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The Scriptures say, “But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts: and be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and fear..”(1 Peter 3:16).

But the Spirit of Prophecy says, “Some have thought it an evidence of intellectual keenness and superiority to perplex minds in regard to what is truth. They resort to subtlety of argument, to playing upon words; they take unjust advantage in asking questions. When their questions have been fairly answered, they will turn the subject [and] bring up another point to avoid acknowledging the truth. We should beware of indulging the spirit which controlled the Jews.”(Testimonies to Ministers, p.108)

So to rectify the two we see that we should be ready to give answers to those who ask, those who want the truth. But should we come in contact with a “Pharisee”, one who wants to argue with us and to show us that he/she only cares about their opinion/agenda, we’ll it’s clear–don’t indulge that spirit. Say “Thanks, but no thanks”.

We would like to present 10 challenging questions that appear to be some often asked questions concerning the Lord’s  Elijah message. We will address each one with a “Thus sayeth the Lord”, so that you may copy this report and use it to help explain to those who are the “Burean” type and want to know the truth of the matter.

1- –  Is there another prophet(s) to come to our SDA church after Ellen G. White?

The simple answer is–yes. The most clearest references come from two Inspired quotes.

“Behold,  I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and dreadful day of the LORD.”(Mal. 4:5)

There can be no misunderstanding here. The Lord says that a male prophet will come as “Elijah”,and he will come at the very end of time.

Then the Lord sent us His prophetess to give us more clues about this Elijah.

“Prophecy must be fulfilled. The Lord says: “Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord.” Somebody is to come in the spirit and power of Elijah, and when he appears, men may say: “You are too earnest, you do not interpret the Scriptures in the proper way. Let me tell you how to teach your message.”(Testimonies to Ministers, p.475)

Here we see that Inspiration tells us a male “he” will appear and that sadly, he would be rejected for the most part. But we see that he will be known as an interpreter of Scripture. As we have reported in many posts on this blog, there has been only one man in all our SDA history that has published volumes of interpretive works of Scripture and Spirit of Prophecy. His name was Victor T. Houteff. If you don’t know much about this man, I strongly advise any and all who will listen–get to know him and his writings. For many, including myself, believe beyond doubt that God sent him as the prophesied “Elijah” to come. His writings are that deep. Only God could have given a mere man this ability.

From a personal view, there is only 3 Inspired books/writings that can sometimes wear me out and give me an overwhelming sense of “enough already, this is too much truth” Scripture, Spirit of Prophecy and Shepherd’s Rod publications. Of course I never get tired of them but they do have such a powerful far-reaching effect on those who study them.

We often marvel how Ellen White had just a 3rd grade education, and yet could write like a true scholar. The Holy Spirit whispering in her ear as she wrote. Amazingly, this phenomena continued with Victor Houteff. He had just a 4th grade education. Both writers certainly  wrote “as they were moved by the Holy Spirit.” (2 Peter 1:21)

2–  Is there another prophet(s) to come to our SDA church after Victor T. Houteff?

Here we can sometimes run into some Davidian “Pharisees” who will ask this question. As we have posted many times the highest and most truth filled light on the planet is the Lord’s Elijah message. But Satan knows this and has infiltrated the Davidian Seventh-day Adventists, just like he has the Seventh-day Adventists.

The typical SDA member will not know about , let alone ask about, another prophet to come to our SDA church. This shows how far encompassing Satan and his minions have blinded and fooled our church. But some Davidians who are well read in the message, can get even be more blinded and fooled than the SDA members! (See our post  – “Blinded by the light” https://godsloveandlaw.com/2013/03/30/blinded-by-the-light/ )

But we need to address this because of the fact that in Davidian circles there are a fair amount of so called believers of the Elijah message that think brother Houteff was not the last prophet to come. We come in contact with these types occasionally on our Facebook group–Truth Tellers.

