Lesson 8: “Interpreting Prophetic Writings”
COLLEEN TINKER | Editor, Proclamation! |
Adventist, do you ever wonder why your church wants you to understand and defend Ellen White when Adventism claims to be “Bible only”, saying that everything you believe is in the Bible, and that you believe the WHOLE Bible more deeply than any other church does? If your beliefs and practices are based entirely on the Bible, then why do you have to know, use, and defend Ellen White?
Clearly Adventist leadership is committed to binding the Adventist conscience to Ellen White and her testimonies. One quarter of this year’s official Bible study curriculum for Adventist members is dedicated to defending and “explaining” Ellen White and her importance and function within Adventism. Did you get that? One quarter of the year’s BIBE STUDIES is dedicated to endorsing Ellen White!
That fact alone reveals her central place in Adventism—and it also betrays Adventism’s refusal to teach that the Bible is God’s inerrant word to us.
The lessons use common arguments for normalizing Ellen White’s contributions, but the defenses for this prophet are down-played, using straw-man arguments and logical fallacies to blur the readers’ discernment and to cement them in their traditional Adventist worldview. After all, the Adventist worldview requires Ellen White’s revelations.
Where To Begin?
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Let’s remember what God Himself has told us about His word and revelation to the world. First, God’s word—the Bible that He has given—is eternal. Furthermore, Jesus’s words are part of God’s word that is eternal and life-giving:
The grass withers, the flower fades, But the word of our God stands forever.—Isaiah 40:8 LSB
But it is easier for heaven and earth to pass away than for one stroke of a letter of the Law to fail.—Luke 16:17 LSB
Truly, truly, I say to you, he who hears My word, and believes Him who sent Me, has eternal life, and does not come into judgment, but has passed out of death into life.—John 5:24 LSB
Why do you not understand what I am saying? [It is] because you cannot hear My word.—John 8:43 LSB
Truly, truly, I say to you, if anyone keeps My word he will never see death—ever.—John 8:51 LSB
We have already seen that Adventism does not affirm that Scripture is INERRANT, that the words of the Bible are the actual words God has given and has preserved through the millennia. Rather, Adventism affirms the Bible’s INFALLIBILITY—saying it will accomplish what it was intended to do—but not its inerrancy. Adventism holds that Scripture does have some errors in it, just as Ellen White’s writings have errors.
Furthermore, we have also seen in these lessons that Adventism uses Ellen White as a prophetic source to interpret and correct misunderstandings of the words of Scripture. They rely on her to correct interpretations of Scripture which they don’t affirm. In this way, they officially place HER interpretations as an interpretive lens over Scripture to deliver doctrines that disagree with a plain reading of the Bible—yet grabbing proof texts from the Bible and interpreting them to say what fits their great controversy, physicalist worldview!
Yet just in the five brief quotes above from Isaiah, Luke, and John, we see that God’s word is eternal. It “stands forever”, and it is as eternal as is the One who spoke it. The quotes above from Luke and John were spoken by the Lord Jesus, God the Son incarnate in human flesh, and He affirmed for all time the power of His word.
The Lord Jesus IS GOD; Yahweh who gave His word to humanity over the millennia and protected it and delivered it to us today, intact and consistent with the oldest manuscripts ever found, is the One who declared that anyone who hears His word and believes in the Father, the One who sent Him, HAS eternal life.
“Has” is present tense, not future—and Jesus is saying that when one believes, at that moment that person passes from spiritual death to life and does not come into judgment.
Notice that this text alone disproves Adventist doctrine. First, it states that person has a part of himself that is dead before he believes and that he comes to life when he believes. Furthermore, Jesus said a person who believes passes from death to life and “does not come into judgment”. This text ALONE disproves the investigative judgment! No born-again believer comes into judgment. Jesus is not atoning for our sins in an ongoing way in heaven!
Believers pass from death to life, and they never die and do not come into judgment!
Notice also that Jesus told the Jews that they could not understand what he was saying because they “cannot hear My word” (John 8:43). A few verses later He said again that “if anyone keeps my word he will never see death—ever”! (John 8:51).
Notice that if we read these words literally, believing that they mean exactly what they say and that the tenses of the verbs are accurate, Jesus is declaring that His word brings LIFE to people when they hear and believe. He is saying that believing His word—Yahweh’s word—guarantees that a person will never die or come into judgment.
Not only do these few sentences from Jesus expose and deny the Adventist doctrine of the investigative judgment, but they also expose and contradict the Adventist doctrine of soul sleep!
