Ellen G. White and Her Critics

Ellen G. White

Copyright © 2018, Ellen G. White Estate, Inc.

Table of Contents

Information about this Book

Acknowledgments

Foreword

To the Reader of this Book

Chapter 1—Mrs. White and the Seventh-day Adventist Church

Chapter 2—A Life Sketch of Mrs. White

Chapter 3—Mrs. White, and Bible Prophets, in Vision

Chapter 4—Medical Facts Concerning Certain Nervous Maladies

Chapter 5—Certain Nervous-Disorder Proofs Examined

Chapter 6—What Do Adventists Claim for Mrs. White’s Writings?

Chapter 7—The Astronomy Vision

Chapter 8—The Predictions of the 1856 Vision

Chapter 9—The Civil War Predictions

Chapter 10—The Tower of Babel

Chapter 11—“No Antidote” for Strychnine

Chapter 12—The Reform Dress

Chapter 13—A Sketch of Early Adventist History

Chapter 14—The Shut-Door Charge Examined

Chapter 15—Mrs. White Taught That Probation Still Lingers

Chapter 16—Time Setting—The Seven-Year Theory

Chapter 17—Did Mrs. White Suppress Some of Her Writings?

Chapter 18—The Image Beast and 666

Chapter 19—Mrs. White’s Attitude Toward Other Churches

Chapter 20—“Amalgamation of Man and Beast”

Chapter 21—“Rome Alone”—An Alleged Contradiction

Chapter 22—The Ignorant Slave—Slavery Until Second Advent

Chapter 23—Did God Deceive the Advent Movement in 1843?

Chapter 24—Did Mrs. White Break a Promise?

Chapter 25—The Time to Begin the Sabbath

Chapter 26—Did Mrs. White Contradict Herself Regarding Sabbathkeeping?

Chapter 27—Mrs. White’s Teachings on Healthful Living

Chapter 28—Mrs. White’s Literary Borrowings

Chapter 29—That Threatened Lawsuit

Chapter 30—Literary Borrowings and Inspiration

Chapter 31—Did Mrs. White’s Secretaries Write Her Books?

Chapter 32—Was Mrs. White “Influenced to Write Testimonies”?

Chapter 33—Mrs. White’s Financial Affairs

Chapter 34—In Conclusion

APPENDIXES

BIBLIOGRAPHY

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Overview

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About the Author

Ellen G. White (1827-1915) is considered the most widely translated American author, her works having been published in more than 160 languages. She wrote more than 100,000 pages on a wide variety of spiritual and practical topics. Guided by the Holy Spirit, she exalted Jesus and pointed to the Scriptures as the basis of one’s faith.

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By Francis D. Nichol [5]

Acknowledgments

To mention by name every person who has helped, in some way, to make this book possible, would carry us quite beyond the bounds of space usually assigned to acknowledgments. And even then the limitations of memory would prevent the total from being complete. There were those who supplied perhaps only a date, or an old pamphlet, but their contribution was often of great worth. Then there was that wide and diversified group of men and women in different lands who took time from their busy labors to read the manuscript. The value of their criticisms and suggestions I do not attempt to compute, but it was large. Here apply the words of Holy Writ: “In the multitude of counsellors there is safety.”

As stated on the title page, this work was “prepared under the direction and sponsorship of the Defense Literature Committee.” The personnel of that committee during the period of the preparation of this book included the following: M. E. Kern,* chairman, D. E. Robinson,* secretary, A. W. Cormack, M. K. Eckenroth,* W. P. Elliott, L. E. Froom, J. D. Livingston, H. W. Lowe, J. L. McElhany, J. W. McFarland, F. D. Nichol, W. E. Read,* D. E. Rebok, J. I. Robison, A. L. White,* L. H. Wood, F. H. Yost.*

To the members of this committee I wish to express my sincere thanks, especially to those whose names are starred (*). The latter constituted a subcommittee, with which I had the privilege of associating, that made an initial, detailed study of the leading charges against Mrs. White and suggested the preparation of the present volume. This subcommittee also examined the manuscript in great detail in the various revisions through which a book like this must go before it is ready for publication. Only those who write reference works can have any adequate idea of the value to an author of such a group as this.

To the following members of the committee I wish very particularly to acknowledge my indebtedness:

To J. L. McElhany, president of the General Conference from 1936 to 1950. Despite the endless claims upon his hours, he was ever [6] ready to take time to give counsel and eminently worth-while suggestions in regard to the preparation of this work, and to write the foreword to it.

To A. L. White, secretary of the Ellen G. White Publications, and to D. E. Robinson, associate secretary. Their constant helpfulness in the matter of providing source material and verifying quotations, dates, and documents, greatly lightened my task.

To L. E. Froom, who is well versed in early Seventh-day Adventist history, for his reading of chapter 13.

The only surviving member of the original Board of Trustees created in 1915 to care for the writings of Mrs. E. G. White, is Francis M. Wilcox, for many years editor of the church paper, the Review and Herald. His constructive criticisms and his reading of the entire work, both in manuscript and in galley form, make me greatly his debtor.

The first section of this work deals with the question: Were Mrs. White’s Visions Due to Nervous Disorders? The answer includes a discussion of current medical views on certain mental and emotional disorders. I am deeply obligated to the following for their reading of this section of the manuscript: Charles L. Anderson, M.D., Charles T. Batten, M.D., Arthur L. Bietz, Ph.D., Cyril B. Courville, M.D., Harrison Evans, M.D.; George T. Harding, M.D., L. A. Senseman, M.D., Harold Shryock, M.D.

To Harold M. Walton, M.D., my thanks for his special reading of the section on the health teachings of Mrs. White.

My thanks also to L. C. Smith, senior attorney, Copyright Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C., for his authoritative information that made possible the framing of the copyright statement on 454.

For the improvements in the book in its toilsome and sometimes halting journey from the lowland of manuscript to the summit of publication, I thank all these and others who might still be named.

F. D. N. [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] [13]

Foreword

By J. L. McElhany

Ellen G. White and Her Critics is, as every reader will readily discover, a book of outstanding and unusual character. It has been written with a special group of readers in mind. Since the death of Mrs. E. G. White, in 1915, the membership of the Seventh-day Adventist Church has practically quadrupled, and the number of workers has increased by more than ten thousand.

Most of these have had no personal acquaintance with Mrs. White. Some of our older workers and members still cherish the personal contacts they had with her. It was my personal privilege to grow to manhood and enter the ministry during the years she was still actively laboring. As a youth I often listened to her public addresses, and later as a worker was often present at camp meetings, workers’ meetings, and general gatherings where she was present and took part. I also conversed with her personally. These experiences, coupled with my study of her writings through the years, have built into my mind and soul a profound conviction that God had called her to exercise the prophetic gift in the remnant church. She was a godly woman. She lived a consistent Christian life which was a living exemplification of the principles she taught and that were revealed to and through her.

It is fitting indeed that the thousands of our workers who never had the personal privilege or opportunity of knowing Mrs. White should have access to the information presented in this volume. To provide them with this information is a service due them. It is not necessary or fitting that Mrs. White’s critics should alone occupy the field of discussion.

Elder Nichol has had wide approval of leaders and workers in undertaking the preparation of this book. By writing it he has [14] rendered all our ministers, workers, and members an outstanding service. His well-known ability to gather facts and present them in logical and convincing form makes of this work a valuable addition to our denominational literature. It will prove to be a source book for our workers, enabling them to meet the charges of the critics. The author was urged to make this volume large and complete enough to cover the field under discussion. A smaller volume would hardly suffice.

In all ages there have been those who assumed the role of Sanballat and Tobiah, who are set forth as outstanding examples of that class of men who by their criticisms and obstructionist tactics have sought to hinder the work of God. The whole effort of such men has been to tear down the cause of God and hinder and oppose those who sought to carry it forward. But truth is positive and even aggressive. Truth does not surrender the field to its enemies. Those who proclaim the truth must also be its defenders. To do otherwise would be cowardly.

In the present instance it is of the utmost importance that the factual evidence regarding the life and labors of Mrs. E. G. White be supplied to all who will be benefited by such information. There are thousands of our workers and tens of thousands of our members who will heartily welcome the help this work will bring to them. It has been with all these in mind that our church leaders have urged that this volume be published. The history of God’s work in all ages reveals the interesting and consoling fact that He uses devoted men to resist and overthrow the efforts of detractors and critics. The critics today who unite their efforts in attempting to destroy the work of Mrs. White will as surely fail in their designs as have the critics of the Bible. Her work will continue to bear fruit in the saving of souls for the kingdom of God and in the exaltation of our Lord Jesus, whom she loved and faithfully served.

May the blessing of God rest upon Elder Nichol’s valued contribution in the defense of the Spirit of prophecy as manifested in this church body through the ministry of Ellen G. White. [15] From the Author

To the Reader of this Book

Throughout almost the whole lifetime of the Seventh-day Adventist movement, which sprang out of the interdenominational Advent movement of the early 1840’s, there have been in circulation various charges and accusations against Mrs. E. G. White. As the opening chapter will reveal, she has played a unique and most important role in the life of the church. The charges against her run the gamut from an accusation that she was a designing woman who foisted upon her followers the plagiarized thoughts of others, to the condescendingly pitying contention that she was a self-deluded hysteric who sincerely thought she had visions.

The very fact that these charges are in almost constant circulation tends in itself to create a considerable dust, and that dust tends, in turn, to obscure the heavenly road for some of the Advent travelers, and to distort, grotesquely, the movement for those who look on, and whom we wish to have travel with us the upward road.

The pages of the church paper through a century have, from time to time, contained vigorous articles in refutation of these attacks upon the character, conduct, and teachings of Mrs. White. It is evident from the record that our spiritual fathers believed that in taking this militant stand in her defense they were defending something central to the whole movement. They did not hesitate on occasion even to bring out special numbers of the Review and Herald that featured a defense of her.[1]

Two Kinds of Charges

Two kinds of charges have been brought against Mrs. White: (1) That she contradicts the Bible in certain doctrinal teachings. (2) That in various ways in her life and conduct and counsel she

[1]For example, The Review and Herald Supplement, August 14, 1883, and The Review and Herald Extra, December, 1887. The latter contained as much matter as would be found in a small book.

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fails to measure up to the specifications of a true prophet. There is inevitably some overlapping.

The first has not been considered at any length in this book, for the simple reason that such charges have been adequately considered in a wide array of Adventist books. Mrs. White’s teachings on doctrine are those held by Seventh-day Adventists. Thus the defense of our teachings, as found in our denominational works, is really a defense of Mrs. White, even as it is a defense of the doctrinal soundness of every other person who believes and promotes those beliefs.

Questions of Fact Considered

I have addressed myself primarily to the second kind of charge, which, incidentally, constitutes the bulk of the accusations against her. For example, Did Mrs. White suppress abandoned views? Did she plagiarize? Did she give foolish counsel on a reform dress? These are questions of fact. In answer, the facts have been presented—all the facts that bear on the questions. Effort has been made to refute the charges against Mrs. White in terms of documented evidence placed in true historical context. And by this means it is hoped not only to quash the indictments against her but to make her counsels and conduct stand out as eminently reasonable and consistent with what would be expected of a messenger of God. In other words, I have sought to give a positive quality to the treatment of what might at first blush seem to be merely a negative undertaking.

In setting forth the various charges against Mrs. White I have generally given a composite of the critics’ arguments. When their exact words have been used quotation marks have been employed, though references have not been given. Those who have read the works of critics and turn to this book for answers will have little trouble in discovering the source of the quoted portions in the charges listed in the following chapters. They will also note that D. M. Canright is often cited.[2] This is because he first and

[2]See Appendix A, p. 537, for a historical note on Canright.

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most fully set forth in print the major accusations against Mrs. White. Others have largely copied from him.

In the very nature of the case this book cannot wholly escape having a controversial overtone, for it meets face to face the militant and, I regret to say, sometimes malicious charges that have been brought against Mrs. White and Seventh-day Adventists. This overtone has been suppressed as far as possible, but there are limits. Charges must be plainly stated and answers must be plainly given if the book is to meet its intended purpose.

When the word “critic” is used throughout this book—and it has been frequently used—reference is made to that kind of person who has frankly set out to attack some feature of Mrs. White’s life and writings. There are others, sincere but troubled in mind, who have expressed perplexities and sometimes doubts but who honestly wish to know the facts and are ready to listen to an explanation such as is here presented.

Limitations to Facts, Evidence, and Logic

I am well aware that there are limitations to the power of facts, evidence, and logic to meet charges and remove doubts. Anyone who has written in defense of the Bible will agree with this. There are two reasons: (1) We cannot always be certain as to what the Bible writer meant; because the passage may be obscure, the historical context uncertain. (2) The mind is more often the servant than the master of man’s emotions and prejudices. How else can we explain, for example, the refusal of the scribes and Pharisees to believe in Christ, who gave the most convincing proofs of His divinity, or the inability of skeptics to see in the pages of Holy Writ any evidence of the supernatural?

In this setting can be better understood the following words from Mrs. White in regard to belief in the divine origin of her writings:

“Those who desire to doubt will have plenty of room. God does not propose to remove all occasion for unbelief. He gives evidence, which must be carefully investigated with a humble mind and a teachable spirit, and all should decide from the weight of evidence.”—ELLEN G. WHITE, Testimonies for the Church 3:255, 2 [18]

“God gives sufficient evidence for the candid mind to believe; but he who turns from the weight of evidence because there are a few things which he cannot make plain to his finite understanding, will be left in the cold, chilling atmosphere of unbelief and questioning doubts, and will make shipwreck of faith.”—Testimonies for the Church 4:232, 233.

To provide that “sufficient evidence” on which to decide the questions and charges at issue is the purpose of this work.

Explaining the Mysterious

However, I do not hope to be able to prove, as one would a proposition in mathematics, that Mrs. White was what Seventh-day Adventists believe she was, a spokesman for God. That cannot be done even for the prophets of the Bible. Indeed, who can prove beyond all cavil and question that there is a personal God? Who can hope by searching to find out the nature of God? In all matters that touch the world beyond, an element of mystery is involved, a mystery that exists because of our finite limitations of understanding. The trusting Christian, if left unchallenged in his faith, is happy to go forward in his life’s program, admitting the element of mystery that transcends him. In fact he finds in this mystery, which does not contradict his reason but simply goes beyond it, the best ground for faith in God—for a God no greater than ourselves would be no God at all.

But the Christian has never long been allowed to enjoy that faith unchallenged. There have ever been those who would attempt to destroy the Christian faith at one blow, not by demanding that the believer explain the mystery, but by cynically declaring that there is no mystery to explain, that all that seems mysterious can be explained in terms of natural phenomena operating according to natural law. For example, the skeptic, instead of believing Christ for the very works’ sake, declares that these miraculous works can be explained either as deceptive sleight-of-hand performances or in some other natural way, or simply as legends.

When the issue is thus drawn the Christian, whose business it is to witness for God and to win converts to the faith, must either desert the field in defeat, exposed as a superstitious, credulous [19] fraud, or else immediately challenge the skeptic. The latter course is the One that defenders of the faith have consistently followed through the centuries. They have challenged the naturalistic explanation of God and Christ and the work of Bible prophets, and have shown that the skeptics’ explanations do not explain. Thus the defenders of Christianity have cleared the air by the very act of restoring the mystery. They are now ready to call on men to draw near once more to contemplate the mystery, and to give their allegiance to Him who is the only true explanation of that mystery.

In harmony with these precedents I have proceeded in my examination of the charges against Mrs. White. Nothing here presented will remove the element of mystery in her visions, but rather the reverse. The logic of her critics’ charges is that she belongs either in the hospital as a pathetic mental case or in jail as a cunning deceiver. They would explain all her visions on a nonsupernatural basis. But the evidence set forth in the following pages will show that the critics’ explanations do not explain. I have sought to clear the air by restoring the mystery, so that the reader may see that Mrs. White rightly belongs on the mountain of God in the company of those who have heard and then made audible the counsels of God to men.

Selecting Charges for Answer

In planning this book I have been confronted by the same question that confronts the writer of a work in defense of the Bible; namely, What charges shall be considered? No book would be large enough to deal with all the charges, small and great, relevant and irrelevant, that have been brought against the Bible. The defender of Scripture must decide which are impressive sounding, representative, and currently prominent. On these he focuses, and all his readers who are sincerely seeking for light conclude that if he has answered these satisfactorily the case for the Bible is proved. Or at least that it is not worth spending time on the other charges.

Even so with this present undertaking. Listed here for answer [20] are all the charges against Mrs. White which are currently prominent, representative, and impressive sounding. For good measure several have been added that cannot thus qualify. In deciding on this list I have been aided materially by Mrs. White’s critics. An examination of their varied writings enables one quickly to see what charges they have focused on through the years. I have been aided even more effectively by the office of the Ellen G. White Publications, which naturally is acquainted with all the major charges that critics constantly present. All these are included in the list examined in this book. Sincere, reasonable readers will not ask more than this, and it is for such that this work has been written.

What benefit these pages may prove to the reader can only be hopefully surmised. But this I know with certainty, and offer it here as a personal testimony: After examining all the major charges against Mrs. White, I rise from the task with a greatly strengthened conviction that she was, as she herself modestly yet confidently affirmed, a frail handmaiden of the Almighty to whom were given divine visions and revelations, that indeed there was manifested in her life the great power of God. May all who read this book reach the same soul-satisfying conclusion.

Washington, D.C.
January, 1951. [21]

Chapter 1—Mrs. White and the Seventh-day Adventist Church

There are two distinguishing marks of the Seventh-day Adventist Church that set it apart as nothing else could. The first is this: The belief that this church arose at a prophetically appointed time to accomplish a last work for God that was foretold by the prophets.

An attack upon this belief is a blow at the very heart of Seventh-day Adventism. This, its critics have not been slow to see. That explains why there has been an incessant attack upon the record of its early formative years, the 1840’s, when the great Advent Awakening in America stirred the whole land, and lands beyond. If it could be proved that Seventh-day Adventists sprang from a wildly fanatical, ascension-robed religious rabble, our declaration that God raised us up would sound fantastic, even sacrilegious.

To attempt to escape the attacks by moving off the historical foundation would be only to surrender our claim to justification for launching a distinctive church. That is why the rugged pioneers of the Seventh-day Adventist Church struck back vigorously and unceasingly at such untruthful and libelous attacks.[3]

The historical sketch in chapter 13 will present a picture of a disappointed company of some 50,000 persons who, under Millerite[4] preaching, had expected the Lord to come on October 22, 1844. We shall then see a penniless little group that withdrew from the once-large Adventist body. On their heads was the derision that had descended on all Adventists, and to that was added the harsh criticism of their former fellow believers and of

[3]The pages of the Review and Herald, mouthpiece of the movement virtually since its beginning, contain numerous articles that expose the groundless nature of the charges brought against the character and conduct of the Advent believers in the 1840’s.

[4]From William Miller, who led out in the Advent Awakening in America in the 1840’s. It is hardly correct to speak of the Millerite movement beyond the 1840’s.

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others, because they began to preach the sacredness of the seventh-day Sabbath. And as if that were not enough to bring to them a sense of complete discouragement and defeat, they had to contend with that curse of all religious awakenings, the fanatical type of individual, who attempts to take over the confidence and control of newly forming companies of believers. Onlookers in the late 1840’s, and for some time beyond, dismissed this little Sabbath-keeping Adventist group as a ragtag end of a raveled-out movement that would soon be nothing more than a curious paragraph in the history books.

Onlookers today do not thus dismiss Seventh-day Adventists, and for good reason. They are now found in every part of the world, numbering nearly a million, despite their strict rules for membership. Schools, publishing houses, and hospitals in numerous lands attest also the growth and strength of this religious body.

But little do these onlookers know of the hard upward path the Seventh-day Adventist movement has traveled since the 1840’s—the grinding poverty, the ridicule from each side of that path, the enticements of fanatics to turn from it, and the not infrequent shortsightedness of leaders who seemed content to allow the Advent pilgrimage to drag its steps when it ought to have been ever quickening its pace toward the immediate goal of world missions, and the ultimate goal of heaven.

And how shall we explain the growth, the unity, the vigorous work of missions, education, publishing, and medicine, that mark the Advent movement and that evoke commendation and praise, even if sometimes grudgingly, from those who look on? We say, of course, that the good hand of our God has been upon us. But God works through particular agencies in displaying His goodness.

The Second Distinguishing Mark

That brings us directly to the second of the two distinguishing marks that set the Advent movement apart as nothing else could: The belief that God gave to this movement, in harmony with the forecast of prophecy, a manifestation of the prophetic gift in the person and writings of Mrs. E. G. White. We believe not only that [23] our feet stand on the solid rock of the Scriptures but also that God gave to us a special guide to help us to keep our feet on the solid path and moving straight forward to the kingdom. That God should have given to us such audible, personal aid, is to us a manifestation of His gracious care. Indeed, we view it as a direct fulfillment of the apostle John’s prediction that the “remnant” elect of God, traveling the last treacherous miles of time, would have in their midst the gift of “the spirit of prophecy.” (See Revelation 12:17 and 19:10. See also Appendix B, p. 543.)

No one can read the history of this Advent people without being repeatedly and forcefully impressed with the fact that it has ever been the counsels of Mrs. White, as she spoke by inspiration, that have guided and steadied the movement. It was her voice more than all others that built morale and courage into the souls of that poverty-stricken group of Sabbathkeepers a century ago. It was her voice in vigorous tones of rebuke that silenced fanatics. It was her voice that ever called the Advent believers on to more diligent Bible study, to holier living, reproving and reviving them when they failed. It was her voice that could ever be heard more clearly than that of any other leader, calling for evangelism, and challenging the movement on to world missions. And it was her voice, often heard alone, that called insistently and persuasively for schools, publishing houses, and a unique kind of medical institutions with which to carry on a Heaven-appointed task.

This is not rhetoric, it is demonstrable fact. The thousands of pages of Mrs. White’s writings clearly establish how great a part she played in creating the policies and directing the course of the Advent movement.

After one hundred years the different Adventist bodies—other than Seventh-day Adventists—that stemmed from the Millerite movement of the early 1840’s total less than 50,000 members, which is no more than the total of Advent believers in 1844. Not long ago we enjoyed a delightful fellowship of a few days with an aged, saintly leader in one of these Adventist bodies. He spoke of the expansion of Seventh-day Adventists, their schools, publishing houses, medical institutions, and then he added: “Your men were [24] more farsighted than ours and laid better plans.” We replied: “No, our men were no wiser than yours, but we had a frail handmaiden of the Lord in our midst who declared that by visions from God she saw what we should do and how we should plan for the future.” No other explanation could, in truth, have been offered for the vitality, distinctiveness, and foresight revealed in connection with the growth of the Seventh-day Adventist movement over the world.

Mrs. White Described Briefly

What manner of person was this Mrs. White, who lived from 1827 to 1915, and who early came into a position of leadership though she never held an office in the church? Was she a woman of university tutoring, with influential connections? Did she have amazing vitality, and did she possess that charm and beauty of person that history frequently presents as the explanation of the domination of a kingdom by a woman?

She would seem to need all these in order to explain the varied activities and successes that attended her labors. Her books have been the inspiration of countless thousands both without and within the Advent movement. Those who have no interest in, and no knowledge of, Adventists often refer to the spiritual power and beauty of her writings. When she spoke from the platform she often held thousands spellbound. Her tireless traveling, her incessant preaching, her endless writing, often starting at two or three o’clock in the morning, would suggest that she must have had a constitution of iron. Her appeal to the hearts of the church membership, her success in directing the thinking of committees and boards of directors, might easily suggest to the average mind that she was in all probability possessed of a magnetic personality and charm.

But what are the facts? Briefly these: Her formal schooling was limited to a few grades. She was not strong, physically; in fact, she was so frail as a girl, because of a grave injury when she was nine years old, that her plans for education had virtually to be abandoned, and her life was often despaired of. She lived to an advanced age but never became robust. Though she was of benevolent [25] countenance, there was nothing particularly prepossessing about her appearance.

Here is, indeed, a singular phenomenon, which calls for an explanation. Mrs. White explained it by declaring that God gave to her visions that enlightened her mind as to what the Advent people should do. And in this explanation all Seventh-day Adventists concur. Using the inspired rule, “By their fruits ye shall know them,” we affirm in unison that the visions give clear evidence of a divine origin. And we firmly insist that the pattern and the progress of the Advent movement are largely due to those visions. Note that we do not say that the visions explain the primary possession by Adventists of certain distinctive beliefs. The record is clear that the doctrinal beliefs grew out of extended Bible study on the part of the pioneers—the doctrinal foundation of the Advent movement is the Bible.

The two chapters immediately following give a sketch of her life and her visions. It would be much more satisfying to this author to devote the whole book to biography, but two reasons preclude this: (1) Others have written at length on the character and fruitage of Mrs. White’s work, and their writings are currently available.[5] (2) The real purpose of this book is not to affirm the writer’s belief in Mrs. White, or the belief of the denomination in her gift, but to answer specific charges that have been brought against her.

To this task we now address ourselves. And first we shall examine the most basic of all the charges, that Mrs. White’s visions can be explained as simply a display of nervous disorders.

[5]See, for example: L. H. Christian, The Fruitage of Spiritual Gifts; A. G. Daniells, The Abiding Gift of Prophecy; C. B. Haynes, The Gift of Prophecy; W. A. Spicer, The Spirit of Prophecy in the Advent Movement; F. M. Wilcox, The Testimony of Jesus.

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Chapter 2—A Life Sketch of Mrs. White

Were Mrs. White’s Visions Due To Nervous Disorders? Part I

Charge: Mrs. White’s so-called visions were simply the result of nervous disorders. She suffered a blow on the head from a stone thrown at her at the age of nine that affected her nervous system. Medical works in the sections entitled “Hysteria,” “Epilepsy,” and “Schizophrenia” describe her case exactly. Physicians who knew her well also thus described her.

It is through visions that God communicates with His prophets. If certain singular manifestations in the experience of an individual, which he claims are visions, are explainable on purely natural grounds, his claim to be the possessor of the prophetic gift collapses.

The favorite method by which critics of all things heavenly, including the Bible, have tried to prove their case is by attempting to show that the supernatural incidents described in Holy Writ can be explained on a physical or material basis; for example, that Paul’s experience on the road to Damascus was simply an epileptic fit.

This charge against Mrs. White was first formulated in 1887 by D. M. Canright shortly after he left the Adventist ministry. Through the years he amplified the charge, and from him almost all other critics of Mrs. White have drawn. He charged that she was afflicted with “a complication of hysteria, epilepsy, catalepsy and ecstasy.” He focused almost exclusively on the first two, however, for the last two have a dubious status in medical literature as distinct disease entities.

Attention should be called, at the outset, to two primary weaknesses in this charge as it has been made through the years: [27]

1. The medical authorities quoted as proofs are almost invariably works current at the opening of the twentieth century, or earlier. But most of what is certainly known today in the field of mental maladies has been acquired since that date, and has greatly revised our ideas of mental maladies.

2. A diagnosis has been reached simply by examining a few isolated incidents in Mrs. White’s life, so-called symptoms of mental disorder, without considering her whole case history, or her life history, as the layman would say. The first step that a reputable psychiatrist takes when confronted with a person who seems to display symptoms of abnormality is to secure a case history. If the case is at all unusual, he would not even attempt a diagnosis without this history. Hysteria, for example, is not simply a group of symptoms; it is a group of interrelated symptoms in a particular individual, who because of this malady is a distinctive kind of personality. The different symptoms are like so many brush strokes; together they serve to produce a certain picture, with a certain hue. Different color combinations produce different pictures, even though the ultimately different pictures may seem to the untrained eye to contain many similarities in the colors applied by the brush strokes. Who of us has not seen an artist on the public platform making stroke after stroke on a sketch, and constantly causing us to change our idea of what he was painting, as he added a color here or a line there? We were able to draw a correct conclusion as to the picture he was creating only when all the lines and all the tints had been applied. Thus with the diagnosis of a case in the field of psychiatry.

In our examination of this charge we shall:

1. Give a case history—a life sketch—of Mrs. White.

2. Set forth the facts concerning her condition in vision, and compare this condition with that of Bible prophets.

3. Present certain currently known facts about epilepsy, hysteria, and schizophrenia.

4. Examine certain evidence and medical testimony that are alleged to prove that Mrs. White was abnormal. [28]

Her Life an Open Book

The description of Mrs. White’s life that we shall briefly give is drawn mostly from Seventh-day Adventist publications, largely her autobiographical sketches, which are available to the public. No one, so far as we have been able to discover, has challenged the published description of her life.

If Mrs. White was an epileptic, a hysteric, or a schizophrenic, with the personality and characteristics that belong to such people, there would surely be many incidents in her life, if the facts concerning them were known, that would prove embarrassing. Yet Adventists have never sought to hide any facts concerning her. We hardly could have done so if we had tried. For seventy years she was before the public, and thus her life, like that of most other public personages, was an open book. From that open book both friend and foe alike can draw. But how meager indeed is the evidence on which to build even the appearance of a case against her! That fact is significant. We wish now to show that when the fuller picture of her life is presented the bits of so-called evidence lose whatever apparent weight they had.

Mrs. E. G. White, born Ellen Gould Harmon, began life at Gorham, Maine, November 26, 1827. While she was a small child her parents moved to Portland, Maine. At the age of nine she was struck in the face by a stone thrown at her by another school girl. She bled profusely, lay in coma for three weeks, and seemed about to die. But she slowly recovered a measure of health. In her autobiography she thus comments on this experience:

“For two years I could not breathe through my nose. My health was so poor that I could attend school but little. It was almost impossible for me to study, and retain what I learned....

“I had a bad cough, which prevented me from attending school steadily. My teacher thought it would be too much for me to study, unless my health should be better, and advised me to leave school.”—ELLEN G. WHITE, Spiritual Gifts 2:11, 12 (1860).

Her own account of her childhood years, immediately following the accident, reveals her as exceedingly frail; in fact her health was so poor that she did not attend school after she was twelve [29] years old. She complained of a bad cough. She was deeply religious, and refers to the effect produced on her by the preaching of the doctrine of hell fire: “The horrors of an eternally burning hell were ever before me.”—Life Sketches of Ellen G. White, 32. She tells of praying for long hours in great anguish.

This was her experience when she was not more than fourteen or fifteen years old. About this time she talked with a kindly minister who spoke to her of the love of God, and her fears were greatly relieved.

Her First Deeply Spiritual Experience

She then joined with others in a prayer meeting conducted at the home of a relative:

“As I prayed, the burden and agony of soul that I had so long endured, left me, and the blessing of the Lord descended upon me like the gentle dew. I praised God from the depths of my heart. Everything seemed shut out from me but Jesus and His glory, and I lost consciousness of what was passing around me.

“The Spirit of God rested upon me with such power that I was unable to go home that night. When I awakened to realization, I found myself cared for in the house of my uncle, where we had assembled for the prayer meeting. Neither my uncle nor my aunt enjoyed religion, although the former had once made a profession, but had since backslidden. I was told that he had been greatly disturbed while the power of God rested upon me in so special a manner, and had walked the floor, sorely troubled and distressed in his mind.

“When I was first struck down, some of those present were greatly alarmed, and were about to run for a physician, thinking that some sudden and dangerous indisposition had attacked me; but my mother bade them let me alone, for it was plain to her, and to the other experienced Christians, that it was the wondrous power of God that had prostrated me. When I did return home, on the following day, a great change had taken place in my mind. It seemed to me that I could hardly be the same person that left my father’s house the previous evening....

“Faith now took possession of my heart. I felt an inexpressible love for God, and had the witness of His Spirit that my sins were pardoned. My views of the Father were changed. I now looked upon Him as a kind and tender parent, rather than a stern tyrant compelling men to a blind obedience. My heart went out toward Him in a deep and fervent love. Obedience to His will seemed a joy; it was a pleasure to be in His service....

“My peace and happiness were in such marked contrast with my former [30] gloom and anguish that it seemed to me as if I had been rescued from hell and transported to heaven. I could even praise God for the misfortune that had been the trial of my life, for it had been the means of fixing my thoughts upon eternity.[6] Naturally proud and ambitious, I might not have been inclined to give my heart to Jesus had it not been for the sore affliction that had cut me off, in a manner, from the triumphs and vanities of the world.”—Life Sketches of Ellen G. White, 38, 39.[7]

She, with other members of her family, accepted William Miller’s preaching on the Second Advent of Christ. Of the year preceding the expected Advent, she wrote: “This was the happiest year of my life.”—Life Sketches of Ellen G. White, 59.

Her First Vision

About two months after the disappointment of October 22, 1844, she had her first vision.[8] She introduces her account of what she saw, with this brief statement:

“I was visiting Mrs. Haines at Portland, a dear sister in Christ, whose heart was knit with mine; five of us, all women, were kneeling quietly at the family altar. While we were praying, the power of God came upon me as I had never felt it before.”—Life Sketches of Ellen G. White, 64.

About a week later she had a second vision:

“The Lord gave me a view of the trials through which I must pass, and told me that I must go and relate to others what He had revealed to me....

“After I came out of this vision I was exceedingly troubled, for it pointed out my duty to go out among the people and present the truth. My health was so poor that I was in constant bodily suffering, and to all appearance had but a short time to live. I was only seventeen years of age, small and frail, unused to society, and naturally so timid and retiring that it was painful for me to meet strangers.”—Life Sketches of Ellen G. White, 69.

She struggled against this call to go out and tell others what she had seen in vision:

“I coveted death as a release from the responsibilities that were crowding

[6]The “misfortune” was the accident of being struck with a stone that broke her nose and thus somewhat disfigured her.

[7]For persons to be prostrated in connection with deeply religious services was not uncommon in the early nineteenth century. Prominent evangelists often noted the fact and referred to those thus laid low as “the slain of the Lord.”

[8]This date is established by Mrs. White’s statement in a letter to Joseph Bates, written from Gorham, Maine, July 13, 1847.

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upon me. At length the sweet peace I had so long enjoyed left me, and despair again pressed upon my soul.”—Life Sketches of Ellen G. White, 70.

She seems to have found some release from this distress of soul in connection with an earnest prayer service, in which a number of persons engaged.

Though exceedingly young, she revealed an amazing understanding of the temptations that trouble the human heart. Said she:

“One great fear that had oppressed me was that if I obeyed the call of duty, and went out declaring myself to be one favored of the Most High with visions and revelations for the people, I might yield to sinful exaltation, and be lifted above the station that was right for me to occupy, bring upon myself the displeasure of God, and lose my own soul. I had known of such cases, and my heart shrank from the trying ordeal.

“I now entreated that if I must go and relate what the Lord had shown me, I should be preserved from undue exaltation. Said the angel: ‘Your prayers are heard, and shall be answered. If this evil that you dread threatens you, the hand of God will be stretched out to save you; by affliction He will draw you to Himself, and preserve your humility.’”—Life Sketches of Ellen G. White, 71, 72.

Her Public Ministry Begins

Then began, almost immediately, a public ministry of preaching, counseling, and writing, that was to continue for seventy years in rather steadily increasing volume, or until almost the time of her death, in 1915. Her first speaking appointment away from Portland, was in Poland, Maine, thirty miles from her home. Of this she wrote:

“For three months my throat and lungs had been so diseased that I could talk but little, and that in a low and husky tone. On this occasion I stood up in meeting and commenced to speak in a whisper. I continued thus for about five minutes, when the soreness and obstruction left me, my voice became clear and strong, and I spoke with perfect ease and freedom for nearly two hours. When my message was ended, my voice was gone until I again stood before the people, when the same singular restoration was repeated. I felt a constant assurance that I was doing the will of God, and saw marked results attending my efforts.”—Life Sketches of Ellen G. White, 72, 73.

The first years of her public ministry were, in some respects, the hardest of all. Not only was she young and frail and unaccustomed to public life, but she had behind her no well-knit church [32] organization to give to her either financial or moral support. She began to preach in the days immediately following the great disappointment of the Advent believers. The once-large united company, who had been joyfully looking for their Lord to return, had created no church organization during the brief years of their anticipation, and in their disappointment naturally tended to fall apart into diverse groups, perplexed, bewildered, and sometimes contentious. When they met together in different places it was generally in homes, though sometimes in rented halls. Nor was there any paid ministry to care for these different companies of believers.

Under such conditions it was inevitable that discordant theological views would develop and bring division. And, as noted, such companies were subjected, at times, to incursions by that strange, unstable kind of person, the fanatic, who is like a fly in the ointment. It does not take many such persons to bring even the best religion into bad odor, to say nothing of bringing distress and confusion to simplehearted, trusting people.

We need this sketch of the kind of world into which Ellen Harmon moved in order to evaluate correctly her character and her work. Picture a young woman, seventeen, frail, timid, poor, starting out under the tremendous conviction that she must preach to these Advent companies what God had given to her by special revelation. No wonder that she wrote: “I coveted death as a release from the responsibilities that were crowding upon me.” From the time she started her public life in 1845, she found herself confronted with problems that would have taxed the resourcefulness and resoluteness of a seasoned minister.

Could Expect Only Skeptical Hearing

There was an added factor that made still more difficult her work. While the Advent movement had existed as a well-defined group, the caution had been repeatedly sounded by the principal leaders that the believers should be on their guard against those who thought they had received dreams and visions from the Lord. All this was to the credit of the leaders, who, knowing something [33] of church history, were aware that the movement would be troubled by deluded persons who hoped to find in such a spiritually awakened group an attentive audience for their hallucinations, false visions, and dreams. It has always been the tragedy of religion that the genuine graces and gifts of the Spirit have been so frequently imitated that prudent Christians, to say nothing of the skeptical world, have been slow to accept the genuine when it has appeared.

Thus Ellen Harmon could expect, not a receptive hearing, but rather a critical, skeptical one. The very fact that fanatics had imposed, at times, on different companies of Adventists, only made such companies doubly skeptical.[9]

Even if she had had a stout heart and a strong nervous constitution, she might have quailed at the thought of launching out on such a mission. That she did go forth in weakness and fear proves at least this much at the outset, she was no self-seeking person, in search of gain or fame.

Her Encounters With Fanatics

The autobiographical sketch of those first few years reveals that Ellen Harmon no sooner set out on her public ministry than she met, head on, the discordant elements and the fanatics that sought to gain control of Adventist groups or companies. The record is clear that she spoke with vigor and great definiteness against all such. As she traveled and met with different companies she experienced from time to time the singular spiritual exercises that she declares were visions from God. She refers to her visions in simple, brief language. The actual descriptions of her in vision are given by others, and these will be presented in the next chapter.

At one of the first places she visited, where certain men were troubling the church with great pretensions of piety, she had this

[9]There were, of course, exceptions. Of her first vision, or view, she says: “I told the view to our little band in Portland, who then fully believed it to be of God.”—A Sketch of the Christian Experience and Views of Ellen G. White (hereafter referred to by the short title Experience and Views), p. 5. For Joseph Bates’s own account of how he came to believe in the genuineness of her visions, see Appendix D, p. 581.

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experience: “During family prayer that night, the Spirit of the LORD rested upon me, and I was taken off in vision.”—Spiritual Gifts 2:48. In the few lines that follow she tells how God revealed to her the true character of these impostors. A little later, in another place, she was suffering great pain because of an injury received in falling from a wagon. She wrote: “Sister Foss joined with me in pleading for God’s blessing, and for relief from pain. About midnight the blessing sought rested upon me. Those in the house were awakened by hearing my voice while in vision.”—Ibid.

A little later she describes a meeting in Portland, Maine, that was appointed in order for her to relate what had been shown to her. Then she adds immediately, “While praying for strength to discharge that painful duty, I was taken off in vision.”—Spiritual Gifts 2:49.

Deep Discouragement Overwhelms Her

As might be expected, she met with bitter opposition from those whose lives she had exposed, and from some who were averse to the very idea of a young woman’s standing before them to speak with authority concerning Christian conduct and the Christian life. At one point in her earliest public years the opposition became so great that her spirit seemed to be overwhelmed. She wrote, “Discouragements pressed heavily; and the condition of GOD’s people so filled me with anguish that for two weeks my mind wandered.”—Spiritual Gifts 2:51.

A little later in her narrative she refers again to this incident as “the two weeks of my extreme sickness, when my mind wandered, as stated on page 51.”—Spiritual Gifts 2:69.

To add to her distress of heart, some skeptical persons in the church companies with which she met, declared that her visions were simply “excitement and mesmerism,” that is, hypnotism.[10]

To offset the depression and doubt that pressed upon her own

[10]The word mesmerism comes from Mesmer, the name of the man who had only a little before set forth startling ideas on hypnotism. The words hypnotism and mesmerism are synonymous. It was quite the vogue in the mid-nineteenth century to explain certain phenomena in the lives of people who seemed not to be acting according to the standard, normal pattern, as the result of mesmerism.

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mind as a result of the charge that her visions were only mesmerism, she went alone to pray at times. On some of these occasions she was given a vision. We quote, “The sweet light of heaven shone around me, and there have I been taken off in vision.”—Spiritual Gifts 2:57.

But she was not entirely freed of the doubts that were pressed upon her by those who charged “mesmerism.” To this was added the depression of spirit that came when some falsely charged her as being the leader of the fanaticism that she was trying to stop. Says she:

“All these things weighed heavily upon my spirits, and in the confusion, I was sometimes tempted to doubt my own experience. And while at family worship one morning, the power of GOD began to rest upon me, and the thought rushed into my mind that it was mesmerism, and I resisted it. Immediately I was struck dumb, and for a few moments was lost to everything around me. I then saw my sin in doubting the power of GOD, and that for so doing I was struck dumb, and that my tongue should be loosed in less than twenty-four hours....

“After I came out of vision, I beckoned for the slate, and wrote upon it that I was dumb, also what I had seen.... Next morning my tongue was loosed to shout the praises of GOD. After that, I dared not doubt my experience, or for a moment resist the power of GOD, however others might think of me.”—Spiritual Gifts 2:59, 60.

The Setting of Her Visions

As we turn the pages of her earliest autobiographical work, we find repeatedly sentences like these:

“The meeting commenced with prayer. Then as I tried to pray, the blessing of the LORD rested upon me, and I was taken off in vision.”—Spiritual Gifts 2:64.

“In the afternoon the blessing of the LORD rested upon me, and I was taken off in vision.”—Spiritual Gifts 2:76.

That is the usual picture she paints of the prelude to a vision—a religious setting, prayer around a family circle, with her own prayer generally offering a transition point between the world of earthly things and the world of vision. Sometimes the transition point was a public sermon, when she was addressing a company.

There were instances, however, when her visions were preceded by attacks of illness that were marked by fainting. She recounts [36] a number of visions, such as we have already noted, before the following incident took place:

“I was suddenly taken ill and fainted. The brethren prayed for me, and I was restored to consciousness. The Spirit of GOD rested upon us in Bro. C.’s humble dwelling, and I was wrapt in a vision of GOD’s glory.”—Spiritual Gifts 2:83.

On August 30, 1846, she married James White, a young Adventist preacher who had been active in the Millerite movement. To this union were born four sons.

The years of their early married life provide a record of stark poverty coupled with poor health, for neither husband nor wife had a rugged constitution. She wrote:

“We were poor, and saw close times. We had resolved not to be dependent, but to support ourselves, and have something with which to help others....

“We endeavored to keep up good courage, and trust in the Lord. I did not murmur. In the morning I felt grateful to God that He had preserved us through another night, and at night I was thankful that He had kept us through another day.”—Life Sketches of Ellen G. White, 105.

As to Mrs. White’s mental attitude when in bodily danger we have this that she records of a boat trip from Portland to Boston when a great storm broke. Among the passengers there was much weeping and praying. A woman asked her, “Are you not terrified?” Of her reply she wrote:

“I told her I had made Christ my refuge, and if my work was done, I might as well lie in the bottom of the ocean as in any other place; but if my work was not done, all the waters of the ocean could not drown me. My trust was in God, that he would bring us safe to land if it was for his glory.”—Spiritual Gifts 2:85, 86.

The Dominating Motive in Her Life

There was one thought above all others that controlled the minds of James and Ellen White. They firmly believed that despite William Miller’s mistaken interpretation of Daniel 8:13, 14, which led him to set a date for the day of Christ’s coming, Bible prophecy made clear that the day of the personal Advent of our Lord was near at hand. With this they coupled the belief that the great [37] Advent Awakening had come as a result of prophecy, and that the Advent believers should go forward to complete their work of warning and making ready a people prepared to meet their God. These beliefs led this youthful couple to dedicate themselves to the task of quickening again the faith of the Advent believers by correcting the prophetic error, and of stimulating them to new zeal by presenting the prophetic evidence that a further work lay ahead.

Mrs. White’s faith and forward look was often greater than that of her husband, and it was rather uniformly greater than that of others who were drawn into the movement as the years went by. This is one of the most singular facts in connection with her life. The reader is invited at this point to turn back a moment to the opening chapter to refresh his mind on the picture presented of the unique, primary place that she occupied through all her years in stirring up leaders and laity alike in the movement, to aggressive, forward action for God.

When she came out of a vision she had in November, 1848, she said to her husband:

“I have a message for you. You must begin to print a little paper and send it out to the people. Let it be small at first; but as the people read, they will send you means with which to print, and it will be a success from the first. From this small beginning it was shown to me to be like streams of light that went clear round the world.”—Life Sketches of Ellen G. White, 125.

When she spoke those words there was literally only a small handful of men who were committed to the distinctive doctrines that later were to characterize the movement now known over the world as the Seventh-day Adventist Church. There was no money; there was no trained personnel with which to set up a publishing work. But those most closely associated with Mrs. White and who thus had the best opportunity to evaluate her spiritual claims, took her words seriously. Out of that vision has grown a world-circling publishing work.

She did not suddenly cast a hypnotic spell over all who came within the sound of her voice. Those who heard her were in full possession of their faculties and free will. Slowly but surely the [38] evidence of her work and preaching impressed itself on some who listened and watched, and the number who took her claims soberly and seriously grew steadily. That is a simple statement of fact, and we think it an important fact.

Letters Reveal Her Personality

A side light on Mrs. White’s habits of life during those first years is provided in this excerpt from a short letter that she wrote to “Dear Bro. and Sister Collins” on February 10, 1850:

“The way is now fully open for James [her husband] to go forward in publishing the Present Truth.[11] We love you and love to hear from you. We should have written you before but we have no certain abiding place, but have traveled in rain, snow and blow with the child from place to place. I could not get time to answer any letters and it took all James’ time to write for the paper and get out the hymn book. We do not have many idle moments. Now we are settled, I can have more time to write.”—Letter 4, 1850.

A letter that she wrote to “Dear Brother Hastings” on March 18, 1850, on the death of his wife, contains these closing lines:

“Dear Brother Hastings, sorrow not as those who have no hope. The grave can hold her but a little while. Hope thou in God and cheer up dear Brother, and you will meet her in a little while. We will not cease to pray for the blessing of God to rest upon your family and you. God will be your sun and your shield. He will stand by you in this your deep affliction and trial. Endure the trial well and you will receive a crown of glory with your companion at the appearing of Jesus.”

Of her resolute courage to go forward in her work, despite her distress of heart in being separated from her children, we read in a letter she wrote to a “Dear Brother and Sister Loveland,” December 13, 1850:

“I had the privilege of being with my oldest boy two weeks. He is a lovely dispositioned boy. He became so attached to his mother, it was hard to be separated from him; but as our time is all employed in writing and folding and wrapping papers, I am denied the privilege of having his company. My other little one is many hundred miles from me. Sometimes Satan tempts me to complain and think my lot is a hard one, but I will not harbor this temptation. I should not want to live unless I could live to do some good to others.”

[11]The first paper published by the group of Sabbathkeeping Adventists.

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The space limits of this chapter prevent our going into endless details concerning the early years of Mrs. White’s public ministry, nor is it necessary to do so in order to give a clear picture. As we read the life sketch she wrote, we find there the record, page after page, of the arduous travel and preaching of both her and her husband, despite their poor health. She refers to an experience in 1854 which she describes, in the language of that day, as “a shock upon my left side.... My tongue seemed heavy and numb; I could not speak plainly. My left arm and side were helpless.”—Life Sketches of Ellen G. White, 151. She describes a similar experience in 1858, and adds, “It was my third shock of paralysis.”—Life Sketches of Ellen G. White, 162. It was some time before “the effect of the shock had entirely left me.”—Life Sketches of Ellen G. White, 163.

Here is the way she describes a vision she received early in the year 1858:

“On Sunday afternoon there was a funeral service at the schoolhouse where our meetings were being held. My husband was invited to speak. He was blessed with freedom, and the words spoken seemed to affect the hearers.

“When he had closed his remarks, I felt urged by the Spirit of the Lord to bear my testimony. As I was led to speak upon the coming of Christ and the resurrection, and the cheering hope of the Christian, my soul triumphed in God; I drank in rich draughts of salvation. Heaven, sweet heaven, was the magnet to draw my soul upward, and I was wrapped in a vision of God’s glory. Many important matters were there revealed to me for the church.”—Life Sketches of Ellen G. White, 161, 162.

Extracts From Her Diary

A diary that Mrs. White kept for some years throws light on her personality. Though she had to travel much, she remained at home as often as possible. In fact, her autobiography and other writings frequently reveal how keenly she suffered in being separated from her children. She was not an impractical, dreamy type of person, introspective and far removed from the workaday world. Her diary, for example, tells of her making “a pair of pants,” and sewing “a coat for Edson [her son],” and “a mattress for the lounge.” Again, she tells of laboring “hard all day on a dress to wear through the mud.” (Diary, March 25, 28, April 26, 1859.) [40]

One day, in the spring of 1859, was spent “making a garden for my children,” because, as she explained, she wanted “to make home ... the pleasantest place of any to them.”—Diary, April 11, 1859.

Referring, many years later, to the discipline she employed in rearing her sons, she wrote:

“I never allowed my children to think that they could plague me in their childhood.... Never did I allow myself to say a harsh word.... When my spirit was stirred, or when I felt anything like being provoked, I would say, ‘Children, we shall let this rest now; we shall not say anything more about it now. Before you retire, we shall talk it over.’ Having all this time to reflect, by evening they had cooled off, and I could handle them very nicely.”—MS. 82, 1901.

Another diary entry in 1859 reads thus:

“Walked to the office. Called to see Sister Sarah [Belden] and mother. Sarah gave me a little dress and two aprons for Sister Ratel’s babe.... I rode down to the city and purchased a few things. Bought a little dress for Sister Ratel’s babe. Came to the office, assisted them a little there and then came home to dinner. Sent the little articles to Sister Ratel. Mary Loughborough sends her another dress, so she will do very well now.

“Oh, that all knew the sweetness of giving to the poor, of helping do others good and making others happy. The Lord open my heart to do all in my power to relieve those around me—give me to feel my brother’s woe!“—Diary, March 1, 1859.

An entry on April 21 includes a reference to another poor family. Here are two sentences: “We have contributed a mite for their relief, about seven dollars. Purchased them different things to eat, and carried it to them.”

Her View of Parent-Child Relationship

In 1863 Mrs. White had a vision in which she saw certain principles that should control the lives of parents in relation to their children. We quote a few lines from what she wrote, because they so definitely throw light on her character and her conception of social and family relations.

“I have been shown that while parents who have the fear of God before them restrain their children, they should study their dispositions and temperaments, [41] and seek to meet their wants. Some parents attend carefully to the temporal wants of their children; they kindly and faithfully nurse them in sickness, and then think their duty done. Here they mistake. Their work has but just begun. The wants of the mind should be cared for. It requires skill to apply the proper remedies to cure a wounded mind. Children have trials just as hard to bear, just as grievous in character, as those of older persons....

“Parents, when you feel fretful, you should not commit so great a sin as to poison the whole family with this dangerous irritability. At such times set a double watch over yourselves, and resolve in your heart not to offend with your lips, that you will utter only pleasant, cheerful words. Say to yourselves, ‘I will not mar the happiness of my children by a fretful word.’ By thus controlling yourselves, you will grow stronger. Your nervous system will not be so sensitive. You will be strengthened by the principles of right....

“The mother can and should do much toward controlling her nerves and mind when depressed; even when she is sick, she can, if she only schools herself, be pleasant and cheerful, and can bear more noise than she would once have thought possible. She should not make the children feel her infirmities, and cloud their young, sensitive minds by her depression of spirits, causing them to feel that the house is a tomb, and the mother’s room the most dismal place in the world. The mind and nerves gain tone and strength by the exercise of the will. The power of the will in many cases will prove a potent soother of the nerves.”—Testimonies for the Church 1:384-387.

Her Resourcefulness Revealed

When her husband suffered a “stroke” in 1865 she decided, after he had received months of medical care, that any real hope for his recovery depended on his gaining a new will to live by doing some useful, even though simple tasks. A small farm was purchased in the country some distance from Battle Creek. We will let her son William describe an incident that reveals her resourcefulness:

“Soon it was haying time. The grass was cut by Brother Maynard’s mowing machine. When ready to haul in, Father thought to ask that it be hauled in by Brother Maynard’s hired man who had done the mowing. To prevent this, Mother had urgently requested Brother Maynard to say that his own work was pressing and that it would not be convenient to send his man to haul in the hay. I was sent to neighbor Whitefield’s with a similar message. These kind neighbors very reluctantly consented to this request, when told what Mother’s reasons were for making it. When Father sent out requests for help with the hay, he was shocked at the answer. Then Mother said: ‘Let us show the neighbors that we can attend to the work ourselves. Willie and I [42] will rake the hay and pitch it on the wagon, if you will load it and drive the team.’ To this Father was forced to consent. As we had no barn, the hay must be stacked near the cow shed. At Mother’s suggestion, Father pitched it off the wagon, while she built up the stack. Meanwhile I was raking up another load.

“While we were thus hard at work, some of the townspeople passed in their carriages, and gazed with much curiosity and surprise to see the woman who each week preached to a houseful of people, heroically engaged in treading down hay and building a stack. But she was not in the least embarrassed; she was intent upon the one object of securing her husband’s restoration to health, and was overjoyed to see that her efforts were succeeding.”—W. C. WHITE, “Sketches and Memories of James and Ellen White,” MS. in White Publications Document File, No. 626.[12]

Her Pioneering in Medical Work

The mid 1860’s found Mrs. White writing at length regarding the subject of health and the need of founding a unique kind of medical institution that would not only seek to restore people to health—and by rational therapies that excluded the deadly drugs of those days—but also to teach them how to keep well. Those writings were based, she declared, on what she saw in vision, and are the explanation for the creation of a chain of sanitariums around the world, beginning with the Battle Creek Sanitarium.[13] To the uniqueness of these institutions, to their pioneering in the fields of diet therapy and physical therapy and health education, multitudes can testify.

As we look at Mrs. White’s correspondence in the 1860’s and 70’s we find the date lines of the letters reading like a railway timetable. She was almost constantly traveling to special church meetings, camp meetings, and like gatherings over the country. In the summer of 1877, in the city of Battle Creek, Michigan, the Women’s Christian Temperance Union made a special endeavor

[12]A variant of the story, written by W. C. White at another time, gives this version of the request to the neighbors: “She [Mrs. White] knew that her husband purposed asking his friendly neighbors to help in getting it [the hay] into a stack. She forestalled this by visiting the neighbors first. “You are driven with your own work are you not?’ she asked. “Yes,’ was the reply. “Then, when Elder White sends for you asking for help with his hay, just tell him what you have told me.’”—W. C. WHITE, “Sketches and Memories of My Mother’s Life,” MS. in White Publications Document File, No. 573a.

[13]See, for example, Testimonies for the Church 1:485-495, 553-567.

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in behalf of the temperance cause. By invitation, she spoke one Sunday evening, under W.C.T.U. auspices, “to fully five thousand persons.” (Life Sketches of Ellen G. White, 221.) It was not uncommon for her to speak to large audiences of non-Seventh-day Adventists on such subjects as temperance and the Christian home. Because of her interest in the subject of temperance she was invited from time to time to speak in the churches of other denominations. For example, she writes:

“On Sunday, June 23 [1878], I spoke in the Methodist church of Salem, on the subject of temperance. On the next Tuesday evening, I again spoke in this church. Many invitations were tendered me to speak on temperance in various cities and towns of Oregon, but the state of my health forbade my complying with these requests.”—Life Sketches of Ellen G. White, 231.

Public Visions and Night Visions

All through these years Mrs. White had been having from time to time what we may call public visions, that is, visions in the presence of others. She had also been having night visions, when, shut out from all the world, she received what she declared were revelations from God. She saw no distinction between the two, so far as the essential nature and content of the visions were concerned. Gradually the public visions became less in number.

One of the last, if not the last, of her public visions was given to her in October, 1878, while she was attending the General Conference session, held in Battle Creek, Michigan. She mentions it thus briefly:

“On Wednesday of the second week of the meeting, a few of us united in prayer for a sister who was afflicted with despondency. While praying, I was greatly blessed. The Lord seemed very near. I was taken off in a vision of God’s glory, and shown many things.”—Life Sketches of Ellen G. White, 238.

Three pages farther on in her narrative she refers to a night vision thus: “On the morning of Oct. 23, 1879, about two o’clock, the Spirit of the Lord rested upon me, and I beheld scenes in the coming judgment.”—Life Sketches of Ellen G. White, 241.

Mrs. White’s increasing public labors never seemed to take her away from the realm of matter-of-fact home duties. In a letter [44] she wrote to D. M. Canright and his wife, November 12, 1873, she said:

“I have arisen at half past five o’clock in the morning, helped Lucinda wash dishes, have written until dark, then done necessary sewing, sitting up until near midnight; yet we have not got sick. I have done the washings for the family after my day’s writing was done.”—Letter 1, 1873.

Someone has well said that a healthy sense of humor is one of the best evidences of a healthy, normal mind. At first blush it may startle some readers to think of Mrs. White as having had a trace even of dry humor. But if innocent little children may laugh, why may not a prophet of God at least smile betimes. We think Mrs. White even chuckled when she wrote the following lines in a letter to her husband from Oakland, California, where she was staying for a time while he was in Battle Creek, Michigan:

“Dear Husband:

“We received your few words last night on a postal card:

“Battle Creek, April 11. No letter from you for two days. James White.

“This lengthy letter was written by yourself. Thank you for we know you are living.

“No letter from James White previous to this since April 6.... I have been anxiously waiting for something to answer.”—Letter 5, 1876.

How She Accepted Death in Her Home

During the early years death had twice visited her home, taking her youngest son as an infant, and her oldest at the age of sixteen. Now death struck once more, taking her husband on August 6, 1881. How great was the blow to her is suggested by how great was the fellowship between them, a fellowship of love and mutual respect. That fact is repeatedly revealed in their private correspondence. They had been taken to the Battle Creek Sanitarium only a few days before, both of them having come down with “a severe chill.” A remarkable insight into her character and her whole attitude toward life is revealed in the following lines from her own narrative:

“Though I had not risen from my sick-bed after my husband’s death, I [45] was borne to the Tabernacle on the following Sabbath to attend his funeral. At the close of the sermon I felt it a duty to testify to the value of the Christian’s hope in the hour of sorrow and bereavement. As I arose, strength was given me, and I spoke about ten minutes, exalting the mercy and love of God in the presence of that crowded assembly. At the close of the services I followed my husband to Oak Hill Cemetery, where he was laid to rest until the morning of the resurrection.

“My physical strength had been prostrated by the blow, yet the power of divine grace sustained me in my great bereavement. When I saw my husband breathe his last, I felt that Jesus was more precious to me than He ever had been in any previous hour of my life. When I stood by my first-born, and closed his eyes in death, I could say, ‘The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.’ And I felt then that I had a comforter in Jesus. And when my latest born was torn from my arms, and I could no longer see its little head upon the pillow by my side, then I could say, ‘The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.’ And when he upon whose large affections I had leaned, with whom I had labored for thirty-five years, was taken away, I could lay my hands upon his eyes, and say, ‘I commit my treasure to Thee until the morning of the resurrection.’ ...

“I keenly feel my loss, but dare not give myself up to useless grief. This would not bring back the dead. And I am not so selfish as to wish, if I could, to bring him from his peaceful slumber to engage again in the battles of life. Like a tired warrior, he has lain down to sleep. I will look with pleasure upon his resting place. The best way in which I and my children can honor the memory of him who has fallen, is to take the work where he left it, and in the strength of Jesus carry it forward to completion. We will be thankful for the years of usefulness that were granted to him; and for his sake, and for Christ’s sake, we will learn from his death a lesson which we shall never forget. We will let this bereavement make us more kind and gentle, more forbearing, patient, and thoughtful toward the living.

“I take up my life work alone, in full confidence that my Redeemer will be with me.”—Life Sketches of Ellen G. White, 252-254.

She Travels to Europe

And so she went forth bravely in the work that she had been carrying on since 1845. We find her soon in California, traveling about to different meetings. In 1883 she traveled eastward on a long sweep of public services. In the summer of 1885 she went over to Europe to give her support and strength to what was then a newly developing work. In one of her sermons while in England [46] she made this statement that throws light upon her mood and attitude toward life:

“I do not look to the end [of the world] for all the happiness; I get happiness as I go along. Notwithstanding I have trials and afflictions, I look away to Jesus. It is in the strait, hard places that He is right by our side, and we can commune with Him, and lay all our burdens upon the Burden Bearer.”—Life Sketches of Ellen G. White, 292.

In writing to an overseas conference she said:

“There is little that any of you can do alone. Two or more are better than one if you will each esteem the other better than yourself. If any of you consider your plans and modes of labor perfect, you greatly deceive yourselves. Counsel together with much prayer and humbleness of mind, willing to be entreated and advised. This will bring you where God will be your counselor.”—Life Sketches of Ellen G. White, 303.

She Pioneers in Australia

In August, 1887, Mrs. White returned to America to continue her work of preaching and writing. Then in November, 1891, she sailed for Australia, there to throw her energies for almost a decade into the newly developing work in the Southern Hemisphere. During most of her first year in Australia she suffered much from what was diagnosed as neuritis and rheumatism. For a part of that year she continued her book writing, in addition to her correspondence with leading workers, “propped up in bed.” (See Life Sketches of Ellen G. White, 338.) Looking back over this long period of illness, she wrote to the brethren gathered in General Conference:

“All through my long affliction I have been most signally blessed of God. In the most severe conflicts with intense pain, I realized the assurance, ‘My grace is sufficient for you.’ At times when it seemed that I could not endure the pain, when unable to sleep, I looked to Jesus by faith, and his presence was with me, every shade of darkness rolled away, a hallowed light enshrouded me, the very room was filled with the light of his divine presence.”—Letter 2d, December 23, 1892, quoted in The General Conference Daily Bulletin, February 27, 1893, p. 407.

She was concerned in Australia, as she had been in America, to see a school founded for the youth, where they could be trained in Christian principles, and for the Adventist ministry as well. [47] She believed that the school should be out in the country, away from the influences of the city. She also wished to see manual labor made a part of the education. She believed that head and hand and heart ought to be educated. She felt that young people should have an education, even though they intended to labor with their hands. She prepared a written statement, early in 1894, to stimulate interest in the founding of a school in Australia. We quote from it to reveal, further, her outlook on life:

“We need schools in this country to educate children and youth that they may be masters of labor, and not slaves of labor. Ignorance and idleness will not elevate one member of the human family. Ignorance will not lighten the lot of the hard toiler. Let the worker see what advantage he may gain in the humblest occupation, by using the ability God has given him as an endowment. Thus he can become an educator, teaching others the art of doing work intelligently. He may understand what it means to love God with the heart, the soul, the mind, and the strength. The physical powers are to be brought into service for love to God. The Lord wants the physical strength, and you can reveal your love for Him by the right use of your physical powers, doing the very work which needs to be done. There is no respect of persons with God....

“There is in the world a great deal of hard, taxing work to be done; and he who labors without exercising the God-given powers of mind and heart and soul, he who employs the physical strength alone, makes the work a wearisome tax and burden. There are men with mind, heart, and soul who regard work as a drudgery, and settle down to it with self-complacent ignorance, delving without thought, without taxing the mental capabilities in order to do the work better.

“There is science in the humblest kind of work; and if all would thus regard it, they would see nobility in labor. Heart and soul are to be put into work of any kind; then there is cheerfulness and efficiency....

“Manual occupation for the youth is essential. The mind is not to be constantly taxed to the neglect of the physical powers. The ignorance of physiology, and a neglect to observe the laws of health, have brought many to the grave who might have lived to labor and study intelligently. The proper exercise of mind and body will develop and strengthen all the powers....

“Habits of industry will be found an important aid to the youth in resisting temptation. Here is opened a field to give vent to their pent-up energies, that, if not expended in useful employment, will be a continual source of trial to themselves and to their teachers. Many kinds of labor [48] adapted to different persons may be devised. But the working of the land will be a special blessing to the worker. There is a great want of intelligent men to till the soil, who will be thorough. This knowledge will not be a hindrance to the education essential for business or for usefulness in any line. To develop the capacity of the soil requires thought and intelligence. Not only will it develop muscle, but capability for study, because the action of brain and muscle is equalized. We should so train the youth that they will love to work upon the land, and delight in improving it. The hope of advancing the cause of God in this country is in creating a new moral taste in love of work, which will transform mind and character.”—Life Sketches of Ellen G. White, 352-355. (Italics hers.)

Side Lights on Her Closing Years

She returned to America in 1900, and in St. Helena, California, about sixty-five miles north of San Francisco, purchased a place named Elmshaven, which was to be her home until the time of her death in 1915. Though she was seventy-two at the time of her return, she did not settle down to ease and retirement. She traveled and preached and wrote much. During this period she took a most active part in the founding of several medical institutions, including a medical school.[14]

The qualities of housewife and neighbor were as clearly evident in these later years as in the former ones. Sometime during 1901 she made a visit to the denominational college in Healdsburg. In connection with this visit she journeyed by carriage to Santa Rosa to hold a Sabbath meeting. As she drove back to Healdsburg, this little incident took place:

“On our return we called upon a family by the name of Lighter. They live about half way between Santa Rosa and Healdsburg, and seem to be in limited circumstances. Sister Lighter’s father, a very old man, is quite feeble....

“We were glad to do an errand for the Master by visiting this family. Willie [her son William] read the comforting promises of God’s Word to the sick man, and I presented the afflicted one to the Great Physician, who is able to heal both soul and body. The family were very thankful for our visit. I know that they were comforted.”—Letter 126, 1901.

Often on her daily carriage drives through the quiet Napa

[14]The Glendale Sanitarium, the Paradise Valley Sanitarium, the Loma Linda Sanitarium, and the College of Medical Evangelists.

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Valley, in which her home was situated, she would alight and visit with a mother who might be seen by a farmhouse with her children. The children always provided a subject of mutual interest. More often than not the farm mother did not even know who had stopped so informally to chat with her for a few moments.

From one of her letters in 1903 this sentence is taken: “Our carriages were drawn up under the trees, and I picked nineteen quarts [of cherries], sometimes sitting on the carriage seat, and sometimes standing on it.”—Letter 121, 1903. In her 1904 letters is found mention of her driving out to a pasture “to see the black calf.” It seems that she was solicitous to know whether it “were faring well after the long rain.”—Letter 91, 1904.

Her Mood as Death Approaches

Not long before she died she said to one who was talking with her:

“My courage is grounded in my Saviour. My work is nearly ended. Looking over the past, I do not feel the least mite of despondency or discouragement. I feel so grateful that the Lord has withheld me from despair and discouragement, and that I can still hold the banner. I know Him whom I love, and in whom my soul trusteth....

“I have nothing to complain of. Let the Lord take His way and do His work with me, so that I am refined and purified; and that is all I desire. I know my work is done; it is of no use to say anything else. I shall rejoice, when my time comes, that I am permitted to lie down to rest in peace. I have no desire that my life shall be prolonged.”—Life Sketches of Ellen G. White, 443, 444.

In that quiet spirit of holy resignation she died on July 16, 1915, having lived nearly eighty-eight years. Her passing was mourned by a worldwide religious movement. What is perhaps more important in this present chapter, which seeks to discover what manner of woman she was, Mrs. White’s passing was mourned by neighbors and friends outside as well as within the church. For years afterward farmers’ wives and their children with whom she had visited informally referred to her as “the little old lady with white hair, who always spoke so lovingly of Jesus.”

This is a woefully inadequate picture that has been painted of a most unusual woman, but space limits have prevented the presentation [50] of any more than a sample of the evidence that might be offered to show how unusual were her talents, how practical her Christianity, and how unselfish and rational her attitudes toward life.

In the light of this life sketch, brief though it is, one is tempted to dispose of the mental-malady charge here and now with one sentence in comment: If such mental illness as Mrs. White is supposed to have suffered from will produce a life of sacrificial service and ardor, of far mission planning, of counsel to holy living and high standards, of selfless love for the needy, and all the other Christian graces that radiated from her life, then we would say solemnly, God give us more mentally maladjusted people.

With these facts in mind let us go on to examine the evidence concerning Mrs. White’s physical state while in vision. [51]

Chapter 3—Mrs. White, and Bible Prophets, in Vision

Were Mrs. White’s Visions due to Nervous Disorders? Part II

A description of Mrs. White’s physical state in vision has been purposely withheld until that description could be placed in its proper setting, the setting of her whole life’s activity. Earlier two sentences were quoted from her own simple description of her first vision, December, 1844. Here is another account of the same incident:

“At this time I visited one of our Advent sisters, and in the morning we bowed around the family altar. It was not an exciting occasion, and there were but five of us present, all females. While praying the power of God came upon me as I never had felt it before, and I was wrapt up in a vision of God’s glory,[15] and seemed to be rising higher and higher from the earth.”—Experience and Views (1851), p. 5. (Early Writings of Mrs. White, p. 13.)

She then proceeds to relate what she saw in vision. She declared on more than one occasion that while in vision she was oblivious to earthly things. We would not therefore look to her for the kind of description we desire. It is an interesting fact that she has left scarcely any record of her physical condition in vision.

James White Describes Her Visions

In 1857 her husband, James White, in describing a meeting that he and Mrs. White attended, tells of her speaking at the meeting and of her being taken off in vision:

“Mrs. W. arose and Spoke with much freedom. The place was filled with the Spirit of the Lord. Some rejoiced, others wept. All felt that the Lord

[15]“I was surrounded with light,” she says, in another account published in 1860. (See Spiritual Gifts 2:30.)

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was drawing very near. How sacred the place. Those present will never forget that meeting. When seated, Mrs. W. began to praise the Lord, and continued rising higher and higher in perfect triumph in the Lord, till her voice changed; and the deep, clear shouts of Glory! Hallelujah! thrilled every heart. She was in vision.

“Unknown to us there was a poor, discouraged brother present, who had thrown his armor down, in consequence, in part, at least, of neglect by his wealthy brethren, and was returning to strong habits which threatened the happiness of himself and family. A most touching and encouraging message was given for him. By the grace of God he raised his head that very evening, and he and his good wife are again happy in hope. Monterey church will never forget that evening. At least they never should.”—The Review and Herald, October 22, 1857, p. 196.

One of the most comprehensive descriptions of her in vision is that given by James White, in 1868. We quote it in full:

“Her condition in vision may be described as follows:

“1. She is utterly unconscious of everything transpiring around her, as has been proved by the most rigid tests, but views herself as removed from this world, and in the presence of heavenly beings.

“2. She does not breathe. During the entire period of her continuance in vision, which has at different times ranged from fifteen minutes to three hours, there is no breath, as has been repeatedly proved by pressing upon the chest, and by closing the mouth and nostrils.

“3. Immediately on entering vision, her muscles become rigid, and joints fixed, so far as any external force can influence them. At the same time her movements and gestures, which are frequent, are free and graceful, and cannot be hindered nor controlled by the strongest person.

“4. On coming out of vision, whether in the day-time or a well-lighted room at night, all is total darkness. Her power to distinguish even the most brilliant objects, held within a few inches of the eyes, returns but gradually, sometimes not being fully established for three hours. This has continued for the past twenty years; yet her eyesight is not in the least impaired, few persons having better than she now possesses.

“She has probably had, during the past twenty-three years, between one and two hundred visions. These have been given under almost every variety of circumstance, yet maintaining a wonderful similarity; the most apparent change being, that of late years they have grown less frequent, but more comprehensive. She has been taken off in vision most frequently when bowed in prayer. Several times, while earnestly addressing the congregation, unexpectedly to herself and to all around her, she has been instantly prostrated in vision. This was the case June 12, 1868, in the presence of not less than [53] two hundred Sabbath-keepers, in the house of worship, in Battle Creek, Mich. On receiving baptism at my hands, at an early period of her experience, as I raised her up out of the water, immediately she was in vision. Several times, when prostrated by sickness, she has been relieved in answer to the prayer of faith, and taken off in vision. At such times her restoration to usual health has been wonderful. At another time, when walking with friends, in conversation upon the glories of the kingdom of God, as she was passing through the gate before her father’s house, the Spirit of God came upon her, and she was instantly taken off in vision. And what may be important to those who think the visions the result of mesmerism, she has a number of times been taken off in vision, when in prayer alone in the grove or in the closet.

“It may be well to speak as to the effect of the visions upon her constitution and strength. When she had her first vision, she was an emaciated invalid, given up by her friends and physicians to die of consumption. She then weighed but eighty pounds. Her nervous condition was such that she could not write, and was dependent on one sitting near her at the table to even pour her drink from the cup to the saucer. And notwithstanding her anxieties and mental agonies, in consequence of her duty to bring her views before the public, her labors in public speaking, and in church matters generally, her wearisome travels, and home labors and cares, her health and physical and mental strength have improved from the day she had her first vision.”—JAMES WHITE, Life Incidents, in Connection With the Great Advent Movement, pp. 272, 273.

A General Conference President Testifies

From George I. Butler[16] comes this description in 1874:

“All we ask is that people shall be reasonable. We are prepared to support by hundreds of living truthful witnesses all that we shall claim, so far as facts are concerned, of the manifestation itself, for this thing has not been done in a corner. For nearly thirty years past these visions have been given with greater or less frequency, and have been witnessed by many, oftentimes by unbelievers as well as those believing them. They generally, but not always, occur in the midst of earnest seasons of religious interest while the Spirit of God is specially present, if those can tell who are in attendance. The time Mrs. White is in this condition has varied from fifteen minutes to one hundred and eighty. During this time the heart and pulse continue to beat, the eyes are always wide open, and seem to be gazing at some far-distant object, and are never

[16]At the time he wrote this description, Butler was president of the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists.

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fixed on any person or thing in the room. They are always directed upward. They exhibit a pleasant expression. There is no ghastly look or any resemblance of fainting. The brightest light may be suddenly brought near her eyes, or feints made as if to thrust something into the eye, and there is never the slightest wink or change of expression on that account; and it is sometimes hours and even days after she comes out of this condition before she recovers her natural sight. She says it seems to her that she comes back into a dark world, yet her eyesight is in nowise injured by her visions.

“While she is in vision, her breathing entirely ceases. No breath ever escapes her nostrils or lips when in this condition. This has been proved by many witnesses, among them physicians of skill, and themselves unbelievers in the visions, on some occasions being appointed by a public congregation for the purpose. It has been proved many times by tightly holding the nostrils and mouth with the hand, and by putting a looking glass before them so close that any escape of the moisture of the breath would be detected. In this condition she often speaks words and short sentences, yet not the slightest breath escapes. When she goes into this condition, there is no appearance of swooning or faintness, her face retains its natural color, and the blood circulates as usual. Often she loses her strength temporarily and reclines or sits; but at other times she stands up. She moves her arms gracefully, and often her face is lighted up with radiance as though the glory of Heaven rested upon her. She is utterly unconscious of every thing going on around her, while she is in vision, having no knowledge whatever of what is said and done in her presence. A person may pinch her flesh, and do things which would cause great and sudden pain in her ordinary condition, and she will not notice it by the slightest tremor.

“There are none of the disgusting grimaces or contortions which usually attend spiritualist mediums, but calm, dignified, and impressive, her very appearance strikes the beholder with reverence and solemnity. There is nothing fanatical in their [her][17] appearance. When she comes out of this condition she speaks and writes from time to time what she has seen while in vision; and the supernatural character of these visions is seen even more clearly in what she thus reveals than in her appearance and condition while in vision, for many things have thus been related which it was impossible for her to know in any other way.

“Peculiar circumstances in the lives of individuals, whom she never before had seen in the flesh, and secrets hidden from the nearest acquaintances, have been made known by her when she had no personal knowledge of the parties other than by vision. Often has she been in an audience where she was wholly unacquainted with the individuals composing it, when she

[17]“Their” is evidently a typographical error.

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would get up and point out person after person whom she never had seen before, in the flesh, and tell them what they had done, and reprove their sins. I might mention many other items of like nature, but space forbids. These things can be proved by any amount of testimony, and we confidently affirm that they are of such a character that they could not be accomplished by deception.”—The Review and Herald, June 9, 1874, p. 201.[18]

These descriptions of Mrs. White in public vision were written and published in the church paper at the very time Mrs. White was having such visions. These visions were often attested by many witnesses. It may reasonably be presumed, then, that these descriptions, which so far as we can discover from our reading have not been challenged, present a true picture. Some may seek to weaken the testimony of these witnesses by contending that there were limitations to their powers of observation. But even if we were to admit these limitations that would not invalidate the testimony of the many witnesses as to the main aspects of her state in vision. It is proper to remember in this connection that Mrs. White herself never based her claim to have received visions from God on any detail of her physical state in vision. We think this fact, which is often overlooked, is important. She based her claim on the fruitage of her visions. She was willing to have applied to her and to her claim the maxim of our Lord: “By their fruits ye shall know them.”

Her Night Visions

So much for the descriptions of her public visions. But she also had night visions. Here is the way she pictures a night vision she received in 1896, when almost seventy years of age:

Friday, March 19, 1896, “I arose early, about half past three o’clock in the morning. While writing upon the fifteenth chapter of John, suddenly a wonderful peace came upon me. The whole room seemed to be filled with the atmosphere of heaven. A holy, sacred presence seemed to be in my room. I laid down my pen and was in a waiting attitude to see what the Spirit would say unto me. I saw no person. I heard no audible voice, but a heavenly watcher seemed close beside me. I felt that I was in the presence of Jesus. The sweet peace and light which seemed to be in my room it is impossible for

[18]See Appendix G, p. 558,

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me to explain or describe. A sacred, holy atmosphere surrounded me, and there was presented to my mind and understanding matters of intense interest and importance. A line of action was laid out before me as if the unseen presence was speaking with me. The matter I had been writing upon seemed to be lost to my mind and another matter distinctly opened before me. A great awe seemed to be upon me as matters were imprinted upon my mind.”—MS. 12c, 1896.

This vision represented one kind of night vision, the kind that she had, at times, when awake in the night seasons. The other kind, which corresponds to what the Bible describes as night visions, were those that came to her during the hours of sleep. (See, for example, Daniel 7:1.) In describing these experiences she sometimes uses the word vision and sometimes the word dream. The scenes portrayed were as graphic, and as much the basis for later writings, as any scenes presented to her in public visions. That fact becomes evident when we examine Testimonies, volume 9, which was published in 1909, and presents, among other matters, what she saw in vision during the immediately preceding five years. Here are a few excerpts:

“In the visions of the night a very impressive scene passed before me. I saw an immense ball of fire fall among some beautiful mansions, causing their instant destruction....

“In great distress I awoke. I went to sleep again, and I seemed to be in a large gathering. One of authority was addressing the company, before whom was spread out a map of the world.”—Page 28.

“In the night of March 2, 1907, many things were revealed to me regarding the value of our publications on present truth....

“After a while I fell asleep again. This time I seemed to be in a council meeting where our book work was being discussed. There were a number of our brethren present, leaders in our work.”—Pages 65, 66.

“While at Loma Linda, Cal., April 16, 1906,[19] there passed before me a most wonderful representation. During a vision of the night, I stood on an eminence, from which I could see houses shaken like a reed in the wind. Buildings, great and small, were falling to the ground.”—Page 92.

Thus is concluded a description of Mrs. White in vision over a long period of years.

If there is any small measure of plausibility in the charge

[19]Two days before the San Francisco earthquake and fire,

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before us, it resides in the fact that Mrs. White’s condition in vision, that is, in public vision, is obviously not a normal condition. Her case may appear to present a few “symptoms” that are similar to those of certain mental and nervous maladies. And from those few similarities the charge is built. This kind of reasoning and diagnosis is strangely like that which results from a layman’s examining a medical book and noting symptoms of certain diseases. Before he has gone far in his reading he is quite likely to conclude, for a frightened moment, that he is afflicted with a strange array of maladies.

What a doctor learns after arduous years of study and practice is that symptoms, like appearances, can be deceiving, and that if the patient’s condition is an unusual one, only a most exhaustive study of the case can assure a correct diagnosis. He notes that certain symptoms seem to indicate a particular malady, but certain other symptoms indicate a very different one. Then by a differential diagnosis he notes the symptoms of one that cannot belong to the other, and so methodically proceeds to his conclusion. Only thus can he avoid making ludicrous or tragic mistakes in diagnosis.

How Should a Prophet Act in Vision?

What many people seem to forget is this: A prophet has the same physical and nervous system as all other people. Obviously, then, if a prophet has a vision, which is not a normal state, ought we not to expect that his physical and nervous systems will show some evidences of that nonnormal state, some “symptoms”? It is because this evident fact is ignored that Mrs. White can plausibly be described as suffering from a mental or psychic malady. We would like to ask: How should a prophet act in vision?

Can anyone picture a state of body and mind that would be different from the normal and yet simulate in no way the abnormal states of which doctors write, and to which critics so plausibly refer? Let us illustrate: If a prophet in vision were limp and oblivious to his surroundings, then a skeptic could quickly call attention to an instance of some person suffering a mental malady who displayed these symptoms. If the prophet were limp but aware [58] of his surroundings, the skeptic could likewise find parallel symptoms in mental sufferers. If the prophet were rigid but aware of surroundings, the same would be true. If his face were strangely pale, or on the other hand markedly flushed; if his eyes were open or closed, then again would parallels be found. If he spoke while in vision, or if he remained stonily silent, parallels would be discovered.

And so, by the simple process of finding a parallel to this or that physical condition, it would be possible to rationalize away the phenomena of a prophet in vision, no matter what the state of body and mind might be. And by the same token it would be possible to diagnose his unusual state as any one of a number of maladies.