Remember  that Scriptures says, “Surely the Lord GOD does nothing, unless He reveals His secret to His servants the prophets” (Amos 3:7)

So we must search the Scriptures to know when/who the Lord sends in the last days / end of time. As mentioned He promises to send one man “Elijah”. Notice it does not say “Elijahs” or “Elijah, the prophets“.

So if the Lord would send more than one prophet, He certainly would have revealed that through His prophets and their writings per His word of Amos 3:7. We find one place, Malachi 4:5,  as the proof of ONE end time prophet to come.

Victor Houteff wrote these inspired words to eliminate all doubt that his calling would be the “very last”.

“Behold, I will send My messenger, and he shall prepare the way before Me: and the Lord, Whom ye seek, shall suddenly come to His temple, even the messenger of the covenant, whom ye delight in: behold, he shall come, saith the Lord of hosts.” Mal. 3:1.

   The promise here is that the Lord will send a messenger, and as the fourth chapter of Malachi is but a continuation of the story in the third, we are there told that the messenger is antitypical Elijah (Mal. 4:5), the one who is “to restore all things” (Matt. 17:11) and Inspiration of a later addition, and in a special message to the Seventh-day Adventist ministry warns:

   “Prophecy must be fulfilled.  The Lord says: ‘Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord.’  Somebody is to come in the spirit and power of Elijah, and when he appears, men may say: ‘You are too earnest, you do not interpret the Scriptures in the proper way.  Let me tell you how to teach your message.'” — “Testimonies to Ministers,” pp. 475, 476.

   There are two main points to note in these quotations: (1) that the message and messenger here mentioned are the very last; (2) that they are to restore all things, (3) that there is danger for some to make fools of themselves by daring to tell him how to teach his message — assuming to take God’s place! (Jezreel Letter, no.9, p.1)

But despite the plain clear words above, the blinded Pharisee will say, “Ah, but Victor Houteff cannot be the anti-typical Elijah because the original Elijah came and spoke the message then was translated to heaven without dying.” But Inspiration is one step ahead of them.

Although VTH was the Elijah to come, under Inspiration he wrote,

“The prophet, or the message is called, Elijah, “with the spirit and power of Elijah”….Thus Elijah stands as a type of the 144,000 living translated saints.”(SRod, vol. 1, p.47)

The above reference is good to know, additionally, because this addresses many SDA non-believers who also say “Victor Houteff died so he cannot be the Elijah anti- type.” But we see that Inspiration says that the anti- type is the 144,000.

But what is most clear of all is the prophet’s own words concerning what Mal:4:5,6 means–

“Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord: and he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse.” Mall 4:5, 6.

   In the light which this prophecy sheds on the subject, no one can possibly escape the conclusion that a prophet — a person — is to be sent “before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord,” and that thus only can there be a group of people in connection with Elijah’s message.  The Scriptures make definite and sure the promise, the time, and the work, also the way to our security in the great and dreadful day, “lest,” as says the Lord, “I come and smite the earth with a curse.” Mall 4:6.

   No one can afford to commit the absurdity of either treating lightly or of kindling sparks of his own on the subject.  We should remember, moreover, that it is not possible that God should leave a one of us in darkness if we want to know the Truth, and if we are mindful of what God would have us to do. (“The Great Controversy,” p… 560).  To the end that this may be the happy experience of all of us, we should pray that the Spirit Who leads into all Truth would direct this effort. (General Conference Special, p.5-6)

We see that, first, the Lord sends ONE PERSON as the “Elijah” promised in the Word. Then from this person who writes out the last message to our church, His remnant people, we know that many will take up the message of Elijah and thus continue spreading this final message of hope, accountability, and solemn responsibility to our church.

Keep in mind that most of the time these Pharisees (who exist both in the SDA and DSDA) want to deny the Lord’s final prophet because they have some man they are following. The SDA members most likely have a Doug Batchelor, Stephen Bohr, Mark Finley, etc. As for the DSDA, there are 3 individuals that come to mind, who have followings.

