Lesson 3: “Old Testament Prophets”
COLLEEN TINKER | Editor, Proclamation! |
Adventist, how is Ellen White related in your mind to the Old Testament prophets? Does Ellen share common ground with Elijah, Jeremiah, Samuel, Miriam, and Deborah—and on what basis? This week’s lesson again leads with a memory verse intended to bind your conscience to Ellen’s testimonies—but the verse is out of context and assumes that you already believe Ellen had a prophetic gift.
In fact the authors move from bad to worse by using a few verses from Jeremiah where he warns Israel against false prophets—but they never use his closely related verses where he identifies the plagiarism of false prophets and their claims to having dreams from God and warns God’s people NOT to listen to those prophets!
The lesson leads with a memory verse from 2 Chronicles 20:20, NKJV:
“Jehoshaphat stood and said, ‘Hear me, O Judah and you inhabitants of Jerusalem: Believe in the Lord your God, and you shall be established; believe His prophets, and you shall prosper’ ”—2 Chronicles 20:20 NKJV
This text has been used frequently in recent years by a variety of Adventist speakers and evangelists, and always it is designed to bind the Adventist conscience to remember Ellen White. If they believe and practice Ellen’s words, they will prosper, is the message. Of course, Adventists’ prosperity is never only about the individual. If Adventists prosper, the organization will also prosper because one of Ellen’s outspoken counsels was her advice about “stewardship”. Adventists are to give a faithful tithe and give-until-it-hurts offerings, and the organized Adventist institution IS the storehouse to which the member “returns” those tithes and offerings. After all, if they do not return them, they are robbing God.
Of course, Ellen is NOT one of God’s prophets—and the Seventh-day Adventist organization is not Israel nor Judah nor the inhabitants of Jerusalem! Context doesn’t allow application of this verse to Ellen White!
Sundays lesson focusses again on Elijah, and this time the author uses James and 1 Kings 19 to establish the idea that Elijah was really “just like us”—in other words, he was vulnerable to depression and discouragement. The unspoken but clear intention of this lesson is clear as the week progresses: to draw a parallel between Elijah’s weakness and despair and Ellen White’s vulnerable fear and discouragement as she faced her supposed calling from God. The author asks the reader what James 5:17, 18 means by stating that Elijah had “a nature like ours”.
Yet the context of James 5:17, 18 is instruction to born again believers to pray in faith for their needs—and to intervene if a brother “strays from the truth”. Ironically, this passage actually exposes the Adventist commitment to Ellen White as straying from the truth instead of establishing her as a prophet with God’s authority to bind one’s conscience:
Is anyone among you suffering? [Then] he must pray. Is anyone cheerful? He is to sing praises. Is anyone among you sick? [Then] he must call for the elders of the church and they are to pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer offered in faith will save the one who is sick, and the Lord will raise him up, and if he has committed sins, they will be forgiven him. Therefore, confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another so that you may be healed. The effective prayer of a righteous man can accomplish much. Elijah was a man with a nature like ours, and he prayed earnestly that it would not rain, and it did not rain on the earth for three years and six months. Then he prayed again, and the sky gave rain and the earth produced its fruit. My brothers, if any among you strays from the truth and one turns him back, let him know that he who turns a sinner from the error of his way will save his soul from death and will COVER A MULTITUDE OF SINS.—James 5:13–20 LSB
Notice that the context of James’s instruction here is first of all to the very early church, the scattered Jewish believers who had no written New Testament and who were newly born-again and finding themselves living in their Jewish neighborhoods without well-established congregations around them. James, the brother of Jesus, is writing to them before Paul even wrote his first epistle, and he is speaking to them knowing that they are well-versed in the Old Testament. Yet now they are alive in Christ, and they are learning to live by the Spirit.
His point was not that the great Elijah was actually a weak man who prayed anyway and was honored by God. Rather, his point was that Elijah, who was chosen and recognized as God’s voice to Israel prior to the dispersion of the northern kingdom, was a man like all of them. Now James is reminding these newly born-again Jews that they, like Elijah, have access to God. They are united with the Father through Christ’s blood, and they are now alive in the their spirits and indwelled by God Himself. Like Elijah, they can pray, and God will hear them as surely as He heard and answered Elijah!