The Bible Describes Prophets in Vision

It is an interesting fact that the Bible makes certain comments on how prophets have acted in vision. The prophet Daniel thus describes a certain vision that he had as he was “by the side of the great river” Hiddekel:

“And I Daniel alone saw the vision: for the men that were with me saw not the vision; but a great quaking fell upon them, so that they fled to hide themselves. Therefore I was left alone, and saw this great vision, and there remained no strength in me: for my comeliness [margin, “vigour”] was turned in me into corruption, and I retained no strength. Yet heard I the voice of his words: and when I heard the voice of his words, then was I in a deep sleep on my face, and my face toward the ground.

“And, behold, an hand touched me, which set me upon my knees and upon the palms of my hands. And he said unto me, O Daniel, a man greatly beloved, understand the words that I speak unto thee, and stand upright: for unto thee am I now sent. And when he had spoken this word unto me, I stood trembling.” “And when he had spoken such words unto me, I set my face toward the ground, and I became dumb. And, behold, one like the similitude of the sons of men touched my lips: then I opened my mouth, and spake, and said unto him that stood before me, O my lord, [59] by the vision my sorrows are turned upon me, and I have retained no strength. For how can the servant of this my lord talk with this my lord? for as for me, straightway there remained no strength in me, neither is there breath left in me. Then there came again and touched me one like the appearance of a man, and he strengthened me.” Daniel 10:7-11, 15-18.

This would be described as a public vision. But Daniel also had night visions. We read: “In the first year of Belshazzar king of Babylon 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. Daniel then proceeds to describe what he saw in his “vision by night.” (Verse 2.)

Why the prophets had some visions by day and others by night we do not know. But this we do know, they made no distinction between these visions as to source, character, or spiritual significance. Indeed, there is no discoverable distinction between public visions and night visions, except that of the time and place of the visions. It is evident also that the prophets used, interchangeably, the words vision and dream. The latter term, of course, carries with it the thought of a revelation in the night, during sleep. Through Moses, God declared: “If there be a prophet among you, I the Lord will make myself known unto him in a vision, and will speak unto him in a dream.” Numbers 12:6. The only reasonable position is to attribute both public and night visions to the same cause and source, the Spirit of God.

Take the case of Balaam. Though he attempted to do Israel harm, the record is clear that certain amazing experiences he had in connection with that attempt were experiences given to him of God. We read:

“And Balaam lifted up his eyes, and he saw Israel abiding in his tents according to their tribes; and the spirit of God came upon him. And he took up his parable, and said, Balaam the son of Beor hath said, and the man whose eyes are open hath said: he hath said, which heard the words of God, which saw the vision of the Almighty, falling into a trance, but having his eyes open.” Numbers 24:2-4. [60]

Visions of John, Paul, and Zacharias

When John the revelator received a vision of Christ, the effect produced upon him he records thus:

“And when I saw him, I fell at his feet as dead. And he laid his right hand upon me, saying unto me, Fear not; I am the first and the last.” Revelation 1:17.

Of the vision that Saul of Tarsus received on the Damascus road, which changed him over to Paul the flaming apostle, the record declares:

“And as he journeyed, he came near Damascus: and suddenly there shined round about him a light from heaven: and he fell to the earth, and heard a voice saying unto him, Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me? And he said, Who art thou, Lord? And the Lord said, I am Jesus whom thou persecutest: it is hard for thee to kick against the pricks. And he trembling and astonished said, Lord, what wilt thou have me to do? And the Lord said unto him, Arise, and go into the city, and it shall be told thee what thou must do.” Acts 9:3-6.

The priest Zacharias, father of John the Baptist, received a vision. The record says:

“And there appeared unto him an angel of the Lord standing on the right side of the altar of incense. And when Zacharias saw him, he was troubled, and fear fell upon him. But the angel said unto him, Fear not Zacharias: for thy prayer is heard; and thy wife Elisabeth shall bear thee a son, and thou shalt call his name John.”

“And Zacharias said unto the angel, Whereby shall I know this? for I am an old man, and my wife well stricken in years.

“And the angel answering said unto him, I am Gabriel, that stand in the presence of God; and am sent to speak unto thee, and to shew thee these glad tidings. And, behold, thou shalt be dumb, and not able to speak, until the day that these things shall be performed, because thou believest not my words, which shall be fulfilled in their season.

“And the people waited for Zacharias, and marvelled that he tarried so long in the temple. And when he came out, he could not [61] speak unto them: and they perceived that he had seen a vision in the temple: for he beckoned unto them, and remained speechless.” Luke 1:11-13, 18-22.

Nor did the dumbness of Zacharias end until the child was born and was about to be circumcised. The question of naming the child was referred to him:

“And he asked for a writing table, and wrote, saying, His name is John. And they marvelled all. And his mouth was opened immediately, and his tongue loosed, and he spake, and praised God.” Luke 1:63, 64.

Mrs. White’s Critics in Strange Company

Certain of the physical phenomena in connection with the visions of Bible prophets are too strikingly like those accompanying Mrs. White’s visions to need comment here. They are cited, not to prove anything in Mrs. White’s behalf, but only to show that in the experience of the prophets of old certain striking physical phenomena were displayed in connection with their visions, phenomena which Bible critics might plausibly attempt to explain away in terms of their similarity to the symptoms of various mental maladies.

Did we say, might attempt? The facts are that Bible skeptics and scoffers have attempted precisely this. They have sought to explain away all the Bible visions on natural grounds. They have described the prophets as fanatics, as ecstatics, as trance mediums, as epileptics, and as everything except what the Bible declares them to be—prophets of God. Mention has already been made of the fact that skeptics dismiss Paul’s Damascus-road experience as an epileptic seizure. There are really vast possibilities of explanation for those who set out resolutely on the premise that there is nothing supernatural. [62]

Chapter 4—Medical Facts Concerning Certain Nervous Maladies

Were Mrs. White’s Visions due to Nervous Disorders? Part III

With Mrs. White’s case history before us let us turn directly to the charge presented at the beginning of chapter 2. It is restated here:

Mrs. White’s so-called visions were simply the result of nervous disorders. She suffered a blow on the head from a stone thrown at her at the age of nine that affected her nervous system. Medical works in the sections entitled “Hysteria,” “Epilepsy,” and “Schizophrenia,” describe her case exactly. Physicians who knew her well also thus described her.

The charge requires an answer to two questions:

1. Do medical works “describe her case exactly”?

2. How valid is the testimony of “physicians who knew her well” and diagnosed her as a mental case?

In this and the next chapter we shall seek to answer these questions.

First, what are the current medical facts regarding epilepsy, hysteria, and schizophrenia that a psychiatrist would have in his mind as he studied the case history of an individual. We shall set forth the principal facts that are strictly relevant to the charges before us. Let us start with epilepsy.

Modern Medical View of Epilepsy

1. The formerly held idea that an injury to the head explains many cases of epilepsy, and also many other cases of abnormal mental states and behavior, is heavily discounted today. It would be shoddy diagnostic procedure to explain someone’s queer ways simply by the fact that when he was a child he fell out of an apple [63] tree, or out of his crib, and landed on his head. It is estimated that probably between 5 and 10 per cent of those who suffer head injuries become epileptics.[20] Some authorities say not more than 5 per cent. On the whole question of head injuries in relation to mental diseases one medical work observes:

“The opinion popularly entertained that injuries to the head are a frequent cause of mental disease is distinctly an error.... Not over one-half of one per cent of admissions to hospitals for mental diseases are to be considered as traumatic [injury] psychoses in the correct sense of the term.”—ARTHUR PERCY NOYES and EDITH M. HAYDON, A Textbook of Psychiatry, p. 126.

2. If the epileptic attacks have been frequent over at least five years of time, and no adequate medical care has been given, the chances of their cessation are poor.

3. Some authorities affirm that an epileptic may live a long life with little or no mental deterioration. But if the epileptic seizures begin in the teens, are frequent over a number of years, and the patient receives no adequate medical aid, most authorities hold that the outlook is very forbidding—the patient almost certainly will suffer increasing mental deterioration.

4. There is some difference of opinion among authorities as to the temperament of an epileptic, but most doctors would agree with this description, given in a current medical work:

“Between the attacks the patient’s general physical and mental condition may be unimpaired. Very often one observes both intellectual and character changes which become more and more apparent as the disease progresses. The epileptic is frequently an unsocial, selfish, egocentric, suspicious, sensitive, pedantic, overscrupulous, hypochondriacal person. He is irritable and sometimes violent, but emotionally poor none the less. (It is possible that much of his unsociability and many of his reactions are the result of the general social attitude toward him. He is generally excluded from gainful occupations and not infrequently shunned.) The epileptic is hypersensitive to alcohol. Occasionally one observes paranoidal and other delusional trends and sometimes hallucinatory ideas and confusional states. He may become over-ceremonious and excessively religious as the disease progresses. Memory

[20]Modern neurological studies which more clearly delimit the motor area of the brain reveal that the chance that a head injury will result in convulsions, or fits, depends on the relation of the injury to the motor center. The head injury suffered by Mrs. White, when she was struck by a stone on the nose, was remote from this motor area.

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defects, ethical depravity, other personality deterioration, and finally dementia may be observed.”—ISRAEL S. WECHSLER, A Textbook of Clinical Neurology, p. 625.

5. The epileptic attack, or “fit,” is generally one of two kinds: (1) a momentary loss of consciousness, though the patient makes no outcry, does not fall, and afterward has no memory of the incident. This, in medical language, is petit mal. (2) A violent attack, with foaming at the mouth, preceded by an outcry and sudden collapse, and followed by complete absence of memory of anything during the time of the attack. This, in medical language, is grand mal. Obviously Mrs. White’s critic means grand mal when he declares that Mrs. White had an “epileptic fit,” for he emphasizes the fact that the “fit” is preceded by an outcry. Patently, petit mal could not provide the remotest analogy to a “vision.” Even a layman would have little difficulty in diagnosing correctly a true grand mal attack.[21]

Modern Medical View of Hysteria

Here are the medical facts regarding hysteria, so far as they have significance for the charge before us:

1. While the majority of hysterics are women, the malady is by no means confined to one sex, as the two world wars strikingly revealed.

2. True hysteria is today a much more sharply defined malady. (According to her critic Mrs. White must have had a case of true hysteria in order to fit certain of the specifications he set down.) In medical language it is known as one of a group of mental maladies called the psychoneuroses. The cause is not physical. Mary may fall out of her high chair in childhood, and years later may be a hysteric, but there is no relation between the two. Neither is there a relation between the glands of internal secretion and hysteria; in other words, the monthly cycle in women, affecting

[21]A medical authority, writing under the title, “Psychiatry, Psychology and Seizures,” speaks of the “abrupt transitions from the normal to the acutely abnormal,” in the case of an epileptic suffering a grand mal attack. “At one moment a self-possessed, rational being, in the next moment a demon-possessed person out of all muscular control, both reason and consciousness gone.”—WILLIAM G. LENNOX, M.D., The American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, vol. 19, no. 3, July, 1949, p. 432.

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ovaries and uterus, is not the cause or even a cause of hysteria—a statement which, of course, requires the conclusion that the cessation of this cycle, known as the menopause, is not the true explanation for the subsidence of hysterical symptoms, which often takes place at mid-life. (See under No. 3.) The cause of hysteria is psychogenic; that is, it is “caused by mental conflicts or other psychological factors.”

3. The spectacular aspects of hysteria—swooning, various theatrical poses, anesthesias, and the like—generally subside about mid-life, both for men and women. As a medical authority declares:

“It is rare to see hysteria after middle life; the hysterics seem to flourish in youth and then in middle age they make adjustments and perhaps settle down to be queer or crotchety people.”—STANLEY COBB, Foundations of Neuropsychiatry, p. 217.

Excessive weeping, emotional upsets, fainting spells, that were formerly considered part of the symptom picture of hysteria, no longer require this explanation. They may be viewed, for example, as evidences of lowered physical and nervous vitality, and hence capable of being relieved, in many instances, simply by improving the bodily tone.

The “Hysterical Personality”

4. Most medical authorities speak of a “hysterical personality.” This is the way one current medical work describes it:

“What characterizes the hysterical personality is the infantile reaction to life and the inability to adjust at the adult level of reality. The individual is hypersensitive, excessively irritable, self-centered (not altogether selfish), preoccupied with himself, impulsive and moody, and generally deficient in emotional control. He is enthusiastic and depressed by turns, often has out-bursts of crying, and sometimes of uncontrollable laughter. Like every child he craves attention and is querulous if he does not receive it, showing that he is considerably narcissistic [that is, sexually attracted toward himself]. He is shy, easily frightened, afraid to be alone, and he would dominate the stage, sometimes in true histrionic fashion. He is generally impatient and anxious, and not infrequently has acute attacks of anxiety. He exaggerates his complaints, keenly feels seeming neglect, is inordinately ceremonious, and [66] preoccupied with his bodily functions. He is affectionate and resentful at the same time (ambivalent), strongly attached to his family, yet incapable of loving very deeply. He is often cruel to the very people he loves best (sadistic trend). He injects his personality into everything and easily identifies himself with persons and things. He lives a life of childish phantasy and loves to indulge in day dreams (autistic thinking). Most characteristic is his extreme and abnormal suggestibility. Sexually he is immature.... In short, the outstanding characteristics of hysteria are persistence of infantile trends and abnormal psychosexual development.”—WECHSLER, op. cit., p. 711.

Dr. Wechsler immediately adds this important, qualifying sentence: “Not every hysteric, of course, shows all the above mental traits; nor does the occurrence of one or more of them in an individual make of him a maladjusted neurotic.”—Ibid. Note particularly the last half of the sentence.

5. A hysterical episode, or what the layman might call a “hysterical fit,” can take a number of different forms. As one medical writer says: “Hysteria is kaleidoscopic in its manifestations and may appear in the form of physical or mental disturbances.”—ARTHUR P. NOYES, Modern Clinical Psychiatry, p. 286.

To sum up the outstanding “manifestations” of a hysterical episode, or fit, as Dr. Noyes gives them: There may be “disturbance of special sense organs, such as blindness, pains, headaches.” “Paralysis may be present in any one of several forms.” There may be “aphonia, in which the patient cannot phonate speech.” But though the patient cannot speak he “continues to cough.” There may be “hysterical vomiting.” One of the commonest forms of “mental disturbances” in hysteria “is amnesia,” a blotting out of memory. There may be “dramatic posturings and activities and an excessive flow of speech appearing nonsensical.... Occasionally the hysterical patient spins fantastic stories.” “At times ... the patient suddenly leaves the place of his usual activity and without any apparent purpose travels to some remote point.”

Relation of Epilepsy to Hysteria

It is true that an epileptic may display, as a complication, the immature personality of the hysteric, and marked hysterical episodes may occur in a person who is also subject to epileptic [67] seizures. In fact, a person suffering an epileptic attack may also simulate certain hysterical symptoms—this is called an “hysterical overlay.” But the formerly held idea that hysteria and epilepsy “sometimes co-exist or alternate or blend together so it is difficult to distinguish them”—we are quoting an early critic who cites encyclopedias and medical statements of his day—is now rather generally abandoned. Hence the term hystero-epilepsy, which reflected that idea, is little used in medical literature today. Some medical authorities specifically term it a misnomer.[22]

Those who have written against Mrs. White need not have confined themselves to epilepsy and hysteria, as they have almost exclusively done. Medical works present several distressing kinds of psychiatric maladies, with symptoms as varied and bizarre as the two discussed. And certainly among those symptoms some could surely be found to have at least the appearance of similarity to Mrs. White’s state in vision. We have no desire to conceal this fact from our readers. On the contrary, we believe that the more we acquaint them with the facts the more easily can we provide them with a correct answer to the charge that her visions were the result of nervous disorders.

That is why we wish, now, to add a description of a third malady, schizophrenia. This fearsome-sounding term means split personality. As already remarked, some today, who indict Mrs. White’s visions as manifestations of a sick mind, describe her, not as an epileptic or a hysteric, but as a victim of schizophrenia. We summarize briefly certain facts regarding this disease as found in a current medical work:

Modern Medical View of Schizophrenia

Schizophrenia (dementia praecox), says a medical textbook, is “the most prevalent of all the major mental disorders,” accounting

[22]Dr. William G. Lennox observes: “I have passed my memory over patients seen in clinic or office who have come for the diagnosis and treatment of recurrent periods, characterized by impairment of consciousness and of muscular control. The inspection is confined to persons who have passed the first decade, and whose epilepsy is not complicated by an acquired structural alteration of the brain. My guess is that not more than per cent of these would have seizures purely emotional in origin and in character; no more than 4 per cent would have hystero-epilepsy. The remaining patients, 95 per cent of the whole, represent those without hysterical seizures, either alone or combined with epileptic attacks.”—Op, cit., p. 444.

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for about one third of mental cases in United States hospitals. Probably “the majority of definite schizophrenic conditions arise in individuals who have always had a tendency toward withdrawal from ordinary activities.” The onset of the malady usually appears before the age of twenty-five, and is as likely to appear in one sex as the other. “Odd grimaces, contortions, mannerisms and stereotyped movements are also frequently seen.”

After describing variant symptoms that accompany certain types of schizophrenia, the medical writer declares:

“The course of the schizophrenic disorders follows no definite path. At times a schizophrenic episode may be followed by a spontaneous and apparently complete remission. This, unfortunately, is rather rare. More commonly, one sees a succession of schizophrenic episodes with periods of normal behavior of variable duration. In the great majority of cases the course is progressively downhill.”—WALLACE MASON YATER, The Fundamentals of Internal Medicine, p. 900.

Let us summarize the generally accepted medical facts regarding schizophrenia:

1. A person experiencing a schizophrenic episode is, frankly, an insane person.

2. The period of insanity is not confined to minutes or hours—the length of Mrs. White’s visions—but to days and weeks, generally over a course of years.

3. Complete return to normal, with no further episodes after a certain date, is “rather rare.”

4. “In the great majority of cases the course is progressively downhill.”

5. The personality of the schizophrenic is increasingly colored by his abnormal episodes.

The Whole Life Picture Important

The most important fact that stands out in this chapter, which has summarized the current medical view on epilepsy, hysteria, and schizophrenia, is not some particular symptom in connection with an attack, but the picture of the epileptic, the hysteric, and the schizophrenic as individuals. In mental maladies, perhaps more [69] than in any others, the whole life picture is important to the diagnosis. A person suffering with one of these maladies presents, generally, a well-defined picture as an individual in relation to society.

If Mrs. White is being viewed as an epileptic, then she must be viewed as a pronounced case, for she had many visions, and they began in her teens. Further, we shall have to view her as an untreated case, for modern medication for epilepsy was unknown in mid-nineteenth century. Now let the reader turn back a few pages and refresh his mind on what medical men today say about the usual social attitudes of such persons, and of the high probability that pronounced cases, if untreated, will suffer mental deterioration as the years go by.

If Mrs. White is being viewed as a hysteric, then she must be viewed as a pronounced case, and for the same reason that holds regarding epilepsy. She must also be considered an untreated case. Now let the reader turn back and read again the current medical description of the “hysterical personality.”

Let him note particularly the fact that the hysterical fit is the result of a particular kind of personality that seeks, through a fit, to secure certain ends or to give expression to certain moods and attitudes that were present before the fit and continue after it.

If Mrs. White is being viewed as a schizophrenic, she must be viewed as a pronounced case, and again for the same reasons that hold regarding epilepsy and hysteria. She must also be viewed as an untreated case.

The only reason that the nervous-disorder charge against Mrs. White sounds plausible to some who have read it is that they have never had opportunity to read the facts concerning her life, or the current medical findings concerning nervous and mental maladies.

Note:—In the preparation of this chapter we have been greatly indebted to the critical assistance of several physicians who are specialists in the fields of psychiatry and neurology. Their names appear in the section entitled Acknowledgments on pages 5 and 6. See Bibliography for the list of current medical works consulted. [70]

Chapter 5—Certain Nervous-Disorder Proofs Examined

Were Mrs. White’s Visions Due to Nervous Disorders? Part IV

In the light of the present-day medical conclusions regarding certain nervous and mental maladies, as laid alongside the life sketch of Mrs. White and the Bible description of prophets, the reader will be able, without our aid, to evaluate certain so-called symptom-proofs that have been set forth by critics to show that she suffered from hysteria and epilepsy, et cetera. To explain the phenomenon of her life as hysteria, for example, is to violate one of the most primary rules that govern modern scientific thinking; namely, that the cause must be adequate to explain the effect. Neither hysteria nor any other grave psychic disorder could have produced a life of unremitting toil and devotion; a mother wholesomely devoted to her family; a public leader drawing the blueprints of world enlargement for a church body; a spiritual guide pouring forth, from platform and through numerous books, moral and religious counsel that even non-Adventists have acclaimed as of the highest quality.

However, one of the so-called proofs that her visions were a result of psychic disorders sounds so plausible and presents so definitely the essence of a whole series of symptom-proofs that we shall examine it here. The “proof” will be presented in the words of D. M. Canright, who first set it forth; in fact this whole chapter must focus directly on arguments presented by him: “I do not know that she [Mrs. White] ever had a vision while alone, or if so, only once or twice.” In the same connection he speaks of her “last vision,” and gives the date, “1875.”

His argument is this: Her visions were the result of hysteria; [71] hysterics “put on” their “act” only in public, hysterical manifestations subside with the menopause, and in Mrs. White’s case that would be about 1875. Therefore, her visions are merely hysterical episodes.

But we have discovered that (1) there is no causal relationship between the fact of the menopause and the subsidence of the bizarre features of hysteria; (2) Mrs. White’s visions were very definitely not all in public, even in the years before 1875; (3) her “last vision” was not in “1875.” The available evidence points to her having visions until the last years of her life. True, they were not public visions, but they were nonetheless visions. That fact stands out clear from the record, and that fact quite demolishes the argument so carefully constructed to prove that hysteria is the explanation of her visions. For the purpose of his argument, the critic dismisses the visions of her later years by a brief reference to “impressions” she had at night. He seeks to convey the idea that these were definitely not visions.

Why the Public Visions Ceased

While we are discussing this matter of public visions we ought, perhaps, to anticipate a question that some sincere reader may raise: If Mrs. White had public visions in her earlier years, accompanied with certain physical phenomena, why did these grow less in number and finally cease, long before her public ministry was ended? The question is a fair one, and we shall seek to answer it.

God is sparing of miracles and never works them merely to create wonder and awe. But He does perform them at times to aid faith. That has been particularly true at the outset of some great program that He initiated in the earth. When the Lord instructed Moses to go down into Egypt and tell the Israelites that he had for them a message from Heaven, Moses replied, “Behold, they will not believe me, nor hearken unto my voice: for they will say, The Lord hath not appeared unto thee.” Exodus 4:1.

And what did the Lord do in response? He performed two miracles, and then said to Moses: “And it shall come to pass, if they will not believe thee, neither hearken to the voice of the [72] first sign, that they will believe the voice of the latter sign. And it shall come to pass, if they will not believe also these two signs, neither hearken unto thy voice, that thou shalt take of the water of the river, and pour it upon the dry land: and the water which thou takest out of the river shall become blood upon the dry land.” Verses 8, 9.

The sequel is that when Moses and Aaron went before the Israelite leaders and “did the signs in the sight of the people,” “the people believed.” Verses 30, 31.

The record of the Israelites reveals that there was need of more miracles in order to provide clear and unmistakable proof that God was speaking through Moses. The miracles were given, and thus the children of Israel were without excuse if they failed to heed his words.

John the Baptist’s Question

When John the Baptist, in prison, was sorely tried in faith, and sent his disciples to Christ with the inquiry, “Art thou he that should come, or do we look for another?” what did Christ do? Matthew 11:3. The record says: “Jesus answered and said unto them, Go and shew John again those things which ye do hear and see: the blind receive their sight, and the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, and the poor have the gospel preached to them.” Verses 4, 5. Clearly, here, the miracles of our Lord were intended to play a definite part in strengthening the faith of John the Baptist. Commenting on John, our Lord declared:

“But I have greater witness than that of John: for the works which the Father hath given me to finish, the same works that I do, bear witness of me, that the Father hath sent me.” John 5:36.

Later our Lord declared in the same vein to His disciples: “Believe me that I am in the Father, and the Father in me: or else believe me for the very works’ sake.” John 14:11.

When the Holy Ghost fell upon the disciples on the day of Pentecost there was a most spectacular display. The book of Acts suggests that in other early instances of the outpouring of the [73] Spirit there was also a visible display. But there is nothing to indicate that the believers in later apostolic times witnessed a great outward display when they received the Holy Ghost. And we have nothing comparable to Pentecost in any later century.

Why a Miraculous Display at Pentecost?

Bible critics make sport of Pentecost and its miraculous manifestations, and argue that it was some kind of hallucination. They call attention to the fact that nothing like Pentecost and related incidents has happened in succeeding centuries. But lovers of the Bible have another explanation for the spectacular display at the outset, and its later subsidence. We believe that such a display was intended of God to provide a certain aid to faith at the beginning of the way; a sign and a wonder to impress on all who saw and heard, that God had set His hand to do great things through this company of men who declared that they had a divine message for the world. We believe that today, as surely as at Pentecost, genuine believers in Christ receive the Holy Spirit, and we seek to prove that by showing that Christians today can give evidence of the fruits of the Spirit even as could the early Christians. And “by their fruits ye shall know them.” It is the similarity of fruits that leads us to conclude that the Source of power from which Christians draw today is the same as that from which Christians drew in apostolic times.

If, indeed, God did give Mrs. White visions—and no believer in the Bible can rule out the possibility that God may give visions to one of His children—why should we not expect that, at the outset at least, He would give these visions in such a way and in such a public manner that the very giving of them would in itself arrest attention, sober scoffers, and place men and women in a mood to listen attentively to the message that the Lord wished her to present? We do not believe that the physical phenomena in connection with Mrs. White’s visions were an integral part of the visions, any more than we think Moses’ rod, which was miraculously turned into a serpent, was an integral part of the message that he brought to the people. But we think that in both instances [74] the phenomena, which were observable to the natural eye, helped to provide a setting for the presentation of the message.

In one of the few references that Mrs. White makes to the physical phenomena in connection with her visions she remarks that such phenomena did play a proper part in the early days of her ministry in establishing the faith of believers. Writing in 1906, she refers to the messages given to her in the earlier days:

“Some of the instruction found in these pages was given under circumstances so remarkable as to evidence the wonder-working power of God in behalf of his truth....

“These messages were thus given to substantiate the faith of all, that in these last days we might have confidence in the spirit of prophecy.”—The Review and Herald, June 14, 1906, p. 8.

Public Visions End, but Prophet’s Work Continues

It is a most significant fact, as already stated, that though after many years the outward physical phenomena ended, the visions did not. And as a result of the night visions there continued to come forth from Mrs. White the same kind of counsel for individuals and for the church.

Those night visions required neither a multitude of people around her, nor “fainting spells,” the allegedly necessary stimuli. Now, it is a well-established maxim that like causes produce like results. If Mrs. White’s testimonies, counsel, and preaching continued the same throughout her life, then we are warranted in believing that the cause that provoked such a public ministry continued the same. Whatever was the source of the messages she received, as she declared, in visions, those messages continued the same. Whatever was the stimulation of her mind, it continued of the same character and nature, though the outward, physical phenomena were no longer manifest.

Does it not, therefore, follow that the visions cannot be explained on a physical basis? For on this basis the essential nature and character of Mrs. White’s singular experiences should have ended at mid-life. That would leave the last half of her remarkable life and all her night visions wholly unexplained! [75]

The First Medical Witness Examined

We come now to the climactic evidence presented—what the critic describes as “the testimony of physicians who have personally examined Mrs. White.”

Who were these physicians? What did they actually say? How well qualified were they, either by training or by opportunity for observation, to offer a medical opinion in her case? The answers to these questions will enable us to evaluate their testimony. Let us examine them.

Canright quotes the following letter which he declares was written to him by a Dr. W. J. Fairfield, who “was for years a physician in their [the Seventh-day Adventists’] Sanitarium at Battle Creek.”

“Battle Creek, Mich., Dec. 28, 1887.

“Dear Sir:—You are undoubtedly right in ascribing Mrs. E. G. White’s so-called visions to disease, It has been my opportunity to observe her case a good deal, covering quite a period of years, which, with a full knowledge of her history from the beginning, gave me no chance to doubt her (‘divine’) attacks to be simply hysterical trances. Age itself has almost cured her.

“W. J. Fairfield, M.D.”

Here are the facts about Dr. Fairfield that bear on his qualifications as a witness against Mrs. White:

1. In an editorial note in The Health Reformer, March, 1878, page 94, Dr. J. H. Kellogg announces that Dr. Fairfield has “just graduated” from “medical school.” He returned to the Battle Creek Sanitarium as a qualified physician.[23]

2. The best evidence available indicates that he left the sanitarium in 1881, or shortly thereafter.

3. A little later he opened a rival medical institution in Battle Creek.

[23]An examination of The Health Reformer reveals that Dr. Fairfield carried the “Dr.” before his name as early as 1876, and that at least for part of the time from 1876 to 1878 he was connected with the sanitarium. The explanation is this: In those days the title “Dr.” was often secured as a result of a few months’ course of study in any one of numerous privately operated hospitals or institutions. Many acquired their status as doctors simply by serving an apprenticeship under a physician. During their apprenticeship they were called, by courtesy, “Doctor.” A letter from Dr. Kellogg to W. C. White, dated “Battle Creek, April 12, 1875,” refers to his own medical training, and adds: “I shall soon set Ellet [E. J. Waggoner] and Will Fairfield at work and mean to get them through [the medical course] in two years from this spring.” He missed his estimate by a year; Fairfield graduated in 1878.

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4. A letter from Dr. J. H. Kellogg to Mrs. White, December 19, 1885, refers to Dr. Fairfield’s rival institution. Says Dr. Kellogg:

“I have some most cutting things to bear, the details of which I must not trouble you with, but they arise out of the miserable persecution from Fairfield, whose malignancy knows no bounds....

“Through Fairfield’s influence, I expect to be expelled from the society of regular physicians, of which I am a member, on the charge that I teach in my writings things which are not in harmony with the views of the regular profession.”

Canright, who presents Dr. Fairfield and also Dr. Kellogg as witnesses against Mrs. White, describes Dr. Kellogg as having “a world-wide reputation as a physician and a scientist.” According to that, what kind of person must Dr. Fairfield have been!

5. Dr. Fairfield, in his letter to Canright, does not claim that he had ever examined Mrs. White while she was in vision. How could he have done so, as a physician, when he did not graduate from medical school until 1878?[24]

6. Dr. Fairfield does not claim that Mrs. White was even his patient at any time at the sanitarium. He simply makes the general statement: “It has been my opportunity to observe her case a good deal, covering quite a period of years.” But just what does he mean by “observe her case”? The only claim that critics make as to Mrs. White’s being a “case” in the medical sense of the word, was when she was in vision. But her public visions had ended by the time he was a qualified physician. When she was not in vision she was a most matter-of-fact mother in her home, a reserved and decorous speaker in the pulpit, and a quietly sociable person in Christian homes that she visited in her constant traveling.

In the proper medical sense of the word Dr. Fairfield patently did not have a “case” to “observe.” We would take the matter one step further and declare that Dr. Fairfield had little opportunity to focus his medically trained eyes upon her even in casual neighborly

[24]According to Canright, Mrs. White’s “last vision” was in 1875. However, one more public vision is recorded, in 1878, when, as Mrs. White relates, “a few of us united in prayer.”—Life Sketches of Ellen G. White, 238. If Dr. Fairfield, had been one of the “few” who were present at this 1878 vision, would the critic have failed to mention this important fact! He evidently did not even know about this 1878 vision, or he would not have said that the last vision was in 1875.

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contacts in the community. He became a physician in 1878 and wrote his letter in 1887. Where was Mrs. White during this period of time? Living regularly in Battle Creek that she might be observed? No. She traveled much and wrote much, and the file of her letters enables us to know within a small margin of error where she was and when. From the beginning of 1878 to the end of 1887 she was in Battle Creek a total of approximately eighteen months, or an average of less than eight weeks out of each year![25] And while she was at home in Battle Creek she spent little time out in public for anyone to “observe her.” Most of the time she was in her home, occupied with her housewifely duties, and with her writing. In 1881, when she was in Battle Creek the longest, five months, she was confined at home for three of those months from “lameness,” on account of an accident she suffered on New Year’s Day.

We think the reader will not wish us to carry the matter further. Dr. Fairfield, just coming out of medical school in 1878, who, as a physician, had never seen Mrs. White in vision, who had little opportunity even to see her as a fellow citizen in Battle Creek, and whose setting up of a rival medical institution would presumably make him critical of everyone who sponsored the Battle Creek Sanitarium, is presented as an impressive medical authority who is competent to pass judgment on her state in vision!

The Second Medical Witness Examined

And now the second medical witness. The critic declares:

“Dr. Wm. Russell, long a Seventh-day Adventist, and a chief physician in the [Battle Creek] Sanitarium, wrote July 12, 1869, that he had made up his mind some time in the past, ‘that Mrs. White’s visions were the result of a diseased organization or condition of the brain or nervous system.’”

Let us examine certain facts that bear on Dr. Russell’s qualifications as a medical witness:

[25]Approximate time in Battle Creek each year is as follows: 1878, 2 months; 1879, 4 months; 1880, 4 months; 1881, 5 months; 1882, none; 1883, 1 month; 1884, I month; 1885, none, 1886, none; 1887, 1 month. Mrs. White took long trips over the United States, often as far as California. For two years she was in Europe. For the six years immediately preceding Dr. Fairfield’s 1887 letter, she was in Battle Creek a total of three months. How much of that time he could “observe her” as she moved in the community is another matter!

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1. The Battle Greek Sanitarium [originally Western Health Reform Institute] was opened in September, 1866. Dr. Russell wrote in July, 1869. And where was Mrs. White during most of the time between these dates? In Battle Greek, where the doctor could observe her? No. She was either traveling or living at her home in Greenville, Michigan, trying to nurse back to health her husband, who had suffered a “stroke” in 1865.

2. And how many public visions did Mrs. White have in Battle Creek during this period of time, so that Dr. Russell, “a chief physician in the Sanitarium,” might observe her with careful medical eye? So far as the records reveal she had one, on Friday night, June 12, 1868, while preaching at the Tabernacle. But there is no evidence that Dr. Russell or any other doctor examined her at that time.

3. There is no evidence that Mrs. White was ever Dr. Russell’s patient at the sanitarium. Nor does the meager fraction of a sentence quoted from him make any such claim.

4. There is no evidence, even, that he was “a chief physician.” On the contrary there is clear evidence that he was considered quite otherwise by the responsible leadership of the church. Before us, as we write, is an eight-page leaflet, the only heading to which is the large bold-face opening clause: “To Whom it May Concern.” The first page of this leaflet states that on March 23, 1869, Dr. Wm. Russell left the Health Institute to call on a patient in Wisconsin, and presumably to open a sanitarium there. The leaflet contains a statement regarding his lack of qualifications to manage a medical institution. This is followed by a testimony of reproof from Mrs. White.

In the light of this testimony from her, in the spring of 1869, it is not hard to understand why Dr. Russell, who probably never treated Mrs. White as a patient, and who almost certainly never examined her medically while she was in vision, might write as it is alleged he wrote, in the summer of that year.

5. There is an encouraging sequel to the 1869 incident of the eight-page leaflet and Mrs. White’s testimony. In the The Review and Herald, April 25, 1871, appears a communication from [79] Dr. Russell addressed to “Dear Bro. and Sr. White,” in which he repents of his waywardness in rejecting her testimony to him. We quote two sentences: “Had I heeded your reproof and counsel I would have saved myself much sadness and great loss. Space will not allow me to particularize, but I hope in future to undo as far as I can all the wrongs I may have done.”—Page 152.

The Third Medical Witness

After bringing on Drs. Fairfield and Russell, Canright quotes from some pamphlet against Mrs. White, which is now unavailable, citing what she is supposed to have said in comment on what Dr. Jackson[26] is supposed to have said, after he is supposed to have examined her: namely, that she was a subject of hysteria. We hardly think our readers will ask us to spend time refuting that kind of evidence.

Then follows immediately this declaration: “Here is the testimony of three physicians, who have personally examined Mrs. White.” He apparently hopes to give added plausibility to this unsupported statement by a similarly unsupported one:

“At the Sanitarium at Battle Greek, Mich., Mrs. White was often treated when ill. The physicians there became familiar with her case. Several of those most prominent there renounced their faith in her visions. This is significant.”

The Fourth Medical Witness

That Mrs. White should have been treated, at times, at the Battle Creek Sanitarium, or that a few doctors may have been faithless, is hardly significant, nor does he trouble to offer proof in support of his sweeping remark about these “prominent” doctors, other than the proofs here being examined. But what he says immediately following is really the significant part of his whole statement concerning the testimony of medical men:

[26]Dr. James C. Jackson of “Our Home,” a medical institution at Dansville, New York. Dr. Jackson may have made such a statement, though the critic provides no proof. Mrs. White, who was there caring for her sink husband in 1865, tells us that she took issue with some of the amusements, like dancing, at “Our Home.” It would therefore not be hard to see how an irritated doctor might wish to discount her words by describing her as nervously upset, or worse. However, we repeat, we have seen no proof that Dr. Jackson ever passed any kind of diagnostic judgment on her.

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“Dr. J. H. Kellogg, for many years the head of that institution, has [c. 1919] a world-wide reputation as a physician and a scientist. He was brought up to reverence Mrs. White and her revelations. Through long years he had every opportunity to study her case. Against his best interests he was compelled to lose faith in her visions. He is no longer a believer in her visions. These physicians, so closely connected with her, learned that the visions were simply the result of her weak physical condition.”

This statement that Dr. Kellogg had high medical standing and that “through long years” he “had every opportunity to study her case,” is correct. He was the medical director of the Battle Creek Sanitarium almost from its opening, and down into the twentieth century. Until early in this century he was a prominent figure in the Seventh-day Adventist Church, a prime mover in its medical activities.[27]

This doctor, with “a world-wide reputation as a physician and a scientist,” repeatedly placed on record his pronounced conviction that her visions were of God. His words were Clear, emphatic, and unqualified over the years. No critic who has read anything of Adventist literature would attempt to challenge this statement.[28] This confidence in Mrs. White he expressed as late as the opening years of this century, as his letters to her reveal.

And then what happened? Did Mrs. White in her old age have public visions once more so that Dr. Kellogg could study her “case” anew and as a result be “compelled to lose faith in her visions”? No. When he turned to be an opposer, Mrs. White was in her late seventies and spending her time largely in California. There were no physical manifestations of any kind in connection with her spiritual office in her later years that provided clinical material for a physician to study. His turning away from belief in her was squarely on the same grounds as that of certain others who turned away—nonmedical grounds. Mrs. White spoke out against certain of his views and policies that vitally affected his relationship to the church. He refused to accept her testimony

[27]He died in 1943, at the age of ninety-one.

[28]In a later chapter on Mrs. White’s health teachings there is quoted in full the preface that Dr. Kellogg wrote for the book Christian Temperance and Bible Hygiene, published in 1890, the first section of which is by Mrs. White. See also Dr. Kellogg’s remarkable statement in the chapter, “Was Mrs. White ‘Influenced to Write Testimonies’?” (See p. 512.)

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against him, and for the same reason that some others refused to do so—the testimony cut squarely across his path.

The Critic on the Witness Stand

Speaking of those who long knew Mrs. White intimately while they were leaders in the Seventh-day Adventist Church, the critic, Canright, from whom we have been quoting, is himself perhaps the outstanding exhibit. He could not speak as a medical man, but he could describe her as a person. Listen to his description and see whether it fits the personality picture of a nervously or mentally abnormal person. In 1877 he wrote a series of articles for the Review and Herald under the title “A Plain Talk to the Murmurers,” and subtitled “Some Facts for Those Who Are not in Harmony with the Body.” We quote:

“As to the Christian character of Sr. White, I beg leave to say that I think I know something about it. I have been acquainted with Sr. White for eighteen years, more than half the history of our people. I have been in their family time and again, sometimes weeks at a time. They have been in our house and family many times. I have traveled with them almost everywhere; have been with them in private and in public, in meeting and out of meeting, and have had the very best chances to know something of the life, character, and spirit of Bro. and Sr. White. As a minister, I have had to deal with all kinds of persons, and all kinds of character, till I think I can judge something of what a person is, at least after years of intimate acquaintance.

“I know Sr. White to be an unassuming, modest, kind-hearted, noble woman. These traits in her character are not simply put on and cultivated, but they spring gracefully and easily from her natural disposition. She is not self-conceited, self-righteous, and self-important, as fanatics always are. I have frequently come in contact with fanatical persons, and I have always found them to be full of pretentions, full of pride, ready to give their opinion, boastful of their holiness, etc. But I have ever found Sr. White the reverse of all this. Any one, the poorest and the humblest, can go to her freely for advice and comfort without being repulsed. She is ever looking after the needy, the destitute, and the suffering, providing for them, and pleading their cause. I have never formed an acquaintance with any persons who so constantly have the fear of God before them.”—April 26, p. 132.

Canright did not have to write that glowing tribute to Mrs. White in 1877. The only compulsion was that of his own troubled heart. Not long before he wrote this he had for a time dropped out [82] of active preaching, because he took exception to a testimony written to him by Mrs. White. Then not long after he wrote this tribute he dropped out again from active ministerial work, and for the same reason. All this he makes clear in an article he wrote in 1884, from which we quote:

“Most of the readers of the REVIEW know the part which I have acted in this cause for many years, both in preaching and in writing. They also know that for two years past I have dropped out of the work. I wish here to state why this was so. Some twelve years ago I received a testimony from Sr. White. I felt that it was too severe, and that some of it was not true. Instead of holding on to my faith in the work and to God, and waiting for him to make it clear, I became tried and quit preaching a short time. But I soon got mostly over this, and went to work again, though I did not feel exactly right toward Sr. White, nor fully accept all the testimony.

“Some five years since I received another testimony while under great discouragement. This I did not receive at all well, but felt hard toward Sr. White, and soon quit the work entirely. But I found no comfort that way, and so, after a short time, went to preaching again. Still I was not heartily in sympathy with all parts of the work, especially the testimonies. I thought I would preach practical truths largely, and as much of the message as I liked; but this did not work, as the brethren were not satisfied, neither was I. So I went to farming....

“A short time since I attended the Northern Michigan camp-meeting with Eld. Butler. Here we had a long time for consultation, prayer, and careful examination of my difficulties.... Light came into my mind, and for the first time in years I could truly say that I believe the testimonies. All my hard feelings toward Sr. White vanished in a moment, and I felt a tender love towards her. Everything looked different....

“I deeply feel that in my past labors I have lacked in spirituality, humility, and a close walk with God. I have often been too hasty and harsh in my labors. I will never rest till all this is changed, and I become a tender-hearted, devoted shepherd of the flock. I will submit to any humiliation, shame, or cross that will fit me to win souls to Christ. I think that my disbelief of the testimonies and other truth has come by opening my heart to doubts, cherishing them and magnifying them.”—The Day-Star, October 7, 1884, pp. 633, 634.

Not Medical Testimony but Emotions Determine Diagnosis

Here is our critic in a moment of high contrition and confession, in 1884, describing himself in essentially the same condemnatory language that he a little later employs to describe Mrs. White. [83] He reveals that his opposition to her teachings resulted, not from a profound study of medical cases, nor from the pressure of irresistible evidence that she was a fraud, a deceiver, or a hoax, but from a mood of resentment at what she wrote to him in counsel, guidance, and rebuke.

Less than three years later Canright left the Adventist ministry for the last time, permanently severed relationships with the church, and began to collect testimony from doctors to prove that she was the exact opposite of the kind of person he had so recently and repeatedly declared her to be. And the farther he removed from her in years and distance, the more dogmatic he became in his diagnosis that her visions were nothing more than the display of a disordered mind. Further comment on his mental-malady charge seems superfluous!

The New Self-delusion Explanation

Some present-day critics, after they have echoed the old charge of epilepsy, hysteria, and perhaps schizophrenia, add for good measure an amendment, as though to make sure that they cover enough ground to explain Mrs. White’s case. Say they: The history of the Christian Era reveals that certain pious people have had ecstatic or trancelike experiences in which they declared that they saw heavenly sights and communed with heavenly beings. Yet they did not have genuine visions such as Bible prophets had. Mrs. White’s singular experiences were simply like those of these pious people. She was sincere, but self-deceived, in thinking she had real visions.

It is easy to see why this amendment to the charge has been made. Anyone who looks into a medical book today can see immediately that the charges of epilepsy, hysteria, or schizophrenia will not stand. And anyhow, it sounds more plausible to speak of Mrs. White as simply a self-deceived, pious soul. In fact Canright himself thus spoke of her once in a condescendingly indulgent moment.

However, present-day critics can consistently speak thus only by renouncing all that former critics have said about her cunning deceitfulness and scheming that darkly expressed itself in suppressions [84] of certain writings, for example, and in other ways. But that is renouncing much, for the hulking structure of indictment against Mrs. White is largely built of charges that she, far from being a piously self-deluded person like certain medieval saints, was instead a cool, calculating individual who set out to deceive others and to make money out of the evil adventure. Let this point be clear to all before we proceed further.

Are the present-day critics who bring forth this theory of pious self-delusion in explanation of her visions really prepared to square all the rest of their thinking about Mrs. White with this theory? If so, then they ought, for safety’s sake, to hasten out of the edifice of charges where they have long dwelt with Mrs. White’s older critics, lest the logical arms of their new self-delusion theory bring down the house upon their heads. We plead only for consistency in this matter. We ought not to be asked at one and the same time to defend Mrs. White against the charge of cunning and crafty deceiving, befitting the most unsaintly of characters, and against the charge of being self-deceived, though undoubtedly saintly, and thus obviously free of guile!

Chief Weakness in the Argument

We do not doubt that through the centuries various devout Christians have had unusual spiritual experiences. There is nothing in the Bible that requires us to believe that God never opens the eyes of anyone but a prophet to a scene of spiritual glory, or never gives to any but a prophet a sense of the divine presence.

The principal weakness in the contention of some critics, that Mrs. White’s visions were simply like the singular experiences of certain saintly persons, is this: The argument proves too much. Bible critics often use precisely the same argument to explain away the claims of Bible prophets! Indeed, modernist churchmen, who express great love for the Holy Book, but who deny its unique authority and claims, use essentially this argument. But Mrs. White’s critics affirm their confidence in the Bible as being exactly what it claims to be, the voice of God to men. We think we hear her critics replying to Bible critics and modernists on this wise: [85]

“We do not grant for a moment the patronizing contention that the ancient prophets, though sincere, were self-deluded men who enjoyed spiritual exercises essentially the same as those enjoyed by many other devout believers in God. We do not believe that self-deception can bring forth such fruitage as the Bible produces. We think it irrational to hold that self-deception can carry with it the compelling power for righteousness that the Bible carries.”

With this answer that Mrs. White’s critics give to Bible critics, we heartily agree. Yet both we and Mrs. White’s critics know that this answer will never silence these Bible critics who insist that they can read God’s Book from Genesis to Revelation without finding therein anything spiritually unique!

We who believe in Mrs. White’s claim to the gift of the Spirit of prophecy, use essentially the same line of reasoning in defense of her claim that we use in defense of the ancient prophets.[29] In this we think we are consistent. Nor do we feel that our defense is necessarily weakened because her critics declare they can read her writings from beginning to end without finding therein anything spiritually unique. We believe that her writings will offer their own testimony to those who are willing to read and to consider the fruitage produced by them over a hundred years of time. For her we would contend, as we earnestly contend for Bible prophets, that it is irrational to hold that self-deception can carry with it the compelling power for righteousness that her writings carry! Nor can self-deception carry with it the far-visioned wisdom and planning that her writings have displayed as they have given direction to a vigorously growing religious movement now active in almost every country in the world.

The Tottering Edifice and the Wayfarer

Thus we come to the end of our examination of a charge that has impressed many through the years. Reared, ostensibly, on a foundation of medical books, with an ex-Adventist minister as its architect, and reinforced by the testimony of ex-Adventist doctors,

[29]We do not, however, consider Mrs. White’s writings another Bible. (See chapter 6.)

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the mental-malady edifice has awed many a wayfarer with its pretentious form. Doubtless we have not demolished it in the minds of those who still wish to keep it probably nothing could do that. But we think that the unprejudiced wayfarer, journeying the road to the kingdom, will no longer be impressed. He will note that medical books have disappeared from the foundation, and that the reinforcing material has crumbled under cross-examination. More than that, he will note that the whole structure is listing dangerously, as if a strong force were pushing it over, the force of Mrs. White’s long record of service and devotion released against it.

And if through a broken window of the fast-toppling structure he hears some critic cry out to him: “Mrs. White had hallucinations,” he will be ready to reply: “Indeed! She is more remarkable than I had thought. Deluded creatures see strange sights, but no one else can see even the shadow. But what Mrs. White saw in mystic lines we see hardened into brick and mortar, into sturdy buildings that house Christian schools, publishing plants, and medical institutions.”

Or if from the swaying roof of the foundationless structure another critic steadies himself to call down to the wayfarer: “Mrs. White heard strange voices,” he will be ready to answer back: “Truly, she was most remarkable! Demented creatures hear voices, but no one else even catches the echo. But multitudes have heard through Mrs. White, the sound of a Voice that has stirred them to holy living, to sacrificial zeal, to worldwide missions, and to increasing devotion to Him whose Voice is the guide of all true Christians.”

And with that the wayfarer will doubtless hasten out of range of the tottering structure, amazed that it holds together and that there are still men and women who fondly cling to it. [87]

Chapter 6—What Do Adventists Claim for Mrs. White’s Writings?

Charge: Seventh-day Adventists make of Mrs. White’s writings another Bible, and she herself encouraged that attitude.

The evidence presented in support of this charge consists of certain statements by church leaders that speak highly of her writings and strongly encourage the reading of them; and statements by Mrs. White in which she declares that God has given to her messages of counsel and guidance for the believers in the Advent movement and that those messages should not be taken lightly.

But it is incorrect to conclude from these that Mrs. White placed her writings on a par with the Bible or above it. She made no claim to have given another Bible. She ever pointed to the Scriptures as the one source of truth and light, the Book that should be the Christian’s first and chiefest source of spiritual instruction. She spoke of her writings as an inspired commentary—albeit a commentary and not another Bible—which is intended of God to throw light upon the Scriptures and to lead us continually to a more diligent study of them.

Statements by Adventist Leaders

One of the earliest subjects on which James White wrote was that of her visions. But in the same connection he made emphatically clear that the Bible is supreme. Here are his words in 1847:

“The Bible is a perfect, and complete revelation. It is our only rule of faith and practice. But this is no reason, why God may not show the past, present, and future fulfilment of his word, in these last days, by dreams and visions; according to Peter’s testimony. True visions are given to lead us to God, and his written word; but those that are given for a new rule of [88] faith and practice, separate from the Bible, cannot be from God, and should be rejected.”—JAMES WHITE, A Word to the “Little Flock,“ p. 13.

This statement made by James White in 1847 is quoted by him in an 1855 editorial in which he discusses at length the primacy of the Bible. (See The Review and Herald, October 16, 1855, p. 61.)

Take another pronouncement made many years later by a president of the General Conference, George I. Butler:

“The majority of our people believe these visions to be a genuine manifestation of spiritual gifts, and as such to be entitled to respect. We do not hold them to be superior to the Bible, or in one sense equal to it. The Scriptures are our rule to test everything by, the visions as well as all other things. That rule, therefore, is of the highest authority; the standard is higher than the thing tested by it. If the Bible should show the visions were not in harmony with it, the Bible would stand and the visions would be given up. This shows plainly that we hold the Bible the highest, our enemies to the contrary, notwithstanding.”—Review and Herald Supplement, Aug. 14, 1883 p. 12.

These are typical of the statements made by spokesmen for the Seventh-day Adventist Church through all the years as to the relationship of her writings to the Bible.

Mrs. White on Primacy of Bible

Mrs. White is also clearly on record as to the primacy of the Bible and the relation of her writings to it. In her first published work, printed in 1851, she declares, almost in the closing sentences:

“I recommend to you, dear reader, the word of God as the rule of your faith and practice. By that Word we are to be judged. God has, in that Word, promised to give visions in the ‘LAST DAYS;’ not for a new rule of faith, but for the comfort of his people, and to correct those who err from Bible truth.”—Experience and Views, p. 64. (See also Early Writings, 78.)

A half century later we hear her expressing the same thought regarding the relation of her writings to the Bible:

“Little heed is given to the Bible, and the Lord has given a lesser light to lead men and women to the greater light.”—The Review and Herald, January 20, 1903, p. 15.

No, we do not minimize the Bible because we believe in Mrs. White’s visions and in her writings. Seventh-day Adventists are not [89] willing to take second place to anyone in their devotion to and their study and promotion of the Bible. Sabbath morning finds us coming to church with the Holy Book under our arms. Printers of the finest grade of Bible testify that Adventists are among their best customers. Strange, indeed, if we had found a substitute Bible in Mrs. White’s writings!

An 1887 Editorial Clarifies Question

The Scriptures repeatedly speak of the manifestation of the gift of prophecy by those who were never called of God to write a portion of the Bible. Yet what they said under the direction of the Holy Spirit was inspired counsel from Heaven, and thus counsel that should be heeded. But giving heed to it did not cause men to turn from the Holy Bible, but rather the opposite. This thought was well stated by Uriah Smith in 1887. We quote in part:

“We stand on the great Protestant platform that ‘the Bible and the Bible alone’ is our rule of faith and practice. We believe that God by his grace and his providence has given existence to the book we call ‘the Bible’ as a revelation of his will to man; that holy men wrote it, as God spoke to them face to face, or moved upon them by the Holy Spirit, or revealed truths to them in visions or dreams, or by the influence of his Spirit called up to unerring remembrance experiences through which they had passed; that thereby we have a volume composed of the Old and New Testaments, which God calls his ‘two witnesses’ (Revelation 11:3); that this volume is complete in itself, and is to have nothing taken from it nor added to it; and that this is set forth as the standard and test of all moral teaching, all spiritual exercises, and all revelation purporting to be either human or divine. The skeptic would call this a very fanatical view of the Scriptures; but so we hold, nevertheless.

“But these Scriptures make provision for the operation of the Holy Spirit, not only in ordinary, but in extraordinary methods in the church to the end of time. These latter are explicitly enumerated in 1 Corinthians 12 and Ephesians 4. They have been expressly ‘set in the church.’ 1 Corinthians 12:28. Prophecies of their especial revival in the last days, are numerous. See Joel 2:28; Acts 2:17; 1 Corinthians 1:7; Revelation 12:17; etc. Among these is expressly mentioned the gift of ‘prophecy’ (1 Corinthians 12:4, 10; 13:2); and in Joel’s prophecy of the operation of the Spirit in the last days, ‘prophesying, seeing visions, and dreaming dreams’ are particularly mentioned, showing that the gift of prophecy is to be manifested through vision. But what was given in this way [90] would not constitute another Bible nor an addition to the Bible. The gifts were in general operation in the days of the apostles. But when Paul said that ‘all Scripture is given by inspiration of God,’ there is no evidence that he referred to the work of the four daughters of Philip, the evangelist, ‘which did prophesy’ (Acts 21:9), nor of Philip when an angel of the Lord spoke to him, and instructed him to go toward the south, where he met the Ethiopian eunuch (Acts 8:26), nor of Cornelius when he was instructed in vision by an angel to send for Peter (Acts 10:3), nor of those who came down from Jerusalem to Antioch (Acts 11:27), nor of Agabus who bound himself with Paul’s girdle, and declared, ‘through the Holy Ghost,’ that thus the owner of the girdle should be bound at Jerusalem. Acts 21:11. Nor has ‘the abundance of the revelations’ with which Paul was favored (2 Corinthians 12:7), been incorporated into the book known as ‘the volume of inspiration.’ They probably related more to the local duties and necessities of those times. But in all these instances, as well as those mentioned above, God was imparting instruction to his people by his Holy Spirit; though it was not designed to enter into that volume which he was preparing for the world as a general revelation of his will.

“In saying this, we detract in no jot or tittle from the sacredness or importance of the gift of prophecy in the church, nor of our obligation to be instructed thereby. When a manifestation is given, and, being tested by the Scriptures, is found in the circumstances of its giving, its nature, and its tendency, to be a genuine operation of the Spirit, we would submit to any candid person to say how it should be regarded. It comes to us as a divine message; it is ‘a ray of light from the throne’; it is instruction by the Holy Spirit; and to resist it, knowingly, is to resist the Spirit, as did the Jews to whom Stephen said: ‘Ye stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears, ye do always resist the Holy Ghost: as your fathers did, so do ye.’ Acts 7:51.”—The Review and Herald Extra, December, 1887, p. 11.

We thank God for the Bible, blessed Book that guides our feet along the path of life. We thank Him also for the manifestation of the Spirit of prophecy in these last days, to enlighten our minds the better to understand that Book. [91]

Chapter 7—The Astronomy Vision

Charge: “Mrs. White was having visions which [Joseph] Bates did not believe were of God; but they [Mrs. White and her husband] were anxious to convince him that they were genuine. Bates had been a sea captain, and had consequently studied the stars; had, in fact, become enthusiastic about astronomy. In the presence of Mrs. White and others he had often talked about the different planets, their positions, moons, and the ‘opening heavens.’”[30]

J. N. Loughborough’s work, The Great Second Advent Movement, page 258, says:

“One evening at the conference above mentioned [Topsham, Maine, 1846], in the house of Mr. Curtis, and in the presence of Elder (Captain) Bates, who was yet undecided in regard to the manifestations, Mrs. White, while in vision, began to talk about the stars, giving a glowing description of the rosy-tinted belts which she saw across the surface of some planet, and added, “I see four moons.” “Oh,” said Elder Bates, “she is viewing Jupiter.” Then, having made motions as though traveling through space, she began giving descriptions of belts and rings in their ever-varying beauty, and said, “I see eight[31] moons.” “She is describing Saturn.” Next came a description of Uranus with his six moons, then a wonderful description of the “opening heavens.”

“This was sufficient, and accomplished its purpose. Elder Bates was convinced, and became a firm believer in the visions.

“But what are the facts? Mrs. White simply saw what her companions at the time generally believed and talked about. Had God given her that view about the planets and the number of moons to each he would have given her the correct number in each case, and thus she would have revealed what astronomers at the time did not know, but later discovered. This would have proved her vision to be of God....

“Later discoveries have now shown that both Jupiter and Saturn have more moons than she said. Elder Loughborough is obliged to confess this. In a foot-note on page 258 of his book already quoted

[30]The “opening heavens” is a phrase used to describe the nebula in Orion.

[31]Loughborough, in the book from which the critic is quoting, says “seven.”

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he says: ‘More moons to both Jupiter and Saturn have since been discovered.’

“As a matter of fact, Mrs. White herself, relating this vision, described Saturn as having only seven moons, the number then assigned to that planet by astronomers. Here are her own words in ‘Early Writings,’ page 32:[32] ‘Then I was taken to a world which had seven moons.’”

What Are the Sources?

Information concerning the vision of November, 1846, in which Mrs. White viewed certain heavenly bodies, has come to us from several sources, some primary, some secondary. The first question before us is this: What did Mrs. White, and those present at her vision, actually say, and when did they say it? In the charge before us, Loughborough is quoted as the source of the account of this astronomy vision. But Loughborough was not present when Mrs. White had this vision, and did not write his work till more than forty years afterward. What did Mrs. White herself record regarding it? In her first autobiographical work, printed in 1860, she makes this brief mention of the vision:

“August 30th, 1846 I was married to Elder James White. In a few months we attended a conference in Topsham, Me. Bro. J. Bates was present. He did not then fully believe that my visions were of GOD. It was a meeting of much interest. But I was suddenly taken ill and fainted. The brethren prayed for me, and I was restored to consciousness. The Spirit of GOD rested upon us in Bro. C.’s [Curtis’] humble dwelling, and I was wrapt in a vision of GOD’s glory, and for the first time had a view of other planets. After I came out of vision I related what I had seen. Bro. Bates asked if I had studied astronomy. I told him I had no recollection of ever looking into an astronomy. Said he, ‘This is of the LORD.’ I never saw Bro. Bates so free and happy before. His countenance shone with the light of Heaven, and he exhorted the church with power.”—Spiritual Gifts 2:83.

In 1849 Mrs. White refers to a vision of other worlds, which the critics declare, though without proof, is the 1846 vision. We give the portion of it that might be supposed to have a bearing:

“The Lord has given me a view of other worlds. Wings were given me, and an angel attended me from the city to a place that was bright and

[32]He means page 32 of section 1, Experience and Views, 1882 edition (page 40 in current edition).

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glorious. The grass of the place was living green, and the birds there warbled a sweet song. The inhabitants of the place were of all sizes, they were noble, majestic and lovely.... Then I was taken to a world which had seven moons. There I saw good old Enoch, who had been translated.”—Broadside, To those who are receiving the seal of the living God. Topsham, Jan. 31, 1849. (See also Early Writings, 39, 40, current edition.)

Other Sources Than Mrs. White

In May, 1847, James White made this brief reference to the 1846 vision:

“At our conference in Topsham, Maine, last Nov., Ellen had a vision of the handy works of God. She was guided to the planets, Jupiter, Saturn, and I think one more. After she came out of vision, she could give a clear description of their Moons, etc. It is well known, that she knew nothing of astronomy, and could not answer one question in relation to the planets, before she had this vision.”—A Word to the “Little Flock,“ p. 22.

On January 27, 1891, Mrs. M. C. Truesdail (nee Stowell), who, as a girl of about sixteen, was present when the vision was given, wrote a letter of reminiscences in which she included this statement:

“Sister White was in very feeble health, and while prayers were offered in her behalf, the Spirit of God rested upon us. We soon noticed that she was insensible to earthly things. This was her first view of the planetary world. After counting aloud the moons of Jupiter, and soon after those of Saturn, she gave a beautiful description of the rings of the latter. She then said, ‘The inhabitants are a tall, majestic people, so unlike the inhabitants of earth. Sin has never entered here.’ It was evident from Brother Bates’s smiling face that his past doubts in regard to the source of her visions were fast leaving him. We all knew that Captain Bates was a great lover of astronomy, as he would often locate many of the heavenly bodies for our instruction. When Sister White replied to his questions, after the vision, saying that she had never studied or otherwise received knowledge in this direction, he was filled with joy and happiness. He praised God, and expressed his belief that this vision concerning the planets was given that he might never again doubt.”—Quoted by J. N. Loughborough in Rise and Progress of the Seventh-day Adventists, p. 127. (The Great Second Advent Movement, pp. 260, 261.)

In 1892, J. N. Loughborough, a Seventh-day Adventist minister, published Rise and Progress of the Seventh-day Adventists. In it he wrote out an account of this Topsham vision. He undoubtedly [94] based this account on conversations held with Joseph Bates years before.[33] In 1905 he revised and enlarged the book, which was then published under the title The Great Second Advent Movement. In this revised work he retells the story of the vision, with the change of only a word. The critic quotes the account from this later edition.[34]

Let Us Note the Key Sentences

We have given all the sources. Three are primary and one is secondary. The first and most important fact to note is that nothing in these quoted accounts credits Mrs. White with stating that a particular planet had a particular number of moons. Let us review:

1. In her own account she simply states, “I was wrapt in a vision of GOD’s glory, and for the first time had a view of other planets.” Neither names of planets nor number of moons is even hinted at in this one and only certain account of the vision written by Mrs. White herself.

2. In what may possibly, though we think improbably, be a reference to this 1846 Topsham vision, she simply states, “The Lord has given me a view of other worlds.... Then I was taken to a world which had seven moons.” But she does not identify that “world.”

3. James White states, regarding her, “She was guided to the planets, Jupiter, Saturn, and I think one more. After she came out of vision, she could give a clear description of their Moons, etc.” He does not state that she gave names to the planets, or that she numbered the moons she saw, much less that she said a particular planet had a certain number of moons.

4. Mrs. Truesdail says, “After counting aloud the moons of Jupiter, and soon after those of Saturn, she gave a beautiful description of the rings of the latter.” But Mrs. Truesdail does not profess to tell us what Mrs. White actually said, or whether the listeners simply concluded that the moons being counted were those of Jupiter and of Saturn because of certain general descriptions. Only Loughborough presumes to state just what she said.

[33]No written account of the vision has come down through the years.

[34]See Appendix E, p. 585.

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5. Even Loughborough, quoting Bates, does not credit her with naming any planets, but only describing them, and then stating, “I see” such and such a number of moons. Bates did the identifying of planets. And may we not reasonably suppose that James White quite naturally accepted Bates’s interpretation as correct? Mrs. White left nothing on record to indicate that she even knew what were the names of the “worlds” she saw. Hence, it is altogether reasonable to conclude that James White’s statement simply reflects the conclusion that he and others reached as a result of Bates’s interpretation of her descriptive statements.

The Essence of the Charge

The charge is that “Mrs. White simply saw what her companions at the time generally believed and talked about.” Hence she was a fraud because she pretended to be presenting a revelation, when, in reality, what she “revealed” was common knowledge, obtainable from conversations with Bates himself or from any textbook on astronomy. And of course she must have perpetrated this hoax “to win Elder Bates.”

Now, we agree that the evidence warrants the conclusion that the vision evidently played a deciding part in persuading Bates that Mrs. White was a true prophet of God and not a fraud. But other documentary evidence also warrants the conclusion that Bates was excessively cautious about accepting her claims. In 1847 he tells of his having taken a very long time deciding. When she was in vision, at different times, he declares, “I listened to every word, and watched every move to detect deception, or mesmeric influence.” (See Bates’s statement in Broadside, A Vision, Topsham, Me., April 7, 1847. Reprinted in A Word to the “Little Flock,“ p. 21.)

The documentary evidence also calls for the conclusion that Mrs. White “had never studied or otherwise received knowledge” in the field of astronomy. The critic does not seem to challenge the statement attributed to Mrs. White regarding her ignorance of astronomy except as that ignorance might have been removed by “conversations.” He says, speaking of Bates: [96]

“He asked her if she had ever studied astronomy, and she replied by saying that she did not remember ever having looked in a book on astronomy. That settled it with him. But she could easily have learned all this from his own previous conversations.”

We are expected to conclude, therefore, that the skeptical Bates was amazed, overjoyed, and overwhelmingly convinced for all time regarding her claims, chiefly because she recited back to him in vision a bit of arithmetic—“four moons,” “seven moons,” “six moons”—which “she could easily have learned ... from his own previous conversations.” We do not believe Bates was that credulous, or that our readers are either!

What the Context Reveals

Surely the vision must have turned on something more than a total of moons or a simple description of planetary bands, as alleged. Note that in the charge at the opening of this chapter, a passage is quoted from Loughborough’s book, The Great Second Advent Movement, page 258, and that the passage ends with the words: “a wonderful description of the ‘opening heavens.’”

Let us now pick up the account as found in the Loughborough book, and go on:

“... a wonderful description of the ‘opening heavens,’ with its glory, calling it an opening into a region more enlightened. Elder Bates said that her description far surpassed any account of the opening heavens he had ever read from any author.

“While she was talking and still in vision, he arose to his feet, and exclaimed, ‘O how I wish Lord John Rosse was here to-night!’ Elder White inquired, ‘Who is Lord John Rosse?’ ‘Oh,’ said Elder Bates, ‘he is the great English astronomer. I wish he was here to hear that woman talk astronomy, and to hear that description of the “opening heavens.” It is ahead of anything I ever read on the subject.’ From that evening Elder Bates became fully satisfied that the visions of Mrs. White were outside of her knowledge and control.”—Pages 258, 259.

How different the matter looks, both for Mrs. White and Joseph Bates when the whole passage is given! Why were not these few additional sentences quoted? They are plainly needed to complete the picture. [97]

The question is not whether Bates had taught her “four moons,” “seven moons,” “six moons,” but whether he had presented to her such a marvelous and graphic view of the heavens that she, in turn, could hold him spellbound, and was worthy to be heard by “Lord John Rosse.” Bates admitted, “It is ahead of anything I ever read on the subject.” Evidently he would not have agreed that Mrs. White “could easily have learned” from him all she related in vision. No wonder the quotation was broken off in the middle of a sentence.

Hence, if we are to accept the documentary evidence, Mrs. White had a most amazing and revealing vision. If she did not acquire this astronomical knowledge, this power of description, from Bates, and if it was “ahead of anything” he himself had read, whence did she secure it? Not from a textbook. That is admitted. And anyhow, does reading a textbook give a person spellbinding powers of description! Mrs. White was only nineteen, in feeble health, and possessed of but meager education, yet she awed and impressed the confessedly skeptical Bates by the words that poured forth from her lips!

But What of Those Moons?

It is in the light of this larger view, as drawn from the record, that we see her 1846 astronomy vision in true perspective.

But now what of those moons? If the memory of those who wrote of the vision is wholly dependable, and if their tying together her description of different worlds with the number of moons—for she named no planets—is correct, why did she not name the true total of moons? The critic is sure that here is clear proof that she was a fraud. But let us go a little slowly.

Bates was honestly skeptical, and because of his study of astronomy he might most easily be impressed by a vision that dealt with the wonders of the heavens. Now if God was the author of Mrs. White’s visions, might He not seek to bring conviction to Bates’s mind as to her divine credentials by giving to her a vision of the heavens? But right here a problem arises: If the Lord caused her prophetic eye to be sharpened to the point where she could [98] see far beyond what the greatest telescope of that time could see, would not her description in vision result only in filling Bates’s mind with doubt and bewilderment?

The essence of the charge before us is that if she had been a true prophet, she would have seen and announced the true total of moons for each planet, and thus “would have proved her vision to be of God.” Indeed! “Proved” to whom? Not to Bates. Nothing could have made him more certain that she was what his skeptical fears had told him she was, a misguided enthusiast. Why should he accept her in opposition to the best reports of all the astronomers of his day?

Most Effective Proof for Bates

But let us take our reasoning one step further. If God sought to impress the mind of the astronomically-minded Bates, how more effectively could we imagine His doing it than by giving to His humble handmaiden a vision within the limits of 1846 astronomical knowledge, yet so surpassingly vivid and detailed as to convey the impression that she was actually gazing upon the sight? If the Lord did not permit her to see beyond what the telescopes of that day could reveal as to the number of moons, why does that prove her a fraud? She did not say, “I saw that there are only four moons that circle Jupiter,” or, “I saw that there are only seven moons that circle Saturn.” She did nothing remotely resembling this. According to Loughborough, who provides the only record of her words, she simply said: “I see four moons,” “I see seven moons,” et cetera.

Do prophets always “see” all the truth of God at one time? A study of the Bible permits us to answer, “No.” Moses was given much divine illumination, more than any Bible prophet, perhaps. He received, for example, instruction that was to ease the hard lot of the slaves in those cruel slave-holding days. But he did not “see” that there should be no slaves at all. Was his claim to being a prophet therefore fraudulent? Obviously the answer is “No.” Then why charge that Mrs. White was a fraud because she did not see all that there was to be seen in the heavens! [99]

A Groundless Assumption

Though Loughborough does not state that she said anything about a specific number of moons belonging to a specific planet, it is contended that Mrs. White herself says so in a passage quoted earlier in this chapter. That passage is a portion of a vision first recorded on a broadside in 1849 (later in Early Writings, 39, 40).

Assuming, for the moment, that she is here describing the 1846 Topsham vision on astronomy, what does that prove! If the reader will turn back to the quotation, he will find that it contains these relevant lines:

“The Lord has given me a view of other worlds. Wings were given me, and an angel attended me from the city to a place that was bright and glorious.... Then I was taken to a world which had seven moons. There I saw good old Enoch, who had been translated.”

The vision gives no clue as to which of the “other worlds” she is here speaking of. But note how the critic attempts to make her words support his charge. As a kind of convincing climax to his argument about her faulty moon-mathematics in the 1846 Topsham vision, he declares:

“Mrs. White herself, relating this vision, described Saturn as having only seven moons, the number then assigned to that planet by astronomers. Here are her own words in Early Writings, 32 [1882 ed. Page 40, new ed.]: ‘Then I was taken to a world which had seven moons.’” (Italics his.)

Three Phrases Examined

Let us examine three phrases in this statement:

1. “Described Saturn.” But in this passage Mrs. White did not speak of the planet “Saturn,” either by name or by any identifying description.

2. “Having only seven moons.” It might be astronomically true that the particular world on which she saw Enoch has “only seven moons.” But the facts are that Mrs. White, speaking of that world, which she identifies only as a place that Enoch was visiting, does not use the restrictive term “only.” [100]

It is easy to see what is here being attempted. The reader is asked to believe that when Mrs. White said, “had seven moons,” she really meant to say, had “only seven moons.” Then on the sheer assumption that this is the 1846 vision, the reader is asked to believe that Mrs. White is describing Saturn. Therefore she is a fraud because she specifically declared in her 1846 Topsham astronomy vision, not simply that “I see seven moons,” but that Saturn has “only seven moons.”

But in this singular sequence of reasoning the critic has made a fatal revelation. He reveals that in order to prove his case against Mrs. White he really needs to have her say that the planet, which he, on pure assumption, informs us is Saturn, had “only” seven moons. But the documentary evidence declares that she used neither the word “Saturn” nor “only.” In other words, he himself discloses that he realizes that “I see seven moons” does not mean the same as “having only seven moons.”

3. “Relating this vision.” The only possible reason for citing this passage from the 1849 Broadside (Early Writings, 40) is the assumption that Mrs. White is here relating the 1846 Topsham astronomy vision. And what proof is submitted in support of that assumption? None. True, there is a similarity in a phrase or two to the description of the 1846 vision as given by Loughborough and Mrs. Truesdail from memory many years later. But literary authorities who have to do with old writings would conclude that any similarity of phrase is most easily explained on the theory that Loughborough and Mrs. Truesdail blurred together their memory of what she heard in 1846 and their memory of what they read of what Mrs. White had written in 1849, or later.

The mere fact that Mrs. White discusses other worlds in 1846 and again in 1849 does not thereby prove that she is dealing with one vision. Did she have only one vision of other worlds? In the only specific reference which she herself made to the 1846 vision she says, “I was wrapt in a vision of God’s glory, and for the first time had a view of other planets.” Then it is reasonable to conclude that she may have had views of “other planets” subsequent to 1846. Mrs. Truesdail, who was a witness to various visions, bears the [101] same testimony. She speaks thus of Mrs. White’s 1846 vision: “This was her first view of the planetary world.”

But let us look more carefully at the text of the Loughborough document, on which both friend and foe must rely for Mrs. White’s words in vision. The phrases “I see four moons,” “I see seven moons,” “I see six moons,” are phrases standing apart from any context. We have only Loughborough’s descriptive connections. Mrs. White did not write out what she saw, nor did anyone else, at her dictation, or from her description, when she came out of vision.

We wonder what kind of problems would present themselves in evaluating the prophets of old if the believer in the Bible had to harmonize with science a collection of exclamatory phrases recorded by bystanders while the prophets were in vision!

One more point: How does the record of the phrases of Mrs. White’s astronomy vision come down to us? The vision was in 1846. But, as already stated, the phrases are first found in Loughborough’s book published in 1892, almost half a century later. And was he writing from personal memory? No. He was writing from the memory of what he had been told—most probably by Bates—years before he wrote in 1892.[35] Would any court admit such evidence as valid under any circumstances? No! We might add that Mrs. Truesdail, in 1891, also wrote from memory.

[35]It is true that Loughborough kept a diary, but there is no proof that this incident, with its specific references to planets and moons, had been recorded in his diary. Even if it had, it would still have been a record, not of something known firsthand by him, but something Bates had said in recollection of the 1846 vision.

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Chapter 8—The Predictions of the 1856 Vision

Charge: Concerning a conference in 1856 Mrs. White declared: “I was shown the company present at the conference. Said the angel, ‘Some food for worms, some subjects of the seven last plagues, some will be alive and remain upon the earth to be translated at the coming of Jesus.’” All who were alive then are now dead. This prediction was not fulfilled.

Must we therefore conclude that Mrs. White is not a true prophet? That is the question before us.[36]

Conditional Quality of Divine Predictions

It may come as a surprise to some to think that God’s promises of blessing and His threats of judgments are conditional. But the Scriptures are explicit on this. Listen to these words:

“At what instant I shall speak concerning a nation, and concerning a kingdom, to pluck up, and to pull down, and to destroy it; if that nation, against whom I have pronounced, turn from their evil, I will repent of the evil that I thought to do unto them. And at what instant I shall speak concerning a nation, and concerning a kingdom, to build and to plant it; if it do evil in my sight, that it obey not my voice, then I will repent of the good, wherewith I said I would benefit them.” Jeremiah 18:7-10.

The Bible presents a number of illustrations of the application of this principle set forth by Jeremiah. Indeed, we may be thankful for Jeremiah’s words; they help us rightly to understand some texts of Scripture that might otherwise seem to indict the divine claims of certain prophets. Let us cite two instances that illustrate both parts of Jeremiah’s statement. The first is a

[36]The prediction was first published in 1856 as a part of one of the articles comprising Testimony for the Church No. 2. It is also found in Spiritual Gifts 4b:18 (second pagination), published in 1864. It is referred to in 1860 in Spiritual Gifts 2:208. Currently the prediction appears in Testimonies for the Church 1:131, 132.

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divine threat to bring judgment upon a nation. We give in parallel columns the threat of judgment and its reversal:

A Threat of Judgment Reversed

“So Jonah arose, and went unto Nineveh, according to the word of the Lord. Now Nineveh was an exceeding great city of three days’ journey. And Jonah began to enter into the city a day’s journey, and he cried, and said, Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown.” Jonah 3:3, 4.

“So the people of Nineveh believed God, and proclaimed a fast, and put on sackcloth, from the greatest of them even to the least of them.” “And God saw their works, that they turned from their evil way; and God repented of the evil, that he had said that he would do unto them; and he did it not.” Jonah 3:5, 10.

Someone may interject that Jonah’s prediction was patently not intended by God to be understood in an unqualified sense, else what would have been the Lord’s purpose in sending him to preach to the Ninevites. Only two comments are needed:

1. To contend that something should be implied in a prediction is to agree with the very reasoning we are here setting forth.

2. So far as the written record is concerned Jonah was sent to preach only a message of judgment. That God might forbear to bring judgment if they did repent, the Ninevites seemed not to be sure: “Who can tell if God will turn and repent, and turn away from his fierce anger, that we perish not?” Jonah 3:9. Furthermore, if Jonah had preached repentance and thus the possibility of deliverance, he would have had no reason to feel that he had “lost face” when the dire forecast failed to be fulfilled,

A Promise Reversed

We give now a promise of blessing and its reversal:

“And God spake unto Moses,” “Say unto the children of Israel, ... I will bring you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians, and ... ye shall know that I am the Lord your God, which bringeth you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians. And I will bring you in unto the land, concerning the which I did swear to give it to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob; and I will give it you for an heritage.” Exodus 6:2, 6-8.

“And the Lord spake unto Moses and unto Aaron, saying, How long shall I bear with this evil congregation, which murmur against me? ... Say unto them, ... your carcases shall fall in this wilderness; and all that were numbered of you, according to your whole number, ... doubtless ye shall not come into the land, concerning which I sware to make you dwell therein.... And ye shall know my breach of promise.” Numbers 14:26-34.

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How clearly these parallel passages on the promise to Israel illuminate the words of Jeremiah! Said the Lord to Israel, “Ye shall know my breach of promise.” The alternate reading in the margin would state it thus: “Ye shall know my altering of my purpose.”

The Case of Eli

Again, take the words of “a man of God” who came to Eli to declare judgment against him because of the vile conduct of his sons. This “man of God” asked Eli if he remembered the promise that the Lord made to his family “when they were in Egypt in Pharaoh’s house,” that they should serve as God’s priests. Then he follows with this reversal of the promise:

“Wherefore the Lord God of Israel saith, I said indeed that thy house, and the house of thy father, should walk before me for ever: but now the Lord saith, Be it far from me; for them that honour me I will honour, and they that despise me shall be lightly esteemed. Behold, the days come, that I will cut off thine arm, and the arm of thy father’s house, that there shall not be an old man in thine house.” 1 Samuel 2:30, 31.

Have sincere Bible students been disturbed by these reversals of God’s decrees? No. Or have they in any way lost confidence in the claims of the Bible prophets because their prophecies failed of fulfillment? No. And why? Because in view of Jeremiah’s words they read into each prediction an implied qualifying clause:

The Implied Qualifying Clause

1. “Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown”—if the Ninevites do not repent.

2. “I will bring you in unto the land, concerning the which I did swear to give it”—if ye will keep My covenant. (See Exodus 19:5, 6, where the Lord, speaking to Moses en route to Canaan, inserts the qualifying “if.”)

3. “I said indeed that thy house, and the house of thy father, should walk before me for ever”—if ye will walk in the ways of righteousness. [105]

If it is proper—and it is—to add to these predictions a qualifying clause, why is it not proper to do so with Mrs. White’s 1856 prediction?

Theologians Comment on Predictions

The conditional character of Bible predictions may be explained on the altogether reasonable ground that God, though sovereign, is not arbitrary. He does not deal with men as if they were lifeless objects on a chessboard to be moved about exclusively at His will. He mysteriously holds in check, as it were, His own plans oftentimes, because He will not override the free will of man. That is what gives to divine predictions their conditional quality, and that is what caused God to speak of “my breach of promise,” or “my altering of my purpose.”

Well-known Bible commentators have written of this:

“God’s unchangeable principle is to do the best that can be done under all circumstances; if then He did not take into account the moral change in his people (their prayers, &c.), He would not be acting according to His own unchanging principle.”—JAMIESON, FAUSSET, BROWN, Commentary, Notes on Jeremiah 18:8.

“God’s promises are as conditional as his threats. It would be neither just nor merciful to us for God to continue his favours unabated after we had departed from him. The removal of them is a wholesome warning to us. It springs naturally from the personal relation of God to his people, one which depends on reciprocal sympathy.”—The Pulpit Commentary, Notes (Homiletics) on Jeremiah 18:7-10.

