The texts of scripture most often employed by Ellen White and other Seventh-day Adventist writers in support of their view that the Lord Jesus Christ, in His earthly incarnation, took upon Himself the human nature of fallen man were:
First and foremost, Romans 8:3:
God, sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh.
They understood the words in the likeness of sinful flesh to be a literal description of the human flesh of the Saviour. They understood the word likeness to have been used in this passage in the same sense in which it was used in Philippines 2:7, made in the likeness of men, to indicate, not a surface or partial similarity, but a true and complete likeness, differing from ours only in that the flesh (nature) of Christ never became involved in sinning.
They understood condemned sin in the flesh to mean that Christ had lived a life without sin in sinful flesh in order to demonstrate that man, by using the same faith, trust, and God-dependency that He used, can successfully do the same thing. Thus at its very source their Christology (nature of Christ) was inseparably linked with their Soteriology (saving work of Christ). This scripture, Romans 8:3, was, by a wide margin, their most frequently quoted Christological text.
Other commonly employed texts were: (emphasis mine)
Concerning His Son Jesus Christ our Lord, which was made of the seed of David according to the flesh. (Romans 1:3)
For both He that sanctifieth and they who are sanctified are all of one: For which cause He is not ashamed to call them brethren. (Hebrews 2:11)
Forasmuch then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, He also Him self likewise took part of the same. (Hebrews 2:14)
For verily He took not on Him the nature of angels; but He took on Him the seed of Abraham. (Hebrews 2:16)
Wherefore in all things it behoved Him to be made like unto His brethren. (Hebrews 2:17)
These scriptures were seen as the interpretive keys to the correct understanding of the words of John:
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made. ... And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth. (John 1:1-3, 14)
They saw both Peter's ladder (2 Peter 1:4-8) and Jacob's ladder (Gen. 28:12-15) as symbols of the fallen nature that Christ assumed (see Ellen White in Bible Echo--Australian Signs of the Times, 12/14/1903, et. al.)[1] The point was often made, as in this quotation, that if Christ had not come in the fallen nature--sinful flesh of man--the bottom rung of Jacob's ladder would not have reached the earth, and man would have had no effective salvation.
Ellen White uses the symbolism of the brazen serpent erected by Moses in the wilderness as a representation of the sinful flesh assumed by Christ in His incarnation (Numbers 21:9, as in Desire of Ages, pp. 174-175, and Letter 55, 1895).[2] She points out that as the hand of Jesus received no pollution in touching the flesh of a leper, so Jesus received no pollution by coming to dwell in humanity, a statement that would be nonsensical if applied to the nature of the unfallen Adam. (See Ministry of Healing, p. 70.)[3]
Thus the Adventist pioneers saw themselves as adhering closely to the plain testimony of the scriptures in believing and teaching that Christ came to the earth in the human nature of fallen man.
They were also adhering closely to the teachings of Ellen White, whom they believed to be an inspired messenger sent by God to the commandment-keeping remnant church of Revelation 12:17. As we shall see, Ellen White had deep and strong convictions about the humanity of Jesus, which she expressed freely and fully in her many books and magazine articles.
Notes: