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I have received a private message from a well known figure in our church making the following comment on my above post. 1) (Agree!) 2) (Agree—and can add, “It is reasonable to propose that she would have continued to change her views, as she matured in her understanding of God’s purposes.) 3) (Agree! What you have identified is a component of the Historical-Critical method that some reject. We have applied the methods of this so-called “demonic” process to EGW for years, and don’t know it.) 4) (Agree! We claim we follow this process, except when we don’t.) 5) (Agree! These as-yet-to-be identified people appear to put their energy into making an organization that reflects their desires. These individuals might modify EGW’s well-known statement to read, “When the SDA denomination perfectly reflects the will of those who have been appointed to lead them, then Jesus can come.”) 6) (Agree. Interesting times lie ahead.) NOTE: I have very slightly modified the wording of the actual message sent to me. That modification does not change the meaning of the message sent to me.

Comments: 1) Ellen White grew in her doctrinal understandings in the same manner that we humans grow. We grow by prayer, Bible study and the experiences of life. So did she. God did not intervene to immediately correct her in every element of her doctrinal understanding that failed to fully reflect the truth of God. As humans it is only in eternity that we will fully understand God. It will not be in this human life. 2) A study of the life and doctrinal understanding of Ellen White will show that over time her doctrinal understandings changed in a number of areas. 3) Much of the individual advice that she gave specific people represented a specific application of a basic principle to their situation and not a generalized application to be applied to all people in all situations. Many people err in failing to understand this. They fail to understand why she may seem to tell one person to do something that she seems to tell another person not to do. 4) God did not give the ministry of Ellen white to the fledgling SDA denomination to replace the Bible as an instructional guide to understanding God. The Bible fills that role, not Ellen White. God gave Ellen White to this denomination to administratively guide it in its developing years. We would not be the denomination that we are today if it had not been for the ministry of Ellen White. 5) In my personal opinion, we have people, who I will not name in this post, who in rejecting the administrative advice of Ellen White, are attempting to form this denomination into a structure that rejects the advice that God gave us through her ministry. In addition, I believe that such fails to prepare us as a denomination for the events that we believe will happen in End Time. 6) These are serious times. As I believe that some of the problems that exist in the SDA denomination are beyond human resolution, I can only wait to see how God will lead and the direction that will take, if God does lead us beyond those issues, which I am uncertain that God will do.

Good post. I have used both words in a number of my posts.

I see the word exegesis a lot here at Adventistan, but I have come across another word that I never see here, although I see it in action. Biblical exegesis is a systematic process by which a person arrives at a reasonable and coherent sense of the meaning and message of a biblical passage. Ideally, an understanding of the original texts (Greek and Hebrew) is required. In the process of exegesis, a passage must be viewed in its historical and grammatical context with its time/purpose of writing taken into account. (from Theopedia) The "other" word I have come across is eisegesis. Eisegesis is the act imposing meaning onto a text and is often described in terms of reading "into" the text rather than "out of" it. Therefore it is the opposite of Exegesis. (from Theopedia) Without taking any current issues into this, exegesis has also been defined by some as reading Scripture to see what God says. Eisegesis occurs when someone takes a belief and searches Scripture to prove they are correct. You can find a number of current ideas which are very contrary to what Christians and Jews have believed for thousands of years, but now emotional issues and "social justice" have people trying to wrap the Bible around their new ideas. You can get into all kinds of theological difficulties when you take this approach to studying God's word.

i don't follow Ted Wilson, I don't follow Dan Jackson. I let Christ be the one authority in the Church.This was a real problem for the religious authorities in his day. He was considered radical and a rebell, and fighting against the established righteous authority of His day. I pray today, I will be found standing In Jesus and Jesus alone. If i add human authority to the authority Jesus in my life i will stand in human strength and not in the strength of the Holy Spirit.

You asked this after quoting my comment "Elder Jackson is standing on the shoulders of Mrs. White, Willie White, A. G. Daniels, W. W. Prescott and others " The answer is simple, I've studied Adventist history, but also something that I thought was just random but where I now believe that the Lord was leading me. When I was at Andrews besides what I needed to study for class, I also liked to just pick up a file in the White estate and read. As I said I did not make specific studies but would just pick up what ever file seemed to catch my interest or that I may have happened to grab at the time. Anyway, in file after file I kept coming across a series of letters that all sounded like each other. The one side of the issue was written by either Mrs. White or Willie. The other side was written by I originally thought it was the same pastor since the last name frequently started with the letter "W" However after a while I'd be surprised that there were names that did not start with "W" and eventually came to relize that even the "W" was at least 3 different last names: Watson, Washburn and Washburn's protégé Wilkinson. Mrs. White or Willie would write to these people telling them that despite the fact that they were using a massive amount of her quotes in their teachings, that they did not understand her message and were thus misrepresenting her and were in fact abusing her writings by using them to actually push their views, and that both Ellen and Willie told them that their views that they were pushing were WRONG. These ministers would defend their views. They would tell Mrs. White that they were indeed using her writings correctly and that they were not misrepresenting her and that they were not wrong, but told Mrs. White that she only wrote those sharp testimonies to them because people close to her were polluting her mind against them, but that these people who were polluting her mind are the ones who were wrong, they were lowering the standards in the church and that she needs to direct her testimonies towards those who were polluting her mind against them and that if Mrs. White knew what was going on, instead of sending them sharp testimony she would fully embrace their ministry and join them in their message. The letters to Willie were not that friendly often comparing him to Nadab and Abihu and the sons of Samuel, accusing him of being used by Satan to bring in New Theology into the church and changing his mother's writing to be against their views and to support his heresies. etc. I have to give these pastors credit that I did not read this next part in their letters, but I came across a couple of mimeographed messages that were being spread in the churches in the early 1900s. These accused Mrs. White of Apostacy, saying that until around 1888 Mrs. White's writings came from God. But since 1888 Mrs. White has apostatized. First she did not support the truth but started opposing the truth in the 1888 General Conference, then in the 1890s she went even deeper into aposticy when she accepted and started to preach the heresy of the trinity, and she no longer believes that she was a prophet because she teaches that her writings are not infallible. They also accused Willie A. G. Daniels, W. W. Prescott and sometimes others of having taken over Mrs. White's mind so that they are using her writings to spread their new theology. They warned people to avoid these heresies and to stop reading Mrs. White directly, especially what she wrote starting with 1888, and to ONLY read Mrs. White as quoted by and they named the different pastors such as Elders Watson and Washburn. The views of Fulcrum7 are basically the views of Elders Watson, Washburn, Wilkinson and the others. They are carrying on the torch of this thread of Adventism. When I was in the Army at Ft. Lewis Washington I use to read a journal called "Our Firm Foundation". That journal kept spreading the same message that I read in those letters that Mrs. White said was wrong. The footnotes kept quoting Watson, Washburn and Wilkinson and the others. I'm sorry but if Mrs. White could say to them that they were wrong back then, why are they right today? Fulcrum7 besides spreading the messages of Watson, Washburn, Wilkinson and the others, what they say about Elder Jackson sounds a lot like what these people use to say about Willie, Daniels and Prescott and what their followers were saying about the post 1888 Mrs. White. If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck it is probably a duck.