Originally published on Friday, December 21, 2012, 6:19 pm in German at www.letztercountdown.org

The Shadow Series is finished, but our work is far from it. On the contrary, God has called us to be a beacon in the wild waters of the Great Storm that now descends upon humanity. In order to achieve this goal and lead the 144,000 teachers, we were subjected to severe tests. We had to find out exactly what Ellen G. White once put as follows:

The season of distress and anguish before us will require a faith that can endure weariness, delay, and hunger—a faith that will not faint though severely tried. The period of probation is granted to all to prepare for that time. Jacob prevailed because he was persevering and determined. His victory is an evidence of the power of importunate prayer. All who will lay hold of God’s promises, as he did, and be as earnest and persevering as he was, will succeed as he succeeded. Those who are unwilling to deny self, to agonize before God, to pray long and earnestly for His blessing, will not obtain it. Wrestling with God—how few know what it is! How few have ever had their souls drawn out after God with intensity of desire until every power is on the stretch. When waves of despair which no language can express sweep over the suppliant, how few cling with unyielding faith to the promises of God. {GC 621.2}

During the many tests we went through since February 27, 2012, we did not know that God would give us a special signal so that we would know that we had received the seal of the living God for our work, and that we should yet disclose this wonderful thing in His time. From this seal comes our new section which will accompany you until the time of plagues, at least as long as we still have communication. May God bless this section especially and give the Holy Spirit to those who know Him and understand that He never does anything without revealing His secret to His prophets (Amos 3:7).

The Abiding Gift of Prophecy

At the end of his life in the 1930's, Arthur G. Daniells, former President of the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists and long-time colleague of Ellen G. White, wrote an excellent book on the subject by the same title The Abiding Gift of Prophecy. In over 400 perfectly researched and in my opinion also inspired pages, he shows that the church of God was always accompanied by the Spirit of Prophecy, and ultimately how the gift was manifested in God's chosen remnant church through Ellen G. White.

He covers the entire history of God's people up to the present day, tracing the presence of the gift of prophecy among God's people in all ages:

1. From Egypt to Canaan realized through the gift of Moses, who received direct instruction from God from the burning bush onward.
2. From Joshua to Samuel by Joshua himself, “men of God”, Deborah and finally with great Samuel, who founded the schools of the prophets.
3. During the rebellion of Israel in the days of the kings when they rejected God as their king, with 30 referred to in the writings of the prophets from Samuel to Jeremiah, plus a few more that were not mentioned by name.
4. In the period during and after the Babylonian captivity from Daniel through Malachi.
5. He demonstrates the presence of the gift of prophecy even between Malachi and John the Baptist.
6. From apostolic times to the present day, as the testimony of the apostles themselves attest, like that of Paul who said: “Quench not the Spirit. Despise not prophesyings.” (1 Thessalonians 5:19-20) and especially through the anti-type of the early rain of Pentecost in the time of the latter rain.
7. By the manifestation of the Spirit of Prophecy through Ellen G. White in the Adventist Church during the period of the investigative judgment.

God has never left His people without the gift of the Spirit of Prophecy. Daniells came as far as the time of the judgment of the dead, but what about the time of transition from the judgment of the dead to the judgment of the living, and what about the time of the judgment of the living? Wouldn't the star in the crown of the woman, the smallest church of the remnant of the remnant, especially need this gift? Shouldn't we expect the gift of prophecy now, or are the 100,000 pages that Ellen G. White wrote in the 70 years of her service as a messenger of God sufficient to lead the church through the little time of trouble?

Ellen G. White herself answers the question by pointing to a new light that she herself did not receive, but that could only be received by diligent students of the Scriptures, aided by the gift of the Holy Spirit.

Peter exhorts his brethren to “grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.” [2 Peter 3:18.] Whenever the people of God are growing in grace, they will be constantly obtaining a clearer understanding of His word. They will discern new light and beauty in its sacred truths. This has been true in the history of the church in all ages, and thus it will continue to the end. But as real spiritual life declines, it has ever been the tendency to cease to advance in the knowledge of the truth. Men rest satisfied with the light already received from God’s word, and discourage any further investigation of the Scriptures. They become conservative, and seek to avoid discussion. {GW 297.2}

Is a Bible student, talented as he may be, a prophet in this sense? No, because the definition of a prophet is that he receives direct instruction from God and hears His voice in dreams or visions. Even when a Bible student is led to certain portions of the Bible and to new knowledge through an occasional dream, that isn't a manifestation of the full gift of the Spirit of Prophecy in him.

