I Don’t Want To Be An Unfaithful Watchman
I’ve been praying and struggling with something.
I’ve started a blog and posted my study notes. They’re mostly SDA/EGW quotes followed by Bible verses, with very little commentary by me.
Then my Adventist pastor-dad compared Mrs. White’s failed prophesies to Jonah’s situation, but I think Ezekiel’s instructions to the watchman to warn of a coming sword was what God wanted Jonah to do:
“Son of man, speak to the sons of your people and say to them, ‘If I bring a sword upon a land, and the people of the land take one man from among them and make him their watchman, and he sees the sword coming upon the land and blows on the trumpet and warns the people, then he who hears the sound of the trumpet and does not take warning, and a sword comes and takes him away, his blood will be on his own head.
He heard the sound of the trumpet but did not take warning; his blood will be on himself. But had he taken warning, he would have delivered his life.
But if the watchman sees the sword coming and does not blow the trumpet and the people are not warned, and a sword comes and takes a person from them, he is taken away in his iniquity; but his blood I will require from the watchman’s hand.’”—Ezekiel 33:2–6
Here’s my question: should I wait and pray for opportunities to tell people what I’ve learned about the church, or should I just put it out there? I don’t want to run ahead of God’s will, but I also don’t want to be an unfaithful watchman. Any guidance would be greatly appreciated.
—VIA EMAIL
Response: I so understand what you are struggling with!
Mrs White is NOTHING like Jonah, and it’s highly upsetting to me that Adventists use Jonah to excuse EGW’s failed prophecies!
Jonah was asked by God to go and warn the Ninevites. EGW was NOT given visions by God.
Jonah, interestingly, was a Jewish prophet who was sent to a gentile nation with a warning from God. That sort of situation did not happen often in the Old Testament. In fact, Ninevah was the capital of the Assyrian nation—one of the most cruel, godless, and destructive of all the ancient empires. Moreover, Assyria became the nation that took the northern kingdom of Israel into exile abut a hundred years before Babylon took Judah. Those northern ten tribes have never been regathered; they became “lost” among the Canaanite nations, and the Samaritans of Jesus’ day were the offspring of the intermarriage between those Israelites and the Canaanites.
God sent a message of warning and repentance to the nation that would be the conqueror of His people. And, in fact, that city did repent. The book of Jonah ends with these words of God:
“Should I not have compassion on Nineveh, the great city in which there are more than 120,000 persons who do not know [the difference] between their right and left hand, as well as many animals?”—Jonah 4:11
It’s amazing how God’s compassion for these people is expressed; He even had compassion for their animals! His rebuke of Jonah was for the purpose of revealing to him that he had a narrow, self-centered view of reality and of God. God has always cared not only for His people but for those who were not His people. He always intended to bring His salvation to the nations. Yet He chose Israel as a means of bringing the Savior into the world and as a means of revealing how much humanity needed saving. They needed blood sacrifice to justify their existence—and Israel was assigned the job of representing God’s plan and intentions as well as revealing the condemnation of humanity’s spiritual deadness and need of life.
The story of Jonah gives us as well as Israel a glimpse into the compassionate heart of God that always intended to bring gentiles to Himself.
There is absolutely no justification whatsoever to compare EGW with Jonah. EGW spoke untruths about God; the story of Jonah reveals God’s purposes. Even more, Jesus said that the “sign of Jonah” would be the only sign the unbelieving Jews would receive from Him—and the sign of Jonah was his three days and nights in the belly of the whale which foreshadowed the Lord Jesus in the tomb.
In the BIG picture, the reluctant Jonah was actually used by the Lord Jesus as a shadow of His own saving work.
As for your blog, I believe that the Lord will be faithful to show you what to do. You can trust Him. The passages in Ezekiel are compelling, but I believe that our direct commands come from the instructions in the New Testament to believers. We are asked to take the gospel of the kingdom into the world, but we are commanded to do this in the context of the new covenant, not in the context of a prophet’s directions to warn Israel according to the terms of the Mosaic covenant. God’s commands to Ezekiel can have some application for us today, but they must first be understood in context: God was asking Ezekiel, who lived during the Babylonian exile, to warn His people that destruction was coming because of their unbelief. Ezekiel was the watchman, and God was reminding him that He had chosen him to bring that warning to an apostate people.
If you feel that the Lord is leading you to publish a blog, by all means, go for it! The Lord will use the work He gives us to do for His glory. He will reveal Himself, and He will use us as He brings us opportunity.
I believe that the important thing is that you realize you can trust God directly and do what He impresses you to do. Speaking the truth about the Lord Jesus cannot be a bad thing, ever! It’s important that you do not read Ezekiel as a direct message warning you that destruction awaits if you don’t sound the alarm.
Our marching orders come directly from God Himself as we read His word and trust Him. He is not warning you with exacting the blood of the unsaved if you do not warn them. Jesus took care of that condemnation. You are on this side of the cross, and your “job” is to trust Him and not fear. Speak as He brings opportunities, and if you feel led to write a blog, go for it! But you do not have to write a blog in order to avoid the Lord’s condemnation for being unfaithful! God is revealing Himself, and He graciously brings us opportunities to participate in speaking the truth! You do not need to worry about being condemned if you don’t.
What Was the Mystery Revealed to Paul?
In Romans 16:25 Paul said we should be established in his gospel and that it was given to him by Jesus himself. Also, he said it was a MYSTERY not known since the world began
Do the former Adventists believe in the fact that Paul was given THAT MYSTERY just for the gospel from Jesus himself?
Paul does declare those wonderful truths. Paul was in God’s timetable of the dispensation of grace.
—VIA EMAIL
Response: Paul also explains this mystery that was not known in past ages:
Of [this church] I was made a minister according to the stewardship from God bestowed on me for your benefit, so that I might fully carry out the [preaching of] the word of God, [that is,] the mystery which has been hidden from the [past] ages and generations, but has now been manifested to His saints, to whom God willed to make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.—Colossians 1:25–27 NASB 95
Although the hints and promises of the gentiles inheriting the blessings promised to Abraham had been scattered throughout the Old Testament, the actual means of accomplishing bringing the gentiles into faith were not fully revealed until the Lord Jesus fulfilled all the terms of the law and inaugurated the new covenant, destroying the barrier of the law that separated the gentiles and the Jews (Ephesians 2:14 and Colossians 2:14). Now all who believe are made alive and indwelled by the Holy Spirit. The mystery not previously known was that gentiles and Jews would be made alive by faith in the Lord Jesus without ever having to be placed under the law.
For the Jews, their law was made obsolete in the finished work of the Lord Jesus (Hebrews 8). For the gentiles, the finished work of Jesus and His shed blood accomplished everything necessary for justification and sanctification when one believes in the Lord Jesus. All those who are saved, are saved in the same way: by faith in the Lord Jesus and His shed blood for their sins. They receive the resurrection life of Jesus when they believe and pass from death to life!
Hatred of Spirit of Prophecy
In these last days there will be a hatred of anything related to the Spirit of Prophesy and God’s warning through His messenger to prepare us for Jesus’ soon second coming. It was predicted, and this video is proof of that. WITHOUT a doubt Jesus is coming.
—VIA YOUTUBE
Response by moderator Jim Liley: The SDA counterfeit pseudo-Christian organization’s understanding and application of what or who the bible is referring to when speaking of the
Spirit of prophesy”, is at best misguided or at worst intentionally deceitful. Here are some links that will help.
Christians understand that the “Spirit of prophesy” refers to the Holy Spirit.†
- March 15–21, 2025 - March 13, 2025
- We Got Mail - March 13, 2025
- March 8–14, 2025 - March 6, 2025