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

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.

Part 2: How Inspiration Works

We're right in the middle of the test of a prophet, that's where we left off.

And I think let's just go through quickly the 3 more tests that we will look at.

And then we shall look at inspiration and how inspiration works.

So this is a very sensitive and an important topic so I really wish that we could have a word of prayer and ask for the Lord's guidance in this.

Our Heavenly Father, thank you for giving us this moment of time that we can study your word together, help us to understand inspiration, help us to understand how you spoke through the prophets of old so that we may have a clear picture of it.

You see that there's so much misunderstanding about this topic, so I pray Father that you will direct our minds and help us not to fall into error.

I see that I have been lacking faith here.

We've been looking at the gift of prophecy.

We've seen that that the Bible calls us to test the prophets and the third test that we'll look at today is by the fruits you shall know them Jesus said in Matthew 7 Beware of false prophets who come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves.

Do men gather grapes from thorn bushes or figs from thistles?

Even so, every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit.

A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit.

Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.

Therefore, by their fruits you will know them.

So the fruits of course we find in the Bible refer to the fruits of the spirit in Galatians which is their behavior, their attitude, but also the fruit of their work.

And so the question we could ask is how did Ellen White live and what was the fruit of her ministry?

And I've quoted for you some of her sharpest critics.

Canwright was a minister, a Seventh-day Adventist minister, who left the church during Ellen White's time, but he was very closely acquainted with her and it was on the basis of the inspiration of Alan White that he left the church and started to attack it.

But he writes in a quote from Review and Herald I know Sister White to be an unassuming, modest, kind-hearted, noble woman.

These traits in her character are not simply put on and cultivated, but they spring gracefully and easily from her natural disposition.

She is not self-conscited, self-righteous and self-important as fanatics always are.

She is ever looking after the needy, destitute, and the suffering, providing for them and pleading their cause.

Towards the end of it, the headings started again and it's number 3.

There's 1 for yesterday that we're still going through and then there's another 1 for today.

So I should have put page numbers on this, I'm sorry, but if you go towards the end it's number 3 in big headings, by the fruits you shall know them.

Anyway this is 1 of her sharpest critics that writes this about Ellen White and that tells us something, in my opinion.

He says, she studies God's Word carefully and constantly.

I've heard Sister White speak hundreds of times, have read all her testimonies through and through, most of them many times, and I have never been able to find 1 immoral sentence in the whole of them, or anything that is not strictly pure and Christian, nothing that leads away from the Bible and from Christ, but there I find the most earnest appeals to obey God, to love Jesus, to believe the Scriptures and to search them constantly." This is a powerful testimony from someone who did not believe in Ellen White.

It tells us something about the fruit of this prophet.

Walter Martin, we don't have time to quote him, but he says basically the same thing, that she's a Christian in every sense of the term.

And, I mean, how many of you have ever read Steps to Christ?

If you've read Steps to Christ, Have you felt that you've been drawn away from Christ or towards Christ when you read it?

I mean if you read that book, that's the book that converted me, basically.

I read that book and I understood what it meant to be converted.

You know before my parents told me that all or other people told me you need to be converted Jonathan that's what what you're lacking and I was asking oh how am I converted and people were trying to describe it to me they were telling me that well it's like it's hard to describe It's kind of like falling in love, you know, you can't really describe it.

I thought I would get some kind of lightning from the sky that would just zap me and then I would be all hallelujah.

But that was not conversion until I read Steps to Christ and I realized it is surrender.

Through prayer I go down on my knees, I give my heart to Jesus and that is what, when God's Spirit comes into me and starts changing my life.

And Imagine if you're the devil, and I trust that you're not, but if you were the devil, and let's say that you were going to call a false prophet that was going to lead people away from Christ.

I mean, the fruits of this false prophet keeps leading people to Jesus all the time.

That's not a good fruit if you're a false prophet.

But it might not be that simple because actually there are many false prophets today that seems to lead people to Jesus.

But is the gospel, is it true gospel or not?

