"that he indeed believes that Jesus had to die for our sins."

I guess we are getting a litle off the point here, but when I listen to Maxwell on the Loma Linda Ch., his emphasis is that Jesus dies to show God's righteousness. He doesn't say, "Jesus died the death you deserve." If he believes it, he should say it.

As far as Provancha goes, his book on the prodigal son, I forget its name, is so clear. For him the death of Jesus was a sad mistake. Dick Winn's devotional book from 1987 + or - was pretty clear, too.

Anyway, back to the point of this, Satan can make any law possible. A Sunday law? Why not? A computer chip? could be, but how does that show alliance to Satan. I still believe that there is a Seal of God and a mark of the Beast.

"Calvary stands as a memorial of the amazing sacrificed required to atone for transgression of the devine law." SC, p. 33.

The moral influence preachers will take these words and say they believe in them, but not in the same was as others.

Do they say that we are sinners who deserve eternal life? Do they say that Jesus suffered the death and separation from God that we deserve in order that we might have eternal life?

rhammen, the problem is to first demonstrate that divine law needed to be atoned.

Rahammen: Dr. Maxwell has developed his own language. The true focus is on what the Bible and Mrs. White actually teaches about hell, which, those of us who have studed this topic, realize that neither of the two views developed in the 1200's adaquatly cover, and a realization that we need to re-study the texts used to develope the theorys of atonement in the light of what the Bible and Mrs. White teaches about hell. Dr. Maxwell has chosen to take this in a direction of trying his best to avoid language that could be mistrued to say that he is teaching the forensic view. Unfortunetly people have taken this to the other extream and read moral influence into what he says.

This is a reason why I encourage a wide study of people who have come to similar views, often very independent of Dr. Maxwell, such as Daniel Dudah, who was sepperated from the western church under the soviet union, and who was allowed by the soviets to attend a Lutheran seminary that our Adventists ministers in the Soviet Union would attend. While there he decided to compare and contrast what he was being taught with Ellen White. Then there was also Jonathan Gallager in England.

Dudah originally believed that all Adventists believed this since he got it from Ellen White. When the soviet union fell and the churches under the soviet rule again had contact with the General Conference, he was shocked that so many Adventists believed what his Lutheran professors taught and not what Mrs. White taught, and then he thought he was the first Adventist to hold this view. Jonathan Gallager for a long time thought that he was the first Adventist to come to this understanding.

Dr. Richard Nies is also a good source. He too came to this understanding from his study of Ellen White.

Moving a little outside of the Maxwell and the "Study Tapes" circle, but a good friend of Dr. Maxwell, Edward Heppenstall came to holding this view from Ellen White but also the Forensic view from church history and could not decide between the two and thus from time to time would support both views.

Moving a little farther out, in the 1920s Lynn Harper Wood came to this view from his study of the Bible, Archaeology and Ellen White. I strongly encourage his book "Mysteries Unvailed" the morning devotional book copyright 1944. There is also evidence that there were others coming to this belief prior to Lynn Wood, to well back into the 1800s, but Lynn Wood is the earliest where we know this view was held.

There is also the works of Paul Heubech. Heubech says that he first learned this from Lynn Wood but that it became clearer when he got to know Graham Maxwell.

Also, even farther away from Maxwell and yes has become controverseral, but you should also read John Wood's three chapters in the original Sanctuary and the Atonement "The Mighty Opposits: The Atonement in the Writings of Ellen G. White" parts 1 and 2, and "We Must All Appear: The Investigative Judgment in the writings of Ellen G. White." (Wood is upset that Maxwell uses traditional Adventist methods for proving his point instead of leading Adventists to a deeper study of the Bible and using exegesus, but that Maxwell does come to correct conclusions)

If you would like to understand this view, whether to study to see if it is correct, or to show that it is heresy, please look at these different works, as well as my posts on these forums (here, Club Adventist, Heavenlysanctuary) and include all of our approaches to the topic. If you are too lazy to do your homework, then please keep quite until you are willing to do the required homework. If you want to do some research but not exhustive, then since you seem to have already looked some into the innercircle of Maxwell, so just add to it the three chapters by John Wood and brouse through the daily titles of Lynn Wood's book and read some interesting sounding pages, keeping these three sources together can help you speak with some knowlege on the topic.

