The main question before us is this: why have we, as a church, adopted positions on doctrine and practice that stand in direct conflict with the revealed will of God?
In conversations with people who have not read the material on this website, I have sometimes encountered the impression that we are pursuing three separate campaigns, each one undermining established principles of our faith: remarriage after divorce, vegetarianism as a test of fellowship, and belief in the Spirit of Prophecy as a requirement for baptism.
But these are not three separate concerns. They are three expressions of the same underlying concern. Beneath every article we have published on these subjects lies one question: what happens when the Spirit of Prophecy speaks directly against a position we hold, yet we find a way to keep the position while setting the counsel aside?
That is what this article examines. If we are going to set aside counsel that clearly came from God – or argue that it does not apply to us in the SDARM – then we need to be able to explain clearly and consistently why. And for something this serious, the reason needs to be a sound one.
“Touch not mine anointed, and do my prophets no harm.”
1 Chronicles 16:22
A Multitude of Words
Before going further, it is worth looking at how we as a church have answered that question in practice. Take one point as a test case: the exception Christ attached to His teaching on divorce.
“But I say unto you, That whosoever shall put away his wife, saving for the cause of fornication, causeth her to commit adultery: and whosoever shall marry her that is divorced committeth adultery.”
Matthew 5:32
“And I say unto you, Whosoever shall put away his wife, except it be for fornication, and shall marry another, committeth adultery: and whoso marrieth her which is put away doth commit adultery.” Matthew 19:9
The Spirit of Prophecy restates this teaching of Jesus in the same terms:
“In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus declared plainly that there could be no dissolution of the marriage tie, except for unfaithfulness to the marriage vow.”
MB 63.1
“There is only one sin, which is adultery, which can place the husband or wife in a position where they can be free from the marriage vow in the sight of God.”
17MR 156
Our position is that no such exception exists. That means these statements have to be explained. Over the years, many different explanations have been offered – in sermons, study meetings, ministerial correspondence, and print. Taken together, they include the following.
The words do not say it. The Greek porneia means an improper sexual act rather than adultery, for which another word exists, and anyone who treats them as equivalent is confused or wrong. “Fornication” applies only to Jewish betrothal, covering the period before a marriage was consummated. The exception clause was inserted by scribes and Matthew has likely been tampered with in translation. The clause can only be properly understood by someone who has studied ancient Greek.
The words were not addressed to us. Jesus was speaking to Jews in those particular statements, and Matthew was written to a Jewish audience.
The words say it but do not mean it. Where divorce follows adultery the marriage tie remains binding, and the dissolution spoken of is artificial. The law of marriage is until death, so no exception to that rule is permissible. A person is free from the marriage vow only when the spouse dies. Someone may be legally divorced and still married in the sight of God.
The Spirit of Prophecy statements do not count. Only her published works may be considered. On this subject she gave her own opinion, which is not in harmony with the will of God. The testimony written to the Monterey church is not inspired, having been written before the church could consider the point collectively, and it applied only to the civil laws of that state at that time. The expression “I saw” does not always indicate inspiration or establish doctrine; she may simply have been speaking from experience. She did not know what advice to give on remarriage. She did not wish to be troubled with questions of this kind and asked that they not be brought to her. And in reading the Spirit of Prophecy we must apply the principle of time and place, since she wrote things that are not applicable today – which is especially true of the statements that disagree with our position.
The weight of evidence favours us. Most of the statements support our view, even if a couple of them do not.
God is advancing the standard through us. Light is progressive, and SDARM is doing the work of Elijah and John the Baptist in restoring this principle. God is therefore using SDARM to raise the bar, notwithstanding His own instructions on this point during the period when the SDA Church was His church.
That is roughly thirty different arguments surrounding one clause in one verse. Two of them are not merely informal explanations. The claim that the clause was inserted by later hands is the conclusion of an official General Conference publication, which we will examine shortly. At the same time, many SDARM teachers accept the clause as genuine but argue that it has a limited meaning. Both explanations cannot be right.
