Chapter 5—An Explanation of Early Statements
An Answer to a Challenge
[
Soon after the republication in 1882 of the three earliest E. G. White
books, A Sketch of the Christian Experience and Views of Ellen G.
White, A Supplement to Experience and Views, and Spiritual Gifts,
vol. 1, all three of which today comprise Early Writings, certain
questions were raised concerning the completeness of some of the
articles and the significance of certain statements appearing here or in
still earlier published articles. Mrs. White answered these questions in
1883 in the following statement. Reference is made to the teachings
on the “shut door.” For another reference to the significance of the
“shut door” see
The Great Controversy, 429-432
.]
Compilers.
My attention has recently been called to a sixteen-page pamphlet
published by C, of Marion, Iowa, entitled Comparison of the Early
Writings of Mrs. White With Later Publications. The writer states that
portions of my earlier visions, as first printed, have been suppressed
in the work recently published under the title Early Writings of Mrs.
E. G. White, and he conjectures as a reason for such suppression that
these passages teach doctrines now repudiated by us as a people.
He also charges us with willful deception in representing Early
Writings as a complete republication of my earliest views, with only
verbal changes from the original work.
Before I notice separately the passages which are said to have been
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omitted, it is proper that several facts be stated. When my earliest views
were first published in pamphlet form, [
Reference is here made to the
24-page pamphlet “A Word to the Little Flock,” published by James
White in 1847, containing three Ellen G. White communications.—
Compilers.
] the edition was small, and was soon sold. This was in a
few years followed by a larger book, The Christian Experience and
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