On the contrary, we are told how the gift of prophecy acts in relation to those in the church, who explore the Word of God through study, thirsting for more light:

Many of our people do not realize how firmly the foundation of our faith has been laid. My husband, Elder Joseph Bates, Father Pierce, Elder [Hiram] Edson, and others who were keen, noble, and true, were among those who, after the passing of the time in 1844, searched for the truth as for hidden treasure. I met with them, and we studied and prayed earnestly. Often we remained together until late at night, and sometimes through the entire night, praying for light and studying the Word. Again and again these brethren came together to study the Bible, in order that they might know its meaning, and be prepared to teach it with power. When they came to the point in their study where they said, “We can do nothing more,” the Spirit of the Lord would come upon me, I would be taken off in vision, and a clear explanation of the passages we had been studying would be given me, with instruction as to how we were to labor and teach effectively. Thus light was given that helped us to understand the scriptures in regard to Christ, His mission, and His priesthood. A line of truth extending from that time to the time when we shall enter the city of God, was made plain to me, and I gave to others the instruction that the Lord had given me.

During this whole time I could not understand the reasoning of the brethren. My mind was locked, as it were, and I could not comprehend the meaning of the scriptures we were studying. This was one of the greatest sorrows of my life. I was in this condition of mind until all the principal points of our faith were made clear to our minds, in harmony with the Word of God. The brethren knew that when not in vision, I could not understand these matters, and they accepted as light direct from heaven the revelations given. {1SM 206.4–207.1}

The last part of that quote from the life of God's messenger reveals an important spiritual principle: The person who is gifted with the Spirit of Prophecy does not understand what the studies of the students mean, not because they are unintelligent or ignorant, but for the purpose that the revelations that are given to the church through them can be recognized as such.

Unfortunately, the story of the gift of the Spirit of Prophecy is also the story of the people's rejection of the Spirit of Prophecy that they should receive. This was the case in all ages, and will drag on even to the coming of Jesus.

Ellen G. White led the church for a long time, even deep into their 120-year wilderness wandering, which began in 1890 because the church rejected even the very beginning of the light of the fourth angel. Not until a long while later were a few of the people finally ready to accept this light in all its fullness. Now, shortly after the beginning of the judgment of the living, this light is to swell to a loud cry, the last great warning to a dying world, which will be destroyed by the judgments of God unmixed with mercy, along with all those who did not want to completely entrust their lives to God.

Since 1915, the year Ellen G. White died, the church had to take their journey through the wilderness on their own without the living Spirit of Prophecy. They had to suffer the trials of following their oft-misguided church leadership from the red, over to the black, then to the pale horse—the dead church of Sardis—for “where there is no vision, the people perish” (Proverbs 29:18). Although her writings accompanied them, the following prophecy of the messenger of God came true:

Satan is ... constantly pressing in the spurious—to lead away from the truth. The very last deception of Satan will be to make of none effect the testimony of the Spirit of God. “Where there is no vision, the people perish” (Proverbs 29:18). Satan will work ingeniously, in different ways and through different agencies, to unsettle the confidence of God’s remnant people in the true testimony.—Letter 12, 1890.

There will be a hatred kindled against the testimonies which is satanic. The workings of Satan will be to unsettle the faith of the churches in them, for this reason: Satan cannot have so clear a track to bring in his deceptions and bind up souls in his delusions if the warnings and reproofs and counsels of the Spirit of God are heeded.—Letter 40, 1890. {1SM 48.3–4}

Arthur G. Daniells wrote in the last chapter of his book The Abiding Gift of Prophecy:

The welfare of the church as a whole, and of its individual members, is inseparably bound up with believing and heeding God's prophets. These, as we have seen, are His chosen messengers, His appointed spokesmen, to His church on earth. As we have also clearly shown, this plan of communication has been God's chosen, uniform, and beneficent provision for revealing His will to man, ever since the separation caused by sin. Through this means, God counsels and instructs, He cautions, entreats, and warns, as need may occasion and as divine love indicates. The presence of the prophet among men is not, therefore, something new or unusual, something strange or fantastic. God is the author of this provision, and wayfaring man is its beneficiary. It is as old as the human need, and as constant as the divine love that prompted and instituted it.