By the way, a question for you, why do we have people from different times in Church history and different parts of the world, independently coming to similar conclusions, and the only thing we have in common is studying Ellen White?

Also, any questions and comments about the above post on last day events

Kevin,

>If you are too lazy to do your homework, then please keep quite until you are willing to do the required homework.

Ouch! Now you hurt my feelings. But "Since your most serene majesty and the princes require a simple answer, I will give it thus: I cannot submit my faith either to the pope or to the councils, because it is clear as the day that they have frequently erred and contradicted each other. Unless therefore I am convinced by the testimony of Scripture or by the clearest reasoning, unless I am persuaded by means of the passages I have quoted, and unless they thus render my conscience bound by the word of God, I cannot and I will not retract, for it is unsafe for a Christian to speak against his conscience. Here I stand, I can do no other; may God help me. Amen."

>can help you speak with some knowlege on the topic.

Do you have any knowledge of Provancha's teachings? YOU BETTER study up and you will see his heresies most clearly.

I originally avoided the name Maxwell so you wouldn't have a cow. As I said, it seems that he believes in such a nice, kind, grandfather type of a God, hard to resist that. But as I read the Bible, I see this same God who can send an angel of death, floods and suffering. Check out the book of Psalms. The words punish, destroy, etc. are all over the place. I will say no more about Dr. Maxwell because I am ignorant about him. I knew some of his very close followers who didn't see eye to eye with.

>By the way, a question for you, why do we have people from different times in Church history and different parts of the world, independently coming to similar conclusions, and the only thing we have in common is studying Ellen White?

I met an anti-trinitarian SDA who said the same thing to me. Let's see some Bible texts and not all these people who have discovered the same thing.

Richard

Yes, I will admit that Dr. Provonsha's shade does bring him closer to these problem points. These are points where someone like myself and Graham Maxwell are in dissagreement with Dr. Provonsha.

Graham Maxwell and Jack Provonsha both attended PUC at the same time. They both attended and were highly impressed by a week of prayer that Lynn Harper Wood gave while they were students. Dr. Maxwell does not remember if Lynn Wood said anything that week which set Graham Maxwell into his thinking, and Dr. Maxwell believes that the similarities between him and Lynn Wood were developed independent of Lynn Wood and not influenced by that week of prayer, but he says that he is not positive of it as he was very impressed with that week of prayer and latter leared the similarities of their views. I did not have the chance to talk to Dr. Provonsha about the week except that he too was highly impressed with Lynn Wood. It was years latter when Lynn Wood retired in Loma Linda and they became friends that Graham Maxwell learned of the similarites between their views.

Anyway, Maxwell and Provonsha graduated from PUC, went their own ways for several years with out contact with each other. When they reunited years latter they were surprised as to the understanding they had both developed about hell and similar views in theology.

However their views are NOT identical. They both developed their views independently of each other and Dr. Maxwell says that although the critics takes what Provonsha says a lot farther than Provonsha believes, that one difference between his theology and Provonsha's is that Provonsha does lean closer to the Moral Influence theory than Graham Maxwell does. He told me that part of the problem is that although the critics do go too far with Provonsha, that there is some validity to their criticizism of Dr. Provonsha, and that they have used his close friendship with Dr. Provonsha and the similarites in theology to make Maxwell identical with Provonsha, and thus Dr. Maxwell get's blamed for teaching points where he and Dr. Provonsha dissagree.

Sounds like this is what you are doing, and why I am NOT recommending you looking at Jack Provonsha's work, but at writers who have a more conservative lean than Provonsha does, especially those outside of the Loma Linda camp.