And that's why this is not only the only test.

We need to have all of the tests, but it is true.

Yeah, but if you think of some prophets, I don't know if they're prophets really, but you have these, if you see behind the scenes, there's for example this prophet that claimed to be Christ in Florida and he was leading millions of people to Christ or the Antichrist who he said was the same person And then he was a drug addict and he was saying there was no sin in the world because Jesus came to take away sin, you know.

And he had all these kinds of weird things.

And you can say, he can come and say, oh, I'm leading people to Jesus.

But the fruits tell that this is not the case.

He's leading people to a totally foreign gospel if you start looking a little bit into what the Bible says.

Many say that, that's what the Mormons told me and I told you about yesterday, that, oh, when you read these books you feel so good and that's the fruit of the Spirit.

So we can't isolate this 1, but at least the fruits should not contradict the message.

They shouldn't be hypocrites in that sense of the word, because God wouldn't keep giving them messages if they were hypocritical all the time.

And a true prophet needs to fulfill this test if it is actually a prophet from God.

It's from people not of this church and even people who are opposed to Ellen White There's 1 instance, Vincent Ramek was a Catholic lawyer And he spent 300 hours investigating and comparing Ellen White's writings.

He was going to investigate the charges of plagiarism, which we'll look at today, later.

And he concluded that too many of her critics, I'm on number 3 and D, too many of the critics have missed the boat altogether.

I personally have been moved, deeply moved by those writings.

I think I'm a better man today because of them.

And I wish that the critics could discover that." He was a Catholic.

Part 3: Balanced or Lukewarm

What we're going to look at today is the question of balanced or lukewarm.

We're going to look at how to read Ellen White.

We're going to look at her own claims, what authority does she have in comparison with what is inspired, what is not inspired, these kinds of questions I'd like us to look at.

But let's have a word of prayer and then we'll start.

Our Father in heaven, we're thankful for the opportunity we have here to study your word and to learn more about the spirit of prophecy which we are to expect in the last days according to your word.

And so please Lord help us to understand these things correctly, help us to have a balanced view of what your prophet has written so that we may get that prospering that you've promised this is my prayer in Jesus name amen since we started on the plagiarism let's let's go into that and then we'll bounce back to the other 1.

It says here, at times in the Bible, the Bible prophets borrowed expressions language or phrases or thoughts from other inspired or uninspired authors That's heading number 4 on the second handout which some of you might not have.

So it says this, even though some of these authors were not Inspired, the thought is inspired by the fact that the Prophet, under the guidance of God, chose to use them.

The preacher says that there is nothing new under the sun, and therefore originality is not a test of inspiration.

So sometimes people have been upset about, for example, something that Ellen White wrote or something that another prophet has written, and they might say, oh, this is not original, they took it from somewhere else.

Well, originality is not necessarily a test of a true prophet.

And let's read Ecclesiastes 12, 9 through 11.

The preachers sought to find acceptable words, and what was written was upright, words of truth.

The words of the wise are like goads, And the words of scholars are like well-driven nails, given by 1 shepherd.

So you see here the preacher, that's Solomon in this case, he didn't actually write all the Proverbs, but he sought them out.

He searched for them, he found them, he put them in order, but still they were words of truth.

They came from the same author, from the Lord.

Even though he had to maybe take something that some other wise person had said, by the fact that he chose it, we can trust that it is an inspired quote.

In Luke 1, verse 1 and 3, Luke says the same thing, that he listened to eyewitnesses and he actually took a lot of things probably from the other Gospels and put into his His narrative and that doesn't make it uninspired, of course So without giving any credit to the original author, that's also something very interesting, Solomon didn't say, thus says Theophilus or whoever he took the quote from, so he didn't give any credit to it.

Both Solomon and Luke used previously written proverbs and documents and presented them under their own name.

There was nothing unethical or false in this, since all truth belongs to God.

And Ellen White was led to use previously written expressions and thoughts.

