Post by Admin on Jun 7, 2024 7:42:06 GMT
Hypothesis: How other SDA view salvation.
Comments on “Ellen G. White on Assurance of Salvation" by Jerry Moon, 2006, from Adventist Theological Seminary, at Andrews University.
Introduction: Many SDA mourn that perhaps they are lost and their salvation is not so assured. This applies to the Author too, having been baptised SDA from 1981, over 45 years ago into the Adventist Faith.
Many of us are seeking salvation who is a Divine person called Jesus, in the SDA denomination, have no real understanding of true faith. In fact of the 28 fundamentals required for baptism, an understanding of true faith is not required. How can that be when Faith is the most important pillar of them all; and none of us have any real understanding of true faith?
Let us therefore, allow Jerry Moon, who published similar feelings in 2004, speak to readers about what he thinks are the issues about our assurance of salvation.
Discussion:
Jerry: A survey showed less than 70% of Adventists worldwide have confident assurance of present salvation.
ROB: According to Ellen White not less than 1 in 20 are saved and understand what faith in Jesus means.
Jerry: But critics allege that Ellen White is primarily to blame for Adventists’ lack of assurance. They say that by teaching that no one should ever say “I am saved,” Ellen White denied the assurance given believers in the gospel. I know from my pastoral experience that many Adventists believe that Ellen White does not teach present assurance.
ROB: When I ask the Lord this question, He says “if you prove to be faithful”. The question one has to ask, does the SDA person know what faith really means?
Jerry: Some toil on in conscious legalism, hoping against hope that everything will come out all right in the end. Many give up on finding any certainty of salvation, and just decide to get what they can out of the present life. Some cling to the “simple” NT gospel, but throw out Ellen White and distinctive Adventist beliefs, since those seem to be the source of the problem.
Some, however, take a different path. They reason (correctly, I believe) that if the same Holy Spirit who inspired John and Paul also inspired Ellen G. White, then there must be an essential harmony between them. Therefore, the views that seem to deny assurance must not be the whole truth, but partial truth or distortions of truth, and we must not quit seeking until we find the whole truth.
Therefore Paul exhorts: “Examine yourselves, whether ye be in the faith” (2 Cor 13:5).
ROB: This is only good if you know what true faith is.
Jerry: Theoretically, if you are among this “elect,” you cannot be lost, so “once saved, always saved” is thought to be an irreversible guarantee of salvation.
Rob: There is an elect, the one chosen by God.
Isa 42:1 ¶ Behold my servant, whom I uphold; mine elect, in whom my soul delighteth; I have put my spirit upon him: he shall bring forth judgment to the Gentiles.
Mt 24:24 For there shall arise false Christs, and false prophets, and shall shew great signs and wonders; insomuch that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect.
Tit 1:1 ¶ Paul, a servant of God, and an apostle of Jesus Christ, according to the faith of God's elect...
Rob: Notice the elect are chosen because of their faith
Jerry: How Ellen White’s view of justification differs from “once saved, always saved.” (1) She rejected Calvinistic predestination. (2) She never reduced faith to mere belief (James 2:19). For Ellen White, faith includes intellectual belief in the facts of the gospel, but extends also to a trust in the personal character of God and Christ, that leads to voluntary surrender of the will to God. Faith that does not lead to surrender is only a partial faith, that has not yet matured to the point of assurance. “A nominal faith in Christ, which accepts Him merely as the Saviour of the world, can never bring healing to the soul. The faith that is unto salvation is not a mere intellectual assent to the truth. . . . It is not enough to believe about Christ; we must believe in Him. The only faith that will benefit us is that which embraces Him as a personal Saviour; which appropriates His merits to ourselves. Many hold faith as an opinion. Saving faith is a transaction by which those who receive Christ join themselves in covenant relation with God. Genuine faith is life. A living faith means an increase of vigour, a confiding trust, by which the soul becomes a conquering power” (DA 347).
ROB: Jerry quotes Ellen White messages and even uses terms like "appropriates His merits to ourselves.” He is almost correct but also wholly not understanding. Is faith only a confiding trust in Jesus? Works without faith is dead? What does this mean?
Jerry: The crucifixion of self refers to the fact that along with the process of “attachment” to Christ (John 15:1-8), there is a work of “detachment” from everything that is in conflict with Christ. “A union with Christ by living faith is enduring; every other union must perish. Christ first chose us, paying an infinite price for our redemption; and the true believer chooses Christ as first, and last, and best in everything. But this union costs us something. It is a relation of utter dependence to be entered into by a proud being. All who form this union must feel their need of the atoning
blood of Christ. They must have a change of heart. They must submit their own will to the will
of God. There will be a struggle with outward and internal obstacles. There must be a painful work of detachment, as well as a work of attachment. Pride, selfishness, vanity, worldliness--sin in all its forms--must be overcome, if we would enter into a union with Christ. The reason why many find the Christian life so deplorably hard, why they are so fickle, so variable, is, they try to attach themselves to Christ without detaching themselves from these cherished idols.
ROB: Hmm? The first of the precious promises in the moral law that a person claims through faith, is “O Lord save me from self will”. Surrender is the process of claiming this precious promise and pressing onto Jesus because you wish to. Than the precious powers of Jesus is appropriated to you immediately because you asked and God provides you the power to do.
Surrender is not some Utopian Process to reach Jesus, it is simply you pressing your request to Jesus and reaching your hand to touch His hand by faith. You do this every time you claim a precious promise by faith.
