Lesson 4: “The Role of the Bible”
COLLEEN TINKER | Editor, Proclamation! Magazine |
Adventist, what is your authority? As an Adventist, I was taught that the Bible was my authority, the source of all we believed as Seventh-day Adventists. I was taught that only Adventists truly believed the WHOLE Bible, not just the New Testament, and we were obedient to the whole of Scripture. In fact, we appealed to “authority” to validate our claim: Ellen G. White said that the Bible is our authority, and we are to take all our marching orders from it, not from her. Yet if we knew to believe the Bible because Ellen White told us to—what was our bottom-line—the Bible, or Ellen White who pointed us to Scripture? What is Adventist authority?
The Confusion of “Almost Right”
This lesson illustrates typical Adventist teaching about the Bible. I learned, as the lesson teaches, that the Bible is God’s Word and is the place we go to learn His will and the nature of truth. In fact, this week’s lessons almost sounded like a study which could have been written by almost any Christian. The problem, however, is that the lesson does not address the underlying Adventist belief: that God has appointed Ellen G. White to help the Adventist to understand the meaning and interpretation of Scripture so that Adventists can proclaim the Adventist gospel—the Three Angels’ Messages—to the world.
If Ellen White were not in the picture, there would be no “Adventist gospel”, nor would the three angels of Revelation 14:6–10 be identified as Adventism’s final message to the world.
First, let’s look at some of the statements from this week’s lesson—statements which appear to validate the Bible as the only source of authority for Adventist doctrines. From Saturday’s introduction:
The Bible is not just an academic book or a collection of old stories. Instead, it is a beautiful, profound account of how the Creator of the universe seeks to draw us close to Him. If you have a desire to grow in your relationship with God, the best thing you can do is commit to spending quality time with Him daily, praying, reading His inspired Word, and surrendering your will to what it teaches.
Sunday’s lesson presents the Bible as “the most powerful weapon” against Satan. In this study we find the signature perspective of Adventism: Satan is powerful and ever-present, and our constant vigil must be to guard against his deceptions. While the author argues that the Bible is the way to defeat Satan, she nevertheless appeals to Ellen White to confirm this Satan-centric view of life and the need to know how to use the Bible against him:
We are told that “Satan employs every possible device to prevent [people] from obtaining a knowledge of the Bible; for its plain utterances reveal his deceptions.”—Ellen G. White, The Great Controversy, p. 593. Satan knows that God’s powerful Word makes him powerless. Satan knows that prayer and Bible study are the most powerful weapons humanity can use against him (Eph. 6:17, 18; Heb. 4:12), so he does everything he can to stop us from reading and praying.
After appealing to Ellen White as the authority to remind the reader that Satan is on the prowl and they need to fight him by knowing the Bible, Wednesday’s lesson says this:
When it comes to personal Bible study, we must be careful not to expect the Bible to serve our purposes or perspectives, which are not always the same as God’s…If we truly want God to speak into our lives, we must take the Bible as a whole and use sound methods when we engage in careful Bible study, trusting that God will reveal what we need to hear when we need to hear it.
Then, in Friday’s lesson, the author concludes her week’s presentation with a quotation from Ellen White’s book Education before leaving the reader with four discussion questions. The third question asks this: “If someone wanted to deepen their relationship with God, where would you advise them to start reading?”
That is a good question—and we will address it later in this article. First, though, let’s look at the unspoken assumptions the author assumes the reader already believes. The Adventist worldview makes it almost impossible for an individual member to actually understand what the Bible is saying because Adventism teaches readers to understand Scripture through an interpretive grid established by Ellen White’s importation.
Who Is Your Authority?
Dale Ratzlaff, the founder of Life Assurance Ministries, famously said that Adventists have two foundational needs: to know who or what their authority is, and to know the biblical gospel. This lesson puts the question of “authority” into our crosshairs.
First, let’s examine the Adventist argument that, as Tuesday’s lesson says,
In the end, the Bible, and the Bible alone, must be the foundational source of what we understand as truth. All other sources must be tried and tested by the Word of God. Even what we deem “reason” needs to be tested by God’s Word!
Yet this statement was prefaced by an appeal to Ellen White to validate the Bible as the source of truth:
“There are mines of truth yet to be discovered by the earnest seeker.”—Ellen G. White, Testimonies for the Church, vol. 5, p. 704. In speaking of “truth,” Ellen G. White always referred to truth as given by God through His Word. We can search for additional light in the Bible because God’s Word never contradicts past truths but instead builds on them.