“These verses [Jeremiah 18:7-10] contain what may be called God’s decree by which the whole of his conduct towards man is regulated. If he purpose destruction against an offending person, if that person repent and turn to God, he shall live and not die.

“If he purpose peace and salvation to him that walketh uprightly, if he turn from God to the world and sin, he shall die and not live.”—ADAM CLARKE, Commentary, Notes on Jeremiah 18:7-10.

Further Reasons for Conditional Predictions

The Bible reveals that God’s predictions, through His prophets, are affected not simply by the wicked repenting, or the righteous backsliding, but also by the supplication of a righteous man who is continuing in his righteousness, Here is the inspired record of [106] what the prophet Isaiah forecast for King Hezekiah, and of the reversal of that forecast:

“In those days was Hezekiah sick unto death. And the prophet Isaiah the son of Amoz came to him, and said unto him, Thus saith the Lord, Set thine house in order; for thou shalt die, and not live. Then he turned his face to the wall, and prayed unto the Lord, saying, I beseech thee, O Lord, remember now how I have walked before thee in truth and with a perfect heart, and have done that which is good in thy sight. And Hezekiah wept sore. And it came to pass, afore Isaiah was gone out into the middle court, that the word of the Lord came to him, saying, Turn again, and tell Hezekiah the captain of my people, Thus saith the Lord, the God of David thy father, I have heard thy prayer, I have seen thy tears: behold, I will heal thee.” 2 Kings 20:1-5.

That the free will of man may nullify a prediction is clearly revealed by all experience in the life of David. Here is an instance in which turning from righteousness to wickedness, or vice versa, is not involved, but simply the free operation of a man’s will in the light of a prediction. David, with some loyal warriors, was in the city of Keilah. He heard that Saul was planning to come up against him and trap him in the walled city. David wished to make certain of Saul’s plans and also whether the townsmen of Keilah would deliver him over to Saul. The record declares:

“Then said David, O Lord God of Israel, thy servant hath certainly heard that Saul seeketh to come to Keilah, to destroy the city for my sake. Will the men of Keilah deliver me up into his hand? will Saul come down, as thy servant hath heard? O Lord God of Israel, I beseech thee, tell thy servant. And the Lord said, He will come down. Then said David, Will the men of Keilah deliver me and my men into the hand of Saul? And the Lord said, They will deliver thee up.” 1 Samuel 23:10-12.

No more unequivocal prediction could have been given to David. But did Saul come down and did the dwellers in Keilah deliver up David? The next verse informs us:

“Then David and his men, which were about six hundred, arose and departed out of Keilah, and went whithersoever they could [107] go. And it was told Saul that David was escaped from Keilah; and he forbare to go forth.” Verse 13.

The Lord might have said to David, Saul “will come down,” and the people of Keilah “will deliver you up,” provided you do not flee. But the record does not include this “provided.” David simply exercised his free will and fled with his men, hence Saul “forbare to go forth.”

We find in this nothing unusual. Why should Saul go down if David had fled? And certainly the people of Keilah could not deliver up David if he had fled. That is obvious! This is another way of saying that the free will of man may cause a divine prediction to be unfulfilled. But none of us find in this fact any reason for doubting divine predictions.

The righteous who backslide exercise their free will. The wicked who turn to righteousness exercise their free will. The man who prays, like Hezekiah, exercises his free will—the right of a child of God to petition his Father. The action of man’s free will is the key to unlock the mystery of the conditional quality of divine predictions. Not until men have sinned away their day of grace, and thus closed their probation and their right further to exercise their free will in defiance of God, will the judgments of God descend upon a sinful world to consume it completely. Thus will the ultimate purpose of God be carried out and His sovereign plan and will find full and unhampered expression.

Factors That Affect Promise of Advent

The Scriptures reveal that one of the reasons why God seems to us to be slow in carrying out His plan and promise to create a new earth for the righteous is because He desires to give men a little longer time in which to exercise their free will to flee from the wrath to come. Peter thus answers those who would doubt the certainty of God’s promise to bring an end to this world of evil simply because time has tarried:

“The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that [108] any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.” 2 Peter 3:9.

Peter also declares that the children of God may hasten the Advent by exercising their free will. There is something that we can do about bringing the Advent nearer. We read, “Looking for and hasting unto the coming [margin, “hasting the coming”] of the day of God” 2 Peter 3:12. Commentators have observed on this text:

“St. Peter seems to represent Christians as ‘hastening the coming [literally, “presence”] of the day of God’ by working out their own salvation, and helping to spread the knowledge of the gospel (Matthew 24, 14), and so rendering the long-suffering patience of God no longer necessary.”—The Pulpit Commentary, Notes (Exposition) on 2 Peter 3:12.

“God appoints us as instruments of accomplishing those events which must be first before the day of God can come. By praying for His coming, furthering the preaching of the Gospel for a witness to all nations, and bringing in those whom ‘the long-suffering of God’ waits to save, we hasten the coming of the day of God.”—JAMIESON, FAUSSET, BROWN, Commentary, Notes on 2 Peter 3:12.

That the coming of Christ is related to an action of men’s free will—the preaching of the gospel by Christ’s followers—is clearly revealed in our Lord’s prophecy as to the time of His coming: “And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations; and then shall the end come.” Matthew 24:14.

Mrs. White’s Relevant Statements

Thus it is evident that if the free will of man is so vitally related to the second coming of Christ, both as regards the unbeliever and the professed children of God, any prediction concerning it would have to be tempered and qualified by that fact. Now listen to the words of Mrs. White in the decades following the 1856 vision. In 1868 she wrote:

“The long night of gloom is trying, but the morning is deferred in mercy, because if the Master should come, so many would be found unready. God’s unwillingness to have his people perish, has been the reason of so long delay.”—Testimonies for the Church 2:194. [109]

In 1896 she wrote:

“If those who claimed to have a living experience in the things of God had done their appointed work as the Lord ordained, the whole world would have been warned ere this, and the Lord Jesus would have come in power and great glory.”—The Review and Herald, October 6, 1896, p. 629.

In a sermon preached on Sabbath, March 28, 1903, at the General Conference, she declared:

“I know that if the people of God had preserved a living connection with Him, if they had obeyed His Word, they would to-day be in the heavenly Canaan.”—The General Conference Bulletin, 35th Session, March 30, 1903, p. 9.

In the last volume of her Testimonies, published in the year 1909, she penned these solemn lines:

“If every watchman on the walls of Zion had given the trumpet a certain sound, the world might ere this have heard the message of warning. But the work is years behind. While men have slept, Satan has stolen a march upon us.”—Page 29.

No Failure in the Word of the Lord

That Mrs. White clearly understood that there is a conditional quality to God’s promises and threatenings—as Jeremiah declared—and that the conditional feature in forecasts regarding Christ’s Advent involves the state of heart of Christ’s followers, is revealed in these words from her pen:

“The angels of God in their messages to men represent time as very short. Thus it has always been presented to me. It is true that time has continued longer than we expected in the early days of this message. Our Saviour did not appear as soon as we hoped. But has the Word of the Lord failed? Never! It should be remembered that the promises and the threatenings of God are alike conditional....

“Had the whole Adventist body [after the disappointment in 1844] united upon the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus, how widely different would have been our history!

“It was not the will of God that the coming of Christ should be thus delayed. God did not design that His people, Israel, should wander forty years in the wilderness. He promised to lead them directly to the land of Canaan, and establish them there a holy, healthy, happy people. But those to whom it was first preached, went not in ‘because of unbelief.’ Their hearts were filled with murmuring, rebellion, and hatred, and He could not fulfill His covenant with them. [110]

“For forty years did unbelief, murmuring, and rebellion shut out ancient Israel from the land of Canaan. The same sins have delayed the entrance of modern Israel into the heavenly Canaan. In neither case were the promises of God at fault. It is the unbelief, the worldliness, unconsecration, and strife among the Lord’s professed people that have kept us in this world of sin and sorrow so many years.”—MS. 4, 1883. Quoted in Evangelism, 695, 696. (See also Appendix F, p. 586.)

These words from Mrs. White harmonize with what we have already discovered of the ways of God toward man, that man’s free will plays an awesome part in the operation of the plans of God for this earth. This is one reason why we must give an account for our deeds—the expression of our free wills—in the final day of God!

When we examine Mrs. White’s unfulfilled prediction of 1856 in the light of the conditional character of divine predictions and unfulfilled Bible prophecies, how quickly the problem before us disappears. We cannot hold Mrs. White to a more rigid and inflexible standard than we would Bible prophets.

In this connection someone may call to mind Deuteronomy 18:22: “When a prophet speaketh in the name of the Lord, if the thing follow not, nor come to pass, that is the thing which the Lord hath not spoken, but the prophet hath spoken it presumptuously.” This text, taken alone, proves too much; it indicts certain Bible prophets as well. We believe that Deuteronomy 18:22 is to be understood, even as any other lone text, in the context of all Scripture. Other scriptures reveal that there are qualifying factors that operate in relation to a prophet’s predictions, particularly where the free will of man may be involved. That would not be so likely where a prophet is seeking to perform some “sign” or “wonder” to prove his claim to being a prophet. (See in this connection, Deuteronomy 13:1, 2.) We have an illustration of true and false prophets in regard to a “sign” or “wonder” in the case of Elijah and the priests of Baal. The free will of the people was not a factor. Both the priests of Baal and Elijah made claims to represent divinity. But only Elijah could cause to “come to pass” the “wonder,” the appointed “sign.” [111]

A Final Question Answered

Only one possible question remains to be answered. Someone may enquire: By thus explaining Mrs. White’s 1856 vision have you not undermined the certainty of all prophecy? In reply we would remind the inquirer that his faith in the prophecies of the Bible is not undermined by the fact that certain of these prophecies were not fulfilled. We are not presenting a new theory regarding the predictions of the prophets in order to explain Mrs. White’s prediction as we do; we are simply calling attention to certain scriptures that explicitly state that certain predictions were not fulfilled. Lovers of the Bible have had no doubt as to the dependability of its prophecies even though the record is clear that some of them were not fulfilled. Why should it be necessary to conclude that doubt is being cast on all the predictions of the prophets simply because we declare that Mrs. White’s 1856 prediction is similar to certain unfulfilled predictions of Scripture?

Let us never forget that if a divine prediction is unfulfilled, if God displays a “breach of promise,” the guilt lies with us, His willful children. Well does Mrs. White declare, in a letter dated December 7, 1901:

“We may have to remain here in this world because of insubordination many more years, as did the children of Israel; but for Christ’s sake, His people should not add sin to sin by charging God with the consequence of their own wrong course of action.”—Evangelism, 696. [112]

Chapter 9—The Civil War Predictions

Basic Charge: At the time of the Civil War, Mrs. White made allegedly prophetic statements about the war which were no more than common knowledge. She sided with those who belabored Lincoln and his administration. She also made a series of predictions [mentioned, in order, in the body of this chapter] that proved false.

The portion of Mrs. White’s writings on which most of these charges are based, was printed first as a little pamphlet entitled Testimony No. 7, in February, 1862. The rest of the charges are based on Mrs. White’s statement that appeared originally as another pamphlet, entitled Testimony No. 9, in January, 1863. Now, if her Civil War predictions were so glaringly wrong, and if, according to the critic, as we shall note later, certain of our earliest pamphlets and papers were suppressed by Mrs. White and her associates, so that none might see her mistakes, would we not naturally expect that these two little pamphlets would also have been suppressed? But this was not the case. The quotations supporting his charge are drawn from a current work published by Seventh-day Adventists, Testimonies for the Church,[37] volume 1.

Charge Number 1

Mrs. White’s “revelations” concerning the Civil War “simply told just what everybody already knew” about the causes of the war and the factors operating in connection with it.

This charge is based upon the presumption that even from the outset of the war “everybody” had a clear understanding of the issues involved, the trend, and the implications of certain courses of actions followed by different leaders in government.

[37]Testimony No. 7, that appeared first as a pamphlet in February, 1862, was reprinted, along with other testimonies, as pages 253-302 of volume 1, Testimonies for the Church, in 1885. Testimony No. 9, which first appeared as a pamphlet in January, 1863, constitutes pages 355-389 of this same volume. Testimonies for the Church became, finally, a nine-volume work. This work has been increasingly circulated from the time of publication up to the present.

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The facts are that no period in United States history has been more debated than the period of the Civil War. The debate began at the very outset of the war, and central to it were questions as to the causes of the war and the objectives that the North and South had in lighting it.

A few years ago a committee of leading historians prepared a group work on the subject of how to write history. In this they discussed some of the difficulties that confront the historian who seeks to discover, amid the welter of facts and discordant claims that surround any period of history, the true picture in proper proportion and focus. The particular exhibit that they employed to show the problem that confronts historians was the Civil War, very particularly the causes of that war. We quote two sentences:

“Study of what historians have said were the causes of this particular war makes one skeptical of all simple explanations of all wars....

“Conclusions about this particular historical problem have been constantly changing ever since the events occurred, as available data and men’s environment, techniques, and philosophies have changed.”—Theory and Practice in Historical Study (a report of the Committee on Historiography of the Social Science Research Council), p. 90.

According to the charge, all that Mrs. White said was “just what everybody already knew.” Great historians are less certain about the transparently simple character of the facts and information and conclusions possible to men even today concerning the Civil War, much less to men in the days of the war itself. A reading of all that Mrs. White wrote concerning the Civil War, in the Testimonies from which the critic has quoted, reveals that she was concerning herself very definitely with the causes that were operating in connection with the war, particularly the factor of the desire for abolition of slavery.

Charge Number 2

Mrs. White’s Civil War “revelation” reflected “the sentiments of those opposed to the Government and the war.” “Her whole message was one of opposition, faultfinding, condemnation, and a prophecy of defeat and final failure,—exactly that of the opponents of Lincoln and his management of the war.” “It [her message of January 4, 1862] is all a bitter denunciation of Lincoln’s administration and his management [114] of the war,” and his appeals for special days of fasting and prayer for victory.

The facts are that though the many critics of the government during the war focus upon Lincoln personally, often making him the object of vilification, Mrs. White does not even mention him by name. She very largely concerns herself, when discussing the trend of affairs, with the actions of an array of government leaders and generals who are not named.

The mistaken idea is held by many today, that the Civil War was fought by the North with a clear-cut and express purpose from the outset to abolish slavery, and that from the beginning of the war Lincoln was the outspoken advocate of this objective. Hence any criticism of Lincoln’s administration would be a despicable attempt to besmirch a great cause and a great man. Before examining Mrs. White’s statements on the objectives and execution of the war, let us look at the historical record on these points. Listen to these words from the Encyclopaedia Britannica:

“At the beginning of the war the people and leaders of the North had not desired to interfere with slavery, but circumstances had been too strong for them. Lincoln had declared that he meant to save the Union as best he could—by preserving slavery, by destroying it or by destroying part and preserving part. Just after the battle of Antietam (Sept. 17, 1862) he issued his proclamation calling on the revolted States to return to their allegiance before the next year, otherwise their slaves would be declared free men. No State returned and the threatened declaration was issued on Jan. 1, 1863.”—Article, “United States of America,” vol. 22, p. 809. (1945 ed., University of Chicago Press.)

Another historical authority declares:

“Although Abraham Lincoln was a lifelong opponent of the slave system, he reached his great decision to attack the ‘peculiar institution’ of the South only because he felt the success of the Union cause required it. As 1862 and the second year of war progressed, the failure of the North to achieve any decisive military success concentrated greater attention than ever on the issue of emancipation....

“Urged by many to strike a blow at the heart of the Confederacy by emancipating the slaves, Lincoln did not abandon his paramount belief that the great purpose of the war was to preserve the Union. He was fearful of driving from the Union the loyal, slaveholding border states, and he knew that many in the Union armies were not anti-slavery men. In his famous letter [115]

of August 22, 1862, he wrote to Horace Greeley, editor of the New York Tribune:

“My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and it is not either to save or destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that.’....

“It was on September 22, 1862, that President Lincoln issued his preliminary Proclamation of Emancipation. By virtue of his authority as Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy, he declared that on January 1, 1863, all slaves within any state or district then declared to he in rebellion against the United States ‘shall be then, thenceforth, and forever free.’”—FRANK MONAGHAN, Heritage of Freedom,[38] pp. 72, 73.

Further Historical Data

In the setting of these historical statements we can see how wholly unwarranted is the attempt to dismiss Mrs. White’s statements on the Civil War as being merely a reflection of the general criticism by “the opponents of Lincoln and his management of the war.” At first the vicious attacks directed against Lincoln and his administration by his political opponents were not made because he failed to take a decided stand against slavery. As Monaghan observes: “Many in the Union Armies were not antislavery men.” And certainly many business men in the North were not antislavery men. They had satisfactory business dealings with the South, and had no desire to disturb such dealings. William Lloyd Garrison, founder of the abolitionist movement, was dragged through the streets with a halter around his neck—not in a Southern city but in Boston.

By no stretch of the imagination could it be said that the North, as such, entered the war in a spirit of holy crusade against the evil of slavery. The clearly avowed purpose, as stated by Lincoln, was to preserve the Union. Even on this point there was no agreement. No small number of prominent men in the North felt that although it was good to have a Union of all the States in America, the idea of union was not of sufficient value to warrant

[38]This volume, published in 1947 by the Princeton University Press, gives, as its subtitle declares, “The History & Significance of the Basic Documents of American Liberty.”

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a war, and that it would be better to let the seceding States depart in peace if they were determined to go.

The pattern of general opposition to Lincoln’s administration turned upon whether the country should be plunged into war to maintain the idea of union, and second, whether the war was being fought on the most successful lines.

What Mrs. White Criticized

But when Mrs. White wrote in criticism of the Government in January, 1862, it was because the Government had taken no stand against slavery. She notes the fact that prominent men in the Northern Army are “pro-slavery men” and that “some of our leading men in Congress also are constantly working to favor the South.” Then she follows immediately with her withering comment on the proclamations for national fasts that God will bring this war to a speedy and favorable termination. “I saw that these national fasts were an insult to Jehovah. He accepts of no such fasts.”—Testimonies for the Church 1:257.

Then she goes on to tell about how some slaves escaping from their masters have been cruelly treated by men in the North, and adds:

“And yet a national fast is proclaimed! Saith the Lord, ‘Is not this the fast that I have chosen, to loose the bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed go free, and that ye break every yoke?’ [Isaiah 58:6]. When our nation observes the fast which God has chosen, then will he accept their prayers as far as the war is concerned: but now they enter not into his ear.”—Testimonies for the Church 1:258.

The whole force of this charge disappears when the context is given.

Our Consistent Antislavery Position

The position of Seventh-day Adventist leaders in opposition to slavery has been clear cut from the very earliest days of the movement. Indeed, the great Advent Awakening under William Miller, from which Seventh-day Adventism sprang, was headed largely by men who were ardent reformers, particularly in the matter of the abolition of slavery. We need offer no apology for them or [117] for Mrs. White, who was foremost in her declarations of horror at the slave traffic. If all religious leaders in America in the generation preceding the 1860’s had spoken with the same forthright vigor against slavery, we doubt whether there would have been a proslavery political group of any consequence by the year 1861. It is an unquestionable fact that Mrs. White, and the Adventist ministers associated with her, were definitely in advance of the great body of the clergy in America in the matter of opposition to slavery.

We set forth these facts, not to boast on behalf of Mrs. White or the Adventist ministry, but only to keep the record straight. And certainly we do not give this historical material with any desire to stir up what should now be the long-dead embers of the fires of misunderstanding and sectional hatred that once blazed in the United States. We have no way of returning adequate, convincing answer to a series of misrepresentations and half truths except as that answer can be placed in a historical context.

Charge Number 3

Mrs. White wrote: “The system of slavery, which has ruined our nation, is left to live and stir up another rebellion.”—Testimonies for the Church 1:255. “A plain, false prophecy. No such thing happened, as all now know.”

But let us give her statement in its context:

“Those who have ventured to leave their homes and sacrifice their lives to exterminate slavery, are dissatisfied. They see no good results from the war, only the preservation of the Union, and for this thousands of lives must be sacrificed and homes made desolate. Great numbers have wasted away and expired in hospitals; others have been taken prisoners by the rebels, a fate more to be dreaded than death. In view of all this, they inquire, If we succeed in quelling this rebellion, what has been gained? They can only answer discouragingly, Nothing. That which caused the rebellion is not removed. The system of slavery, which has ruined our nation, is left to live and stir up another rebellion.”—Testimonies for the Church 1:254, 255.

Mrs. White here is giving the question raised by those who “have ventured to leave their homes and sacrifice their lives to exterminate slavery” Then she gives the answer that they return to their own question. Even if we took these words as an expression [118] of Mrs. White’s views, there would be nothing amiss in them, nothing of false prophecy; they were simply a statement of conditions as of the moment, and a declaration that the seeds of “another rebellion” resided in the system of slavery. If she had said, for example, that the war would end with slavery not abolished and that a new war would ensue as a result, then might the critics charge her with false prophecy. But she did not say that. And, in fact, as we have already observed, the context suggests that she is merely quoting what others have said.

Charge Number 4

Mrs. White wrote: “It seems impossible to have the war conducted successfully.”—Testimonies for the Church 1:256.

“Yes, to her it was uncertain, impossible to succeed. But was that all God knew about it?—all He could tell her?”

It is difficult to see how the critic can construe this statement into a false prophecy. Even prophets, when they write concerning the passing scene, describe it as it then appears. This is what she was doing. She does not say that it could not be possible, or that it would not be possible, at some date in the future, for the war to be conducted successfully.

Charge Number 5

Mrs. White wrote: “Had our nation remained united, it would have had strength; but divided it must fall.”—Testimonies for the Church 1:260.

“No such thing happened. It was not divided, nor did it fall. Did not the Lord know better than that? Yes, but she did not.”

We discussed in the preceding chapter the subject of conditional predictions, and showed that some Bible prophecies were not fulfilled, and for the simple reason that the conditions changed, because of the free will of man. As a warning to the United States, no statement probably was more true than that, “Divided it must fall.” But why did not the critic, in connection with this charge and the four already considered, quote another statement by Mrs. White in the same context?

“When our nation observes the fast which God has chosen,[39]

[39]“Is not this the fast that I have chosen? to loose the bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed go free, and that ye break every yoke?” Isaiah 58:6.

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then will he accept their prayers as far as the war is concerned.”—Testimonies for the Church 1:258.

Did Mrs. White consign the Government to defeat and collapse? Are her statements, quoted so briefly and out of context, to be understood as making predictions that have not come true? We think this last quotation from her provides a sufficient answer, and is strictly in line with the principles discussed in the chapter that dealt with conditional predictions. She sets forth a procedure by which the Government may have its prayers answered “as far as the war is concerned.” Prayer for what? For victory.

Nor is this the only statement made by Mrs. White during the dark days of the war that goes counter to the charge of the critics that she was predicting defeat for the North, and thus victory for the South, and that, in fact, she expressed only what was current thinking in all she said about the war. Few onlookers would have ventured to predict in January, 1863, that the war would end as it did. But here is what Mrs. White published at that time:

“I saw that both the South and the North were being punished. In regard to the South, I was referred to Deuteronomy 32:35-37: ‘To me belongeth vengeance and recompense: their foot shall slide in due time; for the day of their calamity is at hand, and the things that shall come upon them make haste. For the Lord shall judge his people, and repent himself for his servants; when he seeth that their power is gone, and there is none shut up or left, and he shall say, Where are their gods, their rock in whom they trusted?’”—Testimonies for the Church 1:368.

Six months later came Gettysburg, the high tide of Southern power, and then the steady ebb. But before the ebb appears, Mrs. White says, “I was referred to Deuteronomy 32:35-37.” Who referred her to that passage of Scripture? One who knew more than the wise men of the world! And she was so calmly confident of the Source of her counsel that she wrote as she did while the North was experiencing anything but victory.

Charge Number 6

Mrs. White wrote: “This nation will vet be humbled into the dust.”—Testimonies for the Church 1:259.

“Here, again, her prophecy was a complete failure. Our nation was not humbled into the dust.” [120]

Now, what did Mrs. White mean when she wrote “humbled into the dust”? The critic presumably takes for granted that this means that she forecast that the United States Government in Washington would be hopelessly defeated. But that interpretation of her words is not required.

In her opening paragraphs in discussion of the whole subject of the Civil War, she wrote:

“The North had boasted of their strength, and ridiculed the idea of the South leaving the Union. They considered it like the threats of a willful, stubborn child, and thought that the South would soon come to their senses, and, becoming sick of leaving the Union, would with humble apologies return to their allegiance.”—Testimonies for the Church 1:253, 254.

How great was the humiliation of the North when the South, with a relatively small population and relatively small manufacturing possibilities, administered appalling defeats upon the North for at least two years.

Of the attitude of our Government in relation to other countries Mrs. White wrote:

“Our government has been very proud and independent. The people of this nation have exalted themselves to heaven, and have looked down upon monarchical governments, and triumphed in their boasted liberty, while the institution of slavery, that was a thousand times worse than the tyranny exercised by monarchical governments, was suffered to exist and was cherished.”—Testimonies for the Church 1:258, 259.

It is in the very next paragraph after this statement that we find the words: “This nation will yet be humbled into the dust.” Was this country of America humbled in the eyes of countries overseas? Listen to the London Times correspondent quoting for the satisfaction of his English readers the words of the American divine, Reverend Doctor Cheever, who in prayer “blessed the name of God for having so humbled the nation that it was compelled as a military necessity to ask the aid of the negro.”—January 20, 1863.

On July 4, 1863, the London Times referred to the date of the American Independence Day, describing it as “this day of festivity, now converted into a day of humiliation.” [121]

Thus spoke the London Times in the darkest days of the Civil War. The fact that this leading English paper was most evidently writing in vengeful glee, does not therefore make unwarranted the use of its words as testimony. Something very humiliating must have been happening to the United States to make England’s most conservative, most representative paper speak as it did. That the United States was greatly humbled, so far as England was concerned, is not open to question. We think historians would agree that the London Times was not inventing a story, but was presenting a substantially true picture. It is an interesting fact that Mrs. White’s statement that “this nation will yet be humbled into the dust” is made right in the midst of a discussion of what England is thinking of doing in a military way in the light of America’s weakness. Undoubtedly if England had waged war against the Washington Government while it was in its weakened condition, it would have been humbled in a military way. But no one can read these quotations from the London Times in the setting of Mrs. White’s statement about the pride of America, without concluding that her prediction that this country would be humbled in the dust, found more than ample fulfillment in the conditions that actually did develop.

For further light on the meaning that Mrs. White herself attached to the phrase, “humbled into the dust,” we need only to read elsewhere in volume 1 of the Testimonies for the Church. She is discussing an unhappy experience of earlier days in which her husband, poverty stricken and sick, was made the object of cruel insinuations and charges by some who should have dealt kindly with him. His sense of self-respect and dignity were out-raged, and he and Mrs. White were deeply humiliated. Writing of the experience she declares, “We were humbled into the very dust, and distressed beyond expression.”—Page 583.

This parallel passage should be sufficient, we believe, to prove the reasonableness of our position that the phrase “humbled into the dust,” as applied to the United States, met an adequate fulfillment in the deep humiliation that confronted this country during the darkest days of the Civil War. [122]

Charge Number 7

Mrs. White wrote: “When England does declare war, all nations will have an interest of their own to serve, and there will be general war, general confusion.”—Testimonies for the Church 1:259.

“England did not declare war.” “Her prophecy was a complete failure.”

Again we need the context in order to see what Mrs. White is setting forth:

“England is studying whether it is best to take advantage of the present weak condition of our nation, and venture to make war upon her. She is weighing the matter, and trying to sound other nations. She fears, if she should commence war abroad, that she would be weak at home, and that other nations would take advantage of her weakness. Other nations are making quiet yet active preparations for war, and are hoping that England will make war with our nation, for then they would improve the opportunity to be revenged on her for the advantage she has taken of them in the past, and the injustice done them. A portion of the Queen’s subjects are waiting a favorable opportunity to break their yoke; but if England thinks it will pay, she will not hesitate a moment to improve her opportunities to exercise her power, and humble our nation. When England does declare war, all nations will have an interest of their own to serve, and there will be general war, general confusion.”—Testimonies for the Church 1:259.

Note the conditional character of these statements: “She fears, if she should commence war abroad, that she would be weak at home.” “But if England thinks it will pay.” Then follows the sentence: “When England does declare war....” It is evident that Mrs. White is here using the word “when” as a synonym for “if,” which is good English. In fact, if we do not thus understand the word “when” in this connection, we have an unusual situation—a series of problematical “ifs” is followed by a simple statement that England is going to declare war. Thus Mrs. White’s last sentence would make pointless her preceding sentences.

A similar use of the word “when” is found on the preceding page in her work: “When our nation observes the fast which God has chosen, then will he accept their prayers as far as the war is concerned.” No one, least of all the critic, will argue that the word “when” in this connection introduces a simple statement concerning a future fact that will undebatably happen. [123]

An inspired parallel to this “if” and “when” construction is found in Jeremiah 42:10-19. The prophet speaks to Israel about abiding in Palestine rather than going down into Egypt:

“If ye will still abide in this land....” Verse 10.

“But if ye say, We will not dwell in this land....” Verse 13.

“If ye wholly set your faces to enter into Egypt....” Verse 15.

“When ye shall enter into Egypt....” Verse 18.

“The Lord hath said concerning you, O ye remnant of Judah; Go ye not into Egypt: know certainly that I have admonished you this day.” Verse 19.

It is evident that the phrase “when ye shall enter into Egypt” is synonymous with “if ye shall enter into Egypt.”

With the clause “when England does declare war,” understood as synonymous with “if England does declare war,” the statement changes from a prediction to a statement of mere possibility, but a possibility, however, whose full potentialities many might not realize.

Charge Number 8

Mrs. White wrote: “I was shown that God’s people, who are his peculiar treasure, cannot engage in this perplexing war, for it is opposed to every principle of their faith.”—Testimonies for the Church 1:361.

“Hence not a single Seventh-day Adventist took any part in the effort to save the union and free the slaves—not so much as to go as nurses. Had all the people done that way, the nation would have been divided, and slavery would be with us now.”

We have surely now passed the day when, as Seventh-day Adventists, we need to offer any apology for our noncombatant position, a position which we had our first opportunity to state at the time of the Civil War. We received then our official recognition from Washington as a noncombatant religious group.

This particular charge would also have lost much of its force if it had been given in its proper context. The preceding paragraph on the same page states explicitly: “I saw that it is our duty in every case to obey the laws of our land, unless they conflict with the higher law which God spoke with an audible voice from Sinai, and afterward engraved on stone with his own finger.”—Testimonies for the Church 1:361. [124]

The very sentences that follow Mrs. White’s statement that God’s people “cannot engage in this perplexing war, for it is opposed to every principle of their faith,” reads thus:

“In the army they cannot obey the truth and at the same time obey the requirements of their officers. There would be a continual violation of conscience.”

The columns of the Review and Herald during this period reveal that the Seventh-day Adventist leadership, though not wholly agreed as to all the reasons that should cause them not to enlist in the Army, rather generally set forth such reasons as the difficulty in keeping the Sabbath, the duty to love our enemy rather than kill him, and the difficulty of maintaining a holy life under certain army conditions.

But the Review and Herald also set forth clear, sane counsel against any who would think to defy the draft. Seventh-day Adventists were instructed to comply peaceably with it, if and when the draft fell upon them, then to seek in a lawful manner for a noncombatant status.[40]

It is evident from a reading of all that the Review and Herald said on the matter at that time, and from all Mrs. White herself said, that she viewed the war as “opposed to every principle” of Adventist faith in essentially the same sense that conscientious noncombatants view war today. But, we repeat, it is hardly necessary today to provide fair-minded people with proof that a non-combatant may be as loyal to his country and as brave as any man who takes up arms.

It is charged that “not a single Seventh-day Adventist took any part in the effort to save the union and free the slaves—not so much as to go as nurses.” It is a fact that Seventh-day Adventists did not volunteer, and it was against volunteering that Mrs. White was really speaking. A volunteer then, even as today, could not strike any agreements with officers as to conscientious convictions. Hence a Seventh-day Adventist would violate his conscience in the performance of routine military duties. When Army service

[40]For a brief, authoritative statement on this matter see the editorial by James White entitled “The Nation,” in the The Review and Herald, August 12, 1862, page 84.

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was made compulsory—with release, by purchase, no longer a legal alternative—provisions were incorporated in the draft law that protected the rights of those who had conscientious scruples as to bearing arms.

Actually, there were a number of Seventh-day Adventist men in the Army—how many, we have no way of knowing, for figures were never compiled by the church.[41]

Charge Number 9

Mrs. White wrote: “The scenes of earth’s history are fast closing.”—Testimonies for the Church 1:260.

“Mrs. White interpreted the Civil War as a sign of the end of the world, just as Adventists have been interpreting the European war.” [The critic wrote at the end of the first world war. Then he quotes Mrs. White:] “The one all-important inquiry which should now engross the mind of everyone is, Am I prepared for the day of God? Time will last a little longer. [p. 363.]”[42]

Why should anyone feel that Mrs. White is unworthy of confidence because she saw in the dreadful Civil War an appropriate text for exhorting the children of God to make ready for a soon-coming better world. The prophecies of the book of Daniel and Christ’s prophecy in Matthew 24 enable us to know when Christ’s coming is near, even at the door. One of the signs of the last days is the anger of the nations, the wars and upheavals. And we are to be aware of this sign in order to be protected against the “peace and safety” cry with which so many in the world will be lulled to sleep.

What this particular critic could not see, because the full effects of the first world war had not made themselves felt when he wrote his book of charges, were the dimensions of the mighty

[41]The files of the church paper reveal various references to Adventist men in the Army. See, for example, The Review and Herald, February 2, 1864, p. 79; The Review and Herald, July 5, 1864, p. 48; The Review and Herald, January 24, 1865, pp. 70, 72. In the two world wars the counsel of the Seventh-day Adventist Church to its youth in the United States was essentially this: Do not volunteer for service, because legally speaking, if you do, you can lay claim to no special status in regard to your conscientious convictions. Wait for selective service to call you. Then respond promptly and ask for status as a noncombatant. Many thousands of Adventist youth served in these world wars, many of them receiving decorations for bravery, and one of them receiving the coveted Congressional Medal of Honor in World War II.

[42]We have reproduced the quotation exactly as the critic gave it, including his reference to “p. 363.” In the interests of accuracy, it should be stated that the first of these two sentences is on page 355, the second is on page 363, and is not a complete sentence but only the first clause in a sentence. In other words, the two are eight pages apart.

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upheavals in the first half of the twentieth century, upheavals that no one had dreamed of except, of course, those who were trusting enough to believe the prophecies of the Bible. What the critic apparently did not see, either, was that the great military conscripting of the masses of the people in the lands of Europe, which broke forth finally in a world war in 1914, began in earnest in the last half of the nineteenth century. And the wisest of statesmen, scientists, and others express fear that indeed we are about ready to blow ourselves asunder in a third world war. Yet Mrs. White is ridiculed because she saw in the Civil War one of the omens of the last days.

In exhorting believers in the 1860’s to make ready for the day of the Lord, Mrs. White was doing no more than holy prophets and apostles are on record as doing. God gave neither to them nor to Mrs. White the day and the hour of His return. He instructed all who love Him on this earth to be waiting and watching and in readiness against an unknown hour. That is why the apostles exhorted men to be ready for the day of God. Because certain prophecies are now fulfilled we can know more definitely the time of the nearness of the Advent, yes, when it is even at the door, but still we cannot know the day or the hour. Hence, Mrs. White would have been remiss in her solemn duty, and would have failed to follow in the tradition of all the holy prophets and apostles, if she had not used the occasion of that dreadful Civil War to exhort believers to make ready for the day of God.

Charge Number 10

Mrs. White wrote: “I was shown the inhabitants of the earth in the utmost confusion. War, bloodshed, privation, want, famine, and pestilence were abroad in the land.”—Testimonies for the Church 1:268.

“This was exactly what all faultfinders of that date predicted—famine and pestilence. But nothing of the kind happened. There was no famine, no pestilence. Her predictions utterly failed. Where, then, did she get that ‘vision’? Not from God, surely, but from the ideas of those around her, the same as she got all her ‘visions.’ The event proved this.”

Mrs. White’s statement is from a vision dated August 3, 1861, less than four months after the war began. If we are to understand [127] her words as applying simply to the Civil War, then we have a rather remarkable prediction. Certainly the North did not think, in so short a time as four months after the war began, that it would become the long-drawn-out, harrowing ordeal that it finally proved to be. Mrs. White was not expressing a generally held Northern view on August 3, 1861, when she wrote of “war, bloodshed, privation, want, famine, and pestilence.” Let that point be clearly understood. We repeat, it took more than four months for any general impression to take hold upon the North that an extended, sanguinary conflict lay ahead, with all the privations and dangers that such conflicts inevitably bring. Was there famine before the war ended? One of the main factors in defeating the South was reduced food supplies. The historical sketch on the “American Civil War” in the Encyclopaedia Britannica declares that certain Southern armies “were reduced to starvation.”—Volume 1, p. 767. (14th ed.) Was there pestilence? The facts are that more men died of disease than of bullets in the Civil War.[43]

Now, we are not here contending that Mrs. White was picturing the Civil War in the sentence under discussion. We simply say that if she was, she pictured it with a prophetic eye, and with knowledge beyond that possessed by others on August 3, 1861.

Another Reasonable Interpretation

But we are not quite sure of the timing of this statement. As with some passages of Scripture, we hesitate to be dogmatic about it. The prophets of God have been rather distinguished by the fact that in their prophesyings they have often swept over the centuries, and have moved rapidly from a discussion of some local affair, in Palestine, for example, to a discussion of the events of the last hours of earth’s history. All students of the Bible know this. When Christ stood up in the synagogue and read the passage from Isaiah that foretold His coming, He ended with the words, “and the acceptable year of the Lord,” declaring, “This day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears.” But Isaiah followed immediately

[43]See note at close of chapter.

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in his prophecy with the words, “And the day of vengeance of our God.” Let us give the context of Mrs. White’s statement:

“I was shown the inhabitants of the earth in the utmost confusion. War, bloodshed, privation, want, famine, and pestilence were abroad in the land. As these things surrounded God’s people, they began to press together, and to cast aside their little difficulties....

“My attention was then called from the scene. There seemed to be a little time of peace. Once more the inhabitants of the earth were presented before me; and again everything was in the utmost confusion. Strife, war, and bloodshed, with famine and pestilence, raged everywhere. Other nations were engaged in this war and confusion. War caused famine. Want and bloodshed caused pestilence. And then men’s hearts failed them for fear, ‘and for looking after those things which are coming on the earth.’”—Testimonies for the Church 1:268.

A Parallel Passage

Compare this statement with a similar one made by Mrs. White in January, 1863, in connection with a further discussion of the question of the Civil War:

“Everything is preparing for the great day of God. Time will last a little longer, until the inhabitants of the earth have filled up the cup of their iniquity, and then the wrath of God, which has so long slumbered, will awake, and this land of light will drink the cup of his unmingled wrath. The desolating power of God is upon the earth to rend and destroy. The inhabitants of the earth are appointed to the sword, to famine, and to pestilence.”—Testimonies for the Church 1:363.

We believe that when the passage under discussion is seen in its larger context, it takes on the appearance, not so much of a description of events in connection with the Civil War, as of events of some time subsequent to that, the time when, as she says, “I was shown the inhabitants of the earth in the utmost confusion.” This would seem to indicate that she was surveying something larger than the United States, and a condition even more grievous than the Civil War. The phrase, “the inhabitants of the earth,” is one that she uses in both passages we have quoted. In the first she says, “I was shown the inhabitants of the earth in the utmost confusion.” In the second passage she uses the expression twice: “Time will last a little longer, until the inhabitants [129] of the earth have filled up the cup of their iniquity.” “The inhabitants of the earth are appointed to the sword, to famine, and to pestilence.”

A Remarkable Preview of Our Time

We think that the most reasonable interpretation of her statements in this connection, is that she was describing events subsequent to the Civil War. If, as we believe, God opened before her the events of the future, what would she, in 1861, see as she looked into the future beyond Civil War days? She would see the first world war and the second world war, and doubtless another fearful conflict, of which the scientists speak. And could she have better described the conditions of the first half of the twentieth century than in the words just quoted from her?

In the light of this, we would ask a question: Would she have found in the popular theology of the 1860’s anything to prompt her to see such dire events ahead? The charge is that Mrs. White could see only what her contemporaries saw, and reflected their views. The widely held theological view in the last half of the nineteenth century was that the future held for mankind only increasing improvement and betterment, with the millennium not far away! No, Mrs. White was not prompted to see in vision what her contemporaries believed. She looked ahead and saw fearful war, pestilence, famine, and privation. Then she saw a little time of peace, and again devastation. We think that the unprejudiced reader will agree that the first half of the twentieth century has provided a startling historical parallel to her prophetic statement.

Note.—The privations that accompanied and climaxed the Civil War, especially for the Southern States, are scarcely realized by us who live long afterward. Here are some descriptions of conditions in the South as the war closed:

“While the negro population, whose labor was so indispensable a factor in the productive system, was thus occupied [in celebrating their new freedom], the returning Confederate soldiers and the rest of the white population devoted themselves with desperate energy to the procurement of what must sustain the life of both themselves and their former slaves. From many a family that had lived in luxury came pitiful cries for the humblest food; and in many regions where nature would have responded bounteously to slight [130] human effort, the only thing that interposed between the population and famine was the commissary department of the Union army.”—WILLIIAM ARCHIBALD DONNING, Reconstruction, Political and Economic, 1865-1877, p. 12. (The American Nation: A History, edited by Albert Bushnell Hart, vol. 22.)

“Unless the [Confederate] soldier was a land-owner his family was all but helpless. With a depreciated currency and exaggerated prices, his pay, whatever his rank, was too little to count in providing for his dependents. Local charity, dealt out by state and county boards, by relief associations, and by the generosity of neighbors, formed the barrier between his family and starvation.”—NATHANIEL W. STEPHENSON, The Day of the Confederacy, pp. 109, 110. (The Chronicles of America Series, edited by Allen Johnson.)

“A Freedmen’s Bureau official traveling through the desolate back country furnishes a description which might have applied to two hundred counties, a third of the South: ‘It is a common, an every-day sight in Randolph County, that of women and children, most of whom were formerly in good circumstances, begging for bread from door to door. Meat of any kind has been a stranger to many of their mouths for months. The drought cut off what little crops they hoped to save, and they must have immediate help or perish.’”—WALTER LYNWOOD FLEMING, The Sequel of Appomattox, pp. 13, 14. (The Chronicles of America Series.)

“During the latter months of the war the food in the southern prisons was very scarce and inferior, for the Confederates were unable adequately to feed even their own soldiers in the field....

“Viewed by our present-day standards, the hospitals of the Civil War were horribly inadequate.... Moreover, the deaths from diseases such as dysentery, camp fever, and pneumonia were almost twice as numerous as those from fighting.”—SIR JOHN HAMMERTON and HARRY ELMER BARNES, editors, The Illustrated World History, p. 921. [131]

Chapter 10—The Tower of Babel

Charge: Mrs. White, in one of her earliest works, taught that the tower of Babel was built before the Flood. She thus revealed the grossest ignorance of Bible history.

This charge owes its plausibility to a passage in a book written by Mrs. White in 1864. We quote:

“The LORD first established the system of sacrificial offerings with Adam after his fall, which he taught to his descendants. This system was corrupted before the flood by those who separated themselves from the faithful followers of GOD, and engaged in the building of the tower of Babel.”—Spiritual Gifts 3:301.

This passage, as it here reads, quite evidently conveys the thought that the tower of Babel was built before the Flood.

Anyone who has read Mrs. White’s writings is impressed at once with the evidence they provide of the writer’s familiarity with the Scriptures. She need be neither a prophet nor a profound student of the Word in order to know that the Flood preceded the tower of Babel. She need only be a simple reader of the record. And did she know? Yes. What is the clear proof? The very order of the chapters in her book that contains the disputed passage! We list here several of them in the order in which they appear:

“VI. Crime Before the Flood”

“VII. The Flood”

“VIII. After the Flood”

“IX. Disguised Infidelity”

“X. Tower of Babel”

“XI. Abraham”

The chapter entitled “Tower of Babel” Contains these lines: “Some of the descendants of Noah soon began to apostatize.... They built them a city, and then conceived the idea of [132] building a large tower to reach unto the clouds.”—Spiritual Gifts 3:96, 97.

We do not know how Mrs. White could have more clearly revealed her knowledge of the true sequence of events.

To those acquainted with the publishing of books, and with the fallibility of printers and publishers, the explanation of the matter is evident. There is a typographical error in the passage cited by critics. And that typographical error was noted very shortly after the book was published—long before any critic ever took up the matter. In 1866, Uriah Smith, editor of the Review and Herald mentioned that readers had raised a question on this point, and then offered this simple explanation of Mrs. White’s seeming contradiction of the Bible:

“An unfortunate typographical error which has crept in here, makes the language place the building of the tower of Babel before the flood. After the word ‘flood,’ a comma and the word ‘and,’ have been left out.”—The Review and Herald, July 31, 1866, p. 66.

The key sentence in dispute would then read: “This system was corrupted before the flood, and by those who separated themselves from the faithful followers of God, and engaged in the building of the tower of Babel.” Thus it was corrected to read when this material was next printed. (See The Spirit of Prophecy 1:266 [1870].)

Place alongside this typographically corrected sentence a few words from the chapter entitled “Tower of Babel.” Mrs. White describes the apostatizing descendants of Noah as “enemies of God” and “unbelieving,” and declares, “The unbelieving consulted among themselves, and agreed to separate from the faithful.”—Spiritual Gifts 3:96. These words parallel the middle clause in the disputed passage and thus make doubly clear that a typographical error is the explanation for the incorrect statement in the disputed passage. [133]

Chapter 11—“No Antidote” for Strychnine

Charge: “On page 138 of Spiritual Gifts, Vol. 4, Mrs. White says: ‘A branch was presented before me bearing large flat seeds. Upon it was written, Nux Vomica, strychnine. Beneath was written, No antidote.’ This was written in 1864....

“In ‘The Journal of the American Medical Association’ for Feb. 25, 1933, is a record of no less than ‘eleven cases of strychnine poisoning’ which were restored by the use of sodium amytal and kindred combinations.

“The medical world knew no antidote for strychnine poisoning in 1864, so Mrs. White saw in vision just what the doctors were teaching at that time. However, the doctors were more wise than Mrs. White, for they were teaching that there was no known antidote.... Was that vision from the Lord? or was it from her reading current medical works? Was God ignorant of the fact that sodium amytal was an effective antidote for strychnine poisoning in 1864?”

Certain questions, which are not raised in this charge, almost clamor for answer. And, we think, the answer to them will suggest the answer to the whole charge.

1. If Mrs. White was beholden to the medical profession in 1864 for her views, as is implied in the charge that she borrowed her “no antidote” statement from them, then why did she take such militant issue with them in so many other matters? In our discussion of her health teachings in chapter 27 we shall discover that they are marked by a high disdain for currently held medical views. Yet in this matter of strychnine she is supposed to have looked into one of the books of the medical men of that day, picked out a lone statement from it, published it, and staked her reputation, at least in part, upon it. Here, indeed, is a most singular situation. Every presumption is against it.

2. Why would Mrs. White be soberly announcing, as a revelation that there was “no antidote” for strychnine if she had secured the information from a published medical work, and intended her [134] words to be understood in the same sense? Not only doctors and nurses but any intelligent layman knew that no antidote was known for an obvious case of strychnine poisoning.

3. “The medical world knew no antidote for strychnine poisoning in 1864.” But the physicians, following their Materia Medica, regularly administered strychnine to their patients in certain diseases. Did they willfully set out to murder their patients? Why did not the law place its hand upon them, for it was no secret that they administered strychnine?

Two Uses of Strychnine

These questions reveal that Mrs. White’s words have been wrongly interpreted. The medical books of 1864 discussed two different uses of strychnine: (1) A therapeutic use, in small quantities, in such a medicine as nux vomica. (2) A suicidal—or accidental—use, in large quantities. For the latter, there was no known antidote. For the former, the doctors were not looking for an antidote. Instead they were using strychnine medicinally. Mrs. White is also discussing its medicinal use. She declared, and we quote the lines that follow immediately the three sentences cited in the charge:

“I was shown persons under the influence of this poison. It produced heat, and seemed to act particularly on the spinal column, but affected the whole system. When this is taken in the smallest quantities, it has its influence, which nothing can counteract. If taken immoderately, convulsions, paralysis, insanity, and death, are often the results. Many use this deadly evil in small quantities. But if they realized its influence, not one grain of it would be introduced into the system.

“When first taken, its influence may seem to be beneficial. It excites the nerves connected with the spinal column, but when the excitement passes away, it is followed by a sense of prostration and of chilliness the whole length of the spinal column, especially upon the head and back of the neck.”—Spiritual Gifts 4a:138.

More might be quoted of her description of strychnine’s steady, insidious, inroads upon the physical and nervous constitution. But enough is given to reveal that Mrs. White was taking most vigorous issue with the generally accepted medical view that [135] strychnine, medicinally administered, was beneficial. Which leads to the simple conclusion that her “no antidote” statement was intended to describe the baleful and inescapable results that must follow from the use of strychnine as it was then being used, dose after dose, medicinally.

We do not believe that twentieth-century medical men would challenge her statement on that. In fact, no present-day doctor would think of using strychnine as did the doctors in 1864. If he did so use it, he would soon lose his license.

No, Mrs. White was not guilty of setting forth, in 1864, as a revelation, so self-evident a fact as that there was “no antidote” for strychnine taken in large suicidal, or accidental, doses. She declared—what was not known to doctors in 1864—that even if strychnine was taken in “the smallest quantities” it was dangerous, and that there was nothing that would counteract its effects upon the whole system when thus allowed gradually to become a systemic poison. Science knows nothing to the contrary today. [136]

Chapter 12—The Reform Dress

Charge: “Shortly before the Civil War of 1861-65 a few women wore and advocated a reform dress cut short—about half-way to the knees. With this they wore a sort of loose pants on the limbs below the dress. Some Advent sisters favored it as convenient and healthful; but Mrs. White condemned it, with good reason, as follows:

“God would not have His people adopt the so-called reform dress. It is immodest apparel, wholly unfitted for the modest, humble followers of Christ.’ (Testimonies for the Church 1:421, 422 [actually only 421] ...)

“That was God’s mind at that date.

“Again she says: ‘If women would wear their dresses so as to clear the filth of the streets an inch or two, ... such a dress would be in accordance with our faith’ (page 424)....

“Once more she says:

“Christians should not take pains to make themselves a gazingstock by dressing differently from the world (p. 458)....

“This was in 1863, and was clear and emphatic. But one year later, September, 1864, Elder and Mrs. White spent three weeks at Dr. Jackson’s Health Home.” They were “captivated” with his health reform views. “Miss Austin, one of the physicians there, wore a ‘Reform Dress’ with pants below the dress made like men’s pants. Slightly modified, it was the same dress Mrs. White had condemned only a year before.... Immediately she adopted it herself, and began to write revelations and testimonies to the sisters, saying God now wanted them to wear it. It will be seen that after her visit with Miss Austin ‘the Lord’ changed His mind on the dress question, for she says:

“God would now have his people adopt the Reform Dress ... (p. 525)....

“She gives the exact length of the dress. She says: ‘I would say that nine inches as nearly accords with my view of the matter as I am able to express in inches’ (p. 521).”

Before she met Miss Austin she said “an inch or two” but now “nine inches.” “That was the way Miss Austin wore hers.”

“Mrs. White had patterns of the dress,” which she took everywhere she went. She sold them “for one dollar each! She thus pocketed quite a nice sum of easy money.”

Mrs. White gave strong testimonies on the importance of this dress. [137]

“But at length she saw it was a mistake and a failure.” So she “quietly laid it off.” When asked about it “she simply refused to give any” explanations. “The fact was, she had been misled by Miss Austin, and dared not own it.”

In 1875 she wrote, blaming “the sisters for abandoning” the dress and spoke of “another less objectionable style.... (‘Testimonies,’ Vol. IV, p. 640).”

Adventist sisters who wore the Reform Dress were the object of ridicule everywhere.

Here is the dress reform charge in all its fullness. Later critics have added a frill or a trimming but nothing substantial to the lines. After reading it, the reader is supposed to conclude that: (1) the fashions of the day were becoming, modest, and entirely satisfactory; (2) Mrs. White took hold of a weird notion of some fanatical dress reformers because she was easily influenced; (3) in doing so she reversed counsel she had given only a short while before, and (4) then she compounded her spiritual folly by abandoning the reform and recommending something else.

What We Shall Seek to Prove

By the presentation of the documented historical record we shall seek to show that:

1. The fashions of the day loudly cried for reform.

2. A variety of reform dresses were being advocated at this time, some sensible, some not, and that the critic has failed to distinguish between these.

3. Mrs. White advocated a dress that was hygienic, practical, and modest.

4. The critic is mistaken in his chronology and in his interpretation of her words when he charges her first with condemning and then adopting the American costume worn by Miss Austin.

5. Mrs. White claimed, not to have received a revelation as to the details of a dress pattern, but only as to the basic principles of dress reform, and that therefore the critic’s remarks about inches in length is irrelevant.

6. The evidence will not support the charge that she made a “nice” profit from the sale of patterns.

7. She declared that dress reform was only a “minor” matter. [138]

8. The way many related themselves to the reform dress tended to offset the blessing it should have brought, and called for the abandonment of it.

9. By this time changing fashions had removed the more objectionable features that the reform dress was intended to correct.

10. Mrs. White concluded the whole matter by re-stating the basic objectives in reform dress and left the application of them to the sisters in the church.

The Fashions of a Bygone Day

What was the fashion picture at the time Mrs. White wrote? That was the day of the hoop skirt, known often as crinolines, those billowing gowns, held out at the base with great metal hoops. That was the day of the wasplike waist, made so by tight-fitting corsets. That was the day when there were many and heavy undergarments, apparently intended not so much to give warmth as to give bulk and amplitude. That was the day of whalebones, that further served to strait-lace women’s garments. And approximately at that time appeared the bustle skirt, with its curious surplus of clothing, posterior and near the base of the spine, that conveyed the impression of unstable equilibrium, by changing the center of gravity. Also, in those days flourished the trailing skirt, with its prodigal disregard of the cost of cloth per yard, so that it swept up many square yards as a woman walked.

This description might have been made more colorful. But this need not be done. Others, who had no interest in defending Mrs. White, and who probably never knew her, have left us descriptions of the times and the fashions that are more colorful than anything we could write.

A Threefold Indictment

Various vigorous writers in mid-nineteenth century indicted the current styles of women’s dress on three counts: (1) unhealthful, (2) impractical, (3) immodest.

They were unhealthful. Tight-fitting corsets restricted the breathing, and heavy skirts hung from the waist crowded the vital [139] organs out of place. The hoop skirts kept the clothing away from the lower limbs, a custom which meant that they were chilled in winter. The trailing skirts gathered up the filth or the dampness of the streets. The dresses were impractical. It was only with great difficulty that a woman wearing a hoop skirt could enter a carriage or a streetcar or could ascend a staircase. And they were immodest, for the only way that a woman could negotiate certain entrances and exits, and ascents and descents of stairs, was by lifting one side of the hoop skirt in order to shorten its diameter at the base.

Listen to Mrs. M. Angeline Merritt, writing in 1852 of the unhealthfulness of the current style, particularly upon the mothers of men:

“The popular fashions of the present day are not only operating insidiously, but mechanically, to lower the standard, which it is the duty, and should be the pride, of every mother to attain, in presenting offspring to the world with perfect physical, mental and moral requisites, to make the future man. The most prominent of these which militate against the health, natural position, and vitality, of the maternal organs, located in the cavity under consideration, is the present debilitating, injurious mode of female dress, which not only affects prominently the individual herself, but exercises an almost illimitable influence upon the physical condition of her children.”—Dress Reform Practically and Physiologically Considered, pp. 48, 49.

Of the inconvenient character of the current styles, she wrote:

“Every lady who has any experience in domestic life, must understand the abundant inconvenience attendant upon a style of dress, the dimensions of whose superfluities may be adduced in yards and pounds. The utility of skirts for sweeping floors and sidewalks, and for mopping stairways and passages, has become a proverb.”—Testimonies for the Church 1:79. (Italics hers.)

An Indictment of Dress in 1862

Another reformer, Ellen Beard Harman, said this, concerning women’s dress, in a lecture in 1862:

“Viewed in any aspect, the common style of dress for women is one of the greatest barbarisms ever known, especially considering the age in which we live. Only think of the women of the nineteenth century wearing apparel incompatible with the laws of their being—with health, comfort, and convenience, protection and neatness, disproportioned to the body, awkward and burdensome! What are we, indeed, that we should be rigged off [140] like a ship of war?—encased in iron, wood, whalebone, and steel; encoiled in cording, ropes, and sails; and freighted with a useless cargo of dry goods? Was there a mistake made in our construction, that we must go to the mines of the earth or the trees of the forest for material to gird us round about? A mistake was it, that we must rob the whale of his bones, and place them perpendicularly when nature has placed our own bones horizontally, and thus hinder their motion and use? If so, then have we reason to pity the poor men who, like us, were unfortunate in their construction, and are without these mitigating helps.”—Dress Reform: Its Physiological and Moral Bearings, p. 26. (Italics hers.)

Of the dress of those times, the crinolines and hoop skirts, a twentieth-century writer, looking back over the period, observes:

“It seems almost incredible that women of judgment and taste could ever have adopted this monstrosity of fashion.”—ELISABETH MCCLELLAN, Historic Dress in America, 1800-1870, p. 263.

A noted twentieth-century woman preacher, Dr. A. Maude Royden, reminiscing on the strange customs of the past, says this of the hoop skirts worn in the days of her mother:

“My own mother, who is in most things a great admirer of all that is old-fashioned, told me she considered crinolines the most absolutely indecent garments ever invented for feminine wear. Yet she herself and every respectable woman wore these indecent crinolines, and though, like herself, others may have deplored this vagary of fashion, yet they obeyed it, and would have looked exceedingly odd had they not done so.”—Ladies’ Home Journal, March, 1924, p. 31.

A minister writing in the 1860’s offers this comment on the current styles:

“The objections to the common style of dress are numerous, among which the following are a few: 1. The feet and limbs of the females are imperfectly clad, having generally only thin stockings and shoes to protect them. 2. The modern hoop skirt throws the clothes far away from the limbs and then exposes them still more. 3. Hence the feet and limbs often become chilly and cold. This prevents a proper circulation of blood in those parts.”—D. M. CANRIGHT in The Review and Herald, June 18, 1867, p. 9.

Note the name of this writer. Canright is the critic from whose 1919 book against Mrs. White the charges in this chapter have been quoted! [141]

It was inevitable that such folly in fashion should produce a reaction, an indictment of the styles of the day and an endeavor to reform them. About 1850 we see such reform endeavors beginning to take definite shape. These reforms sought to deal effectively with the three defects of the current styles: (1) Remedy the unhealthfulness by lighter weight garments suspended from the shoulders and fitting more closely to the limbs; (2) remedy the inconvenience of them by making them shorter, and removing the hoops and trailing length; (3) and by the foregoing changes, make them also modest.

Styles of Reform Dress

Different reformers had different viewpoints on how to correct the styles of the day. Some were more extreme than others. Because of the very newness of the reform dress idea, there were at first no sharply defined names for the different styles of such dress. Dr. James C. Jackson and Miss Dr. Austin at “Our Home” at Dansville, New York, brought out one of the reform dress styles. This was described as the American costume. Wrote Dr. Jackson:

“It was with reference to a better method of treating diseases peculiar to women, that Miss Austin and myself were led to invent the American costume.”—JAMES C. JACKSON, M.D., How to Treat the Sick Without Medicine, p. 66.

We have not found in the writings of Dr. Jackson any exact description of the American costume. We do know, however, from other sources that this costume was distinguished by the extreme shortness of the dress. Some described the dress as coming to the knees, and some as coming to a point half way between the hips and the knees, with mannish trousers to cover the legs. Obviously such a costume went further than was necessary to remedy the grave defects of the current fashions, and gave to women an extremely mannish look.[44]

[44]Mrs. White’s critic builds much of his case on the claim that he knows precisely the length of Miss Austin’s American costume, that is, about nine inches from the floor. He does not trouble to give any proof. The very terms used to describe the different kinds of reform dress were fluid, for the patterns kept changing. That fact alone makes it difficult to speak with certainty on various details. The critic, half a century after the day of these reform dresses, is dogmatic to the inch about a particular dress in a particular year. He must be, or his argument would collapse.

[142]

So well defined was the dress reformers’ opposition to the current fashions that it took on, for a time, the quality of a crusade. There were women’s associations that had as their main object dress reform. They held lecture courses at which patterns of reform dress styles were exhibited to all who came.[45]

Mrs. White Enters the Dress Discussion

It is in this setting that Mrs. White began to write on the subject of dress reform. We wish to give, in chronological order, her principal statements on the matter. We quote, first, from her statement in 1863:

“No occasion should be given to unbelievers to reproach our faith. We are considered odd and singular, and should not take a course to lead unbelievers to think us more so than our faith requires us to be.

“Some who believe the truth may think that it would be more healthful for the sisters to adopt the American costume, yet if that mode of dress would cripple our influence among unbelievers so that we could not so readily gain access to them, we should by no means adopt it, though we suffered much in consequence. But some are deceived in thinking there is so much benefit to be received from this costume. While it may prove a benefit to some, it is an injury to others.

“I saw that God’s order has been reversed, and his special directions disregarded, by those who adopt the American costume. I was referred to Deuteronomy 22:5: ‘The woman shall not wear that which pertaineth unto a man, neither shall a man put on a woman’s garment, for all that do so are abomination unto the Lord thy God.’

“God would not have his people adopt the so-called reform dress. It is immodest apparel, wholly unfitted for the modest, humble followers of Christ.”—Testimonies for the Church 1:420, 421. (Testimony No. 10.)

Mrs. White’s comment on the American costume is strong presumptive proof that it was distinctly mannish. But to speak of a costume with a dress falling to within nine inches of the floor, as that “which pertaineth unto a man,” would hardly make sense.

Notice that Mrs. White describes “the American costume,“

[45]A glowing report of such an organization is given by one of the dress reform crusaders, a Mrs. S. W. Dodds, M.D., under the title “Dress Reform and Health Reform in Kansas,” in The Health Reformer, February, 1870, pp. 155-158. In that report she declares, “Now, good friends, what we want for the triumph of Dress Reform, is ORGANIZATION. Let us have it.”—Page 157.

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as “the so-called reform dress.” It was this kind of “reform dress” that she said “God would not have his people adopt.”

If Canright, whose charges are quoted in this chapter, had only remembered what he wrote in the 1860’s, he would have answered most of the charges that he brought against Mrs. White in 1919 in the matter of dress reform. Reporting through the church paper in 1867 on his visit to the church in Portland, Maine, and of his endeavor during that visit to promote a true reform dress, he declares:

“The extreme short dress had been worn here before by Sabbath-keepers; hence some prejudice existed against everything that bears the name of short dress. But the reform dress and the American costume are two very different things. All could readily see this.”—D. M. CANRIGHT in The Review and Herald, June 18, 1867, p. 9.

No wonder we find Mrs. White warning the sisters against the “so-called reform dress.” Note that the critic, writing in 1867, states explicitly that the reform dress being promoted among Seventh-day Adventists was not the American costume.

Turning again to what Mrs. White is saying in that Testimony No. 10, written in 1863, we find her adding this:

“We do not think it in accordance with our faith to dress in the American costume, to wear hoops, or to go to an extreme in wearing long dresses which sweep the sidewalks and streets. If women would wear their dresses so as to clear the filth of the streets an inch or two, their dresses would be modest, and they could be kept clean much more easily, and would wear longer. Such a dress would be in accordance with our faith.”—Testimonies for the Church 1:424.

“There is a medium position in these things. Oh that we all might wisely find that position and keep it.”—Testimonies for the Church 1:425.

The Visit to Dansville, 1864

In September, 1864, Mrs. White with her husband visited “Our Home” at Dansville, New York.

Her comment on that visit, at least so far as the dress feature is concerned, is reflected in a personal letter she wrote immediately afterwards:

“They have all styles of dress here. Some are very becoming, if not so short. We shall get patterns from this place, and I think we can get out a [144] style of dress more healthful than we now wear, and yet not be bloomer or the American costume. Our dresses according to my idea, should be from four to six inches shorter than now worn, and should in no case reach lower than the top of the heel of the shoe, and could be a little shorter even than this with all modesty. I am going to get up a style of dress on my own hook which will accord perfectly with that which has been shown me. Health demands it. Our feeble women must dispense with heavy skirts and tight waists if they value health....

“We shall never imitate Miss Dr. Austin or Mrs. Dr. York [both of ‘Our Home’]. They dress very much like men. We shall imitate or follow no fashion we have ever yet seen. We shall institute a fashion which will be both economical and healthy.”—Letter to Brother and Sister Lockwood, September, 1864. (Letter 1a, 1864.)

Note that in this letter Mrs. White explains why she would never imitate Dr. Austin. That reason comports with her 1863 statement, already quoted. She refers to “that which has been shown me,” meaning of course, what she had seen in vision. It is also evident that though in her vision dress reform had been presented before her, she had not been given any pattern or specific details concerning it, and certainly not with regard to its length, in terms of inches from the ground. She specifically declared that the dress she thought to “get out” would not be “the American costume.”

Mrs. White Speaks on Dress Reform in 1865

Mrs. White’s next statement on dress is found in number 5 of the six pamphlets, published in 1865, which bear the general title How to Live. In her article in this number she discusses the care of children, particularly their dress. She observes, “Show and fashion are the demon altar upon which many American women sacrifice their children.”—Page 67. She decries the style of dress for children that leaves the extremities poorly covered.

A further statement by Mrs. White, in 1865, is found in number 6 of the How to Live pamphlets. This is her first positive, formal presentation in behalf of reform in dress, written to the sisters of the Seventh-day Adventist Church. We quote:

“My sisters, there is need of a dress reform among us. There are many errors in the present style of female dress. It is injurious to health, and, [145] therefore, sin for females to wear tight corsets, or whalebones, or to compress the waist. These have a depressing influence upon the heart, liver, and lungs. The health of the entire system depends upon the healthy action of the respiratory organs. Thousands of females have ruined their constitutions, and brought upon themselves various diseases, in their efforts to make a healthy and natural form unhealthy and unnatural....

“Many females drag down the bowels and hips by hanging heavy skirts upon them. These were not formed to sustain weights.... The female dress should be suspended from the shoulders. It would be pleasing to God if there was greater uniformity in dress among believers....

“The children of Israel, after they were brought out of Egypt, were commanded to have a simple ribbon of blue in the border of their garments, to distinguish them from the nations around them, and to signify that they were God’s peculiar people. The people of God are not now required to have a special mark placed upon their garments. But in the New Testament we are often referred to ancient Israel as examples. If God gave such definite directions to his ancient people in regard to their dress, will not the dress of his people in this age come under his notice? Should there not be in their dress a distinction from that of the world? Should not the people of God, who are his peculiar treasure, seek even in their dress to glorify God? And should they not be examples in point of dress, and by their simple style rebuke the pride, vanity and extravagance of worldly, pleasure-loving professors? God requires this of his people. Pride is rebuked in his word.”—Pages 57, 58.

Her Remark on “Gazing-stocks”

A few pages farther on in this pamphlet she makes a key statement of principle from which the critics have quoted only a part of one sentence:

“Christians should not take pains to make themselves gazing-stocks by dressing differently from the world. But if, in accordance with their faith and duty in respect to their dressing modestly and healthfully, they find themselves out of fashion, they should not change their dress in order to be like the world. But they should manifest a noble independence, and moral courage to be right, if all the world differ from them. If the world introduce a modest, convenient, and healthful mode of dress, which is in accordance with the Bible, it will not change our relation to God, or to the world to adopt such a style of dress.”—Testimonies for the Church 1:61, 62.

She then indicts current styles and follows with a criticism of a certain kind of reform dress:

“There is still another style of dress which will be adopted by a class [146] of so-called dress reformers. They will imitate the opposite sex, as nearly as possible. They will wear the cap, pants, vest, coat, and boots, the last of which is the most sensible part of the costume. Those who adopt and advocate this style of dress, are carrying the so-called dress reform to very objectionable lengths. Confusion will be the result. Some who adopt this costume may be correct in their views in general upon the health question, and they could be instrumental in accomplishing vastly more good if they did not carry the matter of dress to such extremes....

“The dress should reach somewhat below the top of the boot; but should be short enough to clear the filth of the sidewalk and street, without being raised by the hand. A still shorter dress than this would be proper, convenient, and healthful for females, when doing their housework, and especially, for those women who are obliged to perform more or less out-of-door labor.”—Testimonies for the Church 1:62-64.

Before passing on to Mrs. White’s next declaration, we wish the reader particularly to note two points concerning the statement on “gazing-stocks,” which, according to the charge, was made in 1863. Note, first, how differently Mrs. White’s words concerning “gazing-stocks” sound when placed in the larger context. There her true meaning is revealed. Second, note that this “gazing-stock” statement appears first in Number 6 of the How to Live pamphlets, published in January, 1865,[46] which fact means that Mrs. White made this statement after she and her husband made that much-discussed visit to Dansville, not before.[47]

The Second Visit to Dansville, 1865

In September, 1865, Elder and Mrs. White went the second time to Dansville, he suffering from a “stroke.” Regarding this visit she wrote two years later:

“I put on the reformed dress September 8, 1865, when I visited Dansville with my sick husband. It was the same length I now wear, and I was distinctly given to understand that it was not the ‘American Costume.’”—The Review and Herald, October 8, 1867, p. 260.

[46]See The Review and Herald, January 10, 1865.

[47]As a matter of fact, the critic quotes this “gazing-stock” passage as from Testimonies for the Church 1:458 where Mrs. White is really restating what she said in How to Live No. 6. Her restatement in the section of volume 1 known as Testimony No. 11, was not published until 1867. See page 713 of volume 1 for a table giving date and place of publication of each Testimony from No. 1 to 14, which constitute volume 1. The critic builds half his case on the alleged 1863 date for the “gazing-stock” statement. It is difficult to understand how he made this error, because there has never been any question as to the date of publication.

[147]

It was about this time that Mrs. White had called upon the sisters in the church to take a positive step in the way of dress reform, thus to break the domination of fashion and to secure better health. It was therefore very natural that she should make the transition to a reform dress at the time she went with her husband to an institution where a variety of reforms were under way. She made sure, however, in putting on the reform dress, that she was not adopting anything that could be described as the American costume.

Waggoner Writes of Reform Dress at Battle Creek

In 1866 the Western Health Reform Institute[48] was founded at Battle Creek, Michigan, by the Seventh-day Adventist Church.

J. H. Waggoner, writing in The Health Reformer, March, 1868, tells of the introduction of a reform dress at the Health Reform Institute:

“When the Health Reform Institute was established, the physicians decided that a better style of dress for women than the long, dragging skirts, was desirable....

“As might be expected, when it was first being adopted at the Institute there was not complete uniformity, but the taste and choice of the wearers had much to do with the length and appearance of the dresses worn....

“At my request the physicians at the Institute named a number of its inmates whose dresses they considered as nearly correct in make and appearance as could be found to that number amongst the varieties. I measured the height of twelve, with the distance of their dresses from the floor. They varied in height from five feet to five feet seven inches, and the distance of the dresses from the floor was from 8 to 10½ inches. The medium, nine inches, was decided to be the right distance, and is adopted as the standard.”—Pages 129, 130.

The Health Reform Institute was set on its way very directly under the counsel and guidance of Mrs. White and by physicians and others who confidently believed that she possessed the gift of the Spirit of prophecy. If, at the outset, she had drawn up exact patterns and specifications for a particular reform dress, on the claim that she had received the exact specifications in vision, would

[48]Later known as the Battle Creek Sanitarium.

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it not follow that that would have been the one and only dress adopted by the Health Reform Institute when it was opened?

Waggoner’s statement reveals that there was no one pattern, nor was there any principle that guided them further than that they sought to create a style of dress that would remedy the evils of the current fashions and give maximum of health, convenience, and modesty. And in doing so they naturally sought to profit, as far as possible, by the current reform-dress endeavors being made by others. This is a very important point.

Because Mrs. White promoted a reform dress, finally carrying patterns of such a dress with her, and because she declared that she promoted dress reform as a result of instruction from the Lord, the critics immediately assume that she claimed to have received the pattern from heaven. And of course if Mrs. White received, directly from heaven, a specific pattern, with exact specifications of length and the like, then if at any time she said anything that seemed to differ in any detail from what she had earlier said, behold the critics have discovered her in a contradiction.

But there is nothing in what Mrs. White has written that warrants the assumption that she claimed to have received a pattern from heaven, with exact specification in inches. On the contrary, Waggoner indicates that an institution that had just been set up under her direct guidance did not have any one pattern, and that the details were decided on after experimentation with dresses that conformed to the basic objectives of health, convenience, and modesty.

Mrs. White Answers Questions on Dress

In 1867 several questions were addressed to Mrs. White on the subject of dress reform. One question read thus:

“Does not the practice of the sisters in wearing their dresses nine inches from the floor contradict Testimony No. 11, which says they should reach somewhat below the top of a lady’s gaiter boot? Does it not also contradict Testimony No. 10, which says that they should clear the filth of the street an inch or two without being raised by the hand?”—The Review and Herald, October 8, 1867, p. 260. [149]

Now listen to Mrs. White’s clear-cut answer, that follows immediately:

“The proper distance from the bottom of the dress to the floor was not given to me in inches. Neither was I shown ladies’ gaiter boots; but three companies of females passed before me, with their dresses as follows with respect to length:

“The first were of fashionable length, burdening the limbs, impeding the step, and sweeping the street and gathering its filth; the evil results of which I have fully stated. This class, who were slaves to fashion, appeared feeble and languid.

“The dress of the second class which passed before me was in many respects as it should be. The limbs were well clad. They were free from the burden which the tyrant, Fashion, had imposed upon the first class; but had gone to that extreme in the short dress as to disgust and prejudice good people, and destroy in a great measure their own influence. This is the style and influence of the ‘American Costume,’ taught and worn by many at ‘Our Home,’ Dansville, N. Y. It does not reach to the knee. I need not say that this style of dress was shown me to be too short.

“A third class passed before me with cheerful countenances, and free, elastic step. Their dress was the length I have described as proper, modest and healthful. It cleared the filth of the street and side-walk a few inches under all circumstances, such as ascending and descending steps, &c.

“As I have before stated, the length was not given me in inches, and I was not shown a lady’s boot. And here I would state that although I am as dependent upon the Spirit of the Lord in writing my views as I am in receiving them, yet the words I employ in describing what I have seen are my own, unless they be those spoken to me by an angel, which I always enclose in marks of quotation. As I wrote upon the subject of dress the view of those three companies revived in my mind as plain as when I was viewing them in vision; but I was left to describe the length of the proper dress in my own language the best I could, which I have done by stating that the bottom of the dress should reach near the top of a lady’s boot, which would be necessary in order to clear the filth of the streets under the circumstances before named....

“Numerous letters came to me from all parts of the field, inquiring the length of the dress shown me. Having seen the rule applied to the distance from the floor of several dresses, and having become fully satisfied that nine inches comes the nearest to the samples shown me, I have given this number of inches in [Testimony], No. 12, as the proper length in regard to which uniformity is very desirable. If it be said that a lady’s boot is not nine inches high, I would say I wear a boot eight inches high, and when I have walked [150] before my sisters with it uncovered as those properly dressed passed before me in vision, they could not see the top of my boot.”—Ibid.

Mrs. White here frankly states the nature of her vision concerning dress reform. There passed before her vision-focused eyes certain scenes, which scenes were clear and definite as to the basic principles concerning the dress reform. From these principles she was left to frame, in human words, the application of the principles as they applied to health, convenience, modesty. Her statements about inches were incidental. She was seeking only to convey the general thought that the skirt should be a reasonable distance above the ground.

Mrs. White’s Testimony in 1867

In this same year, 1867, Mrs. White published Testimony No. 11, containing an article entitled “Reform in Dress,” which restates at some length what she had written before. Her reason for doing so, as she explains in the opening paragraph, is that some did not seem to have understood her position, and that some who did not wish to believe what she had written had sought to make confusion in the church regarding it. In this testimony (No. 11) she takes note of a report that was in circulation that she wore the American costume, and that that style of reform dress was the one being worn by the sisters in Battle Creek. Her vigorous comment was: “I am here reminded of the saying, that ‘a lie will go around the world while truth is putting on his boots.’”—Testimonies for the Church 1:463.

She explained again the objectives she had in view in recommending the kind of reform dress that she did. She counseled her sisters to be neat and give proper attention to dress, even the dress that they wore in ordinary house work when only their family saw them. Said she:

“Sisters when about their work should not put on clothing which would make them look like images to frighten the crows from the corn. It is more gratifying to their husbands and children to see them in a becoming, well-fitting attire, than it can be to mere visitors or strangers.”—Testimonies for the Church 1:464.

Having made general observations about the kind of reform dress that she considered proper, she continued: [151]

“The above-described dress we believe to be worthy of the name of the reform short dress. It is being adopted at the Western Health Reform Institute [Battle Creek Sanitarium], and by some of the sisters at Battle Creek and other places where the matter is properly set before the people. In wide contrast with this modest dress is the so-called American costume, resembling very nearly the dress worn by men. It consists of a vest, pants, and a dress resembling a coat and reaching about half-way from the hip to the knee. This dress I have opposed, from what has been shown me as in harmony with the word of God; while the other I have recommended as modest, comfortable, convenient, and healthful.”—Testimonies for the Church 1:465.

Note Mrs. White’s repeated indictment of the “American costume.” But this was the costume worn by Miss Dr. Austin, who, according to the charge, persuaded Mrs. White to adopt it! That Mrs. White did not adopt that costume, even in a “slightly modified” form, seems transparently clear from the evidence.

A Further Testimony in 1867

To continue the story: Still later in 1867 Mrs. White wrote Testimony No. 12, which contains a section entitled “The Reform Dress.” In this she refers to the experience of the children of Israel and God’s counsel to them, to put upon the fringe of their garments a ribbon of blue to distinguish them from the heathen. Drawing from the principle of this ancient counsel, she adds immediately:

“God would now have His people adopt the reform dress, not only to distinguish them from the world as his ‘peculiar people,’ but because a reform in dress is essential to physical and mental health. God’s people have, to a great extent, lost their peculiarity, and have been gradually patterning after the world, and mingling with them, until they have in many respects become like them.”—Testimonies for the Church 1:525.

The critic quotes a portion of the first sentence from this passage and plays on the word “now,” attempting to make it appear that when in 1867 Mrs. White said “God would now have his people adopt the reform dress,” she was really reversing a statement she had made in 1863. But the context reveals clearly that Mrs. White does not at all have in mind a “now” in contrast to her 1863 statement. The “now” is intended to provide a certain comparison or parallel to an ancient practice enjoined by God, and simply reiterates what she had written earlier. [152]

Those Dress Reform Patterns

In this same testimony (No. 12) she expresses concern over the fact that “the reform dress is not rightly represented,” that is, this new style of dress was not being made properly. The result was that in many cases, instead of looking neat in appearance and sensible, it looked the very opposite. Said she:

“This style of dress is unpopular, and for this reason neatness and taste should be exercised by those who adopt it.... Before putting on the reform dress, our sisters should obtain patterns of the pants and sack worn with it. It is a great injury to the dress reform to have persons introduce into a community a style which in every particular needs reforming before it can rightly represent the reform dress. Wait, sisters, till you can put the dress on right.”—Testimonies for the Church 1:521.

It is in this setting that we see great reasonableness in her statement:

“I shall have patterns prepared to take with me as we travel, ready to hand to our sisters whom we shall meet, or to send by mail to all who may order them.”—Testimonies for the Church 1:522.

The critic cites this passage, quite out of its context, seeking to convey to the reader that Mrs. White not only claimed to have got her pattern from heaven, but had privately made duplicates, and was selling these at a high price and at great profit to herself. The critic says she charged a dollar, but he cites no documentary evidence in support of his statement.

The documentary evidence available reveals clearly that she carried on no exclusive work in the distribution of patterns. In The Health Reformer, January, 1868, is an article on “The Reform Dress,” by Dr. Russell, in which he says: “As none should attempt to make the dress without a pattern, we would say, it can be obtained by addressing Miss Dr. Lamson, Health Institute, Battle Greek, Mich. Price, 25 cents.”—Page 107. But in the next issue of The Health Reformer Miss Dr. Lamson stated that this announcement was an error and that the price was 50 cents.

If the sisters in the church could secure, through The Health Reformer, which came to many of their homes, a pattern for fifty cents, is it reasonable to believe that Mrs. White would be so [153] foolish as to demand “one dollar each” for these patterns, as alleged? In our examination of charges we have had many exhibits of how stories grew tremendously over the years. We should, therefore, not be surprised if this particular story grew to one dollar!

The Reform Kept in Proper Perspective

Mrs. White kept the whole matter of dress reform in proper perspective. She refused to let it become a dominant subject in the church. Listen to her words:

“None need fear that I shall make dress reform one of my principal subjects as we travel from place to place. Those who have heard me upon this matter will have to act upon the light that has already been given. I have done my duty; I have borne my testimony, and those who have heard me and read that which I have written, must now bear the responsibility of receiving or rejecting the light given. If they choose to venture to be forgetful hearers, and not doers of the work, they run their own risk, and will be accountable to God for the course they pursue. I am clear. I shall urge none, and condemn none.”—Testimonies for the Church 1:523.

In line with this was the counsel she gave to certain sisters whose husbands were opposed to the reform dress:

“Sisters who have opposing husbands have asked my advice in regard to their adopting the short dress contrary to the wishes of the husband. I advise them to wait. I do not consider the dress question of so vital importance as the Sabbath. Concerning the latter there can be no hesitation. But the opposition which many might receive should they adopt the dress reform, would be more injurious to health than the dress would be beneficial.”—Testimonies for the Church 1:522.