Lennox Sam -From USA . Works in Africa much of the time(recruiting). Has own ideas such as a pre purification of Davidians before the church judgement comes to the SDA church–Ezek.9. Is active on YouTube.

Ariel Dacutanan – From the Philippines. Teaches that Victor Houteff was not last prophet (although he quotes largely from him), and has his followers believing that he is a prophet even though there is documented evidence of his false predictions. Has a few YouTube videos

Trent Wilde – From USA. Considered one of the “Branch” Davidian leaders. He uses Victor Houteff writings together with his own ideas such as feast keeping, and more prophets to come after brother V. Houteff. Very active on YouTube.

We need to remember Satan is far far more intelligent than we are, and as such he gets very well read men such as the above, to claim that Victor Houteff was indeed a prophet, yet he isn’t enough for us. In other words they interject their message with the Lord’s prophet! They act the part of Korah and say to brother Houteff, as Korah said to Moses, “You take too much upon yourself..”(Numbers 16:3). They also fulfill the prophesied words that our prophetess spoke, “You are too earnest, you do not interpret the Scriptures in the proper way. Let me tell you how to teach your message.”(Testimonies to Ministers, p.475).

Those who follow these men are on a slippery slope, a waiting trap for those who don’t prayerfully study on their own!

3 —  Are there more than 144,000 sealed from the SDA church in the church judgment?

We shall look at this issue with the 3 Inspired sources. While not directly saying how many, our Lord let’s us know that “few” find eternal life.

“For the gate is small and the way is narrow that leads to life, and there are few who find it.”(Matt. 7:14)

Our second quote gets more specific in this matter.

“I have tried in the fear of God to set before His people their danger and their sins, and have endeavored, to the best of my feeble powers, to arouse them. I have stated startling things, which, if they had believed, would have caused them distress and terror, and led them to zeal in repenting of their sins and iniquities.

I have stated before them that, from what was shown me, but a small number of those now professing to believe the truth would eventually be saved–not because they could not be saved, but because they would not be saved in God’s own appointed way. The way marked out by our divine Lord is too narrow and the gate too strait to admit them while grasping the world or while cherishing selfishness or sin of any kind.” (Testimones, vol. 2, p.445-446)

Another revealing quote is Rev. 7:4–“And I heard the number of them which were sealed:and there were sealed an hundred and forty and four thousand of all the tribes of the children of Israel.”

Our prophetess declared that we, the SDA church, are the “Israel of today” (Testimonies, vol. 9, p.164) (Testimonies, vol. 5, p.80). The church contains all the tribes of the children of Israel. Some may ask –What if there are Gentiles in the church, will they automatically be left without the seal of God because they are not descendants of Abraham’s seed?  Rest assured God does not arbitrarily eliminate people from the church. This is a deep study and we have a post that delves into this   https://godsloveandlaw.com/2014/08/09/who-comprises-the-s-d-a-church/

One of the most insidious Satanic tricks is that he gets Elijah message believers to join their SDA brethren, and declare that God’s word is not fully correct (Rev. 7:4) or is “symbolical” and that there will be more than 144,000 sealed from the church. They are really saying “oh it’s really more than that because we got 18 million, cmon.” Those who partake in this teaching are directly “adding” to the words in Revelation which we know comes with a fearful price.

“I testify to everyone hearing the words of the prophecy of this book: If anyone should add to these things, God will add unto him the plagues having been written in this book. And if anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God will take away his part from the tree of life and from the holy city, which are written in this book.” (Rev. 22:18-19)

A few days ago I was involved in a email study with a so-called Davidian brother who  said to me that it cannot be possible that God would only seal 144,000 out of the approximate 18 million SDA members. He said if he taught this it would go over like a “lead balloon.” I about fell out of my chair reading this from a  “40 year” Davidian! This is the perfect example of being the most deceived one can be. Fortunately most Davidians are grounded in the truth and don’t go along with this kind of adding to God’s word.