He reminds them that at the core of their new life in Christ is the need to repent. When we acknowledge our sins (as even Elijah finally did when God confronted him at Mt. Horeb) and repent of them, confessing them to one another where we have sinned against a brother or sister, then God will forgive us and restore us with His strength. James is not describing justification—or coming to faith by realizing we are dead and need to be made alive and saved through belief in Jesus’ finished atonement—he is describing the ongoing life of living in the body of Christ, learning to repent and submit our weaknesses and sinful responses to Him for forgiveness and for the maturing of our faith. He is describing the progress of sanctification in the lives of born again believers.
Even more, he reminds these new believers to confront one another if they stray from the truth. If a person pursues false doctrines or practices, we are to remind and correct those people of the central truth of the gospel. He even says that if a person is pursuing sin and error and we help them see the truth about Jesus and His atonement and their need for belief in God’s word and gospel, we might save that person’s soul from death.
Think about that: rather than this passage validating Ellen White’s much-touted weakness and lack of education and sickliness and self-doubt, this passage is actually challenging those of us who know Jesus to confront the sin of embracing her false prophetic gift! We are being called to help our Adventist loved ones to see the error of their ways and to turn from believing false teachings and embrace Jesus alone. The eternal destiny of their souls is at stake.
Using this passage from James to endorse and excuse Ellen’s false claims is to misuse Scripture and to sin against unsuspecting Adventists who have been taught that they have the “most truth” of any religious organization.
Normalizing Sins
Monday’s lesson establishes that prophets are people of God who represent His character, yet at the same time they have flaws, and the reader is even asked, “Who, even among the most esteemed ‘men of God,’ have you known to be flawless?”
This is a deflection, of course. Ellen White’s problem is not that she was a flawed human being with a need to normalize her flaws. He real problem was that she was a poser, a pretender who claimed to hear from God while her messages denied biblical truth and the identity of the God, the Lord Jesus, humanity in general, and sin and salvation at a practical level. She taught a false gospel, and no amount of appeal to the Old Testament prophets or to her “humanity” can make her legacy godly.
Tuesday’s lesson proceeds to establish the fact that Old Testament prophets rebuked the leaders of Israel, and in spite of being flawed humans, they prayed and kept delivering their messages as God told them to. Ellen, of course, rebuked and corrected “the brethren” throughout her life; her challenging the Adventist leadership was simply functioning in the tradition of the Old Testament prophets. Wednesday’s lesson, then, was devoted to establishing that the Old Testament did name some women prophets, citing Miraim, Deborah, and Huldah. The implication is clear: Ellen White had female precedents in the Old Testament.
Thursday’s lesson addresses the thorny issue of false prophets. Of course, the lesson assumes the Adventist worldview: Ellen White was called by God, and her visions and counsels came directly from Him. Using this assumption as the never-mentioned foundation, the lesson addresses some of Jeremiah’s warnings against false prophets. For example, the author says this:
In Jeremiah 14, God gave Jeremiah a message of judgment for Judah, a judgment that would come in the form of a sword (war), famine, and pestilence. False prophets at the time contradicted Jeremiah’s message. Jeremiah describes them in very clear terms: “And the Lord said to me, ‘The prophets prophesy lies in My name. I have not sent them, commanded them, nor spoken to them; they prophesy to you a false vision, divination, a worthless thing, and the deceit of their heart’ ” (Jer. 14:14, NKJV).
False prophets are corrupt because their source of prophetic claims is often the false “gods” whom they worship (Jer. 23:13, 14). God warns, “ ‘I have not sent them, commanded them, nor spoken to them’ ” (Jer. 14:14, NKJV). They are “ ‘prophets of the deceit of their own heart’ ” (Jer. 23:26, NKJV). Ezekiel was instructed to prophesy against “ ‘the prophets . . . who prophesy out of their own heart’ ” (Ezek. 13:2, NKJV).
