Mike

Are you sure you are not adding to the quotes in your comments of them? What I see Ellen write in the quotes you provided is the bulk of the advent people studying the bible out, not even stoping for the nights sleap with Ellens visions only provided if the biblestudy didnt end them all in one accord with the Spirit. Thinking about it, it is quite possible that it was that way in the time leading up to pentecost and at the apostolic councils aswell. The gathered studying the bible searching for answeres with prayer and extra guidence trough visions only added if the study of scripture didnt lead all the way trough.

I may have missunderstood your point but it seems to me you are advocating something that could be called the old testament prophethood. The holy Spirit working trough a selected few to instruct and eddify the great bulk of the people. But is not Jesus teaching about the Holy Spirit, yes indeed the teaching of all the new testament authors that we are living in a time when God is doing a new thing compared with old testament times. No longer is the Spirit reserved to a spiritual elite. In our day every believer has but to ask God and He will give the Spirit freely and more eagerly than any earthly father is eager to give good things to his children.

Im affraid this may be a detour from the thread topic but I hope for a fair treatement by the moderator

Ill give two quotes from Ellens writings that I came across in the introduction of a book I started to read yesterday.

quote:

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The promise of the Spirit is a matter little thought of; and the result is only what might be expected--spiritual drought, spiritual darkness, spiritual declension and death. Minor matters occupy the attention, and the divine power which is necessary for the growth and prosperity of the church, and which would bring all other blessings in its train, is lacking, though offered in its infinite plenitude. {8T 21.3}

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quote:

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Just prior to His leaving His disciples for the heavenly courts, Jesus encouraged them with the promise of the Holy Spirit. This promise belongs as much to us as it did to them, and yet how rarely it is presented before the people, and its reception spoken of in the church. In consequence of this silence upon this most important theme, what promise do we know less about by its practical fulfillment than this rich promise of the gift of the Holy Spirit, whereby efficiency is to be given to all our spiritual labor? The promise of the Holy Spirit is casually brought into our discourses, is incidentally touched upon, and that is all. Prophecies have been dwelt upon, doctrines have been expounded; but that which is essential to the church in order that they may grow in spiritual strength and efficiency, in order that the preaching may carry conviction with it, and souls be converted to God, has been largely left out of ministerial effort. This subject has been set aside, as if some time in the future would be given to its consideration. Other blessings and privileges have been presented before the people until a desire has been awakened in the church for the attainment of the blessing promised of God; but the impression concerning the Holy Spirit has been that this gift is not for the church now, but that at some time in the future it would be necessary for the church to receive it. {TM 174.1}

All Other Blessings

This promised blessing, if claimed by faith, would
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bring all other blessings in its train, and it is to be given liberally to the people of God. Through the cunning devices of the enemy the minds of God's people seem to be incapable of comprehending and appropriating the promises of God. They seem to think that only the scantiest showers of grace are to fall upon the thirsty soul. The people of God have accustomed themselves to think that they must rely upon their own efforts, that little help is to be received from heaven; and the result is that they have little light to communicate to other souls who are dying in error and darkness. The church has long been contented with little of the blessing of God; they have not felt the need of reaching up to the exalted privileges purchased for them at infinite cost. Their spiritual strength has been feeble, their experience of a dwarfed and crippled character, and they are disqualified for the work the Lord would have them to do. They are not able to present the great and glorious truths of God's Holy Word that would convict and convert souls through the agency of the Holy Spirit. The power of God awaits their demand and reception. A harvest of joy will be reaped by those who sow the holy seeds of truth.

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These I think speak for themselves about where our priorities ought to be.

/Thomas

What was said and quoted here doesn't negate the inspiration of the Bible, however, it does show how destitute of the Holy Spirit the people in the church may have been, and may still be.

Let us try not to go any further

Having decided that the Bible is inspired; does that mean that we do not need to be inspired in order to understand it?

Would it be any different with other inspired writings?

Does our affirmation that the Bible is inspired give us any security of not falling into error?

On the other hand, if we are inspired, will we have any problem knowing the truth?

Did we get to a concensuss on what we mean by "inspired" in the other thread? Just so we have the definition clear for us all.

/Thomas

As I've stated in the other thread, words and writings are not inspired, but the people who work with the words either are or are not inspired. Then when it comes to inspiration there is either direct or indirect inspiration.

For the readers here (my self as well) it is good to read different histories of Israel, and look at the roles of prophets and prophecy in the ancient world, studying about the prophets and sons of the prophets, or prophetic guild.

