First and foremost, we will look at the authority of the bible. So now what I’m going to do is I’m going to take you over to the adventist.org website where it says “Seventh-day adventists accept the bible as the only source of our beliefs. We consider our movement to be the result of the protestant conviction sola scriptura now.” If you don’t know what solo scriptura, sola (only) scriptura (scripture) so that basically they’re saying “only scripture”. We believe in only scripture, the bible, as the only standard of faith and practice for christians. Now you may think brother Allen that sounds about the same thing that we say as evangelical christians. You’re right. That’s exactly what they want you to think. We believe in the bible and only the bible but let’s go deeper. Let’s talk about Ellen G White and how they view her position in terms of her authority to interpret this one sole truth. Now I’m going to go over here to this website and notice what it says. It says here – and this is one of their position on Ellen G White. One of the gifts of the holy spirit is prophecy. Okay, that’s true. This gift is an identifying mark of the remnant church and was manifested in the ministry of Ellen G White. Okay, fine. As the Lord’s messenger – here’s the problem – her writings are a continuing and authoritative source of truth which provide for the church comfort, guidance, instruction and correction. They also make clear that the bible is the standard by which all teaching and experience must be tested. Now I want you to go back to this phrase right here: “her writings are a continuing and authoritative source of truth.” That is a problem. Her writings are “a continuing and authoritative source of truth”. That is basically elevating her writings on par with the level of the apostle Paul. There are members of the adventist church that believe that Ellen G White’s writings were inspired by God and on the same level as the apostle Paul. They believe that her commentary on the bible is divinely inspired so this is a major problem.
This was the previous statement that was on the adventist.org website. As of today, whenever you click on the adventist.org website, it says here this gift is an identifying mark of the remnant church and we believe it was manifested in the ministry of Ellen G White. Her writings speak with prophetic authority and provide comfort and guidance….Do you see what they did? They removed the phrase that her writings were “a continuing and authoritative source of truth.” They removed that phrase from their website. Why? Because they had such a difficult time trying to harmonize some of her false teachings and false beliefs with the scriptures. They also came to the place where they realized that you can’t call any human being other than the people who wrote the scriptures and say that their writings were an authoritative source of truth. No, there is no more authoritative source of truth other than these the new testament scriptures. I want to basically highlight the big difference here. As evangelical christians, we read the scriptures and then we look at other commentaries and if those commentaries don’t line up with scripture, we throw those commentaries out because those commentaries are supposed to help us understand the scriptures. But if in any situation where it’s different, we don’t rely on the commentaries interpreting what the bible says. We say “No, this is what the bible says and therefore those commentaries must be wrong.” My understanding of the adventist church is it’s almost flipped. You have the bible but the bible is the only source of truth as it is first understood and interpreted by Ellen G White. Do you see the difference? In other words, yes we believe in the bible, we believe in only the bible, as it is interpreted and understood by Ellen G White.