How do we know what is from God and what is from EGW?

[Woody]

Quote:

"My opinion has nothing to do with what God has shown me in vision." -- Letter 6, 1851. {3SM 63.5}

[Gibs]

When she states "I was shown" or "I saw" one better sit up and pay attention.

1Jo 4:4 ¶ Ye are of God, little children, and have overcome them: because greater is he that is in you, than he that is in the world.

[Woody]

When she states "I was shown" or "I saw" one better sit up and pay attention.

Are those the only ones you quote then?

[Naomi]

HEY ALL

I think we need to quote the bible more

dgrimm60

[OzarkWoman]

HEY ALL

I think we need to quote the bible more

dgrimm60

[Woody]

Originally Posted By: dgrimm60

HEY ALL

I think we need to quote the bible more

dgrimm60

[Kevin H]

To answer the question, for the first step may I ask a similar question that can give us a good perspective to start from:

How do we know what is from the prophet and what is from EGW? The answer of course would be to compare it to a third question: How do we know what is from the President of the United States and what is from OB?

Now that I've totally confused you with questions upon questions let me try to discuss some and hopefully not muddy it up even more.

The role of Prophet is an office, different people can hold the office. There is a human and individual aspect to each person, their background, education, culture, historical events they live in. Yet all of them have a job that they are responsible to follow and fulfill.

A problem that we have is that in the later half of the 1800s two views of thought formed: After centuries of just taking it for granted that the Bible is inspired, people began to ask what inspiration means. The first view was the modernists, who believed that the Bible was only ancient myths that people would discuss around the campfires, but that it was not historical and purely of human orgin. In reaction to this came the Fundamentalists who taught that the Bible is God's book and since God is perfect, his book has to be perfect.

Granted over the years they have had to modify their strict views they had in the late 19th and early 20th century, and there are stricter and more liberal fundamentalists but they all stay as close to this view as they possibly can. And this is what confuses us: The fundamentalists believe in God, so do we. The Fundamentalists believe in the virgin birth and the uniqueness of Jesus, so do we. The Fundamentalists believe God created the world, so do we. So we found ourselves influenced by all their ideas.

W. W. Prescott early become a Fundamentalist and started to teach it in Battle creek, where he influnced Stephen Haskell. When Mrs. White learned what Prescott was teaching, she invited him to stop teaching and to come and help her prepare her writings. As she gave him his assignments, he was in ablute horror, how could he do the things he was asked to do with the words from God. Mrs. White gave him even more and more of these difficult assignments placing Prescott in a crisis. He realized that he either had to give up Mrs. White or give up Fundamentalism. He gave up fundamentalism, as did A. G. Daniels (now there were some and it is not really clear as there is evidence for both sides, that these men simply gave up fundamentalism, but others, such as Elder Spicer, developed two views of inspiration, the Fundamentalist view for the Bible and a much more liberal, non-fundamentalist view for Mrs. White. So there is debate on if Prescott and Daniels fully gave up fundamentalism when it came to scripture, if they did not they would have still have had a more liberal view of the Bible's inspiration than say Spicer did.)

Elder Butler rejected Fundamentalism and wrote articles against it in the Review in the 1880s. It is likely his rejection of fundamentalism that eventually got him through the crisis of 1888.

So we had Mrs. White, Willie, Prescott and Daniels and the religion department of Washington Missionary College opposing Fundamentalism and teaching how to answer the question of this thread.

The second group was representative in Elder Canright and Elder Jones. They were fundamentalists. Canright became an extream fundamentlist. Like with Prescott, Mrs. White tried to educate him. Canright appears to be an honest man. He also came to realize that he could not both accept Mrs. Whtie and Fundamentalism, but unlike Prescott and Daniels who rejected Fundamentalism (to one extent or another) Canright and Jones rejected Mrs. White. Canright outright denounsing his former faith because it does not fit his fundamental views, and Jones believing that he was the only faithful Seventh-day Adventist left with the entire church having apostisised. If they were not fundamentalists, they would have had no reason to leave. I believe that Canright and Jones were honest men and if he could have lived on this side of the 20th centuary, where even the strictist fundamentalist are less strict than they were, that probably would have shaken their views enough to have given up fundamentalism and they probably would have stayed faithful. Neither man had any reason to leave the church except that they saw the contrast betwen Mrs. White's work and how the Fundamentalists say that inspiration should work.