We also need to realize that most of us have certan pictured some into our mind when we hear the word inspiration that stem from the late 1800s when American Protestantism fell into either liberal, unbelieving "Modernism," or believing but at an an unreal extream "Fundamentalism". Daryl, I fear that your question is too confusing due to the fundamentalists presupposition in the defination of inspiration.

The Bible was written by people who were inspired, God showed them something, which gave a perspective and framework to the things they said, did, and their ministry. The Bible is one by prodict of the entire ministry these people did, a certan type of their writings, but whether it became cannonical or not, all their writings, all their sermons all their ministry was produced by people who were inspired.

Now these inspired people did their own research, made presentations that would have been understood by their audience. We now know that they barrowed a lot from writings around them (sorry people who like to latch on to the fact of Mrs. White's copying, Jesus, John, and the others did the same things)

There was a city (I believe the site was Ugaret, but have not double checked prior to this posting) that was already an ancient ruin when Abraham was born. Archaeologists digging into this city found some early writings, including the story of Baal.

The gods of life, the upperworld wanted to create the world, and of course needed to at the borderline between the upperworld gods and the underworld gods of death, or on the face of the waters. El, the father of the gods asked who will go and whom shall I send? and among the gods of life, El's own son replied "Here am I send me"

Baal came down and faught Rahab, the 7 headed sea monster red dragon, the god of death and the underworld. The dragon grabbed Baal by his heal wounding it and bringing Baal to the dephts of the underworld and killed Baal and cut Baal into pieces.

On the third day, Baals sister and consort Anat, approached El asking for premission to resurect Baal. It was given and Anat collected together all the pieces of the body of Baal and called "Baal, Son of God, come forth, thy Father calls thee" and Baal raised from the dead, returned to his battle against Rahab, and gives Rahab a fatal wound to the 6th head, killing the dragon, and Baal asended to heaven to allow the gods to make the earth, and to take his thrown, and to have worship change from a tent shrine with a court and alter of sacrifice, and a holy place with showbread and a lampstand sepperated by curtans to the most holy place where El's pressence was, into having a temple, a perminant building, with the same aspects, except that Baal, the son of god, pressence was to be in the Most Holy Place.

Soon in heaven there appeared a cloud about half the size of a man's hand. This was the approach of the newly resurected and victorious Baal approaching heaven, with Anat. This was not noticed by the 70 god elders (who could be broken into three groups of 23 god elders who could sit with the heavenly high priest to make 24 god elders) sitting at the gates did not know that Baal was raised and their heads were down between their knees, crying in sadness over Baal's death. Anat yells out to them "Lift up your heads, O gods and be lifted up, O ancient ones that the King of glory may cme in." the gods in their sadness questions "Who is the King of glory?" to which Anat responds "Baal, strong and mighty, Baal, mighty in battle! Lift up your heads, O gods! and be lifted up, O ancient ones that the King in glory may come in." this time with unbelievable joy the gods question "Who is this King of glory?" so that Anat can respond with "Baal of hosts, he is the King of glory."

This is one example of words that are found in ancient documents that are very familiar to us. We need to include a view of inspration that has room for all this copying of words and borrowing of the culture around them. These ancient city states saw certan times of the year as important, so we find holidays that corrisponded to the agricultural settings. In the fall was a group of holidays including the day of atonment where they had the two goats, one being the scapegoat. and in the spring, centuries before Israel even going to Egypt, these Canaanite City states would have the feast of unlevened bread. All these Biblical holidays were kept to Baal centuries before Abraham. Yes, these Baal worshipers believed in the Investigative Judgment prior to Baal doing something positive for them. Prayer come from the ancient peoples praying to their gods to have an investigative judgment.

The only difference was that the ancient Canaanites evetually believed that they needed to help Baal to fight the dragon by uniting their life forces, so there would be orgies including children and anamals. The Bible took over these holidays but removed the origies and instead taught the people that God was suficient to gain the victory and we did not need to help God but simply trust in and rest in and rejoice in God's victory.

The Bible prophets used local illustrations for major universal issues, and had the ancient view of the cosmos, with modifications:

The ancient world believed that the cosmos were in the shape of an egg standing on it's side, the sky and stars were in the upper part of the cosmos with the water and an area, sort of a pancake (or more a waffel due to mountains and valleys) was the earth floating on the waters. Earthquakes were caused by the waves of the waters under the earth, and if you did deep enough you find water.

