Friday: Further Thought – New Testament Prophets
Daily Lesson for Friday 23rd of October 2026
Keeping Jesus and His Word at the Center
As we have learned, God called prophets at specific times and gave them important tasks. Their primary function was to bring people to a knowledge of God and a faithful relationship with Him. This was Ellen G. White’s guiding orientation. Her ministry had two primary functions: to lead people to Jesus and to point them to His Word—the Bible.
Image © Stan Myers from GoodSalt.com
Ellen G. White had a lifelong passion for Jesus and a desire to share the love of God with others. Her famous five-book series, The Conflict of the Ages, begins and ends with the words “God is love.” In Steps to Christ, perhaps her most popular book, she wrote: “Our growth in grace, our joy, our usefulness—all depend upon our union with Christ. It is by communion with Him, daily, hourly—by abiding in Him—that we are to grow in grace. He is not only the Author, but the Finisher of our faith.”—Steps to Christ, p. 69.
During the 1890s, when she was working on The Desire of Ages, she wrote in her diary: “In writing upon the life of Christ I am deeply wrought upon. I forget to breathe as I should. I cannot endure the intensity of feeling that comes over me as I think of what Christ has suffered in our world.”—Manuscript 70, 1897. Ellen G. White loved to speak about Jesus.
The Bible was the second focus of Ellen White’s ministry. She saw her writings as a “lesser light” leading people to the “greater light”—the Bible (Selected Messages, book 3, p. 29). She always encouraged people to go to Scripture, where God has revealed His loving character and plan of salvation. As she put it early in her ministry: “I recommend to you, dear reader, the Word of God as the rule of your faith and practice.”—Selected Messages, book 3, p. 30.
Years later she would write: “The Lord desires you to study your Bibles. He has not given any additional light to take the place of His Word. . . . If eaten and digested, [His Word] is as the life-blood of the soul. Then good works will be seen as light shining in darkness.”—Letter 130, 1901.
Ellen G. White also believed that all who claim the prophetic mantle of Christ must teach “what Christ had taught. That which He had spoken, not only in person, but through all the prophets and teachers of the Old Testament, is here included. Human teaching is shut out.”—The Desire of Ages, p. 826.
Ellen G. White kept Jesus and Scripture at the center of her Christian experience. Next Friday, we will explore her views on revelation and inspiration.
Casual believers were never selected as prophets, rather those that had a zeal for God and were sold out to his cause. God didn’t need to select the best or brightest because He would make up for any lack through the power of the Holy Spirit. God is sovereign and can speak through anyone or anything. Remember when he used a dumb donkey to arrest the attention of a wayward prophet?
God can, will and has often used the foolish things of the world to confound the so-called wise. He has used the weak things of the world to bring to shame the strong. (1 Corinthians 1:27–29) Why does God do this? It is so that He would receive the glory and not the person that he used. It is to showcase His power, strength, and wisdom in our lack thereof. This is good news for humanity because we know that His Grace is sufficient for all of us, and He can use any of us if we are surrendered to be used by him. He gets the glory, but shares with us the joy of being an instrument in His hands.
I don’t really disagree with you, Tim, but I think absolute statements can be risky. Balaam, after all, was a prophet. Earlier I mentioned the prophet of I Kings 13 (actually there were two prophets and both appear quite flawed). Then there is Jonah.
I will leave it to God to determine who He calls as prophets but I think it’s probably healthier not to think of prophets as Supermen. As prophecy in the New Testament and beyond is one of many spiritual gifts, it is the Spirit who determines who gets that gift. It’s not like a job bank where the best people get the gift of prophecy and lesser believers get the gift of teaching, for example. Are the teachers less spiritual than the prophets? I should hope not. That doesn’t take away from the importance of the gift of prophecy to the church but I think hierarchies are more important to us than they are to God.
Good points, Christina.
Jesus as our example teaches us to take God’s Word at the center of our lives and , allow scripture to guide our faith and understanding of the mission before us. Jesus in His ministry used the Scriptures to resist temptation (Matthew 4:4), explain His identity, and reveal the fulfilment of God’s plan to humanity (Luke 24:27). Similarly, Ellen G. White affirms the authority of the Bible and encourages believers to focus on the word. She wrote, “The Bible, and the Bible only, is to be our creed” (The Great Controversy, p. 595). Her prophetic ministry did not replace Scripture but encouraged people to study and obey it. As we reflect on Jesus as a Prophet we are reminded that His words and ministry were firmly rooted in Scripture, and that every spiritual teaching must be tested by God’s Word (Isaiah 8:20; 1 Thessalonians 5:21). Like Jesus, we are called to honour Scripture as the foundation of our faith and to let it lead us into a deeper relationship with christ.
There is no contradiction between Ellen White’s emphasis on the Bible alone and the Adventist belief that God gave her visions. “The Bible alone” does not mean that God stopped speaking through the prophetic gift. Scripture itself teaches that prophecy would continue in the church (Acts 2:17–18; Ephesians 4:11–13; 1 Thessalonians 5:20–21).
The distinction is one of role and authority. The Bible is the inspired, foundational standard by which all teaching and prophetic claims must be tested. Ellen White’s writings do not replace Scripture or add another book to the biblical canon. Rather, as the “lesser light,” they were given to guide, counsel, correct, and direct God’s people back to the “greater light”—the Bible.
So it is not the Bible versus Ellen White. Adventists believe the same God who gave us Scripture may still exercise the biblical gift of prophecy, while Scripture remains the supreme standard of faith and practice. And both ultimately point us to Jesus Christ.
What does it mean for the Bible and the Bible only to be our creed? It means that the Bible is a formal statement of our fundamental beliefs, and principles, personal and organizational, that guide our actions and ways of life. Much to the consternation of some, that statement does not leave her writings or other writings of our more current writers of Biblical illumination out of the picture. If you choose to broaden your understanding of the Bible creed, providing they don’t contradict the Bible.
Furthermore, the statement in the book that gives us illumination of the Old Testament prophets, ‘Prophets and Kings’ is often also misinterpreted in this respect. “The words of the Bible and the Bible alone, should be heard from the pulpit.” Then further along she quotes, Luke 24:32. “Did not our hearts burn within us, while He talked with us by the way, and while He opened to us the Scriptures?” Did you catch that? “He talked with us by the way?” That means Christ illuminated the Bible with giving explanation in stories, and parables, and explaining in Bible messages.
https://egwwritings.org/read?panels=p88.2782&index=0
Don’t forget in all His love and mercy God gave us Ellen White’s writings. My wife and I are still reading Steps to Christ daily along with Maurice and his wife continents apart, this quarter, what a blessing. God wants us to take advantage of His Prophets writings. Don’t forget to include the Bible alone as your creed. Dare I say reference? Look at the page in Steps to Christ. It is with a plethora of Bible texts, just like our Sabbath School Lessons.
https://egwwritings.org/read?panels=p108.58&index=0
Bev’s last paragraph says it too.
Different from what is in the Friday’s Lesson, the Word was the first, not the second, focus of Ellen White. Is it ours?