To the Adventist reader, this warning seems obvious, and Ellen seems exonerated. Yet the authors never refer to Jeremiah’s direct warnings against prophets who did the things Ellen did. First, the context of Jeremiah 14 begins with nine verses in which the prophet delivers God’s judgment against the apostate nation of Judah. They have broken God’s covenant, they are suffering a life-threatening drought, and they are begging the God whom they have refused to worship NOT to leave them. Then in verses 10–22, God responds to Jeremiah and identifies their national sins, and the last six verses are a cry of acknowledgment by the people that they have sinned and that Yahweh is their God. Here are verses 13–16:
But, “Ah, Lord Yahweh!” I said, “Behold, the prophets are saying to them, ‘You will not see the sword nor will you have famine, but I will give you true peace in this place.’” Then Yahweh said to me, “The prophets are prophesying lies in My name. I have neither sent them nor commanded them nor spoken to them; they are prophesying to you a vision of lies, divination, futility, and the deception of their own hearts. Therefore thus says Yahweh concerning the prophets who are prophesying in My name, although it was not I who sent them–yet they keep saying, ‘There will be no sword or famine in this land’–by that sword and famine those prophets shall meet their end! The people also to whom they are prophesying will be thrown out into the streets of Jerusalem because of the famine and the sword; and there will be no one to bury them–[neither] them, [nor] their wives, nor their sons, nor their daughters–for I will pour out their [own] evil on them.”—Jeremiah 14:13–16 LSB
God tells Jeremiah that the prophets in the nation are largely false prophets; He has not sent them. They are not telling Israel the truth about their sin and about God’s judgment of their sin. The lesson takes this passage and makes the point that “false prophets often follow popular views.” The day’s lesson ends with these questions:
Whether or not you are a prophet, it’s always easy to follow the popular thing. Considering how corrupt culture can be, why is this never a good idea?
The lesson never hints at Jeremiah’s direct indictment of false prophets and their deceptive practices that he delivers specifically against the ways these false prophets deceive. Look at Jeremiah’s words in chapter 23:25–32:
“I have heard what the prophets have said who prophesy a lie in My name, saying, ‘I had a dream, I had a dream! “How long? Is there [anything] in the hearts of the prophets who prophesy a lie, even [these] prophets of the deception of their own heart, who intend to make My people forget My name by their dreams which they recount to one another, just as their fathers forgot My name because of Baal? The prophet who has a dream may recount [his] dream, but let him who has My word speak My word in truth. What does straw have [in common] with grain?” declares Yahweh. “Is not My word like fire?” declares Yahweh, “and like a hammer which shatters a rock? Therefore behold, I am against the prophets,” declares Yahweh, “who steal My words from each other. Behold, I am against the prophets,” declares Yahweh, “who take their tongues and declare, ‘[Yahweh] declares.’ Behold, I am against those who have prophesied lying dreams,” declares Yahweh, “and who recounted them and led My people astray by their lying and reckless boasting; yet I did not send them, and I did not command them, and they do not furnish this people the slightest benefit,” declares Yahweh.—Jeremiah 23:25–32 LSB
Notice what Jeremiah quotes God as saying. He is against prophets who claim to have had dreams but who are merely prophesying lies that grow out of the deception of their own hearts. Even more, such false prophets “intend” to make the people forget God by declaring falsehoods in the name of God! In fact, this kind of deceptive manipulation leads to unbelief and idolatry just as serious as Baal worship!
Then God asks true prophets to speak His word “in truth”. God’s word, unlike the self-serving manipulation of false prophets, is “like fire”, and “like a hammer which shatters a rock”. God’s word is living and powerful, and it will come to pass and deliver judgment!
Now God seems to condemn Ellen White directly: “Therefore behold, I am against the prophets…who steal My words from each other.”
It is no secret that Ellen plagiarized large quantities of her writings, often stealing words and ideas from Christian authors and claiming them as her own. She did not receive her dreams and visions from God, yet she claimed she was “shown” what she wrote—and often those words were those of published authors! God hates plagiarist prophets!
