The Gift of Prophecy Revisited

In a just-published Spectrum article, Trevor Lloyd reports on a recent Australia (Sydney) Adventist Forum meeting featuring Graeme Bradford and Arthur Patrick on the mounting challenges to Ellen White’s prophetic authority.  Bradford has authored several books on Ellen White, most notably, More Than a Prophet.

At the meeting, Bradford recounted a conversation with a former Adventist pastor who said that the current situation is “a battle for the very soul of Adventism”, particularly since “there are still folk in North America who would fight to the death to defend an infallible Ellen White”.  In response, Bradford warned, “if we don’t tell our people the truth about how Ellen White performed her ministry then our opponents will do so–and in a negative and destructive way–and this is already happening.”

Further, Lloyd reports about Arthur Patrick’s attendance at the long-forgotten 1982 Prophetic Guidance Workshop.  Following the meeting, Patrick returned to Australia, where “one of his superiors in church administration instructed him to keep for his own records reports he had written of the workshop and not to share either the 941 pages of documents given to attendees or the sound recordings of workshop discussions.”

Given the suppressed 1919 Bible Conference transcripts and the now-confirmed suppressed findings of the 1982 Prophetic Guidance Workshop, Lloyd rightly concludes, “[The Adventist church] can either accept, examine, and interpret the evidence that has come to light, or it can revert to its former blinkered stance.”