Mysteries and paradigms

“Therefore seeing we have this ministry, as we have received mercy, we faint not; but have renounced the hidden things of dishonesty, not walking in craftiness, nor handling the word of God deceitfully; but by manifestation of the truth commending ourselves to every man’s conscience in the sight of God.” (2Cor. 4:2).

Is it correct to say, “Everyone believes what he wants to believe”? Is it right to say that truth exists by the mere decision of mortal men? Can sinful man, of himself actually decide what is truth? These are tough questions, fraught with accusation against the wisdom of men. No doubt, it has caused much counter-accusation and disunity and even persecution.

Nevertheless, is man’s discernment capable of deciding absolute truth? No. In the Garden of Eden Adam had that capability, but he lost it after his fall to the dominion of Satan. God took away his capability to discern truth, by removing His Spirit from Adam. Christ restored Adam and his wife to access with God’s Spirit of truth, but limited by their weakened ability to stand before His Law. The full restoration of the Edenic mind would have to wait many eons. Then “the manifestation of the sons of God” would come again “at the last trump” when “we shall be changed” (Rom. 8:19; 1Cor. 15:52, cf 2 Cor. 5:2).

After Adam’s fall only those who were restored to Christ could have access to the truth, though accessible only by their sincere loyalty to the transgressed Law. They would first have to surrender to the claims of the Law and receive a new heart and a new spirit. “A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh. And I will put My Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in My statutes, and ye shall keep My judgments, and do them.” (Eze. 36:26,27).

They would love God through His Son. The holy Son would impart to them a new nature, a new spirit to love God with all their new heart. With the new spirit and new heart would come a new mind, by which they could understand and discern the will of God. With a new heart and mind to please God would come a special privilege of seeing truths, absolute truths. “The anointing which ye have received of Him abideth in you, and ye need not that any man teach you: but as the same anointing teacheth you of all things, and is truth, and is no lie, and even as it hath taught you, ye shall abide in Him. And now, little children, abide in Him; that, when He shall appear, we may have confidence, and not be ashamed before Him at His coming.” (1Jn. 2:27,28).

“...which none of the princes of this world knew: for had they known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory…. The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.” (1Cor. 2:8,14).

“Howbeit we speak wisdom among them that are perfect: yet not the wisdom of this world, nor of the princes of this world, that come to nought:

But we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, even the hidden wisdom, which God ordained before the world unto our glory:…

But as it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him.

But God hath revealed them unto us by His Spirit: for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God.

For what man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him? even so the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God.

Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit which is of God; that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God.

Which things also we speak, not in the words which man’s wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth; comparing spiritual things with spiritual.” (1Cor. 2:6,7,9-13).

It is a high claim to know truth that others cannot see. For God’s children to claim secret knowledge from God is the height of arrogance in the minds of the unconverted, un-anointed worldling; it is the height of ignorance, especially when profound knowledge pours out of babes and sucklings, who may have a low I.Q. and are unlearned, unschooled by classical education.

Satan blasphemes God and all who stand before Him by faith, “If they had a special endowment of wisdom and intellect from heaven, then why are they but carpenters and fishermen and tentmakers, prostitutes and publicans and lepers? Why are they blue-collar workers, the filth and off-scouring of the world? If they really were the sons of God, wouldn’t God clothe His royal children with flowing robes and bless them with prosperity in this life? What kind of inept, selfish Father God do they serve?”

Yes, it is a high claim, and a high honor to hold the truth, “unto our glory” (1Cor. 2:7). And it is hard for the babes to make that claim because they have been humbled by the knowledge of their sins, and are also pained to rise up above their brethren. This claim has always been painful to make by the humbled, converted children of God, nevertheless, God has required them to make it.

“Without controversy great is the mystery of godliness.” (1Tim. 3:16). “Even the mystery which hath been hid from ages and from generations, but now is made manifest to His saints: to whom God would make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles; which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.” (Col. 1:26,27).