I ask you: if the Bible is the source of truth given by God, if it contains “mines of truth” and if every other source (including Ellen White herself) must be tested by the Bible, why do Adventists appeal to Ellen White to persuade each other to read the Bible? If the Bible is the only source of truth, it should have the authority to validate its own power without the help of a false prophet!
In fact, Adventism’ continual appeal to Ellen White to say that the Bible is their only source of truth as a way to justify Ellen’s influence is what is called a “logical fallacy”. Below I quote from the online source Scribbr.com:
Appeal to authority fallacy refers to the use of an expert’s opinion to back up an argument. Instead of justifying one’s claim, a person cites an authority figure who is not qualified to make reliable claims about the topic at hand. Because people tend to believe experts, appeal to authority often imbues an argument with credibility.…An appeal to authority (also known as an appeal to false or unqualified authority) plays on people’s feelings of respect or familiarity towards a famous person to bypass critical thinking. It’s like someone is telling us “accept this because some authority said it.”— https://www.scribbr.com/fallacies/appeal-to-authority-fallacy/
Appealing to Ellen White’s endorsement of Scripture is subtly placing Ellen on the same level of inspiration and reliability as Scripture. The average Adventist is cemented in deeper feelings of guilt and compunction. It’s even more dangerous when the source to which we attribute authority opposes that which she endorses! She consistently taught anti-trinitarian views, a weak Jesus, an incomplete atonement, confirmed the biblical investigative judgment, and taught that man has no immaterial spirit. On top of it all, she developed a worldview that placed Satan at the center, an evil angel whose supposed accusations against God were so compelling that God sent His Son to prove God was actually good and fair.
The very idea that Ellen White is granted a position of revelatory authority in the minds of Adventists betrays that they do NOT submit to Scripture. They cannot, by definition, consider the Bible to be their only source of truth and also hold to Ellen White possessing any truth from God that complements or completes Scripture. These two loyalties are utterly opposed.
What Does EGW Say About Her Writings?
Ellen White ascribed scriptural-level authority to her own writings. For example:
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 LtMs, Lt 371, 1907, Par. 19.
It is not alone those who openly reject the Testimonies, or who cherish doubt concerning them, that are on dangerous ground. To disregard light is to reject it.—Testimonies To the Church, vol. 5, p. .680.2
I know your danger. If you lose confidence in the testimonies, you will drift away from Bible truth…I warned you. God and Satan never work in co-partnership. The testimonies either bear the signet of God or that of Satan. A good tree cannot bring forth corrupt fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit. By their fruit ye shall know them. God has spoken. Who has trembled at his word?—Pamphlet 117, p. 84.3
These are just three of many quotations EGW wrote over the years threatening Adventists with eternal apostasy if they rejected her words and spiritual authority. When a person claims God’s authority to establish doctrine and to direct the lives of people, that person has scriptural-level authority in the lives of her followers. (And don’t miss the fact that Ellen herself said that her writings were either all from God, or they were all from Satan!)
When Ellen White says that Adventists are to read the Bible and study it deeply, they are not merely being taught by a Christian and helped to understand the Bible. They are being directed to read the Bible the way she says the Bible is to be understood because her revelation is from God. She has bound the consciences of the Adventists because her visions established the Adventist doctrines and helped the founders understand how to read the Bible.
Adventists have a decision to make: who is their authority? Will they submit their minds and hearts to the Bible alone, or will they defer ultimately to an extra-biblical prophet whom the Lord did not establish? If they give up Ellen White, they will discover that the Bible teaches a different worldview than does the great controversy paradigm established by Ellen White.
An Adventist who retains Ellen White as someone significant as a messenger from God in any capacity—even if they claim not to believe she was a prophet—that Adventist will be clinging to a false prophet who twisted Scripture and taught a false Jesus. One cannot consider the Bible to be their authority and also believe that EGW was God’s tool for Adventism.
How Should We Read the Bible?
The lesson makes comments about reading all of the Bible and considering the context, but does it really teach this method of biblical interpretation? Let’s go back to that Discussion Question #3 from Friday’s lesson and put it to the test: “someone wanted to deepen their relationship with God, where would you advise them to start reading?”
Let’s look at Galatians 3:17–19 just for starters:
What I am saying is this: the Law, which came four hundred and thirty years later, does not invalidate a covenant previously ratified by God, so as to nullify the promise. For if the inheritance is based on law, it is no longer based on a promise; but God has granted it to Abraham by means of a promise. Why the Law then? It was added because of transgressions, having been ordained through angels by the agency of a mediator, until the seed would come to whom the promise had been made.—Galatians 3:17–19 LSB
Paul is writing to the gentile church in Galatia which is being beleaguered by Judaizers who want the new gentile Christians to adopt the Law of Moses—which includes the Ten Commandments—claiming that unless one keeps the law, that person cannot be God’s child. The details of this passage cannot be plumbed in depth here because time prevents us, but at the very surface level we see the context Paul is using.
