Continuing Authority???

The Seventh-day Adventist movement will never be taken seriously as a reform movement by the Christian community at large until it stops using the writings of Ellen G. White as a "continuing and authoritative source of truth" in matters of faith and doctrine. Despite all the many official denials that belief in her writings are a test of fellowship, the fact is that Number Eighteen in the list of the "fundamental beliefs" of the Adventist denomination states that "As the Lord's messenger, her writings are a continuing and authoritative source of truth which provide for the church comfort, guidance, instruction, and correction."

There is absolutely no way to harmonize this official statement of belief with the universally accepted Protestant position of "Sola Scriptura". To describe Ellen White's writings as being "a continuing and authoritative source of truth" for "instruction and correction" is to place her writings directly on an equal par with the Bible. The Bible alone is to be the Christian's source of "authority" in matters of faith and doctrine. There can never be two sources of "authority" for the Christian. Ellen White herself would never have endorsed such an authoritative view of her writings.

The idea that "this gift (the "Spirit of Prophecy") is an identifying mark of the remnant church" cannot be deduced from the bible without seriously distorting the text and meaning of the bible. To use Revelation 19:10 "the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy" as proof that the Seventh-day Adventist movement can call Ellen White's visions the "spirit of prophecy" and an "identifying mark" of the "remnant church" is a preposterous misuse of the bible. The term "remnant" is used by the apostles in the New Testament to describe the Christian church in general and it is the height of hermeneutic ignorance to imply that it especially describes the Adventist movement since 1844 in particular.

This misuse of the writings of Ellen G. White has proven to be a "law of unintended consequences" for the Adventist movement. The very blessing that God intended for the movement has been turned into a curse with far-reaching adverse consequences for the movement. Thousands of former Adventists have turned away from this blessed movement by the ridiculously cultic traditional teachers who now dominate the movement today.

The recent Sabbath School Quarterly which attempts to defend the "all or nothing" position in regard to Ellen White is totally misleading and will prove to be disastrous to the movement, worse than the pantheism crisis and perfectionism crisis of the past. Our Enemy is jubilant when he sees these fanatical extremists take over the control of the denomination. He knows that as long as he can keep the majority of Adventists in the clutches of cultism and perfectionism he will delay the fulfillment God's purpose in raising up the Adventist movement.

It is only after this movement truly, unambiguously, and fully embraces Sola Scriptura that we can move forward to fulfill the high calling of finishing the Protestant Reformation. This will involve a total abandonment of the present form of the "28 fundamental teachings". (Click here to see how they should be revised!)

Adventism must:

1. Reject all forms of date-setting such as 2,300 years from 457 BC. to AD.1844 for the beginning of Christ's ministry in the most holy place, 1260 years from AD. 538 to 1798 as a fulfillment of the 1260 days of Daniel and Revelation, the Lisbon earthquake in 1755, the fall of the Ottoman Empire.

2. Stop teaching that tithe paying is binding upon Christians and is a mandatory condition of membership and baptism.

3. Stop teaching that wine in the bible was merely grape juice.

4. Stop teaching that the Levitical food laws are still binding upon the Christian church and that vegetarianism is God's ideal diet.

5. Stop teaching that Christ was literally telling us to wash one another's feet prior to observing the Lord's Supper.

6. Stop teaching a future "close of probation" for the people of God after which there will no longer be a Mediator to plead for them.

7. Stop teaching sinless perfectionism in all of its forms and variations.

8. Stop teaching that God's justification of sinners is an "experience" rather than by faith alone, in Christ's sinless life and atoning death alone, by God's unmerited grace alone, as revealed in the bible alone.

9. Stop teaching that "original sin" is a false doctrine and is an erroneous teaching invented by the Papacy.

10. Stop teaching that the bible condemns the wearing of jewelry.

11. Stop teaching that Christ had a sinful human nature.

12 Stop teaching that the "final generation" can be called a special group of Christians known as the "144,000" and that before Christ comes again they will be without any sin and will perfectly reflect the image of sinless Jesus Christ in character.

13. Stop teaching that the bible infers that there are unfallen inhabitants in unfallen worlds watching the events of history.

14. Stop confusing and commingling justification with sanctification.

15. Stop teaching that we are saved by imitating the life of Christ.

16. Stop teaching the moral influence theory of the atonement which Maxwell and the Loma Linda School of Dentistry have been advocating for 40 years.