“How that by revelation He made known unto me the mystery; (as I wrote afore in few words,

Whereby, when ye read, ye may understand my knowledge in the mystery of Christ)

Which in other ages was not made known unto the sons of men, as it is now revealed unto His holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit;

That the Gentiles should be fellow-heirs, and of the same body, and partakers of His promise in Christ by the gospel:

Whereof I was made a minister, according to the gift of the grace of God given unto me by the effectual working of His power.

Unto me, who am less than the least of all saints, is this grace given, that I should preach among the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ;

And to make all men see what is the fellowship of the mystery, which from the beginning of the world hath been hid in God, who created all things by Jesus Christ:

To the intent that now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly places might be known by the church the manifold wisdom of God,

According to the eternal purpose which He purposed in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Eph. 3:3-11).

I brought the truth of the Father and Son Godhead to my friend, John, who towers over me in intellectual strength and is firmly anchored upon the Spirit of Prophecy writings. I love him as my brother, and trust him because he is anchored to the Spirit of Prophecy. But, he cannot yet see the falsehood of a third person of the Godhead. So, I quoted to him the following statement because I thought it would convince him.

“Cumbered with humanity, Christ could not be in every place personally; therefore it was altogether for their advantage that He should leave them, go to His Father, and send the Holy Spirit to be His successor on earth. The Holy Spirit is Himself divested of the personality of humanity and independent thereof. He would represent Himself as present in all places by His Holy Spirit, as the Omnipresent. “But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in My name, He shall (although unseen by you), [THIS PHRASE WAS ADDED BY ELLEN WHITE.] teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you” [John 14:26]. “Nevertheless I tell you the truth; It is expedient for you that I go away: for if I go not away, the Comforter will come not unto you; but if I depart, I will send Him unto you” [John 16:7].” Manuscript Releases, vol. 14, p. 23.

John smiled and said, “I believe that”. Then he went on to say, “I believe that the Holy Spirit, the third person of the Trinity is Christ’s successor on earth and is divested of the personality of humanity.” He knew what I was saying and politely rejected it.

I was taken aback that something so clear to me was clearly understood in the opposite way by him. It didn’t challenge his concept of the Trinity in the slightest. So, I substituted “the Holy Spirit” for Mrs. White’s use of “Himself”. In a polite rebuttal I asked, “Then, you believe Ellen White was saying that ‘the Holy Spirit is [the Holy Spirit]?’” And I also averred, “You don’t see that to be ‘divested of the personality of humanity’ means that previously He must have been vested with that same ‘personality of humanity?’” Again, with a same, big smile, he said, “No. Divested doesn’t have to mean previously vested.”

Much let down, I realized again the difficulty in uprooting paradigms. And I also remembered that God is very patient with deeply-rooted paradigms. He has been v-e-r-y patient with me.

[By the way,the definition of divest: from www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/divest

• Cached
• Similar

transitive verb. 1 a : to deprive or dispossess especially of property, authority, or title b : to undress or strip especially of clothing, ornament, or equipment c : rid, free. 2 : to take away from a person.]
 

So I decided to ask Daniel L., another person who I knew was a Trinity believer, but who has very little loyalty to Ellen White. I phrased my question so that he would not think that I was trying to force him to believe as Ellen White was promulgating in the above quotation from Manuscript Releases. I wanted to sound as un-opinionated as possible so that he could be as objective as possible. All I desired from him was his opinion of “her opinion”. By requesting his view on Ellen White’s “opinion” I felt he would be free to speak unbiased. I wanted his clear thought without him fearing I was going to back him into a theological corner and force him to renounce the third person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit, as a divine being.

So, after reading the paragraph with no emphases, I asked him, “What do you believe Ellen White was saying from Manuscript Releases, volume 14, page 23? What is the plain reading of what you believe she was saying? Is it ‘The Holy Spirit is the Holy Spirit divested of the personality of humanity and independent thereof. He (the Holy Spirit) would represent Himself as present in all places by His Holy Spirit, as the Omnipresent’”? Or, I asked Daniel, “Was Ellen White saying, ‘The Holy Spirit is Christ Himself divested of the personality of humanity and independent thereof. Christ would represent Himself as present in all places by His Holy Spirit, as the Omnipresent’”?

