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I feel compelled to ask @bob Ryan: how do you reconcile the above text with your avowed belief in the co-eternality and co-equality of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit? Is it the case that the coequality of the Father and the Logos is not itself eternal but temporal? Also, how can the above be reconciled with John 1:1-5, which clearly establishes that it was through the Son all things were made, which would include created beings like the archangels including the fallen archangel which became the devil*, so I fail to see why God would need to gather together various eternal beings to present His son to them. This also clashes with the concept of eternality itself, since God and the angels exist beyond time, how could this, as a discrete event in linear time, even happen? Every eternal being whose attendance was desired would have to temporarily enter into creation in order to receive such a revelation, but upon exiting and returning to eternity, the nature of eternity is such that the knowledge of the event would always have been known. Note that Psalms 90:4 and 2 Peter 3:8 correspond to the nature of eternity I am referring to.
*It must be stressed that the aforementioned writing is correct in that the downfall of the devil was according to his own choice, since God created him with free will, for to create beings without free will Is contrary, I would argue, to the idea of God as being purely loving, since free will is required in order for us to truly love God in the fullest sense of the word. Furthermore, I would argue that God being infinitely good does not create evil, but rather evil exists as a result of intelligent beings choosing not to love God but to set themselves against Him for various petulant, intransigent and self-centered reasons.
There is an ongoing debate to this day within Adventism in that while the fundamental beliefs now outline a more or less Trinitarian view, this was not the case with many of the pioneers. And some very conservative Adventists indicate that it was not for Ellen White either.
I should stress that the great majority of modern Adventists take a more Trinitarian view.
I would say that over time her statements certainly came closer to Trinitarian statements.
Here is a quote from MInistry Magazine, by an Adventist professor and historian, regarding the early SDA church:
Adventists and change
By saying that the Bible is our only creed, Adventism's founders revealed a profound understanding of the dynamic nature of present truth.
www.ministrymagazine.org
Most of the founders of Seventh-day Adventism would not be able to join the church today if they had to subscribe to the denomination's Fundamental Beliefs. 1
More specifically, most would not be able to agree to belief number 2, which deals with the doctrine of the Trinity. For Joseph Bates the Trinity was an unscriptural doctrine, for James White it was that "old Trinitarian absurdity," and for M. E. Cornell it was a fruit of the great apostasy, along with such false doctrines as Sunday-keeping and the immortality of the soul.2
In like manner, most of the founders of Seventh-day Adventism would have trouble with fundamental belief number 4, which holds that Jesus is both eternal and truly God. For J. N. Andrews "the Son of God ... had God for His Father, and did, at some point in the eternity of the past, have beginning of days." And E. J. Waggoner, of Minneapolis 1888 fame, penned in 1890 that "there was a time when Christ proceeded forth and came from God,... but that time was so far back in the days of eternity that to finite comprehension it is practically without beginning." 3
Neither could most of the leading Adventists have agreed with fundamental belief number 5, which implies the personhood of the Holy Spirit. Uriah Smith, for example, not only was anti- Trinitarian and semi-Arian, like so many of his colleagues, but also like them pictured the Holy Spirit as "that divine, mysterious emanation through which They [the Father and the Son] carry forward their great and infinite work." On another occasion, Smith pictured the Holy Spirit as a "divine influence" and not a "person like the Father and the Son."
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