Chapter 1—How Confidence in a Book Is Born
How does a person develop confidence in a book? What finally impels a person to trust a book so much that he will, voluntarily and joyfully, mold his life, give up immediate rewards and gratifications, because of what he reads in a book whose author he has never met?WEWMM 10.1
Men and women must ask this question sooner or later, if they are ever to become committed Christians, or if they are to remain committed believers, after being born into a Christian-oriented home.WEWMM 10.2
Every generation since the disciples first passed on the good news about Jesus Christ to those who knew Him not in flesh and blood has had to answer this question. Every generation that has arisen since Ellen White’s death in 1915 has had to answer this question in regard to her credibility.WEWMM 10.3
Confidence in the Biblical books, which set forth Jesus Christ as Lord, and confidence in the books that were written by Ellen G. White as His messenger in modern times begin and end with the same questions and the same answers. Finding an unshakable confidence, or trust, in the writings of Ellen White comes in the same way that confidence in the Bible is developed.WEWMM 10.4
How, then, does confidence arise? Where does a person begin? Must all the evidence be in, all questions answered, before a Christian can have confidence? How does a person go about knowing anything with certainty so that he can have faith and confidence in his knowledge?WEWMM 10.5
With some areas of life, knowing with certainty is not important. If someone is asked, “How many dogs are there in the world?” he probably would reply, “I don’t know for sure.” And no one is especially disturbed because he does not know with certainty. We say it doesn’t matter.WEWMM 11.1
There are other areas, however, where we need to have confidence that someone else does know for sure, even though we may not. It is interesting, and probably helpful, for a young mother or her accountant husband to know what the tappet clearance should be in the motor of the family car, but they do not need to know so long as their garage mechanic knows for sure.WEWMM 11.2
When asked about the diameter of the earth we would probably say, “Oh, about 8,000 miles.” Very few people would know for sure, and for most people it doesn’t really matter. But for an astrophysicist or a telemetrist it is very important that he knows for certain that the diameter of the earth at the equator, for all practical purposes, is 7,926.41 miles.WEWMM 11.3
We may not know, nor really care to know, just where a kidney stone is or how to get at it, but we trust that someone else does and can get at it with dispatch whenever the need should arise.WEWMM 11.4
There are many important matters in life that we leave to others who have far more confidence and certainty than we may have. But there are some matters we must know with unquestioning confidence, such as whether God answers prayer, or whether there is power available to live nobly, and unselfishly, like Jesus lived. Does this kind of heavenly intervention really exist, or are we using poetic language, or symbolic words? Knowing the truth for sure about such questions is not a matter of mere interest or convenience on our part, but a matter of life and hope, or despair and death.WEWMM 11.5
When a book such as the Bible talks about such matters, how do we develop confidence that we are reading truth? Where do we begin? Is it something that we will only feel? Is it fair to rely on a warm feeling that we are on the right path? Is it safe to trust in spectacular upsurges of elation and ecstasy—even phenomenal, spontaneous radical c hanges in attitudes and feelings?WEWMM 11.6
However, if feeling and ecstatic effusion are to be the test that truth has been found, then the next question must be faced: How does any man know that his feelings are any more reliable than anybody else’s feelings, especially when each man comes up with a different way of life and a conflicting set of theological conclusions?WEWMM 12.1
Deep feelings of rightness on the part of the screaming Voodoo witch doctor, or of one who claims the gift of tongues, or of Trappist monks, do not, because of their undeniable emotional experiences, guarantee the path of credibility and certitude. On the contrary, thoughtful persons looking for the truth to which they can trust their lives, turn away, with alarm and probably with some disgust, from religious emotion as a basis for unshakable confidence. Ellen White observed: “Impressions and feelings are no sure evidence that a person is led by the Lord.”—Testimonies for the Church 1:413.WEWMM 12.2
Let’s try trust. Often we hear, “Everyone has to believe in something. The Bible is as good as anything else we can trust.” How does trust begin? Do we believe that God is “up there” and that the Bible is “truth” because our teachers and parents “believe in” the Bible?WEWMM 12.3
