A Response to the Video:
Seventh-day Adventism, the Spirit Behind the Church

by Bob Pickle

Answers to Questions Raised by:
Mark Martin, Sydney Cleveland
Dale Ratzlaff, The White Lie
. . . and Others

Discern Fact from Fiction

The Role of Mrs. White and Her Writings

#23: "Her followers were to reference these 5000 articles, 49 books, plus 55,000 manuscript pages she claimed to write, and regard them as being as inspired as the Bible through Ellen White's pen of inspiration."—David Snyder.

#23: They regard them as being as inspired as the Bible. This statement is revealing. To believe that Mrs. White's writings are as inspired as the Bible is somehow wrong? It really doesn't make sense.

Seventh-day Adventists do not believe in degrees of inspiration. Someone's writings are either inspired or they are not. The first eleven chapters of Genesis are neither less inspired nor more inspired than the Gospel of Luke.

Since Adventists believe that the Bible teaches that the gifts of the Spirit did not end in the first century, and that the Bible teaches that the gift of prophecy would be manifested in the last days, they also believe that someone in the last days would deliver inspired messages like the Bible prophets did. Yet they have always maintained that the Bible must be the final authority. Any last day prophet that contradicts the Bible must be a false prophet.

This was true in the first century as well. If Agabus or Philip's four daughters (Acts 11:28; 21:9, 10) in their inspired messages had contradicted the Word of God, they would have had to be declared false prophets. As Paul wrote, "The spirits of the prophets are subject to the prophets" (1 Cor. 14:32).

So while there are not degrees of inspiration, there are degrees of authority. Agabus and Philip's four daughters were just as inspired as Moses or Matthew, James or Jeremiah, Micah or Mark, and John or Jonah. But the authority of the messages of Agabus and Philip's four daughters was always subordinate to that of Scripture.

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