17. Stop allowing the teaching of theistic evolution which attempts to allegorize or mythologize the first eleven chapters of Genesis

These reforms are absolutely necessary in order for a true revival of primitive godliness to take place among the advent people. Then and only then will the people of God in other folds begin to take the Seventh-day Adventist denomination seriously and join this God-ordained movement to restore the bible and only the bible as the rule of faith. Just look at the true essence of Adventism.

1.) Seventh-day Adventism is not a cult. There are cultic individuals and factions within Seventh-day Adventism, but the essence of the Adventist movement is true historic Protestant Christianity.

2.) The Adventist movement in its truest evangelical expression as God intends this movement to be will be a "restoration" movement rather than an "innovation" movement.

3.) Adventism uplifts the "Third Use of the Law" which is so important in this lawless diabolical age in which we live.

4. Adventism uplifts the "Second Use of the Law" which is so important as a schoolmaster to lead us to Christ to continually be justified by faith in His sinless life and atoning death on Calvary.

5.) Adventism as a true child of the Reformation affirms that God justifies repentant sinners by His unmerited grace alone through faith alone in the sinless life and atoning death of our Lord Jesus Christ alone as revealed in the Bible alone. Good works of obedience to God's commandments are the fruit of justification and are never the meritorious basis of our acceptance with God. Our acceptance with God begins by faith alone and ends by faith alone till the coming of the Lord.

6.) Adventism re-establishes the glorious truth of the resurrection of the dead at the Second Coming of Christ as the hope of the believer rather than the Grecian view of the "immortal soul" which lives on after death.

7.) Adventism affirms the virgin birth of Christ and His unique incarnation as fully God and fully man.

8.) Adventism is a necessary bulwark against the prevailing error of antinomian Dispensationalism which is sweeping the evangelical Christian world today and foolishly focuses on the Zionist events in the middle east, a rebuilding of the Levitical temple, and a "secrete rapture" of the church.

9.) Adventism uplifts and restores the seventh day Sabbath of the fourth commandment of the Decalogue as a memorial to Christ's having created the universe approximately six thousand years ago in six literal days. The Sabbath is God's emphatic rebuke to the abomination of Darwinian evolutionism.

10.) Adventism affirms the Biblical truth of the literal fall of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden as the origin of sin and suffering and death. This truth is denied by all forms of Darwinism.

11.) Adventism affirms the existence of a real fallen angel named Lucifer who became Satan along with one third of the angelic host.

12.) Adventism affirms a literal world-wide flood which destroyed the lawless unbelieving antediluvian world and the saving of Noah and his family by God's unmerited grace.

13.) Adventism affirms that our Lord Jesus Christ is the Seed of the woman who has fulfilled all the righteous demands of the Law for us so that in Him we are accounted sinless and righteous in His sight even unto the coming of the Lord.

14. Adventism is a warning and a witness that God is about to destroy all the world and all who refuse to repent, believe the gospel of Christ, and allow God to write His law upon their hearts through the indwelling Holy Spirit.

15.) Adventism affirms that God will totally annihilate sin, Satan, and all unrepentant sinners at the final judgment rather than an eternally burning fire in unending pain and suffering.

16.) Adventism as a true child of the Reformation and is an ongoing rebuke to the abominable errors of Roman Catholicism. The Papacy is the lamb-like beast of Revelation 13 which arises from the ruins of the fallen Roman Empire.

17.) Adventism is a rebuke to modern day Spiritualism.

In essence then, Adventism as God intends it to be, is God's final warning to all the world to repent and be justified by His unmerited "grace alone" through "faith alone" in the sinless life and atoning death of "Christ alone" as revealed in the "Bible alone".

This is the essence of true Adventism which Ellen G. White intended for the movement to be. Her vision was for Adventism to be the foremost voice in all the world to uplift the sinless, crucified, and risen Savior to all the world. She never intended her writings to become so prominent in the Advent Movement as they are today as the "twenty eight fundamentals" and the recent Sabbath School Quarterly portray her writings to be. It is time for the Seventh-day Adventist movement to take off the "training wheels" of Ellen G. White and become all that the Lord intended this movement to be. Sola Scriptura, Sola Gratia, Solo Christo, Sola Fide.