The vicissitudes of the church in all ages have been gauged by its allegiance or its disloyalty to the gift of prophecy, and its safety measured by its response to these heavenly leadings. Through the centuries spanning the patriarchal, Mosaic, and 325apostolic eras, we have seen this inviolable rule in operation, as revealed in the pages of Holy Writ.

Then after the death of the apostles, the tragic march of events in the Christian era begins, is told in blood and tears, and is blotched with drift and apostasy. Steadily the nominal Christian church veers from those foundation principles—the precepts and practices, the letter and the spirit—that characterized the apostolic church. The departure centered in perversion of the law and the gospel, though it permeated every truth of Christianity.

Tragic has been the lot of those who stood for the primitive faith. Hated and maligned, persecuted and isolated, they witnessed to the truth. But from time to time prophets—men and women—arose at the call of God, and denounced the iniquity of the disloyal. They encouraged the fidelity of the faithful, and guided and guarded the adherents of truth through the weary centuries.

Now in these divinely denominated “last days,” God's great plan of redemption and the mad course of the human race approach their climax together. Iniquity so abounds among men, human philosophy is so defiant, man's independence of God and of the provisions of redemption are so affronting in this supreme conflict between good and evil, that it was imperative for the gift of prophecy to be conspicuously manifest in the ranks of the remnant church.

Paramount Need in the Last Days

If ever in the course of the race man needed divine guidance, it is surely in these last days, when all the forces of iniquity have broken loose to confuse and to ruin, when the secular world has gone materialist, and the religious world has turned to modernistic teachings. If ever in history the church needed to have divine guidance, that time was reached at the crisis hour of the advent movement, just following the disappointment of 1844, and throughout the decades following. Farreaching were the issues; but adequate was God's guidance.

The last conflict comes over allegiance to God, and reaches its consummation in our day. The perfect law of God, with its Sabbath seal, is the object of Satan's hatred, and he would swing the world to his side in the conflict. The full salvation provided through faith in Christ is equally the object of his relentless attempts to deny His incarnation, His atoning death, His priestly ministry, and His imminent return in power and glory.

Satan's wrath is focused on God's remnant church, the supreme object of divine love and guidance. This church will finally stand as the sole defender of God's trampled law, to which are joined the full provisions of redemption. Not only is the church as a whole the object of the evil one's attack, but the individual member as well is harassed, because of maintaining the integrity of the law and the gospel. Through injecting doubt, carelessness, defiance, or repudiation, Satan likewise seeks to turn allegiance from the counsels of the gift of prophecy.

Hence the three great issues at stake in this last hour are as clearly and sharply defined as inspiration can disclose them. But these have all become confused in the beliefs and practices among the masses of Christendom.

But now, in bringing this volume to a close, the question of individual and church relationship to God's gift stands forth as of supreme importance. My closing words are therefore a plea for the recognition and heeding of this divine provision for the counsel of the church. They are an appeal to the church to keep these matters ever in mind, and to follow them faithfully in practice.

Give Heed to the Heavenly Counsels

Mark well, in retrospect, what this gift has meant to this people through the decades of the past. Mark well, how crisis after crisis has been met, and how issue after issue has been successfully faced. Time has vindicated the heavenly counsels in every instance. Consider, by way of impressive comparison and admonition, the days of Israel in the time of Moses, and then ponder our own times as a parallel. Here are the words of Israel's great leader of old:

“I have set before thee this day life and good, and death and evil.” “I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live: that thou mayest love the Lord thy God, and that thou mayest obey His voice, and that thou mayest cleave unto Him: for He is thy life, and the length of thy days.” Deut. 30:15, 19, 20.

Realizing that he was soon to lay down his responsibilities, the aged patriarch, Moses, was giving his final charge to the people whom he had led for forty years, from Egypt to the borders of the Promised Land.

