18/02/2021
THE “SPIRIT OF PROPHECY” IS VIRTUALLY REJECTED
A large class of professing Christians are really saying in their hearts: As long as we believe that there is a God and a Christ, belong to a church, lead honest lives, and do an occasional good deed as opportunity affords, we are on the way to the Holy City. And sad to say, this loose and fatally delusive hope is even in the Seventh-day Adventist denomination.
Sadly, too, though the denomination was founded by the gift of prophecy, its present-day members -- ministers and laity alike -- are at continual variance among themselves over the prophetic gift, just as they are over other matters in the Scriptures. And among those who do hold that the writings of Mrs. White are inspired, the great majority are as ignorant of and as disobedient to them, as are those who profess no faith at all in them.
“The church," she says, relative to this condition, "has turned back from following Christ her Leader, and is steadily retreating toward Egypt. Yet few are alarmed or astonished at their want of spiritual power. Doubt and even disbelief of the testimonies of the Spirit of God, is leavening our churches everywhere Satan would have it thus. Ministers who preach self instead of Christ would have it thus. The testimonies are unread and unappreciated." -- Testimonies, Vol. 5, p. 217
Yet both classes in the church insist that they are good Seventh-day Adventists! O what exceeding irony that such dreadful inconsistencies in sacred matters have overshadowed the minds of rational beings! Yea, what tragedy! especially when the condition need never have been: for in ample protection against it, The Scriptures Teach the Truth in Several Ways.
Besides being taught by the literal testimonies of the prophets, the gospel is taught also by figurative prophecies. In our immediate concern, therefore, with the Spirit's teachings as to how God reveals unto men His written Word, we must give consideration not only to the literal but also to the figurative testimonies of the prophets. And as the fourth chapter of Zechariah is a pictorial disclosure of the way in which God reveals His Word, we are led thereto for an exposition of The Figurative Mode of Inspired Interpretation. Zechariah 4.