Presuppositions of Affirmers

Presuppositions of affirmers are generally as follows:MOL 502.5

Ellen White was time-related, not time-conditioned. ^{13Rolf Poehler used this distinction in his unpublished paper, “... And the Door was Shut’—Seventh-day Adventists and the Shut-Door Doctrine in the Decade After the Great Disappointment,” Andrews University, 1978.} However, on a continuum from time-related to time-conditioned, affirmers are not always at the same point. One of the weaknesses, for example, of most affirmers is that they place equal weight on both anachronistic statements and contemporary statements. Another weakness is that some affirmers have not always thoroughly studied the contemporary record.MOL 502.6

Ellen White, as all prophets, may not have fully understood all the implications of her visions at the time she received them. Through the years, affirmers have taken different positions on this point. ^{14See Appendix G: “Ellen White’s Growing Understanding of Her Own Visions.”}MOL 502.7

Ellen White’s position on the shut door, after her first visions, was different from (1) other shut-door advocates and (2) from her husband’s or Joseph Bates’s understanding (at least before 1851); her developing clarity regarding evangelistic expansion led the Sabbatarian Adventists into their worldwide vision beginning in the early 1850s. ^{15See Appendix H: “Ellen White Enriched the Term, ‘Shut Door.’” During the 1840s, Ellen White used the term “shut door” in two ways, not in self-contradiction but with each way emphasizing a different, though complementary, point. The problem arises when no distinction is made between what “Shut-door” Millerites believed regarding the “shut door” and what Ellen White meant beginning with her first vision.}MOL 502.8

Affirmers are convinced that Ellen White’s vision-messages are Biblically sound and time-urgent in the setting of the messages of the three angels of Revelation 14. Thus, her role as theological conceptualizer (always under the Biblical norm) can be safely followed. ^{16See Appendix I: “Ellen White Led the Way in Building a Biblical Message for the World.” Beginning with her first vision Ellen White conceptually led the way in the development of a Biblically based coherency that eventually became the distinctive message of Seventh-day Adventists.}MOL 502.9