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

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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Series

The Bible or Ellen White?

Part 3: Balanced or Lukewarm

Transcript

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

Attachments

Ellen G. White Exposed (Prophet or Pretender)

50m

The Most Crucial Gift

52m

The Spirit of Prophecy Matters

1h 5m

Revelation Made Simple

17. Prophetic Movement at End Time

1h 3m

Eyes of the Church

53m

Ellen White Under Fire

1h 3m

Restoration 2006: Prepare Me

Griping Over God’s Gifts: A Prophet or a Loss

50m

Alan Parker - Truth or Hoax: Validity of Ellen White

Strange Statements of Ellen White Explained

1h

The Gift of Prophecy - When and Why

57m

The Spirit of Prophecy

37m

The Bible or Ellen White?

Part 1: The Prophetic Gift and Ellen White

56m

Restoration 2006: Prepare Me

Griping Over God’s Gifts: A Prophet or a Loss

39m

Sound Doctrine