- Apr 18, 2007
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My understanding of EGW has changed in the last year. I still held strictly to Bradford's understanding of inspiration for the longest time and considered EGW a prophetess who simply got things wrong. I still do hold to a lot of what Bradford asserts BTW. But I have come to realize he was just a crutch I was using in order to continue to hold her up as a prophetess. I felt like I was frantically trying to keep a mannequin together, desperately piecing the arms and legs back onto the body everytime they fell off, which was becoming quite often lately. And everytime I would attach one limb back on, another would fall off. I would then go and try to keep that one together and the one I previously attached fell off again. It was a maddening cycle that was sucking the joy out of my Adventism. I simply let the idealized image of EGW fall into a heap and gave up fighting to preserve it in the face of all of the evidence to the contrary I was encountering.
As a result of some of the things that I just cannot reconcile no matter how hard I try, I simply could not hold that she was a prophetess any longer. It was just not working for me anymore and the cognitive dissonance was getting too much for me to bear lately. There are just too many problems, discrepancies, contradictions, false prophecies, theological inaccuracies and outright unresolvable problems for me to uphold her in that fashion any longer. I have relegated her to nothing more than an inspirational, pastoral writer and that is where she will stay for the duration of my Adventist existence. That is the inesacapable conclusion I have now come to.
Thankfully, when my pastor baptized me, he did not require that I assent to belief in her as a prophetess and encouraged me to study the matter for myself. I have spent the last few years doing just that, and I have come to the conclusion that she was NOT a prophetess but rather a founder of the church, a devoted Christian woman with some good and inspirational things to say.
And that's it. Period dot com.
I just got tired of the mental and verbal gymnastics and ridiculous, desperate explanations, justifications and apologetics that went into trying to maintain this 'prophetess' premise. I felt like I had to be true to myself and just finally admit that I no longer accepted her in that role. There is just too much out there on the internet these days that blows this thing wide open to even remotely maintain she was a prophetess anymore. At least for me.
I had no more desire to keep the EGW/prophetess dream alive, and so I have finally let it die the miserable death it was always heading towards.
I have never felt so free. It's like a great burden has lifted from my shoulders.
I no longer have to push these nagging doubts and questions concerning her to the back of my mind to be dealt with later. Always later. But they just kept resurfacing until I was forced to finally meet it head-on and deal with it once and for all.
I made an appointment with my pastor a couple of days ago (who is a hard-core Graeme Bradford devotee) and informed him of this turn of events during the meeting in his office. He had no problems with it whatsoever and no, did NOT threaten to have me disfellowshipped and name removed from the books. He said that quite a few Adventists were coming to that conclusion and have been for years.
No big deal at all.
Of course, my pastor does not believe that belief in EGW as a prophetess is, or should be, a test of membership and that she should not be, ever.
Thanks to all who may have been praying for me during this struggle in the last year. I don't know how well I hid it, but it was probably obvious that I was getting pretty frustrated with the whole EGW matter and I was not getting answers that were satisfactory to me either on this forum or on the internet. I think a lot of my anger and hostility towards the Trads lately can be attributed to this war raging in my head. It was at the point where the question of her role as prophetess had to be reconciled in some way once and for all or I would lose my mind.
Now I can move along in my life without all of the baggage that comes with trying to hold to a flawed premise.
And it feels good!
As a result of some of the things that I just cannot reconcile no matter how hard I try, I simply could not hold that she was a prophetess any longer. It was just not working for me anymore and the cognitive dissonance was getting too much for me to bear lately. There are just too many problems, discrepancies, contradictions, false prophecies, theological inaccuracies and outright unresolvable problems for me to uphold her in that fashion any longer. I have relegated her to nothing more than an inspirational, pastoral writer and that is where she will stay for the duration of my Adventist existence. That is the inesacapable conclusion I have now come to.
Thankfully, when my pastor baptized me, he did not require that I assent to belief in her as a prophetess and encouraged me to study the matter for myself. I have spent the last few years doing just that, and I have come to the conclusion that she was NOT a prophetess but rather a founder of the church, a devoted Christian woman with some good and inspirational things to say.
And that's it. Period dot com.
I just got tired of the mental and verbal gymnastics and ridiculous, desperate explanations, justifications and apologetics that went into trying to maintain this 'prophetess' premise. I felt like I had to be true to myself and just finally admit that I no longer accepted her in that role. There is just too much out there on the internet these days that blows this thing wide open to even remotely maintain she was a prophetess anymore. At least for me.
I had no more desire to keep the EGW/prophetess dream alive, and so I have finally let it die the miserable death it was always heading towards.
I have never felt so free. It's like a great burden has lifted from my shoulders.
I no longer have to push these nagging doubts and questions concerning her to the back of my mind to be dealt with later. Always later. But they just kept resurfacing until I was forced to finally meet it head-on and deal with it once and for all.I made an appointment with my pastor a couple of days ago (who is a hard-core Graeme Bradford devotee) and informed him of this turn of events during the meeting in his office. He had no problems with it whatsoever and no, did NOT threaten to have me disfellowshipped and name removed from the books. He said that quite a few Adventists were coming to that conclusion and have been for years.
No big deal at all.
Of course, my pastor does not believe that belief in EGW as a prophetess is, or should be, a test of membership and that she should not be, ever.
Thanks to all who may have been praying for me during this struggle in the last year. I don't know how well I hid it, but it was probably obvious that I was getting pretty frustrated with the whole EGW matter and I was not getting answers that were satisfactory to me either on this forum or on the internet. I think a lot of my anger and hostility towards the Trads lately can be attributed to this war raging in my head. It was at the point where the question of her role as prophetess had to be reconciled in some way once and for all or I would lose my mind.
Now I can move along in my life without all of the baggage that comes with trying to hold to a flawed premise.
And it feels good!