If one answers Yes, he is fortunate indeed; there is so little trust today. To trust teachers and parents for one’s concepts of God and duty is an admirable trait—for children. But to stay on this level of secondhand faith makes for spineless adults or outright rebels—depending upon the young adult’s way of expressing his emotional immaturity. Anyhow, trusting someone else doesn’t make that other person right. Besides, who told our parents or pastor that what they believe is the truth? Their parents? Who told them?WEWMM 12.4
In other words, if we believe the Bible to be the truth, on whose authority do we build such confidence? Whom do we trust so much that we can base our life on this conviction? As Biblical words come to us over the centuries, whether written by Moses or Isaiah or John, how do we know that such words can be trusted? Every man who has ever heard about the Bible—even the disciples of Jesus—had to answer this question. Even those fortunate people who heard Paul preach had to ask, “How can I be sure that I can trust what this man is saying? He means well, he sounds as if he believes what he is saying, but is it the truth?”WEWMM 12.5
Trusting the enthusiasm and well meaning of other people is not the safest ground on which to build unshakable confidence.WEWMM 13.1
How about reason and research? That sounds safer. Let us see truth as it is, with our own eyes and ears and brain, Reason says. But the history of thought over the past three hundred years has exploded the tantalizing myth that unaided human reason can arrive at truth, especially with questions about the meaning and purpose of life. Even empirical “truth” carries only tentative credentials while it waits for the next discovery and the junking of previously “settled” conclusions.WEWMM 13.2
The beatniks of the fifties, the hippies, yippies, and copouts of the sixties and seventies, are not strange, unexplainable ingrates, but the logical consequences of the total collapse of certainty and confidence in human reason and the morality of scientism. The age of permissiveness, supported by naturalism or agnostic existentialism in the West, and pantheistic idealism in the East, is the logical conclusion to several centuries of progressive rejection of authority as once claimed, each in their turn, for reason, romantic feeling and intuition, historical research, and laboratory investigation.WEWMM 13.3
Yet in spite of the collapse of human effort to find certainty, men everywhere continue to seek certainty, the confidence of knowing that what they believe is for real. The human mind and heart crave truth. They were made to be at home with truth. Not knowing the truth induces a deep-set homesickness of the spirit, alienation, and a feeling of lostness in a world without meaning.WEWMM 13.4
All the while there have been people who have not drifted in a meaningless existence. To reach these men and women who sincerely want to know the truth about life, about themselves, and about the future, God has used books, sixty-six of them in the Bible and scores written by Ellen G. White. In these books men have found confidence in Him and in the truth they seek, unshakable confidence. How has this happened?WEWMM 13.5
Unshakable confidence begins only when men and women know that God, personally, has spoken to them directly. The questions that arise, of course, are: How does a person know that there is a God who wants to talk to men? How does he know when He speaks? How can a man know he is listening to God and not to the echoes of his own soul?WEWMM 14.1
Answers to these questions must be direct, immediate, and personal—or there would not be sufficient to warrant intelligent, unshakable confidence. Yet, the answer must be more than a deep conviction based on private study, personal feeling, or a dramatic emotional experience.WEWMM 14.2
Personal conviction, however arrived at, must be tested against some objective yardstick—something historical, observed, and corroborated by other persons—something that, in itself, has stood the test of scrutiny. Subjective certitude requires objective certainty if an idea is to have any lasting, convincing credibility.WEWMM 14.3
The only times through the centuries when men have known the truth about life have been when God spoke to them “in many and various ways” (Hebrews 1:1, R.S.V.) such as historical interventions (the Exodus through the Red Sea), personal confrontations (Moses and the burning bush), prophetic instruments (Moses, Isaiah, Daniel, et cetera), nature’s handiwork (Psalm 19; Romans 1), and His own personal presence as a carpenter from Nazareth.WEWMM 14.4
In such manifestations, or revelations of Himself, God put Himself on record before the human race, saying over and over again: “I am like this.” “Remember how I kept my promise with Abraham? I will also keep my promises to you.” “Love is stronger than hate or death.”WEWMM 14.5
Human research has never come up with a God like the Lord of the Holy Scriptures, for the simple reason that He could not be thought. For the human mind, the Biblical God would be too unreal. Ideas, such as a creation by decree, forgiveness through permanent sacrifice on the part of God Himself, divine power within man that regenerates thought, feelings, and will, are incredible to people who have not listened humbly to this God speak to them.WEWMM 14.6