This week’s lesson is convoluted and confusing, attempting to sound academic and smart but leaving the reader confused by the vagueness of trying to explain that interpreting Scripture and interpreting Ellen White are similar. The authors of this lesson cannot leave the reader with the idea that all he or she needs to know God’s will is Scripture! They have to make sure that the readers believe they need Ellen White as well.
Yet if we read the Bible and believe it means exactly what it says, we will see God’s will and truth clearly stated: His word is eternal and accessible; those who hear and believe HAVE eternal life and do not come into judgment. There is no place for Ellen White and her invented investigative judgment when we read the Bible without her commentary!
Necessary Interpreter
Thursday’s lesson attempts to insert Ellen White’s commentary into the framework for understanding Scripture by misusing biblical examples. First, the lesson actually separates Jesus Christ from the authorship of Scripture and makes Him merely an expositor of the Old Testament. By doing this subtle separation of Jesus from the eternal, sovereign authorship of the Bible, the author then applies the principle of biblical exposition to other teachers, leading inevitably to subtly endorsing Ellen White’s role as an authoritative interpreter. Notice what the lesson says:
Jesus Christ was, still is, and always will be “the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14:6, NKJV). Even so, His preaching was strongly anchored in the Scriptures. For instance, Mark 1:14, 15 says, “Now after John was put in prison, Jesus came to Galilee, preaching the gospel of the kingdom of God, and saying, ‘The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand’ ” (NKJV). The time was clearly pointing to Daniel 9:24–27. In the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5–7), He quoted Exodus 20:13, 14 (Matt. 5:21, 27). In Luke 4, He quoted Isaiah 61:1, 2. Jesus was a thoroughly biblical preacher.
In another example, Acts 8 tells us that the Ethiopian eunuch “had come to Jerusalem to worship” (Acts 8:27, NKJV), which means that he was familiar with the Jewish religion and at least with some of its ceremonies. He even owned a copy of the book of Isaiah, which he was avidly reading during the trip home. Yet he could not understand the prophecy of the sin-bearing Servant, so he sought someone to explain it to him.
This experience teaches us a few important lessons. First, the simple reading of a passage of Scripture does not always lead to a deeper understanding of the passage. Second, in the study of Scripture we can, and should, learn from each other. Third, we have a personal obligation to share sound Bible messages with others.
Notice what the author does here: without actually explaining what he’s doing, he equates Jesus’ quoting the Old Testament with Philip’s explanation of Isaiah to the Ethiopian eunuch! Yet Jesus’ preaching from the Old Testament was NOT exposition, as in the cases of a preacher (or “prophet”) taking a Scripture passage and then explaining and applying it to life today.
NO! Jesus spoke authoritatively and confirmed the eternal truth of all the Old Testament. He Himself is Yahweh; He Himself is the Source of all Old Testament Scripture. When the Lord Jesus spoke the Old Testament and applied it to Himself and to the kingdom of God, He was confirming that He was literally fulfilling what He had told the Old Testament prophets that He would do!
He was demonstrating that He had come, fulfilling the shadows and promises contained in the law, the prophets, and the Psalms! He wasn’t expositing Scripture; He was fulfilling it, confirming its timeless inerrancy, and declaring its eternal truth! He Himself was the REALITY of the Old Testament shadows!
The lesson, however, uses Jesus’s teaching of the Old Testament as an example of the supposed continuing need for us today to have SOMEONE tell us what the Bible means! For example, the last paragraph of that quote above stated: “First, the simple reading of a passage of Scripture does not always lead to a deeper understanding of the passage. Second, in the study of Scripture we can, and should, learn from each other. Third, we have a personal obligation to share sound Bible messages with others.”
NO!
First, a simple reading of a passage of Scripture absolutely DOES yield to a deeper understanding of it—if the reader is submitted to knowing what is true! In the context of this lesson—of Adventism—a person obviously cannot reach a deeper understanding of a passage if one already has an underlying worldview that denies the passage!
For example, let’s look again at Jesus’ own words in John 5:24: “Truly, truly, I say to you, he who hears My word, and believes Him who sent Me, has eternal life, and does not come into judgment, but has passed out of death into life.”
Reading this passage using the normal rules of grammar, context, and vocabulary cannot make sense to an Adventist who believes that no one will have eternal life until the resurrection and discovers whether or not he is saved. Further, no Adventist can believe that a person who believes in Jesus will NOT come into judgment. After all, the investigative judgment is a judgment of PROFESSED BELIEVERS, not unbelievers—and the verdict from the IJ is still pending! No Adventist can KNOW he or she is saved—and the Adventist commentator Ellen White said that it was a sin to say one was saved!