But the difficulty goes further than that.
First, there is no clear consensus. Different ministers and writers reach for different explanations, and a member who asks the same question of three workers may receive three different answers. For an issue serious enough to determine whether someone may be baptised or remain a member, that is a remarkable situation.
The second is that many of these answers cannot stand alongside each other.
- If the exception clause was inserted by scribes and is not authentic, then it is meaningless to add that Christ spoke it only to Jews. Either He said it or He did not.
- If only her published works may be considered, the argument fails at once, because no one argues that Thoughts From the Mount of Blessing is not a published book and that book states the exception plainly.
- If she expressed a personal opinion not in harmony with God’s will, we cannot also claim that the weight of her evidence is on our side. Either her statements on this subject carry authority and are to be weighed, or they do not and there is nothing to weigh.
- If she did not know what advice to give on this question, then neither the statements for our position nor those against it can be counted.
There is also a problem with saying that God is now raising the standard through SDARM while at the same time claiming that we have increased light. We ourselves affirm that genuine new light does not contradict light God has already given:
“When the power of God testifies as to what is truth, that truth is to stand forever as the truth. No after suppositions contrary to the light God has given are to be entertained”.
1SM 161.1
A settled truth should not normally require thirty different defences, especially when several of them cancel one another out. Ellen White made a similar observation:
“Numberless words need not be put upon paper to justify what speaks for itself and shines in its clearness. Truth is straight, plain, clear, and stands out boldly in its own defense; but it is not so with error. It is so winding and twisting that it needs a multitude of words to explain it in its crooked form.”
Early Writings, p. 96
This is not offered as proof that the SDARM position is wrong. But it does raise a serious question: why are so many different arguments needed to explain away one plain statement of Christ?
That question leads us directly to a broader warning from the Spirit of Prophecy.
The Last Deception of Satan
Most of us know this statement well:
“The very last deception of Satan will be to make of none effect the testimony of the Spirit of God. ‘Where there is no vision, the people perish.’ [Proverbs 29:18.] Satan will work ingeniously, in different ways and through different agencies, to unsettle the confidence of God’s remnant people in the true testimony.”
6LtMs, Lt 12, 1890, par. 45
Within our circles, this statement is usually applied in one direction: outward. We tend to hear it as a warning about those who reject Ellen White, about another church, or about a secular age that has little regard for the prophetic gift.
But the same letter also explains how the testimony of the Spirit of God can be made of none effect. Read in context, several methods emerge. Two are especially relevant to the questions we are examining here.
First, Ellen White describes people who “put their own interpretation upon the Word, and make it contradict what the Lord has revealed in the testimonies” (par. 46).
She then gives another warning:
“You have also taken from their connection portions of the testimonies which the Lord has given for the benefit of His people, and have misapplied them to the support of your erroneous theories, borrowing or stealing the light of Heaven to teach that which the testimonies have no harmony with, and have ever condemned. Thus you place both Scripture and testimony in the frame-work of error” (par. 5).
As we can see, the Testimonies can be undermined in at least two ways relevant to us here: by interpreting Scripture in a way that contradicts what God revealed through them, or by taking statements from the Testimonies out of context to support positions they actually condemn.
It is equally important to notice who this warning was addressed to. These were not people who rejected the Testimonies. They professed confidence in Ellen White’s prophetic gift.
That is why the warning deserves particular attention from us in SDARM. The influence of the Testimonies can be weakened not only by people who reject them, but also by people who believe them, quote them, and defend them, yet interpret them in such a way that they are no longer able to correct an established position.
The danger, then, is not only outside the church. It can arise from within, which makes it far more subtle and much harder to recognise.
In defending the positions we currently hold, have we handled Scripture and the Testimonies in the very way Ellen White warned against? Have we, perhaps without intending to, adopted methods of interpretation that allow us to affirm the prophetic gift while setting aside the counsel God gave through it?
