The Fruitage of Spiritual Gifts

Faith Based on Inspiration

“Faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.” (Romans 10:17.) All genuine faith in God always rests on a divine revelation. This is basic. No one has true faith unless it is built on inspiration. For this reason a definite understanding of what the Lord means by the terms He uses, such as “inspiration of God” (2 Timothy 3:16), is so vitally important that there can be no clear-cut acceptance of the voice of truth if we do not know the meaning of words employed. One root cause of the muddled thinking on religion today is the confused and confusing use of the same terms. New, strange meanings are given to words, so that those who speak them mean the exact opposite of what those words formerly stood for. Not many years ago a certain pagan ideology in Europe started a war and deceived many millions by confusing words, calling slavery liberty and liberty slavery. It is a tragic deception that one government uses the word democracy to denote free individual enterprise and another government employs exactly the same word to express a way of life so different and opposite that it would absolutely shut out all personal initiative. The Roman Church claims to be a chief defender of religious liberty, but this Roman Catholic freedom is only a freedom for an arrogant ecclesiastical tyranny in which the right of the individual to choose his faith and act according to his own conscience is strenuously denied. FSG 132.2

We have the same confusion of terms in the modern liberal use of the word inspiration. Certain religious leaders readily admit that the Bible is inspired, but so, say they, was Milton’s “Paradise Lost”? or Longfellow’s “A Psalm of Life” and thousands of other outstanding writings. They think of inspiration as the imagination or fervor of a poet or orator. In this sense we have heard men say that they thought the messages given by Mrs. White were inspired just as the writings of Bunyan or Wesley were inspired. Against this last assertion the Spirit of prophecy writings take strong stand, for it is far a field from the Bible doctrine of inspiration. FSG 133.1

Back in the eighties and early nineties, some among Adventists, influenced, we think, by the higher criticism then so popular, began to ask many questions about the inspiration and divine nature of the Bible messages. There was with a few at that time a skepticism in our high schools of a kind and to a degree that we have seldom known since. Teachers and ministers joined us who had had their educational training in the schools of other churches. Adventists today are known as Christians who build their message wholly on the Bible and protest earnestly against any scholarship or ministry that dissects or casts doubt on Holy Writ, claiming that some parts are fact and some only fancy. There have been those who were extreme in their ideas of inspiration. The messages from God caution against these. FSG 133.2

Some other thoughts in the Bible on inspiration should be noted. God spoke to Moses direct and face to face. Moses saw the speaker. God spoke audibly to others, such as Samuel, but without any physical manifestation. (1 Samuel 16:7, 12.) A large share of the revelations which came to the prophets of old, however, were given to them in visions or dreams. It is sometimes hard to distinguish between vision and dream in the Bible. They are at times spoken of as though they were the same. “Nebuchadnezzar dreamed dreams,” but the same “secret was revealed to Daniel in a night vision.” (Daniel 2:1, 19) Many years later “Daniel had a dream and visions of his head upon his bed: then he wrote the dream, and told the sum of the matters.” Daniel 7:1. He did not tell all the details he saw. The word sum in the text means leading thoughts or high points, as it is rendered in other translations. It should be added that visions seem to have one characteristic which dreams do not. In a vision a person is in a trance or in an ecstatic state. Paul declared that when he was in vision he did not know whether he was in the body or not. (2 Corinthians 12:2, 3.) FSG 133.3

Just how the faculties of the human mind are influenced or controlled by the Spirit of God when in vision is not revealed. We know but little about the origin of thought and cannot explain how the Lord gives visions or dreams. But this is clear: the person in vision sees the matters presented before him in the same manner that he would see them in actual life, perhaps even more clearly, and he hears the words spoken as distinctly as words would be heard in actual life. FSG 134.1