It says in her early experience when she was sorely distressed over the difficulties of putting into human language the revelation of truths that had been imparted to her, She was reminded of the fact that all wisdom and knowledge comes from God.

Incidentally, Ellen White had only 4 years of education, so she was not a well-learned scholar in words, in that sense of the word.

Yeah, she had her nose cracked by a stone and then she had to quit.

So you can understand that she would feel frustrated.

Here she's going to write eternal truth And how can she express herself in a very acceptable and good way?

On the other hand, if you yourself are an interested scholar, then you learn a lot by reading what others have written.

So I think most of her writing could be her own good English speech.

She read other authors and she didn't just take the quotes from there but she learned the language very well.

Scholars investigated her writings and they made a conclusion that her writing is like a middle college level.

She was reminded of the fact that all wisdom and knowledge comes from God, and she was assured that God would bestow grace and guidance.

She was told that in the reading of religious books and journals she would find precious gems of truth, expressed in acceptable language, and that she would be given help from heaven to recognize these and to separate them from the rubbish of error in which with which they would sometimes find them in which she would sometimes find them associated So this is quite interesting that she read things and some critics they say oh she took from this author and this author was a terrible heathen and did other things.

Maybe they wrote something really good on health or something and she used a similar language.

It was God helped her to pick out those things which were true amid the rubbish of error.

And There are different percentages that people put on how much she actually borrowed in this way.

Now I put there from Herbert Douglas, Messenger of the Lord, there was 1 study that said it was not an exhaustive study but a random study that 31% of the sentences had at least 1 word from another author so of course that's very loosely described so it's not a whole lot it's not like she took lots of things.

Have you ever read the quote from Ellen White's writings when she talks about Eve being created from the rib of Adam?

Let me read it from Patriarchs and Prophets.

Eve was created from a rib taken from the side of Adam, signifying that she was not to control him as the head, nor to be trampled under his feet as inferior, but to stand by his side as an equal to be loved and protected by him." I think that's a beautiful quote and Ellen White uses it in Patriarchs and Prophets.

The thing is that Matthew Henry wrote it in the 16th century.

Also similar of course here's from Matthew Henry's commentary that the woman was made out of a rib out of the side of Adam not made out of his head to rule over him nor out of his feet to be trampled upon him, but out of his side to be equal with him under his arm to be protected near to his heart to be loved." As you see, it's a similar thing.

And she probably read that and thought that this is, wow, this is a very precious truth.

And she took it, she made some changes in wording and she presented it herself.

Now some people say, oh, she's a plagiarist, she took it and she didn't say this was from Matthew Henry.

Well, that wasn't the way they did it in the 19th century.

They just took things out of without necessarily attributing like we have in the scholar world today.

You need to even the slightest little thing you need to have a reference to.

The times have changed very much and actually even in spite of this people have made charge after charge after charge at Ellen White for being a plagiarist.

So to settle the matter once and for all, the General Conference in the 80s I believe, yeah 81, they hired an independent law firm with private money which specialized in patent and copyrights to investigate if Ellen White could be charged with plagiarism or if she had done anything unethical.

So plagiarism, that's when I study for a test and Instead of writing the article, I copy from Wikipedia and I say that, oh, I wrote this.

That's what people say that Ellen White did.

So they asked a lawyer by the name of Vincent Ramek.

He had a Catholic background, Vincent Ramek, and he investigated this for 300 hours and at the beginning he was not favorable towards Adventists.

He thought that actually she was guilty of plagiarism because he had read all the critics' books and so on.

But he said, okay, I'll go into this and I'll do a study on it.

And afterwards, in the Edentist Review, interviewed him and told him these things.

I'm reading from D number 1, heading number 4 in the second handout.

I gradually turned 180 degrees in the other direction.

I found that the charges simply were not true.

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The Bible or Ellen White?

Part 3: Balanced or Lukewarm

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Part 1: The Prophetic Gift and Ellen White

56m

Part 2: How Inspiration Works

52m

Part 3: Balanced or Lukewarm

1h

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