He had great hopes for the future of his beloved people. But knowing, by long experience, their frailties and their weakness at times under temptations and hardships, he also cherished grave fears that they might meet national disaster and defeat. Recognizing that their destiny for weal or woe was conditioned upon their relation to the instruction sent from God, he graphically, and at considerable length, set before them the blessings, temporal and spiritual, that would be theirs if they were obedient, and the curses that would be consequent upon their disobedience. (See Deuteronomy 27, 28.)

Israel's Failure to Remember

When he counseled them to love the Lord God, and to obey His voice, he was thereby exhorting them to heed the messages of counsel and instruction that he, as God's messenger had delivered to them. Save for the Ten Commandments, all the laws and testimonies and statutes enjoined upon them had been spoken through Moses. That they should see or hear only the human instrument in nowise lessened the guilt of their rejection of these divine requirements. That is true also, not only of the generation that he personally addressed, but of the men and women of all time.

Moses made provision for these solemn adjurations ever to be kept in remembrance. Parents were to teach them to their children, speaking of them when they were sitting in the house or walking by the way, as well as in the evening and in the morning hours of worship. (Deut. 11:19, 20.) They were to be written for a memorial in a book, and placed in the side of the ark. Every seventh year they were to be taken out and publicly read before the concourse of pilgrims assembled at the Feast of Tabernacles. For this solemn rehearsal of the prophetic writings, they were to gather the men and the women, not forgetting the stranger who was within their gates. The children who were coming to years of understanding were especially mentioned. They were also to hear, and learn to fear the Lord. (See Deut. 31:9-13.)

In view of the failure of Israel of old thus to keep in remembrance the solemn messages that had come through God's chosen messenger, should not we “upon whom the ends of the world are come” see to it that the instruction that has been given to the remnant church shall be kept vividly in mind?

Prophetic Gift Inseparable From the Movement

Drawing a present-day lesson from the directions of Moses (in Deut. 6:20-25) to rehearse to the children, as they came to the age of inquiry, the signs and wonders wrought in their deliverance from Egypt, Mrs. White wrote in 1882:

“Here are principles that we are not to regard with indifference. Those who have seen the truth and felt its importance, and have had an experience in the things of God, are to teach sound doctrine to their children. They should make them acquainted with the great pillars of our faith, the reasons why we are Seventh-day Adventists,—why we are called, as were the children of Israel, to be a peculiar people, a holy nation, separate and distinct from all other people on the face of the earth. These things should be explained to the children in simple language, easy to be understood; and as they grow in years, the lessons imparted should be suited to their increasing capacity, until the foundations of truth have been laid broad and deep.”—“Testimonies for the Church,” Vol. V, p. 330.

The story of the birth of the nation of Israel, of their deliverance from cruel bondage and their final entrance into Canaan, could not be told without relating the work of Moses as a prophet. Interwoven with every phase of the history were the messages that came from heaven through the great prophet of that period. He was the mouthpiece for Jehovah, making known His will, guiding them in their organization and in their movements; reproving their sins, rebuking their rebellion, and entreating them as a father.

It is likewise impossible today to tell our children “the reasons why we are Seventh-day Adventists” without familiarizing them with the prominent part played by the renewed gift of prophecy in the laying of a scriptural foundation, and building thereon, in guiding in the principles of organization, in fostering every cardinal feature of the advent movement, and in bearing messages of counsel and reproof, or of hope and courage.

It is possible to believe nominally in the gift of prophecy, to accept the messages of former prophets, and yet reject and oppose a contemporary messenger chosen of God to give instruction to His people. In Christ's day the words of the ancient prophets were read every Sabbath in their synagogues, yet the religious leaders rejected John the Baptist, and crucified the Prophet who came direct from heaven,—the greatest who ever appeared on earth. The reason why they closed 329their ears against Heaven's messengers, together with the existence of modern Pharisaism, is well set forth in these words:

“The reproofs, the cautions, the corrections of the Lord, have been given to His church in all ages of the world. These warnings were despised and rejected in Christ's day by the self-righteous Pharisees, who claimed that they needed no such reproof, and were unjustly dealt with. They would not receive the word of the Lord through His servants, because it did not please their inclinations. Should the Lord give a vision right before this class of people in our day, pointing out their mistakes, rebuking their self-righteousness and condemning their sins, they would rise up in rebellion, like the inhabitants of Nazareth when Christ showed them their true condition.”—“Testimonies for the Church,” Vol. V, p. 689.

