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Messenger of the Lord

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    No Difference in Degrees of Inspiration

    At least eight prophets mentioned in the Bible wrote for their times but their works were not included in the canon. 9Jasher (Joshua 10:13; 2 Samuel 1:18), Nathan (1 Chronicles 29:29; 2 Chronicles 9:29; 29:25), Gad (1 Chronicles 21:9; 2 Chronicles 29:25), Ahijah (1 Kings 11:29; 14:2-18; 2 Chronicles 9:29), Shemaiah (2 Chronicles 12:15), Iddo (2 Chronicles 9:29; 12:15; 13:22), Jehu (1 Kings 16:1, 7; 2 Chronicles 19:2; 20:34), Elijah (2 Chronicles 21:12-15). The Biblical story not only does not hint of any difference in the quality of their inspiration, it describes their work as of equal authority with the canonical prophets. We find no difference in how they received their messages or in how they communicated them and how their contemporaries responded to them. Non-canonical prophets spoke for God and were regarded as God’s spokesmen by their contemporaries.MOL 410.1

    With the suggestion that some prophets were granted a higher degree of revelation/ inspiration than other prophets, comes the inescapable question: Who will decide? Can an uninspired person sit in judgment on a prophet’s work and decide whether he or she is a first, second, or third-degree prophet? The gift of prophecy, as other spiritual gifts, is given to men and women “according to His own will” (Hebrews 2:4), not man’s will.MOL 410.2

    In 1884 the president of the General Conference, George I. Butler, attempted to contribute to a clearer understanding of this subject by authoring ten articles for the church paper. In these articles he discussed “differences in degrees” of inspiration. 10The Review and Herald, June 3, 1884.MOL 410.3

    Ellen White waited five years to respond, hoping that he would catch his own mistake. But when others began to pick up on Butler’s point of view and teach it in Battle Creek College, she wrote: “Both in the [Battle Creek] Tabernacle and in the college the subject of inspiration has been taught, and finite men have taken it upon themselves to say that some things in the Scriptures were inspired and some were not. I was shown that the Lord did not inspire the articles on inspiration published in the Review, neither did He approve their endorsement before our youth in the college. When men venture to criticize the Word of God, they venture on sacred, holy ground, and had better fear and tremble and hide their wisdom as foolishness. God sets no man to pronounce judgment on His Word, selecting some things as inspired and discrediting others as uninspired. The testimonies have been treated in the same way, but God is not in this.” 11Selected Messages 1:23. “Men should let God take care of His own Book, His living oracles, as He has done for ages. They begin to question some parts of revelation, and pick flaws in the apparent inconsistencies of this statement and that statement. Beginning at Genesis, they give up that which they deem questionable, and their minds lead on, for Satan will lead to any length they may follow in their criticism, and they see something to doubt in the whole Scriptures. Their faculties of criticism become sharpened by exercise, and they can rest on nothing with a certainty. You try to reason with these men, but your time is lost. They will exercise their power of ridicule even upon the Bible.... Brethren, cling to your Bible, as it reads, and stop your criticisms in regard to its validity, and obey the Word, and not one of you will be lost.... We thank God that the Bible is prepared for the poor man as well as for the learned man. It is fitted for all ages and all classes.” Selected Messages 1:17, 18.MOL 410.4

    Writings are the product of inspiration or they are not. Prophets are genuine or they are impostors. 12Compare Matthew 12:22-32; “God is either teaching His church, reproving their wrongs and strengthening their faith, or He is not. This work is of God, or it is not. God does nothing in partnership with Satan. My work ... bears the stamp of God or the stamp of the enemy. There is no halfway work in the matter. The Testimonies are of the Spirit of God, or of the devil.” Testimonies for the Church 5:671. Other than the difference between the common and the sacred, which should be obvious to everyone, no one is able to divide a prophet’s writings into the inspired and the less inspired. As soon as one tries, the final arbiter is human reason. Each person then believes that his own reason is more dependable than anyone else’s.MOL 410.5

    Through the years some have suggested that Ellen White’s articles in periodicals were not as inspired as her books. Or that her letters were not inspired, only her published books. In 1882 she wrote a candid letter on “slighting the Testimonies,” to be read in the Battle Creek, Michigan, church: “Now when I send you a testimony of warning and reproof, many of you declare it to be merely the opinion of Sister White. You have there-by insulted the Spirit of God. You know how the Lord has manifested Himself through the Spirit of prophecy.... This has been my work for many years. A power has impelled me to reprove and rebuke wrongs that I had not thought of. Is this work of the last thirty-six years from above, or from beneath?MOL 410.6

    “When I went to Colorado, I was so burdened for you, that, in my weakness, I wrote many pages to be read at your camp meeting. Weak and trembling I arose at three o’clock in the morning to write to you. God was speaking through clay. You might say that this communication was only a letter. Yes, it was a letter, but prompted by the Spirit of God, to bring before your minds things that had been shown me. In these letters which I write, in the testimonies I bear, I am presenting to you that which the Lord has presented to me. I do not write one article in the paper expressing merely my own ideas. They are what God has opened before me in vision—the precious rays of light shining from the throne.” 13Testimonies for the Church 5:64-67.MOL 410.7

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