It is difficult to see how she could have presented more judiciously a reform program—and how greatly the current fashions needed reforming! She did not permit this program to overbalance other and more vital considerations.

In her statement on dress reform in the Review and Herald in 1867 Mrs. White is explicit that it is one of the minor things:

“The dress reform was[49] among the minor things that were to make up the great reform in health, and never should have been urged as a testing truth necessary to salvation.”—October 8, 1867, p. 261.

[49]The past tense here simply indicates that Mrs. White, in 1867, was referring back to the time of the introduction of the reform dress.

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Mrs. White made this statement about the minor place of dress reform while she was in the midst of promoting that reform. She did not make this statement as an afterthought, in a lame attempt to explain why that particular dress reform was abandoned. In fact, her statement concerning the minor character of this feature of reform provides the proper setting in which to consider the matter of the abandonment of a particular style of reform dress.

As late as 1873 Mrs. White made this brief comment on dress reform in connection with an extended discussion of the Health Institute:

“The dress reform is treated by some with great indifference, and by others with contempt, because there is a cross attached to it. For this cross I thank God. It is just what we need to distinguish and separate God’s commandment-keeping people from the world. The dress reform answers to us as did the ribbon of blue to ancient Israel.”—Testimonies for the Church 3:171.

Mrs. White on “Simplicity in Dress,” in 1881

In 1881 Mrs. White wrote at length under the title “Simplicity in Dress,” in which she discussed the broad principles involved in such simplicity. She declared that unwarranted expenditure on clothes, either in time in the making of them, or in money in the buying of them, is contrary to the spirit of true religion, which calls for simplicity in our dress and for sacrificial giving to the Lord of our resources for the advancement of His work. She also sets forth there the principle that in blindly following fashion we make of it a god, because we give it our first interest, and that if the fashion be unhealthful, we harm body as well as soul in following the fashion. In the setting of these principles Mrs. White declared:

“To protect the people of God from the corrupting influence of the world, as well as to promote physical and moral health, the dress reform was introduced among us. It was not intended to be a yoke of bondage, but a blessing; not to increase labor, but to save labor; not to add to the expense of dress, but to save expense. It would distinguish God’s people from the world, and thus serve as a barrier against its fashions and follies. He who knows the end from the beginning, who understands our nature and our needs,—our compassionate Redeemer,—saw our dangers and difficulties, [155] and condescended to give us timely warning and instruction concerning our habits of life, even in the proper selection of food and clothing.

“Satan is constantly devising some new style of dress that shall prove an injury to physical and moral health; and he exults when he sees professed Christians eagerly accepting the fashions that he has invented.”—Testimonies for the Church 4:634, 635.

Then she goes on to discuss further some of the evils of current fashions, particularly the trailing skirts, and adds immediately:

“But dress reform comprised more than shortening the dress and clothing the limbs. It included every article of dress upon the person. It lifted the weights from the hips by suspending the skirts from the shoulders. It removed the tight corsets, which compress the lungs, the stomach, and other internal organs, and induce curvature of the spine and an almost countless train of diseases. Dress reform proper provided for the protection and development of every part of the body.”—Testimonies for the Church 4:635.

Why the Reform Dress Was Discarded

It is evident from this, as it has been evident from other quotations, that Mrs. White was seeking to promote, not so much a specific pattern of a dress, as a basic idea that would give expression to certain principles. In other words, a particular design of dress was merely a means toward an end, and not significant in itself. After thus describing, in 1881, the advantage of the reform dress, she comes to the important question:

“The question may be asked, ‘Why has this dress been laid aside? and for what reason has dress reform ceased to be advocated?’ The reasons for this change I will here briefly state. While many of our sisters accepted this reform from principle, others opposed the simple, healthful style of dress which it advocated. It required much labor to introduce this reform among our people. It was not enough to present before our sisters the advantages of such a dress, and to convince them that it would meet the approval of God. Fashion had so strong a hold upon them that they were slow to break away from its control, even to obey the dictates of reason and conscience. And many who professed to accept the reform, made no change in their wrong habits of dress, except in shortening the skirts and clothing the limbs.

“Nor was this all. Some who adopted the reform were not content to show by example the advantages of the dress, giving, when asked, their reasons for adopting it, and letting the matter rest there. They sought to control others’ conscience by their own. If they wore it, others must put [156] it on. They forgot that none were to be compelled to wear the reform dress....

“Much unhappy feeling was created by those who were constantly urging the reform dress upon their sisters. With extremists, this reform seemed to constitute the sum and substance of their religion. It was the theme of conversation and the burden of their hearts; and their minds were thus diverted from God and the truth. They failed to cherish the spirit of Christ, and manifested a great lack of true courtesy. Instead of prizing the dress for its real advantages, they seemed to be proud of its singularity....

“Some were greatly troubled because I did not make the dress a test question, and still others because I advised those who had unbelieving husbands or children not to adopt the reform dress, as it might lead to unhappiness that would counteract all the good to be derived from its use. For years I carried the burden of this work, and labored to establish uniformity of dress among our sisters.”—Testimonies for the Church 4:635-637.

Mrs. White’s remark on “uniformity” refers to her expression of regret that the reform dress had not been made in any approved way, and had become with some a “variety suit” with each of the parts of a different material. The result was that the dress was “ill-proportioned and out of taste.”—Testimonies for the Church 4:637.

She Refers to a Vision in 1875

It is in the setting of these facts that we can understand her statement which follows on the same page:

“In a vision given me at Battle Creek, Jan. 3, 1875, I was shown the state of things which I have here represented, and that the wide diversity in dress was an injury to the cause of truth. That which would have proved a blessing, if uniformly adopted and properly worn, had been made a reproach, and, in some cases, even a disgrace.

“Some who wore the dress sighed over it as a heavy burden. The language of their hearts was, ‘Anything but this. If we felt free to lay off this peculiar style, we would willingly adopt a plain, untrimmed dress of ordinary length.’ ...

“God has been testing his people. He allowed the testimony concerning dress to become silent, that our sisters might follow their own inclination, and thus develop the real pride existing in their hearts....

“If all our sisters would adopt a simple, unadorned dress, of modest length, the uniformity thus established would be far more pleasing to God, and would exert a more salutary influence on the world, than the diversity presented four years ago. As our sisters would not generally accept the reform dress as it should be worn, another, less objectionable style is now [157] presented. It is free from needless trimmings, free from the looped-up tiedback over-skirts. It consists of a plain sacque or loose-fitting basque, and skirt, the latter short enough to avoid the mud and filth of the streets. The material should be free from large plaids and figures, and plain in color. The same attention should be given to the clothing of the limbs as with the short dress.

“Will my sisters accept this style of dress, and refuse to imitate the fashions that are devised by Satan, and continually changing? No one can tell what freak fashion will take next. Worldlings whose only care is, ‘What shall we eat, and what shall we wear?’ should not be our criterion.”—Testimonies for the Church 4:637-640.

Concessions to Human Frailty

We think that these statements speak for themselves and reveal no inconsistency, no contradiction, on Mrs. White’s part. After all, even prophets of God can only set forth principles. God has not commissioned them as policemen to enforce the principles. Furthermore, it was still to be possible for the sisters in the church to give obedience to the principles in terms of a “less objectionable style” that she then sought to present.

Our Lord said, in explanation of a certain course of conduct allowed to the ancient Jews: “Moses because of the hardness of your hearts suffered you to put away your wives.” Strictly speaking, it was not Moses, but He who spoke through Moses, that allowed this.

When the children of Israel wanted a king to rule over them so that they might be like the nations round about them, the Lord said to them, through the prophet Samuel, that in asking for a king they were rejecting Him, the Lord of heaven. Yet the Lord followed this with instruction to Samuel to pour the anointing oil upon Saul to make him king. Later King David received the special blessing of God and the assurance that his throne would be established forever.

The critics find no difficulty with these Scriptural incidents, but they affect great amazement over the fact that Mrs. White, who stated explicitly that the reform dress was simply a “minor” item, should have withdrawn her advocacy of it in favor of a “less objectionable” dress, which retained the essential features of the reform dress. [158]

Reform Dress Not to Be Revived

That she was concerned with giving life to certain principles and that the reform dress was only a means to an end, was made doubly evident by what she wrote in a letter in 1897 when some raised the question as to the advisability of a revival of the particular style of reform dress worn by Adventist women in the 1860’s:

“There were some things that made the reform dress a decided blessing. With it the ridiculous hoops, which were then the fashion, could not possibly be worn. The long dress skirts, trailing on the ground and sweeping up the filth of the streets, could not be patronized. But a more sensible style of dress has now been adopted, which does not embrace these objectionable features. The fashionable style of dress may be discarded, and should be by all who will read the word of God. The time spent in advocating the dress reform should be devoted to the study of the word of God.

“The dress of our people should be made most simple. The skirt and sacque I have mentioned may be used—not just that pattern and nothing else should be established; but a simple style, as was represented in that dress.

“Some have supposed that the very pattern given was the pattern that all were to adopt. This is not so. But something as simple as this would be the best we could adopt under the circumstances. No one precise style has been given me as the exact rule to guide all in their dress.... The Lord has not indicated that it is the duty of our sisters to go back to the reform dress. Simple dresses should be worn. Try your talent, my sisters, in this essential reform.”—Letter 19, 1897.

This statement in 1897 is wholly consistent with one she made in 1865 at the very beginning of the reform-dress program, as the reader will recall. In that initial statement she declared:

“If the world introduce a modest, convenient, and healthful mode of dress, which is in accordance with the Bible, it will not change our relation to God, or to the world to adopt such a style of dress.”

What Does Laughter Prove?

Thus we come to the end of our examination of the most colorfully garbed of all the charges brought against Mrs. White, a charge that has almost exhausted the critics’ store of adjectives through the years in their attempts to make the whole reform-dress idea ridiculous, a thing obnoxious, immodest, even scandalous, [159] and to make Mrs. White appear as an easily influenced character who spoke out against a reform dress one day only to reverse herself the next, because someone changed her mind for her. We think the evidence makes clear that Mrs. White’s course was a consistent one, not determined by a contact with “Our Home” at Dansville, but by a contact with Heaven, that she sought, not so much by a specific pattern, as by the enunciation of principles, to bring about a reform in dress that would remedy certain glaring evils in the fashions of the day.

The only part of the charge that we cannot refute is that Adventist sisters suffered ridicule, at times, because they wore a reform dress. But we deny the conclusion drawn from this fact; namely, that it proves the reform-dress idea to have been one of Mrs. White’s “saddest delusions.” Perhaps the critics would like to tell us what they think of the styles of the present day, in contrast to the fashions of the nineteenth century. We hear them declaring that the styles are much more sensible today in every way. Then we would like to ask them what they think would have happened to a woman in the nineteenth century if she had walked the streets in a style of dress worn today. Do they think that she would have been free from ridicule?

Everyone knows that the best way to provoke a laugh is to look at the family album—anyone’s! Every style there portrayed on the person of grandpa and grandma and all the other ancient relatives looks ludicrous by comparison with the style that we happen, at the moment, to be accustomed to. But the folks in the family album created no laugh when they wore their outfits! Yet we laugh at them, and they would have laughed at us! Pray tell, what does laughter, or ridicule, prove?

True, dress reformers, like most other reformers, were ridiculed in their day, but a later day endorsed their views. Listen to these words, written in 1913:

“The cause for which the early dress reformers labored and suffered martyrdom has triumphed in almost all points....

“The chief points in the indictment of woman’s dress of former times were that the figure was dissected like a wasp’s, that the hips were overloaded [160] with heavy skirts, and that the skirts dragged upon the ground and swept up the dirt. Nowadays the weight of a woman’s clothing as a whole is only half or a third of what it used to be. Four dresses can be packed in the space formerly filled by one. In the one-piece dresses now in vogue the weight is borne from the shoulders, and the hips are relieved by reducing the skirts in weight, length and number. The skirt no longer trails upon the street.... The women who for conscientious reasons refused to squeeze their waists and in consequence suffered the scorn of their sex now find themselves on the fashionable side. A 32-inch waist is regarded as permissible where formerly a 20-inch waist was thought proper. A fashionably gowned woman of the present day can stoop to pick up a pin at her feet.”—Independent, Oct. 23, 1913, pp. 151, 152.

Evidently, then, those who have ridiculed Mrs. White for her dress reform counsel are simply behind the times.

Who will question but that the activities of Seventh-day Adventist dress reformers was one factor among several that led to the healthful attire worn by women in many lands today! [161]

Chapter 13—A Sketch of Early Adventist History

Mrs. White and the Shut Door—Part I

The next charge to be considered, that Mrs. White taught that the door of mercy was closed on October 22, 1844, can be intelligently discussed only after the presentation of a historical sketch of the Millerite movement and the beginnings of the Seventh-day Adventist Church. Such a sketch follows.

In the early decades of the nineteenth century there developed almost simultaneously in different lands an awakening of interest in the doctrine of the second coming of Jesus Christ. In America this awakening took definite shape as a religious movement, with William Miller as its leader. Contrary to the fanciful stories circulated by enemies at that time, and grown larger and more fanciful through the years, this Advent movement in America, known generally as Millerism, was not wildly fanatical. On the contrary, the evidence is undebatable that it was constituted of sober men and women, some of them well educated, who longed for the appearing of our Lord from heaven, and that it was directed by equally sober leaders who largely were drawn from the ministry of various religious bodies.

The true essence of the movement was not the preaching of the day of Christ’s coming, but the reviving of the long-neglected doctrine of the literal, personal, visible return of our Lord as the goal of Christian expectation and the one and only remedy for the tragedy of a sinful world.[50]

So far as the time element was concerned, the major prophecy on which William Miller and the movement rested, was that found in Daniel 8:14: “Unto two thousand and three hundred days; then

[50]See The Midnight Cry, by F. D. Nichol, Review and Herald Publishing Association, for a documented account of the Millerite movement.

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shall the sanctuary be cleansed.” They rightly believed, as the great majority of Protestant prophetic interpreters before them had believed, that in symbolic prophecy a day stands for a year, and that therefore this particular prophecy deals with a period of two thousand three hundred years. They also believed that this time period began 457 B.C. But due to an error in reckoning they first calculated that it would end not later than the spring of A.D. 1844. They also believed, but wrongly, that the cleansing of the “sanctuary” meant the cleansing of the earth by fire, that is, the final judgments of God climaxed by the coming of Christ.

The parable of the ten virgins, set forth by our Lord in Matthew 25, was also prominent in their preaching. They considered it to be not simply a parable but a prophecy that was to meet its fulfillment in the events clustering around the Second Advent of Christ. The parable tells of an eastern wedding, and of ten virgins who, with their lamps lighted, were waiting according to Oriental custom, for the bridegroom to come, that they might usher him in to the wedding. The record says that while the bridegroom tarried they all slumbered and slept, and that at midnight a cry was heard, “Behold, the bridegroom cometh; go ye out to meet him.” Then all the virgins bestirred themselves. The five who had oil in their lamps went in with the bridegroom to the marriage, and “the door was shut.” The five foolish virgins, who had failed to fill their lamps, went off, instead, in search of oil. When they returned and sought admittance with the cry, “Lord, Lord, open to us,” the Lord answered, “Verily I say unto you, I know you not.”

Millerites Restudy Positions

The spring of 1844 brought what is known as the first disappointment. However, the Millerite movement did not suddenly disintegrate. On the contrary, certain of the Millerites re-examined the evidence, particularly the time of the ending of the 2300-day prophecy. They also saw new force in a prophetic statement by Habakkuk, which they felt applied to them at that very time: “And the Lord answered me, and said, Write the vision, and make it plain upon tables, that he may run that readeth it. For the [163] vision is yet for an appointed time, but at the end it shall speak, and not lie: though it tarry, wait for it; because it will surely come, it will not tarry.” Habakkuk 2:2, 3. They also re-examined the parable of the marriage.

This general re-examination and comparing of scriptures led a rapidly increasing number of them to conclude, in the summer of 1844:

1. That, in harmony with the language of Habakkuk, they were now in the tarrying time.

2. That the 2300-day prophecy would end, not in the spring, but in the autumn, specifically October 22, 1844. This later date was the result of certain observations:

a. Since the decree of Artaxerxes, which began the period, was not carried out till the year 457 was well advanced, then 2300 full years would bring the fulfillment correspondingly late in 1844.

b. They also noted that when Christ came to earth He was offered up as the true antitypical passover lamb at the exact time of year when the typical lamb had been offered; namely, on the fourteenth day of the first month, Jewish reckoning. They reasoned by analogy that the great concluding service in the antitypical sanctuary above should take place at the same time of the year as the typical service had taken place on earth; namely, the tenth day of the seventh month, Jewish reckoning. A study of the Jewish calendar, as kept by the Karaite Jews, who they believed were truly orthodox Jews, revealed that the tenth day of the seventh month coincided with October 22 in the year 1844.

c. A closer study of the ancient sanctuary service revealed that it came to its climax in the cleansing of that sanctuary, which was a work of judgment. Dimly they sensed that inasmuch as there was no earthly sanctuary now, and as it was only a type of a heavenly, the prophecy in Daniel 8:14 involved in some way the heavenly sanctuary, the cleansing of which, they believed, involved the cleansing of the earth by fire, the final judgment of all men.

d. All this added up to the conclusion that the cleansing of the sanctuary, the final judgment on all men, would take place on October 22, 1844.

3. That the parable of the ten virgins contained a more exact statement on time than they had; at first, thought. A twenty-four-hour day in prophecy stands for a year; thus the dark half of this period, the night, would stand for six months. And “midnight,” of course, divides this six-month period in two. Now, from the spring of 1844, when the Millerites were disappointed, until October 22, is six months. The middle of this period—“midnight”— [164] would be the summer of 1844. Not until that summer was the re-examination of these various prophecies sufficiently well advanced to provide a basis for a renewed hope and definite preaching regarding the time of the end of the world and the coming of Christ.

During the summer camp meeting season of 1844 certain Millerite preachers began to proclaim what they declared was the true midnight cry. They averred that the movement was in the tarrying time, that the 2300 days ended October 22, 1844, and that the cry which was to go forth at midnight, “Behold, the bridegroom cometh,” was due to be heard at that very time, the summer of 1844.

The Seventh-Month Movement

From this preaching there developed, within the broad and not too sharply defined Advent movement in America, what became known as the “seventh-month movement,” so-called because October 22 was the tenth day of the seventh month, Karaite Jewish reckoning. This was a movement within the larger movement, for it did not at first have the support of the principal leaders. William Miller, Joshua V. Himes, Josiah Litch, and others who had been in the forefront of the Millerite movement since it first had taken definite shape, looked on uncertainly at first, though they did not oppose. As a matter of fact, they did not accept the October 22 date until within a very few weeks of that time.

The seventh-month movement rapidly became the dominant feature of the whole Advent movement. On every side was heard with new emphasis, and with a now specifically timed element, the cry, “Behold the bridegroom cometh, go ye out to meet Him.”

From the beginning of their preaching, William Miller and the ministers associated with him believed not only that they were reviving a long-neglected and primary truth of the Christian religion, the truth of the personal coming of Christ, but that they were fulfilling the prophecy of the angel described in Revelation 14:6, 7, who proclaimed with a loud voice: “Fear God, and give glory to him; for the hour of his judgment is come.” It was this conviction, coupled with a sense of the gravity of the Advent doctrine they were preaching, that gave to leaders and laity alike a [165] crusading zeal, a sacrificial devotion, and an unremitting ardor in the propagation of the doctrine of the personal, literal coming of Christ. The preaching in the summer of 1844 only intensified that ardor.

Despite the fact that the movement was marked by sobriety, that the leaders preached with dignity from the Word of God and called on men everywhere to believe the apostolic doctrine of the literal, personal coming of Christ, the movement increasingly met bitter opposition, both within and without the churches. The opponents quite generally admitted that the Adventist principles of prophetic interpretation were in harmony with those of historic Protestantism, particularly the principle of a day for a year. Some were even willing to admit that the prophecy of the 2300 days was doubtless due to end about the time that the Adventists declared that it would. In fact a number of the ministry of other religious bodies were forecasting the ending of certain great Bible prophecies approximately at that time.

What, then, was the main cause of the opposition? Chiefly this: Adventists declared that when the great prophecies ended, particularly the 2300-day prophecy, the world would come to a sudden end under the fiery judgments of God and the coming of Christ, and that a wholly new world would be created, as the apostle Peter foretold. No, said all their opponents on every side, what is in store for the world at the ending of the great prophecies, which we also believe are about to be fulfilled, is not a conflagration, but a regeneration of the earth by a gradual improvement of the inhabitants.

Second Angel’s Message

Many who belonged to the Advent movement, which was really interdenominational, were cast out of their respective churches because of their belief in the literal coming of Christ. Others, while not cast out, were given vigorously to understand that they must not speak of their belief in Christ’s coming.

Not only was there opposition to the Advent movement from many pulpits; there was violent ridicule in the press, both secular [166] and religious. There were also caricatures of the Advent preaching and belief on the part of mobs and sometimes even the breaking up of meetings by such mobs.

This varied opposition, particularly the opposition of the churches, caused the Advent leaders to begin to look further into the prophecies of the Bible. They were already preaching the prophetic message of the angel of Revelation 14:6, 7, “The hour of his judgment is come.” They noted that a second angel followed, proclaiming, “Babylon is fallen.” Revelation 14:8. They noted also that this same cry, “Babylon is fallen,” is repeated in Revelation 18, coupled with the command, “Come out of her, my people.” The study of these passages led to the conclusion that “Babylon” is a prophetic, symbolic term to describe the fallen churches of Christendom, and at this time, very particularly the Protestant churches, because they rejected the doctrine of the literal, personal coming of Christ as the goal of Christian hope and the solution of the tragedy of the world. This led the Millerite leaders in general to apply to the members of these churches the command: “Come out of her, my people.” This feature of the Advent preaching began to be increasingly prominent as the opposition and ridicule increased.

The Climax of the Movement

The movement came to its natural climax on October 22, 1844, the time of the second, or great, disappointment. The best estimate is that on that date about fifty thousand persons were believers in the teachings of the movement.[51] Their disappointment was quickly followed by bewilderment, and even by confusion of thought. It could hardly have been otherwise. The first great question to trouble every Advent believer was this: Is this whole movement a delusion? Did the devil lead us into all our belief and activity, or is the movement of God, as we have so devoutly thought? Some quickly revealed the answer that their minds gave to the question by fading out of the picture immediately. The

[51]This is the figure generally accepted, though obviously vague. William Miller described the total as “some fifty thousand believers.” See his Apology and Defence, page 22. James White also estimated 50,000. See his Life Incidents, page 236.

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number that thus departed there is no way of knowing, but there seems good reason to believe it was large. Certainly the “mixed multitude” soon melted away.

Most of those who did not depart took the position, at first, that although the Lord did not come on October 22, some minor variation in prophetic reckoning might explain the delay and that in this further tarrying time that still remained there was naught for them to do but to comfort one another, and to strengthen each other’s faith. They firmly believed that their work for the world was done. That was the logical corollary of their belief that the movement was of God, that the reckoning of the time was correct, or at least essentially so, and that therefore the destruction of the world immediately impended.

A few weeks after the disappointment William Miller wrote:

“We have done our work in warning sinners, and in trying to awake a formal church. God, in his providence has shut the door; we can only stir one another up to be patient; and be diligent to make our calling and election sure.”—Letter dated November 18, in Advent Herald, Dec. 11, 1844, p. 142. (Italics his.)

A little later he wrote again:

“I did believe, and must honestly confess I do now, that I have done my work in warning sinners, and that in the seventh month.”—Letter in Advent Herald, Feb. 12, 1845, p. 3.

However, even before Miller made these statements other prominent leaders in the movement had already begun to question the idea that the day of probation had ended.

The Albany Conference

In the spring of 1845 a conference of Advent believers was called in Albany, New York, in an endeavor to clarify the thinking of the Millerites. The Advent Herald thus summarizes a portion of an address William Miller gave at the conference:

“After the seventh month, he felt for a time that his work was done. But when he commenced his lectures at Albany, all his darkness was gone. Therefore brethren, he said, where you find a door open, enter upon that field of labor, and labor until the Master shall tell you to stop. As yet he [168] has given you no such command. Go, labor in the vineyard, and you will still find souls willing to listen to the glad tidings.”—June 4, 1845, p. 132.

In the summer of 1845 William Miller published what he called his Apology and Defence in relation to the movement and its great disappointment. He made a distinction between the Advent movement in general, which had been expanding for years preceding 1844, and the seventh-month movement which, as we have seen, developed within the framework of the large movement in the summer of 1844. We observed that Miller and most of the other leaders were the last to accept the distinctive tenet of the seventh-month movement; namely, that the 2300-day prophecy was to end October 22, 1844, and that the preaching of this specific date for the cleansing of the sanctuary constituted the true midnight cry. In August, 1845, Miller wrote:

“I have no confidence in any of the new theories that have grown out of that [seventh-month] movement, viz., that Christ then came as the Bridegroom, that the door of mercy was closed, that there is no salvation for sinners, that the seventh trumpet then sounded, or that it was a fulfilment of prophecy in any sense.”—WILLIAM MILLER, Apology and Defence, p. 28.

Miller is here referring to various views that began to be preached and published by different individuals in an attempt to find their way out of the great disappointment. He refused to consider any new interpretation of the words, “Behold the bridegroom cometh,” or to believe that the seventh-month movement “was the fulfilment of prophecy in any sense.”

Leaders Did Not Restudy Key Prophecy

The Millerite leadership in general did not seek to find an explanation for their disappointment by a re-examination of the words of the prophecy of the 2300 days. They were still sure the coming of the bridegroom was the second coming of Christ in glory, and that the cleansing of the sanctuary involved the destruction of the world by fire. Neither event had taken place. Therefore, they concluded, they must look to the future for the coming of the bridegroom and the cleansing of the sanctuary. [169]

That conclusion carried with it, of course, the inevitable decision that the seventh-month movement—which was the climax of the whole Millerite movement—was not of God, and that at best it was a theological delusion.

With Miller, Himes, and other prominent leaders taking this position, it is no surprise that the great body of Adventists accepted this view. But if the midnight cry, the shutting of the door, and the cleansing of the sanctuary were still in the future, it was most natural that new dates would be set, and set they were. It should ever be said to the credit of Miller and Himes and a few other key men like them, that they were most restrained in this matter. But Miller was growing old and feeble—he died in 1849—and neither Himes nor any other leader was strong enough to hold the movement together.[52] A variety of dates was set by different men, with the result that this or that little group among the Adventists was repeatedly brought to the point of expectation only to be disappointed again, with all that such continued disappointments could do to the faith of trusting, believing people.

The keystone of the whole structure of the Advent movement, from the day that William Miller first went out to preach, had been the prophecy of the 2300 days, with its climax, the cleansing of the sanctuary. But in order for that great Bible time prophecy to have meaning, it had to have a time of beginning; hence the endeavor that had been made by Miller and all other leaders in the movement to discover the time when this prophecy should start. They held that the 70-week period was the first part of the 2300-day prophecy. This led them to conclude that the beginning date was 457 B.C. Hence the ending was patently A.D. 1844.

457 B.C. Date Questioned

The very logic of the position taken by the Millerite leaders after 1844 soon demanded that they question the date of the beginning of the 2300-day prophecy. They spoke, at first, of a margin of error of a few years as to its starting date, and as to the

[52]In fact, within a few years after 1844 dissension arose between Himes and a certain segment of the movement.

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date of the crucifixion, which was a key date in the 70-week prophecy. They could entertain this idea of a small error in chronological and historical reckoning without questioning the major premises on which the movement rested. It was this margin-of-error idea that provided the plausibility for the new time setting of different Adventist preachers who kept announcing the end of the world, that is, the cleansing of the sanctuary, as due in 1845, 1846, and so on. Always their thinking was controlled by the premise that the sanctuary cleansing involved Christ’s Second Advent and the earth’s fiery destruction. Obviously the earth was still standing; therefore the sanctuary cleansing was still future.

The original margin-of-error idea quickly spent its force and did its sorry work of depleting the ranks through repeated disappointments, which cast doubt on the divine origin of the whole movement.

This led to the separating of the seventy weeks of Daniel’s prophecy from the 2300 days, for Adventist leaders in their study were unable to justify moving far from A.D. 457 as the starting date for the seventy weeks. But to do this was to leave the 2300-day prophecy floating in air, with no certain beginning, and consequently no certain ending. Furthermore, to separate these two prophecies was to repudiate the most primary premise on which the Advent movement had been reared. Miller believed that the seventy weeks belonged to the 2300 days and provided the clue to the beginning of that long period. There would probably have been no Advent Awakening in America in the 1840’s if he had not been persuaded that the two prophetic periods are related.

Thus the logical result of separating the seventy weeks and the 2300 days was to take from the movement its prophetic validation, and to self-condemn it before the world as being a false religious movement. Each step that the Millerite leaders took after 1844 led toward this sorry end. Rarely in religious history has a movement been so thoroughly undermined by its own leadership. The fact that the leadership proceeded sincerely, as they thought, only adds tragedy to the result that followed. The undermining, which began immediately after 1844, in a repudiation of the seventh-month [171] movement, followed on logically to the virtually complete undermining of the prophetic pillars of the Millerite movement within a few decades.

Rise of Seventh-day Adventism

But the story of the Millerite, or more properly, Advent movement, is not confined to this main body just described. In the days immediately following the great disappointment of October 22, 1844, there began slowly to take shape in the minds of a few of the disappointed ones certain understandings of prophecy, certain explanations of the disappointment, that were to be the doctrinal nucleus of the future Seventh-day Adventist Church.

In the seventh-month movement Adventists studied Christ’s ministry in the heavenly sanctuary in relation to Daniel 8:14, and reasoned that service, if true to the type, would end with a cleansing of the sanctuary. But they had seen in this concluding feature a sudden work of judgment that was to reveal itself in the destruction of the wicked at the coming of Christ. In fact, they focused their thoughts, not so much on Christ’s going into, as His coming out of, the sanctuary on that fateful day of cleansing—coming out to bless His waiting people, as did the high priest in the typical service. This coming out to bless, said they, is the second coming of Christ. Thus in the seventh-month movement they drew into their doctrine of the sanctuary cleansing the idea of the antitypical sanctuary in heaven above without surrendering the idea that sudden world judgment and the Second Advent were the distinguishing features of the cleansing of that sanctuary.

What Hiram Edson Saw

With these facts before us we are prepared to understand the significance of what Hiram Edson saw and told on the morning of October 23. Edson lived in New York State. On the night of October 22, 1844 he, with other Adventists, had been waiting for the Lord to come, until midnight passed, and their disappointment became a certainty. They prayed at dawn for an explanation of their disappointment. And now let him tell the story: [172]

“After breakfast I said to one of my brethren, ‘Let us go and see, and encourage some of our brethren.’ We started, and while passing through a large field I was stopped about midway of the field. Heaven seemed open to my view, and I saw distinctly and clearly that instead of our High Priest coming out of the Most Holy of the heavenly sanctuary to come to this earth on the tenth day of the seventh month, at the end of the 2300 days, that He for the first time entered on that day the second apartment of that sanctuary; and that He had a work to perform in the Most Holy before coming to this earth. That He came to the marriage at that time [as mentioned in the parable of the Ten Virgins]; in other words, to the Ancient of days to receive a kingdom, dominion, and glory; and we must wait for His return from the wedding....

“While I was thus standing in the midst of the field, my comrade passed on almost beyond speaking distance, before missing me. He inquired why I was stopping so long. I replied, ‘The Lord was answering our morning prayer, by giving light with regard to our disappointment.’”—Fragment of Manuscript on His Life and Experiences, by Hiram Edson.

Edson discussed his view with O. R. L. Crosier and F. B. Hahn, with whom, says he, “I was closely associated.” The three were at that time publishing a little Adventist paper called The Day Dawn. In that paper they published this new view, and “The Day Dawn was sent out bearing the light on the sanctuary subject.”—Ibid.[53] Like most of the short-lived Adventist papers of that time, the Day Dawn probably had a very small circulation, and thus made a negligible impact on the main body of Adventist believers. However, the issue containing this new view of the sanctuary cleansing “fell into the hands of Elders James White and Joseph Bates [two Adventist ministers in the east], who readily endorsed the view.”—Ibid.

Sabbath Doctrine Accepted

About the time that Edson gained this new view of the sanctuary cleansing, an important theological change was taking place in a company of Adventists in Washington, New Hampshire. A number of them, under the endeavors of Rachel Oakes, a Seventh Day Baptist, began to keep the seventh-day Sabbath.[54]

[53]No copy of this issue of the Day Dawn is known to exist today.

[54]Some sources say that the group began the observance of the Sabbath in the spring of 1844, others say, in the autumn.

[173]

In 1844 there lived in Portland, Maine, a frail young woman, Ellen Harmon, who with her parents had been disfellowshiped from the Methodist Church because of espousing Millerism. She soon began to display singular spiritual activity. She declared that God gave to her visions, in which visions spiritual light and guidance for herself and for others were received.

Mingling of Two Beliefs

Slowly the holders of the two doctrinal beliefs, Edson’s view of the cleansing of the heavenly sanctuary, and the seventh-day Sabbath, began to commingle. In the dim shadows of one hundred years ago, with few contemporary records, we see three figures standing out sharply in this newly forming religious group, with a few others occasionally coming into focus. Those three figures were Joseph Bates, a former sea captain, who had been a prominent Millerite preacher; James White, a young Millerite preacher in his twenties; and Ellen G. Harmon.

The year 1845, the first after the great disappointment, brought forth no published writings from this primary group. In fact, in that year James White was actually anticipating, with others, the coming of Christ that very October. Here are his words:

“It is well known that many were expecting the Lord to come at the 7th month [Jewish reckoning], 1845. That Christ would then come we firmly believed. A few days before the time passed, I was at Fairhaven, and Dartmouth, Mass., with a message on this point of time. At this time Ellen [Harmon] was with the band at Carver, Mass., where she saw in vision that we should be disappointed, and that the saints must pass through the ‘time of Jacob’s trouble,’ which was future.”—A Word to the “Little Flock,“ p. 22.

James White was evidently carried along with the general enthusiasm and hope of those around him. The theological thinking of the pioneers was not yet formulated. A new theological system, harmonious in all its parts, is not generally formed in a day—or in a year. But it is significant to note that a voice was heard declaring that the Lord would not come in 1845 and calling attention to events that must yet take place before His return in glory. [174]

Seventh-day Adventist Doctrines Begin to Take Shape

We must come to the year 1846 for the first definite evidence of crystallizing convictions and united thinking on doctrine among those who were to be the pioneers of Seventh-day Adventism. In that year O. R. L. Crosier published an amplified statement of the new sanctuary doctrine in a well-known Millerite paper, thus giving the doctrine a certain publicity and prominence that it had not received up to that time.[55]

It was early in this same year and in this same paper that there appeared the first published writings of Ellen G. Harmon, who in August, 1846, became the wife of James White.

It was in 1846 that Joseph Bates and James White first met.[56]

Though Bates had first been persuaded, in 1845, that the seventh day is the Sabbath, it was not until the summer of 1846 that he became firmly and irrevocably settled in his conviction. It was in this latter year that he brought to James and Ellen White the seventh-day Sabbath, which they soon accepted. And it was in that same year that Bates published the first of a number of pamphlets that were to come from his pen through the years.

Even in 1846 these three principal pioneers—Joseph Bates and James and Ellen White—were leaders of nothing faintly resembling an organization or a denomination. The Sabbath conferences of 1848, which constitute the first evidence of more or less well-defined groups of believers, had an aggregate attendance of only a few hundred persons. In those first years after the great disappointment these three pioneers were the leaders, or rather promoters, of little more than ideas and theological views.

Development of Sanctuary Doctrine

Let us examine, first, the early development of their doctrine of the heavenly sanctuary, with its interrelated teaching on the shut door; then the growth of their distinctive teaching on the Sabbath.

[55]See his article, “The Law of Moses,” published as an eight-page Extra of The Day-Star, February 7, 1846. However, Crosier soon repudiated this new sanctuary doctrine and became a sharp critic of the Sabbathkeeping group.

[56]See The Early Life and Later Experiences and Labors of Elder Joseph Bates (edited by James White), p. 311.

[175]

The record is clear as to the import of their thinking regarding the heavenly sanctuary. If Christ began His work of cleansing the sanctuary on October 22, 1844, and came at that time to the marriage described in the parable of Matthew 25, then the seventh-month movement, in which virtually all the Adventists had formerly rejoiced, was not a delusion. Instead, they had been preaching the truth when they proclaimed to all men that the prophecy of Daniel 8:14 and the parable of Matthew 25:1-13 would be fulfilled in 1844. The Advent movement could continue to maintain that it arose in response to prophecy, very particularly the prophecies of Daniel 8:13, 14, and Revelation 14:6, 7.

Major Differences Between Two Groups

Thus the difference between the large body of Adventists and this slowly emerging little group of Sabbathkeeping Adventists was all the difference between denying and affirming the divine guidance of the Millerite movement that had come to an apparently disappointing climax on October 22, 1844. As already stated, Adventists in general steadily maintained that every part of the distinctive teachings of the 1844 movement be squared with the premise that the sanctuary cleansing involves the Second Advent and the destruction of the earth by fire. The Sabbathkeeping group insisted that everything be squared with the premise that the 2300-day prophecy ended in 1844.

The logic of the larger body of Adventists required them to conclude that the midnight cry and shut door, which immediately precede the sanctuary cleansing, were still in the future. And, of course, the further they moved from October 22, 1844, the more sure they necessarily became that the door was not shut at that time. This is but another Way of saying that the further they moved from 1844, the more they were tempted to conclude that the tremendously stirring 1844 movement was simply a false excitement.

In contrast, the logic of the Sabbathkeeping group enabled them to maintain their faith in the 1844 movement in general and the seventh-month movement in particular. They could hold on [176] to the belief that the 2300-day prophecy began in 457 B.C., and thus ended in A.D. 1844, and that the sanctuary cleansing began at that time. Their new light on the sanctuary enabled them to see how this cleansing could be taking place even though, contrary to their formerly held view, the earth was still untouched by judgment fires. What is equally evident, the logic of the position of this group also demanded that they believe that the midnight cry and its corollary in the parable, the shutting of the door, irrespective of what that shutting might signify, were in the past. Thus belief that the door in the parable was shut on October 22, 1844, carried with it the belief that the 2300-day prophecy had ended, that the sanctuary was being cleansed, and that the 1844 movement was unquestionably of God.

Shut-Door and Sanctuary Doctrine

Up to the time of the disappointment, the shutting of the door had been to all the Millerites a synonym for probation’s close, even as the sanctuary cleansing had been a synonym for fiery judgment. The Sabbathkeepers quickly escaped from the false interpretation of the sanctuary cleansing through Edson and Crosier’s exposition. But there was no one ready, at the outset, with a new interpretation of the shut door. That the Sabbathkeeping Adventists believed, for a time, that probation had ended, was really incidental. In other words, while the logic of the time element in their theological view demanded that they believe that the door in the parable was shut on October 22, 1844, it did not demand that they believe that probation had closed. It is true that in their discussions of Christ’s work in the second apartment of the heavenly sanctuary, in the years immediately following 1844, they restricted His service to the household of faith, which was “still within the reach of mercy and salvation.”—The Review and Herald, December 1850, p. 14. But this restrictive view of Christ’s work simply revealed that they had not yet freed their minds of the idea that probation for the world at large ended in 1844. There is nothing in the belief that Christ began a ministry in the second apartment in 1844 that requires belief, also, that probation for the world ended then. [177] Seventh-day Adventists today believe that the door of the parable was shut in 1844, for we employ essentially the same logic as did our fathers of a hundred years ago. Yet we do not believe that the world’s probation closed in 1844.

Keeping in mind, then, the fact that from the outset, belief in the shut door of the parable was, to our forebears, synonymous with the belief in the truth of divine leadership of the 1844 movement, we can see the full meaning and force of a statement made by James White in 1847. He is speaking of Mrs. White’s first vision, in December, 1844, in which she saw the children of God journeying to the New Jerusalem, with a “bright light set up behind them at the first end of the path, which an angel told me was the Midnight Cry.” He states:

“When she received her first vision, Dec. 1844, she and all the band in Portland, Maine, (where her parents then resided) had given up the midnight-cry, and shut door, as being in the past. It was then that the Lord shew[ed] her in vision, the error into which she and the band in Portland had fallen. She then related her vision to the band, and about sixty confessed their error, and acknowledged their 7th month experience to be the work of God.”—A Word to the “Little Flock,“ p. 22.

The “band in Portland” were typical of most of the Adventists immediately after the disappointment. They had decided that nothing happened, in fulfillment of prophecy, on October 22, 1844. In other words, that the midnight cry and the shutting of the door were not “in the past,” but were events still to take place. Hence their “7th-month experience” had not been of God. James White declares that Mrs. White’s vision caused them to confess their “error” in the timing of these two events. They were then ready to acknowledge “their 7th month experience to be the work of God.”

As we have noted, Edson’s view, first expressed on October 23, 1844, which was the core of the revised interpretation on the sanctuary cleansing, placed that cleansing and the coming of the bridegroom, not at the Advent, and in relation to this earth, but before the Advent, and in heaven. Edson declared that Christ “entered” into the second apartment of the heavenly sanctuary on October 22, 1844, to cleanse it. At the same time He came in before the [178] Ancient of Days in the most holy place to receive a kingdom—His marriage to the bride, the New Jerusalem—and that we must wait for His return from the wedding. (See Daniel 7:13, 14; Luke 12:36.)

Vision Supports New Sanctuary Teaching

Early in 1846 Ellen Harmon published a vision she had received. This vision supported the main outlines of the new interpretation. She wrote:

“In February, 1845, I had a vision of events commencing with the Midnight Cry. I saw a throne and on it sat the Father and the Son.... I saw the Father rise from the throne, and in a flaming Charriot go into the Holy of Holies, within the veil, and did sit. There I saw thrones that I had never seen before. Then Jesus rose up from the throne, and the most of those who were bowed down arose with Him; and I did not see one ray of light pass from Jesus to the careless multitude after he arose, and they were left in perfect darkness. Those who rose up when Jesus did, kept their eyes fixed on Him as He left the throne and led them out a little way.—Then He raised His right arm and we heard his lovely voice saying, ‘Wait here—I am going to my Father to receive the Kingdom; keep your garments spotless, and in a little while I will return from the wedding and receive you to myself.’ And I saw a cloudy chariot, with wheels like flaming fire, and Angels were all around it as it came where Jesus was. He stepped into the chariot and was borne to the Holiest where the Father sat. There I beheld Jesus, as He was standing before the Father, a great High Priest.”—Broadside, To the Little Remnant Scattered Abroad, Portland, April 6, 1846. Signed, Ellen G. Harmon.[57]

Inevitably the new interpretation of the marriage parable provoked much controversy with the main body of Adventists, particularly because of the phrase in the parable, “the door was shut.” It is easy to see why our fathers were early described as the Sabbath and Shut Door people. The critics of Seventh-day Adventism fasten upon the phrase, “shut door,” lift it out of its historical context, and seek to prove thereby that in our early years we were chiefly distinguished by an ardent belief that the door of mercy was closed to all men on October 22, 1844. Our critics might as properly say that for several years after Christ’s ascension the holy apostles were distinguished by a belief that salvation was not only

[57]See also Experience and Views, pp. 43, 44; Early Writings, 54, 55.

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of the Jews but exclusively for the Jews. In both cases the picture is wholly out of focus.

We believe that this historical sketch fully supports the declaration that the newly developing Seventh-day Adventist Church set out to emphasize the shut door of the parable, not from a desire to keep anyone out of the kingdom, but from a resolute determination to hold onto the belief that God had raised up the Advent Movement of the early 1840’s in fulfillment of prophecy. This is not said in any attempt to blur the fact that these early Sabbathkeepers believed for a time that probation for sinners had ended, but to place that fact in proper perspective. Certainly they could be best distinguished as the Sabbath and Shut Door people, because they kept the Sabbath, whereas other Adventists kept Sunday; and they believed that the 2300-day prophecy ended in 1844, whereas other Adventists believed that it had not yet ended.

Early Thinking of Sabbathkeeping Adventists

The thinking of our pioneers on the shut door immediately following 1844 may be summarized in a series of questions:

Was not the whole world lying in sin? Had not even the Protestant churches become Babylon by willfully rejecting the message of the personal coming of Christ? Had not the great Adventist company come out from the fallen churches in 1844 in response to the Bible command, “Come out of her, my people”? Were not all these believers in the Advent, who had not only come out from the fallen churches but had sacrificed and labored for the cause under bitter ridicule, God’s special people? Had not the cleansing of the sanctuary begun, the final work of our great High Priest in the second apartment of the heavenly sanctuary? And did He not go into that apartment, in fulfillment of the ancient types, carrying on His breastplate the names of only the twelve tribes of Israel? And were not the Advent believers the spiritual Israel of God in the last days?

Furthermore, they were sure the door of the parable was shut. And had they not been taught in the Millerite movement that the closing of the door meant the end of probation? [180]

Any hesitancy they might have in believing that the world, by rejecting the doctrine of Christ’s personal coming, had sinned away their day of grace, seemed to be overcome as they thought of the scoffing, jeering fashion in which the public had treated the Advent message. As already stated, in the days preceding October, 1844, many church members, as well as non-Christians, made open mockery of the whole idea of a personal coming of Christ. And immediately after October 22 the ribald abandon of many of these scoffers seemed to prove that they had done despite to the Spirit of God, and thus sinned away their day of grace. William Miller, writing to a friend shortly after the great disappointment, thus describes what happened immediately after October 22 had passed:

“It passed. And the next day it seemed as though all the demons from the bottomless pit were let loose upon us. The same ones and many more who were crying for mercy two days before, were now mixed with the rabble and mocking, scoffing, and threatening in a most blasphemous manner.”—Manuscript letter to I. O. Orr, M.D., Dec. 13, 1844.

On November 29, 1844, Miller wrote a letter to a fellow Millerite leader, I. E. Jones, in which he discusses the mood of the public, and offers his conviction concerning their having sinned against the Holy Ghost. He speaks of “the most violent mobs” that had attacked the Millerite meetings. These mobs, in some instances, at least, must have been constituted of churchgoers, for Miller remarks: “Yet in no case have the nominal churches dealt with their brethren for such an offence.” Then he adds, regarding the mockers:

“For some time in October they crowded our house night and day; but now ‘there is room enough.’ The trap is laid for them, they appear to know that Christ will never come. They that were crying for mercy a few days since, are now scoffing and mocking us, and ridiculing each others fears. Even some old professors are worse than the world. Have not such individuals sinned against the Holy Ghost?”—Advent Herald, Dec. 25, 1844, p. 154.

We give these two statements by Miller to show that it was not simply the little Sabbathkeeping segment of Adventists who felt that the ungodly and blasphemous actions of many persons indicated that they had sinned against the Holy Ghost, and thus had [181] moved beyond the pale of salvation. Whether Miller and the large group of Adventists that he represented opened the door of mercy again to such outright blasphemers is not clear from the record, and is not relevant to this sketch. What is relevant is the fact of the blasphemous speech and actions of a certain segment of the population, and the further fact that, for a little while, the Sabbathkeeping Adventists considered this blasphemous conduct as typical of the mood of the world and, therefore, weighty evidence that probation had closed for the world. In the virtual absence of documentary evidence in the earliest years after 1844, we can hardly dogmatize on the relative force that they attached to their different reasons for thinking that probation had closed. It is not hard to conclude, however, that this very commonly displayed blasphemous conduct was one of the most weighty of the reasons that controlled their thinking.

The Central Point in Shut-Door View

At least this much is undebatable, that central to their thinking on this subject was the idea that men, by willfully rejecting light from the Scriptures, had sinned away their day of grace. That their willful and fateful action took place prior to, or not later than, October 22, 1844, when God shut the door, could be considered simply as an evidence of God’s foreknowledge in dealing with men. This is no fine, technical point. It was this primary thought that probation had ended for the rebellious world because of an intelligent action of men’s own free wills, that permitted the Sabbathkeeping group very quickly, as we shall see, to argue consistently that grace was still offered to those who had not made a decision against the truth.

The Christian doctrine of probation’s close is set forth in the words of John: “He that is unjust, let him be unjust still: and he which is filthy, let him be filthy still: and he that is righteous, let him be righteous still: and he that is holy, let him be holy still.” Revelation 22:11, 12.

Here is the real shutting of the door of mercy, the eternal fixing of all men’s destiny. Beyond the day of this decree wicked [182] men cannot, and righteous men will not, change their status. It is set for eternity. There is no ministering Intercessor for either righteous or wicked.

But even the earliest published view of our fathers did not thus fix the destiny of all men as of October 22, 1844. Though they thought the willfully rebellious world had sinned away its day of grace, they did not think that the status of Advent believers was irrevocably fixed, or that they no longer had a great High Priest ministering for them. They made appeals to “lukewarm” Adventists around them to come out of the “Laodicean” state, lest God “spue” them out of His mouth. They themselves were also keenly conscious of the danger of falling away from the pathway of truth along which they were traveling to the New Jerusalem.[58]

A Logical Lever

This modification of the Millerite belief that the shutting of the door was the sudden and complete ending of Christ’s mediatorial work for saints and sinners alike, was one of the logical levers that gradually opened the door wide to “whosoever will.” By including in their thinking the view that after October 22, 1844, Christ still had a mediatorial function to perform—even if only for a limited fraction of mankind, the household of faith—our fathers laid the basis for an ever enlarging conception of Christ’s service in the most holy place in behalf of humanity. That steadily enlarging conception will be evident as we study their statements written during the next few years.

All this is said in no attempt to blur the fact that these pioneers were partly in the dark at first—no one has ever offered greater evidence of their doctrinal fallibility than we are here presenting. We are seeking to show only that the pioneers, despite their evident fallibility, held from the outset certain distinctive doctrines which, when consistently developed, enabled them to preach salvation full and free to all who were willing to hear and accept.

[58]No point is more clearly emphasized in their writings. It appears first in Mrs. White’s earliest vision, December, 1844. This vision will be discussed in a later chapter.

[183]

James White’s 1847 Statement on Shut Door

Let us listen to James White speak through the oldest document that presents the semblance of a consensus of Seventh-day Adventist thinking. He is writing in May, 1847:

“From the ascension, to the shutting of the door, Oct. 1844, Jesus stood with wide-spread arms of love, and mercy; ready to receive, and plead the case of every sinner, who would come to God by him.

“On the 10th day of the 7th month, 1844, he passed into the Holy of Holies, where he has since been a merciful ‘high priest over the house of God.’ But when his priestly work is finished there, he is to lay off his priestly attire, and put on his most kingly robes, to execute his judgment on the living wicked.... I think the following is a prophesy which has been fulfilling since Oct. 1844. [Then he quotes Isaiah 59:14-16. The 16th verse begins:]

“And he saw that there was no man, and wondered that there was no intercessor.”—A Word to the “Little Flock,“p. 2. (Italics his.)

However, when an opponent cried out that they were closing “the door of mercy,” these Sabbathkeeping Adventists replied in a way that indicates that even at the outset they sensed that God’s mercy is great. Listen to these words of Joseph Bates, written also in 1847. He quotes Paul as saying, “I came to Troas to preach Christ’s gospel, and a door was opened unto me of the Lord” (2 Corinthians 2:12), and adds immediately:

“Paul’s open door, then, was the preaching the gospel with effect to the Gentiles. Now let this door be shut, and the preaching of this gospel will have no effect. This is just what we say is the fact. The gospel message ended at the appointed time with the closing of the 2,300 days; and almost every honest believer that is watching the signs of the times will admit it. I know it will be said ‘why you have, or would close the door of mercy!’ There is no such language in the Bible. I have no desire nor wish in my soul to see my worst enemy lost. I think I have made it manifest for the last twenty years, and am still willing to do what I can to save those that will help themselves. But I am perfectly sensible that it cannot be done only in God’s appointed way; and all that will walk under the shadow of his wing will rejoice at the fulfilment of his word, although their hearts may be burdend and pained at seeing the opposite in their friends.”—JOSEPH BATES, Second Advent Way Marks and High Heaps, pp. 67, 68.

In 1847 Bates also wrote the following in a comment on the work of Mrs. E. G. White: [184]

“I believe the work is of God, and is given to comfort and strengthen his ‘scattered,’ ‘torn’ and ‘pealed people,’ since the closing up of our work for the world in October, 1844.”—Broadside, A Vision, April 7, 1847.[59]

Exclusive of debated passages by Mrs. White, to be considered later, these statements by James White and Joseph Bates, in 1847, are about the earliest published on the subject of probation’s close by the spokesmen of the Sabbathkeeping group of Adventists.[60] The lack of harmony between the statements is easily explained by the fact that the writers were in transition in their thinking. They had not yet thought through their new interpretation of the heavenly sanctuary to the point where that interpretation harmonized with all other Christian doctrine. James White could preface his citation of Isaiah 59:16, which speaks of there being “no intercessor,” with the frank, but hardly dogmatic, declaration: “I think the following is a prophesy which has been fulfilling since Oct. 1844.” However, he believed that Christ was still an “intercessor” for the elect of God.

Bates’s statement in his broadside about the “closing up of our work for the world” squares with a further statement in his pamphlet, Second Advent Way Marks and High Heaps. He is commenting on the prophecies that prove the Advent movement to be of God:

“I am aware of the arguments that are resorted to, to resist these clear scriptural fulfilments in advent history. We hear (say they) there are souls converted. So your argument won’t stand. I think the scripture argument will stand ten thousand times firmer than all the said be converts since this [seventh] trumpet has been sounding. How can you have faith in Babylonish revivals, after Babylon has fallen?”—BATES, Second Advent Way Marks and High Heaps, p. 53.

Bates had little or no faith, either, in revivals by those Adventists who had really undermined the foundations of the Advent movement by questioning, if not rejecting, the basic premises of prophetic interpretation on which it had been reared.

[59]This may be Bates’s first published statement on the idea of probation’s close. His pamphlet Second Advent Way Marks and High Heaps, which discusses the shut door, simply bears the date “1847.” We cannot tell, therefore, whether it was published before or after April 7.

[60]James White and Joseph Bates wrote a few articles for Millerite papers prior to 1847 in which brief references were made to the subject.

[185]

But that did not prevent him from declaring that he was “still willing to do” what he could “to save those that will help themselves.” He does not clarify his next statement: “I am perfectly sensible that it cannot be done only in God’s appointed way.” But he is emphatic in the second half of the sentence: “all that will walk under the shadow of his wing will rejoice at the fulfilment of his word.”

The only way we can explain how these two statements—on pages 53 and 68 of Bates’s pamphlet—came from the same writer at the same time is that the “whosoever will” of Revelation 22 was warring in Bates’s mind with his earlier Millerite interpretation of the “shut door” of Matthew 25. That such a mental conflict should take place is no rarity in the history of religious thought. The happy sequel is that the “whosoever will” was soon to become dominant and to demand that the shut door open into a new area of light and divine intercession for whosoever will accept the still proffered salvation.

The Sabbath Doctrine Takes Definite Form

Let us turn, now, to look at the early development of the doctrine of the seventh-day Sabbath. One of the first Millerites to accept the Sabbath was T. M. Preble of New Hampshire. He published his view in February, 1845, in an Adventist paper called The Hope of Israel.[61] Bates read this article, was persuaded of the Sabbath, and in August, 1846, brought out a forty-eight-page pamphlet entitled The Seventh Day Sabbath, a Perpetual Sign. In his pamphlet he states that the reading of the Preble article “convinced” him of the Sabbath in the spring of 1845, but adds:

“Contrary views did, after a little, shake my position some, but I feel now [August, 1846] that there is no argument nor sophistry that can becloud my mind again this side of the gates of the Holy City.”—Page 40.

In January, 1847, Bates published a second, enlarged, edition of his Sabbath tract.

[61]In March, 1845, Preble reprinted this article as a 12-page tract, entitled: A Tract, Showing That the Seventh Day Should Be Observed As the Sabbath, Instead of the First Day; “According to the Commandment.”

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In the first edition Bates builds his argument for the Sabbath almost exclusively on the premise that the Sabbath was instituted at creation and re-enacted in Exodus 20; that the Ten Commandments are the moral rule for Christians and the seventh-day Sabbath is therein commanded. He touches briefly on a prophetic aspect when he observes, in his historical sketch of the change of the Sabbath, that the prophet Daniel describes the little horn as thinking to change times and laws, that this little horn is the Papacy, and that the times and laws are God’s law, very particularly the law of the Sabbath. Bates then asks his Adventist readers: “Now the second advent believers have professed all confidence in his [Daniel’s] visions; why then doubt this.”—Page 42.

In the second edition of his Sabbath tract Bates builds the prophetic argument for the Sabbath not simply on a brief reference to Daniel’s vision on the little horn but also on the declaration of the apostle John in Revelation 14:9-11. In so doing he provided the contrast between God’s Sabbath and the mark of the beast, which has been a distinguishing feature of Seventh-day Adventist preaching from that day to this.

Substance of Bates’s Argument

The substance of Bates’s argument to the Advent believers is this: The great book of the Revelation is the foundation of all the Adventist preaching. We have believed and preached that the message, “Fear God, and give glory to him; for the hour of his judgment is come,” met its fulfillment in the preaching of the Millerite movement. The message of the second angel, who proclaims that Babylon is fallen, and whose message is echoed by another angel in the eighteenth chapter of Revelation that declares, “Come out of her, my people,” also met its fulfillment in the Millerite movement.

Up to this point Adventists of every persuasion, unless they had turned back on the preaching of the Millerite movement, could agree.

Now, declares Bates, a third angel follows after these two; his message is a warning against receiving the mark of the beast, and [187] those who do not receive that mark are described immediately in this language: “Here is the patience of the saints: here are they that keep the commandments of God, and the faith of Jesus.” Revelation 14:12. Why should the Advent believers give obedience simply to the first two of these three angels? There is a third message to accept—full obedience to all God’s holy commandments, including the commandment to keep the seventh-day Sabbath.

Thus did Bates and the Sabbathkeeping Adventists set forth the doctrine of the Sabbath as the third in a series of divinely indited messages intended for the closing days of earth’s history.

The Sabbath as a Seal

The attention of the Sabbathkeeping Adventists soon focused on another passage in the Revelation, the statement of John in the seventh chapter regarding the sealing work. Mrs. White refers to this in January, 1849. However, she does not present any line of reasoning to show what the seal is; she simply states, “This seal is the Sabbath.”[62]

In January, 1849, Joseph Bates published a seventy-two-page pamphlet entitled A Seal of the Living God. In this he presents a reasoned argument to show that the Sabbath is the seal of God. However, on page 24 Bates credits to Mrs. White the presentation in vision of the first “clear light” on the subject of the sealing work of Revelation 7.

John declares that the number of those sealed is 144,000. From this statement the Sabbathkeeping pioneers drew the conclusion that “the remnant” “which keep the commandments of God, and have the testimony of Jesus Christ” (Revelation 12:17), would be 144,000 in number.

Thus was early built into the doctrine of the seventh-day Sabbath an added prophetic element—the “seal”—which gave further Scriptural reinforcement and prophetic timeliness to the doctrine. It became a part of “present truth.” (See Joseph Bates, A Seal of the Living God, p. 17.)

[62]See Broadside, To Those Who Are Receiving the Seal of the Living God. Signed, “E. G. White, Topsham, Jan. 31, 1849“: also Experience and Views, pp. 19-21; Early Writings, 36-38.

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Near the close of his pamphlet Bates seeks to show the distinction between the Sabbathkeeping group, of which he was a part, and “Second Advents,” as he describes all others of the Advent movement. Says he: “The first wonderful sign by which they were distinctly known from Second Advents, was shut door believers, but the greatest wonder, and sign by which they are now known is 7th day Sabbath believers.”—Ibid., p. 56. This leads him almost immediately to observe: “The shut door and Sabbath, then, are the two prominent marks by which they are known.”

In other words, our forebears first grasped the truth of the heavenly sanctuary service, with Christ entering the most holy place on October 22, 1844, for a final work of judgment and the receiving of His kingdom. Second, they saw the Sabbath in a prophetic setting—saw it as the third in a series of angelic messages timed for the last days.

The Sabbath and Sanctuary Tied Together

The next step in the developing theology of the Sabbathkeeping Adventists was the discerning of a relationship between the Sabbath and shut door. And the relationship discovered was such as to give added force to the Sabbath and to provide a way of escape out of the restricted conception of salvation implicit in their first understanding of the shut door. This enlarged understanding came as a result of a vision given to Mrs. White on March 24, 1849.

In this vision she “was taken off in the Spirit to the City of the living God.” She saw that “the commandments of God, and the testimony of Jesus Christ, relating to the shut door, could not be separated, and that the time for the commandments of God to shine out, with all their importance, and for God’s people to be tried on the Sabbath truth, was when the door was opened in the Most Holy Place of the Heavenly Sanctuary, where the Ark is, containing the Ten Commandments.” She saw, also, that this door was opened in 1844, when Jesus “shut the door in the Holy Place, and opened the door in the Most Holy.” She quotes Revelation 3:7, 8. Since then “the commandments have been shining out to God’s people, [189] and they are being tested on the Sabbath question.”—Present Truth, August, 1849, p. 21.[63]

It was this 1849 vision of the open and the shut door that definitely bound together the Sabbath and the sanctuary doctrines in the minds of this little group of Sabbathkeeping Adventists.[64] As they studied the book of Revelation they discovered various references to the sanctuary, or temple, in heaven. They noted that when John describes the very last events of earth’s history, he records, “And the temple of God was opened in heaven, and there was seen in his temple the ark of his testament.” Revelation 11:19.

Three Key Doctrines Rounded Out

Thus were rounded out the main features of the most distinctive doctrines that were to distinguish Seventh-day Adventists from that day to this. Let us summarize:

1. The doctrine of the literal, personal Second Advent of Christ. This doctrine was retained essentially as preached in the Millerite movement, except for the element of definite time. The time element in that movement had been the 2300-day prophecy. But our fathers, by their new interpretation of that prophecy, thereby took from it any possible use as a key to unlock the mystery of the date of Christ’s Advent. That is why Seventh-day Adventists, from the very beginning, have been singularly free from the disheartening and embarrassing mistake of attempting to set a definite time for the coming of the Lord.[65] So far as time is concerned, Seventh-day Adventists have confined themselves to the words of our Lord, that when we see certain signs of the Advent take place we can know that “it is near even at the doors.”

2. The doctrine of the Sabbath, which received its first acceptance

[63]See also Experience and Views, pages 24, 25; Early Writings, 42, 43. The full text of this vision is given in the next chapter.

[64]On April 7, 1847, Mrs. White had a vision in which she was taken, first into the holy place, and then into the most holy, where she “saw an ark” and the Ten Commandments in the ark with “a halo of glory” around the Sabbath [commandment]. But the open and shut-door feature was not introduced.—See Broadside, A Vision, April 7, 1847; also A Word to the “Little Flock,” p. 18; Experience and Views, pp. 15, 16; Early Writings, 32, 33. See the chapter entitled “Time Setting,” for a discussion of one modifying exception.

[65]See the chapter entitled “Time Setting,” for a discussion of one modifying exception.

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by a little group of Adventists in 1844 in Washington, New Hampshire, under the simple teaching of the binding claims of the law of God, now was reinforced by various prophetic passages, particularly Revelation 14:9-12, which gave to the Sabbath doctrine its significance as a part of present truth, a testing, sealing message for the last days of earth’s history.

3. The doctrine of the heavenly sanctuary, which explained their disappointment, now took shape as a well-defined tenet interlocked with the doctrine of the Sabbath.

It is interesting, and we believe significant, that the clear formulating of these major doctrines was accompanied by a correcting of their view of the shut door.

Doctrine of 144,000 and Enlarged View

Unquestionably, Mrs. White’s vision of the open and shut door was a most important means of leading the Sabbathkeeping Adventists out of their restricted conception of salvation for men. There was evidently another factor also, John’s description in Revelation 7 of an elect company of 144,000 “sealed” in evident readiness for Christ’s Second Advent. As we have noted, the number of Advent believers at the height of William Miller’s preaching was estimated as fifty thousand people. And many thousands of these were now not simply in the lukewarm, Laodicean state, as Bates described the majority of non-Sabbathkeeping Adventists; they had actually gone back into the world. Thus the number of Adventists to whom our fathers could preach the further and climactic message of the third angel was very far short of the prophetic total of 144,000 elect. Bates discusses this point in his 1849 pamphlet, A Seal of the Living God. Says he:

“John see[s] that the 144,000 were sealed of all the tribes, &c., and these were the servants of our God, men and women now living. Where are they, say our opponents? Answer, on the earth. Do you know where to find them all? no, not yet, but I believe John saw every one of them, and I had rather believe him, if I should never have the privilege of seeing or hearing from one of them until the resurrection of the just, than to have my part taken from the book of life and out of the holy city, by continually trying to prove that it was not so, because the Sabbath believers could not point them all out, and tell their names.”—Page 38. [191]

Toward the end of his pamphlet he makes this observation as to who will constitute the 144,000:

“Now all advent believers that have, and do, participate in the advent messages as given in Revelation 14:6-13, will love and keep this covenant with God, and especially his Holy Sabbath, in this covenant; this is a part of the 144,000 now to be sealed.

“The other part are those who do not yet, so well understand the advent doctrine; but are endeavoring to serve God with their whole hearts, and are willing, and will receive this covenant and Sabbath as soon as they hear it explained. These will constitute the 144,000, now to be sealed with ‘a seal of the living God,’ which sealing will bear them through this time of trouble. [I think the evidence is pretty clear that a part of the 144,000 will come from the east; the river Euphrates will be dried up for them to cross over at the pouring out of the sixth seal....]”—Pages 61, 62. (Brackets his.)

Excluding his mistaken interpretation regarding the Euphrates, we may say that Bates here spoke more accurately than he realized. The logical implication in this statement is that those who are sincere, who are willing to accept truth, no matter where they may be in the world, may still receive salvation.

This firm belief that there would be 144,000 elect and that many of these must be found outside the Adventist company, even in far lands, was a leaven working in the minds of our forebears. That belief, combined with Mrs. White’s vision of the shut and open door,[66] constituted the ferment that was to raise and expand this Sabbathkeeping group above and beyond the narrow confines in which their shut-door belief first found them after October 22, 1844.

Earliest Activities of Sabbathkeeping Group

Now what were this group of Adventists doing in the first few years after 1844? Were they smugly and self-righteously sitting at

[66]It is true that Mrs. White’s first vision, December, 1844, described the heavenward-journeying company, subsequent to October 22, 1844, as being 144,000 in number, and it must obviously follow that at least a portion of them were “sealed” at a time later than the vision. (See Broadside, To the Little Remnant Scattered Abroad; see also Experience and Views, pp. 9-15; Early Writings, 13-20.) However, in this vision Mrs. White does not dilate on the subject, as does Bates in his 1849 pamphlet, and there is no evidence that her reference to the 144,000 immediately provoked any curious question from her associates as to where all these would come from. However, the statement was there, with all its implications that non-Adventists were yet to be saved. Bates had read it, for he was an ardent believer in her visions, and now in January, 1849, he was to take up this question of the sources of the 144,000. In a later chapter the implications in Mrs. White’s reference to the 144,000 in her first vision will be discussed more fully.

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home waiting for the early destruction of all but themselves? No! Though engaged in vigorous and sometimes unhappy theological controversy with other Adventists, they nevertheless sought to labor for them spiritually. They viewed them as the lost sheep of the house of Israel—lost in certain mistaken ideas of prophecy, but still members of the household of God.

They wished to bring comfort and a further message to these fellow Adventists, whose state of mind ran all the way from simple bewilderment to disillusionment, disaffection, and departure from the faith. They wished to assure them that they could still believe that the Advent movement was of God, that the prophetic interpretation of the seventy weeks and 2300 days was sure, that there was no mistake in the reckoning, and that the whole disappointment could be explained by a corrected interpretation of the meaning and nature of the cleansing of the sanctuary and the coming of the bridegroom. They wished, also, to bring to them light on the message of a third angel that follows the first and the second.

From the very sketchy record we have of those earliest post-1844 years we see Joseph Bates, James White, and his wife, Ellen White, and a few others moving about from one Adventist company to another seeking to bring comfort and renewed confidence.

The record is clear that their labors were unflagging. There were not enough of them to make contact with all the Adventists everywhere.

And to whom else could they have hoped to bring, at the outset, the kind of message that they had. Secular publications of the time, as well as the different Adventist publications, reveal that the non-Adventist public were hardly in a mood to listen to further Adventist preaching. Laughter was about the only response to any kind of Adventist statement. That fact is clear beyond question. More than one Adventist was saluted, after October 22, 1844, with the inquiry, “Why haven’t you gone up yet?” To which some Adventists replied with a vigor that closed the discussion: “If I had gone up where would you have gone?” Himes and Miller might speak of preaching to the world and of the possibility of gaining converts almost immediately after the great disappointment, but [193] their own journals bear eloquent testimony to the bitter opposition that confronted them on every side, and of the fact that they spent most of their efforts and energies going about among Adventist groups to cheer and comfort and hold them firmly together.

False Premise Too Often Employed

Through the century of Seventh-day Adventist history many things have been written and said concerning those few years immediately following 1844 that do not take all the facts into proper account. Interestingly enough, loyal friend and militant critic have often been controlled in their thinking by the same premise; namely, that proof of anything short of perfection on the part of the Seventh-day Adventist pioneers provides clear evidence that the movement they launched is not of God.

On this premise some loyal members of the church have sought to square all unfavorable evidence with the favorable. This has been a common, and sometimes pardonable, practice in all ages. A vividly held premise can blind the eye and invalidate the reasoning even of the most conscientious.[67]

On this same premise militant critics have sought to square all favorable evidence with the unfavorable. This has also been a common but rarely pardonable practice in all ages. Specifically, critics of Seventh-day Adventism have attempted to marshal the evidence in such a way as to prove that our forebears were the most deluded, exclusive, and hopelessly mistaken lot of people that ever lived. And, therefore, that this Seventh-day Adventist movement is not a fulfillment of prophecy, not of divine origin.[68]

The premise, of course, is false, and hence the conclusions built upon it, whether by friend or foe, are at best unwarranted or irrelevant, and at worst, erroneous. The writer of the book of Acts held to no such premise when recording the happenings of the earliest years of the Christian church. He described the

[67]Some of those who have written in defense reveal that they did not have before them, and perhaps had never seen, the earliest writings of our fathers. Otherwise they would not have made certain sweeping generalizations. Fortunately, the reputations of the pioneers do not suffer from a full presentation of all the sources, as this present study, we believe, reveals.

[68]See Appendix G, p. 597, regarding the charge that the Sabbathkeeping group were fanatical.

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apostles as being filled with the Holy Ghost in a most unusual and spectacular display of God’s power in setting them apart as God’s special messengers. But he also records that these Spirit-filled men were dominated for several years with the thought that salvation was only for the Jews.

God had to perform miracles to persuade Peter to bring the gospel to a Gentile, Cornelius, who was actually pleading that the gospel be preached unto him. God had to give Peter a vision, then synchronize that miraculously with the coming of the servants from Cornelius, and climax it with the spectacular pouring out of the Holy Ghost upon Cornelius and his household under the apostle’s preaching. Furthermore it took the recital of all these miraculous happenings to persuade the others at Jerusalem that Peter was worthy, not of censure, but of commendation.

Sabbathkeepers’ Position Understandable

No, we need not prove that the Sabbathkeeping pioneers were above mistakes in order to prove that they were men of God, and called of Him to preach a mighty message to the world. Indeed, it is not surprising that these pioneers challenged the validity of the claims made by other Adventist preachers, that men and women had been converted in those years immediately following 1844. There were no miracles to aid their faith in believing this, no spectacular outpouring of the Holy Ghost. There was simply the word of one man against another. In fact, not only was there the absence of supporting miracles; there was, on the contrary, certain strong evidences to lead our fathers to believe that at least some of the revivals, with their alleged conversions, were clearly not of God.

We touch right here upon one of the sorry aftermaths of the great disappointment. At best the Millerite movement had been a loosely knit company of believers. While the movement was strong and active it could maintain a definite shape and standard. After the disappointment certain unruly, self-appointed preachers conducted general and revival services here and there under the name of Adventist, though they may not have been a part of the movement in 1844. [195]

Not infrequently the revival owed its vigor to some new date that the revivalist set for the coming of the Lord, because a new interpretation had been given to the 2300-year prophecy. Obviously, to the Sabbathkeeping group, whose basic premise was that the October 22, 1844, date was correct, all such new dates were anathema and an evidence of the false preaching of the one who presented them.

Furthermore—and this is a most important point—some of those who engaged in revivals shortly after 1844 became entangled in various spiritualistic activities; for the cult of Spiritualism, in its modern form, began about that time with the mysterious rappings carried on through the Fox sisters at Hydesville, New York. And to our forebears, anything tainted with Spiritualism was a product of the bottomless pit.

Sense of Cohesion Developing

By the year 1849 the still very small group of Sabbathkeeping Adventists was beginning to have a sense of cohesion. Such men as Joseph Bates and James White felt that they represented not only ideas but companies of people who held those ideas. Furthermore, they felt that these views were now rather clearly outlined, well buttressed with Scripture, definitely interlocked, and prophetically timed as “present truth.” It was in July of this year that their first publication, Present Truth, was founded.

It is hardly necessary for us here to go into a detailed presentation of quotations from their writings to show the steady transition from shut door to open door that took place. But it is important for the record to set down here the fact that the transition was gradual, not sudden.[69] There is nothing in the evidence to warrant the belief that at some particular point along the way these pioneers suddenly saw a great light and from that moment onward completely changed formerly held views about salvation and the shut door.

The most definite piece of evidence as to the time of the termination

[69]See Appendix H, “From Shut Door to Open Door,” p. 598, for a documented record of the transition.

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of their shut-door ideas is a statement by James White in 1854. He is answering a charge by a Mrs. Seymour in the Harbinger, that the Sabbathkeeping Adventists had closed the door of mercy on the world, saying it was too late. Here are his words:

“Now all this is entirely false. Those who have read our publications, especially for the past two years, and have known any thing of the labors of the brethren in the Sabbath cause, know that Mrs. S. has penned untruths, and that the Harbinger has published the same.”—The Review and Herald, July 4, 1854, p. 173.

Going back “two years” would bring us to the middle of 1852. We think that if the files of our publications had been clear of all shut-door views for longer than “the past two years,” James White would have so stated. The greater the total of years, the more impressive his rejoinder to Mrs. S.

Not by a reversal of views, but rather by an expansion and a development of them in a certain direction, the pioneers gained a sufficiently clear understanding of the sanctuary doctrine in relation to other Bible doctrines to enable them to preach, “Whosoever will may come,” and “He that hath ears to hear, let him hear.”

James White Reviews the Past

Looking back over those early days, James White wrote, in 1868, a series of articles that best sums up their transition in theological views. He is discussing the question of the shut door that confronted the whole Adventist company immediately after October 22, 1844, and declares:

“The clear light from the heavenly sanctuary that a door, or ministration, was opened at the close of the 2300 days, while another was closed at that time, had not yet been seen. And in the absence of light in reference to the shut and open door of the heavenly sanctuary, the reader can hardly see how those who held fast their advent experience, as illustrated by the parable of the ten virgins, could fail to come to the conclusion that probation for sinners had closed.

“But light on the subject soon came, and then it was seen that although Christ closed one ministration at the termination of the 2300 days, he had opened another in the most holy place, and still presented his blood before the Father for sinners.”—The Review and Herald, May 5, 1868, p. 327. [197]

He goes on to show that the prophetic statement in Revelation 3:7-13, which describes the symbolic Philadelphia church, has a direct bearing on the question of the shut door:

“Adventists were agreed that the seven churches of Rev. ii and iii, symbolized seven states of the church, covering the entire period from the first advent of Christ to his second appearing, and that the sixth state addressed represented those who with one united voice proclaimed the coming of Jesus, in the autumn of 1844. This church was about to enter upon a period of great trial. And they were to find relief from it, so far as ascertaining their true position is concerned, by light from the heavenly sanctuary. After the light should come, then would also come the battle upon the shut and open door. Here was seen the connecting link between the work of God in the past advent movement, present duty to keep the commandments of God, and the future glory. And as these views were taught in vindication of the advent movement, in connection with the claims of the Sabbath of the fourth commandment, these men, especially those who had given up their Advent experience, felt called upon to oppose. And their opposition, as a general thing, was most violent, bitter, and wicked.

“The shut and open door of the heavenly sanctuary was the strong point upon which this matter turned. If we were right on the subject of the cleansing of the sanctuary, the preaching of the time was right, and the entire movement has been right.”—Ibid.

A Prophetic Forecast

Commenting on the prophetic passage: “Behold, I have set before thee an open door, and no man can shut it,” he observes:

“Nothing can be plainer than that man, or a set of men, would, near the close of the history of the church, war against the truth of God in reference to the shut and open door.

“And to this day those who retain the spirit of war upon those who keep the commandments of God, make the belief in the shut and open door odious, and charge it all upon Seventh-day Adventists. Many of them are not unaware of the injustice of this. Some of this people did believe in the shut door, in common with the Adventists generally, soon after the passing of the time. Some of us held fast this position longer than those did who gave up their advent experience, and drew back in the direction of perdition. And God be thanked that we did hold fast to the position till the matter was explained by light from the heavenly sanctuary.

“And it may be worthy of notice that although the belief in, and abandonment of, the shut-door position has been general; there have been two distinct [198] and opposite ways of getting out of it. One class did this by casting away their confidence in the advent movement, by confessions to those who had opposed and had scoffed at them, and by ascribing the powerful work of the Holy Spirit, which they had felt, to human or satanic influence. These get out of the position on the side of perdition.”—The Review and Herald, May 5, 1868, p. 330.

Two Groups Contrasted

He immediately places in contrast with these the Sabbathkeeping group of Adventists:

“Another class heeded the many exhortations of Christ and his apostles, applicable to their position, with its trials, dangers and duties—Watch—Be ye therefore patient—Cast not away therefore your confidence—For ye have need of patience—Hold fast.—They waited, watched, and prayed till light came, and they, by faith in the word, saw the open door of the heavenly sanctuary, and Jesus there pleading his precious blood before the ark of the most holy place.

“But what was that ark? It was the ark of God’s testimony, the ten commandments. Reader, please follow these trusting, waiting ones as they, by faith, enter the heavenly sanctuary. They take you into the holy place, and show you ‘the candlestick, and the table, and the shewbread,’ and other articles of furniture. Then they lead you into the most holy, where stands Jesus, clad in priestly garments, before the mercy-seat which is upon, and but the cover of, the ark containing the law of God. They lift the cover and bid you look into the sacred ark, and there you behold the ten commandments, a copy of which God gave to Moses. Yes, dear reader, there, safe from the wrath of man and the rage of demons, beside his own holiness were the ten precepts of God’s holy law.

“The waiting, watching, praying ones embraced the fourth precept of that law, and with fresh courage took their onward course to the golden gates of the city of God, cheered by the closing benediction of the Son of God: ‘Blessed are they that do his commandments, that they may have right to the tree of life, and may enter in through the gates into the city.’ Thus they came out of the position of the shut door on the side of loyalty to the God of high Heaven, the tree of life, and the eternal city of the redeemed. The reader will not fail to see the difference between this and getting out of the shut door on the side of perdition. God pity the apostate.”—Ibid.

The Movement Takes Shape

Unflagging labor on the part of Joseph Bates, James and Ellen White, and a few others who were described as “the travelling brethren” because of their constant journeying to meet with different [199] companies, slowly added numbers and strength to the movement. In the 1850’s, and for some time afterward, the Review and Herald office of publication was the rallying point and was generally referred to as “the office.” The movement early gained strength in Michigan and surrounding territory, which was then known as the West. In 1855 the publishing office was moved from Rochester, New York, to Battle Greek, Michigan, which was to be the center of all denominational activity for about fifty years, or until the publishing house and the General Conference headquarters were moved to Washington, D.C., soon after the opening of the twentieth century. In 1860 the name Seventh-day Adventist was formally adopted. The incorporation of the publishing business and the organization of Michigan and other local conferences followed. The next step was to effect some kind of stable organization that would coordinate the endeavors of all who named the name of Seventh-day Adventist.

On May 21, 1863, in Battle Greek, Michigan, a formal denominational organization was created.

With this event we may say that the early days of Seventh-day Adventism ended. Onward from 1863, when the membership was 3,500, we witness a steady growth and expansion.

Early Views Summed Up

As we look back over the beginnings of Seventh-day Adventism, we may say this regarding the views of the founders as to salvation for sinners:

They were right in believing from Scripture that men may sin away their day of grace, and who can read the record of 1844 without feeling that many did at that time! They were wrong in generalizing from this that the world at large had done so. They were wrong, also, in their initial view, inherited from Millerism, that the shutting of the door involved the end of probation.

But a religious body should be judged by the doctrines it formulates and adopts as its distinguishing marks, and not by the initial and varied views the founders entertained before they had had opportunity to coordinate or consolidate their thinking. [200] Though the tree of Seventh-day Adventism sprang from the soil of Millerism, there is a certain real difference between the soil and the tree. Millerism was an interdenominational awakening on a central truth, the personal Advent of Christ, but was in no sense a church or organization with a formal creedal statement or a discipline.

When men first walk a path, particularly if they walk in the dusk of early morning, they may not consistently walk in a straight line. They may step to one side or the other; they may even retrace a step occasionally. Our fathers started out on the path that was to set them off as a distinct church body, because their eyes were on a certain doctrinal road map that they believed would lead them out of the morass of dark disappointment into which they suddenly plunged after October 22, 1844. In the dim light they did not, at first, read the map accurately. But we should never forget that the worth of a road map is not to be measured by the faltering steps of the travelers who use it, but by the destination to which the map leads them. The record is clear that the doctrinal road map did lead our fathers out of the morass onto solid ground and rapidly onto an ever widening road, until, on a vast plateau before them they saw the multitudes of the world to whom Seventh-day Adventists have ever since sought to bring the “everlasting gospel.”