Daniel, my non-Ellen White subscriber friend gave me his honest evaluation of her statement, which was the latter of the two above versions. He said, “Ellen White was saying, ‘The Holy Spirit is Christ divested of the personality of humanity and independent thereof. Christ would represent Himself as present in all places by His Holy Spirit, as the Omnipresent.’ A plain reading of her statement says that she believed Christ to be the Holy Spirit. To say, ‘The Holy Spirit is the Holy Spirit’ adds nothing to her commentary of Christ’s words. It makes no sense. Such a statement needed not to be said, if that was what she was saying, which I don’t believe she was saying.”

Daniel was my control group for this examination on the Trinitarian stance of my friend John versus my own non-Trinitarian stance. I wanted to know if I was biased and slanted, or John was. Is not the sentence, “The Holy Spirit is the Holy Spirit”, nonsensical? The statement, “The Holy Spirit is the Holy Spirit divested of the personality of humanity and independent thereof. The Holy Spirit would represent Himself as present in all places by His Holy Spirit, as the Omnipresent” can only be blindly understood by those whose beliefs are so rooted in Ellen White, more than the light shining from scripture, that they cannot see her clearest explanation of the gospel of John on the subject of the Godhead. They cannot see the tree for the forest. Another discrepancy in the Adventist Trinitarian on 14MR23.3 is saying, “The Holy Spirit would represent Himself by His Holy Spirit.” “The Holy Spirit...by His Holy Spirit”?  Ellen White could not have meant such gibberish! She must have been saying that Christ would represent Himself as the Omniscient Holy Spirit that we know. Christ is our Comforter, the only Comforter beside the Father, since both Father and Son [and not a third Spirit being] suffered for us, therefore the Father and Son alone can comfort us in all of our troubles.

To the Father and the Son the masses must always slip in a go-between, a third person Spirit. They cannot go directly by faith to the Son. In their minds the abundance of evidence cannot speak to them as it was written, that the Spirit of God is the Father’s person, His powerful, personal influence to create and to recreate, to teach and to guide, His life-giving presence with His divine personality. The authoritative voice to the patriarchs and prophets and kings of old is the same authoritative voice to the apostles and the wilderness church of the Dark Ages and Protestant Adventism today.

But, the Spirit is God. The Spirit of God is God’s Spirit. The Spirit of Christ is Christ, coming with all His divine personality, a heavenly personality divested of the human personality that genetically favored His earthly lineage from Adam through Abraham.

“I will not leave you comfortless: I will come to you.

Yet a little while, and the world seeth Me no more; but ye see Me: because I live, ye shall live also.

At that day ye shall know that I am in My Father, and ye in Me, and I in you.

He that hath My commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth Me: and he that loveth Me shall be loved of My Father, and I…will manifest Myself to him.” (John 14:18-21).

This agrees with the Apostle John’s statement in 1Jn 2:27 and 28, that the anointing of the Spirit is Jesus’ anointing for the purpose of our abiding with Him. Jesus repeated Himself in the next verses below. He would be the Comforter who no one would see or know, “even the Spirit of truth; whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth Him not, neither knoweth Him.” (John 14:17). “I have given them Thy word; and the world hath hated them, because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.” (John 17:14). “He is despised and rejected of men…and we hid as it were our faces from Him; He was despised, and we esteemed Him not.” (Isa. 53:3).

“Judas saith unto Him, not Iscariot, Lord, how is it that Thou wilt manifest Thyself unto us, and not unto the world? Jesus answered and said unto him, If a man love Me, he will keep My words: and My Father will love Him, and We will come unto him, and make Our abode with him.” (John 14:22,23).

The Father and Son are the other Comforter who would come to them and anoint them with truth.

“And because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father.” (Gal. 4:6).

“But when they deliver you up, take no thought how or what ye shall speak: for it shall be given you in that same hour what ye shall speak. For it is not ye that speak, but the Spirit of your Father which speaketh in you.” (Matt. 10:19,20).

“And Jesus answered and said unto him, Blessed art thou, Simon Barjona: for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but My Father which is in heaven.” (Matt. 16:17).

“For I know that this shall turn to my salvation through your prayer, and the supply of the Spirit of Jesus Christ.” (Phil. 1:19).