Then God says He is against the prophets who, on the authority of their own word, claim they speak for Him. They “credit” God with their own lies! He reiterates that He is against those who have prophesied “lying dreams” He is against prophets who recount their false dreams and views to the people, binding their consciences with untruths that keep them from seeing God and His truth. Furthermore, He says that He didn’t command such people to speak, and they are not delivering the slightest benefit to the people!
Notice that! Ellen White has not furnished the slightest benefit; instead, she has planted Adventists deeply into a false worldview, terrifying them with the thought that they might have confessed sins, creating anxiety in them by insisting they have to keep the Sabbath perfectly holy in order to demonstrate that they honor and belong to God. She has diminished Jesus and declared His atonement incomplete, assigning Him an unbiblical job in the “heavenly sanctuary” where He continues applying His blood to confessed sins and where He will finally destroy sin by placing the sins of the saved on Satan and sending him to the lake of fire.
Ellen has given Satan responsibility for human sin, not Adam—and she credits the eradication of sin to SATAN, not to Jesus who literally took responsibility for human sin and fully paid for it with His death!
Finally, the ninth discussion question at the end of the Teachers Note on page 43 of the quarterly reveals how thoroughly Adventism manages Ellen White’s reputation, trying to save her from herself in the eyes of the members:
Ellen G. White referred to herself as a messenger rather than as a prophet, focusing on delivering God’s messages rather than claiming a title for herself. In what ways was she a messenger? What can we learn from her attitude of humility in ministry?
This statement is deceptive and is, in effect, a lie. Look at what Ellen said about herself and her role:
I am instructed that the term prophet would signify one who manifests the gift of prophesying, but much more than the work of a prophet has been given to the Lord’s messenger.…With pen and with voice I am bidden to bear a straightforward message. I am often called to stand before large congregations to speak on various lines of the work of God.—2 Letters and Manuscripts, Lt. 225d, 1906, par. 6, 8.
And notice here what she said about her own writings:
Abundant light has been given to our people in these last days. Whether or not my life is spared, my writings will constantly speak, and their work will go forward as long as time shall last. My writings are on file in the office; and even though I should not live, these words that have been given to me by the Lord will still have life and will speak to the people.—22 Letters and Manuscripts, Lt. 371, 1907, par. 19.
Ellen White did not have an attitude of humility; she ascribed more authority to herself than that of a mere prophet, and she assigned scriptural-level, eternal authority to her writings! The Old Testament prophets do not give us a guide for explaining Ellen White’s “prophetic authority”; rather, they reveal God’s judgment on her prophecies which have led millions of people to believe in an unbiblical Jesus, a false view of themselves, a false view of sin, and a false view of salvation.
Ellen White is not a prophet in the tradition of Elijah or Jeremiah nor of any other biblical prophet. She does, however, fall into the category the those false prophets that God warns we are not to listen to.
I appeal to you, Adventist: let this quarter’s lessons be a warning to you. Pay attention to the red flags and to the confusing details you find in these lessons compared to God’s word. Let Hebrews 1:1, 2 be your guide, and ask the Lord to show you how to read His word without the lens of Ellen White’s interpretations altering your perception.
Trust the Lord Jesus alone, and believe that He has fully paid for all your sin on His cross. Believe that He has broken the curse of death into which you were born, and believe that He is God’s final word to you!
God, having spoken long ago to the fathers in the prophets in many portions and in many ways, in these last days spoke to us in [His] Son, whom He appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the worlds, who is the radiance of His glory and the exact representation of His nature, and upholds all things by the word of His power; who, having accomplished cleansing for sins, sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high, having become so much better than the angels, as He has inherited a more excellent name than they.—Hebrews 1:1–4 LSB
This weekly feature is dedicated to Adventists who are looking for biblical insights into the topics discussed in the Sabbath School lesson quarterly. We post articles which address each lesson as presented in the Sabbath School Bible Study Guide, including biblical commentary on them. We hope you find this material helpful and that you will come to know Jesus and His revelation of Himself in His word in profound biblical ways.
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