Men saw Him act, heard Him speak, trusted His counsel, observed the validity and vindication of His principles as the years went by. All this they wrote down in documents that finally became the Holy Bible.WEWMM 14.7
But they did not write their experiences and record these messages so that generations to come would have a “holy” book that could be revered and memorized. They wrote so that succeeding; generations could stand where Biblical writers had stood and listen and see what they had experienced. Their writings were not meant to be primarily the object of faith but a two-way channel by which readers would learn of a personal, self-communicating God and also in the learning, actually hear Him speak! The truth they wrote was the truth about a living God who would do in every generation to follow what He had done in the lives of the Biblical writers. It was truth that had been given to them by God Himself, not something devised by the mind of man.WEWMM 15.1
Their appeal was: “O taste and see that the Lord is good! Happy is the man who takes refuge in him!” (Psalm 34:8, R.S.V.). Peter reminded his readers that the source of their confidence resided in the self-authentic witness of the good news that he and others were proclaiming: “Like newborn babes, long for the pure spiritual milk, that by it you may grow up to salvation; for you have tasted the kindness of the Lord” (1 Peter 2:2, 3, R.S.V.).WEWMM 15.2
The apostles did not ask men merely to trust them as to who Jesus was. But they did ask men to stand where they stood and listen to what they heard. Although, after the ascension, Jesus no longer spoke face to face as the apostles once heard Him, nevertheless, the apostles asked their hearers to join them in listening to the voice of Jesus as He spoke to their souls. This personal invitation of the apostles, whether face to face or through their letters, became to those who were eager for truth as a telescope bringing the unknown to earth. The telescope, however—no matter how elegant—was not made to be merely looked at, but to be looked through. The apostles knew, as all men of faith learn, that human instruments such as historical research, human logic, and even emotional, sensational demonstrations would not in themselves produce a lasting conviction on second-generation believers—for all such human tools are subject to interpretation, incompleteness, and the latent suspicion that maybe somebody had been duped.WEWMM 15.3
They simply said (but with conviction that shook the world): “This Carpenter who was nailed to a Jerusalem cross was God Himself. He spoke, lived, and died like no man before Him. His analysis of man’s predicament rings true. His promises have always been fulfilled. In fact, He promised us his personal Representative whom He called the Holy Spirit, so that we would never have reason to doubt His continuing presence and power in our lives. He wants all men actually to have this Holy Presence and Power in their lives, just as we first experienced it when He walked and talked with us face to face. If you want more out of life, real happiness, and reason to hope, He has much to teach you. If you listen to Him as we have, as you read our words and hear His inner voice, you will know exactly what we are talking about.”WEWMM 16.1
And listen they did. In Galatia, Corinth, Philippi, Antioch, and many places unknown today, men and women listened—not only to this personal witness of the apostles but also to the Spirit within that verified, confirmed, and authenticated what they heard with their ears and read with their eyes. Head and heart, fact and feeling, were joined.WEWMM 16.2
Peter described the response of these second- and third-generation hearers to the Biblical witness, who through this experience became “contemporary” disciples with those who knew Jesus in the flesh: “Without having seen him you love him; though you do not now see him you believe in him and rejoice with unutterable and exalted joy. As the outcome of your faith you obtain the salvation of your souls” (1 Peter 1:8, 9, R.S.V.).WEWMM 16.3
Although Peter, Paul, Matthew, and the other apostles (those who could report about what they had personally seen and heard) passed on, their witness did not die with them. What they had to say about Jesus lived on in their letters to young Christian churches; these eyewitness reports eventually became a permanent addition to the Bible through which the apostles themselves had first heard God speaking to them.WEWMM 16.4
Through this written testimony Jesus was kept before the world as man’s Saviour. Men and women everywhere, as the centuries rolled on, were asked to listen to Him speak. Whenever a person listened with an open mind and heart, he heard the voice of God transmitted through the inspired instruments of human witness.WEWMM 16.5
