Greetings MOL Family!
There’s a lot of self-supporting work (so called), and there’s a lot of reformatory work (so called), that is just weakened by human ideas, on so many phases of life. If you come in contact with anybody and they say you need some change in your life, before you make that change be sure that you have a “Thus saith the Lord” for it. And beyond that, if it’s in the area where the Bible and the Spirit of Prophecy has said nothing, be sure before you make any change in your life on that point, that there’s some good, accepted, scientific authority that, that thing has been proved and can be proved.
What Does God Say?
Oh, I wish our institutions could be cleansed forever of all these fads and fancies. I wish it, my dear friends. I wish it so much. But now, do you know why God lets a certain amount of that to take place? So you can, as we learned in the first part of our lesson, learn to use your nose. There are so many different ideas on many subjects, like diet, and health, and association, and reading, and music, and dress, and a lot of things. Learn to listen to the Word of God. Learn to have respect for what God says, and be very slow to run off with some fad and fancy.
…Believe in the LORD your God, so shall ye be established… – 2 Chronicles 20:20
That means settled, not moved around.
…believe his prophets, so shall ye prosper. – 2 Chronicles 20:20
This is successful living. In the Bible and in the modern revelations given to this people through the Spirit of Prophecy, we have divine guidance. And I’ll tell you what you’ll find in 99 cases out of 100. If it’s really important for you to know something, 99 times out of 100 you’ll find the answer, if you’ll hunt for it, in these inspired pages. And 99 times out of 100, if you can’t find the answer in these books it really doesn’t make enough difference to worry about.
You notice that I’ve left myself a little room. I said 99 times out of 100. There are a few things that are important to life that God hasn’t put in plain English, even in Sis. White’s writings. There are a few things He has left us to find out from scientific authority. But most of the things we find out from scientific authority are things that we can prove from the Bible and the Spirit of Prophecy.
Take for instance these things we’ve been learning on the value of sunlight and fresh air and proper diet, exercise and rest. Scientific research can throw a flood of light on how those things work, and why they’re important. But a person that didn’t know anything about any of that scientific research, that would just go and do what The Ministry of Healing says, what would he have? He’d have health. Wouldn’t he? Yes, he’d have health. So, let’s do what God says, and let’s learn all we can from scientific authority to collaborate that, and explain it and how it works, and all that.
Now, I’d like to give you this suggestion. I don’t know what your background is in thinking about the Spirit of Prophecy. It’s easy to take for granted that anybody who [is studying these lessons] is fully sold on the authority and inspiration of Sis. Ellen G. White’s writings. But that’s not necessarily so. I don’t know what your background is.
May I recommend this to you? If you have any question in your mind about the inspiration of this books The Ministry of Healing, and The Desire of Ages, and Steps to Christ, Testimonies to the Church, Counsels on Diet and Foods, and all the rest; if I were you, I’d make it one of the first priorities to get that question settled. You see, to me when I read this book, The Ministry of Healing, that’s Jesus speaking to me. Now, if that’s true, I’m at an immense advantage. I not only have the guidance of Jesus, I know I have it. That makes me rich.
So let me illustrate what I mean about the importance of being certain. If I have a $5 bill, am I rich? Yes, I’m $5 rich. But now suppose a brother comes over to me and says, “Have you really looked at that bill?”And he looks at it and says, “You know, brother, I think that’s a counterfeit.” And I say, “What makes you think it is a counterfeit?” He begins to show me, and compare it with another $5 bill. And I come to the place, (Watch this!) I may not be entirely sure it’s a counterfeit, but I’m not sure anymore that it’s genuine. Am I rich? Well, I’m not as rich as I was a few moments ago. Is that right?
Do you know that the Bible is the Word of God? It’s just possible that someone has some doubts about that? Friends, don’t feel ashamed if you have doubts. People have doubts. There may be reasons. You may have never examined the evidences, either for the authority of the Bible or the Spirit of Prophecy. So if you’ve never had an opportunity to examine the evidence, you’re not to be blamed.
I say to you, if you have any doubt about accepting the Bible as the final authority in your life; give us an opportunity to study that with you. Don’t go on week after week, and month after month, studying these classes with the Bible presented as the word of God, if back in your mind there’s the thought, “I wonder, is the Bible really something we can count on?”
