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Understanding Ellen White - Contents
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    Sitting in judgment on God’s messages

    What Grudem and others are suggesting, would mean, in practical terms, that God gives a specific message to a prophet and the rest of the congregation sits in judgment on whether the message is valuable or not; whether it should be accepted or not. Nowhere else does Scripture support the idea that fallible human beings should sit in judgment on God’s Word.UEGW 235.6

    Paul and the early Christian believers realized that words spoken in church may come from three different sources—the Spirit of God, evil spirits, and the human spirit. Jesus warned His disciples about the danger of false prophets, “Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves. You will know them by their fruits” (Matt 7:15, 16; cf. 24:11, 24). He did not say, “Beware of the false elements in the sayings of the prophets” No, he said, “Beware of false prophets” 1 John 4:1-6is another warning about false prophets. It also provides a test on how to identify them. Given the low spiritual atmosphere in Corinth, we should not be surprised that Paul advised them to judge the prophets, not just what they said.UEGW 236.1

    Grudem claims, “While the other passages speak of tests to reveal false prophets, 1 Corinthians 14:29 and 1 Thessalonians 5:19-21 speak rather of a different sort of evaluation, the evaluation of the actual prophecies of those already accepted by the congregation”36Grudem, The Gift of Prophecy in the New Testament and Today, 59. However, are those “in sheep’s clothing” not those already accepted by the congregation? Jesus in Matthew 7:22 says, “Many will say to Me in that day, ‘Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name?’ ” These people are church members, not strangers coming from outside the church. Paul warned the elders from Ephesus, “Also from among yourselves men will rise up, speaking perverse things, to draw away the disciples after themselves” (Acts 20:30). What better way to lead people astray than to claim that one has a message from God?UEGW 236.2

    The concept that “every member of the congregation would listen carefully and evaluate each statement, distinguishing what he or she felt to be good from the less good, what was thought to be helpful from the unhelpful, what was perceived to be true from false”37Ibid., 60. seems utterly at variance with the rest of Scripture, but it is certainly useful in accommodating the phenomenon of modern prophets in the Christian church. The driving force behind this new understanding of 1 Corinthians 14:29, unfortunately, is not biblical exegesis but the justification of the mistakes of supposed modern prophets in the churches today. This has led to a distortion of what the text is really saying. It is always dangerous for human reasoning, even sanctified human reasoning, to be in the judgment seat over prophetic revelation.UEGW 236.3

    First Corinthians 14 is one of the most difficult and contentious chapters in the New Testament. Commentators agree that Paul advised the church to carefully evaluate and pass judgment on38The Greek word diakrino “doubt, decide, judge” has a wide range of meaning in Paul’s writings, where it appears seven times: “doubt” (Rom. 4:20; 14:23), “differ from” (1 Cor. 4:7), “judge, pass judgment on” (1 Cor. 6:5; 11:31; 14:29), and as a participle “judgment” (1 Cor. 11:29). what these prophets said. The question is, For what purpose was it to be done? Was it to weed out the errors from what they were saying, or was it to weed out false prophets on the basis of what they said? Adam Clarke, who wrote before modern Pentecostalism came to the fore, commented on the phrase “and let others judge” (1 Cor. 14:29) as follows:UEGW 237.1

    It appears to have been taken for granted that a man might pretend to this spirit of prophecy who was not sent of God; and therefore it was the duty of the accredited teachers to examine whether what he spoke was according to truth and the analogy of faith. 39Adam Clarke, The New Testament of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ (New York: Phillips and Hunt, 1884), 2:153.UEGW 237.2

    Similarly, Charles Hodge, who wrote in the middle of the nineteenth century, in his commentary on 1 Corinthians wrote concerning 14:29, “The other prophets, i.e. those who did not speak were to sit in judgment on what was said, in order to decide whether those claiming to be prophets were really inspired.” 40Charles Hodge, An Exposition of the First Epistle to the Corinthians (London: The Banner of Truth Trust, 1959), 302.UEGW 237.3

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