Why Testimonies Are Rejected

It was Christ's rebuke of specific sins in their life that caused the Pharisees to reject His claim of being the Son of God. There is today, as there has always been in the past, a direct relation between the cherishing of some sin and a doubting of the messages of the Lord's chosen servant.

“Many who have backslidden from the truth assign as a reason for their course, that they do not have faith in the testimonies. Investigation reveals the fact that they had some sinful habit that God has condemned through the testimonies. The question now is, Will they yield their idol which God condemns, or will they continue in their wrong course of indulgence, and reject the light God has given them, reproving the very things in which they delight? The question to be settled with them is, Shall I deny myself, and receive as of God the testimonies which reprove my sins, or shall I reject the testimonies because they reprove my sins?”— “Testimonies for the Church,” Vol. IV, p. 32.

In the early part of this volume it is asserted, with corroborative evidence, that next to the gift of Christ to our world, the gift of prophecy is God's most precious bestowal upon the church. It is therefore certain that Satan, the great adversary of God and man, will have an intense hatred for every manifestation of the gift. Its possession by the remnant church is given in the Scriptures as the explanation of the dragon's wrath against her. Rev. 12:17. Knowing this, we shall not be surprised that the testimonies of God's Spirit are the object of bitter and ceaseless attack. The most subtle arguments that can be devised by a master mind trained in guile and 330sophistry will be presented as reasons why we should disbelieve them.

Counsel to Our Remnant People

I counsel you who may meet with objections to the claims of the testimonies given for the remnant, to regard a proper balance between the trivial and the great, between that which is difficult of understanding and that which is plain. Here are clear, guiding principles:

“You need not go in uncertainty and doubt. Satan is at hand to suggest a variety of doubts; but if you will open your eyes in faith, you will find sufficient evidence for belief. But God will never remove from any man all causes for doubts. Those who love to dwell in the atmosphere of doubt and questioning unbelief, can have the unenviable privilege. God gives sufficient evidence for the candid mind to believe; but he who turns from the weight of evidence because there are a few things which he cannot make plain to his finite understanding, will be left in the cold, chilling atmosphere of unbelief and questioning doubts, and will make shipwreck of faith.”—Id., pp. 232, 233.

“Those who train the mind to seize upon everything which they can use as a peg to hang a doubt upon, and suggest these thoughts to other minds, will always find occasion to doubt. They will question and criticize everything that arises in the unfolding of truth, criticize the work and position of others, criticize every branch of the work in which they have not themselves a part. They will feed upon the errors and mistakes and faults of others, ‘until,’ said the angel, ‘the Lord Jesus shall rise up from His mediatorial work in the heavenly sanctuary, and shall clothe Himself with the garments of vengeance, and surprise them at their unholy feast; and they will find themselves unprepared for the marriage supper of the Lamb.’ Their taste has been so perverted that they would be inclined to criticize even the table of the Lord in His kingdom.”—“Testimonies for the Church,” Vol. V, p. 690.

The words of Moses, linking blessing with obedience and disaster with disobedience, were predictive. They were spoken when Israel was just beginning her national history. The future of the nation was marked with the correlation of prosperity and obedience, and of ultimate captivity and destruction following persistent disobedience. The calamity came sooner in Israel, who rejected the counsels of all her prophets, than in Judah, whose day of doom was repeatedly postponed because of occasional reformations.

A Lesson for Our Time

The lesson is no less meaningful for our time. Our day of deliverance has been delayed because of our failure to measure up to the wholehearted consecration called for in the heavensent messages committed to us. We are still in this troubled world because we have not gone forward in faith, sacrifice, and earnestness to finish the work of God in the earth to which we have been most solemnly urged by God's servant. Had we fully heeded the admonitions and counsels that have come to us, we might now be enjoying the glories of heaven. This we have been clearly told:

“Had the purpose of God been carried out by His people in giving to the world the message of mercy, Christ would, ere this, have come to the earth, and the saints would have received their welcome into the city of God.”—“Testimonies for the Church,” Vol. VI, p. 450.