The third group would be people like Stephen Haskell and Elder Washburn. Both were fundamentalists. Now it was surprising because Elder Washburn was the nephew of the anti-fundamentalist Elder Butler. They were both very close and united in their opposition to Jones and Wagner in the 1888 General Conference. But as events were leading towards the 1919 Bible conference, from notes I've read on the internet googling the 1919 Bible conference, it appears that their opposit views on fundamentalism became a rift between them. (of course Butler died in 1918 the year before the conference)

Anyway this third group would do their best to bring about a fundamentalist approach towards Mrs. White. Haskell and Mrs. White had many conversations and letters about this topic, Haskel trying to convince Mrs. White that her inspiration worked the way he said it worked and she trying to tell him how it did work. Both were frustrated because they were very close friends but neither could convince the other of their views of inspiration.

Anyway in 1919 Haskell's view prevailed and has become the typical Adventist view. Washburn's ideas, with Wilkinson, and their ideas being filtered through the book Questions on Doctrine, have developed into the groups that call themselves "Historic Adventists" While I do not remember enough of the details that I don't want this blamed on Washburn himself, many from the views that he presented would start out by saying that the pre-1888 Mrs. White was from God and Post-1888 was from Willie or Mrs. White becoming an apostate. There is a trend you can see in the literature in the White estate vault where eventually their writings go from blaming Jones and Wagner and the later Mrs. White with hericy into how they were actually good historic adventists after all and Willie and Prescot were the true villians, and as time went on, well Willie and Prescott turned out to be good historic Adventists after all and the real villians are LeRoy Froom and those involved with Questions on Doctrine.

This is a very interestng history. For more study I encourage looking into the discussions on Testimony # 11 and the reformed dress.

As I understand it, God showed things to Mrs. White that she describes is like seeing snapshots, and that her job as a prophet was to see what she could learn from these snapshots and to try to describe what she saw. Try to get people to look at a picture and describe it to people who have not seen the picture and you would have an excellent idea of how inspiration works. You will not get a perfect idea if what the picture looks like, but you will get enough of an idea to know what picture was seen when you see it. Another guideline is that it is the framework and major principles that Mrs. White got from vision and that she would work on filling in how to present it. Also realizing that Mrs. White's writings followed different timely theams: first not to give up their Millerite expirence and 1844 as not being from God, that God was leading in this expirence. Then came the orginazation of the church, next the orginazation of the educational and health care system and health message, followed by her greatest work the issues of the Great Controversy.

She saw questions on the Bible and all these other little issues they wanted her advice on as side issues pulling her away from her job, and would emphesise that her job was not to answer questions like "what is the meaning of the daily" that her job was NOT to do exegesis on scripture, that was our job. Her job was to point out the lost Biblical truth such as the issues of the Great Controversy, but that we needed to use comon sense and study in applying the principles of what she points out. Her job was to teach us things like how to work the cities, not how to interpet the Bible. However if you have two meetings, one to study what she says about how to work a city, and the other on how she interpets the Bible, which to we tend to gravatate towards? In our own study do we want to use her the way she tells us to use her, or do we want to use her for how we want to use her and to have her interpet the scripture for us? It was not until the late 1920s that Mrs. White was called an inspired commentary on the scripture. I have a suspicition (based on her writings) that had she been alive at the time she would have put a sharp stop to that idea.

[Woody]

I'm sorry. I tried to wade through all of that but couldn't get much. I must be tired. Do you have a bottom line summary you could provide for me?

[Woody]

"It is not the words of the Bible that are inspired, but the man that were inspired. Inspiration acts not on the man's words or his expressions but on the man himself, who, under the influence of the Holy Ghost, is imbued with thoughts. But the words receive the impress of the individual mind. The divine mind is diffused. The divine mind and will is combined with the human mind and will; thus the utterances of the man are the word of God." E.G. White Manuscript 24,1886.

[Woody]

I wish that self should be hid in Jesus. I wish self to be crucified. I do not claim infallibility, or even perfection of Christian character. I am not free from mistakes and errors in my life. Had I followed my Saviour more closely, I should not have to mourn so much my unlikeness to His dear image. {2BIO 444.6}

[Lysimachus]

Kevin H.

What is the definition of "Fundamentalism" in the context you're using it? I have always understood the term to simply mean conservative Christians.