All one has to do is look at the Lord’s history on how He executed His judgments. In Noah’s day, with possibly several million (some say much more) there was eight saved. In Moses’ time with the approx. million people who came out of Egypt, there was two people saved (over 20 years old). In Lot’s day, from the large cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, one family was spared.  In the time of our Lord’s prophecies of the coming destruction of the Jews (approx. 1.1 million) only about 97,000 survived(Wikipedia- siege of Jerusalem AD 70).

So it is entirely in keeping with His historical judicial actions. Does this mean that He only wants 144,000 to survive? Of course not. But down through the ages God has always sent His prophets to warn and when the warnings are ignored, He commits His judgments. Our prophet , Victor T. Houteff, was sent to us, are we going to listen?

His is a righteous Judge and we have no basis to deny His justice or even question it. All we can do is learn the message and obey it.

4 —  Should we keep the feast days/ceremonies?  

Let us read what happened right after Jesus died–

“At that moment the veil of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. The earth quaked and the rocks were split.” (Matt.27:51)

The Spirit of Prophecy explains–

“By the rending of the veil of the temple, God said, I can no longer reveal My presence in the most holy place. A new and living Way, before which there hangs no veil, is offered to all. No longer need sinful, sorrowing humanity await the coming of the high priest. 5BC 1109.4

Type had met antitype in the death of God’s Son. The Lamb of God had been offered as a sacrifice. It was as if a voice had said to the worshipers, “There is now an end to all sacrifices and offerings”(5 BC p.1109)

Any one who knows about the feast days/ceremonies knows that the main ingredient of these ceremonies was the sacrifice of animals. Once Christ died the central meaning and purpose of the feast days was gone.

There is a movement among our church today, proposing that Christ really did not do away with the ceremonies. They conveniently interpret Scripture and the Spirit of Prophecy to point out how we must keep the feast days. One of the leading proponents from the SDA church is a man named, John Vandenburg. He has a website called Bible Explorations and is active on YouTube.

But the best evidence we have that the feast days are no longer required is from the restorer of Truth that the Lord sent, let us read–

“Broadly speaking, the law of Moses consists of three parts.  The first is the Ceremonial law, the law of the temple — the sacrificial law.  This law, of course, we today must not observe, except in antitype, for it foreshadowed things to come, particularly Christ’s first advent.  Thus it is that if we had lived in Old Testament times and had failed to comply with the sacrificial law and system of that day, we would thereby have demonstrated unbelief in Christ, Who was to come.  But since we are living in the Christian era, if we should now observe the typical sacrificial law and system, we should thereby demonstrate unbelief in Christ, Who has come.

   And so, as this law was nailed to the cross (Col. 2:14), we need not, and must not, observe it now.” (TG, vol. 2, no. 37, p.14-15)

The above is plain and very clear, the “Ceremonial law” and “sacrificial law” was “nailed to the cross”. If you try and keep these days as a requirement, you “demonstrate unbelief in Christ, Who has come.”

Again, some Pharisees argue, “But see, the prophet says we are to keep the feast days in “anti-type”.This can easily be corrected by pointing out the fact that neither Ellen White nor Victor Houteff kept the feast days during their life. So if the mis-informed attempt to bring this weak argument, we simply say that God does not bring prophets who write and teach one thing and do the other. We all know that our Lord continually blasted hypocrisy as one of the most sinful conditions of mankind. In the chapter 23 of Matthew, He said “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!” seven times.

“You hypocrites! Well did Isaiah prophesy of you, when he said: “‘This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.’”(Matt. 15:7-9)

“God hates hypocrites more than He hates any other kind of sinners.” (1 TG, no.44, p.5)

Again the message clarifies the issue–

“The earthly sanctuary service for the salvation of the human race, in types and symbols, reveals Christ’s administration in the heavenly.  Which was made up of two laws; namely, the “ten commandment” and the “ceremonial” laws.  The tables of the ten commandments were put in the ark, and the ceremonial or the law of Moses was placed on the side of the ark. (See Deut. 10:2; 31:26.) 