Take with you takings from His Word, saying them to Him, who will break open His precious promises like the ox grinding the corn and empower you with love that fills your heart with fruits of His experiences in you. (Yasha also spelt as Hosea 14 :2)
Jerry: Believers become one in Christ; but one branch cannot be sustained by another. The nourishment must be obtained through vital connection with the Vine. We must feel our utter dependence on Christ. We must live by faith in the Son of God.
ROB” Yes indeed.
Pr 16:9 ¶ A man's heart deviseth his way: but the LORD directeth his steps.
It is a joyous work to ask for specific needs and receive the powers you seek, thus not all who have faith are the same, we all choose differently the different powers of love that we ask for, but the foundation principles of the ten words begin our work of faith in our Saviour. From these ten are many thousands of precious promises ready to fill our specific needs and desires.
Jerry quotes Ellen White : A mere assent to this union, while the affections are not detached from the world, its pleasures and its dissipations, only emboldens the heart in disobedience” (ST Nov. 29, 1910, in 5BC
1143-1144).
ROB: If you claim a precious promise you cannot doubt or reverse it’s power over you..
James 1:6 But let him ask in faith, nothing wavering. For he that wavereth is like a wave of the sea driven with the wind and tossed.
7 For let not that man think that he shall receive any thing of the Lord.
8 A double minded man is unstable in all his ways.
True Faith does not result in legalism, formalism or perfectionism.
Jerry: “ Why is it so hard to lead a self-denying, humble life? Because professed Christians are not dead to the world. It is easy living after we are dead” (MYP 127-128). But the process of dying to self is not legalism. It is not a work of merit, but a gift of grace. Thus she says, “no man can empty himself of self. We can only consent for Christ to accomplish the work. Then the language of the soul will be, Lord, take my heart; for I cannot give it. It is Thy property. Keep it pure, for I cannot keep it for Thee. Save me in spite of myself, my weak, unchristlike self” (COL 159). “He [Christ] is knocking at the door of your heart, asking for admittance. He longs to renew your heart, filling it with a love for all that is pure and true. He longs to crucify self for you, raising you to newness of life in him” (Youth’s Instructor, Sept. 9, 1897). (Self is the crucified, not the crucifier).
Rob: “Hmm?
EGW: But if we are constantly growing in Christian experience, if we continue to look to Jesus in faith, strength will be given us for every emergency. All the powers and faculties of a regenerated nature must be brought into constant, daily exercise. Every day we shall have occasion to crucify self, to war against inclination and a perverse temperament that would draw the will in a wrong direction. The repose and triumph of victory are not yet ours, except as we by faith enter into the victory that Christ has gained for us.—Letter 4, 1892. {RC 108.6}
ROB: The biggest need is to ask Jesus to save us from our self will, that we may ask specific powers for specific needs, such as ‘your words not mine’ I speak.
Jerry: Summarizing so far, we may say that [1] the ground of assurance is justification by grace alone through faith alone;
ROB: Yes but you have not defined what faith means in a practical manner, you have only compiled the writings of Ellen White without understanding them?
Jerry quote Ellen White: By prayer, by the study of His word, by faith in His abiding presence, the weakest of human beings may live in contact with the living Christ, and [2] He will hold them by a hand that will never let go” (Ministry of Healing, 182).
ROB” Yes indeed, but do you understand what faith really means and how simple child like, true faith is?
Jerry quotes Ellen White: One of Ellen White’s favorite texts on security was 1 John 2:1. In a letter to a woman in desperate need of assurance, White reported hearing this text in vision, quoted by an angel.
“Said the angel, ‘God leaves not His people, even if they err. He turns not from them in wrath for any light thing. If they sin they have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.’” She continued, “He who so loved you as to give His own life for you will not turn you off and forsake you unless you willfully, determinedly forsake Him to serve the world and Satan” (Lt. 17, 1862 to *Susan G. Russell, excerpted in HP 119).
ROB: Where does the Scriptures teach this idea?
1Jo 5:16 If any man see his brother sin a sin which is not unto death, he shall ask, and he shall give him life for them that sin not unto death. There is a sin unto death: I do not say that he shall pray for it.
spiritualsprings.org/ss-759.htm for more.
Jerry quotes Ellen White: It may seem to you that you are hanging upon a single promise, but appropriate that one promise and it will open to you the whole treasure house of the riches of the grace of Christ. Cling to that promise and you are safe. ‘Him that cometh unto me I will in no wise cast out.’ Present this assurance to Jesus, and you are as safe as though inside the city of God” (10MR 175).
ROB: It takes only one precious promise claimed by faith in Jesus making fruit in you to be saved by Him.
Jerry Quotes Ellen White: “If one who daily communes with God errs from the path, if he turns a moment from looking steadfastly unto Jesus, it is not because he sins willfully; for when he sees his mistake, he turns again, and fastens his eyes upon Jesus, and the fact that he has erred, does not make him less dear to the heart of God. He knows that he has communion with the Saviour; and when reproved [by God] for his mistake in some matter of judgment, he does not walk sullenly, and complain of God, but turns the mistake into a victory. He learns a lesson from the words of the Master, and takes heed that he be not again deceived. Those who truly love God have internal evidence [assurance, Rom 8:16; Gal 4:6] that they are beloved of
God, that they have communion with Christ, that their hearts are warmed with fervent love toward him" (RH, May 12, 1896).
ROB: Nice quote
Shalom