“But God hath revealed them unto us by His Spirit: for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God. For what man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him? even so the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God.” (1Cor. 2:10,11).

“But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you. Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of His. And if Christ be in you, the body is dead because of sin; but the Spirit is life because of righteousness. But if the Spirit of Him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, He that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by His Spirit that dwelleth in you.” (Rom. 8:9-11).

“Searching what, or what manner of time the Spirit of Christ which was in them did signify, when it testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ, and the glory that should follow.” (1Pet. 1:11).

“For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man: but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.” (2Pet. 1:21).

Notice from Peter, that the Holy Ghost that moved the holy men is the Spirit of Christ which testified in them. The Holy Ghost and the Spirit of Jesus are one and the same. The Greek for “testified” comes from the same word for “testimony of Jesus”.

“The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave unto Him, to shew unto His servants things which must shortly come to pass; and He sent and signified it by His angel unto His servant John: who bare record of the word of God, and of the testimony of Jesus Christ, and of all things that he saw.” (Rev. 1:1,2).

Notice from John that there is not a Holy Spirit or Holy Ghost third person involved in the inspiration and transmission of the Revelation, but only the Father, Jesus, His angel, and John. There is no Holy Spirit or Holy Ghost, but there is the Testimony of Jesus. This picture shows that “the Revelation of Jesus Christ” (Rev. 1:1) is “the testimony of Jesus Christ.” (Rev. 12:17). The Spirit of Christ is the testimony of Jesus.

“For it pleased the Father that in Him should all fulness dwell.” (Col. 1:19). Not in “Them” , as in the 2^nd and 3^rd  Persons of the Godhead, but in Christ alone has it pleased the Father to have all His fullness dwell.

“And I beheld, and, lo, in the midst of the throne and of the four beasts, and in the midst of the elders, stood a Lamb as it had been slain, having seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven Spirits of God sent forth into all the earth.” (Rev. 5:6). The seven Spirits, or the Spirit without measure, came from Christ to His people throughout the world.

“The Sovereign of the universe was not alone in His work of beneficence. He had an associate—a co-worker who could appreciate His purposes, and could share His joy in giving happiness to created beings. ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God.’ John 1:1, 2. Christ, the Word, the only begotten of God, was one with the eternal Father—one in nature, in character, in purpose—the only being that could enter into all the counsels and purposes of God. ‘His name shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.’ Isaiah 9:6. His ‘goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting.’ Micah 5:2. And the Son of God declares concerning Himself: ‘The Lord possessed Me in the beginning of His way, before His works of old. I was set up from everlasting. . . . When He appointed the foundations of the earth: then I was by Him, as one brought up with Him: and I was daily His delight, rejoicing always before Him.’ Proverbs 8:22-30.

     The Father wrought by His Son in the creation of all heavenly beings. ‘By Him were all things created,... whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by Him, and for Him.’ Colossians 1:16. Angels are God’s ministers, radiant with the light ever flowing from His presence and speeding on rapid wing to execute His will. But the Son, the anointed of God, the ‘express image of His person,’ ‘the brightness of His glory,’ ‘upholding all things by the word of His power,” holds supremacy over them all. Hebrews 1:3. ‘A glorious high throne from the beginning,’ was the place of His sanctuary (Jeremiah 17:12); ‘a scepter of righteousness,’ the scepter of His kingdom. Hebrews 1:8. ‘Honor and majesty are before Him: strength and beauty are in His sanctuary.’ Psalm 96:6. Mercy and truth go before His face. Psalm 89:14.” Patriarchs and Prophets, p. 34.

Both scripture and Spirit of Prophecy exalt Christ, leaving no room in the Godhead for a third person of a Trinity. The only other beings in the heavenly throne have ever been the angelic hosts. Such a third person is the devil’s effort to usurp Christ’s place in our hearts, of which Patriarchs and Prophets goes on to tell.

“But a change came over this happy state. There was one who perverted the freedom that God had granted to His creatures. Sin originated with him who, next to Christ, had been most honored of God and was highest in power and glory among the inhabitants of heaven. Lucifer, son of the morning,...” Patriarchs and Prophets, p. 35.