A Strange Situation

A large segment of Protestantism, following the Reformer Calvin, are known as Calvinistic, and thus include in their creeds the dogma of predestination, which teaches, in part, that a portion of humanity were predestined to destruction, doomed of God to damnation before they were born. In other words, the door of mercy would never open for them. Yet we do not recall that any of the critics of Seventh-day Adventism have raised their voices in an outraged cry against all Calvinistic Protestantism, which is, indeed, a substantial segment of Protestantism. In fact, some of them have belonged to Calvinistic churches! We might add that only in our day, after four hundred years, has Calvin’s fearful predestination doctrine begun to be softened. [201]

Our fathers believed that all men had opportunity for salvation, and that only by their own willful action did any of them cut short their day of grace. And though our forebears were too pronounced in their original view of probation’s close, they began to modify that view almost in their first pronouncements. A few years was more than sufficient to do for them what four centuries have hardly yet done for Calvinistic Protestantism.

There are those who will ever seek to make what capital they can of the first faltering steps of our fathers. All others, we think, will agree with us that the nature and worth of Seventh-day Adventism should be measured by the road map that led its founders onward to an ever widening field of evangelistic activity.

In the setting of this historical sketch, we wish now to turn to the charge that Mrs. White believed and taught, as the result of alleged visions, that the door of mercy was shut for all sinners on October 22, 1844. [202]

Chapter 14—The Shut-Door Charge Examined

Charge: From October 22, 1844, to approximately the same time in 1851, Mrs. White believed that the door of mercy was shut to all sinners and that only Adventists had hope of salvation. “Mrs. White had revelation after revelation in her visions during this same period, confirming this theory.”

This sweeping charge is based on the following:

1. Mrs. White’s statement that for a time after 1844 she, with all other Adventists, believed that probation had closed for the world.

2. A passage in her first vision, December, 1844.

3. A passage in her vision of February, 1845.

4. A statement in her letter to Eli Curtis in 1847.

5. Her endorsement of O. R. L. Crosier’s article on the sanctuary, which Crosier said supported the shut-door theory.

6. Her use of Hosea 5:6, 7.

7. A passage in her Topsham vision of March 24, 1849.

8. A passage in the so-called “Camden vision,” dated June 29, 1851.

9. Her declaration that church members, at the time of the rise of the Advent movement of the early 1840’s could be described as “children of their father, the devil.”

10. Her blessing, with her prayers and tears, the paper Present Truth, which promoted the shut door.

11. The apparent agreement of her writings with what all her associates were saying in the early post-1844 years, and they allegedly were all saying that there was no more salvation for sinners.

12. The lack of proof that Mrs. White or any of her associates tried to convert any sinners in the early post-1844 years. [203]

These, briefly, we believe, are all the principal grounds on which rests the charge against Mrs. White that she held and taught for approximately seven years onward from 1844 that there was no more salvation for sinners.

Mrs. White is declared to have received “revelation after revelation” in support of this belief. The conclusion we are supposed to reach is that there is an endless array of damaging evidence that might be presented if only space limits permitted. The reader is entitled to know that, strangely enough, attention is called only to a certain few visions. Let us now examine the exhibits presented.

1. Mrs. White’s Frank Statement

As we examine in detail the alleged evidence we shall find that certain statements by Mrs. White definitely teach that people, both in the churches and in the world, sinned away their day of grace in 1844. But that evidence will also reveal clearly that Mrs. White most definitely did not have any visions that probation ended for all mankind on October 22, 1844. In 1874 there was in circulation against her the charge that she held various false beliefs, including a belief that there was no more salvation for sinners after 1844. She commented on this charge in a letter she wrote from Battle Creek, Michigan, August 24, 1874, to a Seventh-day Adventist minister, J. N. Loughborough. We quote the opening paragraphs:

“Dear Bro. Loughborough:

“I hereby testify in the fear of God that the charges of Miles Grant, of Mrs. Burdick, and others published in the Crisis is not true. The statements in reference to my course in [eighteen] forty-four is false.

“With my brethren and sisters, after the time passed in forty-four I did believe no more sinners would be converted. But I never had a vision that no more sinners would be converted. And am clear and free to state no one has ever heard me say or has read from my pen statements which will justify them in the charges they have made against me upon this point.

“It was on my first journey east to relate my visions that the precious light in regard to the heavenly sanctuary was opened before me and I was shown the open and shut door. We believed that the Lord was soon to come in the clouds of heaven. I was shown that there was a great work to be done in the world for those who had not had the light and rejected it. Our brethren could not understand this with our faith in the immediate [204] appearing of Christ. Some accused me of saying my Lord delayeth His coming, especially the fanatical ones. I saw that in ‘44 God had opened a door and no man could shut it, and shut a door and no man could open it. Those who rejected the light which was brought to the world by the message of the second angel went into darkness, and how great was that darkness.

“I never have stated or written that the world was doomed or damned. I never have under any circumstances used this language to any one, however sinful. I have ever had messages of reproof for those who used these harsh expressions.”—Printed in The Review and Herald, January 14, 1932, p. 6, accompanied by photographic facsimile of this part of her letter.

Mrs. White’s Reply to Criticisms

In 1883 Mrs. White wrote an extended answer to various criticisms of her work, including the charge that she had taught, in the early post-1844 years, that there was no more salvation for sinners, and that she later removed from her published works some of these statements to conceal the fact that she had formerly taught this un-Scriptural doctrine. She quotes a passage from her first vision, as a sample of the later deleted passages in debate, and offers a forthright statement as to what that passage was intended to teach at the time it was written, and what Mrs. White was now teaching, in 1883. Here is the passage from the first vision, as printed in the broadside, To the Little Remnant Scattered Abroad:[70]

“It was just as impossible for them [those that gave up their faith in the ‘44 movement] to get on the path again and go to the city, as all the wicked world which God had rejected. They fell all the way along the path one after another.”

Then follows her comment:

“It is claimed that these expressions prove the shut door doctrine, and that this is the reason of their omission, in later editions. But in fact they teach only that which has been and is still held by us as a people, as I shall show.

“For a time after the disappointment in 1844, I did hold in common with the Advent body, that the door of mercy was then forever closed to the world. This position was taken before my first vision was given me. It was the light given me of God that corrected our error, and enabled us to see the true position.

“I am still a believer in the shut door theory, but not in the sense in

[70]See chapter 17 for a discussion of the suppression aspect of the charge.

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which we at first employed the term or in which it is employed by my opponents.

“There was a shut door in Noah’s day. There was at that time a withdrawal of the Spirit of God from the sinful race that perished in the waters of the flood. God, Himself, gave the shut door message to Noah:

“My Spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh: yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years.

“There was a shut door in the days of Abraham. Mercy ceased to plead with the inhabitants of Sodom, and all but Lot with his wife and two daughters, were consumed by the fire sent down from heaven.

“There was a shut door in Christ’s day. The Son of God declared to the unbelieving Jews of that generation, ‘Your house is left unto you desolate.’

“Looking down the stream of time to the last days, the same infinite power proclaimed through John:

“These things saith he that is holy, he that is true, he that hath the key of David, he that openeth and no man shutteth; and shutteth, and no man openeth.

“I was shown in vision, and I still believe, that there was a shut door in 1844. All who saw the light of the first and second angel’s messages and rejected that light, were left in darkness. And those who accepted it and received the Holy Spirit which attended the proclamation of the message from heaven, and who afterward renounced their faith and pronounced their experience a delusion, thereby rejected the Spirit of God, and it no longer pleaded with them.

“Those who did not see the light, had not the guilt of its rejection. It was only the class who had despised the light from heaven that the Spirit of God could not reach. And this class included, as I have stated, both those who refused to accept the message when it was presented to them, and also those who, having received it, afterward renounced their faith. These might have a form of godliness, and profess to be followers of Christ, but having no living connection with God, they would be taken captive by the delusions of Satan. These two classes are brought to view in the vision,—those who declared the light which they had followed, a delusion, and the wicked of the world who, having rejected the light, had been rejected of God. No reference is made to those who had not seen the light, and therefore were not guilty of its rejection.

“In order to prove that I believed and taught the shut door doctrine, Mr.------[a critic of the 1880’s] gives a quotation from the Review of June 11, 1861, signed by nine of our prominent members. The quotation reads as follows:

“Our views of the work before us were then mostly vague and indefinite, some still retaining the idea adopted by the body of Advent believers in [206] 1844 with Wm. Miller at their head, that our work for “the world” was finished and that the message was confined to those of the original Advent faith. So firmly was this believed, that one of our number was nearly refused the message, the individual presenting it having doubts of the possibility of his salvation because he was not in “the ‘44 move.”

“To this I need only to add, that in the same meeting in which it was urged that the message could not be given to this brother [J. H. Waggoner], a testimony was given me through vision to encourage him to hope in God and to give his heart fully to Jesus, which he did then and there.”—MS. 4, 1883; also quoted in Appendix F, p. 586.

Bible Testimony on Probation’s Close

Here Mrs. White’s position is squarely stated. There is no ambiguity, no hesitancy. The Bible abounds with solemn declarations that different classes and groups of people at different times in the world’s history have sinned away their day of grace. For example:

1. Antediluvians.

“And it repented the Lord that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart. And the Lord said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth; both man, and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air; for it repenteth me that I have made them.” Genesis 6:6, 7.

2. Amorites.

“But in the fourth generation they shall come hither again: for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet full.” Genesis 15:16.

3. Israelites.

a. In the Wilderness.

“So I gave them up unto their own hearts’ lust: and they walked in their own counsels.” Psalm 81:12.

b. During the Period of the Kingdom.

“Therefore pray not thou for this people, neither lift up cry nor prayer for them, neither make intercession to me: for I will not hear thee.” Jeremiah 7:16.

c. In Christ’s Day.

“Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a [207] lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it.” John 8:44.

“O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not! Behold, your house is left unto you desolate.” Matthew 23:37, 38.

4. Gentiles, in General.

“And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient.” Romans 1:28.

“Who being past feeling have given themselves over unto lasciviousness, to work all uncleanness with greediness.” Ephesians 4:19.

5. New Testament Statements Dealing With Christian Era.

“Wherefore I say unto you, All manner of sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men; but the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost shall not be forgiven unto men. And whosoever speaketh a word against the Son of man, it shall be forgiven him: but whosoever speaketh against the Holy Ghost, it shall not be forgiven him, neither in this world, neither in the world to come.” Matthew 12:31, 32.

“If any man see his brother sin a sin which is not unto death, he shall ask, and he shall give him life for them that sin not unto death. There is a sin unto death: I do not say that he shall pray for it.” 1 John 5:16.

“For it is impossible for those who were once enlightened, and have tasted of the heavenly gift, and were made partakers of the Holy Ghost, and have tasted the good word of God, and the powers of the world to come, if they shall fall away, to renew them again unto repentance; seeing they crucify to themselves the Son of God afresh, and put him to an open shame.” Hebrews 6:4-6.

“For if we sin wilfully after that we have received the knowledge of the truth, there remaineth no more sacrifice for sins, but a certain fearful looking for of judgment and fiery indignation, which shall devour the adversaries.” Hebrews 10:26, 27. [208]

To these passages may be added a symbolic declaration in the last book of the Bible. There the prophet John tells of an announcement that is to be made shortly before the end of the world, and while probation for the world at large still lingers. Says the prophet:

“And there followed another angel, saying, Babylon is fallen, is fallen, that great city, because she made all nations drink of the wine of the wrath of her fornication.” Revelation 14:8.

That declaration is echoed a little later on in the Revelation, as follows:

“After these things I saw another angel come down from heaven, having great power; and the earth was lightened with his glory. And he cried mightily with a strong voice, saying, Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen, and is become the habitation of devils, and the hold of every foul spirit, and a cage of every unclean and hateful bird. For all nations have drunk of the wine of the wrath of her fornication, and the kings of the earth have committed fornication with her, and the merchants of the earth are waxed rich through the abundance of her delicacies. And I heard another voice from heaven, saying, Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues. For her sins have reached unto heaven, and God hath remembered her iniquities.” Revelation 18:1-5.

Babylon and Probation’s Close

The context immediately suggests that Babylon represents a religious organization, for God’s people are commanded to “come out of her.” The classic Protestant position is that Babylon represents a religious body, Rome. The Millerite movement in general took the position still held by Seventh-day Adventists and some others, that Babylon finally comes to include, not only Rome, but all apostate Protestantism as it refuses to advance in the light that God has revealed. The one point we here wish to make is that the Bible teaches that in the days just preceding the Second Advent some class or group described as Babylon will fall and come under the fearful judgment that God reserves for those who have forfeited grace. [209]

Final Closing of Door of Mercy

The climax to this series of texts just given is the declaration in the last chapter of the Bible that marks the close of probation for all mankind, without exception.

“He that is unjust, let him be unjust still’ and he which is filthy, let him be filthy still: and he that is righteous, let him be righteous still: and he that is holy, let him be holy still. And, behold, I come quickly; and my reward is with me, to give every man according as his work shall be.” Revelation 22:11, 12.

It is the belief of Christians in general, and most certainly the belief of Seventh-day Adventists, that this declaration has not yet been uttered, and that when it is uttered the case of every human being will be settled for eternity. Furthermore, that until this edict does go forth, any sinner, unless he has sinned away his day of grace by some kind of willful rebellion such as is described in the foregoing texts, may secure forgiveness and salvation.

One cannot read the Scriptures, and particularly such passages as have been quoted, without exclaiming, as did Christ’s apostles: “Are there few that be saved?” We know how our Saviour answered them. Various Bible writers have borne the same testimony. They present a picture vastly different from what is commonly painted by the Christian ministry in modern times. By the opening of the nineteenth century ministers had rather generally come to believe the pleasing doctrine that the whole world is to be converted, and that thus a golden millennial era will be set up on earth. This doctrine goes squarely against the most explicit scriptures.

Adventists Oppose Delusive World-Conversion Idea

This world-conversion idea was most militantly attacked by Adventists in the great Advent Awakening under William Miller, and has been an object of attack by Seventh-day Adventists ever since. We believe, with the Bible, that the world is not growing progressively better, and that we do not face a millennium of peace and holiness on this earth. We have believed from the very earliest of Adventist preaching, that the world lies in wickedness, that wickedness will be rampant until the end of time, that there [210] are few that will be saved, that indeed the righteous of God in the last days will be described as a “remnant.”

The Bible informs us that when the world was destroyed by a flood there were only eight persons saved. When Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed there was found only one righteous man, who took with him his immediate family out of the city. Of the great host of Israelites who started from Egypt to the Promised Land, all who were twenty or older died in the wilderness “save Caleb ... and Joshua,” as the Lord declared they would, because of their murmuring. (Numbers 14:29.)

Through all the history of the world, the words of the apostle John apply: “The whole world lieth in wickedness.” Either by rejecting light or by failing to walk in such light as it is possible for them to have, most of mankind, in all generations, have gone down to godless graves. World conversion does not belong in the Bible picture, though the ambassadors of God are to seek to make converts in all the world. How true of almost any clime and any generation are the words of Isaiah: “Darkness shall cover the earth and gross darkness the people.” One cannot read the Scripture record without being impressed, perhaps even startled, by the fact that the Bible writers repeatedly declare that men may sin away their day of grace and close probation’s doors against themselves.

Mrs. White Sets Forth No New Doctrine

It is in the setting of all these scriptures that we can rightly evaluate the statements made by Mrs. White that certain people sinned away their day of grace in 1844. She is setting forth no new doctrine. True, she is making an application of the doctrine to a particular time and situation. She does it on the strength of Scriptural analogy and of the application to that particular time of certain passages of Scripture. Why should it seem incredible that at a particular moment in the Christian Era some should sin away their day of grace, when the Bible record is clear that on numerous occasions in ancient times men did so?

The critics will probably agree to this statement of the matter, but will add immediately that Mrs. White taught that all men [211] had sinned away their day of grace, and that this cannot be true because probation does not close for all the world until the final fiat of Revelation 22:11, 12 goes forth. Thus the issue is clearly drawn. The charge is that she taught that probation closed for all the world in 1844. She says she did not. Of course if the critics were dealing with a Bible prophet, they would readily accept his interpretation of his visions, even though the apparent meaning of his visions might seem to be different. But in dealing with Mrs. White, they insist that they know better what she meant than she did herself. To them, this seems entirely consistent! At least it is the only way by which they can build a case against her.

2. The First Vision Examined

Mrs. White had her first vision in December, 1844. We quote that part of it which is supposed to teach that there was no more salvation for sinners after October 22, 1844:

“While praying at the family altar, the Holy Ghost fell on me, and I seemed to be rising higher and higher, far above the dark world. I turned to look for the Advent people in the world, but could not find them—when a voice said to me, ‘Look again, and look a little higher.’ At this I raised my eyes and saw a straight and narrow path, cast up high above the world. On this path the Advent people were travelling to the City, which was at the fa[r]ther end of the path. They had a bright light set up behind them at the first end of the path, which an angel told me was the Midnight Cry. This light shone all along the path and gave light for their feet so they might not stumble. And if they kept their eyes fixed on Jesus, who was just before them, leading them to the City, they were safe. But soon some grew weary, and they said the City was a great way off, and they expected to have entered it before. Then Jesus would encourage them by raising his glorious right arm, and from his arm came a glorious light which waved over the Advent band, and they shouted Hallelujah! Others rashly denied the light behind them, and said that it was not God that had led them out so far. The light behind them went out leaving their feet in perfect darkness, and they stumbled and got their eyes off the mark and lost sight of Jesus, and fell off the path down in the dark and wicked world below. It was just as impossible for them to get on the path again and go to the City, as all the wicked world which God had rejected. They fell all the way along the path one after another, until we heard the voice of God like many waters, which gave us the day and hour of Jesus’ coming. The living saints, 144,000 in number, knew and understood the voice, while the wicked thought [212] it was thunder and an earthquake. When God spake the time, he poured on us the Holy Ghost, and our faces began to light up and shine with the glory of God as Moses did when he came down from Mount Sinai, (Exodus 34:30-34.)

“By this time the 144,000 were all sealed and perfectly united. On their foreheads was written, God, New Jerusalem, and a glorious Star containing Jesus’ new name.”—Broadside, To the Little Remnant Scattered Abroad. Reprinted in 1847 in A Word to the “Little Flock,“ p. 14.[71]

The Key Passage Scrutinized

Let us look closely at the key sentence in question: “It was just as impossible for them to get on the path again and go to the City, as all the wicked world which God had rejected.” Lay alongside this sentence another statement by Mrs. White found in the same 1847 pamphlet. She is writing to Eli Curtis, and says:

“You think, that those who worship before the saint’s feet, (Revelation 3:9), will at last be saved. Here I must differ with you; for God shew[ed] me that this class were professed Adventists, who had fallen away, and ‘crucified to themselves the Son of God afresh, and put him to an open shame.’ And in the ‘hour of temptation,’ which is yet to come, to show out every one’s true character, they will know that they are forever lost; and overwhelmed with anguish of spirit, they will bow at the saint’s feet.”—A Word to the “Little Flock,“ p. 12.

It is evident that Mrs. White is here referring to the same class as in her first vision—Adventists who fell away from the truth of the Advent, the truth that was most clearly symbolized by the light at the beginning of the road, called the midnight cry. In her letter to Eli Curtis she speaks of such persons as being “forever lost.” She rests her statement on the passage of Scripture that she quotes: “crucified to themselves the Son of God afresh, and put him to an open shame.” Let us compare this passage of Scripture with the passage we quoted from her first vision. Paul writes:

“For it is impossible for those who were once enlightened, and have tasted of the heavenly gift, and were made partakers of the Holy Ghost, and have tasted the good word of God, and the powers of the world to come, if they shall fall away, to renew them again

[71]See also Experience and Views, pp. 10, 11; Early Writings, 14, 15.

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unto repentance; seeing they crucify to themselves the Son of God afresh, and put him to an open shame.” Hebrews 6:4-6.

In her first vision Mrs. White speaks of a “bright light” that “gave light for their feet.” Some “rashly denied the light” and denied that God “had led them out so far.” They “fell off the path” and it was “impossible for them to get on” again. The Bible speaks of those “who were once enlightened” who “crucified to themselves the Son of God afresh,” who “fall away.” “It is impossible to renew them again unto repentance.”

It is quite evident that Mrs. White, by her quotations from Paul in the Eli Curtis letter, has given us the key to the understanding of the debated passage in her first vision: “It was just as impossible for them to get on the path again and go to the City, as all the wicked world which God had rejected.” We are not here required to provide an interpretation to the passage of Paul. We believe it sufficient if we show that Mrs. White is employing Scriptural language and conclusions in what she writes. Though commentators have been frankly perplexed as to exactly how Paul should here be understood, none of them have ever concluded that Paul taught that the day of probation for all sinners had ended.[72]

“All the Wicked World Which God Had Rejected”

We come now to the last part of the sentence: “All the wicked world which God had rejected.” We have already quoted Mrs. White as declaring that that clause should be understood as follows: “The wicked of the world who, having rejected the light, had been rejected of God.” That interpretation obviously would relieve all of the tension. It is a very reasonable interpretation of the disputed clause. The author herself says that that is what the clause means. And there we leave the matter. The reader can decide whether the critic’s interpretation or Mrs. White’s interpretation of the disputed clause is the correct one.

[72]One Bible commentary makes this interesting comment on Paul’s words: “While men continue in wilful and willing sin they preclude all possibility of the action of grace. So long as they cling deliberately to their sins, they shut against themselves the open door of grace.”—F. W. FARRAR, The Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Hebrews (in The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges), p. 107.

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But in leaving the matter at this point, we ask only that the reader be consistent in his decision. God said to Jeremiah, “Therefore pray not thou for this people, neither lift up cry nor prayer for them, neither make intercession to me: for I will not hear thee.” Jeremiah 7:16. The Lord’s words, “this people,” apparently suggest no exception. Here is the same kind of sweeping statement as “all the wicked world.” It seems to make no exception for anyone in Israel.

But would anyone contend that the Lord is here telling Jeremiah that there were none in Israel who loved God and whose prayers God heard? We think not. God has always had a remnant. When Elijah thought he was the only one in Israel who served God, the Lord reminded him that despite the national apostasy that had brought a judgment of God upon the whole nation, the Lord still had seven thousand in Israel who had not bowed the knee to Baal. (1 Kings 19:18.)

Even after the Lord allowed His people to go into Babylonian captivity, He still had among them a faithful elect, and when the seventy years’ captivity was ended, there were thousands who turned their faces again toward Jerusalem to rebuild the Holy City and God’s temple. But there stand the words of God to Jeremiah, “Therefore pray not thou for this people.” This is only one of numerous passages in the Bible, as all Bible students know, where an apparently all-inclusive sweeping declaration is to be understood with definite limitations.

Christ’s Sweeping Denunciations

Again, look at the words of Christ in denunciation of Chorazin and Bethsaida: “It shall be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon in the day of judgment, than for you. And thou, Capernaum, which art exalted unto heaven, shalt be brought down to hell.” Mrs. White’s statement about “the wicked world” no more requires us to insist that she means everyone in the world, than Christ’s words about Chorazin, Bethsaida, and Capernaum require us to believe that He meant that every person in those three cities was “rejected” of God. But we have never heard the idea even suggested by a commentator, [215] that Christ meant that all in those three cities were doomed.

Or, take our Lord’s statement concerning Jerusalem, “that killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee.” It is evident that Christ is here using the word “Jerusalem” to describe the whole Jewish people. No more fateful declaration was ever uttered against a people or against its capital city than the words of our Lord: “Behold, your house is left unto you desolate.” Commentators all understand that passage to mean that the Jewish people were “rejected” of God. But does anyone believe that our Lord meant that all Jews were rejected of God, and that all the inhabitants of Jerusalem were placed outside the pale of mercy? No. Our Lord said to His disciples that they were to begin their preaching in Jerusalem and go out over all Judea. And when the great preaching began there were thousands in Jerusalem who accepted the faith. Yet Mrs. White’s words about “the wicked world” are not one whit more devastating or inclusive than Christ’s words regarding Jerusalem.

In the light of these passages of Scripture, and many like them that might be quoted, we think it entirely consistent and reasonable to believe Mrs. White’s own interpretation of the debated clause; namely, “the wicked of the world who, having rejected the light, had been rejected of God.” And when we accept her interpretation, all the difficulty disappears, including the arguments of her critics.

3. Mrs. White’s Vision of February, 1845

Mrs. White’s critics quote from her vision in February, 1845. This vision describes Christ as going into the most holy place. Said Mrs. White: “Before the throne I saw the Advent people, the church, and the world. I saw a company, bowed down before the throne, deeply interested, while the most of them stood up disinterested and careless.” The passage quoted by the critics is this: “I did not see one ray of light pass from Jesus to the careless multitude after he arose.” (See broadside, To the Little Remnant Scattered Abroad, signed Ellen G. Harmon, Portland, April 6, 1846.[73])

[73]See also Experience and Views, p. 43; Early Writings, 54, 55.

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A few sentences earlier Mrs. White wrote: “Then I saw an exceeding bright light come from the Father to the Son, and from the Son it waved over the people before the throne. But few would receive this great light; many came out from under it and immediately resisted it; others were careless and did not cherish the light, and it moved off from them.” Is it not the orthodox Christian teaching that light comes to those who pray for it, and that the light of heaven is withdrawn from those who resist it? It is the path of the just that is as the shining light, and not the path of the careless, who reject the light of heaven.

4. Her Letter to Eli Curtis

In Mrs. White’s letter to Eli Curtis, to which we have already referred, is found this further statement: “The Lord has shown me in vision, that Jesus rose up, and shut the door, and entered the Holy of Holies, at the 7th month 1844.”—A Word to the “Little Flock,“ p. 12. The argument against Mrs. White here rests, of course, on the mere use of the phrase, “shut the door.” The reasoning is as follows: “The words ‘the shut door,’ consistently meant one thing only to Seventh-day Adventists in the years immediately following 1844, namely, the shutting of the door of mercy, therefore when Mrs. White uses the phrase, that is what she means, therefore she is teaching that there was no more mercy for sinners after 1844.”

Two comments on such reasoning are all that are needed. First, in the light of the historical record in the preceding chapter, it is evident that the earliest Seventh-day Adventists explicitly refused to make the “shut door” synonymous with the door of mercy, and that though their view was befogged by their original Millerite interpretation of the phrase, “the shut door,” they could not bring themselves to believe that there were no exceptions.

Second, not the pioneers in general, but Mrs. White, is here speaking. In her vision of March 24, 1849, quoted later, she says that the shutting of the door means the closing of Christ’s work in the first apartment of the heavenly sanctuary and His entering into the second apartment. True, that vision was two years after [217] the Curtis letter. But the “shut door” phrase in this letter is used strictly in harmony with that 1849 vision.

Mrs. White does not say that there is no more salvation for sinners because Christ closed the door of the first apartment and went into the most holy place to do His final work of ministry.

5. Her Endorsement of Crosier’s Article

Mrs. White endorsed the O. R. L. Crosier article mentioned in the preceding chapter. In her letter to Eli Curtis she wrote:

“I believe the Sanctuary, to be cleansed at the end of the 2300 days, is the New Jerusalem Temple, of which Christ is a minister. The Lord shew[ed] me in vision, more than one year ago, that Brother Crosier had the true light, on the cleansing of the Sanctuary, &c; and that it was his will, that Brother C. should write out the view which he gave us in the The Day-Star, Extra, February 7, 1846. I feel fully authorized by the Lord, to recommend that Extra, to every saint.”—Ibid.

One of Mrs. White’s critics secured from Crosier, in 1887, a letter in which he affirmed, concerning that Day-Star article: “The object of that article was to support the theory that the door of mercy was shut.” Therefore, of course, Mrs. White, by endorsing Crosier’s article, was endorsing the doctrine that the “door of mercy was shut.”

As the preceding chapter showed, the great point of controversy between Millerites in general and the little group of which Mrs. White was a member was over the question of what the sanctuary is and what constitutes its cleansing. Crosier’s lengthy article is devoted very largely to answering these questions. Mrs. White agreed with those answers and hence endorsed the article. Seventh-day Adventists still agree with his answers. We can accept his discussion of the sanctuary and its cleansing without feeling it necessary to conclude that the “door of mercy” was shut.[74]

6. Her Use of Hosea 5:6, 7

Mrs. White used Hosea 5:6, 7 in describing various believers and particularly teachers and leaders who had been in the Second Advent movement. Her critics declare: Her associates used this text

[74]See Appendix H, p. 613, which quotes James White’s discussion of this point in 1853.

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to prove that the day of salvation had ended for all sinners. Mrs. White uses it in the same way. Therefore she believed as they did regarding probation’s close. Hosea 5:6, 7 reads as follows:

“They shall go with their flocks and with their herds to seek the Lord; but they shall not find him; he hath withdrawn himself from them. They have dealt treacherously against the Lord: for they have begotten strange children: now shall a month devour them with their portions.”

Mrs. White’s associates used this passage to describe Adventist leaders “with their flocks,” that is, their churches. Christ has “withdrawn himself from them” into the second apartment of the heavenly sanctuary. The “strange children” that “they have begotten” are their converts. “They have dealt treacherously against the Lord” because they have failed to preach to these converts the fullness of present truth, into which they as leaders should have walked as advancing light came to the Advent movement.

But not all of Mrs. White’s associates used this passage in Hosea to prove that these leaders and all their converts are outside the pale of mercy. Arnold, for example, calls them “misguided souls.” The knocking at the shut door which these misguided souls are doing he describes as a knocking at the door of the first apartment, and not a knocking at a Shut door of mercy. (See The Present Truth, December, 1849.)

Commenting on this passage, James White wrote:

“The reason why they do not find the Lord is simply this, they seek him where he is not; ‘he hath withdrawn himself’ to the Most Holy Place. The prophet of God calls their man-made converts, ‘STRANGE CHILDREN;’ ‘now shall a month devour them, and their portions.’”—The Present Truth, May, 1850, p. 79. (Emphasis his.)

These are typical illustrations of how Mrs. White’s associates used this passage in Hosea. It is plain that they are discussing those who had received the light but “had rejected the offers of salvation.” Whether they definitely believed that such “misguided souls” might find the Lord, if they were willing to look for Him where He is now ministering, is not altogether clear from their statements. But we think that Mrs. White’s statements are sufficiently [219] explicit to permit us to reach a clear conclusion as to her teaching on this matter.

We quote the whole of a brief message from her in the The Present Truth, March, 1850:

Mrs. White’s Words Explain Her Use of Text

“This is a very important hour with us. Satan has come down with great power, and we must strive hard, and press our way to the kingdom. We have a mighty foe to contend with; but an Almighty Friend to protect and strengthen us in the conflict. If we are firmly fixed upon the present truth, and have our hope, like an anchor of the soul, cast within the second vail, the various winds of false doctrine and error cannot move us. The excitements and false reformations of this day do not move us, for we know that the Master of the house rose up in 1844, and shut the door of the first apartment of the heavenly tabernacle; and now we certainly expect that they will ‘go with their flocks,’ ‘to seek the Lord; but they shall not find him; he hath withdrawn himself (within the second vail) from them.’ The Lord has shown me that the power which is with them is a mere human influence, and not the power of God.

“Those who have published the ‘Watchman’ have removed the landmarks. I saw, two months ago, that their time would pass by; and then some honest souls, who have been deceived by this time, will have a chance to receive the truth. I saw that most of those who preach this new time do not believe it themselves. I saw that our message was not to the shepherds who have led the flock astray, but to the poor hungry, scattered sheep.”—Page 64. (Parentheses hers.)

Mrs. White is here speaking very particularly of those who published an Adventist paper called The Watchman, and who had been setting new times for the Lord to come. She said that in thus setting time they had “removed the land-marks.” But she had seen that “their time would pass by.” She goes even further, and brings the heavy charge of hypocrisy against some of them, when she declares: “I saw that most of those who preach this new time do not believe it themselves.” The record of the post-1844 days reveals that there were certain individuals of easy conscience who did fasten upon a possible time, in order to create a fervor of excitement and to win converts of a certain brand to their banner.

In view of this we can understand her next sentence: “I saw that our message was not to the shepherds who have led the flock [220] astray.” That statement would go right along with some of the declarations that Christ made to the scribes and Pharisees. But what about the flocks and herds of these shepherds. She says that these “honest souls” “will have a chance to receive the truth.” She is emphatic that “our message” is “to the poor hungry, scattered sheep.”

Note again that qualifying word “honest.” That is the key to the whole passage, and indeed to all of Mrs. White’s statements in the series of debated passages in her writings in the years immediately following 1844. She has a message of hope for “honest souls,” that is, for those who have not willfully rejected light, for those who hunger and thirst after righteousness, for those who seek the Lord in humility. And have the prophets of the Bible, from first to last, had any other message than this? True, the apostles went out to preach to the heathen, who had no hunger and thirst after righteousness, and no love for the truth, but their attitude of mind could be excused on the grounds of ignorance. However, when this ignorance was removed and some still proved rebellious, the disciples went elsewhere to preach.

7. Her Vision of March 24, 1849

It is charged that Mrs. White’s vision on March 24, 1849, contains statements that prove the case against her. In order that the context may clearly be seen, we give the full text of the vision as it originally appeared in the The Present Truth, August, 1849:

“Sabbath, March 24th, 1849, we had a sweet, and very interesting meeting with the Brethren at Topsham, Me. The Holy Ghost was poured out upon us, and I was taken off in the Spirit to the City of the living God. There I was shown, that the commandments of God, and the testimony of Jesus Christ, relating to the shut door, could not be separated, and that the time for the commandments of God to shine out, with all their importance, and for God’s people to be tried on the Sabbath truth, was when the door was opened in the Most Holy Place of the Heavenly Sanctuary, where the Ark is, containing the ten commandments. This door was not opened, until the mediation of Jesus was finished in the Holy Place of the Sanctuary in 1844. Then, Jesus rose up, and shut the door in the Holy Place, and opened the door in the Most Holy, and passed within the second vail, where he now stands by the Ark; and where the faith of Israel now reaches. [221]

“I saw that Jesus had shut the door in the Holy Place, and no man can open it; and that he had opened the door in the Most Holy, and no man can shut it: (See Revelation 3:7, 8:) and that since Jesus has opened the door in the Most Holy Place, which contains the Ark, the commandments have been shining out to God’s people, and they are being tested on the Sabbath question.

“I saw that the present test on the Sabbath could not come, until the mediation of Jesus in the Holy Place was finished; and he had passed within the second vail; therefore, Christians, who fell asleep before the door was opened in the Most Holy, when the midnight cry was finished, at the seventh month 1844; and had not kept the true Sabbath, now rest in hope; for they had not the light, and the test on the Sabbath, which we now have, since that door was opened. I saw that Satan was tempting some of God’s people on this point. Because so many good Christians have fallen asleep in the triumphs of faith, and have not kept the true Sabbath, they were doubting about it being a test for us now.

“I saw that the enemies of the present truth have been trying to open the door of the Holy Place, that Jesus has shut; and to close the door of the Most Holy Place, which he opened in 1844, where the Ark is containing the two tables of stone, on which are written the ten commandments, by the finger of Jehovah.

“Satan is now using every device in this sealing time, to keep the minds of God’s people from the present, sealing truth; and to cause them to waver. I saw a covering that God was drawing over his people, to protect them in the time of trouble; and every soul that was decided on the truth, and was pure in heart, was to be covered with the covering of Almighty God.

“Satan knew this, and was at work in mighty power, to keep the minds of as many as he possibly could unsettled, and wavering on the truth. I saw that the mysterious knocking in N. Y. and other places, was the power of Satan; and that such things would be more and more common, clothed in a religious garb, to lull the deceived to more security; and to draw the minds of God’s people, if possible, to those things and cause them to doubt the teachings, and power of the Holy Ghost.

“I saw that Satan was working through agents, in a number of ways. He was at work through ministers, who have rejected the truth, and are given over to strong delusions to believe a lie that they might be damned. While they were preaching, or praying some would fall prostrate and helpless; not by the power of the Holy Ghost, no, no; but by the power of Satan breathed upon these agents and through them to the people. Some professed Adventists who had rejected the present truth, while preaching praying or in conversation used Mesmerism to gain adherents, and the people would rejoice in this influence, for they thought it was the Holy Ghost. And even [222] some that used it, were so far in the darkness and deception of the Devil, that they thought it was the power of God, given them to exercise. They had made God altogether such an one as themselves; and had valued his power as a thing of naught.

“Some of these agents of Satan were affecting the bodies of some of the saints; those that they could not deceive and draw away from the truth by a satanic influence. Oh! that all could get a view of it as God revealed it to me, that they might know more of the wiles of Satan, and be on their guard. I saw that Satan was at work in these ways to distract, deceive, and draw away God’s people, just now in this sealing time. I saw some who were not standing stiffly for present truth. Their knees were trembling, and their feet were sliding; because they were not firmly planted on the truth, and the covering of Almighty God could not be drawn over them while they were thus trembling.

“Satan was trying his every art to hold them where they were, until the sealing was past, and the covering drawn over God’s people, and they left out, without a shelter from the burning wrath of God, in the seven last plagues.

“God has begun to draw this covering over his people, and it will very soon be drawn over all who are to have a shelter in the day of slaughter. God will work in power for his people; and Satan will be permitted to work also.

“I saw that the mysterious signs and wonders, and false reformations would increase, and spread. The reformations that were shown me, were not reformations from error to truth; but from bad to worse; for those who professed a change of heart, had only wrapt about them a religious garb, which covered up the iniquity of a wicked heart. Some appeared to have been really converted, so as to deceive God’s people; but if their hearts could be seen, they would appear as black as ever.

“My accompanying angel bade me look for the travel of soul for sinners as used to be. I looked, but could not see it; for the time for their salvation is past.”—Pages 21, 22.[75]

The Argument Against Mrs. White

The argument against her is as follows: The only reason Mrs. White would say: “Some appeared to have been really converted, so as to deceive God’s people,” is that Mrs. White believed that the salvation of all sinners was past, and that for anyone to be converted would prove that the shut-door theory was wrong. Mrs. White is

[75]See also Experience and Views, pp. 24-27; Early Writings, 42-45.

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here making a blanket indictment of all reformations. Yet at the very time she was writing, the mighty evangelist Finney, for example, was doing a great work for God; hence how blindly did Mrs. White follow a false interpretation of the shut door.

This argument sounds plausible, but let us look at the full record. The vision is notable, first, because it is the initial presentation of the shut door in relation to Revelation 3:7, 8, which declares that there is an open door as well as a shut door.

After explaining the significance of the open door she goes on to deal very specifically with the activity of Satan. She says she saw that Satan “was at work in mighty power, to keep the minds of as many as he possibly could unsettled, and wavering on the truth.” Nor is she dealing in general terms regarding Satan’s activity, for she follows immediately with these words: “I saw that the mysterious knocking in N. Y. and other places, was the power of Satan; and that such things would be more and more common, clothed in a religious garb, to lull the deceived to more security.”

She is referring here to the beginnings of modern Spiritualism, the mysterious rappings in connection with the activities of the Fox sisters at Hydesville, New York. From those small but sinister beginnings has grown the whole modern cult of Spiritualism, or as we more lately say, Spiritism. No one in 1849 dreamed that a far-flung cult would develop from “the mysterious knocking in N. Y.” There were scarcely any who saw in those rappings an evil relationship to Satan. Mrs. White saw it and spoke out boldly. She did not say that the knockings were, or would be, the only manifestation of Satan. She saw the knockings simply as one concrete exhibit.

At the same time there was a worldwide interest in hypnotism, or mesmerism, as it was generally called, from the name of its chief promoter, Mesmer. The newspapers of those days had much to say on the subject. Mrs. White saw a certain relationship between the activities of Satan and the endeavors of mesmerists to gain control of the minds of men.[76]

[76]Mesmerism was so widely discussed in the 1840’s that it came to be used, often, as a loose synonym for deception. A person might say of someone that he was mesmerized; that is, he was befuddled, deceived, bemused.

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Now, it is the activities of Satan and the evil results of mesmerism that Mrs. White is discussing at length in this vision. Note the relationship she builds between Satan’s activity and that of certain ministers: “I saw that Satan was working through agents, in a number of ways. He was at work through ministers, who have rejected the truth, and are given over to strong delusions to believe a lie that they might be damned.” These colorful words are not really her own, but are paraphrases of Scripture.

Paul’s Prediction

Paul speaks of some in the last days who will be under the delusive powers of Satan, with this result: “For this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie: that they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness.” 2 Thessalonians 2:11, 12. It is evident, therefore, from Paul’s prophecy, that these willingly deluded people are specifically described as rejecters of light. God sends them strong delusion “because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved.” Verse 10.

Mrs. White’s critics give no evidence that they are troubled by Paul’s amazing prophecy, but they are sure that Mrs. White is a false prophet because she here makes an application of Paul’s words. The important point to remember is that Paul has made such a prophecy, and that we are living in the last days, when this prophecy is due to be fulfilled. Therefore, the burden of proof rests on Mrs. White’s critics to show that her application of his prophecy is wrongly made. The mere fact that she made such an application is not proof in itself that she is a false prophet. Indeed, if she was a false prophet, how did she so clearly foresee, in 1849, that the mysterious knockings were the beginnings of the far-flung modern spiritistic movement?

Particular Kind of Revivals and Reformations

She goes on to show the kind of revivals and reformations that were being carried on by such ministers who were given over “to strong delusions.” She declares that their converts, who saw and felt [225] such strange stirrings in their revival meetings, “thought it was the Holy Ghost.” Repeatedly in this vision Mrs. White uses the word “deceive” or “deception.” Those who had come under the control of Satan, very specifically as an outgrowth of the “mysterious rapping,” and those who were using “mesmerism to gain adherents,” are described not only as deceiving these adherents but as seeking to deceive “the saints.”

Now, says Mrs. White, in further warning:

“I saw that the mysterious signs and wonders, and false reformations would increase, and spread. The reformations that were shown me, were not reformations from error to truth; but from bad to worse; for those who professed a change of heart, had only wrapt about them a religious garb, which covered up the iniquity of a wicked heart. Some appeared to have been really converted, so as to deceive God’s people; but if their hearts could be seen, they would appear as black as ever.”

Surely the context makes clear the true meaning of this key phrase of Mrs. White’s critics: “Some appeared to have been really converted, so as to deceive God’s people.” This vision is not discussing reformations or revivals in the abstract. She is not talking about Finney or any other man whom God has used in greater or less degree. She speaks of certain “reformations that were shown me.” These words convey a vastly different thought than Mrs. White’s critics imply. They would have her say that she saw that all reformations, all revivals, anywhere in the land, no matter who conducted them, “were not reformations from error to truth; but from bad to worse.”

But Mrs. White did not say this. What she did say was in a certain context. We have given the whole of that context. The conclusion is clear that she was talking about certain kinds of reformations that were definitely of Satan. Obviously, if “God’s people” concluded that the converts of such reformations were true converts, they would most surely be deceived into thinking that the power of Satan was the great power of God, and would be led into the snare of Spiritism.

This vision is clearly a warning against Spiritism, a warning, furthermore, “that the mysterious signs and wonders, and false [226] reformations would increase, and spread.” In other words, there was great need for God’s people to be on their guard increasingly in the days that lay ahead.

Further Warnings Against Spiritism

Mrs. White had much to say about the satanic source of Spiritism. We quote the opening lines of a vision of August 24, 1850:

“I saw that the mysterious rapping was the power of Satan; some of it was directly from him, and some indirectly, through his agents; but it all proceeded from Satan. It was his work that he accomplished in different ways; yet many in the churches and the world were so enveloped in gross darkness that they thought, and held forth that it was the power of God.”—Experience and Views, p. 47.

The Topsham vision of March 24, 1849, which we have been discussing at length, was republished in the first little book of Mrs. White’s writings, Experience and Views. It is found on pages 24-27. That was in 1851. In 1854 there was published a pamphlet entitled Supplement to the Christian Experience and Views of Ellen G. White. In the first pages of that supplement she offers certain explanatory comments on statements published in the 1851 booklet. We quote in part:

“The ‘false reformations’ referred to on page 27, are yet to be more fully seen. This view relates more particularly to those who have heard and rejected the light of the Advent doctrine. They are given over to strong delusions. Such will not have ‘the travail of soul for sinners’ as formerly. Having rejected the Advent, and being given over to the delusions of Satan, ‘the time for their salvation is past.’ This does not, however, relate to those who have not heard and have not rejected the doctrine of the Second Advent.”—Page 4.

In this 1854 Supplement she goes on to quote a portion of the 1849 vision, as follows:

“I saw that the mysterious knocking in N. Y., and other places, was the power of Satan, and that such things would be more and more common, clothed in a religious garb, to lull the deceived to more security, and to draw the minds of God’s people, if possible, to those things and cause them to doubt the teachings, and power of the Holy Ghost.”

Then she adds immediately this most enlightening comment: [227]

“This view was given in 1849, nearly five years since. Then spirit manifestations were mostly confined to the city of Rochester, known as the ‘Rochester knockings.’ Since that time the heresy has spread beyond the expectations of any one....

“I saw the rapping delusion—what progress it was making, and if it were possible it would deceive the very elect. Satan will have power to bring the appearance of a form before us purporting to be our relatives and friends that now sleep in Jesus. It will be made to appear as though they were present, the words they uttered while here, which we were familiar with, will be spoken, and the same tone of voice, which they had while living, will fall upon the ear. All this is to deceive the saints, and ensnare them into the belief of this delusion.”—Pages 4-6.

These comments and further ones that we might give, all support the interpretation of the March 24, 1849, vision here presented. The point at issue is the nature and source of “the reformations that were shown me.” Mrs. White says that the reformations are of Satan, that is, a display of Spiritism, and intended to deceive. The product, or fruit, of the “reformations,” is the alleged converts. Therefore the power of the deception is in terms of the apparent genuineness of the conversion. How understandable, then, is Mrs. White’s statement: “Some appeared to have been really converted, so as to deceive God’s people.” Yes, and how unwarranted the critics’ interpretation of her words proves to be!

The Crucial Question

Let us look, finally, at the closing paragraph of this vision:

“My accompanying angel bade me look for the travel[77] of soul for sinners as used to be. I looked, but could not see it; for the time for their salvation is past.” Mrs. White’s critics declare that here is clear proof that she taught that there was no more salvation for sinners after 1844. We believe that the evidence thus far presented shows how uncalled for is this conclusion. The phrase, “the time for their salvation is past,” may properly be understood in the setting of her statements several paragraphs earlier about those “who have rejected the truth, and are given over to strong delusions to believe a lie that they might be damned.” It is clear that Mrs.

[77]This is corrected to read “travail” in later printings of the vision.

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White in this vision has her eye on the statement of Paul, who describes a company that have rejected truth. Obviously, such persons have sinned away their day of grace.

Thus the closing words of this vision, “for the time for their salvation is past,” does not demand that we believe that Mrs. White taught that salvation for all sinners ended in 1844, even though we understand the word “their” to refer back to the word “sinners” in the preceding sentence.

However, we think that the whole context requires that the word “their” refer to the false ministers or shepherds who were carrying on the alleged reformations. Who is it that is expected to have “travel of soul for sinners”? And for which Mrs. White in vision “looked, but could not see”? The answer is, of course, the ministers or shepherds. Certainly we hardly look for sinners to have “travel of soul” for themselves. But when we apply the statement to the false shepherds, that is, false ministers, and declare that “the time for their salvation is past,” we find that it harmonizes perfectly with the statement earlier in the vision: “He [Satan] was at work through ministers, who have rejected the truth, and are given over to strong delusions to believe a lie that they might be damned.”

Two Passages Compared

Now, compare this with her statement in The Present Truth, March, 1850, page 64: “The excitements and false reformations of this day do not move us.” She speaks of some false ministers who really do not believe what they themselves preach, and adds, “I saw that our message was not to the shepherds who have led the flock astray, but to the poor hungry, scattered sheep.” It is true that Mrs. White is here speaking of deception in terms of false time-setting rather than Spiritism, but her two statements have this basic point in common: they deal with deceptions on the part of certain false ministers or shepherds. For these false shepherds who are given over to deception and delusion, she says that we have no message. For “honest souls, who have been deceived,” she expresses hope. [229]

Incidentally, who are these “honest souls, who have been deceived,” and who are to “have a chance to receive the truth”? In this instance they are persons whom various Adventist preachers had converted to the belief that Christ would come at a certain time according to a revised interpretation of the 2300-day prophecy. Now, were these various Adventist preachers confining their preaching to those who had been in the Millerite movement? No, declare Mrs. White’s critics, these other Adventist leaders had broad vision, and early in 1845 were out preaching on every side to all who would listen, and bringing in converts. Therefore, we may reasonably conclude that their “flock” included men and women won from the world after 1844.

Then these “honest souls, who have been deceived” consist, at least in part, of people drawn directly from the world. Such people, according to the charge before us, were considered by Mrs. White and her associates as outside the pale of mercy. Yet Mrs. White describes these people as “honest souls” for whom she and her associates had a “message.”

8. The So-called Camden Vision

A further piece of evidence against Mrs. White is a vision she is said to have had “at Camden, N. Y., June 29, 1851.” She is alleged to have declared in that vision:

“Then I saw that Jesus prayed for his enemies, but that should not cause us to pray for the wicked world, whom God had rejected. When he prayed for his enemies, there was hope for them, and they could be benefited and saved by his prayers, and also after he was a mediator in the outer apartment for the whole world; but now his spirit and sympathy were withdrawn from the world; and our sympathy must be with Jesus, and must be withdrawn from the ungodly.... I saw that the wicked could not be benefited by our prayers now.”

We are not quoting from a work published by Seventh-day Adventists, but from the writings of the critics, and why? Because they are the only ones to whom we can go for the text of this alleged vision “at Camden, N. Y., June 29, 1851.”

The “vision” consists of about 400 words. We have quoted that part of it which the critics quote. [230]

Even if these words were spoken by Mrs. White they could hardly be said to teach differently from John, who says: “If any man see his brother sin a sin which is not unto death, he shall ask, and he shall give him life for them that sin not unto death. There is a sin unto death: I do not say that he shall pray for it.” 1 John 5:16. In order to make this alleged vision conform both to Scripture and to the position taken by Mrs. White, that some had sinned away their day of grace, we need only to understand by the phrase, “I saw that the wicked could not be benefited by our prayers now,” to mean the willfully wicked who had rejected light. But to keep the whole record straight, we challenge the authenticity of this alleged Camden vision. (See Appendix I, p. 615, for a discussion on this point.)

9. “Children of Their Father, the Devil”

The following passage from Mrs. White is also submitted in evidence in an attempt to prove that she taught that there was no more salvation for sinners after October 22, 1844:

“I saw that if the false covering could be torn off from the members of the churches, there would be revealed such iniquity, vileness and corruption, that the most diffident child of GOD would have no hesitancy in calling them by their right name, children of their father, the Devil; for his work they do.”—Spiritual Gifts 1:128.

This was published in 1858 and is part of the closing paragraph of the chapter entitled “The Church and the World United.” This chapter is a link in a series of chapters in which Mrs. White is tracing the history of the apostasy in the Christian Era, down through the time of the Reformation, and on beyond that to the time of the Advent Awakening under William Miller. The lines quoted describe the state of the church in the days just preceding the Advent movement of the 1840’s. Let us add, now, two sentences that follow immediately the sentence quoted by the critics:

“JESUS and all the heavenly host looked with disgust upon the scene; yet GOD had a message for the church that was sacred and important. If received, it would make a thorough reformation in the church, revive the living testimony that would purge out hypocrites and sinners, and bring the church again into favor with GOD.” [231]

Thus ends the chapter, “The Church and the World United.” It is followed immediately by the chapter entitled “William Miller,” which describes the “message for the church” that would bring it “again into favor with GOD.” Now, even though Mrs. White describes the church of the early nineteenth century in the language Christ used to describe the Jews—“children of their father, the Devil”—she explicitly states that it was possible for the church again to be brought “into favor with GOD.”

Passage Proves Too Much

This passage proves more than those who quote it wish it to prove. That is probably why it is quoted so briefly. In none of Mrs. White’s statements in the seven-year period, from 1844 to 1851, when she is allegedly teaching no more salvation for sinners, does she use any more devastating language than in the passage just quoted from Spiritual Gifts. But this passage describes the church in the years preceding 1844. Furthermore, though her language might appear to indicate that the church was beyond the pale of God’s mercy, she explicitly stated that there was hope for the repentant.

Note the results that she said would follow if the church received God’s “message.” It “would purge out hypocrites and sinners, and bring the church again into favor with GOD.” Obviously, the word “sinners” is here intended to mean obstinate, willful sinners who refused to accept the “message” that was intended of God to “make a thorough reformation in the church,” and not all the church, even though they all could properly be described as “sinners.” No reasonable person would say that the word “sinners” is here intended to describe all “the members of the churches,” even though she describes them, with apparently no exceptions, as “children of their father, the Devil.” There would be no “church” to bring again “into favor with GOD” if all the “members” are comprehended in that word “sinners,” and are purged out by the preaching of the “message.”

This passage provides the clearest, most undebatable proof that the apparently unqualified words of Mrs. White, like those of any [232] other writers, must be understood, oftentimes, as having not an unlimited but a qualified meaning. We found that in her defense of her first vision she declares that the “wicked world” is to be understood as describing the willfully wicked rejecters of light in the world. Now in the passage just considered, the word “sinners,” which is a term as expansive as the “world,” must be qualified to mean the obstinate, willful sinner, unless we are to make nonsense out of the whole passage. Consistency calls for us to agree, also, that the word “world” may similarly be qualified.

10. Mrs. White’s Prayer of Blessing on Papers

When the copies of Present Truth came from the press, Mrs. White, along with others, knelt beside those papers in prayer and called down the blessing of heaven upon the message the papers contained, and then sent out those papers for all to read. Now, it is charged, these papers set forth the doctrine that there was no more salvation for sinners, and yet the alleged prophet of God gives them the blessing of her prayers.

We are supposed to conclude from this that if Mrs. White had been a true prophet, she would, from the very outset, have discerned and repudiated every error that her associates might hold, and would have refused to pray for any piece of literature that was not wholly free from all error. When the matter is thus stated, the fallacy of the argument under examination begins to be evident. The Bible does not describe prophets as omniscient; that is, that they know all things, and that they can immediately expose all errors, and that, indeed, they will proceed without fail to do just this whenever error is present.

There is nothing more clearly revealed in the Bible than that prophets have limitations. Furthermore, Bible prophets have written some things hard to be understood, which have been cited by infidels in an attempt to prove, not simply that the prophets were limited in understanding, but that they reflected nothing but the current thought around them. On more than one occasion prophets of old gave prayers of blessing in behalf of men whose lives revealed far more troublesome views than the shut-door ideas [233] of our Seventh-day Adventist pioneers. In fact, some of those who were thus blessed in ancient times were polygamists. But prayers are not to be confused with revelations or prophesyings. A prayer arises from a human being, even though he be a prophet, but a prophecy comes down from God. When David talked to the prophet Nathan about building a house for the Lord, Nathan gave him his blessing, told him to go forward, and do all that was in his heart. But that night God gave to Nathan a vision that led him to speak differently on the morrow to David. (2 Samuel 7:1-17.)

A Taunting Question Examined

Mrs. White repeatedly declares that she conversed with heavenly beings. To the critics it seems irrational and a proof of her fraudulence that she should have claimed such converse repeatedly through the years, and yet was so slow at times to make a clear pronouncement on some particular truth or to expose some particular error of teaching or facts. But what of the prophets of the Bible?

Infidels have sneeringly asked why the mighty Bible prophets did not speak out against slavery, and denounce it for what we today clearly see it to be—an outrageous violation of the God-given right of our fellow man. But all of us who believe the Bible to be the Word of God, see in an instance like this of slavery simply an illustration of the inscrutable wisdom of God in unfolding only slowly to men the full implications of holy living. Christ told His disciples that He had many things to tell them, but they could not bear them then. God deals with men in terms of the times in which they live and the patterns of thought that control them. What would it avail to give men suddenly a great burst of light if the effect would be to blind them? Their eyes must become slowly adapted to greater light if it is to benefit them.

It is only by this approach to the matter that we can answer the Bible critics on many questions concerning holy prophets of old. Why may we not, with equal propriety, use the same approach to explain why Mrs. White poured forth a prayer of blessing upon papers that were not wholly free from error of statement? [234]

11. Similarity of Her Language to That of Her Associates

Mrs. White is said to describe sinners and the sinful world, in the years just following 1844, in language so strangely like that used by men who were teaching that probation had closed that her words should be understood in the same sense.

We should remember that even prophets are confined to the language of the times in which they live and the people among whom they move. It is because of this fact that religious modernists have made some remarkable interpretations of the statements of Bible prophets. They are sure, for example, that those prophets thought that the world was flat. Did not the prophets speak of the four corners of the earth? Now those who lived in their day believed that the world was flat, and presumably had four corners. Therefore, the prophets simply reflected the ideas of their day. Orthodox Christians protest this kind of reasoning, and rightly so. We believe we may as properly protest this kind of reasoning when it is employed against Mrs. White. The true meaning of specific statements by Mrs. White may much more safely be determined by comparing those statements with her other writings rather than with the writings of others.

12. Mrs. White and Labor for Non-Adventists

The final argument, and the one supposed to prove beyond all debate, that Mrs. White, along with her associates, believed that there was no more salvation for sinners, is this: There is no evidence that can be produced to show that either she or any of her associates tried to convert anyone in the seven-year period following 1844. They spent all their time laboring for their former associates who had been in the great Advent movement.

But what if she did not carry on any labor for worldlings during those early post-1844 years? Does that prove that she did not believe there was salvation for any of them? Do we have many instances of Old Testament prophets preaching any message from God to the peoples round about Israel? With rare exceptions, such as the case of Jonah, there is nothing even to suggest that they did so. Take, for example, Isaiah, the great prophet of salvation. Did he [235] go out and preach to the Gentiles? There is certainly nothing in the record to suggest it.

But, someone will say, the Old Testament times were different. In some ways, yes. But the plan of salvation has been the same through all the ages. There has been only one gospel, and would anyone say that God was interested in saving only the Jews? No. Then what is the explanation? We think we hear Bible lovers declaring that the Old Testament prophets probably had their hands more than full trying to revive and guide the people of which they were a part. The answer is a good one.

Lesson From Activity of Disciples

Let us look at the disciples during the years of Christ’s ministry. They were with Him for about three and a half years. Did he distribute them over the various countries round about Jewry? No. He told them to go only to “the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” This seemed natural and reasonable to the disciples. They were astonished beyond words when Christ even conversed with the Samaritan woman by the well. Nor did the disciples see anything strange in our Lord’s words to the Syrophoenician woman who pleaded with Him to heal her daughter. Christ inquired of her as to whether it was right to take the children’s food and give it to the dogs.

We hear someone quickly coming to the defense of our Lord and the disciples—though no defense is needed—and explaining that Christ wisely sought to have the disciples focus first on their own people, who had much in common with them in their belief as to what all the prophets did say should come. Further, that the disciples needed to have their own eyes opened to a larger understanding of Scripture with regard to Christ before it would be wise to send them out to the world. Did not our Lord explain to them, on the resurrection day, the true meaning of many texts? The record says, “Then opened he their understanding, that they might understand the scriptures.” Luke 24:45. Certainly they needed a larger conception of the range of God’s plan of salvation before they could be prepared to go to the four corners of the earth, [236]

We agree fully that this is an entirely satisfactory explanation of why our Lord, during His ministry on earth, sent His disciples only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.

But the fact remains that the nations round about Israel received little or no preaching of the gospel during all the years of all the Old Testament prophets and during the years that Christ was on earth. Yet no indictment do we bring against the Old Testament prophets or Christ or His disciples. We view all of them as men of God, spokesmen for God.

Bible Provides Parallel to Adventist Experience

We think it is not unreasonable to see in all this a parallel to the experience of Mrs. White and her associates. We believe that a wise providence overruled in the matter of their preaching. There was literally only a small handful of them. They were poor and scattered and recovering from a bewildering disappointment. If God had suddenly and immediately opened before their eyes the full blazing light of a world task, it might not only have blinded them but discouraged them completely. They had more than they could do traveling to their own lost sheep of the house of Israel, their fellow Adventists with whom they had much in common in prophetic beliefs.

Furthermore, they needed to have their eyes more fully opened, and their minds established on the distinctive doctrines that they at first saw dimly in outline, before they could carry on a strong evangelistic program in the world. God had to open their eyes even as he opened the eyes of the disciples. Then, too, who would have listened either to Mrs. White or her associates immediately after 1844? You cannot make much headway with people who ridicule you. The evidence is too clear for debate that both Sabbathkeeping and first-day Adventists rather uniformly met with bitter ridicule.

We are aware that Himes and Miller and others said, early in 1845, that there were openings on every side, and that they should press in and preach to all. The record of the years can speak for itself. Those openings must not have been very productive, for [237] the membership of the main body of Adventist people did not grow; it dwindled sadly with the years. What else could it do but dwindle, when those who were preaching kept setting new dates all the while, with resultant disillusionment and doubt in the minds of most hearers? How much better it would have been if they had waited until they had had a sure message.

James White on Laboring for Sinners

In the The Review and Herald, August 19, 1851, James White writes a long editorial, entitled “Our Present Work.” He speaks of the need of preaching the truth, of scattering publications everywhere. The reason he offers is this: “Now the door is open almost everywhere to present the truth, and many are prepared to read the publications who have formerly had no interest to investigate.”—Page 13.

A little later he declares that from 1844 to 1846 “a number of the advent brethren in different States embraced the Sabbath.”—The Review and Herald, May 6, 1852, page 5. But in the same connection we find him saying: “But this work is not confined to those only who have had an experience in the past advent movement. A large portion of those who are sharing the blessings attending the present truth were not connected with the advent cause in 1844.”—Ibid.

That statement was made in the spring of 1852. Unless we are to assume—though there is nothing in the record to support it—that all this influx had taken place since James White wrote, in August, 1851, that “now the door is open almost everywhere,” we must conclude that from 1846 onward, a “large portion” of those added to their ranks “were not connected with the advent cause in 1844.” Our Sabbathkeeping forebears may have been surprised that some of these people came in, but that is beside the point. The record is that they came in during that seven-year period mentioned in the charge. And need we add that people rarely become converts to a new and unpopular faith unless some real endeavor is made by the believers of that faith to convert them! True, we cannot point to the historical record of such endeavor. [238] But the facts are that we know very little about the earliest activities of our forebears. The record is woefully incomplete.

So much for the twelve principal lines of argument and evidence submitted to prove that Mrs. White believed and taught for seven years following 1844 that there was no salvation for sinners. A study of the sources and the context of her writings has revealed that she believed no such thing. [239]

Chapter 15—Mrs. White Taught That Probation Still Lingers

Mrs. White and the Shut Door—Part III

Not only do the passages cited in the preceding chapter fail to support the shut-door charge against Mrs. White, but a close study of her writings reveals certain statements quite inconsistent with the idea that the day of mercy had ended for all the world in 1844.

In Mrs. White’s first vision she saw the Advent people traveling on a path toward the city of God: “They had a bright light set up behind them at the first end of the path, which an angel told me was the Midnight Cry.” In other words, she is describing the heavenward journey of the Advent people subsequent to the midnight cry, that is, in the days following October 22, 1844. She describes the spiritual tragedy of some who rejected the light and fell off the path: “They fell all the way along the path one after another, until we heard the voice of God like many waters, which gave us the day and hour of Jesus’ coming. The living saints, 144,000 in number, knew and understood the voice, while the wicked thought it was thunder and an earthquake.”

How large was the company of “the Advent people” on October 22, 1844? Miller’s estimate, we have seen, was “some fifty thousand believers.” James White’s estimate was the same. Now Mrs. White has a vision of this company of fifty thousand starting on that pathway, with apostates and backsliders falling off along the way, until some date, still future at the time of her vision, God announced the day and hour of Jesus’ coming. But at that time, despite all the falling away, all the backsliding, there was a total of 144,000. [240]

In an earlier chapter Joseph Bates was quoted as declaring, in 1849, which was more than four years after this vision of Mrs. White’s, that he even then did not know where all the 144,000 were to come from. He thought that some would come from beyond the great river Euphrates. It is really a simple matter of arithmetic that this first vision of Mrs. White’s reveals that salvation was still open for some outside the company of “the Advent people” after the ending of the midnight cry, or else there would never be 144,000 at the great last moment when God announces the day and hour of Christ’s coming.

To offset these evident implications, it is claimed that Mrs. White in vision was not really looking into the future when she saw 144,000 believers, but that she was speaking of the present. Does she not speak of the “living saints, 144,000 in number”? Even if that interpretation of her words were true, the question would still remain: Does not her vision logically require us to conclude that in addition to Adventists many thousands are to be gathered into the company of the saved, seeing that Adventists, in 1844, totaled only about 50,000?

A reading of the vision reveals clearly that the word “living” is not used as a synonym for the phrase “persons now living” but in contrast to the word “dead.” In this vision she speaks of both “living saints” and saints resurrected. We read in the next paragraph: “The graves opened, and the dead came up clothed with immortality. The 144,000 shouted, Hallelujah! as they recognized their friends who had been torn from them by death, and in the same moment we were changed and caught up together with them to meet the Lord in the air.”

How simple the explanation of Mrs. White’s words when we see them in their context. She tells of the journey of the Advent people to the kingdom. Many fall by the wayside. Finally comes the great moment when God announces the day and hour of Jesus’ coming. “The living saints, 144,000 in number, knew and understood the voice.” Mrs. White is not speaking of 144,000 living at the moment of her vision, but of 144,000 living upon the earth at the moment of Christ’s coming, and that these living saints had [241] their ranks suddenly augmented by a great company of resurrected saints. The company of the finally saved that was shown her was much larger than the known total of Adventists in 1844, even by the most generous estimate.

Testimony From Her Vision of January 5, 1849

Let us look now at a vision given to Mrs. White, January 5, 1849:

“At the commencement of the Holy Sabbath, (Jan. 5,) we engaged in prayer with Bro. Belden’s family at Rocky Hill, Ct., and the Holy Ghost fell upon us. I was taken off in Vision to the Most Holy Place, where I saw Jesus still interceding for Israel. On the bottom of his garment was a bell and a pomegranate, a bell and a pomegranate. Then I saw that Jesus would not leave the Most Holy Place, until every case was decided either for salvation or destruction: and that the wrath of God could not come until Jesus had finished his work in the Most Holy Place—laid off his priestly attire and clothed himself with the garments of vengeance. Then Jesus will step out from between the Father and man, and God will keep silent no longer; but pour out his wrath on those who have rejected his truth. I saw that the anger of the nations, the wrath of God, and the time to judge the dead, were separate events, one following the other. I saw that Michael had not stood up, and that the time of trouble, such as never was, had not yet commenced.”— The Present Truth, August, 1849, p. 22.[78]

Here is a remarkable statement which we do not recall that Mrs. White’s critics have quoted. Jesus is here described as being in “the Most Holy Place,” and as continuing there “until every case” is “decided either for salvation or destruction.” She explains that “the wrath of God could not come until Jesus had finished his work in the Most Holy Place.” When that work is finished “then Jesus will step out from between the Father and man, and God will keep silent no longer; but pour out his wrath on those who have rejected his truth.” What is it that has prevented God from pouring out His wrath on the world? The fact that Jesus is standing “between the Father and man” “in the Most Holy Place.” If that statement of hers does not teach that Jesus still has a desire for the salvation of the wicked and is still shielding them

[78]Experience and Views, p. 19; Early Writings, 36.

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from the wrath of God, then we do not know how that glorious truth could be stated. She is doing what devout Christian writers have always done, picturing Christ as pleading that God’s long-suffering and mercy be continued a little longer, that the wicked may have further opportunity to repent and be saved.

However, until a sinner, by turning to Christ, avails himself of Christ’s ministry, we do not speak, strictly, of Christ’s carrying on an intercessory work for him. It is in the setting of this fact that we understand her words: “I saw Jesus still interceding for Israel.” He could perform His true priestly function only for those who invoked His services. Mrs. White is here simply using the language that the Bible writers consistently employ. They speak of God’s relationship to Israel, oftentimes in such a way as to lead the casual reader to believe that God had no concern whatever for anyone else. The new covenant is made only “with the house of Israel.” Hebrews 8:8. Paul reminds the church at Ephesus that “in time past ye walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience.” Ephesians 2:2. He adds that they “were by nature the children of wrath, even as others.” Verse 3. A little farther on in his letter he observes, regarding the evil practices of the Gentiles, that “because of these things cometh the wrath of God upon the children of disobedience.” Ephesians 5:6. Here is a description of a sinful world waiting for “the wrath of God” to come upon it. This parallels Mrs. White’s picture.

How We Become Children of God

Now, how do these Gentiles cease to be children of wrath and become children of God, and thus the objects, definitely, of Christ’s intercession? Paul explains, by reminding these Ephesians of their former sinful Gentile state, and adding:

“That at that time ye were without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope, and without God in the world: but now in Christ Jesus ye who sometimes were far off are made nigh by the blood of Christ.” Ephesians 2:12, 13. “Now therefore ye are no [243] more strangers and foreigners, but fellowcitizens with the saints, and of the household of God; and are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner stone.” Verses 19, 20.

Add to this Paul’s words to the Galatians: “And if ye be Christ’s then are ye Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.” Galatians 3:29.

A Harmonization of Scripture

Thus we can harmonize the scriptures that speak of Christ’s confining the saving new covenant to “the house of Israel,” with the scriptures that speak of His yearning desire to save all men from the just wrath that should come upon them. In the plan of God, men become heirs to the promises of God through Abraham, and all of us may become Abraham’s children through faith in Christ. Thus, though John describes the 144,000 gathered to God at the last day as being from the twelve tribes of Israel, and as passing into the New Jerusalem through gates bearing the names of those tribes, we all believe that men of every nation, kindred, tongue, and people will belong to that company.

We repeat, in the light of all these scriptures, Mrs. White is simply using standard Scriptural language when she speaks of Jesus “interceding for Israel.” There is nothing in such a statement to warrant the conclusion that His mercy is not available to anyone else. On the contrary, as we have just seen, her vision clearly implies that His mercy is available to sinners, that indeed He is standing between God and man, warding off, as it were, “the wrath of God,” that otherwise would fall upon “the children of disobedience.”

We need not attempt to prove that, at the time this vision was given, Mrs. White, in her capacity as a finite individual, clearly understood that Christ was offering His mercy to all mankind. We need only to show that Mrs. White, in her capacity as a prophet for God, was presenting views consistent with all the Scriptures. Prophets themselves sometimes had to search the revelations that God had given to them and to other prophets, in order to understand His plan. (See 1 Peter 1:10, 11.) [244]

Further Positive Testimony

Strikingly similar to the vision we have been considering is the following from an article by Mrs. White that appeared in the The Present Truth, September, 1849. We quote in part:

“We must work while the day lasts, for when the dark night of trouble and anguish comes, it will be too late to work for God. Jesus is still in his Holy Temple, and will now accept our sacrifices, our prayers, and our confessions of faults and sins, and will now pardon all the transgressions of Israel, that they may be blotted out before he leaves the Sanctuary. When Jesus leaves the Sanctuary, then he that is holy and righteous, will be holy and righteous still; for all their sins will then be blotted out, and they will be sealed with the seal of the living God. But those that are unjust and filthy, will be unjust and filthy still; for then there will be no Priest in the Sanctuary to offer their sacrifices, their confessions, and their prayers before the Father’s throne. Therefore, what is done to rescue souls from the coming storm of wrath, must be done before Jesus leaves the Most Holy Place of the Heavenly Sanctuary.

“The Lord has shown me that precious souls are starving, and dying for want of the present, sealing truth, the meat in due season; and that the swift messengers should speed on their way, and feed the flock with the present truth. I heard an Angel say, ‘speed the swift messengers, speed the swift messengers; for the case of every soul will soon be decided, either for Life, or for Death.’”—Page 32.

Mrs. White’s reference to the “unjust” and the “filthy” is from the text in Revelation that proclaims the close of probation. She speaks of that proclamation as still future. What if she had said that this text was fulfilled in 1844!

Not Speaking of Adventists in General

The fact that Mrs. White says that Christ “will now pardon all the transgressions of Israel,” does not require us to believe that He does not offer salvation to all. This we have shown in our discussion of the preceding quotation from her vision of January 5, 1849.

In the final edict that closes probation all evil men are listed under the general heads “unjust” and “filthy,” and all sanctified men under the terms “righteous” and “holy.” Now, even if we think of Mrs. White’s statements in the setting of her associates’ [245] beliefs, as her critics insist we must always do, we are still unable to find in her reference to the edict regarding the “unjust” and “filthy” a reference particularly to wayward Adventists. Perhaps an individual Adventist who had turned away from all righteousness was described as “unjust” and “filthy.” But certainly the Sabbathkeeping Adventist group did not think of other Adventists in general as “filthy” and “unjust.”

Mrs. White makes clear in her message published September, 1849, that the day that decides forever the fate of those who continue to be “unjust” and “filthy,” is still future. She declares that we must rescue souls from the coming storm. That is the language of evangelistic endeavor.

The Dorchester Vision of November, 1848

Let us look, now, at the vision given to Mrs. White in Dorchester, Massachusetts, November, 1848.

“At a meeting held in Dorchester, Mass., November, 1848, I had been given a view of the proclamation of the sealing message, and of the duty of the brethren to publish the light that was shining upon our pathway.

“After coming out of vision, I said to my husband: ‘I have a message for you. You must begin to print a little paper and send it out to the people. Let it be small at first; but as the people read, they will send you means with which to print, and it will be a success from the first. From this small beginning it was shown to me to be like streams of light that went clear round the world.’”—Life Sketches of Ellen G. White, 125.

It was this counsel given to James White that prompted him to begin publishing the Present Truth in 1849, and to go on from that to ever larger publishing activities, which ultimately have gone “clear round the world.”

Surely the reasonable interpretation of Mrs. White’s words is that she is picturing a world work. Then what becomes of the charge that Mrs. White in vision taught that there was no more salvation for sinners, in other words, that God had no interest for anyone in the world except a little handful of Adventists? The answer to this question is so evident that the critics have sought to avoid it by certain arguments. Let us consider these under four heads: [246]

The First Argument Against Dorchester Vision

1. The last sentence of what Mrs. White is alleged to have said: namely, “From this small beginning it was shown to me to be like streams of light that went clear round the world,” “is no part of the Dorchester vision.” That is evident from an examination of the text of “the entire vision.” “That part of the vision relating to seeing lights appearing all over the world, was not given to Mrs. White until she was in Europe about 1886. It was first published in the R[eview and] H[erald] of July 26, 1887. It also appears in Gospel Workers, 378 which bears date of 1892. Instead of her seeing this in her early childhood, as she says, she did not see it until she was past 60.”

What are the facts about the text of this vision? Did Mrs. White sit down shortly and write out what she had seen and the counsel she had been given? She did this in many instances, and thus we are in no doubt as to the text of such revelations. But sometimes she simply gave verbal instruction or counsel to individuals or churches as a result of what she had seen. In later years, particularly when recounting the past, she occasionally referred to some unrecorded vision and, at times, wrote a few lines as to what she had seen or heard. That was the case in regard to this Dorchester vision.

While Mrs. White was in vision she sometimes uttered exclamatory sentences as different scenes were unfolded to her. In a few instances someone present when the vision was given, copied down these exclamatory sentences, thinking thus to secure firsthand the very words of the prophet in vision. This was the case in regard to the Dorchester vision. Bates, who was present, tells of their having “made the publishing of the message a subject of prayer ..., and the way to publish appeared not sufficiently clear, we therefore resolved unitedly to refer it all to God. After some time spent in earnest prayer for light and instruction, God gave sister White the following vision.”—A Seal of the Living God, p. 24. Then Bates gives a series of phrases and sentences that he copied down while she was in vision. But he immediately adds this qualifying statement: “The above was copied word for word as she spake in vision, therefore it’s unadulterated; some sentences escaped us, and some which we have not copied here.”—Page 26.

It is hard to see how Bates could have more clearly stated that [247] he copied down only a part of what Mrs. White said. Nor did the exclamations uttered give a full account of the vision. Yet critics soberly declare that they have “the entire vision,” and quote Bates as proof. We have no way of knowing what the sentences were that he left out. And in the absence of those sentences, which would provide context, we cannot be certain as to the full meaning of the sentences quoted. We wonder how the visions of Daniel and John would sound if we were dependent for our knowledge of them on the exclamatory statements these prophets might have made during their visions!

We could dismiss the whole argument at this point on the valid ground that there is no text of “the entire vision.”

Mrs. White says that in her Dorchester vision in 1848 she saw “streams of light that went clear round the world.” Her critics say, “That part of the vision relating to seeing lights appearing all over the world, was not given to Mrs. White until 1886 on a trip through Europe and that she did not publish it until 1887.” The critic is referring to a talk Mrs. White gave in Copenhagen, Denmark, July 22, 1886, which was printed in the The Review and Herald, July 26, 1887. We quote the portion that bears on the question before us:

“When in my very girlhood the Lord saw fit to open before me the glories of heaven. I was in vision taken to heaven, and the angel said to me, ‘Look!’ I looked to the world as it was in dense darkness. ... Again the word came, ‘Look! ye.’ And again I looked intensely over the world, and I began to see jets of light like stars dotted all through this darkness; and then I saw another and another added light, and so all through this moral darkness the star-like lights were increasing. And the angel said, These are they that believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and are obeying the words of Christ.... I saw that the rays of light came directly from Jesus, to form these precious jets of light in the world.”—Page 466.[79]

Note these points in comment: 1. Mrs. White did not say, in 1886, that she then had a vision, but that she was recounting a vision of her “very girlhood”—which particular vision she does not state. But the critic boldly declares that she did not see this in

[79]The part here quoted, and a little more, is reprinted in Gospel Workers (1892), 378.

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her “girlhood,” but actually in 1886. The reader must decide between him and Mrs. White on this point.

2. The only place in Mrs. White’s writings where reference is made to any words spoken by her in connection with the 1848 Dorchester vision, is Life Sketches, published in 1915. And the only statement she there makes concerning “light,” is this: “Streams of light that went clear round the world.” Hence, this statement is the only one that can here be in dispute. But note how the critic turns her words: “That part of the [Dorchester] vision relating to seeing lights appearing all over the world.” But it is necessary thus to alter her words in order to make them parallel her words spoken in 1886. And, as we have seen, it is then necessary for the critic to assert that her 1886 words were not a reminiscence of the 1840’s but the expression of an 1886 viewpoint!

The Bates Text of the 1848 Dorchester Vision

Now let us see just what Bates copied down while Mrs. White was having her 1848 Dorchester vision. Deficient though his copying was, we believe that he set down some phrases from Mrs. White’s lips that bear a striking similarity to the disputed passage: “Streams of light that went clear round the world.” Following is the whole text of what Bates wrote, with certain phrases placed in italic to indicate their similarity to this passage:[80]

“Where did the light break out? Let thine angels teach us where the light broke out! It commenced from a little, then thou didst give one light after another. The testimony and commandments are linked together, they cannot be separated; that comes first the ten commandments, by God.

“The commandments never would be struck against if it were not to get rid of the Sabbath commandment. That one that has relaxed it is very foolish. It was very small, and when it rose, though it rose in strength, it was weak back there, when it came up it increase, (or increased.) If they won’t hear it they are as accountable as though they did hear it.

“He was well pleased when his law began to come up in strength, and the waste places began to be built up.

[80]If Mrs. White spoke even at a conversational rate of speed, only a good stenographer could hope to take down her words accurately. This fact, coupled with Bates’s admission that he missed certain statements by her, prohibits any careful Bible student from using her words, as quoted by Bates, as the basis for any doctrinal view.

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“Out of weakness it has become strong from searching his word. The test upon it has been but a short time. All who are saved will be tried upon it in some way. That truth arises and is on the increase, stronger, and stronger. It’s the seal! It’s coming up! It arises, commencing from the rising of the sun. Like the sun, first cold, grows warmer and sends its rays.

“When that truth arose there was but little light in it, but it has been increasing. O the power of these rays.

“It grows in strength, the greatest weight and light is on that truth, for it lasts forever when the Bible is not needed. It arose there in the east, it began with a small light, but its beams are healing. O how mighty is that truth; it’s the highest after they enter the goodly land, but it will increase till they are made immortal. It commenced from the rising of the sun, keeps on its course like the sun, but it never sets.

“The angels are holding the four winds.

“It is God that restrains the powers.

“The angels have not let go, for the saints are not all sealed.

“The time of trouble has commenced, it is begun. The reason why the four winds have not let go, is because the saints are not all sealed. It’s on the increase, and will increase more and more; the trouble will never end until the earth is rid of the wicked.

“At that time neighbor will be against neighbor. That time has not yet come, when brother against brother and sister against sister; but will come when Michael stands up.

“When Michael stands up this trouble will be all over the earth.

“Why they are just ready to blow. There’s a check put on because the saints are not sealed.

“Yea, publish the things thou hast seen and heard, and the blessing of God will attend. Look ye! that rising is in strength, and grows brighter and brighter. That truth is the seal, that’s why it comes last. The shut door we have had. God has taught and taught, but that experience is not the seal, and that commandment that has been trodden under foot will be exalted. And when ye get that you will go through the time of trouble.

“Yea, all that thou art looking at, thou shalt not see just now. Be careful, let no light be set aside which comes from another way from which thou art looking for.”—A Seal of the Living God, pp. 24-26.

There are a number of phrases copied down by Bates that provide striking parallels, but for brevity’s sake we focus simply on these: “It arose there in the east, it began with a small light, but its beams are healing.... It commenced from the rising of the sun, keeps on its course like the sun, but it never sets.”

When Mrs. White came “out of vision” she restated to her [250] husband a little of what she had seen. In her vision she had exclaimed that the light of the message was like the light of the sun. The sun, as it “keeps on its course,” sends its light “clear round the world.” And so she told her husband afterwards: “It was shown to me to be like streams of light that went clear round the world.” What more need be said on this point![81]

Second Argument Against Dorchester Vision

2. In her Dorchester vision Mrs. White was not envisioning a worldwide work, because she was declaring at that very time that the coming of Christ was very near. How then could she be speaking of a work that was to spread over the whole earth?