Why two laws?  The moral law points out the sin, “for by the law is the knowledge of sin.” (Rom. 3:20.)   “For where no law is, there is no transgression.” (Rom. 4:15.)   But the ceremonial law “was added because of transgressions till the seed should come to whom the promise was made.” (Gal. 3:19.)   Which was the remedy to heal the sinner and set him free from the condemnation of the moral law.  When Christ (the seed) came, He took this law of ordinance (the law of Moses) “out of the way, nailing it to the cross.” (Col. 2:14.) 

The earthly administration of the law of ordinance could not give life of itself, because it was only a shadow of the true.  Therefore, at the crucifixion of Christ it ceased and the heavenly one, which was foreshadowed by the earthly, began.  The literal sanctuary service of both temples were identical.”(Shepherds Rod, vol. 2, p.267-268)

Some point to a few EGW quotes where they are mis-interpreted to look like she advocates  observing the feast days. One example is the following.

“If the children of Israel needed the benefit of these holy convocations in their time, how much more do we need them in these last days of peril and conflict! And if the people of the world then needed the light which God had committed to His church, how much more do they need it now!” {6T, 39-40}

One of our most basic rules of Hermeneutics is to look at context. With this rule, we should look at the preceding  paragraphs of the above quote.

To begin with the context begins with the title–Camp Meeting.

We start from the middle of page 39–

“Anciently the Lord instructed His people to assemble three times a year for His worship. To these holy convocations the children of Israel came, bringing to the house of God their tithes, their sin offerings, and their offerings of gratitude. They met to recount God’s mercies, to make known His wonderful works, and to offer praise and thanksgiving to His name. And they were to unite in the sacrificial service which pointed to Christ as the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world. Thus they were to be preserved from the corrupting power of worldliness and idolatry. Faith and love and gratitude were to be kept alive in their hearts, and through their association together in this sacred service they were to be bound closer to God and to one another.

In the days of Christ these feasts were attended by vast multitudes of people from all lands; and had they been kept as God intended, in the spirit of true worship, the light of truth might through them have been given to all the nations of the world.

40

With those who lived at a distance from the tabernacle, more than a month of every year must have been occupied in attendance upon these holy convocations. The Lord saw that these gatherings were necessary for the spiritual life of His people. They needed to turn away from their worldly cares, to commune with God, and to contemplate unseen realities.”

We see that Inspiration compares the feast days meetings to our camp meetings, as a way to gather together for “the spiritual life of His people.” She is not saying that we must keep the feast days in order to satisfy our Lord today. It plainly says that those feast days “pointed to Christ.” He was soon to take the place of the sacrificial feast day ceremonies!

The remainder of the page shows the importance of attending meetings and having fellowship with our brothers and sisters for uplifting God’s cause.

To further confirm her stance on these ceremonies she made the following powerful statements.

“In the Galatian churches, open, unmasked error was supplanting the gospel message. Christ, the true foundation of the faith, was virtually renounced for the obsolete ceremonies of Judaism. The apostle saw that if the believers in Galatia were saved from the dangerous influences which threatened them, the most decisive measures must be taken, the sharpest warnings given.” (AA p.385)

“He has swept away every ceremony of the ancient type. He has given no liberty to restore these rites, or to substitute anything that will recall the old literal sacrifices.” (Review and Herald, Feb. 25, 1896)

So we see that both our prophetess and prophet confirm that feast keeping should not be considered a requirement today. Some may at times want to observe them as a historical lesson , to learn of our Biblical history and this lesson can be good (See Special Testimonies on Education,page 80), but to say we must keep them today is to profess unbelief in Christ.

(Next week, we’ll look at questions 5 to 10)

This entry was posted on September 12, 2015 at 3:26 am and is filed under Present Truth, Proper teachings, The Feast Days. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.