God-given Criteria

How can we distinguish between the genuine and the counterfeit? We may rest assured that God has not left us to flounder in a time when the issues are so acute that if it were possible the very elect would be deceived.CEESDAH 17.1

Again and again Ellen White has directed us to God’s Word as our security. In God’s Word we find the criteria by which we are to judge between the true and the counterfeit, the genuine and the spurious. If there is one point above another on which God has sounded the most solemn and repeated warnings, it is on this point. None need be deceived, although many will be.CEESDAH 17.2

Referring to the time of the latter rain in her chapter “Modern Revivals” in The Great Controversy, Ellen White said:CEESDAH 17.3

“The Spirit and power of God will be poured out upon His children. At that time many will separate themselves from those churches in which the love of this world has supplanted love for God and His word. Many, both of ministers and people, will gladly accept those great truths which God has caused to be proclaimed at this time to prepare a people for the Lord’s second coming.”—Page 464.

Then, in prophetic words she describes how the enemy will intrude himself:CEESDAH 17.4

“The enemy of souls desires to hinder this work; and before the time for such a movement shall come, he will endeavor to prevent it by introducing a counterfeit. In those churches which he can bring under his deceptive power he will make it appear that God’s special blessing is poured out; there will be manifest what is thought to be great religious interest. Multitudes will exult that God is working marvelously for them, when the work is that of another spirit.”—Ibid.

Elsewhere she emphasized the subtlety of the conflict:CEESDAH 17.5

“Satan has come down in these last days, to work with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish. His satanic majesty works miracles in the sight of false prophets, in the sight of men, claiming that he is indeed Christ Himself. Satan gives his power to those who are aiding him in his deceptions; therefore those who claim to have the great power of God can only be discerned by the great detector, the law of Jehovah.

“The Lord tells us if it were possible they would deceive the very elect. The sheep’s clothing seems so real, so genuine, that the wolf cannot be discerned only as we go to God’s great moral standard and there find that they are transgressors of the law of Jehovah.”—The Review and Herald, August 25, 1885.