(When I come on strong it is hoping to make you angry enough to look up your facts so that you can shut me up) Now I am going to come down hard on you again, you own post above condems you. You seem to have taken a look at Provonsha, who is indeed in this camp, but does lean more towards a direction that the others in us are not comfortable with, and it appears that you have made Provonsha's views the bench mark to mesure this belief by. Even though Provonsha does indeed give a flavor to this view, and he is a very well known member of this camp, I am arguing his problems does not spoil this view as a whole, that it is still possible to hold this view without agreeing with Provonsha on all his points. Provonsha is NOT the bench mark.

My second argument is that even with the differences between Provonsh's shading of this view, that you and the other critics have gone farther in your criticizism than Provonsha's approach merits. You take what many of us feel are just criticizisms of Dr. Provonsha, but you blow them way out of proportion, going from just criticizisms into something that is not fair, then not only put your disproportionet exageration on to not only Provonsha himself, but also forcing it upon those of us who belong to this general camp but who do not see these points as Provonsha does.

All I'm asking you to do is to examine the other works, such as Lynn Harper Wood and the three chapters in Sanctuary and the Atonement, and my other posts on this topic and prove to me that these sources are teaching the Moral Influence Theory, and that these sources line up with the criticizisms you have of Dr. Provonsha, and if you can do this, I will admit that you are right and I am wrong. But I have a sneeking suspicion that you will not be able to do this.

Until you do this I will still argue that you are not doing your homework, and are misrepresentaing this view. If you want to do this view justice (or justly criticizise it) you can't stop with simply looking at Provonsha and blowing him out of proportion, but you need to include a broad study of directions to this understanding. The sources I am recommending are to give you a more ballanced picture so that you can either have a better view of your misunderstandings of us, or be able to take better aim at us with a better chance of hitting the bulls eye.

I don't care if you or I are right or wrong, I'm only conserned that we are fair and accurate. So far you have consistantly represented this view in a way that is unfair and distorted and insist that we accept your distortion as the truth. But you are not going to convince me that I'm wrong if I do not recognize my beliefs in your critizisms.

Is it really so painful for you to want to make it possible for me to say "you have given an accurate representation of my beliefs"? I bet that you are fair to the anti-trinitarians and don't insist to them that they are Wicca's and disprove Wicca from scripture, and thus insist that they give up their anti-trinitarian beliefs based on your job of showing problems with Wicca. So why do you insist on using that method on my beliefs?

[ January 27, 2006, 04:15 AM: Message edited by: Kevin H ]

"Calvary stands as a memorial of the amazing sacrificed required to atone for transgression of the devine law." SC, p. 33.

What did the other guy post? "All you have to do now is prove that the divine law needs to be atoned for." Sins need to be atoned for. Anyway, I'm speaking to people who consider that Ellen White expresses orthodox biblical theology.

Kevin,

Hey, I just said in my last post that I am ignorant of Graham Maxwell. I know his brother, Mervyn, didn't see eye to eye with him.

But, have you read Provancha's book- I forget the name- you can go home again? I had it around 1985.
Read the final chapter, then tell my I'm exagerating. As Hans Lorandell (sp.) said, "How can he even call himself a Christian!"

Read it and I'll read your books. Are those readings on line? If not, I can guarantee you I will not do my homework, unless someone lends them to me.

R

Ellen White on Salvation

A Chronological Study by Woodrow W. Whidden II

http://www.sdanet.org/atissue/books/wws/salv07.htm

Did you mention this guy? Here's a great page to clarify the issues that I discovered doing my homework. Icon 49 Thanks for the encouragement, Kevin.
r

too bad I don't have an SDA college library around the corner. I might have a maxwell book around here, though I've gotten rid of lots of books through moves I've made.

You weren't comfortable with Provancha's book. How could a Christian that believes that Christ died in his place?