This argument, in various forms, is answered in the pages of this book. We need only remind the reader that none were more insistent in their appeal to their hearers to make ready for the day of Christ’s coming than were the early apostles. Yet they were actively laboring to preach the gospel to all the world.

Third Argument Against Dorchester Vision

3. In the Dorchester vision, as can be seen from Bates’s text of “the entire vision,” Mrs. White declared that “the time of trouble has commenced,” in other words, that probation has ended. Hence, how could she be seeing, in that vision, the expansion of a message to the whole world?

We might dismiss this argument simply by declaring that the uncertainty of context—what she might have said just before or just after the passage under discussion—prevents any possibility of knowing just what she referred to. Fortunately, we have Mrs. White’s own words in another connection that enable us to see conclusively that when she uses the phrase, “the time of trouble,” she does not necessarily mean the close of probation. Here is what she wrote after a vision in 1847:

“I saw that God had children, who do not see and keep the Sabbath. They had not rejected the light on it. And at the commencement of the time of trouble, we were filled with the Holy Ghost as we went forth, and proclaimed

[81]Incidentally, the phrase copied by Bates, “it commenced from a little, then thou didst give one light after another,” provides an interesting parallel to the words used by Mrs. White in her 1886 statement! Which is another way of saying that here is supporting proof for her declaration that it was in her “girlhood” she saw what she described in that 1886 talk.

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the Sabbath more fully. This enraged the church, and nominal Adventists, as they could not refute the Sabbath truth. And at this time, God’s chosen all saw clearly that we had the truth, and they came out and endured the persecution with us.”—Broadside, A Vision, April 7, 1847.[82]

It is evident that Mrs. White is here speaking of a time of trouble preceding the close of probation, for honest souls are making decisions for eternity.

However, she herself, a little later, removed all possible uncertainty on this point by a comment on this “time of trouble” phrase in 1851. After quoting the passage that contains the phrase, she declares:

“The commencement of the time of trouble,’ here mentioned does not refer to the time when the plagues shall begin to be poured out; but to a short period just before they are poured out, while Christ is in the Sanctuary. At that time, while the work of salvation is closing, trouble will be coming on the earth, the nations will be angry, yet held in check, so as not to prevent the work of the third angel.”—Supplement to Experience and Views (1854), pp. 3, 4.

This harmonizes with the words of her vision of January 5, 1849, from which we earlier quoted: “I saw that ... Michael had not stood up, and that the time of trouble, such as never was, had not yet commenced.”

Fourth Argument Against Dorchester Vision

4. According to Mrs. White and all her associates, the “present truth” was the “shut door and the Sabbath.” Therefore “how inconsistent for S. D. A.’s to teach that Mrs. White saw the gospel going to all the world when they were all teaching that probation had closed, and were condemning the people who were going out and trying to save souls.”

This argument has been examined in the preceding pages. We are concerned not with what Mrs. White’s associates believed and taught, or even with what she herself may have believed—she frankly states that for a little time after 1844 she did believe that “no more sinners would be converted.” We are concerned only with what she declared God revealed to her in vision. We believe

[82]See also A Word to the “Little Flock,” p. 19; Experience and Views, p. 17; Early Writings, 33.

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that the evidence submitted in this and the preceding chapter reveals that none of Mrs. White’s visions teach that probation closed for all mankind, exclusive of Adventists, in 1844. On the contrary, we believe that certain of her visions, for example, this Dorchester vision, clearly reveal that God was giving to her a view of many souls yet to be saved, of a mighty message yet to be carried “clear round the world.”

We do not contend that Mrs. White’s associates immediately understood the meaning of those visions of evangelism and expansion. We hardly think they did. We need not even contend that Mrs. White herself clearly understood at the outset the full meaning of certain visions given to her. The Bible prophets did not always understand. We repeat, and it needs repeating to clear up the fog of irrelevant arguments that have been raised, that our only contention is this: Mrs. White, when exercising the prophetic gift, did not teach the false doctrine of probation’s close for all men in 1844, but rather the contrary.

Two More Charges Follow Closely

Thus we come to the end of our consideration of the charge that Mrs. White believed in no more mercy for sinners for a seven-year period following October 22, 1844. Probably the reader will be curious, now, to know why a specific seven-year period is mentioned. That draws us into a consideration of the charge that Mrs. White believed and taught that Christ would actually come in the autumn of 1851. We shall also find, when we are studying that charge, that it is interwoven with still another; namely, that certain of the sentences dealing with the shut door in Mrs. White’s earliest visions were deleted from later printings to conceal the fact that she thus once believed. It is alleged that she changed her views because she decided at the last moment that Christ would not come in 1851, and that therefore this fact of suppression of early statements provides an added and most weighty argument in support of the charge that Mrs. White originally taught there was no more mercy for sinners. In the following chapters these charges will be considered. [253]

Chapter 16—Time Setting—The Seven-Year Theory

Charge: Mrs. E. G. White and her husband, James White, were led by Joseph Bates to believe that the time of Christ’s work in the most holy place in heaven would be seven years (from the autumn of 1844 to the autumn of 1851) and that the Advent would occur on the latter date. Mrs. White made repeated statements which revealed that she believed this. A few months before this seven years ended, Elder White and wife became convinced that this theory had to be given up. When they gave up this time view they decided at the same time to give up the view that there was no more mercy for sinners.

This charge has a twofold objective: (1) to prove Mrs. White a false prophet, for Christ did not come in 1851; (2) to provide a foundation for the further charge that, after the seven-year period, she suppressed certain of her earliest writings.

Three arguments are presented to prove that Mrs. White and her husband believed the end would come in 1851:

1. That Joseph Bates, in an 1850 pamphlet, predicted that Christ would come again in 1851.

2. That Bates was very influential, and the Whites were unknown, poverty-stricken, and beholden to him.

3. That Mrs. White made certain statements that clearly supported Bates’s view.

1. Bates’s Time-setting Theory Stated

It is true that for a brief period Bates believed Christ would come in 1851. He published his view sometime in 1850. We quote:

“The seven spots of blood on the Golden Altar and before the Mercy Seat, I fully believe represents the duration of the judicial proceedings on the living saints in the Most Holy, all of which time they will be in their affliction, even seven years, God by his voice will deliver them, ‘For it is the blood that maketh atonement for the soul.’ Leviticus 17, 11. Then the number [254] seven will finish the day of atonement, (not redemption.) Six last months of this time, I understand, Jesus will be gathering in the harvest with his sickle, on the white cloud.”—An Explanation of the Typical and Anti-typical Sanctuary, pp. 10, 11. (A sixteen-page pamphlet.)

Now, inasmuch as Bates believed that Christ entered the most holy place in 1844, his view regarding the “number seven” meant that he believed that Christ would come in 1851.

This pamphlet bears the date 1850. Whether it was published early or late that year, we have no way of knowing. However, we can be sure beyond all reasonable doubt that Bates’s first advocacy of this 1851 date was at the time he published this pamphlet. It is incredible that he would remain silent a day after he had made what he believed was a great theological discovery concerning the date of Christ’s coming. Bates’s autobiography clearly reveals that he was a man of action, forthright and vigorous. As soon as he had a conviction or a belief he was in action in behalf of it. Is it credible he could come to the startling conclusion that Christ would return in the autumn of 1851, and remain silent for a period of time concerning it? He was the one man in the little group of Sabbathkeeping Adventists who had gone into print with several pamphlets, from 1846 to 1849, to set forth his various views. But in none of these was there any reference to the seven-year period. Nor was there any article from his pen in behalf of this view in Present Truth, which was published from July, 1849, to November, 1850. The same may be said regarding the Advent Review, of which a few numbers were published at this time. He was not the kind of man who left to others the responsibility of preaching his beliefs.

As will become evident, the date of the publication of this pamphlet, and of the beginning of Bates’s belief in and advocacy of the seven-year period, is important. We repeat, that date can most certainly be set as 1850.

2. How Influential Was Bates?

Now, according to the charge, James and Ellen White accepted Bates’s view. That Bates was one of the influential figures in the Millerite movement, having spent all of a substantial fortune in [255] the promotion of the Advent doctrine, under Miller, is quite true. That James and Ellen White were “penniless, absolutely poor,” is also true. But the bold declaration that the Whites greatly needed the influence that Bates could give them, and therefore gladly accepted his seven-year time theory, is pure assumption and contrary to the facts.

By a casual reference to Bates’s influence in the late Millerite movement, and to his expenditure of his fortune upon it, the reader is permitted to conclude that Bates probably still had both money and influence after 1844. This conclusion makes plausible the assumption that the Whites were beholden to him. But what are the facts? Bates was influential in the movement up to October 22, 1844, but not afterward, and for the very reason that he accepted and began to promote the same theological views that were soon to distinguish the Sabbathkeeping group of Adventists.

And what of Bates’s finances? James White first met him “in the year 1846.”[83] It was in that year that Bates sat down to write his first pamphlet. He had no more than begun to write when his wife asked him to buy her some flour. She did not know that he had to his name only a York shilling, worth twelve and a half cents. When he returned from the store with the little package of flour she was amazed. In former years he had always purchased supplies on a large scale. When he confessed he was penniless she burst into tears.[84]

The record is also clear that in those earliest days certain money was subscribed to pay for Bates’s traveling as a preacher. And who gathered up the money and gave it to Bates? None other than James White! More than one of his early letters refers to Bates’s poverty. For illustration: James White, writing from Port Gibson, New York, August 26, 1848, to “My dear Brother and Sister Hastings,” tells of meeting Bates at a New York City wharf, en route to a meeting.

“We were very glad to see the old pilgrim once more. He had been able

[83]See The Early Life and Later Experience and Labors of Elder Joseph Bates, edited by James White, p. 311.

[84]See J. N. Loughborough, The Great Second Advent Movement, pp. 251, 252.

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to leave things comfortable at home, and had two dollars in his pocket. Bro. Chamberlain from Ct. had two for him from Sister Hurlbut, I had one from you, and 50 cents from another sister, in all made $5.50 which brought him to the meeting.”—Letter, dated August 26, 1848.

3. Mrs. White’s Statements Allegedly Supporting Bates

What, specifically, is the evidence presented to prove that the Whites accepted Bates’s seven-year theory? Two statements by Mrs. White are presented. The first is this:

“I saw some, looking too far off for the coming of the Lord. Time has continued on a few years longer than they expected, therefore they think it may continue a few years more, and in this way their minds are being led from present truth, out after the world. In these things I saw great danger; for if the mind is filled with other things, present truth is shut out, and there is no place in our foreheads for the seal of the living God. This seal is the Sabbath. I saw that the time for Jesus to be in the most holy place was nearly finished, and that time can last but a very little longer; and what leisure time we have should be spent in searching the Bible, which is to judge us in the last days.”

The critic comments thus on Mrs. White’s words: “Here is a ‘vision’ given September, 1850, about one year before the seven years were to end.” Obviously the date of this quotation is important. Bates set forth his seven-year view in 1850. If Mrs. White is to be quoted to show that she had accepted Bates’s View, her statement could not be earlier than 1850.

Fictitious Date Needed to Support Charge

We are unable to discover what is the ground for the statement that Mrs. White wrote the foregoing in “September, 1850.” But this we do know, that these words of hers were printed not later than January 31, 1849! On that date there was published a broadside entitled To Those Who Are Receiving the Seal of the Living God. This contained, among other statements, the vision quoted above. At the close of the broadside is the name “E. G. White,” and the line “Topsham [Maine], Jan. 31, 1849.” Hence, whatever the reason that prompted Mrs. White to make her statement concerning the nearness of the end of time, that reason was not Bates’s theory. [257]

In commenting further on Mrs. White’s statement, the critic declares: “In September, 1850, she limited the time to ‘a few months,’ ‘time almost finished,’ etc. Note how evidently she relied upon Bates’s seven years.” We ask the reader to look again at the quotation from Mrs. White that we have given—and we have quoted all that the critic quotes in his work, and more. Her statement does not contain the phrase, “a few months.” Just why the critic declares that she used this phrase in this particular passage will become evident when we examine, now, the second statement by her which is supposed to show that she accepted Bates’s seven-year theory.

Mrs. White’s Second Statement Supposedly Supporting Bates

“In a view given June 27, 1850, my accompanying angel said, ‘Time is almost finished. Do you reflect the lovely image of Jesus as you should?’ Then I was pointed to the earth, and saw that there would have to be a getting ready among those who have of late embraced the third angel’s message. Said the angel, ‘Get ready, get ready, get ready. Ye will have to die a greater death to the world than ye have ever yet died.’ I saw that there was a great work to do for them, and but little time in which to do it.”—Early Writings, 64.

“Some of us have had time to get the truth, and to advance step by step, and every step we have taken has given us strength to take the next. But now time is almost finished, and what we have been years learning, they will have to learn in a few months. They will also have much to unlearn, and much to learn again.”—Early Writings, 67.

This statement by Mrs. White, which we have quoted at greater length than does the critic, provides the remaining ground for the charge that she accepted Bates’s idea on the seven-year period; in other words, that she was teaching that the end of the world would come in a few months.

But let us look more closely. What proof can be presented that Bates’s pamphlet setting forth his seven-year time period was written in the first half of 1850? No proof at all. None is possible. He might as easily have written it in the last half of the year. But there is no question as to the date when Mrs. White made the statement just quoted from her, namely, June 27, 1850. [258] Second, Mrs. White does not declare that Christ will come “in a few months,” but that “what we have been years learning, they will have to learn in a few months.”

It is now evident why the critic from whom we quoted wished the reader to think that in the first of her two statements she used the key phrase, “a few months.” That first statement speaks only of time, and “that time can last but a very little longer.” Her second statement, now before us, speaks not only of time and the need of readiness in general but also of the time involved in “learning,” that is, learning the truth. If time is short and greater battles against our wily foe, Satan, impend, might it not be necessary for believers more quickly to learn the truth than had formerly been the case? When war is imminent the citizenry have to learn quickly the arts of war and the manual of arms. In our warfare with Satan it is the knowledge of the truth that arms us for battle. The “learning” of it is therefore a most important point, and the time element in the learning of it may be equally important. But to conclude that this is equivalent to declaring that “in a few months” Christ will come is wholly unwarranted.

Her Words in 1854 Explain Key Phrase

Remember that Mrs. White’s words are being interpreted in terms of Bates’s theory, and further, that it is claimed James and Ellen White gave up this time theory “a few months before this seven years ended,” that is, shortly before October, 1851. But what Mrs. White’s critics do not state—and in this instance they are guiltless, because the facts were not available to them—is that in 1854 Mrs. White uses the same phrase, “a few months.” This is in one of her unpublished writings, which is on file in the office of the E. G. White Publications in Washington, D.C. The manuscript is dated “February 12, 1854,” and is entitled “Reproof for Adultery and Neglect of Children.” The manuscript is nearly seven pages long, when put in typewritten form. In the first part of this manuscript is found a vigorous condemnation of a violation of the seventh commandment in a certain church. Some in the particular church had not viewed the matter as gravely as they [259] should. With this as a background, we quote at some length from this 1854 manuscript:

“He has not been willing to bear reproof, but has been ready to rise up in heart and justify self, was rich and increased in goods, had a whole spirit, would get angry, and all this has been nourished and fostered by some of the church. If those who have been in the church for weeks and months have not learned the straightness of the way, and what it is to be Christians, and can not hear all the straight truths of the word of God, it were better that they were cut off from Israel. It is too late in the day to feed with milk. If souls a month or two old in the truth, who are about to enter the time of trouble such as never was, can not hear all the straight truth, or endure the strong meat of the straightness of the way, how will they stand in the day of battle? Truths that we have been years learning must be learned in a few months by those who now embrace the Third Angel’s Message. We had to search and wait the opening of truth, receiving a ray of light here and a ray there, laboring and pleading for God to reveal truth to us. But now the truth is plain; its rays are brought together. The blazing light of truth when it is presented as it should be can be now seen and brought to bear upon the heart. There is no need of milk after souls are convinced of the truth. As soon as the conviction of truth is yielded to and the heart willing the truth should have its effect, the truth will work like leaven, and purify and purge away the passions of the natural heart. It is a disgrace for those who have been in the truth for years to talk of feeding souls who have been months in the truth, upon milk. It shows they know little of the leadings of the Spirit of the Lord, and realize not the time we are living in. Those who embrace the truth now will have to step fast. There will have to be a breaking up of heart before the Lord, a rending of heart, and not the garment.”

Compare this passage with another manuscript statement by Mrs. White, written August 26, 1855. She is here speaking of the labors of her husband when they first began to publish their little paper and to clarify the doctrines that were to become distinctive of Seventh-day Adventists.

“By care and incessant labor and overwhelming anxiety has the work gone on until now the present truth is clear, its evidence by the candid undoubted, and it is easy work now to carry on the paper to what it was a few years ago. The truth is now made so plain that all can see it and embrace it if they will, but it needed much labor to get it out clear as it is, and such hard labor will never have to be performed again to make the truth clear.”—MS. 2, 1855.

In the light of these two manuscript quotations how clear is [260] the meaning of Mrs. White’s statement of June 27, 1850, calling upon believers to learn “in a few months” “what we have been years learning.” It literally took years, at the very first, to gather “a ray of light here and a ray there” before the light was clear and full so that they could see their way. “But now,” says Mrs. White, “the truth is plain; its rays are brought together. The blazing light of truth when it is presented as it should be can be now seen and brought to bear upon the heart. There is no need of milk after souls are convinced of the truth.” Again, “It is a disgrace for those who have been in the truth for years to talk of feeding souls who have been months in the truth, upon milk.” And why? “It shows they know little of the leadings of the Spirit of the Lord, and realize not the time we are living in. Those who embrace the truth now will have to step fast. There will have to be a breaking up of heart before the Lord, a rending of heart, and not the garment.”

Two Points Made Clear

Two points are evident. First, that Mrs. White is using the phrase “in a few months” in relation, specifically, to the time needed for learning the truth. She is not limiting the day of the Lord to a few months ahead. In fact, in her 1854 statement she is not discussing specifically the second coming of Christ, though she does talk of our being “about to enter the time of trouble such as never was,” and of our need “to step fast.” But this general statement about the imminence of troubles ahead is intended only to show why new believers should not continue to feed on “milk” but should in a few months be ready to “endure the strong meat of the straightness of the way.” Otherwise, she inquires, “how will they stand in the day of battle?”

Second, Mrs. White is evidently alluding to certain of Paul’s statements as the basis for her exhortation. These Scriptural statements make the true meaning of her words even more clear. Says Paul, in his letter to the Hebrews:

“Of whom we have many things to say, and hard to be uttered, seeing ye are dull of hearing. For when for the time ye ought to be teachers, ye have need that one teach you again which be the [261] first principles of the oracles of God; and are become such as have need of milk, and not of strong meat. For every one that useth milk is unskilful in the word of righteousness: for he is a babe. But strong meat belongeth to them that are of full age, even those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil.

“Therefore leaving the principles of the doctrine of Christ, let us go on unto perfection; not laying again the foundation of repentance from dead works, and of faith toward God, of the doctrine of baptisms, and of laying on of hands, and of resurrection of the dead, and of eternal judgment. And this will we do, if God permit.” Hebrews 5:11 to 6:3.

These words of Paul, we might add, are followed immediately by his statement about its being “impossible for those who were once enlightened,” “if they shall fall away, to renew them again unto repentance.”

Again, Paul writes to the church at Corinth:

“And I, brethren, could not speak unto you as unto spiritual, but as unto carnal, even as unto babes in Christ. I have fed you with milk, and not with meat: for hitherto ye were not able to bear it, neither yet are ye able. For ye are yet carnal: for whereas there is among you envying, and strife, and divisions, are ye not carnal, and walk as men?” 1 Corinthians 3:1-3.

Place alongside these the statement of Peter:

“For it had been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than, after they have known it, to turn from the holy commandment delivered unto them.” 2 Peter 2:21.

Mrs. White Follows Bible Pattern

Mrs. White’s urgent appeals to believers to make ready for the soon-coming judgments of God simply follow the Bible pattern. When she speaks of time being nearly finished, when she appeals to new believers to learn in a few months the solid truths of the Word, that they may be ready for perilous days just ahead, she is inventing no new form of exhortation. Indeed she virtually borrows [262] the words of Scripture. Listen to Paul speaking again, in his letter to the Hebrews:

“Cast not away therefore your confidence, which hath great recompence of reward. For ye have need of patience, that, after ye have done the will of God, ye might receive the promise. For yet a little while, and he that shall come will come, and will not tarry.” Hebrews 10:35-37.

To the church at Rome, Paul wrote:

“And that, knowing the time, that now it is high time to awake out of sleep: for now is our salvation nearer than when we believed. The night is far spent, the day is at hand: let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armour of light. Let us walk honestly, as in the day; not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying. But put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh, to fulfil the lusts thereof.” Romans 13:11-14.

Paul declares that “the day is at hand” and that “yet a little while, and he that shall come will come, and will not tarry.” Mrs. White uses almost identical language, and besides she writes in the very days that the prophet declared to be “the last days.”

Note, incidentally, that Paul’s appeal to the church at Rome to be in readiness, ends with the command: “But put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh, to fulfil the lusts thereof.” Mrs. White, in her 1854 statement, administered a rebuke to those who were indulging in the “lusts” of the flesh.

She Warns Against Time Setting

According to the charge, she, along with her husband, gave up the seven-year theory a few months before the 1851 autumn date set by some for the Second Advent. But there is no evidence that she ever accepted the theory! We quote, now, from her Camden vision of June 21, 1851,[85] that warns against time setting. This vision is the basis, apparently, of the statement that “a few months

[85]The date and place of this Vision are established by records in the office of the White Publications. This Camden vision is not to be confused with a spurious “Camden Vision” dated June 29, 1851. See Appendix I, p. 615.

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before this seven years ended, Elder White and wife became convinced that this theory had to be given up.” In a four-page Review and Herald Extra, dated July 21, 1851, are found the following two paragraphs from Mrs. White’s pen that describe her Camden vision:

“Dear Brethren: The Lord has shown me that the message of the third angel must go, and be proclaimed to the scattered children of the Lord, and that it should not be hung on time; for time never will be a test again. I saw that some were getting a false excitement arising from preaching time; that the third angel’s message was stronger than time can be. I saw that this message can stand on its own foundation, and that it needs not time to strengthen it, and that it will go in mighty power, and do its work, and will be cut short in righteousness.

“I saw that some were making every thing bend to the time of this next fall—that is, making their calculations in reference to that time. I saw that this was wrong, for this reason: Instead of going to God daily to know their PRESENT duty, they look ahead, and make their calculations as though they knew the work would end this fall, without inquiring their duty of God daily.

“In hope. E. G. WHITE.” (Capitalization hers.)

There is nothing in this statement that suggests that Mrs. White is revising a belief she formerly held. When we remember that the seven-year theory had been set forth only in the preceding year, and when we have considered evidence in the remainder of this chapter as to how narrow were the limits of belief in that theory, there seems nothing strange in the fact that Mrs. White did not speak out against the theory till the summer of 1851.

James White and Time Setting

And now what of James White and the theory? What is the evidence submitted to prove that he thus believed? None!

As already stated in this chapter, the one main publication of the early Sabbathkeeping Adventists, The Present Truth—renamed shortly The Advent Review and Sabbath Herald—contained no article from Bates or anyone else advocating the seven-year theory prior to the printing of Bates’s tract in 1850. Attention was called to this fact because it provided strong presumptive evidence that the theory was not invented before 1850. Now we [264] wish to add that no issue of the Review and Herald, after the publication of Bates’s 1850 tract, contains any article advocating the theory. Yet James White, who is alleged to have believed the theory, was the editor! And the theory dealt with the most momentous theme imaginable! Not only did he not write a line in support of it; he did not admit to the columns of the paper any article supporting it. And remember, these Sabbathkeeping Adventists had only this one journal that could rightly be described as the exponent of whatever collective views the group held. A tract published by an individual among them might, or might not, represent the views of others.

James White made one definite statement on the theory, in the The Review and Herald, August 19, 1851. His editorial, entitled “Our Present Work,” is long, and is devoted particularly to a discussion of “The Time,” as the editor says in a subhead introduction. This phrase, “The Time,” has a distinctive quality in early Adventist literature, and means, “The time element in relation to the doctrine of the second advent of Christ.” Here is how he opens his discussion under that subhead:

“It is well known that some of the brethren have been teaching that the great work of salvation for the remnant, through the intercession of our Great High Priest, would close in seven years from the termination of the 2300 days, in the autumn of 1844. Some who have thus taught we esteem very highly, and love ‘fervently’ as brethren, and we feel that it becomes us to be slow to say anything to hurt their feelings; yet we cannot refrain from giving some reasons why we do not receive the time.”—Page 13.

Six Reasons Against Seven-Year Theory

James White sets forth six reasons against the seven-year theory. We abridge them as follows:

“1. The proof presented has not been sufficient.... As we have not been interested in this time, only as we have feared its bad result, perhaps we are not prepared to judge of the amount of evidence in favor of the seven-years time; but if there is proof in favor of it, we confess that we have not been able to see it....

“2. The message of the third angel does not hang on time. Time is not in the least connected with it.... [265]

“3. We are now emphatically in the waiting time, in the time of the ‘patience of the saints.’ ...

“4. Our present position relative to the truths connected with the third message, is based on positive testimony, and is stronger than time can be, or ever has been....

“5. If it is the purpose of God that time should be embraced we think the brethren generally would be called up to it.—But as far as we have been able to learn, it has not been received only where those who teach it have traveled, and presented it as a subject of importance....

“6. To embrace and proclaim a time that will pass by, would have a withering influence upon the faith of those who should embrace and teach it, and we fear would overthrow the faith of some. What we have witnessed, for more than six years past, of the sad results of setting different times, should teach us a lesson on this point. These are some of the reasons why we do not embrace the seven-years time.”—Ibid.

This was written in 1851. Bates presented his view in 1850. Thus the theory had been in circulation for approximately a year. Now listen to James White’s summarization, in the paragraph that follows immediately after his listing of the six reasons against the theory:

“It has been our humble view for the past year that the proclamation of the time was no part of our present work. We do not see time in the present message; we see no necessity for it, and we do not see the hand of the Lord in it. And we have felt it to be our duty to let the brethren know that we have no part in the present movement on time.”—Ibid.

How could he more clearly state that he not only did not at any time accept the theory, but that he vigorously opposed it?

How Widespread Was the Theory?

We can better understand why James White made only one statement of his position on this theory, when we read the brief report entitled “Oswego [N.Y.] Conference.” A paragraph that tells of the “principal subjects presented,” says:

“The subject of the seven-years time was not mentioned. In fact, we know of no one in this State, or in the west, who teaches it. Some may suppose from our remarks in [Review and Herald] No. 2 [August 19, 1851, quoted above], that the seven-years time is held by quite a large portion of the brethren; but it is not so. The view has been mostly confined to the state [266] of Vermont, and we learn by Bro. Holt that most of the brethren there have given it up.”—The Review and Herald, September 16, 1851, p. 32.

These are the only references to the theory that we have found in the Review and Herald. How different the whole picture looks in the light of these two quotations. The critics of Mrs. White have dogmatically declared that she and her husband accepted Bates’s view on time, and have gone on from that to make sweeping statements to the effect that the whole company of early Seventh-day Adventists were thus deluded. It was imperative that such a picture be painted of Adventists in general, and Mrs. White in particular, in order to give plausibility to the charge of suppression that is next brought against her. But the picture stands revealed as a caricature of early Seventh-day Adventists in general, and as absolutely false of James and Ellen White in particular. [267]

Chapter 17—Did Mrs. White Suppress Some of Her Writings?

Charge: This charge may be divided into eight parts:

1. That the belief in the “shut door” and the belief in Bates’s “seven-years” period were interlocked, and that the abandonment of one necessitated the abandonment of the other.

2. That “a few months before this seven years ended, Elder White and his wife became convinced that this [seven year] theory had to be given up.” Therefore they promptly set out in the summer of 1851 to suppress earlier publications that taught the shut door and the seven-year theory.

3. That they suppressed A Word to the “Little Flock” and Present Truth and started a new paper called The Advent Review and Sabbath Herald.

4. a. That they published, “in August, 1851,” a sixty-four-page pamphlet, Experience and Views, which, though drawn almost wholly from A Word to the “Little Flock” and Present Truth, makes no mention of them.

b. That certain passages that teach the shut door were deleted from the visions as reprinted in Experience and Views.

5. That Mrs. White’s work Experience and Views was allowed to go out of print to conceal abandoned shut-door teachings.

6. That when Mrs. White’s Early Writings was published in 1882, a further attempt was made to conceal the earliest publications:

a. In a statement by George I. Butler.

b. In the wording of the preface.

7. That Uriah Smith, long the editor of the Review and Herald, made damaging admissions which support the charge that these earliest publications were suppressed.

8. That when the particular deletions made in Mrs. White’s earliest writings are examined, they provide proof positive that she wished to suppress abandoned teachings, very particularly her teachings on the shut-door and seven-year theory.

1. Interlocking of Two Theories

There is no evidence to support the prime charge—so vital to the whole argument—that the shut-door view and the seven-year theory were interlocked. On the contrary, the facts already [268] presented reveal that these two views were not. James White believed in the shut door, but refused to believe in the seven-year theory. Hence the alleged abandonment of one did not require the abandonment of the other.

2. Elder and Mrs. White’s Relation to Seven-Year Theory

No proof is presented that Elder and Mrs. White “became convinced” that the seven-year theory had to be given up. They never accepted it, and thus never wrote in behalf of it. Therefore, what would there be to suppress concerning it?

Further, there is no proof that James White suddenly changed his view on the shut-door in the summer of 1851. Nor have the critics even attempted to provide proof. The evidence is clear that he had not really abandoned the shut-door view in the summer of 1851—but more on this point later. Then just what would be the motive for suppressing certain early documents in that allegedly significant summer of 1851?

3. The “Suppression” of Two Publications

Simple dates in the calendar disprove the claim that the Advent Review and Sabbath Herald—known briefly as the Review and Herald—was launched because certain theories had been abandoned. The theories are said to have been repudiated in the summer of 1851. The Review began publication in November, 1850!

The documentary evidence is clear that the Review was not published to suppress anything that had gone before. Note these facts:

a. The last issue of Present Truth was published in November, 1850. The first issue of the Review followed immediately in that same month and was sent out to the same readers. The first issue contained an editorial note, which read in part: “We hope to be able to send you this enlarged size of the paper quite often.”—Review and Herald, vol. 1, no. 1, p. 7. This is not one publication suppressing another, but one simply continuing the other, and in expanded form. The new title probably reflected the name Advent [269] Review, which had been used to designate several issues of a little paper that James White had helped to publish in 1850.

b. In that first issue of the Review and Herald, under the title “Publications,” is listed Present Truth! There were some back copies left. The editor wanted these circulated—not suppressed!

c. An Extra of the Review, published July 21, 1851, contains an article which the editor states “was written in 1847, and published in a tract, entitled ‘A Word to the Little Flock.’”—Page 4. That was eight months after the launching of the Review, which was allegedly started, not simply to supplant, but to suppress this little tract, so that even the memory of it might be forgotten!

d. How could the Review have been launched to conceal the seven-year theory, when the Review, as we discovered, is the only one of the three publications that even mentions it? Or how could it have been launched to conceal the shut-door theory, so freely discussed in Present Truth and A Word to the “Little Flock,“ when the Review simply continued the discussion?

e. In the first volume of her Testimonies for the Church, Mrs. White relates the story of the founding of Present Truth, and adds: “In 1850 it was issued at Paris, Maine. Here it was enlarged, and its name changed to that which it now bears, The Advent Review and Sabbath Herald.”—Page 89. That was written about 1884, or thirty-four years after the Review is supposed to have been launched so that even the memory of Present Truth might be forgotten! If Present Truth contained embarrassing teachings, why mention it at that late date! People might begin hunting for copies of it!

4. The Publication of “Experience and Views”

a. There is supposed to be proof of suppression in the fact that Present Truth and A Word to the “Little Flock”—both of which discuss the shut door—are not mentioned in Experience and Views, though most of the material is reprinted from them. We think our readers will conclude that the discussion under Number 3 makes this “proof” quite pointless. In preparing a book [270] a publisher does nothing unusual, nothing dark or questionable, in drawing material from a tract and from articles in different issues of a journal, without referring to the fact that the author’s material had earlier appeared in other publications.

b. When Experience and Views was published, critics also noted that there were deletions from certain of the visions there reprinted, and that some of these deletions at least apparently dealt with the shut-door doctrine. Here, said they, is double proof that a methodical endeavor has been made to suppress every trace of the no-more-mercy-for-sinners doctrine that Adventists abandoned in 1851. That this “proof” was being vigorously presented in the 1860’s is revealed by Uriah Smith’s rejoinder in the The Review and Herald, July 31, 1866, pages 65-67.

The worthlessness of this “proof” will become evident as the examination of the charges is continued.

5. “Experience and Views” Out of Print

The book Experience and Views, published in 1851, and the Supplement, published in 1854, went out of print in a relatively few years. Immediately the cry was again raised, “Suppression.” The mere fact that they were out of print is supposed to be all the proof required to support the charge. According to the critics of the time the book was “suppressed” because we “had become ashamed of it,” and “dare not publish it.”[86] And of course the occasion for our being “ashamed” would be primarily because of shut-door doctrine in it. That is the prime reason offered for our “suppressing” any of our early literature.

Obviously, charges 4 and 5 are contradictory. It is because we are listing the whole long record of “suppression” charges through the years that their contradictory quality appears. While later critics generally focus on 1851, when Experience and Views was published, as the date when suppression took place, earlier critics

[86]The charge evidently was first given general circulation in a tract published by two ex-Adventists, Snook and Brinkerhoof, in 1866; and then repeated by an H. E. Carver, in an 1870 tract. We have not been able to find copies of these tracts, and must rely for our statements on a discussion of their arguments that is found in the Review and Herald. See Supplement, August 14, 1883. This Supplement was published to answer certain charges regarding Mrs. White, particularly the charge of suppression.

[271]

argued that this 1851 work had so far failed to suppress abandoned views that it was finally allowed to go out of circulation!

6. Publication of “Early Writings”

In 1882 there came from the Seventh-day Adventist presses a book bearing on its outside cover the title Early Writings. The contents consists of a reprint of the following:

a. The 1851, sixty-four-page pamphlet Experience and Views, to which is added a four-page appendix of new material. (See Early Writings, current edition, pp. 78-83.)

b. The forty-eight-page 1854, Supplement to ...Experience and Views.

c. Spiritual Gifts, volume 1, that had originally appeared in 1858.

The title page reads thus:

EARLY WRITINGS OF MRS. WHITE. EXPERIENCE AND VIEWS, AND SPIRITUAL GIFTS, VOLUME ONE, BY MRS. E. G. WHITE SECOND EDITION Review and Herald: Battle Creek, Mich. Pacific Press: Oakland, Cal. 1882.

Each of the three parts of this edition of Early Writings is separately paged. The first two parts—Experience and Views and the Supplement—are introduced by a “Publishers’ Preface.” We quote it in full, because certain statements in it are the basis for grave charges by critics.

“The second edition of this little book appears in response to a long-standing wish, expressed by many, that it be published. ‘Experience and Views’ was first published in 1851, and all who were acquainted with the experience and labors of the author, as well as those especially interested in [272] the cause in which she labored, supplied themselves therewith. But as the cause was young, only a small edition had been printed, and after a few years it was all sold. Other books were printed treating more fully many of the subjects presented in this, and it was not supposed that there would be a sufficient demand for this book to warrant its republication. As, however, the labors of Mrs. White have become more public and extended, a widespread interest has arisen in all her works, especially in these earlier views, and the call for the publication of a second edition has thus become imperative.

“For the above reason we are happy to present this book to the public at this time; and for still another reason we take peculiar pleasure in its republication. Our opponents have been wont to make loud claims that there was a desire and an ‘attempt to suppress these views, because the work has been so long out of print. The presence of this book will be a sufficient refutation of the groundless charge.

“Foot notes giving dates and explanations, and an appendix giving two very interesting dreams, which were mentioned but not related in the original work, will add to the value of this edition. Aside from these, no changes from the original work have been made in the present edition, except the occasional employment of a new word, or a change in the construction of a sentence, to better express the idea, and no portion of the work has been omitted. No shadow of change has been made in any idea or sentiment of the original work, and the verbal changes have been made under the author’s own eye, and with her full approval.—PUBLISHERS.”—Pages iii, iv.

This publishers’ preface is followed immediately by the preface which James White wrote in “August, 1851” for Experience and Views. The publishers entitled it “Preface to First Edition.”

The third section of Early Writings—Spiritual Gifts, Volume One—is introduced by a “Publishers’ Preface,” which reads in part, as follows:

“Volume one of ‘Spiritual Gifts,’ first published in 1858, has for some time been out of print, for the following reasons: Mrs. White’s views on the subjects here presented have since been more complete and full than at the time when this book was first printed. Many of these later views are written out and published in the new series entitled ‘Spirit of Prophecy,’ which was designed to take the place of the previous volumes. But it is now thought best to republish this, as here presented, for the reason that many desire to have the matter in this condensed form, and also because the range of subjects is much wider than has yet been presented in the volumes of ‘Spirit of Prophecy.’” [273]

George I. Butler’s Statement

When Early Writings was published, George I. Butler, president of the General Conference, wrote an article in which he mistakenly declared that the book contained “the very first of the published writings of sister White.”—The Review and Herald, December 26, 1882, p. 792. A critic quickly took hold of this and charged that Butler claimed that Early Writings contained “all her early visions.”

Butler corrected his error of statement in an article in which he said in part:

“We want the reader distinctly to notice that we did not claim [in the The Review and Herald, December 26, 1882] that Early Writings contained ‘all her early visions,’ as Mr.------tries to make us say. This we have never said. We did suppose, however, at the time, that ‘Experience and Views,’ and the ‘Supplement’ to the same, contained her earliest ‘published writings,’ but were mistaken. There is quite a difference between this and what Mr.------undertakes to make me say, that the book in question contains ‘all her early writings.’ I stated in that article that many of our people ‘desired to have in their possession all she had written,’ and that this republication of ‘Experience and Views’ and ‘Supplement’ was undertaken because of this desire, but did not say this comprehended all she had written in the early part of this work, or that they were ‘all now republished,’ as he says.”—Review and Herald Supplement, Aug. 14, 1883, p. 4.

The Charge Regarding “Early Writings”

The charge of suppression in relation to the publication of Early Writings is in two parts:

a. In the words of the most prominent critic, whose ideas all others seem to have copied: “Early Writings,’ published in 1882, claims to contain all the early writings of Mrs. White, with ‘not a word omitted.’ ... But they [the omitted passages] are not [included]. Why were they suppressed?”

b. Early Writings, 1882, carries the line, “second edition,” and reprints James White’s preface to Experience and Views, 1851, under the title, “Preface to the First Edition.” This is false, continue the critics. The first edition of Mrs. White’s writings was A Word to the “Little Flock,“ 1847. But no reference is made [274] to this edition because Adventist leaders do not wish their members to know of this true first edition, which contains abandoned teachings.

The “Early Writings” Charges Answered

The answer can be brief and direct:

a. The publishers of Early Writings in 1882 did not claim that it contained all of Mrs. White’s early writings. Instead, they stated in the preface that they were publishing a “second edition” of a certain “little book,” entitled Experience and Views, which, they added, was “first published in 1851.” No statement could be more accurate. Hence James White’s preface to the 1851 edition could only be decribed by them as “Preface to first edition.” And all of this “first edition” is faithfully reprinted in 1882, as the publishers declared. There is nothing in the 1882 Preface that suggests that Early Writings contains all of her early writings. Instead, the publishers specifically state which of her early writings they are reprinting. The plausibility of this whole charge disappears when it is laid alongside the text of the 1882 Preface.

b. In the light of these facts the question as to what should be considered the true first edition of Mrs. White’s writings really becomes irrelevant. But since the critics claim that the 1847 tract, A Word to the “Little Flock,“ was the first edition of Mrs. White’s writings, let us give the facts that bear on this claim. The tract opens with an explanatory note regarding its contents, which we quote in part:

“The following articles were written for the Day-Dawn, which has been published at Canandaigua, New York, by O. R. L. Crosier. But as that paper is not now published, and as we do not know as it will be published again, it is thought best by some of us in Maine, to have them given in this form.”—Page 1.

Contents of 1847 Tract

The note is signed “James White.” In this tract, as has been elsewhere noted, are two of Mrs. White’s visions and a letter of hers to Eli Curtis, which occupy about eight pages. There is a page [275] by Bates. The remaining fifteen pages are filled with James White’s material. He apparently believed, and rightly so, that the tract was primarily from his pen, for he signed his name at the close. When he said that “the following articles were written for the Day-Dawn” he could hardly have had in mind Mrs. White’s two visions. They had both been published shortly before—and doubtless were still available—one of them in the Day-Star and on a broadside, the other simply on a broadside. The occasion for the twenty-four-page tract, therefore, was not really to publish Mrs. White’s writings, but certain “articles” that he had written, though he might appropriately include two visions of hers, plus her letter to Curtis, and remarks by Bates. Why should James White, poverty stricken, go to the expense of bringing out an “edition” of Mrs. White’s writings when the really vital part of those writings that he did publish in the tract—the two visions—was already in print?

No book publisher would think of describing A Word to the “Little Flock” as the first edition, or any edition, of Mrs. White’s writings. But all book publishers would agree that if a book first published in 1851 is reprinted in 1882, the latter should be described as the “second edition.” Which is another way of saying that the 1851 edition should be properly described as the “first edition.”

The Charge Narrowed Down

The republication of Experience and Views in 1882 silenced the charge of suppression that had been raised when it went out of print about 1860. The explanation that Experience and Views did not claim to contain all Mrs. White’s earliest writings, took the edge off the charge that certain unpublished writings were suppressed when Early Writings was published. The critics therefore have narrowed down their charge to this:

When the text of two of Mrs. White’s visions, as published in Experience and Views, is compared with the text of their earlier appearance in A Word to the “Little Flock,“ it is found that there are some omissions. These deletions, it is charged, can be explained only as evidence of a desire to suppress abandoned beliefs. [276]

And how was this charge met by Butler and the publishers of Early Writings? By the prompt publication of these two visions in undeleted form as a twelve-page tract entitled To the Remnant Scattered Abroad. The tract was advertised at “3 cts. a copy.”—The Review and Herald, August 28, 1883, p. 560.

7. Uriah Smith’s Statement

Uriah Smith joined the staff of the Review in the early 1850’s. Canright, who left the Seventh-day Adventist ministry in 1887, stated that in 1883 he received a letter from Smith in which Smith declared that he had not seen a copy of A Word to the “Little Flock” since the 1850’s. This is supposed to show how effectively the little tract had been suppressed—not even the editor had seen a copy in about thirty years.

Reference to the files of the Review reveals that in 1866 Smith ran a series entitled “The Visions—Objections Answered.” In it are found several references to this tract in terms of specific pages and quotations. For example, in the issue of July 31, 1866, he comments thus on the source of a quotation: “This is based on language found in Word to the Little Flock, p. 19, as follows.” Then he gives the text of the passage. Further in this July 31 issue he says: “Those who have the Word to the Little Flock, and can read it for themselves, will notice ...” An editor would not speak thus to his subscribers if he had any reason to think that the tract had disappeared or been suppressed.

Undependability of Memory

Smith is supposed to have been in such darkness regarding early documents that he did not even know that Experience and Views, published in 1851, was not a full reprint of everything written previously by Mrs. White. Again let us refer to his Review article of July 31, 1866, in which (p. 66) he quotes a passage from the tract, A Word to the “Little Flock,“ giving page number, and then adds: “This is omitted on page 10 of Experience and Views.”

Whether Smith did, or did not, write a letter to a certain critic [277] in 1883 is really beside the point. The files of the Review reveal that he was well acquainted with the tract and its relation to Experience and Views. Smith was an honest man. If he wrote the letter, and he may have, it is a choice exhibit of how the best of men can have the worst of memories at times. Seventeen years can blur the memory of incidents for most people.

Incidentally, Smith’s series in the 1866 Reviews was later placed in book form, thus becoming a source of permanent reference in Adventist homes. And the president of the publishing house at that time was James White, who is supposed to have set out, long before, on a campaign to suppress even the mention of the tract!

8. Those Deleted Passages

We think the evidence permits the conclusion that no effort was made by James White or by other church leaders through the years to suppress early documents containing Mrs. White’s writings. It is a fact, however, that some of her early writings were not reprinted in later years. It is also a fact that some of the early writings that have been reprinted through the years have had sentences and even paragraphs deleted from them and other revisions made.

The critics declare that if Mrs. White received inspired messages, those messages, without any deletions, should have been preserved. And consistently, if it is wrong to fail to reprint a certain sentence or paragraph from a message, how much worse to fail to reprint the particular message itself.

Thus the problem before us may be considered in terms of two questions:

a. May a true prophet revise or delete or perhaps even not preserve his God-given messages?

b. And if it is proper for a prophet to do so, were Mrs. White’s revisions, deletions, et cetera, in harmony with the kind of changes made by Bible prophets; or did she make changes with an evil intent to deceive and conceal?

What does the Bible reveal concerning the messages of the prophets? [278]

The Messages of Ancient Prophets

a. Their inspired messages were often given only orally. Hence there was no preservation of these messages.

b. A message delivered orally was not always presented in identical language to different audiences. This is evident from the brief transcripts that have been preserved. And when more than one inspired scribe has preserved an account of a heaven-born message, the scribes may vary the account, all of them together giving only a small fraction of what was said. Note the variations in the reports on Christ’s words as found in the four Gospels. Note again Luke’s report of how Paul related a certain experience to three different groups, as recorded in Acts, chapters 9, 22, 26. Probably Paul stressed different aspects of the narrative to fit different audiences, a most reasonable procedure, we all agree.

c. There is nothing in the Bible to suggest that God expected His prophets to put all their inspired messages finally in written form, which is the only way they could be preserved for the edification of men.

d. God did not see fit even to have preserved the messages of some prophets who had put their words on parchment. See, for example, 1 Chronicles 29:29, and 2 Chronicles 9:29. Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians—see 1 Corinthians 5:9—was not preserved. What Bible translators and editors call his first epistle is really his second.

But perhaps the critics would reply that the Bible prophets may not have had the opportunity to preserve their words, or that God Himself did not see fit to preserve them, and that that was different from Mrs. White’s taking the initiative in dropping out certain of her writings, or parts of them. But is mankind any less deprived of the messages by the former situation than by the latter? And is not the only purpose in preserving the writings the edifying of those who might later read? Furthermore, inasmuch as God has not seen fit to preserve much of the messages that prophets have given, might He not have enlightened the prophets as to which parts should be set down for permanent record? Might He not have enlightened Mrs. White? [279]

e. Prophets have added to their messages when writing them a second time. Jeremiah dictated to his secretary, Baruch, a message for king Jehoiakim. But the king threw the scroll in the fire. Then the Lord instructed Jeremiah to take another roll “and write in it all the former words that were in the first roll.” But the record adds that not only were the words of the first roll reproduced, but “there were added besides unto them many like words.” Evidently the changed condition called for an addition to the first message. If God enlightened Jeremiah to make an addition to a written message, might He not enlighten Mrs. White similarly?

Lovers of the Bible find no difficulty with this portrayal of the varied ways in which inspired messages are brought to men, how they are varied, and how they are preserved or not preserved. Why should we? We do not question God or the prophets. How do we know what liberty God gives to prophets? Who are we to say whether a prophet, who proceeds under divine guidance, should add to or subtract from a message he had given at a particular time and place, before he again gives that message? The facts are that we know very little about the mysterious relation that God sustains to His prophets.

This whole matter of revisions, deletions, or additions is certainly of more practical significance in our modern age of printing than it ever could have been before. Today it is a matter of editions of books, and sometimes the books are to reach widely different groups.

The Key Question Answered

It is evident that Mrs. White had a Scriptural precedent for making changes and deletions. We come, thus, to the key question: Were the changes that she made in her writings consistent with the procedure of Bible prophets, or did she follow an evil course in an endeavor to destroy the evidence that she had formerly believed certain views?

Remember, it is charged that her motive in deletions was specifically to hide a discarded belief in the shut-door and the seven-year theory, and that the change of belief came in the [280] summer of 1851. Following are facts, which, we think, provide a clear answer to this key question:

a. The Review and Herald continued to present the shut-door theory beyond the summer of 1851, certainly beyond the time when Mrs. White made the deletions from her first vision, which deletions constitute the key exhibit in the charge. If she and her husband were scheming in unison, why should she suppress her abandoned view ahead of him? In the Extra of the The Review and Herald, July 21, 1851, is found her first printing of the first vision with the deletions in question. But that same issue contains a report by James White on a tour he made in New York State. He speaks of meeting, among others, an Elder Jesse Thompson, and adds:

“Bro. Thompson was intimately acquainted with Bro. Miller, and traveled much with him. But when our work for the world closed in 1844, instead of setting himself to work, as some did, to try to re-arouse the churches to the subject of the Advent, he remained silent, until he heard the message of the third angel.”—Page 3.

“When our work for the world closed in 1844.” Upon finding language like this in the years before 1851 critics declare in unison: This is shut-door doctrine, clear and explicit. But James White is supposed to have abandoned, suddenly, all shut-door belief right at this time, and that is given as the reason why certain deletions were made in Mrs. White’s earliest visions. Yet the documentary evidence reveals that in the same issue of the Review that prints for the first time her earliest visions with deletions, James White used language that is identical with his shut-door language of earlier years. Hence, taking the very premises of these critics we must conclude that whatever her motive for the deletion, that motive was not a desire to conceal allegedly abandoned views on the shut door.

b. James and Ellen White are pictured as having done such a thorough job of eliminating all traces of evidence that they once held the shut-door view that they did away with certain early publications. But when they brought out Experience and Views in 1851, they left in statements that appear to teach the shut door [281] as definitely as any of the deleted passages. It is this fact that caused critics in the 1860’s, when Experience and Views had gone out of print, to charge that we feared to reprint it because it contained discarded views. But this little book was reprinted in 1882 as a section of Early Writings, a work still current. More on this point at the close of the chapter.

Surely all this adds up to only one possible conclusion: The deletions made in certain early visions cannot be explained as illustrations of an evil endeavor to hide an abandoned view.

c. It is alleged that a program of suppression was carried on, not simply to hide a formerly held belief in the shut-door, but also to hide a belief in the seven-year theory. But the only two passages in Mrs. White’s writings that critics have even attempted to interpret as supporting that theory are passages that have appeared undeleted to the present day. Yet she was supposed to have given up the theory in 1851—though the evidence reveals that she never held it—and to have taken most sweeping steps to do away with the evidence of her former belief.

d. There are other deletions besides those that appear to deal with the shut door. But we are unable to find much reference to them in the charges of critics, except the blanket charge that a prophet should never withdraw anything once uttered. The reason they make no particular case out of most of these other deletions is that they can discover no semblance of sinister motive for the eliminations. In the absence of evidence for such motive the reasonable conclusion is that she must have had an honorable reason for what she did. But this reasonable conclusion is fatal to the charge before us. Once we have proved that there is nothing necessarily wicked in making a deletion, we place upon the critics the heavy responsibility of proving that a certain few deletions were made with evil intent.

The Honorable Motives for Deletions

The foregoing, it seems to us, provide ample proof that deletions in Mrs. White’s early writings ought not, to be explained in terms of the grave charge before us. This frees us to look for [282] honorable motives, which are not difficult to find. Consider these facts:

a. Deletions may be made to save expense. The pioneers were pathetically poor. They really had no money with which to print, except as they took it from funds that should have been used to provide food and clothing. It was in those darkest days there came from the press the sixty-four-page pamphlet entitled A Sketch of the Christian Experience and Views of Ellen G. White, a name we shorten to Experience and Views. The printing of this was the first endeavor to gather into one publication a real collection of Mrs. White’s earliest writings. And it is the text of some of her visions as given in this pamphlet that has drawn most of the fire from critics regarding deletions.

The range and the purpose of this pamphlet is clearly stated by Mrs. White in the opening paragraph. She says:

“By the request of dear friends I have consented to give a brief sketch of my experience and views, with the hope that it will cheer and strengthen the humble, trusting children of the Lord.”—Page 3.

Note that phrase: “a brief sketch of my experience and views.” While any publisher would describe this sixty-four-page pamphlet as the first edition, or more accurately, the first collection, of her writings, no publisher, indeed no one who allows an author’s words to have their ordinary meaning, would conclude that this first edition contained all that the author had written up to that time. A “brief sketch” is something far short of a complete presentation of an author’s writings.

The First Cry of Suppression

This may seem like stressing the obvious, but the facts are that this pamphlet, when published, soon became the occasion of questioning by some of the Sabbathkeeping group. They were in distress because “some visions were not included” in this pamphlet. They were in such distress that they “groaned and wept” and publicly spoke of “their losing confidence in the work.” Now, let Mrs. White continue the narrative: [283]

“My husband handed the little pamphlet to Elder Hart, and requested him to read what was printed on the title page. ‘A SKETCH of the Christian Experience and Views of Mrs. E. G. White,’ he read.

“For a moment there was silence, and then my husband explained that we had been very short of means, and were able to print at first only a small pamphlet, and he promised the brethren that when sufficient means was raised, the visions should be published more fully in book form.”—Letter 225, 1906.

This explanation, coupled with the realization that the word “sketch” indicates a less than complete presentation, allayed the fears of the brethren and resulted in a request for forgiveness for their criticisms and for their fears that “you were concealing from us some of the light we ought to have.”

Deletions to Avoid Repetition

b. The longer an author writes on related themes the more likely he is to repeat certain ideas. This is inevitable. That Mrs. White did so is no strange thing.

And how would a prophet or anyone else remove repetitions? By deletions! Now listen to Mrs. White’s own explanation for her earliest deletions in the text of a vision, her first vision. We quote her words prefacing this vision as it appeared in the Review and Herald Extra, July 21, 1851:

“Here I will give the view that was first published in 1846. In this view I saw only a very few of the events of the future. More recent views have been more full. I shall therefore leave out a portion and prevent repetition.”

It was the very fact that the substance of all the teachings in deleted passages, or in visions not reprinted, is found in some variant form in current works that largely explains why no complete text of her earliest writings has been available through the years. Critics have insisted that we dare not publish them, that such publication would wreck the faith of younger ministers and shake the church to pieces. But these extravagant claims are no longer heard. All the issues of Present Truth, and A Word to the “Little Flock,“ that were supposed to have been suppressed, have been reproduced in facsimile, plus other early works. Thousands of copies have been sold to ministers and laity. And nothing explosive [284] has happened! Why should it? What the church read in these reproduced writings of Mrs. White was simply a variant of what they had been reading for long years in her current books!

Reasoning to Opposite Conclusions

To this key fact we shall let the critics themselves testify. Canright, in an extended work against Mrs. White, comes to the climax of his quotations from her that are supposed to prove that she taught the shut-door doctrine of no more mercy for sinners, and declares:

“Hear her once more on this subject. After Jesus left the Holy Place, she says: ‘I did not see one ray of light pass from Jesus to the careless multitude after he arose, and they were left in perfect darkness.... Satan appeared to be by the throne trying to carry on the work of God. I saw them look up to the throne and pray, “Father, give us thy spirit;” then Satan would breathe upon them an unholy influence.’ Early Writings, 55, 56; ed. 1907.

“Her teaching here is as clear as day—not one ray of light comes to sinners since 1844, but all are left to the devil! What is the use of Adventists denying that she taught this doctrine? She certainly did teach it.” (Deletion after “darkness,” by Canright.)

Canright is quoting from the 1907 edition of Early Writings, which is the current one![87] In the next chapter of his book he discusses, under the title, Damaging Writings Suppressed,” certain passages that have been deleted from Mrs. White’s earliest writings and declares that these deletions were made to hide the doctrine of the shut door that she allegedly abandoned in 1851. Now his climactic proof “that she taught this doctrine,” is, as we have noted, the quotation from the 1907 Early Writings. But this was not deleted; instead, it steadily receives wider and wider circulation through the promotion efforts of the Seventh-day Adventist publishing houses that sell Early Writings!

By the singular logic of this critic, so confidently relied upon by those who have followed him, we may reason ourselves into one or the other of two opposite conclusions by taking one or the other of two emphatic declarations made by him:

[87]The text of Early Writings has remained unchanged since it was first published in 1882. The difference in the editions is chiefly in the paging.

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1. We may start with his statement that Mrs. White is teaching the shut door in this quotation from the currently available Early Writings, and thus reach the conclusion that she never abandoned that doctrine and hence never suppressed the fact that she taught it.

2. Or we may start with his statement that she did abandon the shut-door doctrine in 1851, methodically suppressing every former reference to it—even to doing away with A Word to the “Little Flock” and Present Truth—and thus reach the conclusion that her words in Early Writings obviously cannot teach the shut-door doctrine.

To this dilemma and absurdity do we come when we pursue the suppression charge to its logical, or rather illogical, end.

NOTE: Those who wish to make a detailed study of all the deletions in Mrs. White’s earliest writings are referred to Appendix J, p. 619. See also Appendix F, p. 586, for Mrs. White’s own explanation of certain deletions. [286]

Chapter 18—The Image Beast and 666

Charge: When Mrs. White had a vision in 1847 she believed, and thus wrote, that the image beast of Revelation 13 had a number, and that the number was made up at that time. She thus reflected the current view of the Seventh-day Adventists, who held that the image beast was apostate Protestantism, and that the “666” represented the total number of sects that constituted Protestantism. When she reprinted this vision in 1851, in Experience and Views, she struck out the passage from her vision that discussed the image beast and his number. This was because she had then abandoned her earlier view—presumably because others had abandoned it.

The vision was first printed April 7, 1847,[88] and the later deleted passage reads as follows:

“I saw all that ‘would not receive the mark of the Beast, and of his Image, in their foreheads or in their hands,’ could not buy or sell. I saw that the number (666) of the Image Beast was made up; and that it was the beast that changed the Sabbath, and the Image Beast had followed on after, and kept the Pope’s, and not God’s Sabbath. And all we were required to do, was to give up God’s Sabbath, and keep the Pope’s and then we should have the mark of the Beast, and of his Image.”

In the charge before us we have the same line of reasoning that is found in the charges on the shut door and suppression: Mrs. White is alleged to have taught certain views because they were currently held, and then to have abandoned them when those about her changed their theology. We have discovered how untenable is this charge and its supporting arguments when applied to the doctrines of the shut-door and the seven-year theory. Let us examine the charge in its present application.

The first fact to keep in mind is that there was no such thing as a clearly defined Seventh-day Adventist theology in the years immediately following 1844. Because one of the Sabbathkeeping

[88]See Appendix D, p. 578, for the text of this vision.

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pioneers believed thus and so on a particular scripture or prophecy, does not warrant the conclusion that that was the view held by all. Even though these pioneers had increasing fellowship on the broad outlines of such doctrines as the Sabbath, the Second Advent, and the sanctuary, and often spoke highly of the published views of each other, they did not therefore endorse each others’ views on every detail. Each man wrote as he saw fit.

As regards the two beasts of Revelation 13, very vague ideas were held at the outset by most of the pioneers. The second beast is described by James White and certain others as the “Image Beast,” because it enforces the worship of the image to the first beast. He and others also thought for a short time that the number 666 applied to the “Image Beast.”[89]

Protestant Sects and 666

There is also certain evidence that some of the pioneers thought that the 666 was constituted of that many Protestant sects. Early in 1851 Otis Nichols published a prophetic chart for the pioneer Sabbathkeeping ministers to use. Under the pictorial representation of the “Image of Papacy” is found the view that the Protestant churches number 666.[90]

In May, 1851, we find J. N. Andrews writing thus:

“An image to the beast then must be another church clothed with civil power and authority to put the saints of God to death. This can be nothing

[89]See A Word to the “Little Flock,” pp. 9, 10; also George Holt in The Present Truth, March, 1850, p. 64.

[90]The chart was 29 inches wide by 44 inches long. In the upper right hand corner is the title: A Pictorial Illustration of the Visions of Daniel & John and Their Chronology. Published by O. Nichols, Dorchester, Mass. Under the heading, “Image of Papacy,” the first paragraph reads: “The two lamb like horns, REPUBLICANISM & PROTESTANTISM, whose names number 666, become united in action, speak like a DRAGON, and controll the civil legislature, and cause it to make the CHURCH the IMAGE of papacy which received a deadly wound and was healed.” (Emphasis his.) However, a small part of this text matter consists of a correction that was firmly pasted down over the original text. This was done, apparently, soon after the charts were made, because the whole looks very ancient. The original text—which can now be seen on one copy of the chart, because the pasted on portion has largely flaked off—reads thus: “The two lamb like horns, the papist and protestant, whose names number 666, become united in action, speak like a DRAGON, and controll the civil legislature, and cause it to make themselves the IMAGE of papacy which received a deadly wound and was healed.” (Emphasis his.) The difference in text does not appear to change the sense materially, or affect the point in which we are here interested, the relation of 666 to the total of Protestant churches. This chart is undoubtedly the one referred to by James White in The Review and Herald, January, 1851, no. 4, p. 31. He says there: “THE CHART.—It is now ready. We think the brethren will be much pleased with it, and that it will be a great help in defining our present position.”

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else but the corrupt and fallen Protestant church.... The Protestant church may, if taken as a whole, be considered as a unit; but how near its different sects number six hundred three score and six, may be a matter of interest to determine.”—The Review and Herald, May 19, 1851, pp. 84, 85.

Even as late as 1860 we find Andrews writing thus on the subject of the two-horned beast:

“The image it appears is made up by legalizing the various classes that will acknowledge the blasphemous claims of the beast, by taking his mark. Every class that will therefore acknowledge the authority of the beast may be legalized and form a part of this image; but when this is accomplished, woe to all dissenters. It is thus that we understand the number of the beast as six hundred three-score and six. The mark will determine to which class each individual belongs.”—J. N. ANDREWS, The Three Messages of Revelation XIV, 6-12. Particularly the Third Angel’s Message, and Two-horned Beast (1860 ed.), p. 103.

Conclusions We May Draw

Now let us see what conclusions follow from the evidence revealed in these various quotations. First, we may conclude that in 1851—the crucial date in the charge—and before and after that date, there was held by various Sabbathkeeping spokesmen the idea that the number 666 applied to the second beast of Revelation 13, and that the 666 represented that number of churches. We cannot say to what extent the view was held before 1851. But this much we can say, that there is no evidence to support the idea that the view had suffered any eclipse or abandonment in 1851. The prophetic chart would strongly suggest the contrary.

But the charge against Mrs. White depends for its weight on the claim that she suppressed the passage under discussion because she had abandoned the view by 1851. And of course the implication is that she abandoned the view to avoid the embarrassment of holding to a view that others had abandoned.

Mrs. White need not have been embarrassed to publish that passage in Experience and Views in 1851, even if it taught what it is alleged to have taught. With that fact established, we need hardly go farther, for we have removed the primary basis for the charge. If the deletion cannot be explained on evil, deceptive grounds, then we are here confronted only with one more of a [289] long list of deletions that we have found may be explained on perfectly honorable grounds.

But let us look a little further into the evidence to discover, if possible, whether there is reason to believe that Mrs. White ever held that the number 666 applied to 666 sects of Protestantism. In 1860 a correspondent who was troubled over the propriety of creating an organization for the legal holding of church property wrote the following question to James White:

“If this government is the two-horned beast, can we be recognized and protected by it without becoming one of the number of his name?”

It is clear that the questioner believed that the number 666 belonged to the “image” of “the beast,” and referred to church organizations.

In his reply Elder White pointed out logically that the “number” should be associated with the first beast of Revelation 13 rather than with the two-horned beast, and then continued:

“Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast,’ &c. Here is a call for wisdom. Let him that hath understanding come forward. We confess our lack of wisdom, and decline attempting an exposition to the matter. But let them that have wisdom come forward and ‘count the number of the beast.’

“Fifteen years since some declared the number 666 to be full—that there was that number of legally organized bodies. Since that time there have been almost numberless divisions, and new associations, and still the number is just 666!“—The Review and Herald, April 26, 1860, p. 182.

What James White’s Statement Reveals

This statement by James White supports the conclusion we have already reached, that there were those, beginning with 1845, who held the view that Mrs. White is alleged to have held up to the year 1851. But his statement also reveals that he did not share this view. And the very way he expresses himself indicates that he had thus far not ventured an explanation of the 666. He was not the kind of man to conceal the fact that he had formerly held a wrong view.[91] No, James White, up to 1860, evidently had not

[91]Note his recital, years afterward, of his once-held shut-door views, as quoted in chapter 13.

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reached any conclusion as to how to understand the 666. But he goes still further and gently ridicules the view that the number 666 applies to a list of “organized bodies.”

Is it reasonable to believe that he would have used ridicule in describing this view if his wife had believed it and written in support of it at any time? Evidently when he endorsed the prophetic chart in early 1851, which included a statement identifying the 666 with the Protestant churches, he must have been giving one of those general endorsements that did not indicate agreement with every detail. Good men often do that today when endorsing books—or other good men!

We may therefore reasonably conclude that whatever Mrs. White may have intended by her words in the deleted passage, she did not intend to teach that the “666” represented the total of Protestant churches. And with this further conclusion reached, we most surely are warranted in ending our examination of the charge, for the real basis on which it rests has disappeared.

Two Mistaken Ideas Corrected

There is only one sentence in this mark-of-the-beast paragraph that seems not clear in terms of the interpretation now long held by Seventh-day Adventists; namely: “I saw that the number (666) of the Image Beast was made up.” Though we may not be sure just what Mrs. White meant by those words, we can, at least, free the sentence from two unwarranted conclusions drawn from the text itself.

1. The claim is that Mrs. White teaches in this particular sentence that the “number” was “made up” at the time she wrote, 1847, because she used the past tense, “was.”

But that does not necessarily follow. In fact the context disproves it. In the immediately preceding paragraph she describes what is patently a future event, but she uses the past tense, for which she had Bible precedent.[92] “The wicked thought that we had brought the judgments down on them. They rose up and took

[92]“I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away.” Revelation 21:1.

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counsel to rid the earth of us, thinking that then the evil would be stayed.” Then comes the paragraph about the number of the beast, with its phrase, “was made up.” This is followed by a paragraph that opens thus, in description of a coming event: “In the time of trouble, we all fled from the cities and villages, but were pursued by the wicked, who entered the houses of the saints with the sword.” The paragraph continues on in the past tense. Yet it is very clear that she is speaking of a future and not a past event.

It is evident, that whatever Mrs. White may have meant in this key sentence in dispute, nothing can be made of the fact that, as it comes down to us, it reads in the past tense. Or perhaps we might say that, viewing this sentence in its context, the reasonable conclusion is that Mrs. White is really speaking of the future and not of the past. Which only further weakens whatever argument has been built on this sentence.

That Parenthetical Number, 666

2. A point has also been made out of the “666” found in parentheses in the sentence. It is assumed that this number is part of the original manuscript written by Mrs. White. The following facts indicate, we believe, that this is an unwarranted assumption:

a. The use of parentheses, as in the case before us, is alien to the style of Mrs. White’s writing. An examination of her handwritten manuscripts of the early years reveals that rarely if ever did she insert explanatory matter in parentheses.

b. As explained a little later in this chapter, Joseph Bates was the first publisher of this vision, which he brought out on a single sheet of paper, called a broadside. In this original printing the “(666)” is found. When next the vision was published, in A Word to the “Little Flock,“ there is not only the parenthetical “(666)” but also parenthetical letters, for example, “(a),” “(b),” etc., which refer the reader to footnotes. Uriah Smith, writing in defense of the visions in 1866, declares that all of these parenthetical letters, and also the “(666),” were not inserted by Mrs. White, but by “the publisher,” and were “no part of the vision itself.” [292] The Review and Herald, July 31, 1866, p. 65. Smith wrote this while all the parties concerned—Mrs. White, James White, and Joseph Bates—were living. Though it is true that Mrs. White rarely commented on explanations offered concerning her visions, it is hard to believe that if Smith had been in error in this statement, neither James White nor Joseph Bates would have corrected him. But when Smith republished the statement in a book in 1868, his words here quoted are unchanged. (See The Visions of Mrs. E. G. White, pp. 100, 101.)

c. If the parenthetical “(666)” was written by Mrs. White, then James White would have had much clearer light on this mystic number than he gives evidence of having. As late as 1860 he confessed to great ignorance on this matter, and stated that in contrast there were some who, “fifteen years” before, had “declared the number 666 to be full.” He evidently disagreed with their idea that the number 666 was “full,” as well as with the explanation offered as to the manner in which it was full. But if Mrs. White had written that parenthetical “(666)” in her vision, would he have commented quite as he did in 1860?

The foregoing would seem to make wholly implausible the assumption that Mrs. White wrote the “(666)” that appears in the printed form of the vision. The reasonable conclusion is that Joseph Bates inserted it to clarify the passage in terms of his own interpretation of her words. This is a practice often followed by good men when they deal with difficult or obscure texts in the Bible. There was no special reason why James White, when republishing the vision a month later, should remove the “(666).” He confessed he did not know; why not permit his loyal colaborer, Bates, to offer his parenthetical comment!

Large Chance of Copyists’ Errors

When we think of the way in which the early writing and printing of our Seventh-day Adventist pioneers was done we marvel at the degree of mechanical accuracy and the literary quality of their writings. In the particular instance before us, there was a writing, a rewriting, and possible further writing of the vision. [293] Mrs. White first wrote out the vision. Then James White evidently copied it and sent the copy to Elder Bates by mail. We have neither of these copies. Bates much valued the visions, and it is quite possible that he did not send to the printer the copy James White sent him, but rather made another copy and sent that out to the typesetter. Then the printer provided Bates with the broadsides ordered. We have copies of that broadside, which is the first printing of the vision. James White presumably used one of these broadsides as copy for the printer when he prepared A Word to the “Little Flock,“ which is the second printing of this vision.[93]

If copyists’ or printers’ errors crept into the text of this vision as it appeared in print, it would not be strange. That is the only conclusion to which a person acquainted with the printing business could come. Even with the most careful system for checking and double checking in modern, efficient publishing houses, the strangest kinds of errors constantly creep onto the printed page, sometimes to the great embarrassment of the printer, the writer, and those written about. Copyists’ errors have even crept into Bible manuscripts.[94]

James White states that he was responsible for one error that appeared in the vision as printed in Bates’s broadside. He explains that this resulted from his “hastily copying the vision to send to brother Bates.” (See A Word to the “Little Flock,“ p. 22.) This error was very conspicuous because of the common knowledge of the Biblical account of the location of the sanctuary furniture. However, it does not necessarily follow that he went through the entire document checking it word by word with the original, and that because he caught one error he would be sure to catch all

[93]There are two reasons for thus concluding: 1. It would be much easier to give the printer a copy of a printed broadside than to go through the laborious process of copying out the vision by hand, to say nothing of the fact that such printed copy would be much more acceptable to the printer. 2. The whole content of the broadside was reprinted by White, with the “Remarks” by Bates as well as the vision by Mrs. White. This would raise the strong presumption that he sent the Broadside as copy to the printer.

[94]However such errors have generally been minor and have not prevented us from learning the way of salvation clearly. As one authoritative writer has well said: “No fundamental doctrine of the Christian faith rests on a disputed reading. Constant references to mistakes and divergences of reading, such as the plan of this book necessitates, might give rise to the doubt whether the substances, as well as the language, of the Bible is not open to question. It cannot be too strongly asserted that in substance the text of the Bible is certain.... The Christian can take the whole Bible in his hand and say without fear or hesitation that he holds in it the true Word of God, handed down without essential loss from generation to generation throughout the centuries.”—Sir Frederic Kenyon, Our Bible and the Ancient Manuscripts, p. 23.

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others. The fact that modern editors and proofreaders catch most errors does not warrant us in believing that they catch all the errors!

We believe that it is altogether reasonable to conclude that some copyist’s or printer’s error explains whatever obscurity the sentence holds. It may be contended that Mrs. White should have noted any such error. But the facts are that Mrs. White was, throughout those years, often gravely ill. If the Lord did not see fit to protect the text of Holy Writ from minor copyists’ errors, who shall boldly say just what the great God of heaven should have done in behalf of Mrs. White and her writings?

The vision containing this disputed passage was next published four years later in the Review and Herald Extra, July 21, 1851. It was in this printing of the vision that the deletion was made—right at the time when the prophetic interpretation that it was alleged to endorse had probably its greatest vogue! Note again the expositions of the image beast as set forth by Otis Nichols on his chart and by Elder Andrews in the Review, both early in 1851. Whatever may have been Mrs. White’s reason for deleting the passage in question it certainly was not to conceal a view generally abandoned.

We think that the unprejudiced reader will conclude that this mark-of-the-beast paragraph was dropped out, not with evil intent to conceal, but simply to save space or to avoid repetition or perhaps to avoid ambiguity until a more comprehensive statement might be made. [295]

Chapter 19—Mrs. White’s Attitude Toward Other Churches

Charge: Mrs. White speaks of all the churches in the most scathing language. She declares that God has forsaken them. This is uncharitable, un-Christian, for even if there are defects in the churches, they contain many devout souls. What makes her harsh charges against the churches even more unreasonable is that this denunciation of them was precipitated by their refusal to accept the false Adventist preaching that Christ would come to earth in 1844.

As an introduction to our answer let us quote at length from the passage in Mrs. White’s writings from which a small portion is presented by critics in proof of this charge:

“I saw the state of the different churches since the second angel proclaimed their fall. They have been growing more and more corrupt; yet they bear the name of being Christ’s followers. It is impossible to distinguish them from the world. Their ministers take their text from the Word, but preach smooth things. The natural heart feels no objection to this. It is only the spirit and power of the truth, and the salvation of Christ, that is hateful to the carnal heart. There is nothing in the popular ministry that stirs the wrath of Satan, makes the sinner tremble, or applies to the heart and conscience the fearful realities of a judgment soon to come. Wicked men are generally pleased with a form without true godliness, and they will aid and support such a religion. Said the angel, Nothing less than the whole armor of righteousness can overcome, and retain the victory over the powers of darkness. Satan has taken full possession of the churches as a body. The sayings and doings of men are dwelt upon instead of the plain cutting truths of the word of God....

“I saw that since Jesus had left the Holy place of the heavenly Sanctuary, and had entered within the second vail, the churches were left as were the Jews; and they have been filling up with every unclean and hateful bird. I saw great iniquity and vileness in the churches; yet they profess to be christians. Their profession, their prayers and their exhortations, are an abomination in the sight of God. Said the angel, God will not smell in their assemblies. [Cf. Genesis 8:21 and Amos 5:21.] Selfishness, fraud and deceit are practiced by them without the reprovings of conscience. And over all these evil traits they [296] throw the cloak of religion. I was shown the pride of the nominal churches. God was not in their thoughts; but their carnal minds dwell upon themselves. They decorate their poor mortal bodies, and then look upon themselves with satisfaction and pleasure. Jesus and the angels looked upon them in anger. Said the angel, Their sins and pride have reached unto heaven. Their portion is prepared. Justice and judgment have slumbered long, but will soon awake. Vengeance is mine, and I will repay, saith the Lord. The fearful threatenings of the third angel are to be realized, and they will drink the wrath of God. An innumerable host of evil angels are spreading themselves over the whole land. The churches and religious bodies are crowded with them. And they look upon the religious bodies with exultation; for the cloak of religion covers the greatest crimes and iniquity.

“All heaven beholds with indignation, human beings, the workmanship of God, reduced to the lowest depths of degradation, and placed on a level with the brute creation by their fellow men. And professed followers of that dear Saviour whose compassion was ever moved as he witnessed human woe, heartily engage in this enormous and grievous sin, and deal in slaves and souls of men. Angels have recorded it all. It is written in the book. The tears of the pious bond-men and bond-women, of fathers, mothers and children, brothers and sisters, are all bottled up in heaven. Agony, human agony, is carried from place to place, and bought and sold. God will restrain his anger but a little longer. His anger burns against this nation, and especially against the religious bodies who have sanctioned, and have themselves engaged in this terrible merchandise. Such injustice, such oppression, such sufferings, many professed followers of the meek and lowly Jesus can witness with heartless indifference. And many of them can inflict with hateful satisfaction, all this indescribable agony themselves, and yet dare to worship God. It is solemn mockery, and Satan exults over it, and reproaches Jesus and his angels with such inconsistency, saying with hellish triumph, Such are Christ’s followers!“—Spiritual Gifts 1:189-192. (See also Early Writings, 273-275.)

This statement by Mrs. White from Spiritual Gifts, volume 1, is representative of several declarations that she made in the days immediately following 1844 regarding the state of the Churches. Mrs. White sets forth as perhaps her most striking proof of the deplorable state of the churches the fact that many church members, including ministers, kept slaves. But that fact is not revealed in the charge.

If the reader has scanned the literature of the critics, he will notice that they also quote briefly from Mrs. White’s words in an earlier chapter in this same volume of Spiritual Gifts. They give [297] her words on page 172 in which she speaks of the church members who are ensnared by Satan, after their rejection of the first and second angels’ messages. Then they indicate that there is a break in their quotation, and follow immediately with these further words from page 172: “The churches were elated, and considered that God was marvelously working for them, when it was another spirit. It will die away and leave the world and the church in a worse condition than before.”

Now, what is the part in between that has been left out? Here are the missing sentences:

“Some he [Satan] deceives in one way and some in another. He has different delusions prepared to affect different minds. Some look with horror upon one deception, while they readily receive another. Satan deceives some with Spiritualism. He also comes as an angel of light, and spreads his influence over the land.”

With these quotations and omissions before us let us now review briefly certain facts regarding the beginnings of the Advent movement found in chapter 13, to place Mrs. White’s strong words in their historical setting. The movement began to take definite shape in the United States about the year 1840, under the preaching of William Miller and a rapidly increasing number of ministers and lay preachers of various religious bodies. Contrary to popular misconception and caricature, the essence of this preaching was not a definite time for the Lord’s return, though the time element did color it increasingly toward the last. Its essence was this: first and most prominently, a revival of the doctrine of the personal, literal coming of Christ to bring a sudden end to this present evil world, to destroy the wicked and save the righteous, and thus bring in that better world for which Christians have ever prayed. This preaching was in direct conflict with the popular teaching in virtually all Christendom that the world was to be gradually changed to righteousness by a “spiritual” coming of Christ, that is, a coming of His Spirit in increased measure to this earth to convert all hearts and thus surely, though slowly, to usher in an earthly millennium. The Adventists, under Miller, declared that such teaching was a denial of the most primary of [298] Bible doctrines, a doctrine which the holy apostles and the early church all believed and preached, and which the Protestant Reformers revived after long years of papal darkness. Unquestionably, the Adventists in the 1840’s were right in declaring that the popular teaching at that time was a denial of the apostolic teaching on the Second Advent of Christ.

How the Break With the Churches Began

The Adventists (Millerites) in the early 1840’s did not set out to establish a new church. The ministers of the movement were from numerous churches. For a time these ministers were invited to fill many pulpits. But soon something most disturbing developed. Those who took hold of the truth that Christ would soon come in glory, majesty, and might, found new spiritual life stirring within them. “Every man that hath this hope in him [the hope of Christ’s personal coming] purifieth himself, even as he [Christ] is pure.” I John 3:3. Thus testified the apostle John. These Adventist believers became too fervent for their rather staid churches. They were made to feel distinctly uncomfortable. Ministers in various churches began to preach with increasing vigor and volume against this disturbing Adventist movement. It was too potent a leaven in the lump of Christendom.

And let it be kept clearly in mind, the essence of that anti-Adventist preaching was not a challenging of the time element of Adventist preaching but a challenging of the Adventist belief as to what event impended. As we look back on it now we can clearly see that the Adventist preaching was a presentation of a sudden supernatural solution of the world’s woes; the popular preaching, a presentation of a naturalistic, slow-development solution of its ills.

The most libelous, scurrilous attacks began to be made upon Adventist preachers and lecturers, and most vindictive were the ministers of leading churches. All this is clear from the record. It was churchmen who gave widest circulation to wild stories that the Adventists were planning silly ascension robes for the day of the expected advent, and that their preaching was filling [299] the asylums with men and women made mad with the Adventist doctrine. The attacks were so outrageous that the editor of the infidel paper the Investigator took the popular ministry to task for their libelous assaults on the Adventist preachers.

Call to Come Out Begins to Sound

The result was that by the end of 1843 Adventist ministers began to apply to the churches the prophetic words of John, “Babylon is fallen,” and to invoke the command that accompanies this declaration, “Come out of her, my people.” (See Revelation 14:8; 18:1-4.) They rightly reasoned that “Babylon” refers to religious bodies, and that the message of its “fall” is sounded by the angel that follows immediately the one who announces that the hour of God’s judgment is come.

And as they preached these prophetic words regarding Babylon’s fall, they focused, not so much on the failure of the churches to believe that Christ would come in 1844, as on their outright denial of the doctrine of the premillennial, personal, literal coming of Christ, and their ridicule of it. This too is clear from the record.

They noted also the cold formalism that passed for Christianity and the doctrinal heresies that were fast eating out the foundations of many New England churches.

Naturally, as the Adventist ministers explored more fully the words, “Babylon is fallen,” they began to see those words in relation to the fact that many thousands of church members, and not infrequently ministers, held slaves.[95] To the Adventist ministers, who were largely abolitionists, slavery was a heinous sin. They cogently argued that slaveholding and the personal coming of Christ were ideas that no one wished to entertain at the same time. This fact of slavery provided an additional text for their preaching: “Come out of her, my people.” Rightly could they call attention to the fact, for fact it was, that many who lived in Northern States were

[95]In The Review and Herald, September 6, 1864, is found this news note: “Ministers and members of the Methodist Church South and North, owned 219,000 slaves; the Baptists do [ditto] 125,000; the Reformed Baptists 101,000; the Presbyterians, old and new school, 77,000; the Episcopalians 88,500; all other denominations 55,000,—the Congregationalist and Advent Churches are as bodies free. Total, 600,000.—Sel.”—Page 120.

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far from having any crusading conviction against slavery. About half of the chapter in Spiritual Gilts, from which the passage under fire is quoted, is an indictment of slaveholding church members.