“If every soldier of Christ had done his duty, if every watchman on the walls of Zion had given the trumpet a certain sound, the world might ere this have heard the message of warning. But the work is years behind. While men have slept, Satan has stolen a march upon us.”—Id., Vol. IX, p. 29.

Nothing could impress our hearts more, perhaps, than these solemn words. The coming of the Lord for which we have longed and prayed and labored for so many years, might now be an accomplished fact, and the people of God have entered upon their reward, had we only lived up to the high privileges and responsibilities that are ours by the favor of God.

“Believe His Prophets”

Through the words of Scripture, God has given every essential saving truth. He has marvelously preserved that word, and has so multiplied copies of it that everyone may now have it. The characteristics of our day are outlined in that word. The testimonies of God's Spirit, as given to the remnant church, are in harmony with that word, and lead us to that word. But in them is to be found that wealth of detail, needed by those who are living in “the time of the end,” those who must stand against the subtle and supreme wiles of Satan, and perfect a character befitting those who are to be translated. As the telescope reveals, but does not create, details unperceived by the unaided eye, so the reading of the messages sent us does not add to but rather magnifies the eternal word of God.

As we prayerfully and diligently study the counsel and instruction God has so graciously given to His remnant church, bringing our lives into conformity to the standard of character there revealed, and striving diligently to finish the work allotted to us, we shall thereby prove that we are “looking for and hasting unto the coming of the day of God.” 2 Peter 3: 12.

“Believe in the Lord your God, so shall ye be established; believe His prophets, so shall ye prosper.” 2 Chron. 20:20. THE END

How much more does all of this apply to the present time, when—unnoticed by the vast majority of Advent believers—the judgment of the living has already started, and indeed with the elders, the leaders of the 144,000. In a terrible time of total apostasy from the truth in the Adventist Church, out of some 17 million Adventists, including a few Protestants who wanted to be baptized into the Adventist Church but were denied because of their belief in the “Orion heresy”—out of all those, a small handful of men and women of God's choosing gathered. This small group was tested hard! Very hard! Their trials began on February 27, 2012 in a special way, and they had to learn the patience of the saints, and acquire a faith that could endure delay—which Ellen G. White prophesied, as previously mentioned (see GC 621 quote above). True, the time of the coming of Christ will never again be a test, because Jesus will still come according to the Orion Clock and the Vessel of Time, but the three-and-a-half years of the time of trouble would begin a year later than they expected. They had understood the year of plagues to be part of the judgment of the living, which was incorrect and led them to the belief that Jesus would come in 2015 and the time of trouble would begin simultaneously with the judgment of the living. Actually, these two periods are offset from one another by one year. Therefore, the visible events, like the fireballs and the Sunday law, had to come later than the other events in the heavenly sanctuary which we explained in our Final Warning articles. So in the future, we have to clearly distinguish between the three-and-a-half times of Daniel 12, which are the three-and-a-half years of the judgment of the living that will end before the plagues begin, and the three-and-a-half years of tribulation that include the small and the great time of trouble (the year of the plagues).

No faith could have withstood this year of “disillusionment” without divine confirmation of the studies of Orion and the Vessel of Time. I myself would never have dared publish the Orion study in 2010 if I had not stuck to the divine “rule” that Ellen G. White had described in the above quote about her personal experience: For studies to be recognized as genuine, there must be confirmation of them through the Spirit of Prophecy. There must be a spiritual leader who receives a confirmation of the studies through the Word of God and who does not understand the studies themselves. Ellen G. White had seen that there would be new light just ahead, but she herself did not receive it. A different person had to fulfill this task, another spiritual director who would aid the spiritual growth of the small fledging remnant church that was in transition from the crown of the woman of Revelation 12 (the SDA Church) to the stars in the crown (the church of the 144,000).

The second part of this introductory series for this new section will now finally reveal who the director was in my dream, The Message of the Fourth Angel, and unravel the story of the mysterious circumstances of his “death”.

NOTE:

This wonderful book, The Abiding Gift of Prophecy, can be downloaded in its entirety HERE. (Should anyone find a German translation online, please let us know.)

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