Today in the twentieth century as for each generation since the apostles died, “the Scriptures are to be received as God’s word to us, not written merely, but spoken.... In them He is speaking to us individually, speaking as directly as if we could listen to His voice. It is in these promises that Christ communicates to us His grace and power.”—The Ministry of Healing, 122.WEWMM 17.1
This relationship wherein man declares Jesus to be his Lord, receives His declaration that he is a forgiven son, and commits himself to Him in trusting obedience, is called “faith” in the New Testament. Faith is man’s Yes to God’s Yes. Faith accepts the fact that man is a sinner in need of a Saviour, not merely an ignorant stumbler in need of education. But this knowledge and experience of faith is not something that can be deduced by logic or discovered by research; it comes only in response to the Lord who speaks to man, personally, through His Spirit and through the written record of His mighty acts in history.WEWMM 17.2
In describing how men and women today find faith in God and confidence in the Bible, Ellen White wrote probably the clearest statement found anywhere as to how confidence in a book is born:WEWMM 17.3
“Through faith they come to know God by an experimental knowledge. They have proved for themselves the reality of His word, the truth of His promises. They have tasted, and they know that the Lord is good.WEWMM 17.4
“The beloved John had a knowledge gained through his own experience. He could testify: ‘That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, of the Word of life; (for the life was manifested, and we have seen it, and bear witness, and show unto you that eternal life, which was with the Father, and was manifested unto us;) that which we have seen and heard declare we unto you, that ye also may have fellowship with us: and truly our fellowship is with the Father, and with His Son Jesus Christ’ (1 John 1:1-3).WEWMM 17.5
“So everyone may be able, through his own experience, to ‘set his seal to this, that God is true.’ John 3:33, A.R.V. He can bear witness to that which he himself has seen and heard and felt of the power of Christ. He can testify:WEWMM 17.6
“‘I needed help, and I found it in Jesus. Every want was supplied, the hunger of my soul was satisfied; the Bible is to me the revelation of Christ. I believe in Jesus because He is to me a divine Saviour. I believe the Bible because I have found it to be the voice of God to my soul.’WEWMM 18.1
“He who has gained a knowledge of God and His word through personal experience is prepared to engage in the study of natural science....WEWMM 18.2
“He who has a knowledge of God and His word through personal experience has a settled faith in the divinity of the Holy Scriptures. He has proved that God’s word is truth, and he knows that truth can never contradict itself.”—The Ministry of Healing, 461, 462.WEWMM 18.3
What do we learn from this remarkable statement about faith, personal experience, the voice of God, and the Bible?WEWMM 18.4
First, and beneath all discussion regarding confidence in finding the truth, is. the faith experience. Faith is the personal response of a man who has been awakened to the outreaching love of his Creator. In complete agreement he says Yes to all that God says about his being a rebel. What God says about his self-centered living, the man of faith knows to be true. Furthermore, what God offers in His invitation to return home as a forgiven son the man of faith knows to be the greatest word that could be spoken to man. He knows through experience that wholeness of life dawns for the first time only when He calls Jesus his Lord.WEWMM 18.5
Every disciple lived through this same experience before he turned to his contemporaries and witnessed in voice and word to this life-giving, earth-shaking good news.WEWMM 18.6
This good news, written in the letters later assembled within the covers of what we know today as the Bible, is understood to be the truth only by people who allow the Lord of the Bible to speak to them. The tragedy is that not all who listen to “the voice of God” respond to Him as forgiven and grateful sons!WEWMM 18.7
But for those who do, the Bible is the channel through which they continue to hear Jesus speak. Because they hear Him speak, they have confidence that the Biblical writers were speaking the truth about God. The Bible becomes authentic and worthy of confidence because what the writers said God would do when men listened and obeyed is exactly what happens in personal experience. They have “proved that God’s word is truth.”WEWMM 18.8
The basic fact about truth that we learn in this Ellen White comment (a truth verified by many cross-checks in human experience) is that man was made to respond to God, physiologically, as well as morally. Whether or not man listens and obeys what he hears from God, either through the inner Word of His Holy Spirit or the exterior Word of the Bible, does not, in itself, invalidate the inspiration or integrity of God’s Word. The significant fact is that there is a God-given faculty within man that enables him to distinguish between books that are used as channels of the Word of God and those that are mere human opinion or self-echoes. Such books above all others, we contend, are the Bible and the writings of Ellen G. White.WEWMM 19.1