At the very top of the dome was the far north where El had his throne and rulled from. Now to the heathern this was the point where all reality met and El (the god most high) was the sum total of all reality. The Bible prophets saw the far north as where the infinate, moral, personal El (God) who transenced the cosmos would come to communicate and rule the finite world.
We need to have an understanding of Inspration to allow for the prophtes to be living in the world and culture they lived and worked in, and not impose upon them facts that we believe.

The ancient world believed that things cycled around. We have remenants of this in the false application of the cycles in the idea of reincarnation. But the prophets used cycles when it comes to understanding Biblical prophecy. All prophecy is conditional to people's responce. If the lessons were not learned there was a return to time to lead up to the events again, but seeing what could have happend at the one time will teach us what will happen in the future. Prophecy is a reincarnaiton of important events, where the issues become more universal and where we either enter the promiced land or return to the wilderness for another generation to face an analogous situation.

We need a view of inspiration that has room for these things.

Nice post, Kevin. It reminds me of courses I took with Dr. Waterhouse at Andrews. He brought out many of the things you mentioned here. He showed how events from the agricutural cycle corresponded to events in Israels experience, with the sanctuary, with Christ's life, and with the experience of the church.

To give one example, the agricutural cycle had a 3 1/2 month period of draught between rainy seasons. Elijah prayed, and this draught was extended to 3 1/2 years. 3 1/2 years = 1260 days. This period of time, 3 1/2 months, was a very meaningful period to the Hebrews, and they would have picked up on this symbolism very quickly.

Another example, the waters were seen as associated with evil, so when the Israelites crossed through the Red Sea, this was victory of evil in a symbolic sense as well as the literal victory. Simiarly when the righteous stand on the sea of glass, this is symbolic of victory of evil, as was Jesus' walking on the water.

Exactly Tom! Freeing ourselves from Fundamentalism (yet avoiding Modernism) frees us up to study the Bible in a way to catch all these newances that made sence to the early readers, and which gives us the keys to understand what's happening now.

Modernism is willing to study the Bible, but does not see it as historical and does not see it as the living word of God. Fundamentalists see it as historical and the living word of God but are so worried of not supporting their traditions, fear of coming across a contradiction (where they think they'd have to throw it out) or some other problem that they are unwilling to approach it from more than a superficial look, and thus miss it's blessings. Also, many fundamentalists tend to enjoy having a power trip, and like to find quotes to use to hammer over people's heads, and for them to feel good because they "Know the truth" while this other approach forces us all to approach the Bible as students.

Yes, the only part of the Bible that is totally inspired is the parts that were not intentionally or unintentionally changed to suit the preconceived opinions of the translators. And, yes, one must be inspired by the Holy Spirit if they hope to sort it all out and to arrive at the truth when they study the Bible.

To make all this possible, God gave us the SOP. It is impossible to know the truth without the Holy Spirit opening the eyes of our understanding. It is the Holy Spirit that enables us to read the Bible and the SOP and to arrive at the correct conclusions regarding salvation truths.

Without the Bible and the SOP and the Holy Spirit the church would not survive the confusion that would result from members studying without these three sources of enlightenment. Now, more than ever, as near the end of time, the Devil knowing that his time is almost up, we need the Bible and the SOP and the Holy Spirit - the ingredients of the much anticipated and much needed Latter Rain.

Mountain Man: I wish I did not have to go to work now as I have much to say about you post. Maybe some short statements:

1. Words are NOT inspired, the Bible, EVEN IN IT'S ORIGINAL was not inspired, but the people who wrote and many of the editors WERE people who inspired, and their writings was one aspect of what inspiration did for them, and the Bible came from select of their writings. While all translations have biases, we are not to worry too much about them. All our translations are basically from one textual family (although now the other two families are starting to make an impact) In Jesus' day there there three textual families, each with versions and translations, but Jesus and Paul had no issue with that. You are so stuck on word translation that you make an issue that Jesus and Paul would dissagree with.

Mrs. White was a local prophet, appliing the Bible for the guidance of the church for this time in history and pointing us back to the issues of the great controversy, which was central to the ancient world but forgotten in our day, and guiding the ship of our faith from the rocks that would sink us of Modernism, Fundamentalism, and Futurism, and also pointing towards the correct view of hell.A serious study of the Bible, from a moderate standpoint and looking at the history of the ancient world would lead to the same points. She is incredably useful and gives us shortcuts and we needed her to guide us to where we are, but it is possible to do without her.