When the Text Itself Has to Go
The first of those two methods – interpreting the Word in a way that contradicts what the Lord has revealed in the Testimonies – has a documented example in our own literature.
Divorce and Remarriage was published by the Seventh Day Adventist Reform Movement General Conference in Sacramento, California. Its subject is the exception clause in Matthew 5:32 and 19:9. Its conclusion is not merely that the clause has been misunderstood. It goes further: the booklet argues that the clause is not part of the Bible at all.
The argument is built witness by witness. Mark is called “the first of our witnesses to disagree with the exception clause in our version of the Book of Matthew” (p. 11). Luke is “the second witness to testify that he had no knowledge of any exception phrase in the general law of marriage enunciated by Christ” (p. 11). The astonishment of the disciples in Matthew 19:10 is offered as “further evidence that the exception phrase in Verse 9 was not in existence in the time of the apostles” (p. 10). And the reason the clause cannot stand is stated plainly: “If this exception is to be admitted as being part of the original text, it would make the exposition of Christ inconsistent with itself” (p. 8).
The conclusion follows:
“There is only one conclusion that we can come to, and that is that this perplexing phrase in the Book of Matthew ‘except it be for fornication did not exist in the days of the early Christian church, but was introduced at some later date by the ‘holy fathers’.” p. 15
Divorce and Remarriage by the Seventh Day Adventist Reform Movement General Conference, p. 15
Whatever else may be said about this argument, notice the direction in which the reasoning runs. The doctrine is fixed first, and the text is then measured against it. Because the clause cannot be reconciled with the position, the clause is judged not to be Christ’s. Removing a clause from the text is not a milder step than ignoring it.
The booklet also raises another issue discussed elsewhere on this website: the use of “weight of evidence” as a method of determining Bible truth. Its argument rests explicitly on that approach, stating that doctrine should be decided by the weight of the evidence presented (p. 10). In practice, three Gospel writers are counted against one, and the one is set aside.
Having concluded that the clause is spurious, the booklet has to account for the fact that Ellen White quoted it as the plain teaching of Christ. Its answer:
“Sr. White apparently had no special revelation to cover the inconsistency of this exception phrase, as she endorsed the position taken by the leaders in regards to divorce.”
Divorce and Remarriage by the Seventh Day Adventist Reform Movement General Conference, p. 8
So in an official General Conference publication, on a question we treat as a test of fellowship, the prophetic gift is said to have been silent and Ellen White is said to have followed the leaders. Yet this was not a marginal statement she made in passing. In Thoughts From the Mount of Blessing she quotes Matthew 5:32 in full, exception clause included, and introduces it with the words “Jesus declared plainly.” The booklet’s position therefore requires us to believe that, in a published book, she presented a later insertion as the plain declaration of Christ – and that no light was given to correct her.
That is difficult to reconcile with requiring every baptismal candidate to affirm that her writings are inspired.
The Same Position, the Opposite Method
Another argument commonly used in SDARM is that, if we want to know what the Lord revealed through Sister White, we should read her published works, citing 5T 696.1. That is good counsel. The question is twofold – what we understand are her published works, and more importantly – what did Sr. White mean by that term?
Does this quote about her ‘published works’ mean that inspired counsel written in letters to individuals and churches carries no authority if it was not published for general circulation during her lifetime?
Before we turn “read her published works” into a general rule for deciding which of Ellen White’s writings carry authority, we need to look at the context. The statement appears in Testimonies for the Church, volume 5, in a chapter titled “Unfounded Reports.” There she answers several false reports about things she was said to have taught or confessed. Only after correcting those reports does she write:
“And now to all who have a desire for truth I would say, Do not give credence to unauthenticated reports as to what Sister White has done or said or written. If you desire to know what the Lord has revealed through her, read her published works.”