Present-Day Apostasy

In 1848 began those mysterious rappings in Hydesville, New York, that marked the birth of modern Spiritism. Spiritism attracted numbers who were church members, and the supernatural powers that attended this evil thing seemed to them an evidence of the power of God. Of these Mrs. White spoke in the quotation cited too briefly by the critics.

The appearance of Spiritism among some of the churches only sharpened the vigorous preaching, “Come out of her, my people,” that had begun a few years earlier. This preaching, Seventh-day Adventists continue to the present day. If there is any difference, it is in the definiteness of it today. We believe the evidence is clearer now than ever it was in the 1840’s, that “Babylon is fallen.” True, slavery has been abolished in the United States, but what other developments have taken place? The answer, briefly, is this:

Darwin’s evolution theory, first announced in 1859, and quickly accepted by most of the scientific world, began, erelong, to capture the Christian ministry. Inevitably associated with this theory was the whole philosophy of antisupernaturalism. Darwin’s theory had no room for miracles, no room for the creation, as Moses recorded it, and hence no room for the fall of man. But if there was no fall of man, then the Biblical idea of sin disappears. If man is gradually evolving upward and always has been, there is obviously not only no place for a fall, there is no need for Christ to offer His life for sin that He might thereby lift men up.

By the early part of the twentieth century the evolution theory, with all that it implied, had so captured theological seminaries and church leaders that it produced on the part of orthodox ministers a countermovement known as Fundamentalism. But this countermovement only served to highlight the apostasy and to reveal its true dimensions. Fundamentalism has fought a losing battle in all the larger denominations. For a third of a century, at least, various [301] Fundamentalist ministers have spoken out against what they describe as apostasy in the churches, and in language that is as powerful as anything that Mrs. White ever wrote. What is more, there has been heard from the lips of Fundamentalist preachers the very words of Scripture used as the text by Mrs. White in her denunciation of the churches: “Babylon is fallen,” and “Come out of her, my people.”

In view of their expressed devotion to the Bible, in the orthodox meaning of those words, Mrs. White’s critics must surely have read and approved the general position and declarations of the Fundamentalist leaders regarding the apostasy in Christendom. We wonder whether they would be willing to tell us in what way Mrs. White’s scathing description of the churches is more vigorous or more devastating? They will probably answer that the difference is this: Fundamentalist preachers are speaking of a condition in the twentieth century, when a certain well-defined apostasy actually exists, and Mrs. White was denouncing the churches in the middle of the nineteenth century, when that condition did not exist.

But we reply: Does apostasy any more truly exist in the churches today than slavery did at the time Mrs. White wrote the passage before us? And is holding slaves any less heinous than holding such a doctrine as evolution? Or is belief in Spiritism, the doctrine of devils, less properly the occasion for denunciation than belief in evolution?

Quite apart from these points, however, and viewing Mrs. White’s words in the long perspective of a century, it is all to the credit of her claim to inspiration that she wrote as she did regarding the advancing apostasy that would mark Christendom.

She saw what others did not see till long afterward, when apostasy was rather suddenly discovered to be entrenched in the Christian church. She saw that the churches, by their very belief in gradual world reform, in opposition to the premillennial, supernatural coming of Christ, were really conditioning themselves to accept the Darwinian evolution theory that the world and man are slowly progressing upward. The only views entertained in the Christian church as to a solution of the tragedy of a sinful [302] world are: (1) the second coming of Christ suddenly to bring in righteousness, and (2) the gradual progress of man toward perfection. The evolution theory fitted beautifully into the latter view, and subtly became the scientific demonstration, so men thought, of the truth of that view. But as evolution came more and more into the thinking of churchmen it increasingly became the explanation for the progress that the world was supposed to be making toward an earthly millennium. Which is another way of saying that modern churchmen almost unconsciously drifted ever nearer to a plainly secular conception of world betterment.

It is right here we would remind the Fundamentalists that there is nothing they make more clear in their preaching than that the doctrine of the literal, personal coming of Christ is a touchstone of orthodoxy and a great dividing line between them and all Modernists. And that, of course, is the doctrine that distinguished the Adventists in mid-nineteenth century, when Mrs. White wrote those passages about the churches, which we are considering. The Fundamentalists could have gone a step further in their discussion of what constitutes a touchstone—and God grant they will erelong—and said that the seventh-day Sabbath is a touchstone of orthodoxy and a dividing line between those who stand on the foundation of the Mosaic creation, with all that that implies of Bible doctrine, and those who stand on the evolution theory, with all that that implies. No one can conscientiously keep the seventh-day Sabbath, a memorial of the fact that in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, and harbor any thought of evolution.

It is interesting that Mrs. White did not say that the fall of Babylon was completed in 1844. When she wrote on the subject of the fall of Babylon in 1858 she spoke of it as progressive.[96] When she wrote in 1888 she still spoke of it as progressive. Here are her words:

“The message of the second angel did not reach its complete fulfilment in 1844. The churches then experienced a moral fall, in consequence of their refusal of the light of the advent message [the doctrine of the premillennial

[96]See Spiritual Gifts 1:189-193, published in 1858, where is found essentially the same text as in Early Writings, 273-276.

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literal, personal coming of Christ]; but that fall was not complete. As they have continued to reject the special truths for this time [for example, and most strikingly, the truth of the seventh-day Sabbath], they have fallen lower and lower.”—The Great Controversy, 389.

But someone may ask: Does not Mrs. White paint a picture of the Christian world in such a way as to make it appear that the only people of God are Seventh-day Adventists and that everyone else is under the irrevocable judgment of God?

Such an interpretation of her teaching on the fall of Babylon, or the second angel’s message, is unwarranted. Mrs. White teaches what the Bible teaches on this doctrine. Because Babylon is fallen an angel proclaims: “Come out of her, my people.” Revelation 18:4. The Bible thus declares that God’s “people,” at least a portion of them, are found in Babylon. And that is what Mrs. White teaches. Listen to her words:

“Notwithstanding the spiritual darkness and alienation from God that exist in the churches which constitute Babylon, the great body of Christ’s true followers are still to be found in their communion.”—The Great Controversy, 390.

Churches Compared to Jews at First Advent

The fact that she wrote in scathing, thunderous tones in the passage quoted from Spiritual Gifts at the beginning of this chapter, does not require us to conclude that she believed that God had utterly rejected all within the churches. In Spiritual Gifts, volume I, we read these words:

“I saw that since JESUS had left the Holy place of the heavenly Sanctuary, and had entered within the second vail, the churches were left as were the Jews; and they have been filling up with every unclean and hateful bird.”—Page 190.

Mrs. White here refers, most evidently, to Christ’s statement over Jerusalem, in which He declared:

“O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not! Behold, your house is left unto you desolate.” Matthew 23:37, 38. [304]

But to whom were the apostles first sent, by Christ’s command, after His ascension? To fellow Jews in Jerusalem! And thousands of Jews were converted, including a great company of the priests.

Should Remember Historical Context

We should remember that some of Mrs. White’s most specific and denunciatory declarations should be viewed in their historical context. True, she declares that apostasy increases with the years, but certain of her powerful statements concerning those who had turned from the truth of God, and brought upon themselves Heaven’s condemnation, can rightly be applied only as we think of the events of the 1840’s. We must remember in this connection the facts that came to light in our study of the shut-door charge, that some of Mrs. White’s declarations there discussed can be understood as applying, not to all professed Christians for all time to come, but rather to a class living at a particular time who had related themselves in a hostile way to truth.

There is nothing in Mrs. White’s later writings that warrants the conclusion that she views all the ministers and members of other churches as past hope, and beyond the pale of God’s love and grace. Rather, she considers them as potential subjects of God’s kingdom which is to be set up at Christ’s second coming. She views the Advent movement, not as another church, competing with already established churches for membership, but as God’s last call to all the world to rise to higher spiritual levels, to accept further light, in order to be ready for the great day of God. Take these words from her pen:

“It should ever be manifest that we are reformers, but not bigots. When our laborers enter a new field, they should seek to become acquainted with the pastors of the several churches in the place. Much has been lost by neglecting to do this. If our ministers show themselves friendly and sociable, and do not act as if they were ashamed of the message they bear, it will have an excellent effect, and may give these pastors and their congregations favorable impressions of the truth. At any rate, it is right to give them a chance to be kind and favorable if they will.

“Our laborers should be very careful not to give the impression that they are wolves stealing in to get the sheep, but should let the ministers understand [305] Their position and the object of their mission,—to call the attention of the people to the truths of God’s Word. There are many of these which are dear to all Christians. Here is common ground, upon which we can meet people of other denominations.”—The Review and Herald, June 13, 1912, p. 3.

When we read this passage and like ones from Mrs. White, that speak of the great company of God’s faithful children to be found in all the churches, we are able to see what was her true attitude toward the membership of all churches. Any seeming lack of harmony between these statements and the ones which seem to teach a contrary view, can be removed by placing the latter in their historical context.[97]

[97]For documentary proof as to the attitude of the churches toward the Adventists in the 1840’s, and for the time element in their preaching, see the author’s The Midnight Cry. For an extended discussion of the doctrine of Babylon’s fall, see the author’s Reasons for Our Faith, pp. 145-225.

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Chapter 20—“Amalgamation of Man and Beast”

Charge: Mrs. White teaches that before the Flood, and also afterward, men cohabited with beasts and that the offspring constitutes certain depraved races of men today. She is here simply revealing a credulous belief in ancient myths regarding strange creatures produced by unholy alliances between human beings and beasts. If progeny could result from such unions, it would support the antiBiblical doctrine of evolution. But it is an unscientific statement, wholly fanciful. Later on, she suppressed the statement.

The only passages in Mrs. White’s writings that are ever cited in support of this charge are found in Spiritual Gifts, volume 3, published in 1864 and republished in Spirit of Prophecy, volume 1, in 1870. The earlier volume is devoted to a recital of the story of man’s early history, beginning at creation. Chapter 6 is entitled “Crime Before the Flood,” and contains this statement:

“But if there was one sin above another which called for the destruction of the race by the flood, it was the base crime of amalgamation of man and beast which defaced the image of GOD, and caused confusion everywhere. GOD purposed to destroy by a flood that powerful, long-lived race that had corrupted their ways before him.”—Spiritual Gifts 3:64.

Chapter 7 is entitled “The Flood,” and contains this statement:

“Every species of animal which GOD had created were preserved in the ark. The confused species which GOD did not create, which were the result of amalgamation, were destroyed by the flood. Since the flood there has been amalgamation of man and beast, as may be seen in the almost endless varieties of species of animals, and in certain races of men.”—Page 75.

These are Mrs. White’s only statements on the subject of the amalgamation of man and beast.

What Mrs. White meant by these passages has been the occasion of some speculation through the years. Her critics have set forth their view of her words in the charge cited. Those who believe in [307] her writings have given two explanations. Some have held that she taught not only that men and beasts have cohabited but also that progeny resulted. However, these defenders have contended that this does not really support the doctrine of evolution. The evolution theory depends for its life on the idea that small, simple living structures can gradually evolve into ever higher forms of life, finally bringing forth man. That more or less closely related forms of life may cross and produce hybrids is not questioned by creationists today. That, in the long ago, when virility was greater, and conditions possibly in some respects different, more diverse forms of life might have crossed—such as man and some higher forms of animals—can be set forth only as an assumption. But this assumption has marshaled against it the whole weight of scientific belief today. Of course, scientists have been wrong, at times, in reasoning that all the past must be understood in terms of the processes we now see going on.

We might leave the matter at that, which would do no worse for Mrs. White than to leave her two statements in Spiritual Gifts as being beyond the range of investigation or proof. The Bible itself contains some such statements, as all students of the Scriptures well know.

But there is another explanation of these amalgamation passages which we believe is more satisfying and which avoids any conflict with the observable data of science.

What Does the Word “Amalgamation” Mean?

First, what is the general meaning of the word “amalgamation”? Is it ever used to describe the depraved act of cohabitation of man with beast? No dictionaries we have had access to, not even the exhaustive Oxford English Dictionary, indicate that the term has ever been used to describe this act. There is another standard English word that may properly be used to describe such cohabitation. The primary usage of the word “amalgamation” through long years has been to describe the fusion of certain metals, particularly mercury with other metals, and by extension, to denote the fusing of races of men. In the mid-nineteenth century the word [308] was commonly employed in the United States to describe the intermarriage of the white and the Negro race.[98]

The long-established meaning of the key word “amalgamation” as the blending of races should weigh heavily in determining the interpretation of the questioned passages. The burden of proof rests on those who affirm that Mrs. White gave a new and alien meaning to the term.

Second, the whole tenor of Mrs. White’s writings provides strong testimony against the claim that she is here seeking solemnly to present as fact some ancient stories about abnormal man-beast progeny. Her writings are not tainted with fanciful fables of the long ago. Those writings have a strongly matter-of-fact quality to them. If she had been a dreamer and visionary how frequently might she have regaled her readers with myths and weird stories of antiquity.

What Does the Key Phrase Mean?

The crux of the “amalgamation” passages is this: “amalgamation of man and beast.” That statement could be construed to mean amalgamation of man with beast, or amalgamation of man and of beast. In a construction like this the preposition “of” is not necessarily repeated, though it may be clearly implied. We might speak of the scattering of man and beast over the earth, but we do not therefore mean that previously man and beast were fused in one mass at one geographical spot. We simply mean the scattering of man over the earth and the scattering of beasts over the earth, though the original location of the two groups might have been on opposite sides of the earth. In other words, the scattering of man and of beast.

[98]The Century Dictionary, edition of 1889, says, under “Amalgamation“: “2. The mixing or blending of different things, especially of races.” The idea of the blending of races, as one meaning of the word, seems to have faded out of some dictionaries, probably in view of the fact that the term “hybridization” is now generally used to denote fusion, or crossing, of living things. However, the 1949 printing of Funk and Wagnalls New Standard Dictionary says, under “Amalgamate“: “3. To form into a compound by mixing or blending; unite; combine; as to amalgamate diverse races. Used specifically, in the southern United States, of marriage between white and black persons.” A Dictionary of American English (Oxford University Press, 1938-44, 4 vols.) says: “Amalgamate, v. (1797-, in general sense.) Of persons: a. To combine or coalesce, esp. by intermarriage. +b. (See quot. 1859.) ...1859 BARTLETT 8 Amalgamate ... is universally applied, in the United States, to the mixing of the black and white races.” Amalgamation. (1775- in general sense.) +The fusion of the white and black races by intermarriage.”

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Then why may we not rightly understand this particular grammatical construction in the same way when speaking of amalgamation? If we may speak of a scattering of man and beast without at all implying that scattering started from a single spot, why may we not speak of the amalgamation of man and beast without at all implying that man and beast came together in one place in fusion?

We believe that the meaning of the key phrase in question is found by understanding it to read: “amalgamation of man and [of] beast.” Thus the passage would be speaking of the amalgamation of different races of mankind and the amalgamation of different races of animals. The grammatical construction and common usage permit us to understand “of” as being implied.

The Results of Amalgamation

But does simply the amalgamation of different races of men and the amalgamation of different species of animals suffice to measure up to the description of the evil character of amalgamation and the results that followed from it; namely, destruction by a flood? Let us look first at the amalgamation of races of men. Note again the text of the first quotation cited (Spiritual Gifts 3:64), and observe these characteristics of amalgamation:

1. It was the “one sin above another which called for the destruction of the race by the flood.”

2. It “defaced the image of God, and caused confusion everywhere.”

3. “That powerful, long-lived race ... had corrupted their ways before him.”

Two distinct groups of human beings are presented at the opening of the chapter in Spiritual Gifts, volume 3, entitled “Crime Before the Flood“: (1) “the descendants of Seth” and (2) “the descendants of Cain.” The two groups were distinct in two marked ways: (1) The first group “felt the curse but lightly.” (2) The second group, “who turned from GOD and trampled upon his authority, felt the effects of the curse more heavily, especially in stature and nobleness of form.” “The descendants of Seth were [310] called the sons of GOD—the descendants of Cain, the sons of men.” Here two races are presented which differ both in moral and physical characteristics.

Then follow immediately these words: “As the sons of GOD mingled with the sons of men, they became corrupt, and by intermarriage with them, lost, through the, influence of their wives, their peculiar, holy character, and united with the sons of Cain in their idolatry.”—Pages 60, 61. Next comes a description of their evil course of idolatry, particularly their prostituting to sinful ends the gold and silver and other material possessions that were theirs. Mrs. White then observes: “They corrupted themselves with those things which GOD had placed upon the earth for man’s benefit.”—Page 63. From a discussion of idolatry she turns to polygamy and makes this statement: “The more men multiplied wives to themselves, the more they increased in wickedness and unhappiness.”—Page 63.

Even in this brief chapter we find sufficient to support the position that the judgment of a flood upon men was because of the amalgamation of races of men. Two races are presented. The amalgamation of the two results in corruption and idolatry, and polygamy only increases the corruption and wickedness. The disputed passage says that God brought the Flood because men “had corrupted their ways before him.”

The Divine Image Defaced

Let us now note parallel passages in Mrs. White’s writings. In Patriarchs and Prophets, where she writes much more at length on the subject, she speaks thus of the descendants of Seth and Cain:

“For some time the two classes remained separate. The race of Cain, Spreading from the place of their first settlement, dispersed over the plains and valleys where the children of Seth had dwelt; and the latter, in order to escape from their contaminating influence, withdrew to the mountains, and there made their home. So long as this separation continued, they maintained the worship of God in its purity. But in the lapse of time they ventured, little by little, to mingle with the inhabitants of the valleys. This association was productive of the worst results. ‘The sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair.’ The children of Seth, attracted by [311] the beauty of the daughters of Cain’s descendants, displeased the Lord by intermarrying with them. Many of the worshipers of God were beguiled into sin by the allurements that were now constantly before them, and they lost their peculiar, holy character. Mingling with the depraved, they became like them in spirit and in deeds; the restrictions of the seventh commandment were disregarded, ‘and they took them wives of all which they chose.’ The children of Seth went ‘in the way of Cain;’ they fixed their minds upon worldly prosperity and enjoyment, and neglected the commandments of the Lord.”—Pages 81, 82.

Here Mrs. White paints a picture of cumulative wickedness, climaxing in the Flood, and stemming largely from the amalgamation of the “race of Cain” and the “children of Seth.” We are using the word “amalgamation” in its proper dictionary meaning, and according to the common usage of the time in which Mrs. White wrote—the intermarriage of different races.

Further on in Patriarchs and Prophets Mrs. White declares:

“Polygamy was practiced at an early date. It was one of the sins that brought the wrath of God upon the antediluvian world. Yet after the flood it again became wide-spread. It was Satan’s studied effort to pervert the marriage institution, to weaken its obligations, and lessen its sacredness; for in no surer way could he deface the image of God in man, and open the door to misery and vice.”—Page 338.

In a comment on the history of Israel, she observes:

“It came to be a common practice to intermarry with the heathen.... The enemy rejoiced in his success in effacing the divine image from the minds of the people that God had chosen as His representatives.”—Fundamentals of Christian Education, 499.

Then take this passage from another of Mrs. White’s writings:

“Unhallowed marriages of the sons of God with the daughters of men, resulted in apostacy which ended in the destruction of the world by a flood.”—Testimonies for the Church 5:93.

Parallel Passages Summarized

Let us summarize: The result of the breaking down of the marriage institution, and particularly the intermarriage between the children of God and the heathen, was to “deface the image of God in man.” Further, “Unhallowed marriages of the sons of God with the daughters of men” carried mankind irresistibly [312] forward in increasing iniquity “which ended in the destruction of the world by a flood.” Substituting the word “amalgamation” for marriage in the above quotations, note the striking parallel to the following statements in the disputed passage: “The base crime of amalgamation ... defaced the image of God“: and, “God purposed to destroy by a flood that powerful, long-lived race that had corrupted their ways before him.”

In none of the parallel passages we have quoted, or in any others that might be cited, does Mrs. White speak of the cohabitation of man with beast as being a feature of the gross and dismal picture of antediluvian wickedness that precipitated the Flood. On the contrary it would appear that she speaks of intermarriage of the race of Cain and the race of Seth, with its inevitable train of idolatry, polygamy, and kindred evils, as the cause of the Flood. And all this harmonizes with the earlier quoted statement in the opening paragraph of the chapter that contains the disputed passage:

“As the sons of GOD mingled with the sons of men, they became corrupt, and by intermarriage with them, lost, through the influence of their wives, their peculiar, holy character, and united with the sons of Cain in their idolatry.”—Spiritual Gifts 3:60, 61.

As already stated, this introduction to the chapter “Crime Before the Flood” is followed by a recital of the idolatry that grew rampant, the denial of God, the theft, the polygamy, the murder of men, and the destruction of animal life. Then comes immediately the disputed passage, as though summarizing: “But if there was one sin above another which called for the destruction of the race by the flood, it was the base crime of amalgamation of man and beast which defaced the image of GOD, and caused confusion everywhere.”[99]

[99]Some might contend that the construction of this sentence indicates that the writer is listing a new crime to the series, something in addition to the unholy marriages, idolatry, murder, etc. We do not believe that such a conclusion is required. It is no unusual thing for a writer to list a series of items, and then, in conclusion, focus upon one of them, with some such introductory phrase as, “If there is one item above another....” Nor do we believe that any special weight should he placed on the fact that in thus recapitulating, the winter amplifies on the particular point under discussion, as though the very focusing on it seems to draw the writer’s mind to a related thought. This, we believe, is a wholly reasonable way to view the construction before us. Mrs. White returns, in the last paragraph of the chapter, to focus on the main cause of the Flood, as earlier set forth in the chapter. In so doing she expands a little to include the related “confusion” in the animal kingdom that had resulted from the entrance of sin into the world.

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One apparent stumbling block in the way of accepting this interpretation of the passage as an intermarriage of races of men and a crossing of different species of animals is the construction of the statement: “amalgamation of man and beast which defaced the image of God.” And how could the crossing of species of animals do this?

But let us look more closely at what she says. Two results follow from the “amalgamation of [1] man and [2] beast“: It (1) “defaced the image of God,” and (2) “caused confusion everywhere.” We have seen how the marriage, the amalgamation, of the races of men produced the first of the results. Why could we not properly consider that the amalgamation of the races, or species, of animals produced the second, that is, “caused confusion everywhere”? When two related things are described in one sentence, it does not follow that we must understand that all the results listed flow from each of the two.

Second Controversial Passage Examined

This brings us to a consideration of the second of the two controversial passages:

“Every species of animal which GOD had created were preserved in the ark. The confused species which GOD did not create, which were the result of amalgamation, were destroyed by the flood. Since the flood there has been amalgamation of man and beast, as may be seen in the almost endless varieties of species of animals, and in certain races of men.”—Spiritual Gifts 3:75.

This passage is separated from the first by only a few pages. The intervening pages give the account of the Flood. Here she speaks of “every species of animal which GOD had created,” in contrast with “the confused species which GOD did not create.” “Confused species” of what? The construction permits only one answer: Species of animal. But an amalgamation of man with beast would produce, not a species of animal, but a hybrid man-beast species, whatever that might be. Mrs. White is here most certainly speaking of “confused species” of animals. And she says simply that such “confused species” “were the result of amalgamation.” [314]

Let us summarize, now, by placing in parallel columns the substance of two statements by Mrs. White:

Amalgamation of Man

Amalgamation of Beast

The intermarriage, the amalgamation, of races of men defaced the image of God.

The amalgamation of “species of animals” resulted in “confused species.”

We believe these parallel passages fully warrant the conclusion, already reached, that when Mrs. White said, “amalgamation of man and beast,” she meant (1) the amalgamation of races of men, and (2) the amalgamation of species of animals. The first “defaced the image of God,” the second “caused confusion everywhere.”

Three Important Conclusions

Mrs. White says that “since the flood” there “has been amalgamation of man and beast,” and adds that the results may be seen in (1) “almost endless varieties of species of animals,” and in (2) “certain races of men.” There are several important conclusions that follow from this passage:

1. Mrs. White speaks of two clearly distinguished groups that testify to this amalgamation. There are (1) “species of animals” and (2) “races of men.” There is no suggestion that there were species part man and part animal. But how could there be amalgamation of man with animal and the result be anything else than hybrid man-animal species. She does not even hint of subhuman monsters or caricatures of man. On the contrary, as just noted, she speaks unequivocally of “species of animals” and “races of men.”

2. Mrs. White speaks of the “almost endless varieties of species of animals” that have resulted from amalgamation. Now the standard attack on Mrs. White in the matter of amalgamation is that she reflected the thinking of those who believed the fiction of man-animal crosses. If we rightly understand that fiction, as it has been wafted through the centuries by the winds of credulity, a few large, mythical creatures of antiquity were supposed to have resulted from a union of man with animals. And these creatures [315] were always supposed to reveal both human and animal features. But there is nothing in the ancient fiction that supports the idea that “almost endless varieties of species of animals” were the result of an unnatural cross of man with animals. Mrs. White is here certainly not expressing an ancient, mythical view. Not even the credulous pagans, wholly devoid of biological knowledge, would have thought of entertaining such an idea. How much more reasonable to interpret the passage to mean that these “almost endless varieties of species of animals” resulted from an amalgamation of previously existing forms of animal life!

3. Mrs. White calls upon the reader to look about him for proof of what she is saying. In other words, whatever this amalgamation has been, its fruitage is evident today. “As may be seen,” she says, “in the almost endless varieties of species of animals, and in certain races of men.” But can anything be “seen” in our day that would provide support for the ancient myth of beast-men? Certainly there is nothing in the savage races of some remote heathen lands that even suggests a cross between man and animals.[100] And if the most degraded race of men does not suggest such a cross, much less do any species of animals suggest it. But the results of the amalgamation of which Mrs. White speaks “may be seen” by the reader.

Darwinism and Creationism

At the time she wrote her amalgamation statement in 1864 Darwin’s influence was only beginning to be felt in the world. Until he published his Origin of Species (Nov. 24, 1859), most scientists, and religionists generally, had held firmly to the view that the species are “fixed,” that is, they cannot be crossed. Darwin theorized that all creation is in flux, with no ultimate bounds

[100]In the middle of the nineteenth century, when some dark recesses of the earth had scarcely been touched by explorers, strange stories were often told as to the kind of savages who dwelt there. Probably some who first read Mrs. White’s amalgamation statements unconsciously allowed these strange stories to determine their interpretation of the passages. Needless to say, now that all the savage races are fairly well known, the testimony of those who have come in contact with them is that though they may be depraved, they are exceedingly human in every respect, and need only the opportunity to acquire the white man’s habits and vices! Mrs. White does not comment on the phrase, “certain races of men.” She gives no details as to how the races intermingled after the Flood, nor does she say that such postdiluvian intermingling was a “base crime.” We need only to note that she makes the simple statement that “amalgamation” produced “races of men,” not races part man and part animal.

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on any form of life. He reasoned that natural law, expressing itself through natural selection and survival of the fittest, causes simple forms to become increasingly complex and to rise constantly in the scale of life, until man finally appears. His theory and the doctrine of the fixity of species could not live together. One devoured the other. To Darwin and those who agreed with him, it seemed that the chief obstacle to acceptance of his theory was the doctrine of species fixity. And to orthodox Christians belief in species fixity seemed absolutely essential to belief in Genesis.

Thus when the battle began between the Darwinites and the believers in Genesis the fighting was chiefly over this question of the fixity of species. Creationists generally considered the term “species” as equivalent to the “kinds,” in Genesis, to each of which was given the divine order to “bring forth ... after his kind.” Genesis 1:24. Such an equating of “species” and “kind” we now know to be unwarranted.

The outcome of such an uneven fight is known to all. Evolutionists had little trouble in proving that there are “endless varieties of species of animals,” if we might borrow Mrs. White’s words in her amalgamation statement. And whenever creationists have sought to make their stand on the point of fixity of species, as that term is generally understood, they have been put to rout.

Present-day creationists who have any knowledge of genetics, which treats of the laws governing “heredity and variations among related organisms,” fare much better than did their fighting fathers. Genetics shows how endless varieties may develop within certain limits—the limits of the potential variations within the original strain—but no farther. In other words, the simple fact of variations in species does not, in itself, provide any proof for evolution. That much is certain. Thus we may believe in “endless varieties of species” after Ararat without believing in evolution. Mrs. White wrote in 1864 that these “almost endless varieties” “may be seen,” though creationists at that time, and for about a half century more, saw no such thing; they saw only fixity of species. Yet Mrs. White had no leanings toward Darwin’s theory. From the outset she spoke vigorously against evolution! [317]

The Greatest Objection Considered

Perhaps the greatest objection to accepting the view here set forth is found in this question: Mrs. White describes the “amalgamation of man and beast” as a “sin” and a “base crime,” but why should the amalgamation of various species of animals be thus described?

Note, first, that Mrs. White, in the chapter “Crime Before the Flood,” is using the word “crime” as loosely synonymous with “sin.” The key word before us, therefore, is “sin.” And what is sin? It is transgression of the law of God. This is often restricted in theological thinking to violations of the Ten Commandments, the moral law. That Mrs. White frequently uses the word “sin” in a much larger sense, as including any violation of so-called natural laws, is evident from an examination of her writings.[101] The reason she does this is that she declares that these so-called laws of nature are as truly an expression of the mind and will of God as are the Ten Commandments.

Now let us turn to the Bible record of the condition of the whole created world, man and beast, before the Flood:

“And the Lord said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth; both man, and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air; for it repenteth me that I have made them.” Genesis 6:7.

Why should the Lord repent that He had “made them,” the beasts and birds and creeping things, as well as man? In a few verses farther on is found the answer:

“And God looked upon the earth, and, behold, it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted his [A.R.V. their] way upon the earth.” Genesis 6:12.

“And all flesh died that moved upon the earth, both of fowl, and of cattle, and of beast, and of every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth, and every man.” Genesis 7:21.

[101]For example: “It is just as much sin to violate the laws of our being as to break one of the ten commandments, for we cannot do either without breaking God’s law.”—Testimonies for the Church 2:70.

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The Plan of God for Eden

When God first made the world He placed upon it a wide variety of animals and plants, distributed over hills and valleys, on sunny plain and in shady dell. The picture was one of beauty and harmony in diversity. We can, of course, only conjecture as to details of the Edenic world. The record declares that God commanded that each form of life should bring forth “after his kind.” Genesis 1:24. And the fossil records bear silent testimony that between the major forms of life there appear to be no intermediary forms. There are sharp gaps instead. Whether the Lord designed that His perfect earth should also preserve distinctions between the more closely related forms of life, we can only venture a guess. But if He placed all these more or less closely related forms upon the earth, it would seem a reasonable assumption that He did so as an expression of His divine conception of what a perfect world should be like.

We think this is even more than a reasonable assumption in the light of specific counsel later given to Israel, as God sought to set up in this sinful world a government according to the plans of heaven. Through Moses God said to Israel:

“Ye shall keep my statutes. Thou shalt not let thy cattle gender with a diverse kind: thou shalt not sow thy field with mingled seed: neither shall a garment mingled of linen and woollen come upon thee.” Leviticus 19:19. (See also Deuteronomy 22:9-11.)

The last part of this command, which deals with a garment, was doubtless intended to symbolize the idea Of keeping separate those things that should be separate; the command with regard to the cattle and seed is obviously literal.

Satan and the Animal Kingdom

The Bible presents a picture of a controversy between God and the devil that starts with the beginnings of our world and covers everything that has to do with our world. That Satan, as a free moral agent, has been allowed of God to roam the earth and use his diabolical skill in creating disorder and destruction, the Bible amply testifies. [319]

The first instance of Satan’s attempt to bring disorder in our world was his speaking through an animal, a serpent. And though Satan was the instigator of the serpent’s wily words, the Lord included the serpent in the judgments meted out at the fall.

Where the Scripture record is so brief we must be slow to dogmatize. But we may find in the fact of Satan, his evil purposes, and this specifically mentioned instance of his control of a member of the animal kingdom, a strong suggestion that the animal kingdom has suffered from his diabolical cunning. We cannot believe that in Eden there were blood-thirsty beasts, ill-tempered, snarling, and vicious. All believers in the Bible grant that these evil changes in the beasts were the result of sin. But how could a beast, which does not have a moral nature, and therefore has no knowledge of sin, be changed in nature by the entrance of sin into the life of Adam and Eve? The Christian mind will not permit the idea that God so changed the animals. In the fact of Satan, whose domination of the serpent is recorded for our learning, is surely found the only real explanation of the sorry change that came over the animal kingdom. Part of that change, we believe, was the confusing of the species, the blurring of a wondrous picture of divine harmony in diversity.

A Belief Consistent With Scripture

We grant that this belief as to the cause of the confusing of species cannot be supported by a clear text of Scripture. We affirm only that this belief is consistent with such scriptures as discuss those earliest days. And nothing more than this need be affirmed in order to protect the belief from being lightly dismissed by any Bible believer, as an unreasonable explanation.

It is evident that on this view of the confusion of species in the animal kingdom we find a satisfying answer to the question: How could the crossing of different forms of animal life be described as sin? Was sin involved in the activity of the serpent? We all answer Yes. But we immediately think of Satan. Even So with the crossing of animals. Any and every move to mar God’s original, orderly plan can be described only as sin. [320]

Mrs. White Focuses on Satan as Evil Power

One cannot read far in Mrs. White’s writings before becoming aware that she views the whole drama of our world from its earliest days onward as a great struggle between God and the devil.[102] Mrs. White pictures Satan as stalking over the earth, bent on disorder and devastation, even as the Bible pictures him. It is true that she did not specifically refer to Satan in the amalgamation statements in Spiritual Gifts. However, in an unpublished statement, she makes a reference to amalgamation—the only other reference thus far discovered in all her writings—which discloses her views as to the cause of certain of the changes that took place in our world after Adam and Eve fell. The statement reads:

“Not one noxious plant was placed in the Lord’s great garden, but after Adam and Eve sinned, poisonous herbs sprang up. In the parable of the sower the question was asked the Master, ‘Didst not thou sow good seed in thy field? how then hath it tares?’ The Master answered, ‘An enemy hath done this.’ All tares are sown by the evil one. Every noxious herb is of his sowing, and by his ingenious methods of amalgamation he has corrupted the earth with tares.”—MS. 65, 1899.

This statement, viewed in the setting of the whole tenor of Mrs. White’s writings which attribute to Satan the active responsibility for all evil in our world, fully warrants us in concluding that she attributed to Satan the “confused species” of animals. Hence she would most certainly describe these “species” as a manifestation of sin, even as she could properly speak of the appearance of insensate but “noxious, poisonous herbs” as an exhibit of the activity of the “evil one.” Thus her amalgamation statement regarding “sin” is consistent with all that Scripture has revealed of earth’s early days, in terms of the interpretation we have given to the key phrase, “amalgamation of man and beast.”

We have; therefore; left for consideration only the charge implicit in the fact that the amalgamation statements were not incorporated by Mrs. White in her later works, now current.

[102]A four-volume work by Mrs. White, published between 1870 and 1884, entitled Spirit of Prophecy, carries the secondary title: The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan, not to be confused with the later work Great Controversy, which is an expansion of the fourth volume. In the first volume the two amalgamation passages are reprinted in their original context.

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The Suppression Charge Examined

Here is simply a variation of the charge of suppression. We believe that the chapter that dealt exhaustively with that charge revealed that the fact that a passage is not retained in later publications, or that a particular book is not republished, is not in itself valid ground for charging that suppression has occurred. In view of this clearly established point we might properly refuse to take seriously this plausible-sounding charge of suppression as applied to the amalgamation passage. But that the groundlessness of the charge may be transparently clear we give these pertinent facts in the case:

From 1858 to 1864 there appeared from Mrs. White’s pen four small volumes carrying the general title Spiritual Gifts. With the exception of volume 2, which is largely autobiographical, and the latter half of volume 4, the volumes present a portrayal of sacred history from the creation to Eden restored.

From 1870 to 1884 she brought forth four larger volumes, under the title The Spirit of Prophecy. These volumes cover more fully the subject of man’s religious history from Eden to Eden. In large part the material in Spiritual Gifts, except the autobiographical volume, is reproduced in The Spirit of Prophecy. Often the text of the former is exactly reproduced, chapter after chapter, in the latter. In some instances there are deletions, and often there are additions. A detailed study of the matter reveals that here apply the principles set forth in the discussion on Suppression, by which an author, in bringing out a new and more complete treatment of a theme, may properly add or subtract or revise. The two amalgamation passages appear verbatim in The Spirit of Prophecy, in volume 1, published in 1870.

How easy it would have been for Mrs. White to drop out the amalgamation passages in the 1870 edition. The passages had already raised questions, as is evidenced by the reference to them in Uriah Smith’s work, Objections to the Visions Answered. That was the time to “suppress” them. But she reproduced the chapters containing the passages, so that both the passages and the context remain the same. [322]

Up to this time Mrs. White had been writing quite exclusively for the church. The next step was the planning of books that might be sold to those outside the Seventh-day Adventist Church, even to those who might not have any religious background or connection. Naturally, included in such a plan would be the desire to give an appropriate emphasis to certain truths that distinguish the preaching of the Advent movement. Now, even as a minister, turning from his congregation to address a mixed multitude, would quite change his treatment of a subject, by addition, subtraction, or revision, even so would a writer. In 1890 the great subject of man’s early history, which is the theme of Spiritual Gifts, volume 3, and Spirit of Prophecy, volume 1, was covered in a new way in the book Patriarchs and Prophets, prepared for sale to the general public. This is one of a set of current works which cover the religious history of man from Eden to Eden, and known generally as the Conflict of the Ages Series. In each volume of the series the field is covered in an amplified and sometimes new way, and no pretense is made of reprinting an earlier work. It would be just as consistent to contend that the whole four volumes of The Spirit of Prophecy have been suppressed as to contend that a certain five sentences the total involved in the amalgamation passages—have been suppressed!

If anything need be added, we presume it would be to remind the reader that the four volumes of Spiritual Gifts, which are the original source of the amalgamation passages, are currently available in a facsimile edition![103]

[103]At no time did Mrs. White offer any comment on the matter. James White spoke approvingly of Smith’s book defending Mrs. White against fifty-two objections. But it would be a bold assumption to conclude from this that he agreed with every detail of every explanation and defense that Smith presented. (See James White’s approving paragraph in the The Review and Herald, August 25, 1868, p. 160.) In the chapter “The Image Beast and 666” we noted that James White approved, with apparently no qualification, a certain prophetic chart. But later, and in another connection, he gently ridiculed a point of prophetic interpretation that is reflected in one statement in the chart. Now, if we are not warranted in drawing from James White’s approval of Smith’s book the conclusion that he specifically endorsed Smith’s statement on amalgamation, we are even less warranted in concluding from James White’s approval that Mrs. White approved. Mrs. White’s silence proves nothing. Only rarely did she make a statement regarding the accuracy or inaccuracy of explanations made by others concerning her writings.

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Chapter 21—“Rome Alone”—An Alleged Contradiction

Charge: “In the revision of some of her [Mrs. White’s] books she directly contradicts what she had previously written. Thus, in all editions of her book, The Great Controversy, 383, from 1888 up to 1911, of the fall of Babylon referred to in Revelation 14:8, she said, ‘It can not refer to the Romish Church.’ She applied it altogether to the Protestant churches. But in the revised edition of 1911 this statement was changed to read: ‘It can not refer to the Roman Church alone.’ Before this it could not refer to the Roman Church at all; but now she says it does apply to that church, and to that church particularly, but not to it alone. It includes others. Here is a contradiction if ever there was one.”

The apparent contradiction involves a passage which reads differently in the old edition of The Great Controversy from what it reads in the current, or new, edition.[104] Before examining the “contradiction” a word should be said about the revision, lest the reader gain the impression that the revised edition is filled with statements that set forth new beliefs and positions, possibly in conflict with earlier stated views. The facts about the revision are these:

The plates from which the book had long been printed had quite worn out. This necessitated a resetting of type in order to make new plates. The relationship of this fact to the revision of the text is set forth by Mrs. White thus:

“When I learned that Great Controversy must be reset, I determined that we would have everything closely examined, to see if the truths it contained were stated in the very best manner, to convince those not of our faith that the Lord had guided and sustained me in the writing of its pages.

“As a result of the thorough examination by our most experienced workers, some changing in the wording has been proposed. These changes I have carefully examined, and approved. I am thankful that my life has been

[104]The old edition was first printed in 1888, the new in 1911.

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spared, and that I have strength and clearness of mind for this and other literary work.”—Letter 56, 1911.

Here is a frank statement of the purpose in such revision as was made. And that purpose was to secure maximum clarity of expression.

Every reasonable presumption is against there being a contradiction between the two editions of The Great Controversy. Thousands of Adventist homes contained copies of the old edition, and no slightest attempt was made to recall these copies. Why should Mrs. White invite trouble and doubt among Adventists by boldly reversing her teaching concerning Rome, when there was nothing in the original statement that demanded change? By this we mean that the original statement was an exposition of a symbolic, prophetic passage, and thus no one could ever successfully prove—as we prove an error in historical statement—that her original exposition was erroneous. Then why did she revise her words regarding Rome and thus risk the charge of contradiction? The answer again is: So that her whole presentation of the subject should be “stated in the very best manner” to remove all ambiguity.

The Context of the Disputed Passage

Let us give, with ample context, the disputed passage as it appears in the old edition of The Great Controversy:

“In Revelation 14, the first angel is followed by a second, proclaiming, ‘Babylon is fallen, is fallen, that great city, because she made all nations drink of the wine of the wrath of her fornication.’ The term Babylon is derived from Babel, and signifies confusion. It is employed in Scripture to designate the various forms of false or apostate religion. In Revelation 17, Babylon is represented as a woman, a figure which is used in the Bible as the symbol of a church, a virtuous woman representing a pure church, a vile woman an apostate church.

[There follow three paragraphs that refer to the spiritual Significance of marriage as a symbol of our relationship to Christ, and then the prophetic explanation continues thus:]

“The woman, Babylon, of Revelation 17, is described as ‘arrayed in purple and scarlet color, and decked with gold and precious stones and pearls, having a golden cup in her hand full of abominations and filthiness.... And upon [325] her forehead was a name written, Mystery, Babylon the Great, the mother of harlots.’ Says the prophet, ‘I saw the woman drunken with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus.’ Babylon is further declared to be ‘that great city, which reigneth over the kings of the earth.’ The power that for so many centuries maintained despotic sway over the monarchs of Christendom, is Rome. The purple and scarlet color, the gold and precious stones and pearls, vividly picture the magnificence and more than kingly pomp affected by the haughty see of Rome. And no other power could be so truly declared ‘drunken with the blood of the saints’ as that church which has so cruelly persecuted the followers of Christ. Babylon is also charged with the sin of unlawful connection with ‘the kings of the earth.’ It was by departure from the Lord, and alliance with the heathen, that the Jewish church became a harlot; and Rome, corrupting herself in like manner by seeking the support of worldly powers, receives a like condemnation.

“Babylon is said to be ‘the mother of harlots.’ By her daughters must be symbolized churches that cling to her doctrines and traditions, and follow her example of sacrificing the truth and the approval of God, in order to form an unlawful alliance with the world. The message of Revelation 14 announcing the fall of Babylon, must apply to religious bodies that were once pure and have become corrupt. Since this message follows the warning of the Judgment [that is, the first angel’s message], it must begin in the last days, therefore it cannot refer to the Romish Church, for that church has been in a fallen condition for many centuries.”—Pages 380-383.

In the new edition, the text is the same, except that the clause, “it cannot refer to the Romish Church,” is revised to read, “it cannot refer to the Roman Church alone.” (See new edition, p. 383.)

It is evident from the extended passage quoted that in the old edition Mrs. White emphatically includes Rome as a part of Babylon, indeed, makes her the “mother.” Therefore, her statement, “it cannot refer to the Romish Church,” might easily appear to be at variance with her declaration that Rome is an integral part of Babylon. That apparent variance is removed in the new edition.

What Is Meant by Babylon?

Why should Mrs. White have said in the old edition, “it cannot refer to the Romish Church” when she clearly reveals in the context that she considers Rome the “mother” of all the Babylonish churches? We believe the answer is to be found in a study of the [326] question that held the attention of Adventists in the earlier days; namely, What is meant by “Babylon” in the book of Revelation?

When the second angel’s message (Revelation 14:8) first began to be the subject of special study and sermons by the Adventists in the 1844 movement, the question was: What is Babylon? The long-established Protestant position was that Babylon represented exclusively the Papacy. No, replied most of the Millerite leaders, it must include various Protestant churches. On the strength of this belief, coupled with the conviction that the time had come to announce that “Babylon is fallen,” Millerite ministers called upon the members of Protestant churches to “come out.” It was this call, coupled with the message that Christ would soon come, that set apart as a distinct company some fifty thousand people in the summer of 1844.

Shortly after the great disappointment of October 22, 1844, many Millerite leaders, along with the laity, began to doubt various of the prophetic positions that had distinguished the movement. Among the first positions to be questioned was that regarding the meaning of Babylon. Miller himself had never actively endorsed the idea that Babylon embraced Protestant churches as well as Rome,[105] though he seemed to be about the only Millerite leader who had not. The reversal of belief on this point led the principal Millerite group, under Miller and Himes, to revert to the position that Babylon represents simply Rome. And, of course, for this view they had the long-established Protestant interpretation.

This reversal of belief as to Babylon, and thus the surrender of the second angel’s message, by the major part of the Adventists, early constituted a point of contention between them and the little Sabbathkeeping group. The latter group held firmly that the original Millerite preaching of Revelation 14:8 was correct, that Babylon includes Protestant churches.[106] The soon-crystallized

[105]See William Miller’s Apology and Defence, pp. 25, 30.

[106]For example, an editorial in the The Review and Herald, January 13, 1852, p. 76, vigorously declares that if it had not been for the first and the second angel’s messages there never would have been an Adventist movement in 1844, and that to repudiate the first or the second, or both, was simply to give up the “original faith” that had made the Adventists a distinct people.

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Seventh-day Adventist view regarding Babylon may be summarized thus:

1. Babylon, as the term is used in the Revelation, consists of three main parts: paganism, Roman Catholicism, and apostate Protestantism.

2. The second angel of Revelation 14, who declares that “Babylon is fallen,” is speaking specifically of the third part, apostate Protestantism. The principal reasons given for this, are:

a. That the second angel’s message follows along with the judgment-hour message, and thus could not be given until the time of the ending of the 2300-day prophecy. But in 1844 it would hardly be accurate to announce that Babylon is fallen, as applied to paganism or Roman Catholicism, for they had been in that state for long centuries. Therefore, the word “Babylon,” in Revelation 14:8, must apply very particularly to Protestantism.

b. That when the call was made, “Come out of her, my people,” it was answered chiefly by those who held membership in various Protestant churches. As Mrs. White declares in The Great Controversy:

“In the eighteenth chapter of the Revelation, in a message which is yet future,[107] the people of God are called upon to come out of Babylon. According to this scripture, many of God’s people must still be in Babylon. And in what religious bodies are the greater part of the followers of Christ now to be found? Without doubt, in the various churches professing the Protestant faith.”—Page 383, old edition.

Various Writers Cited

In the light of these reasons it is easy to see how different writers among us might appear to be expressing divergent views, or how even the same writer might appear to express contradictory views regarding Babylon. If the discussion dealt with the broad question of what constitutes Babylon, a Seventh-day Adventist writer would certainly speak of Rome as prominent. But if the writer had in his mind the historic controversy that had been carried on for decades, both with Protestants in general and other Adventist bodies in particular, as to the meaning of Babylon and its fall, he would

[107]The clause, “in a message which is yet future,” is deleted from the new edition.

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almost certainly declare that the revelator, in chapter 14:8, is not only not speaking particularly of Rome, but rather is speaking solely of Protestantism.

It is this fact that explains the wording, not only of Mrs. White’s statement in The Great Controversy, but that of other of our denominational writers through the years. The apparent contradictions prove to be merely illustrations of how misunderstanding can arise when a special emphasis is placed on one aspect of a truth. Take this statement by J. N. Andrews in 1851. After quoting Revelation 14:8, he says:

“This angel follows or comes after the judgment hour cry. That such a message has been given, all are aware who have in any manner heeded the mighty work of God through the land....

“That a work worthy of being noted as the fulfillment of prophecy, could ever be accomplished by calling the people of God out of Rome, no one can seriously pretend.”—The Review and Herald, May 19, 1851, p. 81.

Note how emphatically he excludes Rome from his thinking as he comments on Revelation 14:8. But listen to his words in the immediately following paragraph:

“We regard Babylon as the professed church united with the kingdoms of the world. In other words, ‘Babylon is the apostate churches.’—We cannot restrict the term to the Papal church, for it evidently includes all those religious bodies which have become corrupt like the ‘mother of harlots.’”

A Distinguishing Mark

This apparent lack of harmony in discussions of Babylon seems to distinguish our writers through the years. The simple explanation is that at one moment the writers are thinking of the special application of Revelation 14:8; at the next moment, of the fact that Rome is nevertheless a most important part of Babylon, and will continue to be until the day of judgment.

An editorial in the The Review and Herald, December 9, 1851, reasons thus regarding the application of Revelation 14:8:

“God’s people, who heard the first angel’s message, and came out under the message of the second, were, prior to their coming out, in Babylon. Were they in the Catholic Church? And did they come out of that church? Certainly not. But we know that many thousands did come out of the Protestant Sects. [329] As the Catholic Church has not morally fallen, being always about as low as it possibly could be, and as God’s people were not there, we say that it cannot be the Babylon mentioned by the second angel.”—Page 64.

But the editor reprinted in the same issue an article from The Voice of Truth, September, 1844, entitled “Come Out of Babylon,” which declared, in part:

“The mother represents the Catholic Church the eldest member of the family; and we believe the daughters symbolize the Protestant sects.... The ‘whole family’ most strikingly represents that city. Take the whole and the figure is perfect; leave out the children and it is imperfect.”—The Review and Herald, December 9, 1851, p. 58. (Italics his.)

We should remember, as we note the emphasis, first on one aspect and then on the other, that the Review and Herald writers were sometimes thinking of the claim made by Protestants in general, and by their former Millerite brethren, in particular, that Babylon signifies Rome exclusively.

The apparent conflict between the broader and the narrower view of Babylon that may properly be held at the same time is further indicated in this passage from an 1852 editorial entitled “Babylon“:

“If the term Babylon be applied to the Roman Catholic church alone, then we inquire, When did she morally fall? The fact that she has always been corrupt, and about as low as she possibly could be, forbids the application of this moral change, or fall, to that corrupt church. Again, Babylon, signifying ‘confusion, or mixture,’ cannot be applied to the Roman church, she being a unit.”—The Review and Herald, June 10, 1852, p. 21.

No New Theology in 1911 Edition

The construction of this 1852 editorial reveals a striking similarity to the disputed passage in the new edition of The Great Controversy! This much, at least, is already evident, that the new edition is setting forth no new theology!

J. H. Waggoner, writing in 1854 under the title “Babylon Is Fallen!” declared:

“Babylon is said to be fallen, because she made all nations drink of the wine of the wrath of her fornication. Revelation 14:8. This I understand to be at the period when the fall of the whole family has taken place; and is it [330] not a fact that the daughters are allied to the nations as well as the mother?”—The Review and Herald, September 5, 1854, p. 29.

In an article in the Review and Herald in 1862, Uriah Smith comments on Revelation 17:1-5. The proposition is set down: “That this apostate woman is a symbol of the Roman Catholic church, all Protestant commentators are agreed.” After discussing this point Smith declares:

“This woman is explicitly called Babylon. Is then Rome Babylon to the exclusion of all other religious bodies? No; from the fact that she is called the mother of harlots, which shows that there are other independent religious organizations, which constitute the apostate daughters, and belong to the same great family.”—December 9, p. 12. (Italics his.)

This statement, taken in conjunction with the preceding one by Waggoner, once more reveals how the two thoughts regarding Babylon—a primary emphasis on Rome, and a final emphasis on the Protestant sects—balance in the minds of our Seventh-day Adventist writers. When attention is first called to Rome’s long historical relation to certain Bible prophecies, Smith seeks to protect against a mistaken conclusion by inquiring: “Is then Rome Babylon to the exclusion of all other religious bodies?” When the particular prophecy of the fall of Babylon, in Revelation 14:8, is before him, Waggoner wishes to make sure that attention is focused on Protestantism: “This I understand to be at the period when the fall of the whole family has taken place.”

A Controversy With Himes

In the Review and Herald in 1864, Uriah Smith, now the editor, examines the claim of Joshua V. Himes, who had been prominent in the 1844 movement, that the Roman Catholic “church alone constitutes Babylon.” The emphatic rejoinder is: “The papal church does not alone constitute Babylon.” In support of this the editor sets down a series of propositions:

“1. That the papal church is only that portion of Babylon represented by the mother. 2. That there are harlot daughters, which are all included under the term Babylon. 3. That these daughters are the various degenerate Protestant sects, which are bound by human creeds, and, cherishing many of the [331] heresies of the papacy, are following in its footsteps. 4. That the Scriptures seem to speak of Babylon under the two divisions of mother and daughters, Rev xvii, dealing specially with the mother, or Papal Babylon, and chap. xviii, with the daughters, or Protestant Babylon. That this conclusion is necessary, from the fact that the testimony taken together, must embrace them both; and there are statements in chap. xvii, which cannot apply to Protestantism, and others in chap. xviii, which cannot apply to the Papacy. 5. That scattered through these various Protestant sects, the people of God were to be found almost exclusively, prior to the proclamation of the Advent doctrine, or first angel’s message from 1840 to 1844. 6. That in consequence of their rejecting the doctrine of the Advent, those churches met with a change, grieved God’s Spirit by shutting their eyes to the truth, and suffered a moral fall.”—November 29, p. 4.

Note that the editor, in refuting the claim that Babylon is Rome “alone,” first declares that “the papal church does not alone constitute Babylon.” Then he moves on until in point 5 he uses the term Babylon “almost exclusively” to describe the “various Protestant sects,” because in them, he says, “the people of God were to be found almost exclusively” in the early 1840’s, which is the time of the fall of Babylon to which Adventist ministers referred in their preaching.

An Editorial in 1880

An editorial in the Review and Herald, in 1880, sums up, in similar manner, the two aspects of the subject that seem to create an apparent Contradiction: (1) the general definition and application of Babylon, and (2) the specific application in relation to Revelation 14:8. The editorial ends thus:

“The message of Revelation 14, while using the term Babylon without limitation, did not declare that the pagan and papal divisions which had been corrupt during their whole history, then fell, but, the last division having fallen; the announcement could be made respecting the whole, that it ‘is fallen.’

“By this view we are not obliged to plead for any embarrassing limitation of the term Babylon, and the delay of the announcement of the fall to the present generation is easily accounted for.”—June 10, p. 376.

What Mrs. White Stressed in Old Edition

In the light of all these quotations it is easy to see how a writer, by focusing at one time on one aspect of Babylon, and at a later time on another aspect, could be considered contradictory. Yet no [332] contradiction really would exist. Mrs. White wrote The Great Controversy in the 1880’s, when our Seventh-day Adventist writers were still much in controversy with other religious bodies as to the meaning of Babylon. The need was not to prove that Rome was involved, but that Protestantism was, and that very particularly Protestantism was intended in Revelation 14:8. Undoubtedly Mrs. White in her writing at that time focused on that point. The result is revealed in the wording of the old edition, first published in 1888.

But the years rolled on, the older days of controversy ended, particularly with other Adventist groups, and the passage in The Great Controversy became susceptible of misunderstanding. The misunderstanding was not due to any new theological view adopted by Seventh-day Adventists, which would be embarrassed by the passage. Let us mark that well! No; the misunderstanding was due to an apparent contradiction resident in the passage itself, the kind of apparent contradiction that we have found resident in the various quotations given in this chapter. In other words, Mrs. White, after quoting Revelation 14:8, immediately proceeds for two pages to discuss Babylon largely in terms of Rome, only to follow with the statement that “Babylon,” in Revelation 14:8, “cannot refer to the Romish Church.” The revision in the new edition, first published in 1911, simply sought to remove the apparent contradiction within the passage itself, by making the disputed line in the passage read: “It cannot refer to the Roman Church alone.”

One Critic’s Final Argument

In the light of the foregoing facts let us look at what a critic presents as an unanswerable argument against Mrs. White’s inspiration, in terms of the change in wording regarding Babylon.

“Which was inspired, the revelation of 1888 or the revelation of 1911? Some of her defenders claim that this [change in wording] makes no change in the meaning. If you were acquitted by a court jury of a crime for which you had been charged, and the jury should bring in a verdict, ‘The prisoner is not guilty of the crime charged against him,’ would it make any difference [333] to you if the clerk inserted the word ‘alone’ and thereby made it read: ‘The prisoner is not guilty alone of the crime charged against him’?”

But Mrs. White, sitting as a jury of one in 1888, did not acquit the “Romish Church” of the “crime” for which it “had been charged.” On the contrary she renders against it, and at great length, a verdict of guilty of all that the Bible declares that Babylon commits. But the case before Mrs. White involves more than one defendant. The revision of the text of her verdict sought only to make clear the relationship of one defendant to the other, in the matter of the timing of their crimes!

To the question, “Which was inspired, the revelation of 1888 or the revelation of 1911?” we would return another: Which is inspired, Paul’s letter to the Romans, c. A.D. 60, that speaks of certain persons predestined to salvation; or John’s Revelation, c. A.D. 96, that offers salvation to “whosoever will”? Romans 9:17-23; Revelation 22:17. The answer, of Course, is that they both are, and that there is really no contradiction. Paul is simply stressing one great truth, the sovereignty of God, and John is stressing another, the free will of man. Even so with Mrs. White and the disputed passage before us; there is no real contradiction. [334]

Chapter 22—The Ignorant Slave—Slavery Until Second Advent

Charge Number 1

Mrs. White, writing in 1858, declared that the slaves were kept in such ignorance that they could not discern between right and wrong. Therefore God could not take them to heaven, but in mercy will simply not resurrect them. He will simply let them be as though they had not been. This is contrary to facts and Scripture. “In truth slaves were often more godly than their masters and perhaps this visionist [Mrs. White] didn’t know that the slaves had their own separate places in churches in those days.” Mrs. White’s statement is “contrary to the Word, of God,” which declares that “all that are in their graves” will come forth. See John 5:28, 29.

This charge is based on the following statement by Mrs. White in 1858, in Spiritual Gifts 1:193:

“I saw that the slave-master would have to answer for the soul of his slave whom he has kept in ignorance; and all the sins of the slave will be visited upon the master. GOD cannot take the slave to heaven, who has been kept in ignorance and degradation, knowing nothing of GOD, or the Bible, fearing nothing but his master’s lash, and not holding so elevated a position as his master’s brute beasts. But he does the best thing for him that a compassionate GOD can do. He lets him be as though he had not been.” (See also Early Writings, 276.)

Let us examine in order the two parts of this Charge:

First Part of Charge Number 1

1. That slaves were spiritually ignorant, when “in truth slaves were often more godly than their masters.” But Mrs. White did not say that all slaves were spiritually ignorant. In fact, she declared as emphatically as do the critics that “slaves were often more godly than their masters.” Only a few pages beyond this passage (page 193) now under discussion is her statement: “I saw the pious slave rise in triumph and victory” (Spiritual Gifts, p. [335] 206). Only two paragraphs before the disputed paragraph on page 193 she speaks of “the tears of the pious bond-men and bond-women” (page 191). In the same connection she hurls anathemas at the cruel masters. We do not know how she could have more clearly taught that “in truth slaves were often more godly than their masters.”

The language of the whole chapter from which the brief passage in debate is quoted, makes clear that Mrs. White is speaking of two classes of slaves: (1) the “pious” slave, who evidently has a knowledge of God, knows right from wrong, and acts in harmony with that knowledge. All that is implicit in the word “pious.” (2) The slave “kept in ignorance,” who knows “nothing of God, or the Bible,” who fears “nothing but his master’s lash,” and who does not hold “so elevated a position as his master’s brute beasts.” In making this distinction Mrs. White conforms to history. All slaves were not treated alike. Some slave owners were much more considerate than others, and some did provide for their slaves certain opportunities for religious instruction.

Mrs. White, looking forward to the great day of God, “saw the pious slave rise in triumph and victory.” She saw the slave that had been kept in complete ignorance allowed to sleep on in the grave and “be as though he had not been.”

Second Part of Charge Number 1

2. That brings us to the second point of the charge; namely, that Mrs. White says that some will not rise in the resurrection, when the Bible says that “all” will rise. But the Bible writers sometimes use all-inclusive words like “all” and “every” with definitely implied restrictions. Let us illustrate:

Christ said, “And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me.” John 12:32. Universalists, who teach that all men will be saved, use this text with great persuasiveness. Does not the text say “all”? But orthodox Christendom has ever denounced Universalism as heresy.

As to this particular statement by Christ, there have been various interpretations. We think it is simply an illustration of [336] the fact that Scriptural writers and speakers often make general statements, which, taken apart from their other statements, might seem to be too all-inclusive. But these writers presume that their hearers will interpret a particular statement by all the other statements they have made. When we do this with Christ’s words in John 12:32 we soon find ourselves understanding the “all” as meaning all who are willing to respond to His drawing influence.

John the revelator foretells the second coming of Christ and declares that “every bondman, and every free man, hid themselves in the dens and in the rocks of the mountains; and said to the mountains and rocks, Fall on us, and hide us from the face of him that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb.” Revelation 6:15, 16. Note that he says “every bondman, and every free man.” Yet Isaiah says that in the last great day there will be a company who will look up and rejoice. (See Isaiah 25:9.) Shall we then conclude that John contradicts Isaiah? All Bible students understand that when John says “every” he means only every one of the wicked hosts in the world.

It is no more unreasonable to believe that there may be limitations to the “all” in the phrase, “All that are in the graves shall hear his voice,” than in the “all” of John 12:32, or the “every” of Revelation 6:15. Christ divides the resurrected into two groups: (1) “they that have done good,” and (2) “they that have done evil.” We think that everyone will admit that there are some who have lived and died who have done neither good nor evil. For example, Moses wrote of the “little ones” and “children” of the rebellious Israelites, that they “had no knowledge between good and evil.” Deuteronomy 1:39. Then there are those who are mentally defective. To the list of those who have “no knowledge between good and evil” Mrs. White simply adds the slave who has been “kept in ignorance.”

When the question is raised, What will God do finally with all those who have had no knowledge between good and evil? we are immediately plunged into deep theological discussion. Even the wisest of men have no clear answer on this question, which is a most difficult one. Most theologians are content to answer it by voicing the question asked in the Scriptures: “Shall [337] not the Judge of all the earth do right?” Mrs. White’s statement is simply a commentary on that ancient question, a commentary which does not run contrary to Scripture.

Charge Number 2

A second, and closely related charge, may be stated thus:

Mrs. White did not expect that slavery would be abolished, for she declared that the slave masters would suffer the seven last plagues. “The slave-holders are all dead. Will they be resurrected to pass through the seven last plagues?” Quite evidently she could not see a little time ahead to the day when slavery would be abolished in the United States and in all the world.

This charge is based on the words of Mrs. White that follow immediately the passage already quoted, as will be evident:

“He [God] lets him [the ignorant slave] be as though he had not been; while the master has to suffer the seven last plagues, and then come up in the second resurrection, and suffer the second, most awful death. Then the wrath of GOD will be appeased.”

A further statement by Mrs. White, which was made in 1847, may possibly also serve as a basis for this charge:

“Then commenced the jubilee, when the land should rest. I saw the pious slave rise in triumph and victory, and shake off the chains that bound him, while his wicked master was in confusion, and knew not what to do.”—Broadside, A Vision, Topsham, Maine, April 7, 1847.[108]

The Bible prophets provide us with many illustrations of scenes, separated by greater or less periods of time, which seem to be merged together so that we need to read additional statements in the Bible in order to separate the two or more parts. Isaiah prophesied of the work that Christ would do at His first advent. Christ read from the prophecy in Isaiah 61 and added: “This day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears.” Luke 4:21. But He stopped short in the middle of what appears in Isaiah to be a continuing passage. Isaiah 61:2 reads: “To proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all that mourn.” Why did He stop before the phrase: “and the

[108]See also A Word to the “Little Flock,” p. 20; Spiritual Gifts 1:206; Early Writings, 35.

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day of vengeance of our God”? Because that day was still ahead. But one would not discover that fact if he confined his eyes to the sixty-first chapter of Isaiah.

Transition From Present to Future Judgment

The Bible prophets often moved quickly from a description of an immediately present incident, such as a war, a plague, or a calamity of some sort, to a description of the last hours of earth’s history and the coming of Christ. In one sentence they may be speaking of the judgments of God upon the present inhabitants of the land, and in the next, the final judgments of God upon sinful men. They may speak of the “sinners in Zion”—men living at that very hour—only to follow immediately with a description of the cowering wicked at the final day. But we think that the sinners listening at the moment to the prophet’s dire words considered that he was continuing to describe them, which, in a sense, he was, for we shall all stand before God’s judgment bar. This divine unconcern for establishing any sharp division between the immediate and the ultimate that not infrequently reveals itself in the declarations of prophets is a striking feature of the Bible.

Devout theologians have explained this by saying that God did not vouchsafe to these prophets any revelation as to the time that was to elapse between the present event that they witnessed and the final day of vengeance to which their minds so repeatedly turned. Thus the discussion of an immediate judgment, such as hurricane, pestilence, or war, would present to their minds striking similarities to the final scenes that had been revealed to them of the judgment plagues and the destruction of the wicked. And thus they would merge the two in their descriptions. The result is not a deception upon the hearers but a solemn reminder that all earth’s present calamities are but harbingers of the ultimate destruction awaiting the ungodly.

Future Scenes of Slavery

When Mrs. White looked forward to the last hours of earth’s history did she see any scenes of slavery in the world that were similar to those she witnessed in mid-nineteenth century? If God [339] gave to her any picture of final events—and He did—then she would certainly see slavery. And how do we know? From John the revelator. At the hour of Christ’s coming, as we have already noted, “every bondman, and every free man, hid themselves.” Revelation 6:15. And it is this very text that Mrs. White quotes in connection with her statement about “the pious slave” rising up at the commencement of “the jubilee.” (See Spiritual Gifts 1:206.)

Actual Slavery Today

Perhaps, with prophetic eye, she saw, what none of her critics dreamed would happen, the reinstitution of actual slavery on a large scale in our postwar world. The public press has carried numerous unchallenged accounts of the actual servitude of great numbers of war prisoners and others in certain lands.

We know that just before the last great hour an apostate religious power, in unholy alliance with the secular, will order the destruction of all who will not give obedience to its evil mandates, that indeed none may buy or sell except those who have a mark of allegiance to that power. In comment on that time Mrs. White wrote:

“As the defenders of truth refuse to honor the Sunday-sabbath, some of them will be thrust into prison, some will be exiled, some will be treated as slaves.”—The Great Controversy, 608.

Evidently, from the foregoing, we must conclude that in the very last days, even at the time when the heavens open to reveal Christ descending, there are to be “slave-masters.” And certainly it will be true that “the master must endure the seven last plagues.” That will be true no matter whether the slaves in earth’s last hour are ignorant or pious, white or colored.

Key Clause Lifted?

But it may be protested that we are lifting this key clause out of its context. In a sense yes, but no more so than we lift out, or remove chronologically, a clause in a Bible prophecy from the immediate moment of the prophet’s description of a current event to the future event of the last judgment. We see in this passage [340] from Mrs. White an illustration of one of those generalizations of inspiration that do not wait for qualifying time clauses, but hasten to the central truth, in this instance the truth that fearful judgment awaits a particular class of sinners, the slave masters.

We think that Mrs. White followed a practice of the prophets of old; she merged a mid-nineteenth century state of slavery with a last-day state of bondage in which many will find themselves, and moved in her description from one to the other without indication of transition.

Critics Do Not Indict Paul or John

No lover of the Bible would indict Paul, for example, or John, for speaking of Christ’s coming as near, and accordingly exhorting their immediate hearers to readiness for the day of deliverance. The exhortation to readiness is the only consistent sequel to the declaration concerning the shortness of time.

But the coming of Christ brings not only deliverance to the righteous but destruction to the wicked, including slave masters. Then is not Mrs. White squarely following the prophetic pattern when, in harmony with her declarations concerning the nearness of the end, she warns the wicked, in this instance the slave masters, that judgment awaits them?

True, those very slave masters in mid-nineteenth century who may have heard or read her words, have gone to their graves. But where have those first-century Christians gone who read Paul’s epistles of exhortation? To their graves!

Scriptural Style in Pronouns

It is a common style in Scripture to speak to immediate hearers as if they were to witness, personally, a long series of events. When the disciples asked Christ what would be the sign of His coming and of the end of the world, He made answer by outlining important events that would take place until the Second Advent. But repeatedly through that talk to His disciples Christ uses the pronouns “you” and “ye,” which are employed when one is addressing another. For example, when He carne to the end of His list of signs, [341] He declared to them as they sat beside Him on the Mount of Olives: “When ye shall see all these things, know that it is near, even at the doors.” Matthew 24:33.

But no one would think of confining Christ’s words to the life-time of the apostles. We see in His form of speech simply a vivid style of conveying truth, and read into the “you” and “ye” all of us who have lived in the hope of the Advent since the days of the apostles. And, we might add, in passing, we combine Christ’s words with those of His holy prophets so as to discover when, indeed, the Advent is near, even at the doors.

If we allow to Mrs. White the same methods of speech, the same privilege of merging present and future events, as we all willingly grant to Bible writers, the charge before us collapses. [342]

Chapter 23—Did God Deceive the Advent Movement in 1843?

Charge: “Mrs. White taught that God was a party to—that His hand ‘hid’—the prophetic errors contained in self-deceived William Miller’s and his followers’ ‘1843 chart.’ (See ‘Early Writings of Mrs. White,’ p. 74.) The Bible declares that ‘no lie is of the truth’; that God ‘cannot lie’; and that deceitfulness, of any and every sort, is ‘an abomination unto Him.’ (See 1 John 2:21; Titus 1:2; Proverbs 6:16-19.)”

The statement to which the critic refers, reads thus:

“I have seen that the 1843 chart was directed by the hand of the Lord, and that it should not be altered; that the figures were as He wanted them; that His hand was over and hid a mistake in some of the figures, so that none could see it, until His hand was removed.”—Early Writings, 74.

Mrs. White is here referring to the error in calculation on the principal prophetic chart used by the Millerites in the early 1840’s, that led them to calculate that the 2300-day prophecy of Daniel 8:13, 14, would end in the year 1843, Jewish spring-to-spring reckoning,[109] whereas the correct reckoning was October 22, 1844.

When the two disciples walked the road to Emmaus the Sunday afternoon of the resurrection, Christ joined them. “But their eyes were holden that they should not know him.” Luke 24:16. Thus they walked and talked, thinking that they were conversing with “a stranger in Jerusalem.” No accent of voice betrayed Him, no mannerism apparently gave a clue to His identity. Finally, as He sat at meat with them in their home at the end of the journey, and blessed the bread, “their eyes were opened, and they knew him.” Verse 31.

The simple meaning of these two passages from Luke’s Gospel is that Christ did not permit them, at first, to recognize Him, or,

[109]That is, somewhere between the spring of 1843 and the spring of 1844, by our calendar.

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to borrow the language of Mrs. White, His “hand was over and hid” from them the truth that the “stranger” was none other than Christ. The consensus among commentators is that the phrase, “their eyes were holden,” means that in some supernatural way Christ concealed from them for a time the truth as to who their fellow traveler was. Whether that concealment is explained by His appearing in “another form” (see Mark 16:12) or simply by His temporarily preventing their eyes and ears from functioning with normal acuteness, we have no way of knowing. Nor is it important in this connection that we attempt to know. We are concerned only with the fact that “their eyes were holden” for a time.

We can imagine the Bible skeptic trying here to make out a case by first calling attention to the Biblical claim that God is above deception, and then pointing to this experience of the disciples en route to Emmaus. Could anything be conceived of as more important than that His own disciples should know their Lord? Yet for a time He concealed that fact from them.

But would a Christian be impressed by such an argument? No. We would reply that Christ’s concealment of His identity rises above the level of deception, and has no moral taint in it.

Thus, also, would all of us answer the Bible critics who like to focus on the Lord’s specific command to Abraham to offer up his son Isaac. The Lord allowed Abraham to travel the long journey to the mountaintop, even to going through the agonizing task of binding his only son on the altar. Then, and not till then, did the Lord stay Abraham’s hand and disclose to him that he was not to offer his son, but to offer a ram instead. No lover of the Bible sees in this strange drama, which owes its suspense and climax to God’s concealment of His plan, any reason for questioning His ways.

Then why question Mrs. White’s statement, when it suggests nothing more of concealment, of hiding for a time the truth of a matter, than the Biblical incidents here presented?

There is another reasonable explanation of Mrs. White’s words that can be found by comparing them with certain other statements of Scripture. Might not her words about God’s hiding a mistake [344] from the eyes of the Adventists be an instance where she followed a Bible precedent of attributing to God that which finally must be explained in terms of men’s own actions? Take this most startling illustration from Holy Writ:

“And the Lord said unto Moses, Go in unto Pharaoh: for I have hardened his heart, and the heart of his servants, that I might shew these my signs before them.” Exodus 10:1.

This statement that God hardened Pharaoh’s heart is found repeatedly in the book of Exodus. But in the midst of these statements is found this:

“But when Pharaoh saw that there was respite, he hardened his heart, and hearkened not unto them; as the Lord had said.” Exodus 8:15.

Certainly there is nothing more difficult to explain in Mrs. White’s words under consideration than in the words from Exodus, that God hardened Pharaoh’s heart. We find there is nothing unduly difficult in explaining either if we keep in mind that Heaven’s prophets, living ever under an awesome sense of the sovereignty of God—who doeth all things according to His good pleasure—sometimes speak of Him as responsible for incidents in the lives of men which must ultimately be explained in terms of men’s own free will.

We would not dogmatize on how to interpret Mrs. White’s words about God’s hiding a mistake. We simply say that for those who know and believe the Bible, and who particularly remember the narrative of Abraham, the disciples en route to Emmaus, and Pharaoh, the words of Mrs. White will present no perplexing problem, no reason for doubting her inspiration. [345]

Chapter 24—Did Mrs. White Break a Promise?

Charge: “About 1904, Dr. J. H. Kellogg and his [Battle Creek] Sanitarium associates, it was learned, were not accepting as from God all of Mrs. White’s writings. They found numerous contradictions in them, and believed that many of them were inspired by the officials, and were calling attention to some of these things.

“Mrs. White thereupon wrote them a ‘testimony,’ asking that they write out their difficulties regarding her writings, and send them to her. In this communication, dated March 30, 1905 [correct date, 1906], she not only promised to clear up these difficulties, but said that God would help her to do this. She said:

“Recently in the visions of the night I stood in a large company of people.... I was directed by the Lord to request them, and any others who have perplexities and grievous things in the minds regarding the testimonies that I have borne, to specify what their objections and criticisms are. The Lord will help me to answer these objections, and make plain that which seems to be intricate.... Let it all be written out, and submitted to those who desire to remove the perplexities.... They should certainly do this, if they are loyal to the directions God has given.

“Dr.----[110], one of the Battle Creek Sanitarium physicians, took her at her word, and wrote out a large number of ‘perplexities’ which he and others had found in her writings, and sent them to her.

“What did Mrs. White do? Instead of fulfilling her promise and attempting an explanation, she had another ‘vision,’ in which she was instructed by ‘a messenger from heaven’ not to do so. Here are her words, written under date of June 3, 1906:

“I had a vision, in which I was speaking before a large company, where many questions were asked concerning my work and writings. I was directed by a messenger from heaven not to take the burden of picking up and answering all the sayings and doubts that are being put in many minds....

“She could not clear up these difficulties, nor answer these objections.... She had made a promise which she could not fulfill.”

We have reproduced as much of the quotations from Mrs.

[110]The doctor’s name is not necessary to the argument and its deletion keeps the discussion, as far as possible, above the level of personalities.

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White as the critic gives. Her words of March 30, 1906, as here quoted, convey the impression that she is promising, in advance, to answer any and every kind of question that might be raised. We shall quote more fully from the letter, beginning immediately after the sentence: “The Lord will help me to answer these objections, and to make plain that which seems to be intricate.”

“Let those who are troubled now place upon paper a statement of the difficulties that perplex their minds, and let us see if we can not throw some light upon the matter that will relieve their perplexities. The time has come for the leaders to state to us the perplexities of which they have spoken to the nurses and to their associate physicians. Let us now have their reasons for talking with the students in a way that would destroy their faith in the messages that God sends His people. Let it all be written out, and submitted to those who desire to remove the perplexities.

“If statements have been made that there are contradictions in the testimonies, should I not be acquainted with the charges and accusations? Should I not know the reasons of this sowing tares of unbelief? ...

“I am praying for you all, and praying for our youth. It is time that we understood who is on the Lord’s side. I ask that the leaders in the medical work at Battle Creek, and those who have been associated with them in gathering together criticisms and objections to the testimonies that I have borne, shall open to me the things that they have been opening to others. They should certainly do this, if they are loyal to the directions God has given. We should also have a clear statement of facts from those with whom physicians and ministers have been at work, to undermine their confidence in the Bible, the Messages, and the Testimonies. If there is in your minds the thought that Sister White’s work can no longer be trusted, we would be glad to know when and why you came to this decision. It may be that some matters that seem to you very objectionable can be explained. This will be better than to leave these matters until the great future investigation, when every man’s work will appear as it is, with the reasons that underlie their course of action....

“I present this before you all. I am still praying for the physicians, the ministers, and the church in Battle Creek. If any are framing excuses that have deceived their own minds, I plead with them to put these excuses away before the final judgment.”—Letter 120, 1906.

True Meaning of Her Letter

In this larger context the major burden of her letter stands revealed as an appeal to the critical brethren to put themselves on record in writing, to be as frank in speaking to her as they were [347] in speaking to “nurses” and others at the sanitarium. Her statement that the Lord would help her “answer these objections,” should be read in the light of her statement in the next sentence: “Let us see if we can not throw some light upon the matter.” Also with her further statement: “It may be that some matters that seem to you very objectionable can be explained.” Then, too, we should note carefully her words: “If any are framing excuses that have deceived their own minds, I plead with them to put these excuses away before the final judgment.”

In other words, we think that the reasonable interpretation of her whole letter—we have given virtually all of it—is that she was making a heaven-directed last appeal to this critical group to lay their grievances squarely before her.[111] She wanted everything to come out into the open, and she wanted to show a measure of good faith in advance by presuming that their questions would warrant an answer. Hence her words: “The Lord will help me to answer these objections.” But her following on to say, twice, by implication, that she might not be able to answer some questions to their satisfaction reveals that she was not sure that all these men were of a mood to consider valid the answers she might be prepared to give. After all, if people are “framing excuses that have deceived their own minds,” they may be impervious to any attempt to clear up their questions and grievances.

The charge before us implies that as soon as someone wrote out his “perplexities” and sent them to her she immediately was panic stricken, nonplused, and “had another ‘vision’” in which she reversed herself, and refused to answer any questions.

What Are the Historical Facts?

Now what are the facts? Before us lie copies of a sheaf of letters written by Mrs. White to various ones of this Battle Creek group in which she seeks to clarify their misunderstandings of her testimonies and of her work. Some of these letters were written before June 3, 1906—the time of her alleged reversal of attitude—but

[111]The complete break with most of them came shortly afterward.

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a number of them bear dates after that. In her letter to one doctor, dated June 15, 1906, are found these words:

“If I can present to the people the facts in the case as they exist it may save some from making shipwreck of faith. I have been sent some of the most frivolous questions in regard to the testimonies given me by the Lord.”—Letter 180, 1906.

Now look again at the June 3, 1906, vision. Does she say that “she was instructed by ‘a messenger from heaven’ not to” answer any questions? In fact, what warrant is there for presuming that the June 3 vision is intended as a reversal of her letter of March 30? What she wrote on March 30 was in the form of a letter to certain men. What she wrote on June 3 was a statement addressed to no particular person, and entitled “Hold Fast the Beginning of Your Confidence.” While it is true that this statement deals with certain of the views that were troubling the minds of many at Battle Creek, she is not discussing her letter of March 30. Nothing in her June 3 statement requires the conclusion that she was reversing her request to certain named men to present the questions that troubled their minds regarding her testimonies. We quote in full the two opening paragraphs of the June 3 statement:

“For many months I have been troubled as I have seen that some of our brethren whom God has used in his cause are now perplexed over the scientific theology which has come in to lead men away from a true faith in God.[112] Sabbath night, a week ago, after I had been prayerfully studying over these things, I had a vision, in which I was speaking before a large company, where many questions were asked concerning my work and writings.

“I was directed by a messenger from heaven not to take the burden of picking up and answering all the sayings and doubts that are being put into many minds. ‘Stand as the messenger of God anywhere, in any place,’ I was bidden, ‘and bear the testimony I shall give you. Be free. Bear the testimonies that the Lord has for you to bear in reproof, in rebuke, in the work of encouraging and lifting up the soul; “teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world.”’”—MS. 61, 1906.

[112]She is here referring to certain pantheistic and philosophical teachings that were being promoted by leaders at the Battle Creek Sanitarium.

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Further Evidence of Her Answering Questions

One of those she requested, by name, in the March 30 letter, to write to her their questions, did so on April 26. We give the opening paragraphs of her reply, dated July 6:

“I greatly desire that you shall understand all things clearly. I had hoped to answer your letter of April 26 long before this, but I have had many important matters on my mind, which required first attention.

“To some of the questions asked in your letter, answers have been given me. For an answer to some of your questions, I am instructed to refer you to statements already published.”—Letter 224, 1906.

Much more might be quoted from her numerous letters during this particular time to show that she made a sincere endeavor to answer what she believed were questions worthy of answer. That she declined to be drawn into a discussion of some questions does not require us to believe that she broke her promise of March 30, but only that she considered some questions as “frivolous,” others as mere personal attacks, and still others as “excuses,” none of which called for a reply from her.[113] Thus the reader can judge for himself whether or not she broke her promise of March 30. We think he will agree that if she had not made a distinction between the kinds of questions asked, she would have failed to show that measure of spiritual discernment which we may rightly expect of one in whom is revealed the gift of the Spirit of prophecy.