After twenty-five years of translating the New Testament into modern English, J. B. Phillips wrote a remarkable testimony to his experience as a translator, called Ring of Truth. He regretted the modern scene where so many intelligent people do not understand what the Christian message is all about, chiefly because they have never given the New Testament a fair hearing.WEWMM 19.2
Yet, Dr. Phillips observed: “It [the New Testament] has the proper ring for anyone who has not lost his ear for truth.... It is not magical, nor is it faultless: human beings wrote it. But by something which I would not hesitate to describe as a miracle there is a concentration upon that area of inner truth which is fundamental and ageless. That, I believe, is the reason why millions of people have heard the voice of God speaking to them through these seemingly artless pages.”—Page 20. WEWMM 19.3
He was amazed at the initial public response to his early translation of the Epistles (Letters to Young Churches). And he was astonished at what was happening to him. Coming to grips with the New Testament firsthand, removing the old varnish of archaic speech caused the centuries “to melt away, and here was I confronted by eternal truths which my soul, however reluctantly, felt bound to accept. The further I went with my work of translation the more this conviction of spiritual truth grew within me.”—Page 24.WEWMM 19.4
He had earlier viewed the Greek of the New Testament with “snobbish disdain” in comparison with the Greek used by the classical writers, but he soon saw that God was using the “ordinary workaday language” of common man just as He humbled Himself by condescending to become man. The infusion of the Spirit of God in the language of man witnessing to Jesus as Lord became “strangely alive; it spoke to my condition in the most uncanny way.... Although as a priest of the Anglican Church I had a great respect for Holy Scripture, this very close contact of several years of translation produced an effect of ‘inspiration’ which I have never experienced, even in the remotest degree, in any other work.”—Page 25.WEWMM 20.1
Dr. Phillips saw the effect of a fresh look at the Bible on himself and on those who read his translations. He reaffirmed the fact that a human being can know God through Christ in a very real sense as He is set forth in the Bible. Almost paraphrasing statements by Ellen White (The Ministry of Healing, 461, 462), he wrote: “The laboratory check for spiritual experience is life itself, and it is exactly here, sometimes in the most appallingly dangerous and painful situations, that I have found faith both sure and radiant. In short, I have seen the experience of God described in the New Testament occurring again and again in our modern world.”—Pages 55, 56.WEWMM 20.2
He concluded his book, saying: “It is my serious conclusion that we have in the New Testament, words that bear the hallmark of reality and the ring of truth.”—Page 125.WEWMM 20.3
Dr. Phillips’ witness to the self-authentic reliability of the Bible joins the long line of grateful Christians who have found their “settled faith in the divinity of the Holy Scriptures.” The Bible, after the death of the apostles (the only eyewitnesses and firsthand reporters of our Lord’s personal witness), became the precondition of faith for all generations to come. After the apostles died, generally speaking, faith in Jesus as Lord would not have been possible without the Bible. But whenever faith arose, confidence in the Bible arose at the same time—it could not have been otherwise. When men find Jesus by traveling the road to Him as outlined in the Bible they simultaneously trust the Book that safely led them. The believability of the Bible comes at the same time that a person believes in the Lord of the Bible. Whatever the Bible says about Jesus and what He can mean to me is exactly my experience—and that is where unshakable confidence in the Bible rests. Safely.WEWMM 20.4
That is exactly where confidence in the writings of Ellen G. White begins and ends. The same joining of head and heart, fact and feeling, is required before unshakable confidence in her works is; born. Working with these messages as one would with the Biblical text, letting them speak as they were intended to speak, the door opens to all that is strangely alive, believable, and self-authenticating. Here, too, the voice of God will be heard. This simple observation from experience is repeated often, in so many ways, by the contributors to this volume.WEWMM 21.1
Confidence in the writings of Ellen White is developed in the same way, along the same path, as confidence in the Bible is developed. Even as faith can be understood only by a man who has met Jesus through the Bible, so confidence in the writings of Ellen White becomes real and unshakable only to those who with an open head and heart “taste and see” for themselves.WEWMM 21.2
Herbert E. Douglass
Takoma Park, Maryland
October 1, 1972