Testimonies for the Church 5:696
In context, this is plainly a warning against hearsay and misattribution. It is not a ruling that documented, authenticated letters carry less authority simply because they were not published during her lifetime or after.
The nine-volume Testimonies for the Church – the very set in which 5T appears – is described by the White Estate as consisting mainly of personal messages or testimonies to individuals and churches, together with general counsel. Volume 1 itself includes many letters written personally to church members. So “published works” was never a category separate from letters to individuals and churches; much of the published Testimonies consists of exactly that material, later selected for wider circulation.
Publication therefore tells us about distribution, not necessarily about whether one of her inspired letters has value for us today.
Was It Just Her Opinion?
Another explanation found in our literature is that certain statements were simply “her own opinion.” We do need to recognise that Ellen White sometimes expressed personal opinions – as Adventists we do not believe in continual inspiration, as though every word she ever spoke or wrote was inspired. But if a statement can be classified as opinion whenever it conflicts with one of our settled doctrines, the distinction becomes far too easy to use.
Ellen White herself distinguished between the sacred (inspired) and the common (opinion) in her own writing. When challenged in 1909 over a letter that stated the Paradise Valley Sanitarium had forty rooms when it actually had thirty-eight, she explained that this information had been given “not as a revelation from the Lord, but simply as a human opinion.” She added that there are times when “common letters must be written, and information given that has passed from one to another of the workers. Such words, such information, are not given under the special inspiration of the Spirit of God” (1SM 38, 39).
The things she identified as common were plainly common: the number of rooms in a building, the weather and what a newspaper said caused it, her health, the prune crop, canning applesauce, and the scarcity of money.
Recognising this distinction, however, creates another responsibility. If not everything she wrote carried the same weight, how are we to avoid going to the other extreme and dismissing genuine counsel as merely her personal opinion? Ellen White herself warned against doing exactly that.
“Many times in my experience I have been called upon to meet the attitude of a certain class, who acknowledged that the testimonies were from God, but took the position that this matter and that matter were Sister White’s opinion and judgment. This suits those who do not love reproof and correction. … Everything that sustains their cherished ideas is divine, and the testimonies to correct their errors are human – Sister White’s opinions. They make of none effect the counsel of God by their tradition.”
3SM 68
Both truths need to be held together and a understanding these guardrails will help us:
- She was not verbally inspired. Inspiration acted upon the person, not upon the vocabulary: God’s penmen, not His pen (1SM 21).
- The distinction between sacred and common is real, but in her own examples it is identified by subject matter and by her own explanation, not by the reader’s convenience.
- The unit of discernment is the statement, not merely the document. A single 1897 letter contains both a clearly identified personal opinion and an “I have been shown.”
- She also identified the danger in our own motives: what supports our cherished ideas can easily be treated as divine, while what corrects them is reclassified as “Sister White’s opinion.”
These principles help us recognise the distinction without turning it into a convenient way of classifying counsel from God as merely human opinion.
Conclusion
In our appeal to SDARM, we are not questioning whether Ellen White exercised the prophetic gift. We believe she did. Nor are we arguing that her writings should carry less weight. Our concern is the opposite: that they should be allowed to carry the weight they ought to carry, including when they correct us.
That is the question running through every article on this website: when the Spirit of Prophecy speaks directly to a practice we hold, do we allow that counsel to correct the practice, or do we find a way to manage away the counsel instead?
So the question is ultimately one for us as a movement: how have we treated God’s prophet? If our way of reading lets us affirm the Testimonies while setting aside their correction, then what we need is not another explanation, but repentance.
“Satan will work ingeniously, in different ways and through different agencies, to unsettle the confidence of God’s remnant people in the true testimony.” 6LtMs, Lt 12, 1890, par. 45
The agencies are not always outside. May God give us the humility and courage to ask whether, even while defending the Testimonies, we have ever made them of none effect.