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Outline

Ellen White or Holy Scripture - Which is the final court of appeal? [Outline 1]

  1. Question: As a Seventh-day Adventist, do you believe that Ellen White is the infallible interpreter of Holy Scripture for the Seventh-day Adventist denomination?
    1. No - Either we have agreement that the Bible is the ultimate authority, or an attempt will be made next to discredit the Bible and put it on the same level as Ellen White's writings.
 
Our Observation

The Seventh-day Adventist who has reached this point in the discussion is stating that:

  • Ellen White is not the infallible interpreter of Holy Scripture for the Seventh-day Adventist denomination.

This means that they hold to one of three positions:

  1. The Bible is the ultimate authority. They can also provide examples of doctrinal error in Ellen White's teachings.
  2. The Bible is the ultimate authority. They cannot, or will not, provide any examples of doctrinal error in Ellen White's teachings.
  3. They implicitly acknowledge two authorities, the Bible and the writings of Ellen White (one Biblical and one present day). They try to make her writings complimentary to the Bible, and make her a modern day equivalent of a Bible prophet.

Here are these three positions broken out in a little more detail:

  1. They truly believe that the Bible is the ultimate authority by which every realm of human knowledge and endeavor should be judged. They agree that Ellen White is not the infallible interpreter of Holy Scripture for the Seventh-day Adventist denomination, and they can provide one or more examples demonstrating where she contradicted the Scriptures. One would have to wonder why a person holding this position would choose to remain an Adventist, since this position is in direct conflict with Seventh-day Adventist Fundamental Belief #18.
  2. They truly believe that the Bible is the ultimate authority by which every realm of human knowledge and endeavor should be judged. They agree that Ellen White is not the infallible interpreter of Holy Scripture for the Seventh-day Adventist denomination, but they will claim that they are unable to provide any examples. A Seventh-day Adventist taking this position is either extremely ignorant about what she wrote, or more likely in a state of intentional denial about the cultic nature of Ellen White's writings. Those who are ignorant can be shown numerous examples where she contradicted Bible doctrine, in which case they have no choice but to adopt position 1 or 3. Those in denial, when confronted with examples of their denial, will quickly morph their position into that of position 3. Our task as a Christian is to help them articulate whether position 1 or 3 is more agreeable to them, since position 2 is really no position at all, but rather a temporary state of ignorance or denial.
  3. They think they believe, as the Seventh-day Adventist Fundamental Belief #18 states, that "the Bible is the standard by which all teaching and experience must be tested", but then they qualify that by also stating from the same Fundamental Belief that "As the Lord's messenger, her writings are a continuing and authoritative source of truth which provide for the church comfort, guidance, instruction, and correction." Obviously it is impossible to have two "authorities". One must be used to test and evaluate the other. These Seventh-day Adventists don't want to make the teachings of Ellen White accountable to the Bible, and so the knowledgeable Adventists will next proceed to devalue the Bible in order to place it on the same "plane" as Ellen White's teachings. By pointing out supposed contradictions and errors in God's Holy Word they attempt to place it at the same level of inspiration and accuracy as Ellen White's writings. This has been the strategy of the leading apologists within the Seventh-day Adventist Church since the 1980's when many problems with Ellen White's writings began to surface. A complimentary approach has been to rewrite the Bible to agree with Ellen White's teachings. This Bible, copyrighted by the official denominational publishing house, was released initially under the name of "The Clear Word Bible". It is available in adult, children's and audio versions.

The next step in our Discussion Tree will be to ask them [Question 1.b.1] to provide at least one example where her doctrinal interpretation of the Bible is in error. Their response will determine which of these paths we follow.

 
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