I was actually a bit skeptical to this prophet, but there are so many different variations of what people say a prophet is.

So I would like us to look at what the Bible actually has to say about it.

In Hebrews 1, verses 1 and 2, it says, and 2 it says God who at various times and in various ways spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets has in these last days spoken to us by his son.

So according to this verse God has spoken through who?

The prophet is actually the spokesman of God.

Sometimes we think that a prophet is a fortune teller, you know, that's not the definition according to the Bible.

In Exodus 4 and verse 16, God says that Aaron shall be your spokesman to the people and he himself shall be as a mouth for you and you shall be to him as God and then in chapter 7 verse 1 God says to Moses so the Lord said to Moses see I have made you as God the Pharaoh and Aaron your brother shall be your prophet.

So if you compare those 2 verses you see very clearly that a prophet is a spokesman from God.

So it's actually God's primary way of communicating.

Sometimes he actually speaks through an audible voice.

Can you think of an example in the Bible when God spoke through an audible voice?

And at Mount Sinai, right, sometimes He makes His will known through that way.

And we wish, we sometimes say, oh, why can't God do that to me, right?

Why doesn't He speak to me through thunder and lightning?

And then it would be so easy to know God's will.

But God's primary method of communicating is through the prophets.

And we might say, but doesn't God communicate through the Bible?

It's actually the Scriptures of the prophets is what the Bible is called.

So if it wasn't for the prophetic gift, we would not have a Bible today.

So the prophetic gift is very, very important.

And we might wonder, so how does 1 become a prophet?

Do I go to prophet school 101 and then I graduate and then I become a prophet.

I once did 1 of these tests, I don't know if you've done them, in the church you have a gift test.

I actually did that 1 and I turned out to be a prophet.

I don't really know but it made me lose a bit confidence in those things because I don't believe that's how God in the Bible presents the prophetic gifts.

If we look in 1st Corinthians 12, maybe someone else can read it so I don't have to, you don't have to hear my voice all the time.

For to 1 is given the word of wisdom through the spirit to another the word of knowledge through the same spirit to another the faith by the same spirit to another gifts of healing by the same spirit to another the working in miracles to another prophecy another discerning of spirits to another different kinds of tongues and to another the interpretation of tongues.

But 1 and the same Spirit works all these things, distributing to each 1 individually, as He will.

It is a gift that God, when He sees necessary, He gives it.

The question can be asked, can all be prophets?

If we continue in that chapter in 1 Corinthians, Paul actually answers this question.

He writes that in 1 Corinthians 12 verse 29 that are all apostles, are all prophets, are all teachers, are all workers of miracles?

And the obviously implied answer in that is no.

Series

The Bible or Ellen White?

Part 1: The Prophetic Gift and Ellen White

Transcript

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

Attachments

A God Worth Knowing

17 A Voice of Reason

1h 8m

Prophetic Movement at End Time

1h 3m

The Spirit of Prophecy Matters

1h 5m

IMPACT Scandinavia 2012: Workshop B

The Most Essential and Attacked Gift of God’s Remnant Church, Part 1

1h

War on the Remnant Church in Prophecy

54m

Ellen G. Why?

1h 12m

Ellen White? Why Should I Care?

02 How Inspiration Works

52m

Ellen White Under Fire

1h 3m

Unlocking the Mysteries of the Sanctuary

24 The Sanctuary and the Testimony of Jesus

55m

IMPACT Scandinavia 2012: Workshop B

The Most Essential and Attacked Gift of God’s Remnant Church, Part 3

1h 29m

Eyes of the Church

53m

The White Elephant in the Room

Must Know: How to Read Ellen White

1h 2m

Sound Doctrine