Chapter 1—God’s Word Through the Prophets
Seventh-day Adventists generally believe that the sacred canon of Scripture was closed with the inclusion of the Apocalypse of John. And the canon, therefore, is both complete and sufficient in itself. In other words, it is possible for an individual to find Jesus Christ, to obtain salvation and eternal life, without ever having heard of Ellen G. White or ever having read one word of her writings.IRWHW 73.2
Adventists, further, have traditionally held since their earliest days that the Scriptures are the source of our doctrinal beliefs, the authority of those beliefs, and the test of all beliefs (and all religious experience, as well).IRWHW 73.3
However, having said all that, it is also clearly evident from Scripture that God also used a number of prophetic messengers, many of whom were contemporaries of the Bible writers, but whose utterances do not form a part of the canon itself. Some of them did their work during Old Testament times, some during New Testament times. It seems evident that their prophetic ministries involved the same kinds of work as that of the Bible writers. And this list of noncanonical prophets included women as well as men—five such as mentioned in each of the Testaments. IRWHW 73.4
The first prophet mentioned in Scripture was Enoch, “the seventh from Adam” (Jude 14); thus the “spiritual gift” of prophecy was among the earliest of the so-called “gifts of the Holy Spirit” to be given to the human family. During the first 2,500 years of human history all prophetic utterances were oral. Moses marks a transition point: He was the first literary prophet. From his time onward both varieties of prophet flourished.IRWHW 73.5