Why, friends, I’m just as settled, and I say it humbly but thankfully, that the Bible is talking to my soul what the God of Heaven presents to me, as though I could go to Heaven and be up there and hear God Himself speaking. I’m just as settled in that. You can be. I hope you are. If you’re not, get that settled.
So, Are You Settled?
Now, about the Spirit of Prophecy: In this class, I’m not going to try to give a series of Bible studies on the Spirit of Prophecy. But I’ll just say this, dear friends – Seventh-day Adventists don’t take the Bible and Sister White. We don’t take Sister White instead of the Bible. The volumes of the Spirit of Prophecy are not in addition to the Bible. We take the Bible and the Bible alone.
“You do?” The Bible and the Bible alone. That’s right. That’s our rule. But we find in the Bible, (don’t miss this!) clear predictions in Acts 2, Revelation 12:17, and other places in the Bible, that in the last days, God will have a church in which He pours out His Spirit and the gift of prophecy will be manifest. If any of that is not very familiar to you, give us a chance to put information in your hands that you can study for yourself, or study it with you.
If the Bible itself says that in the last days the last church will have this gift of prophecy, then if we believe the Bible, how much of it? — All of it. Then what will we expect to find? — A church with the spirit of prophecy. That isn’t something outside the Bible, but the Bible itself calls for that. We’d have to cut out some of the verses of the Bible if we’d leave that out.
So we take the Bible and the Bible alone, as the rule of faith and doctrine. But we listen, along with all the rest of the Bible, to those verses that tell us that in the last days, God pours out His Spirit in this wonderful gift of prophecy. And we have tasted and found it’s true. We have tested and found that it’s accurate.
I want you to have that experience for yourself, because I’ll tell you, dear friends, pretty soon, maybe you’ve already done it, you’re going to ask a question, “Why did they do it this way here? Why do they have this thing and don’t have this over here? Why?” And the answer, if the one you ask knows the answer, may be in Vol. 4, page so and so, or Vol. 5, page so and so, or Ministry of Healing, page so and so, or Counsels to Teachers, page so and so. I suppose if you wanted to, you could make a list of at least a hundred things, and the answer to them is (and should be) in those inspired books.
If you want something fascinating, begin to make yourself a notebook or a little section of your notebook, on definite things that are done (or not done) in your life and program, that the answer as to why is found on a certain page. Do know that there is a page in Sis. White’s writings that tells when to turn out the lights in our schools? Would you be interested in that?
Do you know that there is a page in the inspired writings, just one in fifty-thousand pages, where we are given a recommendation as to a suitable temperature in a room? Of course, if it’s just the opinion of a woman who wrote it down there a hundred+ years ago, and she has been dead now these many years, it really is not worth that much finding out about it. But, if the Lord Jesus sent His right hand covering cherub, the angel Gabriel, down the skies and gave the prophet light from the Sanctuary on how to live successfully, and included in it this instruction on the proper temperature of the room, that would be worth finding it out, wouldn’t it?
Well, room temperature isn’t our subject in this lesson. But you can find it. I’ve given you these two just as a sample. There are literally hundreds of details in diet, in dress, in music, in reading, in association, in recreation, in child training, in education, and in what we do with our time, our money, and friends, and it is fascinating.
I recommend that you take note of different quotations from the Spirit of Prophecy that would help you in how to live. And, do you know that every person would have a different list? Do you know why? The Spirit of God is going to guide you as to what is needed to guide you. Sure, He will; and so in the Bible and the Spirit of Prophecy, you’re going to find your instruction, and not only instruction but what? — Power.
Man shall not live by bread alone, but by [What?] every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God. – Matthew 4:4
Let’s live by that, friends. What do you say? That’s the way to be happy. Just find out what to do from Headquarters, go ahead and do it, and claim the blessing.
Have Thine own way, Lord!
Have Thine own way!
Thou art the Potter;
I am the clay.
Mold me and make me
After Thy will,
While I am waiting,
Yielded and still.
Until next week – Invite a friend, and we’ll see you then…
–
Did you know that we have more online classes available (and posted daily)?
_______
*This study has been adapted from classes taken by Elder W.D. Frazee.