He states in verse 17 that the law had a beginning: 430 years years AFTER God made His unconditional covenant with Abraham in Genesis 15 in which He promised him descendants, land, and blessing to the world through him. Yet Ellen White taught that the law—including the Ten Commandments—is eternal. She taught that it governed the angels in heaven, and Lucifer rebelled against it and against God and became the evil Satan.
She taught that Abraham obeyed the principles of the Ten Commandments and further taught that Abraham walked through the sacrificed animals in Genesis 15 promising to obey God’s statutes. NO! She added that detail to Scripture; Abraham was asleep and never made promises when God covenanted with him.
Further, Ellen taught that the law will continue for eternity, and on this basis, she taught strongly that the seventh-day Sabbath is still valid for Christians. She taught that Sabbath-keeping will be the mark that separates the saved from the unsaved when Jesus returns, and those who worship on Sunday have the mark of the beast and will be lost.
Yet in the passage above, in verse 19, Paul states when the law came to an end: when the Seed would come to whom the promise had been made. The Seed is Jesus—and Paul has just declared that the law, including the Ten, did not exist before Sinai, 430 years AFTER Abraham, and it lasted UNTIL the Seed. Now that Jesus has come, we are no longer under the law. (Read the rest of Galatians 3 and 4 for further clarification.)
Ellen White commands the reading of Scripture, but she explains Scripture with such twisted interpretations that Adventism simply does not follow the clear meaning of the words. She demands the strict observance of the Ten Commandments, especially the fourth, and thus negates the completed work of Christ in dying for our sin, of being buried, and of shattering the curse of death on the third day. She completely negates the terms of the New Covenant in which God’s people live by faith in the Son of God by the power of the Holy Spirit, not under the law. The law is obsolete (Hebrews 8:13).
The words of the Bible mean exactly what they say. There is no hidden meaning, no symbolic morphing of meanings. The meaning the first audience understood is the meaning the words still have today, and while application can be made to believers of any age, the meanings are clear and unmoving.
We Must Desire Truth
Thursday’s lesson says, “To have spiritual discernment means to have spiritual insight and understanding. It makes sense, then that a spiritually open-minded person will have very different takeaways when reading the Bible than a spiritually closed-minded person.”
Again the author misses reality. A great many people are open-minded spiritually, considering all manner of spiritual and extra-biblical propositions. New Age, Wicca, alien intelligences, Word-Faith movements, paganism of all kinds—all of these and more require a person to be spiritually open-minded. There is real spiritual evil. Yet there is reality and truth as well. God asks us to trust Him and to believe His word just as He gave it, not proof-texting our ways into self-styled spiritual experiences.
The “secret” to understanding Scripture is not spiritual open-mindedness. Rather, the secret is the desire to know truth and reality. Furthermore, we have to be willing to let go of the spiritual ideas we already have. We have to be willing to recognize that we are dead in sin by nature and need a Savior.
We have to be willing to lay down our favorite ideas of spiritual reality and submit to God and to His word, and we have to ask Him to teach us truth.
We have to be willing to know what is true even if it contradicts and deconstructs our Adventist ideas. We have to be willing to let God show us Himself and reveal His word to us.
Adventist, are you willing to submit your Adventism, your worldview, to God’s word? Are you willing to ask Him to help you read the Bible without the interpretive overlay bequeathed by Ellen White?
God WILL answer your prayer to know the truth. He will reveal Himself to you. And He will use His word, breathed-out and committed to us for our instruction and for correction and for doctrine—and He will show us the truth about who we are and who He is.
God’s word is inseparable from God Himself. When we trust Him and submit to Him for truth and reality, His word will show us His will and how we should live. If you have never trusted the Lord Jesus who died for your sin, was buried, and rose from death on the third day, shattering your death sentence, I urge you to trust Him now. I leave you with the words of Hebrews 4:12, 13 where we see how God teaches us through His word. When we trust Him, we will find this passage to be revealing the way forward:
For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart. And there is no creature hidden from His sight, but all things are uncovered and laid bare to the eyes of Him to whom we have an account [to give].—Hebrews 4:12, 13 LSB
Let go of your dependence on Ellen White’s interpretations. Trust Jesus alone. Reality will become clear, and you will know the joy of living within the will of God. †
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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