Yet if we submit to the Bible as to the authoritative word of God, asking its Author to teach us, this passage of Jesus’ own words absolutely destroys our Adventist paradigm!
The lesson cannot admit or risk that realization.
Now let’s look at that second conclusion in the lesson’s quote above: “in the study of Scripture we can, and should, learn from each other.” Certainly iron sharpens iron, and we learn Scriptural insights from the people who the Lord has given the spiritual gifts of teaching and prophetically speaking forth God’s word—not new revelations but the Bible, God’s word already given. Yet the Bible is enough for us; many believers are isolated and unable to always have the benefit of a teacher, a believer who can discuss Scripture. God’s word and His Spirit are enough to give us all we need for life and godliness.
Yes, God DOES equip His church with teachers and preachers for the purpose of building us up into the image of our Lord, helping us learn to trust Scripture and believe it. Yet if we find ourselves without access to a teacher, if we trust God and want to know truth, He teaches us. The Holy Spirit teaches us all things and reminds us of all that He said (John 14:26). We need the legacy of teachers and commentators so that we are not inventing our own new religion—but if we are born again and submitted to the Lord, He is faithful to teach us truth.
The discussion question at the end of Thursday’s lesson reveals the Adventist warning:
Even though at times we might need help in understanding texts, why must we always be convinced in our own minds of what we believe?
See what they did there? The author inserted into the readers’ minds the persistent Adventist warning that they must always be on guard against a teacher who would attempt to persuade them to abandon Adventist interpretation.
This question is a warning against podcasts like this one which attempt to demonstrate Adventism’s hidden worldview that demands Ellen White’s authoritative commentary on Scripture. Without Ellen White, Adventists could go to their Bibles and pray to know truth and begin to actually SEE what God has revealed to us in His word!
Even more, without Ellen White’s commentary, Adventists would be able to see who Jesus really is.
Shocked By the Lord Jesus
Shortly after we left Adventism, I was shocked when our pastor explained that Jesus is our greatest affirmer of the validity of the Old Testament. I had never thought of Jesus as authoritative on the basis of His Authorship as God. I had always thought of Jesus using the Old Testament the way the lesson described Him—as a wise commentator, an expositor who gave us insightful ways to look at old passages.
For example, our pastor referred to Jesus saying the Jews would receive no sign except the sign of Jonah—and by that saying that Jonah had been a real person who literally was swallowed by a fish and deposited on the land three days later. Jesus was saying that historic event was a sign of His own death and resurrection.
Hearing Pastor Gary Inrig explain Jesus’ use of the Old Testament was revelatory to me. I had never thought of His endorsement of God’s word as the affirmation of an Author, not as simply a wise man using insight and wisdom to explain God’s word. No! The Lord Jesus affirmed that the Old Testament was completely true and descried reality and God’s will.
The lesson and Adventism, however, separates Jesus from the authorship of Scripture and uses this separation to claim that the reader must come to the Bible with a firm belief in one’s own worldview BEFORE reading or listening to a teacher.
Adventism cannot have its members approaching Scripture without the belief that they need an interpreter. Adventists must have Ellen, and this entire week’s Sabbath School lessons have been designed to bind the Adventist conscience to Ellen’s commentary and to their own inadequate ability to understand the Bible. They utterly negate the reality of the living, eternal nature of God’s word and the power of the Holy Spirit to convict the world of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment—all on the basis of God’s revealed word in Scripture.
I urge you today: if you struggle to read and understand the Bible, if it seems to contradict what you believe, you need to know that the Lord will lead you to truth. Ask Him to remove the veil of Ellen White’s grip on your understanding. Ask the Lord to show you what is REAL and to hep you understand the truth in His eternal word.
See Jesus hanging on the cross, fully atoning for your sin, and see Him rising from the grave on the third day. Believe that He has done everything necessary for your salvation, and trust Him. Let go of your grip on Ellen White and on the physicalist, great controversy worldview that Ellen bequeathed to you.
Believe in Jesus today, and enter the freedom of knowing Jesus and living with His life in you, free from enslavement to an extra-biblical prophet. Trust Jesus—and LIVE! †
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.
- The Claim: Bible Only—The Practice: Ellen White (Q4 L8) - November 12, 2026
- We Got Mail - November 12, 2026
- Defending Ellen White (Q4 L7) - November 5, 2026