[113]W. C. White, her son, wrote on June 9, 1907, to one of those who had prepared a long document that consisted largely of questions that impugned her integrity: “That portion of the document addressed to her, which takes the form of an attack upon her integrity and her work, she will refer to the brethren to answer, because for many years she has been instructed that it is not any part of her legitimate work to answer the numerous and violent attacks which have been made upon her by her critics and the enemies of the work.” At the time and in those places where the attacks created any confusion, oral answers were generally provided by Adventist ministers. Most of the objections and quibbles presented in response to Mrs. White’s March 30, 1906, letter have now lost their force and interest, so that present-day critics rarely allude to them. Objections on such main subjects as plagiarism and the apparently contradictory counsel on dairy products have continued down to the present. They are answered rather fully in this book.

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Chapter 25—The Time to Begin the Sabbath

Charge: “Elder Bates led Mrs. White and her husband to accept the Sabbath in 1846. He had been a sea captain, and by nautical time began the day at 6 P.M. So he began the Sabbath that way. By him Mrs. White was led to keep it the same way till 1855—nine years.”

James White declares: “Mrs. W. has in two visions been shown something in regard to the time of the commencement of the Sabbath. The first was as early as 1847, at Topsham, Me. In that vision she was shown that to commence the Sabbath at sunrise was wrong.”[114]—The Review and Herald, February 25, 1868, p. 168.

“If the Lord gave her this vision, how natural and easy it would have been for him to tell her that sunset was the right time. Why simply tell her sunrise was wrong, and leave the whole church in error eight years more as to what time was right? The answer is easy. Bates was still in the lead, and opposed sunrise time, and she ‘saw’ through his glasses; that was all....

“How did she finally find out? This way: A division among them was arising over this question. So Elder J. N. Andrews, the best scholar they then had, was requested to study the subject and present his conclusion to the conference held at Battle Creek, Mich., Nov. 16, 1855. This he did, and decided that sunset was the Scriptural time to begin the Sabbath. The conference voted to accept his view....

“Then, four days after Andrews and the conference had settled it, Mrs. White had a vision in which an angel told her that sunset was the right time!!! ... In that vision she complained to the angel and asked for an explanation. She says: ‘I inquired why it had been thus, that at this late day we must change the time of commencing the Sabbath. Said the angel, “Ye shall understand, but not yet, not yet.” (‘Test.,’ Vol. I., p. 116).

“That was over sixty years ago; Mrs. White is dead; but the promised explanation has never been given. So I will give it now: In her visions she saw just what Bates taught her. When Andrews had the lead, then she changed her views and saw just what he and the conference taught. That is the whole of it, and the like of that is the source of all her revelations.”

[114]This is one of Mrs. White’s early visions that was delivered only orally. There is no published record of it.

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Most of the arguments in this charge have a strangely familiar ring. They have been answered before. Let us look at this charge in its historical context.

The Historical Setting

In December, 1844, Mrs. White began to have visions. In 1845 Joseph Bates accepted the seventh-day Sabbath, though he did not become fully established on it until 1846. In the autumn of that year he brought this truth to Elder and Mrs. James White, who accepted it. Bates, who had been a sea captain, concluded that the day begins at 6 P.M. James White, who wrote an extended account of the matter in 1868, states:

“The six o’clock time was called in question by a portion of believers as early as 1847, some maintaining that the Sabbath commenced at sun-rise, while others claimed Bible evidence in favor of sunset.”—The Review and Herald, February 25, 1868, p. 168.

James White explains that Bates “was very decided upon the six o’clock time. His decided stand upon the question, and respect for his years, and his godly life, might have been among the reasons why this point was not sooner investigated as thoroughly as some other points.”—Ibid.

James White also explains Mrs. White’s connection with the matter in its earliest stages:

“Mrs. W. has in two visions been shown something in regard to the time of the commencement of the Sabbath. The first was as early as 1847, at Topsham, Me. In that vision she was shown that to commence the Sabbath at sunrise was wrong. She then heard an angel repeat these words, ‘From even unto even shall ye celebrate your Sabbaths.’ Bro. Bates was present, and succeeded in satisfying all present that ‘even’ was six o’clock. Mark this: The vision at Topsham did not teach the six o’clock time. It only corrected sunrise time.”—Ibid.

In 1855 James White wrote a short editorial for the Review and Herald, entitled, “Time of the Sabbath,” from which we quote:

“Equatorial time, or from six o’clock to six o’clock, has been observed by the body of Sabbath-keepers. The truth is, the subject has not been fully [352] investigated till within a few months. We have never been fully satisfied with the testimony presented in favor of six o’clock. While the various communications received for a few years past, advocating both sun-rise and sunset time, have been almost destitute of argument, and the spirit of humility and candor. The subject has troubled us, yet we have never found time to thoroughly investigate it....

“When in Maine last Summer we stated our feelings on the subject to Bro. [J. N.] Andrews, and our fears of division unless the question could be settled by good testimony. He decided to devote his time to the subject till he ascertained what the Bible taught in regard to it, and his article in this No. [of the Review and Herald] is the result of his investigations. Some have the impression that six o’clock time has been taught among us by the direct manifestation of the Holy Spirit. This is a mistake. ‘From even to even,’ was the teaching, from which six o’clock time has been inferred. We now rejoice that Bro. Andrews has presented the Bible testimony on this question, in his accustomed forcible, candid manner, which settles the question beyond all doubt that the Sabbath commences not only at even, but at the setting of the sun.”—December 4, p. 78.

On pages 76 to 78 of that issue is found Andrews’ article, entitled “Time for Commencing the Sabbath,” to which James White refers, and which cogently and Scripturally presents the case in behalf of sunset as the time for beginning the Sabbath. Andrews follows his article with a note “To The Brethren,” in which he says in part:

“The result of the investigation is the firm conviction that the commencement and close of each day is marked by the setting of the sun. It will be asked why this conclusion was not earlier arrived at? The answer is this: the subject has not been hitherto thoroughly investigated.”

The note is dated: “Battle Creek, Mich., Nov. 12th, 1855.”

The 1855 Battle Creek Conference

In his retrospective 1868 article, from which we have already quoted, James White refers to Andrews’ article, and explains that it appeared in the Review, Dec. 4, 1855. Then he adds:

“This article, however, before it appeared in the Review was read at the Conference at Battle Creek about that time,[115] and the subject was discussed

[115]In the The Review and Herald, December 4, 1855, under the heading, “Business proceedings of the Conference at Battle Creek, Mich.,” are found these opening lines: “Brethren assembled in conference at Battle Creek, Nov. 16, 1855, according to appointment in Review of Oct. 16th. Eld. Joseph Bates was chosen Chairman.”

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resulting in settling the minds of the brethren on the sunset-time, with the exception of Bro. Bates, and a few others. Since that time there has been general agreement among us upon the subject.”—The Review and Herald, February 25, 1868, p. 168.

Mrs. White again comes into the picture, as James White continues with his 1868 account of the 1855 conference at Battle Creek:

“At the close of the conference at Battle Creek referred to above, the ministers and others, especially interested in the cause had a special season of prayer for the prosperity of the cause, and in that meeting Mrs. W. had a vision, one item of which was that sunset time was correct. This settled the matter with Bro. Bates and others, and general harmony has since prevailed among us upon this point.”—Ibid.

The portion of her vision which dealt with the time for beginning the Sabbath reads thus:

“I saw that it is even so, ‘From even unto even shall ye celebrate your Sabbaths.’ Said the angel, ‘Take the word of God, read it, understand, and ye cannot err. Read carefully, and ye shall there find what even is, and when it is.’ I asked the angel if the frown of God had been upon his people for commencing the Sabbath as they had. I was directed back to the first rise of the Sabbath, and followed the people of God up to this time but did not see that the Lord was displeased, or frowned upon them. I inquired why it had been thus, that at this late day we must change the time of commencing the Sabbath. Said the angel, ‘Ye shall understand, but not yet, not yet.’ Said the angel, ‘If light come, and that light is set aside or rejected, then comes condemnation and the frown of God; but before the light comes, there is no sin, for there is no light for them to reject.’ I saw that it was in the minds of some that the Lord had shown that the Sabbath commenced at six o’clock, when I had only seen that it commenced at ‘even,’ and it was inferred that even was at six. I saw that the servants of God must draw together, press together.”—Testimonies for the Church 1:116.

The Crux of the Matter

Now comes the question, which is the crux of the matter, so far as the charge against Mrs. White is concerned: Why did not she reveal this truth about sunset time for Sabbath when she first began to have visions on the importance of keeping the seventh-day Sabbath? The question was anticipated and answered long before the critic framed it. Listen, as James White concludes his narrative in the Review and Herald in 1868: [354]

“But the question naturally arises, If the visions are given to correct the erring, why did she not sooner see the error of the six o’clock time? For one I have ever been thankful that God corrected the error in his own good time, and did not suffer an unhappy division to exist among us upon the point. But, dear reader, the work of the Lord upon this point is in perfect harmony with his manifestations to us on others, and in harmony with the correct position upon spiritual gifts. It does not appear to be the desire of the Lord to teach his people by the gifts of the Spirit on the Bible questions until his servants have diligently searched his word. When this was done upon the subject of time to commence the Sabbath, and most were established, and some were in danger of being out of harmony with the body on this subject, then, yes, then, was the very time for God to magnify his goodness in the manifestation of the gift of his Spirit in the accomplishment of its proper work. The sacred Scriptures are given us as the rule of faith and duty, and we are commanded to search them. If we fail to understand and fully obey the truths in consequence of not searching the Scriptures as we should, or a want of consecration and spiritual discernment, and God in mercy in his own time corrects us by some manifestation of the gifts of his Holy Spirit, instead of murmuring that he did not do it before, let us humbly acknowledge his mercy, and praise him for his infinite goodness in condescending to correct us at all. Let the gifts have their proper place in the church. God has never set them in the very front, and commanded us to look to them to lead us in the path of truth, and the way to Heaven. His word he has magnified. The Scriptures of the Old and New Testament are man’s lamp to light up his path to the kingdom. Follow that. But if you err from Bible truth, and are in danger of being lost, it may be that God will in the time of his choice correct you, and bring you back to the Bible, and save you. And would it become you in such a case to murmur and say, ‘Lord, why didst thou not do this before?’ Take care! ‘Be still, and know that I am God.’ Our necessity is his opportunity to teach us by the gifts of his Holy Spirit.”—February 25, p. 168.

In the light of this historical record and James White’s answer to the question of why Mrs. White did not have her vision earlier, we believe the charge quite largely disappears.

The contention that Mrs. White was beholden to Joseph Bates is an unfounded assumption that we have already dealt with in the chapter entitled “Time Setting—The Seven-Year Theory.”

That Mrs. White should have a vision that went counter to Bates’s view on the six o’clock beginning of Sabbath, the critic explains thus: “When Andrews had the lead, then she changed her [355] views and saw just what he and the conference taught.” What the critic fails to state is that Andrews was not present and that Bates was chairman of the conference that heard and accepted Andrews’ view! If we would speak of anyone as in the lead at the conference, it would be the chairman. There is no historical support for the statement that Andrews was “in the lead” in 1855. Incidentally, he was then twenty-six years old. The best evidence supports the view that Bates was unquestionably “in the lead” in those days.

The chairman was not convinced by the paper read. He was convinced a few days later by Mrs. White’s vision. Not Bates’s guiding Mrs. White’s thinking on the matter, but Mrs. White’s guiding his, that is the only conclusion warranted by the evidence.

The critic notes the angel’s words, as quoted by Mrs. White: “Ye shall understand, but not yet, not yet.” He asserts that the promised explanation has never been given. Hence he volunteers to do so. And he justifies his bold volunteering on the ground that “sixty years” had passed by and no explanation had yet been given.

In doing this, he overlooked two points: (1) The angel did not say that he would explain the matter later, but simply that they, the Sabbathkeeping Adventist group, would understand later. (2) James White, in his statement which discusses the question of why the sunset time had not been revealed to Mrs. White at the outset, shows clearly that he and those who accepted his view of the matter had acquired a clear understanding of it at least as early as 1868.

A true understanding of the function of the gift of prophecy in the Advent movement came slowly. It certainly had not fully come in 1847, when she had her first vision on the matter of the time for beginning the Sabbath, nor in 1855, when she had her vision in Battle Creek confirming the sunset time. But certainly a sufficient understanding had come by 1868 to provide a fulfillment of the angel’s words to Mrs. White. The critic’s explanation is very belated. [356]

Chapter 26—Did Mrs. White Contradict Herself Regarding Sabbathkeeping?

Charge: “From the first Mrs. White taught that the Pope changed the Sabbath, that Sundaykeeping is ‘the mark of the beast,’ and that before the end Seventh-day Adventists were to suffer great persecution because they would not cease working on Sunday. A decree was finally to go forth to slay them and rid the earth of them (Early Writings, 29, 47, 55 [first pagination], 143, 145 [third pagination], ed. 1882[116]).”

Adventists here and there were put in jail for violating Sunday laws. When she was asked what should be done, in a particular instance where Adventists were threatened with imprisonment in Australia, “here are her instructions in ‘Testimonies for the Church,’ Vol. IX, No. 37, published in 1909. It is a square backdown from all she had published before. It avoids all possibility of persecution for Sunday work. She says: ‘The light given me by the Lord at a time when we were expecting just such a crisis as you seem to be approaching was that when the people were moved by a power from beneath to enforce Sunday observance, Seventh-day Adventists were to show their wisdom by refraining from their ordinary work on that day, devoting it to missionary effort’ (p. 232). ‘Give them no occasion to call you lawbreakers.’ ‘It will be very easy to avoid that difficulty. Give Sunday to the Lord as the day for doing missionary work.’”

The first question to be answered is this: What did Mrs. White really teach in the passages cited from Early Writings? We shall list them in order:

1. On page 29 (first pagination) Mrs. White speaks of a decree that is to go forth finally to “slay the saints.” This will cause them to cry to God day and night. This is the time of Jacob’s trouble, but they will be delivered out of it. Then she sees a company who are “weighed in the balance, and found wanting.”

[116]The edition current since 1907, when new plates were made, differs in page numbering. In this current edition, the pages approximately comparable to those cited in the charge are as follows: Pages 36, 56, 65, 282, 283, 285, 286. We shall refer to the Early Writings quotations in terms of the page numbers of the old edition, as given in the charge.

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The angel explains: “These are they who have once kept the Sabbath and have given it up.” She describes them also as having “trodden the Sabbath under foot.” There is no reference to Sunday. (See current edition, pp. 36, 37.)

2. On page 47 there is no reference, either to the Sabbath or to Sunday, but only a general discussion under the title: “Duty in View of the Time of Trouble.” (See current edition, p. 56.)

3. On pages 55 and 56 she declares that the pope “changed the day of rest from the seventh to the first day.” She says nothing about any law to compel Sabbathkeepers to “cease working on Sunday.” But she does say: “When the plagues begin to fall, those who continue to break the holy Sabbath will not open their mouths to plead those excuses that they now make to get rid of keeping it.” (See current edition, p. 65.)

4. On page 143 (third pagination) she describes the threat of death against the “saints” in the last days “unless the saints should yield their peculiar faith, give up the Sabbath and observe the first day of the week.” (See current edition, pp. 282, 283.)

5. On pages 145 and 146 she speaks of those who had died in faith “keeping the Sabbath,” and of a blessing “pronounced on those who had honored God, in keeping his Sabbath holy.” There is no reference to Sunday. (See current edition, pp. 285, 286.)

We thus have before us all the references cited in support of the major premise that “Mrs. White taught ... that before the end Seventh-day Adventists were to suffer great persecution because they would not cease working on Sunday.”

Before we comment on these five references let us quote a little further from Mrs. White:

“I saw that God will in a wonderful manner preserve his people through the time of trouble. As Jesus poured out his soul in agony in the garden, they will earnestly cry and agonize day and night for deliverance. The decree will go forth that they must disregard the Sabbath of the fourth commandment, and honor the first day, or lose their lives; but they will not yield, and trample under their feet the Sabbath of the Lord, and honor an institution of papacy.”—Testimonies for the Church 1:353, 354.

“Those who honor the Bible Sabbath will be denounced as enemies of law and order, as breaking down the moral restraints of society, causing anarchy [358] and corruption, and calling down the judgments of God upon the earth....

“As the Protestant churches reject the clear, scriptural arguments in defense of God’s law, they will long to silence those whose faith they cannot overthrow by the Bible. Though they blind their own eyes to the fact, they are now adopting a course which will lead to the persecution of those who conscientiously refuse to do what the rest of the Christian world are doing, and acknowledge the claims of the papal sabbath.”—The Great Controversy, 592.

“The time is coming when God’s people will feel the hand of persecution because they keep holy the seventh day. Satan has caused the change of the Sabbath in the hope of carrying out his purpose for the defeat of God’s plans. He seeks to make the commands of God of less force in the world than human laws. The man of sin, who thought to change times and laws, and who has always oppressed the people of God, will cause laws to be made enforcing the observance of the first day of the week. But God’s people are to stand firm for Him.”—Testimonies for the Church 9:229, 230.

Conclusions That Naturally Follow

To say, as does the critic, that Mrs. White taught that Seventh-day Adventists were to “suffer great persecution because they would not cease working on Sunday,” is grossly to distort her words. The persecution is to come because they will not give up the Sabbath. The keeping of Sunday is simply an act that follows the giving up of the Sabbath. The former is placed in contrast to the latter. Hence we conclude that the Adventist who is loyally keeping the Sabbath is certainly not a keeper of the first day of the week simply because he may be using Sunday for “missionary work.” There is an attitude of the mind and a purposeful act of the will involved in this matter she is discussing. As we face the crisis of which she speaks we are to remember that the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord, and thus to keep that day, holy, despite all threats of persecution. At the same time we are to resist all endeavors of men to make us observe “the first day of the week.” In other words, we are not to transfer our affections from God’s holy day to the papal day. We are not to give up keeping the former holy and begin to keep the latter holy.

This is Mrs. White’s consistent teaching through all her writings, including Testimonies, volume 9, which is cited in the charge as the book that contains a “square backdown from all she had [359] published before.” The charge declares that her statement in volume 9 as to engaging in missionary work on Sunday “avoids all possibility of persecution for Sunday work.” But we have just discovered from the quotations given that “God’s people will feel the hand of persecution because they keep holy the seventh day.” And that statement is found only three pages before, and in the same context with, the passage quoted by the critic to prove his case against her!

Remaining Points Considered

In the setting of these passages that give Mrs. White’s true teaching on the matter of Sabbathkeeping, the points in the charge become a little pointless. Let us consider briefly those not already answered:

1. Mrs. White “now directs her people to keep Sunday exactly as all conscientious Sunday observers do; that is, in holding religious meetings and doing religious work!”

We hardly believe that any minister of a Sundaykeeping church would agree with that statement. We are certain that no minister in the area where her instruction was put into effect would consider we were keeping Sunday “exactly as all conscientious Sunday observers do.” Mrs. White included in her instruction regarding these Sunday “religious meetings” the following: “We are to proclaim the truth in regard to the Sabbath of the Lord.”—Testimonies for the Church 9:233. Proclaiming the Sabbath truth means to an Adventist not simply presenting the evidence for the seventh-day Sabbath of the Lord but presenting the warnings of heaven against keeping the papal Sabbath, the first day of the week. Will someone explain how an Adventist could at one and the same time be keeping Sunday and denouncing Sunday worship?

2. “Now, if it [“holding religious meetings”] is acceptable to the Lord from Adventists, it must be acceptable to the Lord from Methodists, Baptists, Presbyterians, Congregationalists and others.”

We agree that it would be acceptable to the Lord if the members of these Protestant churches followed her counsel for Adventists, which means keeping God’s holy Sabbath day, and then, if [360] the situation requires, using Sunday in missionary work, holding religious meetings that extol the true Sabbath and warn against the false.

3. “Lastly, if Methodists, Baptists and other Christians have the mark of the beast because they ‘give Sunday to the Lord’ in religious service, why will not Adventists also have it if they give the day to the Lord in the same way?”

But how would Adventists receive the mark of the beast for holding religious services on Sunday if those services had as one of their purposes a warning against the mark of the beast? We might add that Adventists do not teach that anyone has the mark of the beast simply because he keeps Sunday. That mark will be placed only upon those who, having received a knowledge of the Scriptural claims of the Sabbath, willfully continue to keep the papal Sunday. In proof of this we quote these words from Mrs. White:

“When Sunday observance shall be enforced by law, and the world shall be enlightened concerning the obligation of the true Sabbath, then whoever shall transgress the command of God, to obey a precept which has no higher authority than that of Rome, will thereby honor popery above God. He is paying homage to Rome, and to the power which enforces the institution ordained by Rome. He is worshiping the beast and his image. As men then reject the institution which God has declared to be the sign of His authority and honor in its stead that which Rome has chosen as the token of her supremacy, they will thereby accept the sign of allegiance to Rome—‘the mark of the beast.’ And it is not until the issue is thus plainly set before the people, and they are brought to choose between the commandments of God and the commandments of men, that those who continue in transgression will receive ‘the mark of the beast.’”—The Great Controversy, 449.

4. “In giving the instruction she did, Mrs. White herself removed the ground for the persecution under Sunday laws which she had previously predicted.”

This has already been answered, with particular emphasis on the fact that what “she had previously predicted” in Early Writings she consistently continued to predict through the years, including her words in Testimonies, volume 9.

A reading of the full text of Mrs. White’s counsel regarding [361] our attitude and actions in relation to threatened Sunday law prosecution reveals that she is here writing a commentary on the inspired command: “As much as lieth in you, live peaceably with all men.” Romans 12:18. The only time that that command cannot apply is when living peaceably would sacrifice principle, and would cause us to bear a false testimony to the truths of God. There is no danger that any Adventist will bear a false testimony concerning God’s holy Sabbath day by engaging in missionary work on Sunday, provided he follows the inspired instruction to “proclaim the truth in regard to the Sabbath of the Lord” as he goes forth in such missionary work. [362]

Chapter 27—Mrs. White’s Teachings on Healthful Living

Charge Number 1:

In placing certain restrictions on diet Mrs. White goes counter to the New Testament, which informs us we are not “subject to ordinances” and that “the kingdom of God is not meat and drink.” The Jerusalem Council proves that the ancient ceremonial laws are abolished. See Acts 15:28, 29.

This indictment collapses when the true basis for Mrs. White’s teachings is set forth. Through the centuries there have been those who placed prohibitions on certain foods and drinks for ceremonial reasons. But Mrs. White does not. Nor is any attempt made to prove that she does. The charge simply assumes she does. There is not one line in her writings that could support the contention that she believed that merely refraining from some article of diet, or merely carrying out a certain regimen of living, would in itself have any saving virtue or any ceremonial significance.

There is nothing mysterious, occult, or ceremonial about her health teachings. No one is more emphatic than she that “the kingdom of God is not meat and drink.” Romans 14:17. But she often uses the New Testament text: “Whether therefore ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God.” 1 Corinthians 10:31. There is no conflict between these texts. They are not contradictory, they are complementary.

Reason for Health Doctrine

Our physical habits, including our eating habits, have a relation to religion. Man is a complex being composed of body, soul, and spirit. Whatever affects one part of man affects, at least indirectly, the other parts. The medical world has recently come to realize this and gives particular attention to it in terms of psychosomatic medicine. This term simply means soul-body medicine. The medical [363] world speaks of the interaction of the mind and the body of man, and sometimes of the interaction of body, mind, and spirit. Thus Mrs. White is building on an obviously rational foundation when she erects her health teachings, as she certainly does, on the premise that there is a definite interaction between the different parts of man.

Even Mrs. White’s critics will surely agree to this premise. They know that if evil ideas are brought to the mind through lewd conversation or pictures, for example, there may be calamitous effects upon the body in lustful excesses that break down the physical constitution. Here the scripture is fulfilled that evil communications corrupt good manners. The evil began with the mind, but it did not end there. The body, too, was affected. The reverse is also true, that words of cheer and happiness and hope spoken into the ears of an individual can mean new health to his body. Here applies the scripture that a merry heart doeth good like a medicine.

The critics will also agree to the premise when the action begins with the body and the reaction affects mind and spirit. They agree that liquor drinking is bad. They subscribe to the rather obvious truth that when liquor goes into a man’s stomach it reflexly affects his mind and benumbs his spiritual faculties. Here apply the warnings of Scripture against strong drink. To the extent that a person’s mental and spiritual faculties are benumbed, to that extent he is unable to understand the will of God or to give obedience to it. And it is because the baleful effects of liquor are in direct ratio to the amount consumed that temperance societies, which at first were only moderation societies, now quite rigidly insist on total abstinence.

Reasoning to Logical Conclusion

Mrs. White’s teachings on healthful living simply carry the logic of the premise to its ultimate conclusion. She declared that there are habits and practices other than liquor drinking that adversely affect the body and in turn affect mind and spirit. For example, she went on to indict tobacco. And we think that at [364] least some of her critics will follow her in this. Nor will they be impressed by the question so confidently asked by the smoker: Where is the text in the Bible that prohibits the use of tobacco? Further, the critics will certainly subscribe to Mrs. White’s teaching that overwork not only affects the body adversely but may also dull the mind and spirit to the point where spiritual truths cannot be clearly discerned.

Likewise we believe they will agree with her declaration that bad air, lack of sleep, and lack of proper exercise by sedentary workers have a deleterious effect on the body, and at least indirectly on the mind and spirit. What minister but has grieved at seeing his congregation drowsing when they should have been listening to spiritual truths? And the trouble need not be ministerial lack of fire; it may simply be lack of fresh air. In other words, what we take into our lungs, as well as into our stomachs, can have vast effects on mind and spirit.

We think that the critics will go a step further in agreement with Mrs. White’s teachings on health. She says much about the value of abstemiousness and the evils of gluttony. Nothing is more prominent in her health views. She makes plain that the food eaten may be wholesome, but if eaten to excess will produce, first, a bad effect on the body, and in turn a clouding of mental and spiritual faculties. What minister is there but has noticed with dismay that at an afternoon service there may be such drowsiness that some worshipers receive little if any spiritual good from the service? And is it not generally agreed in the ministerial fraternity that the trouble may lie, not in the quality of the spiritual food being offered by the minister, but in the quantity of literal food that has been eaten by the worshipers?

We are also sure that the critics will heartily subscribe to another important feature of Mrs. White’s teaching—the importance of cleanliness and the health-giving value of frequent bathing. Seventh-day Adventists did not create the saying “Cleanliness is next to godliness,” but we subscribe to it. We also find ourselves in agreement with what modern medicine has to say about the value, to the body, of water, used both internally and [365] externally. And when the body is in good condition, the mind and spirit can more easily apprehend important truths.

Remarkable Agreement by Critics

To sum up: Critics believe as firmly as does Mrs. White that our physical habits are interlocked with our spiritual life. They will agree that constant liquor drinking may cause a man to lose heaven, even though they admit that abstinence from drink gives him no guarantee of final residence there. They will agree that the man who knows the value of soap and water is presumptuous in praying to be saved from disease unless he comes to God literally with clean hands, even though they admit that bodily cleanliness does not assure such salvation. Nor will the critics hesitate to agree, in the light of modern medical findings on overweight, that a man may dig his grave with his teeth, even though they insist that he can never hope to eat his way into heaven by abstemiousness. And, consistently, they will also need to agree that a man who knows of the deleterious effects of overeating would be presumptuous in following up an enormous meal with a prayer to God for long life.

In short, the critics really believe that the kingdom of God does have a certain relation to “meat and drink” and “washings,” and that a man’s eternal life, to say nothing of his present life, may be vitally affected by his physical habits, including dietary habits. They are sure that obedience to physical laws will help us to “keep under” the body (1 Corinthians 9:27), and thus aid us on the heavenward journey, even though such obedience cannot, in itself, guarantee heaven to us. And in so believing they are not one whit the less believers in the prime truth that we are saved by grace and not by works.

Mrs. White Presents Balanced Health Teaching

Even so with Mrs. White. She set forth the principles of healthful living as being vital to healthy bodies, and in turn to healthy minds and spirits. She declared that some might lose heaven who knowingly and willfully violated these principles. At [366] the same time she rebuked those who took the other extreme of viewing healthful living, particularly diet reform, as a form of penance whereby a man may ensure entrance to heaven. To a family that took this extreme, she wrote:

“I saw that you had mistaken notions about afflicting your bodies, depriving yourselves of nourishing food. These things led some of the church to think that God is surely with you, or you would not deny self, and sacrifice thus. But I saw that none of these things will make you more holy. The heathen do all this, but receive no reward for it. A broken and contrite spirit before God is in his sight of great price. I saw that your views concerning these things are erroneous.”—Testimonies for the Church 1:205.

To others, who made light of the whole subject of health reform, she wrote:

“Some have sneered at this work of reform, and have said it was all unnecessary; that it was an excitement to divert minds from present truth. They have said that matters were being carried to extremes. Such do not know what they are talking about. While men and women professing godliness are diseased from the crown of their head to the soles of their feet, while their physical, mental, and moral energies are enfeebled through gratification of depraved appetite and excessive labor, how can they weigh the evidences of truth, and comprehend the requirements of God? If their moral and intellectual faculties are beclouded, they cannot appreciate the value of the atonement or the exalted character of the work of God, nor delight in the study of his word. How can a nervous dyspeptic be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh him a reason of the hope that is in him, with meekness and fear? How soon would such a one become confused and agitated, and by his diseased imagination be led to view matters in altogether a wrong light, and by a lack of that meekness and calmness which characterized the life of Christ, be caused to dishonor his profession while contending with unreasonable men? Viewing matters from a high religious stand-point, we must be thorough reformers in order to be Christ-like.”—Testimonies for the Church 1:487, 488.

In the following words Mrs. White sets forth the principle underlying the whole doctrine of health reform that she preached:

“Let it ever be kept before the mind that the great object of hygienic reform is to secure the highest possible development of mind and soul and body. All the laws of nature—which are the laws of God—are designed for our good. Obedience to them will promote our happiness in this life, and will aid us in a preparation for the life to come.”—Christian Temperance and Bible Hygiene, 120. See also Counsels on Diet and Foods, 23. [367]

Four Reasons for Eliminating Certain Foods

Flesh food was only one of a number of foods that Mrs. White said are not ideal foods. Against some she was more pronounced than against others. She gave the following reasons for discarding certain foods and drinks:

1. Simply unwholesome, and thus place an unnecessary strain on the digestive system.

2. Possible or probable carriers of disease.

3. Unduly stimulating, or irritating, to the body.

4. Their use necessitates taking the lives of God’s creatures.

These are not mystical or ceremonial reasons, and certainly not moral reasons in the sense in which the word “moral” is usually understood. Rather they are physical and humanitarian reasons. They acquire a moral quality because of two facts: (1) The laws of nature are the laws of God, and (2) our physical habits react upon our mental and spiritual faculties and upon our physical strength and life span. We are to dedicate all our strength—physical, mental, and spiritual—to God, and thus to eschew any habit or practice that would impair or cut short our service for God. Many Christian churches think of liquor drinking as having a moral aspect, sometimes even to the extent of disfellowshiping a drinker. But the act of drinking is a physical act. It acquires its moral quality because of the reflex effect upon the mental and spiritual faculties and upon bodily efficiency and life expectancy that results from the entrance of the liquor into the body. Many would also agree that the same may be said of tobacco.

On a logical extension of such reasoning rests Mrs. White’s declaration that all our physical habits and practices have a moral quality. Here the command of Paul takes on peculiar significance: “Whether therefore ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God.” 1 Corinthians 10:31.

Appeals to Avoid Extremes

Though Mrs. White set forth the ideal diet program for the Christian, she presented it with repeated appeals to avoid extremes, to be sure that in discarding certain foods and drinks the diet is [368] not impoverished. Nothing could more sharply distinguish her from the fanatic than this fact that she did not present these dietary teachings in a sweepingly unqualified way, with no notice taken of the specific needs of the body, the dietary limitations of different countries, the degree of knowledge of food preparation possessed by different people, and the speed with which some can adapt themselves to a changed diet. For example, she wrote:

“We do not mark out any precise line to be followed in diet; but we do say that in countries where there are fruits, grains, and nuts in abundance, flesh food is not the right food for God’s people.”—Testimonies for the Church 9:159.

Then she adds almost immediately: “We are not to make the use of flesh food a test of fellowship.”

The substance of her whole teaching regarding the subject of diet might be summed up thus: We should eat the most nutritious, most wholesome food available, seeking ever to walk in all the light revealed, that in our physical life we may ever more fully come into harmony with the divine laws that should govern us physically, even as we seek, by God’s enabling grace, to come ever more fully into harmony with the divine laws that should govern us spiritually. The true Christian never loses sight of the fact that physical law and moral law are alike expressions of the mind and the will of God. He “giveth to all life, and breath, and all things,” for “in him we live, and move, and have our being.”

The Jerusalem Council’s Action

Acts 15:28, 29 is quoted to support the claim that all restrictions on meat and drink have been done away in the Christian Era, because the ceremonial requirements of Judaism have been done away. We have already shown that there is nothing ceremonial in the dietary teachings of Mrs. White. We wish, now, to show that the very text quoted to prove that in the Christian Era there are no restrictions on foods really proves the opposite. The Jerusalem Council deliberated on the question of ceremonial requirements and prohibitions and decided that strictly ceremonial features of the Old Testament Era were no longer binding. The question before them was not whether the Gentiles should be [369] allowed to eat meat. That was allowed by Moses, who was “read in the synagogues every sabbath day.” Hence the council ruling did not discuss it, but the council, so far from saying that what the Gentiles ate had no relation to right living, specifically set up certain restrictions: “That ye abstain from meats offered to idols, and from blood, and from things strangled, and from fornication: from which,” added the council, “if ye keep yourselves, ye shall do well. Fare ye well.”

No Christian reasons that if a man keeps himself from fornication he has fulfilled all the moral requirements of Christianity. Then why should anyone reason that the limited dietary restrictions set up by the council—and they were restrictions—represent all that might be listed? Mrs. White simply provides reasons why certain further restrictions should be placed upon the diet.

Charge Number 2

Christ ate meat. Mrs. White, in condemning meat, condemns Him.

This charge is virtually answered by what has already been presented. Christ ate the best food that was available. That, we have no reason to doubt. And does Mrs. White’s advocacy of a fleshless diet set any higher standard than this? The answer is No. Of course it might be added that we know next to nothing about His diet. The record does not reveal whether He specially selected one kind of food in preference to another. We know, for example, that in a place where there was no food except a few loaves and fishes, He used this food for the multitude. There is nothing in Mrs. White’s writings that would condemn this. If the record teaches us anything, it teaches us that He simply used the best food obtainable with which to feed the hungry. Mrs. White wrote of her own experience: “When I could not obtain the food I needed, I have sometimes eaten a little meat.”—Christian Temperance and Bible Hygiene, 118. (See also Counsels on Diet and Foods, 394.)

But perhaps someone may say, regarding Christ’s having fed fish to the people: “If meat eating is so far from the ideal food, so bad for the body, Christ would certainly have known this and [370] would have worked a miracle, if necessary, to provide better food.”

This statement owes its impressiveness to its alleged insight into just what Christ would have done under certain conditions. Mrs. White’s health teachings covered much more than abstinence from meat eating. She had much to say about various features of diet and about bathing, exercise, sleep, fresh air, to mention only part of the teachings. She also said much about the danger of disease from different kinds of foods. Most people will agree that this teaching is valid and that the following of it means better health for people, less disease. They also will agree that Christ knew the value of these teachings, for He knew all things. But can anyone show that Christ spent time lecturing, for example, on disease prevention, the danger of germs, the value of frequent bathing? No. Then why should we be asked to explain why He did not say or do something about meat in relation to health?

The simple facts are that Christ, as He hastened about from city to city, dealt only with the most primary spiritual problems confronting man. And as regards their physical maladies, He immediately healed them, thus providing proof of His divine claims. Spiritual work must be done for men’s hearts before they are in any mood to understand that their bodies are the temples of the Holy Ghost and that they should glorify God in their bodies. The revelation of the ways of God toward man is progressive. The black paganism that confronted the apostles called for them to focus, likewise, on the most primary spiritual values in all their preaching.

Charge Number 3

“On the question of meat eating, Mrs. White uses language that is positively against God’s Word.” For example: “In Testimonies for the Church 1:548, she calls meat eating ‘a suggestion of Satan.’”

The critic presents a long list of statements in the Bible that set forth God’s permission to use flesh foods, and illustrations of their being used. The reader is supposed to conclude that she flies in the face of Scripture.

Let us first present, in its context, the phrase quoted from Mrs. White: [371]

“Some think that they cannot reform, that health would be sacrificed should they attempt to leave the use of tea, tobacco, and flesh-meats. This is the suggestion of Satan. It is these hurtful stimulants that are surely undermining the constitution and preparing the system for acute diseases, by impairing Nature’s fine machinery, and battering down her fortifications erected against disease and premature decay.”—Testimonies for the Church 1:548, 549.

Mrs. White does not call “meat eating ‘a suggestion of Satan.’” She speaks, instead, of what some “think” and of the source of their thought. They “think that they cannot reform.” Is it not such thinking as this that keeps multitudes from making spiritual progress on innumerable matters? And would not any minister tell a man who said that he could not “reform” that such thinking was “a suggestion of Satan” and “positively against God’s Word”?

The question of whether, under some conditions, meat might be the best food available is not even under discussion here.

Christians quite uniformly believe that it may be wholly consistent with the objective of progress in the path toward the ideal, even to urge “reform” in some practices that the holy prophets permitted and sanctioned by a specific code. Moses permitted the Jews a “bill of divorcement.” But did Christ speak approvingly of this? No. He reminded His hearers that “in the beginning it was not so.” Not only did Moses permit slavery; he gave specific instruction as to how the slaves should be marked and how long they might be kept in servitude. Within the memory of some still living in America that Scriptural fact has been employed by Christian ministers, to say nothing of multitudes of laymen, to prove that those who wished to abolish slavery were, in the words of the charge before us, using “language that is positively against God’s Word.” And what was the best answer to that reasoning? “In the beginning it was not so.”

Those who call men back to Eden are not speaking “against God’s Word.” The story of Eden is the foundation of God’s Word; the restoration of Eden, the goal of the plan of salvation. Nothing more definitely distinguishes Mrs. White in her writings than her presentations of the beauty and perfection of Eden as a stimulus to higher and holier living in word and in deed. And in the particular [372] matter before us, that of diet, nothing more clearly distinguishes Mrs. White in her presentation of the Edenic ideal of a fleshless diet than her warnings against extremes, her reminders that circumstance of country and a person’s condition may alter cases, and her appeals to judicious endeavor in leading men along the path toward Eden.

Charge Number 4

Mrs. White fulfilled Paul’s prediction concerning some who “in the latter times” would “depart from the faith,” “forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain from meats, which God hath created to be received.” (See 1 Timothy 4:1, 3.) See also her letter to a “Brother and Sister V.”

The one authentic passage from Mrs. White that is quoted to give plausibility to the charge of “forbidding to marry” is this:

“In this age of the world, as the scenes of earth’s history are soon to close, and we are about to enter upon the time of trouble such as never was, the fewer the marriages contracted, the better for all, both men and women.”—Testimonies for the Church 5:366.

The context of this passage is an appeal to a young woman who was about to contract a marriage with an unbeliever. The quoted statement is followed immediately with the lines:

“Above all, when Satan is working with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish, let Christians beware of connecting themselves with unbelievers.”

Let us grant that this statement regarding “the fewer the marriages” is a difficult one; but it is no more difficult than certain passages in the Bible that seem to go contrary to the general tenor of Scripture. For example, take these words of Paul: “But this I say, brethren, the time is short: it remaineth, that both they that have wives be as though they had none.” 1 Corinthians 7:29. Taken alone, what a perplexing text that is, much more perplexing than what Mrs. White has said. Nor is this the only statement that Paul made regarding marriage that is “hard to be understood.”

But lovers of the Bible insist that Paul’s words should be viewed in the larger context of his other statements. He declared that marriage is honorable, and gave counsel on the proper relation [373] of husbands and wives, parents and children. So did Mrs. White. She wrote at length regarding the duties of parents to children and children to parents. She also set forth principles that should govern the youth in the selecting of a life companion.

Other than the one passage from Mrs. White, critics do not cite any statements in our church paper, or any other representative literature published by Seventh-day Adventists, “forbidding” or even discouraging marriage. Their failure to do so is significant!

Evidently, then, Adventists are not the ones whom Paul foresaw when he predicted that some would arise “forbidding to marry.” But if Adventists are not the ones whom Paul forecast as “forbidding to marry,” they can hardly be the ones he forecast as “commanding to abstain from meats.” In his prophecy those who do the first seem evidently to be the ones who do the second!

How Paul’s Prediction Was Fulfilled

There is general agreement among Bible commentators that Paul’s prediction refers, first of all, to the Gnostic heresy, which even in his day was beginning to trouble the church. Listen to the words of a scholarly commentary concerning Gnostic teaching:

“Marriage and begetting children were wrong, because the condition of marriage was looked upon as an institution of the Demiurge;[117] and because, in this way, souls pure and innocent in a former state were imprisoned in impure bodies, and, by union with corrupt matter, became sinful and wretched.... Manichaeus held that wine sprang from the blood and gall of the devil. Perhaps the food here designated is only meat (comp. Romans 14:2, 21). The command probably arose from the Gnostic fancy, that the materials which nourished the body were not the work of the Most High God, but of the Demiurgus.”—Lange’s Bible Commentary, Notes on 1 Timothy 4:3.

There is also quite general unanimity among commentators that Paul’s prediction finds its larger fulfillment in the Papacy.

We need not tarry to consider what Mrs. White is supposed to have said in a letter to a “Brother and Sister V,” for the office of the E. G. White Publications has no record of any such letter.

[117]Demiurge: “in some Gnostic systems, an inferior, not absolutely intelligent, deity, the creator of the world, identified by some with the creator God of the Old Testament, and distinguished from the supreme God.”—Webster’s Dictionary.

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Indeed, the key number given by the critic is not the correct one for letters from Mrs. White.

Charge Number 5

“Every person who knows anything about the Bible, must know that pork eating is forbidden, and yet, Mrs. White as the self-appointed mouthpiece for God, said that pork was ‘nourishing, strengthening food,’ and that those who taught that it was wrong to eat swine’s flesh were making ‘a time of trouble for themselves.’

“This she claims was shown her in vision.” (See Testimonies for the Church 1:206, 207.)

Later she condemned the eating of swine’s flesh. (See Testimonies for the Church 2:96.)

What did Mrs. White really say on this matter of pork? The facts are these: In 1859 she wrote a letter to a family who are identified only as “Dear Bro. and Sister A.” The letter is printed in Testimonies, volume 1, under the title “Errors in Diet.” Note the plural, “Errors.” What these various errors may have been we can only infer from the letter that Mrs. White wrote to them. She says:

“I saw that you had mistaken notions about afflicting your bodies, depriving yourselves of nourishing food. These things lead some of the church to think that God is surely with you, or you would not deny self, and sacrifice thus.”—Page 205. Then she adds, “Some have gone to extremes in regard to diet.”

She goes on: “I was referred back to our experience in Rochester, N. Y. I saw that when we lived there we did not eat nourishing food as we should, and disease nearly carried us to the grave.” She explains that the reason was that they were poor and trying to save money to promote the work of God. But, she adds, “I saw that God does not require any one to take a course of such rigid economy as to weaken or injure the temple of God.” This is followed by her discussion of the general principle that those who labor with their hands and those who labor in word and doctrine “should eat of nourishing, strengthening food to build up their strength.”

It is clearly evident from this first half of her extended letter that Mrs. White was correcting these people in regard to (1) wrong ideas on economy, the kind of economy that would actually give [375] them insufficient diet; and (2) wrong ideas about “afflicting” their bodies with a view to acquiring added holiness in the eyes of others.

Then, in a new paragraph, she declares:

“I saw that your views concerning swine’s flesh would prove no injury if you have them to yourselves; but in your judgment and opinion you have made this question a test, and your actions have plainly shown your faith in this matter. If God requires his people to abstain from swine’s flesh, he will convict them on the matter. He is just as willing to show his honest children their duty, as to show their duty to individuals upon whom he has not laid the burden of his work. If it is the duty of the church to abstain from swine’s flesh, God will discover it to more than two or three. He will teach his church their duty.”—Testimonies for the Church 1:206, 207.

There is nothing in Mrs. White’s letter to suggest that this family’s “views concerning swine’s flesh” were prompted by a sense of economy. There was nothing particularly expensive about swine’s flesh compared with other flesh or with other foods. In the first half of her letter Mrs. White rebukes them for some “mistaken notions about afflicting your bodies, depriving yourselves of nourishing food.” If she was trying to tell these people that swine’s flesh is “nourishing, strengthening food,” why would she say, “I saw that your views concerning swine’s flesh would prove no injury if you have them to yourselves”?

Patently, then, whatever counsel Mrs. White had for them concerning their views on swine’s flesh, it was not with regard to any possible nourishing, strengthening quality it might possess, but on other grounds. These other grounds are clearly set forth in the quotation already given. It is evident that this family had made the question of swine’s flesh “a test,” and an occasion for assuming a holier-than-thou attitude. It has been the sad experience throughout all the history of Christianity that eminently worthwhile and even necessary reforms have sometimes had to be rebuked, for the moment, by high-minded men, because those who sought to bring in the reform used imprudent haste and methods, and even worse, unwarranted reasons. There is nothing in Mrs. White’s statement that prevents the reader from believing in the possible importance of reform on the matter of swine’s flesh. Her [376] only rebuke was to a certain family that she felt was approaching the matter in the wrong way.

Of course those who bring this particular charge—and those who have copied it—remind us that the Bible plainly forbids pork eating and declare that if Mrs. White were truly a prophet of God she would have known this and spoken out plainly. But she did not. Hence, they argue, she is not a true prophet.

But must a Prophet have all light and all knowledge on all questions of significance to the church at the very outset of the discussion of them? That question has been raised in earlier chapters, and illustrations provided to show that even to prophets God does not always give all the light at once. In view of this we hardly think that the fair-minded reader will find any grounds for indicting Mrs. White’s claim to the prophetic gift because at the very outset she did not see that swine’s flesh should not be eaten. Prophets are to be held to account, not for what they admit they do not know, but for what they claim God has revealed to them.

Charge Number 6

Mrs. White at first condemned the use of butter and eggs, but later she permitted their use.

The reasoning is this: If Mrs. White made a statement at one time, she is most surely contradicting herself, and thus proving herself a false prophet, if for any reason, she modifies that statement at a future time. With this underlying premise in the reasoning thus clearly stated, the reader is put on his guard concerning the validity of the charge before us.

We give now the longest list that we have found in any critic’s writings of alleged contradictory statements on the matter of butter and eggs. It is in parallel form and representative. We give it for two reasons: (1) that no one may be able to say that we did not let the full force of the argument present itself; (2) because we believe that in the very passages quoted in allegedly damaging parallel fashion is to be found at least the key to a harmonization of the statements. Herewith is the list:[118]

[118]The extracts are quoted exactly from the original rather than from the critic’s sometimes inaccurate transcription.

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“BUTTER AND EGGS CLASSED ITH MEAT AND FORBIDDEN”

“BUTTER AND EGGS SHOULD NOT BE CLASSED WITH MEAT AND SHOULD BE EATEN”

[1] Testimonies for the Church 3:21: “We bear positive testimony against tobacco, spirituous liquors, snuff, tea, coffee, flesh-meats, butter, spices, rich cakes, mince pies, a large amount of salt, and all exciting substances used as articles of food.” [2] Testimonies for the Church 2:367: Because we from principle discard the use of meat, butter, mince pies, spices, lard, and that which irritates the stomach and destroys health....” Testimonies for the Church 2:485: “One family in particular have needed all the benefits they could receive from the reform in diet; yet these very ones have been completely backslidden. Meat and butter have been used by them quite freely.” [4] Testimonies for the Church 2:487: “No butter or flesh-meats of any kind come on my table.” [5] Testimonies for the Church 3:136: “Children are allowed to eat fleshmeats, spices, butter, cheese, pork, rich pastry, and condiments generally.... These things do their work of deranging the stomach, exciting the nerves to unnatural action, and enfeebling the intellect.” [6] Testimonies for the Church 2:362: “You place upon your tables butter, eggs, and meat, and your children partake of them. They are fed with the very things that will excite their animal passions, and then you come to meeting and ask God to bless and save your children. How high do your prayers go?”

[7] Testimonies for the Church 7:135: “Milk, eggs, and butter should not be classed with flesh-meat.... Let the diet reform be progressive.” [8] Testimonies for the Church 9:162: “Some, in abstaining from milk, eggs, and butter, have failed to supply the system with proper nourishment, and as a consequence have become weak and unable to work.” [9] Testimonies for the Church 9:163: “I am instructed to tell them to eat that food which is most nourishing. I can not say to them: You must not eat eggs, or milk, or cream you must use no butter in the preparation of food.” [10] Testimonies for the Church 9:162: “We should not consider it a violation of principle to use eggs from hens that are well cared for and suitably fed. Eggs contain properties that are remedial agencies in counteracting certain poisons.”

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These ten quoted passages are numbered for convenience in referring to them in the comments that will follow.

As already stated and illustrated, Mrs. White placed her dietary teachings primarily on a physiological basis. Though the physical laws that govern our being are divine and unchanging, the carrying out of those laws may call for changes or variations, at times, in our diet or in other of our practices. This may be due to various reasons, some of which we have touched upon already. Let us briefly enumerate the main reasons.

Reasons for Variations in Applying Health Laws

1. Difference in climate or country, with inevitable differences in available food supply. A certain combination of foods may be most ideal but may not be obtainable at certain seasons or in certain countries.

2. Difference in time. Foods that at one time might be banned as carriers of disease might at a later time and with different sanitary conditions be considered relatively unobjectionable.

3. Differences in the economic or educational status of people. Certain people may have neither the knowledge of dietary principles to enable them to cook without the use of certain ingredients nor the means to provide the most ideal foods. There was a time in America, for example, when fresh fruits, nuts, et cetera, were scarce—and hence costly—in some parts of the country, particularly, out of season.

4. Difference in people, as to age, temperament, physical state, and the like.

The strength of the charge that Mrs. White reversed herself on her dietary teachings resides in a refusal to take account of the various differences here listed. In judging Mrs. White, critics will not tolerate for a moment any application of the principle that circumstances alter cases, though they are ready to apply that adage to every other situation in life, including even some unusual situations in the Bible. Indeed, they are aware that Christ Himself provided an excellent illustration of the principle that circumstances alter cases. Said He to the caviling Pharisees: [379]

“Have ye not read what David did, when he was an hungred, and they that were with him; how he entered into the house of God, and did eat the shewbread, which was not lawful for him to eat, neither for them which were with him, but only for the priests?” Matthew 12:3, 4.

Moses, the great prophet of God, had borne positive testimony that the shewbread should be eaten only by the priests. But Christ, who gave to all the prophets the words they should speak, informs the Pharisees of an exception to this positive testimony. By clear implication Christ indicates that David was blameless.

We cite this instance from Holy Writ, not to draw an exact parallel to anything that Mrs. White has written, but simply to illustrate the point that circumstances do alter cases, even to altering the application of a testimony given by a prophet of God.

Quotations 1 to 6 Examined

Let us look at quotations Numbers 1 to 6, under the heading, “Butter and Eggs Classed With Meat and Forbidden.” The fact that butter and eggs are mentioned in the same list with meat does not necessitate the conclusion that Mrs. White considered them of equally unwholesome quality, equally bad as possible carriers of disease, or even comparable from a humanitarian standpoint. For example, to secure meat there must be a slaughterhouse, but to secure butter and eggs there need only be a dairy and a hennery. The whole argument the critic is trying to build here is based on the fallacy that simply because different foods are listed together as not the best for human consumption, therefore the person listing them must have considered them all of equal badness, and that furthermore the badness is of an intrinsic quality, so that under no condition could there possibly be any change in the nature of any of the items. Hence, if once bad, always bad. But there is nothing in Mrs. White’s writings that permits such assumptions.

Mrs. White did speak, at the outset, against butter, and in emphatic terms. In fact, she made a number of statements about dairy products, in general, being questionable, And well she might, [380] There was no pasteurized milk, and thus no pasteurized butter. With a few possible exceptions, there was no government dairy inspection to determine health of animals or cleanliness of premises or sanitary procedures in handling the dairy products. Read this description of dairy cows written about the time Mrs. White began to make her statements on foods:

“The cows of the Sixteenth Street distillery stables were found, on examination by the Health Officer of New York, in horrible conditions: their ears were full of sores, their eyes ran rheum, their tongues were thickened and the edges raw, their nostrils were glanderous, their udders had externally large corroding ulcers, and inside the glands were stopped by the garget; while on their bodies, in various places, were large sores of different sizes—all betokening highly inflammatory conditions. So affected were the strength and health of some of the animals, that when lying down they had to be lifted up, and when up, had to be held up by straps passing under the body just behind the fore legs. Yet their milk, on subjection to chemical analysis, showed no morbid or poisonous constituents, and differed only in a slight degree from the milk of healthy cows. So the milk was declared good, and the stables were ‘white-washed.’ But who among thoughtful people believes the milk to be healthy? Chemistry is not omnipotent. What the laboratory fails to find, the stomach of a child can find; and so swill milk, used as a beverage or as food by children, has its poison distilled into their blood till health is lost.”—J. C. JACKSON, M.D., quoted in How to Live, no. 1, pp. 21, 22.[119] (Italics his.)

Needless to say, the products of such a dairy would not be allowed on the market today. In fact, such cows would not be allowed in a dairy in any highly civilized land. What the chemists’ eye could not discover in 1865, when this description was written, would be easily discoverable today.

Despite the danger of infected milk, Mrs. White did not go the whole way and condemn milk altogether and in all instances, as some at that time did. She uttered cautions regarding it, and warned that it should be boiled. But against butter she spoke out emphatically. Obviously, butter could not be boiled. And the length of time between production and consumption only increased

[119]This work was published in 1865. The exact date of Dr. Jackson’s statement, quoted therein, we do not know. Evidently it was not long before, because his principal writing was being done in the 1860’s. Thus we may conclude that the doctor is describing certain dairy conditions of the 1860’s, the very time when Mrs. White was writing on dairy products.

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the health hazard. There was little refrigeration and no pasteurization when Mrs. White first wrote regarding dairy products.

She also offered certain strictures on butter along with her general indictment of a large use of fats and greasy foods. She declared that these were not the most wholesome.

Comments on Eggs

In her earliest writings on health she did not make much mention of eggs. She declared that they had a certain stimulating quality and that in certain instances, at least, their use by children should be avoided. Lay alongside quotation Number 6 another statement by Mrs. White written about the same time. Mrs. White writes to a “Dear Bro. and Sister E” regarding the moral habits of their children. Among other things, she says in her long letter to them:

“You cannot arouse the moral sensibilities of your children while you are not careful in the selection of their food. The tables that parents usually prepare for their children are a snare to them. Their diet is not simple, and is not prepared in a healthful manner. The food is frequently rich and fever-producing, having a tendency to irritate and excite the tender coats of the stomach. The animal propensities are strengthened and bear sway, while the moral and intellectual powers are weakened, and become servants to the baser passions. You should study to prepare a simple yet nutritious diet. Flesh-meats and rich cakes and pies prepared with spices of any kind, are not the most healthful and nourishing diet. Eggs should not be placed upon your table. They are an injury to your children. Fruits and grains, prepared in the most simple form, are the most healthful, and will impart the greatest amount of nourishment to the body, and, at the same time, not impair the intellect.”—Testimonies for the Church 2:400.

We are to conclude from her statement that there is a certain relationship between a feverish, unhealthy condition of the digestive system and a stimulation of the sex organs.

Place beside this the fact that Mrs. White wrote much about the training of children and of taking every precaution possible, not only as to diet, but as to environment, education, and habits of life, to strengthen every noble aspiration and to build barriers against immorality. We are not here required to explore the broad area of the possible relation between diet and sex. We refer to the [382] matter only to explain why Mrs. White makes certain references that she does, to eggs, for example, in relation to the diet of children.

Discoveries Suggest Restraint in Passing Judgment

Most of the amazing discoveries as to the significance of diet in relation to all the bodily functions, and to health in general, have been made since Mrs. White wrote all these words.

Today medical men are attaching increasing significance to diet in relation to the functioning of body and mind. The presence or the absence, in almost microscopic quantities, of certain important ingredients, for example, vitamin B1 (thiamine), can change a normally cheerful, well-poised person into a nervous, irritable, moody creature. We refer to this unfolding marvel of the relation of food to the body and mind of man simply to suggest that the mere absence of supporting scientific proof for some particular statement on diet that Mrs. White has made provides no valid ground for dismissing it as irrational and fanciful.

Already scientific investigation in the field of nutrition has provided striking confirmation of many things that she wrote. For example, she declared that greasy foods, rich foods, pies, and gravies were unwholesome. Now note these words expressing current medical opinion as set forth in Hygeia, published by the American Medical Association:

“Recent medical opinion is that diet has much to do with the increase in coronary heart disease. People are more ‘civilized.’ They eat too much of animal fats; bacon, egg yolks, pie a la mode, gravy, cream, butter, fat meats. These foods produce an excess of cholesterol in the blood. Cholesterol is a fatty substance, a certain amount of which is normal in the blood. But when there is too much, plaques of cholesterol are laid down in the lining of the arteries, especially the coronary arteries. Practically all coronary thrombosis is due to deposits of cholesterol. On these deposits the blood clot forms, blocking the artery, and one has a thrombosis.”—IRENE E. SOEHREN in March, 1948, p. 183.

The Hygeia author observes, regarding this prevalent and often fatal malady, that probably one man in thirty, over forty years of age, “will suffer an attack of coronary thrombosis this year.” [383]

Deposits of cholesterol, which may be found in any part of the arterial system, become impregnated with calcium. The result is hardening of the arteries, with too often fatal results.

When Mrs. White wrote, in the 1860’s and ‘70’s, repeatedly and emphatically about the unwholesome quality of animal fats and greasy foods in general, of rich pies and gravies, no one knew anything about the relationship of these to the formation of an excess of cholesterol in the blood. But we know it today.

Quotation 7 Examined

Quotations 7 to 10 are said to be contradictory to the first six. Here is the context in which quotation Number 7 is found:

“Concerning flesh-meat, we should educate the people to let it alone. Its use is contrary to the best development of the physical, mental, and moral powers. And we should bear a clear testimony against the use of tea and coffee. It is also well to discard rich desserts. Milk, eggs, and butter should not be classed with flesh-meat. In some cases the use of eggs is beneficial. The time has not come to say that the use of milk and eggs should be wholly discarded. There are poor families whose diet consists largely of bread and milk. They have little fruit, and cannot afford to purchase the nut foods. In teaching health reform, as in all other gospel work, we are to meet the people where they are. Until we can teach them how to prepare health-reform foods that are palatable, nourishing, and yet inexpensive, we are not at liberty to present the most advanced propositions regarding health-reform diet.

“Let the diet reform be progressive. Let the people be taught how to prepare food without the use of milk or butter. Tell them that the time will soon come when there will be no safety in using eggs, milk, cream, or butter, because disease in animals is increasing in proportion to the increase of wickedness among men. The time is near when, because of the iniquity of the fallen race, the whole animal creation will groan under the diseases that curse our earth.”—Testimonies for the Church 7:134, 135.

It is hard to believe that any reasonable person can find in this statement by Mrs. White any contradiction of her statement in quotation Number 1. The fact that in quotation Number 1 Mrs. White spoke against butter, as well as against a number of other foods, does not mean that she necessarily put it in the same class as all these other foods, but simply that she considered it on the wrong side of the line that divided between ideally wholesome [384] foods and other foods. In view of changing conditions of sanitation and dairy inspection, and in view of the needs of many families, it is not hard to see how Mrs. White might consistently give a qualified approval to butter and eggs, as she does. In fact her whole statement in Testimonies, volume 7, breathes a spirit of sweet reasonableness. She makes the question of the use of dairy products, and eggs in general, turn largely on the question of “disease in animals.” In other words, though sanitary precaution and dairy inspection may increase, disease may increase also, ultimately the latter outrunning the former. Her words are a rebuke to extremes at either end on the matter of health reform: “Let the diet reform be progressive.”

Quotations 8 to 10 Examined

Quotations Numbers 8, 9, and 10 may be considered together, because they are drawn from the same place in Mrs. White’s writings. We give them in their context:

“While warnings have been given regarding the dangers of disease through butter, and the evil of the free use of eggs by small children, yet we should not consider it a violation of principle to use eggs from hens that are well cared for and suitably fed, Eggs contain properties that are remedial agencies in counteracting certain poisons,

“Some, in abstaining from milk, eggs, and butter, have failed to supply the system with proper nourishment, and as a consequence have become weak and unable to work. Thus health reform is brought into disrepute. The work that we have tried to build up solidly is confused with strange things that God has not required, and the energies of the church are crippled. But God will interfere to prevent the results of these too strenuous ideas. The gospel is to harmonize the sinful race. It is to bring the rich and poor together at the feet of Jesus.

“The time will come when we may have to discard some of the articles of diet we now use, such as milk and cream and eggs; but it is not necessary to bring upon ourselves perplexity by premature and extreme restrictions. Wait until the circumstances demand it, and the Lord prepares the way for it.

“Those who would be successful in proclaiming the principles of health reform must make the word of God their guide and counselor. Only as the teachers of health reform principles do this, can they stand on vantage-ground. Let us never bear a testimony against health reform by failing to use wholesome, palatable food in place of the harmful articles of diet that we have [385] discarded. Do not in any way encourage an appetite for stimulants. Eat only plain, simple, wholesome food, and thank God constantly for the principles of health reform. In all things be true and upright, and you will gain precious victories.

Diet In Different Countries

“While working against gluttony and intemperance, we must recognize the condition to which the human family is subjected. God has made provision for those who live in the different countries of the world. Those who desire to be co-workers with God must consider carefully before they specify just what foods should and should not be eaten. We are to be brought into connection with the masses. Should health reform in its most extreme form be taught to those whose circumstances forbid its adoption, more harm than good would be done. As I preach the gospel to the poor, I am instructed to tell them to eat that food which is most nourishing. I can not say to them: ‘You must not eat eggs, or milk, or cream. You must use no butter in the preparation of food.’ The gospel must be preached to the poor, but the time has not yet come to prescribe the strictest diet.”—Testimonies for the Church 9:162, 163.

When the citations from Mrs. White are seen in this larger context, we believe that any possible question in the reader’s mind will disappear.

Charge Number 7

Mrs. White did not live up to her own health teachings, though she claimed to. Here is the proof in parallel columns, headed:

“MRS. WHITE DID NOT EAT MEAT”

“MRS. WHITE DID EAT MEAT”[120]

“I have a well-set table on all occasions. I make no change for visitors, whether believers or unbelievers.... No butter or flesh-meats of any kind come on my table.” Testimonies for the Church 2:487, written 1868.

“When I could not obtain the food I needed, I have sometimes eaten a little meat; but I am becoming more and more afraid of it.” E. G. WHITE in Christian Temperance and Bible Hygiene, 18, (published 1890).

“In ‘Testimonies,’ Vol. 2, p. 485, in speaking of others who ate meat, she said: ‘These very ones have been completely backslidden. Meat and butter have been used by them quite freely.’

“Question—If others who ate meat had backslidden, what about the prophetess herself, who confessed in the ‘testimony’ given above that she ate meat, and that too, after she positively said: ‘No butter

[120]The quotations are copied from the original sources.

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or flesh meat of any kind come upon my table?’ ‘Consistency thou art a jewel.’”

We give, below, in parallel columns, the context of the two passages quoted so briefly in the charge:

“I have a well-set table on all occasions. I make no change for visitors, whether believers or unbelievers. I intend never to be surprised by an unreadiness to entertain at my table from one to half a dozen extra who may chance to come in. I have enough simple, healthful food ready to satisfy hunger and nourish the system. If any want more than this, they are at liberty to find it elsewhere. No butter or flesh-meats of any kind come on my table. Cake is seldom found there. I generally have an ample supply of fruits, good bread, and vegetables. Our table is always well patronized, and all who partake of the food do well, and improve upon it. All sit down with no epicurean appetite, and eat with a relish the bounties supplied by our Creator.”—Testimonies for the Church 2:487.

“The table should be abundantly supplied with food of the best quality. If any have a perverted taste that craves tea, coffee, condiments, and unhealthful dishes, enlighten them. Seek to arouse the conscience. Set before them the principles of the Bible upon hygiene. Where plenty of good milk and fruit can be obtained, there is rarely any excuse for eating animal food; it is not necessary to take the life of any of God’s creatures to supply our ordinary needs. In certain cases of illness or exhaustion it may be thought best to use some meat, but great care should be taken to secure the flesh of healthy animals. It has come to be a very serious question whether it is safe to use flesh-food at all in this age of the world. It would be better never to eat meat than to use the flesh of animals that are not healthy. When I could not obtain the food I needed, I have sometimes eaten a little meat; but I am becoming more and more afraid of it.”—Christian Temperance and Bible Hygiene, 117, 118. (Also in Counsels on Diet and Foods, 394.)

Where is the conflict between these two passages? In the one Mrs. White is describing her “well-set table on all occasions” with generally “an ample supply of fruits, good bread, and vegetables.” In the other she explicitly states: “When I could not obtain the food I needed I have sometimes eaten a little meat.” Whether Mrs. White was here referring to instances when she was traveling abroad we do not know. But the facts are that just previous to the [387] writing of this statement in Christian Temperance in 1890 she had done considerable traveling overseas, and as all who have traveled know, it is often very difficult, particularly in some lands, to secure adequate supplies of fruits and vegetables and good milk.

The “Backslidden” Family

But what about “others who ate meat,” whom Mrs. White describes as “backslidden”? Here is the context of these words:

“One family in particular have needed all the benefits they could receive from the reform in diet; yet these very ones have been completely backslidden. Meat and butter have been used by them quite freely, and spices have not been entirely discarded. This family could have received great benefit from a nourishing, well-regulated diet. The head of the family needed plain, nutritious food. His habits were sedentary, and his blood moved sluggishly through the system. He could not, like others, have the benefit of healthful exercise; therefore his food should have been of the right quality and quantity. There has not been in this family the right management in regard to diet; there has been irregularity. There should have been a specified time for each meal, and the food should have been prepared in a simple form, and free from grease; but pains should have been taken to have it nutritious, healthful, and inviting. In this family, as also in many others, a special parade has been made for visitors; many dishes prepared and frequently made too rich, so that those seated at the table would be tempted to eat to excess. Then in the absence of company there was a great reaction, a falling off in the preparations brought on the table. The diet was spare, and lacked nourishment. It was considered not so much matter ‘just for ourselves.’ The meals were frequently picked up, and the regular time for eating not regarded. Every member of the family was injured by such management. It is a sin for any of our sisters to make such great preparations for visitors, and wrong their own families by a spare diet which will fail to nourish the system.

“The brother referred to felt a lack in his system; he was not nourished, and he thought that meat would give him the needed strength. Had he been suitably cared for, his table spread at the right time with food of a nourishing quality, all the demands of nature would have been abundantly supplied.”—Testimonies for the Church 2:485, 486.

Here is a picture of a family “completely backslidden” from the whole idea of health reform. And what is the prime idea in health reform so far as diet is concerned? To provide the body with the best, the most nourishing, food available. This family evidently turned away from this idea in a variety of ways, even though they [388] knew better and, what is equally important, could evidently have secured the better food.

Why should anyone find a conflict between Mrs. White’s statement regarding that family and her statement regarding herself: “When I could not obtain the food I needed, I have sometimes eaten a little meat”?

Light From “a Catholic Woman”

In an attempt to provide further proof that Mrs. White did not live up to her own teachings, critics quote a statement by her as follows:

“When the selfishness of taking the lives of animals to gratify a perverted appetite was presented to me by a Catholic woman, I felt ashamed and distressed. I saw it in a new light, and I said, I will no longer patronize the butcher, I will not have the flesh of slain animals on my table.—U. T., Aug. 30, 1896.” Published in Instruction Relating to the Principles of Healthful Living,[121] (1st ed.), p. 97.

This statement is cited for two purposes: (1) to prove that Mrs. White, though writing against meat eating over many years of time, was, as late as 1896, not following her own teaching; (2) that she did not really receive her antimeat-eating view from a vision but from “a Catholic woman.”

The brief quotation is from a letter written by Mrs. White, August 30, 1896, while she was living in Australia, and is addressed to a family in America. The first part of the long letter discusses the question of eating meat. Mrs. White is encouraging this family to take meat from their diet, and relates her own experience in the following paragraph, which contains the sentence quoted above:

“I have a large family, which often numbers sixteen. In it there are men who work at the plough, and who fell trees. These have most vigorous exercise, but not a particle of the flesh of animals is placed on our table. Meat has not been used by us since the Brighton [Australia] Campmeeting [January, 1894]. It was not my purpose to have it on my table at any time, but urgent pleas were made that such a one was unable to eat this or that, and that his stomach could take care of meat better than it could anything else. Thus I was enticed to place it on my table. The use of cheese also began to creep in,

[121]Generally known as Healthful Living. U.T., an abbreviation for unpublished testimony.

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because some liked cheese; but I soon controlled that. But when the selfishness of taking the lives of animals to gratify a perverted taste was presented to me by a Catholic woman, kneeling at my feet, I felt ashamed and distressed. I saw it in a new light, and I said, I will no longer patronize the butchers. I will not have the flesh of corpses on my table.”—Letter 73a, 1896.

Lay alongside this a statement by Mrs. White in a letter written about the same time:

“Since the camp meeting at Brighton (January, 1894) I have absolutely banished meat from my table. It is an understanding that whether I am at home or abroad, nothing of this kind is to be used in my family, or come upon my table, I have had much representation before my mind in the night season on this subject.”—Letter 76, 1895, published in Counsels on Diet and Foods, 488.

Nothing Concealed, Nothing Inconsistent

These two quotations, and the one already given from Christian Temperance and Bible Hygiene, 118, reveal no inconsistency in Mrs. White’s personal life. The reader will note that it is Mrs. White herself who provides the critic with the information he has concerning her life. He did not have to secure this by some private detective method. Mrs. White saw no reason to conceal her course of life.[122] From the outset she sought to follow a course in harmony with her teachings. She declared that there had been times when she felt it necessary to eat a little meat. This was strictly in keeping with her counsel that healthful living calls for eating the best food that is available. Now writing from Australia, she provides a further commentary on this point. In still another statement, written about this time, she describes her family’s fare and her home in Australia, and again enunciates the principle that should govern in the matter of meat eating:

“We have plenty of good milk, fruit, and bread. I have already consecrated my table. I have freed it from all flesh meats. It is better for physical and mental soundness to refrain from living upon the flesh of animals. As far as possible we are to come back to God’s original plan.”—MS. 25, 1894, in Counsels on Diet and Foods, 488.

[122]Her very writing of the facts in a letter to a family, without requesting them to consider the letter confidential, is the best proof in the world that she did not consider that she had anything to conceal. Mrs. White well knew that what she wrote in letters would likely become public property erelong.

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Who will say, from all the evidence before us, that Mrs. White did not follow out the basic principles she set down; namely, “as far as possible we are to come back to God’s Original plan.” Her 1896 letter simply indicates that she had been loath arbitrarily to set diet limits for some who sat at her table.

But does this 1896 statement by Mrs. White prove that she got her “light” on abstaining from meat eating from “a Catholic woman” rather than in visions of the night as she had claimed through the years? Look once more at the whole paragraph. What was it that Mrs. White saw “in a new light”? Was it the basic view that meat was not best for food, or that it might carry germs? No. These and other reasons Mrs. White had stated repeatedly for about thirty years! What was the trouble at her table in Australia? She states that some who worked for her thought that they must have meat to eat, in order to do their heavy work. So, she adds, “I was enticed to place it on my table.” Then follows her statement about “taking the lives of animals to gratify a perverted taste,” and the appeal of the “Catholic woman.” What she saw, therefore, in a new light, was the taking of the “lives of animals to gratify a perverted taste,” and the relation of this to the plea of her workmen for meat. Her conviction that a flesh diet is not the best, she had set forth long before.

That “Suppressed” Quotation

The critic asks why the quotation from Mrs. White’s 1896 letter, which is given in the 1897 edition of Healthful Living, was left out of the 1898 edition. We do not know, but we think that the very use to which some have put the quotation provides the best clue as to why it was deleted. It was too brief to place Mrs. White’s words in the proper context.

Now those who publish books know that in making a correction on a page, endeavor is always made not to throw the pages out of order. If this quotation from the 1896 letter had been sufficiently lengthened to give its true context, it would have necessitated a repaging of the book from page 97 onward, or else the throwing out of other important quotations. It was not imperative that the [391] quotation be retained, and hence, we presume the two sentences were deleted and another quotation put in its place. But in so simply explained a deletion as this someone discovers a dark, deep plot to suppress Mrs. White’s writings.

We wish that the full paragraph from the August, 1896, letter might have been quoted in the 1897 edition of Healthful Living. It would have provided an excellent illustration of a principle that Mrs. White enunciated in 1895, which principle is set forth in a brief quotation further down on page 97 of Healthful Living:

“Those who have lived upon a meat diet all their lives do not see the evil of continuing the practise, and they must be treated tenderly.—U. T., June 19, 1895.”

It was because Mrs. White had “treated tenderly” some who sat at her table that she was confronted with the problem discussed in her 1896 letter. All reasonable people, we believe, will see in this whole incident only further proof that Mrs. White took no sudden, fanatical positions on the matter of diet, and most of all, was slow to make herself judge of the diet of others.

Charge Number 8 There is nothing original in what Mrs. White said on the question of health reform. It was all copied from other health reformers. Note these facts:

1. There were other health reformers in America before Mrs. White began to write on health. Some of these had written at length on the subject, and some had set up what might be described as health reform medical centers for treating the sick according to reform principles.

2. There can be found in Mrs. White’s writings certain parallels to the writings of earlier health reformers.

3. In September, 1864, James and Ellen White visited one of these health reform institutions and there learned about health reform.

It is true that there were health reformers before Mrs. White began to write on health. The critics cite a few sentences from her that reveal a close similarity of thought and expression to the writings of other health reformers. For all we know they might have quoted several sentences more. But we think that the reader will be unimpressed by an exhibit of a few sentences, after studying [392] the facts set forth in the following chapters on plagiarism. It is also true that in September, 1864, Mrs. White and her husband visited a certain health reform institute operated by a Dr. Jackson, at Dansville, New York, called “Our Home,” to see what they could see and hear what they could hear.

Critics Disclose No Secret

And are we dependent on her critics for most of this information? No; we secure it from James White, Mrs. White, and those associated with them. That is an important point. If she were a deceiver, if she really had not received any direct illumination from Heaven, and was wholly dependent on others, would not her consciousness of that fact prompt her to conceal, as far as possible, from her readers the fact that there were other reformers teaching more or less the same as she, and certainly to conceal from her readers the fact that she had actually visited one of these health reform institutions!

In the year 1865, Ellen G. White and her husband, James White, published a series of six pamphlets bearing the general title How to Live, and numbered consecutively from 1 to 6. For each of these pamphlets[123] Mrs. White wrote an article under the general head “Disease and Its Causes.” The rest of the material in each pamphlet was taken largely from the writings of various health reformers. The names of the writers and of their publications are given, so that the reader need be in no doubt as to the source of the matter. In other words, when Mrs. White began to write extensively on the theme of disease and its causes, she placed those writings alongside the writings of others on the same subject. And it is in the very first of the six pamphlets that we find the article by her husband, James White, telling of their visit to Dr. Jackson’s institution. The article begins thus:

“In the month of September, 1864, Mrs. W. and self spent three weeks at the health institute at Dansville, Liv. Co., N. Y., called, ‘Our Home.’ Our object in this visit was not to take treatment, as we were enjoying better health than usual; but to see what we could see, and hear what we could hear, so as

[123]Five of them contain sixty-four pages each, and one eighty pages.

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to be able to give to many inquiring friends a somewhat definite report.”—How to Live, no. 1, p. 12.

We do not know how more effectively or openly the fact could have been stated that Mrs. White was making no claims to exclusive possession of light on the subject of health reform.

An Important Question

But right here an important question arises. We have found repeatedly in former chapters that critics like to make the sweeping charge that Mrs. White’s teachings simply reflected the current thinking, whether the thinking was inside the church or out. They cannot tolerate the thought that she might have had an original idea, much less that the idea came from Heaven. But they well know that the views of the health reformers of the mid-nineteenth century were not generally held. Most medical practitioners ridiculed them.

We ask: Why did Mrs. White’s writings on health fail to reflect the generally held views of the time, that were supported by virtually all medical men? Why, instead, did she turn so definitely against them, and give at least a measure of support to ideas that had no standing? This is a singular situation, indeed, and is quite contrary to what we should expect her to be doing if she was a fraud and was dependent for her views upon the ideas current at the time. If she was a cunning deceiver, seeking to build a reputation for herself, or if she was simply a harmlessly ecstatic soul, would she not be more likely to throw in her lot with well-established medical views rather than with new ones, seeing she could do so and still hold on to her distinctive theology? But the evidence shows that she did not.

We think that this remarkable fact will make the reader skeptical of the charge that Mrs. White simply borrowed her health teachings from others.

An Even More Important Question

But there is an even more important question that demands answer. How would Mrs. White know to choose from among the varied views of reformers that which was good and discard that [394] which was bad? The reformers presented no simon-pure health counsel. For example, Sylvester Graham, who gave his name to graham bread, and who set forth several worth-while health ideas, made the great and grave dietary blunder of discounting, heavily, green, leafy vegetables. Some others held extreme views about milk. They declared that quite apart from its being a possible carrier of disease, milk was essentially a bad food for any but small children and infants. There were those who viewed salt as really a poison. And there were those who overemphasized rest and derogated physical exercise in the daily regimen of patients recuperating from various maladies. These are samples of mistaken views. It is no discredit to these early reformers that they did not have a full and wholly correct understanding of health principles, particularly dietary laws. We could not expect them to. That is the history of all reform.

What if Mrs. White, who agreed with some of Graham’s views, had come out vigorously against green, leafy vegetables? What if she had declared that milk is essentially a bad food for any but small children and infants? What if she had declared that salt is a poison to the body and ought not to be used at all?

But Mrs. White did not take these positions. Constantly she warned against the danger of extremes in health reform. Where the Lord had not revealed some specific point definitely to her she frankly stated that the future might provide support for some current health view but that no one should run ahead to set up such a view as a standard for the church. She spoke of a “Bro. B” who was connected with the publishing house at Battle Greek and whose advocacy of certain extreme positions in The Health Reformer—the monthly health journal of the denomination—were open to censure:

“Bro. B. had urged the extreme positions of Dr. Trall. This had influenced the doctor to come out in the Reformer stronger than he otherwise would have done, in discarding milk, sugar, and salt. The position to entirely discontinue the use of these things may be right in its order; but the time has not come to take a general stand upon these points.”—Testimonies for the Church 3:19. [395]

Note that Mrs. White refers to the “extreme positions of Dr. Trall,” who was one of the prominent reforming doctors of the time, and who conducted a department in The Health Reformer.[124] She was not prepared at the time of writing to make any clear statement as to whether they should “entirely discontinue the use of these things.” But if she was controlled in her thinking and writing by what these health reforming doctors were teaching, why did she not feel clear to speak out dogmatically and in behalf of what Dr. Trall was advocating? He was not the only one who advocated what she declared were “extreme positions” on “discarding milk, sugar, and salt.” It would be safe to say that he rather represented the general sentiment of the reforming doctors. The only dogmatic speaking Mrs. White did in that connection was to brand the views as “extreme positions,” which they were. But when she did ultimately speak with definiteness regarding these articles of diet it was to urge, not abstinence, but moderation, as to salt and sugar, and to give caution as to the dangers of disease in milk. For example, in a letter she wrote in 1901 she declared:

“I use some salt, and always have, because from the light given me by God, this article, in the place of being deleterious, is actually essential for the blood. The whys and wherefores of this I know not, but I give you the instruction as it is given me.”—Counsels on Diet and Foods, 344.

Physical Activity and Health

What if Mrs. White had endorsed the idea, promoted by some prominent health-reforming doctors, regarding the value of rest as contrasted with any physical activity as a program of recuperation from illness? We are sure the critics certainly would not rest until they had made full use of that in their charges. And they would work that charge more today than ever, for the importance of physical activity in the whole recuperative program has assumed unusual significance in recent years. But Mrs. White, instead of

[124]That he had many good ideas and that his work was valued, is made clear by the fact that he conducted a department in this journal.

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endorsing any regimen that would frown on physical exercise in the recuperative program, consistently spoke of the interaction of body and mind, and thus of the value of exercise.

Separating Chaff From Wheat

In the autumn of 1865 James White suffered what is commonly described as a stroke, which resulted in partial paralysis. Mrs. White took him to Dr. Jackson’s institution at Dansville, New York. Of their experience there, in relation to the medical and other views promoted, she wrote:

“We did not feel that the three months passed at this institution was in vain. We did not receive all the ideas and sentiments and suggestions advanced, but we did gather many things of value from those who had obtained an experience in health reform. We did not feel that there was any necessity of gathering the chaff with the wheat.”—MS. 1, 1867.

But how would Mrs. White, who is supposed to be a pathetically ignorant, even if cunning, individual, know that some of the ideas presented at Dr. Jackson’s institution were “chaff” and some “wheat”? And how would she be able to separate the chaff from the wheat? Might it not be an evidence of God’s unique direction of her life and writings that she could thus distinguish and separate the one from the other?

Dr. Kellogg Testifies

We can think of no more pertinent discussion of these questions than that made by Dr. J. H. Kellogg, who was for many years the medical director of the Battle Creek Sanitarium.[125] In writing the preface to Christian Temperance and Bible Hygiene,[126] in 1890, he declared:

“Nearly thirty years ago there appeared in print the first of a series of remarkable and important articles on the subject of health, by Mrs. E. G. White. These articles at once commanded earnest consideration by those who were acquainted with Mrs. White’s previous writings and labors. Thousands

[125]The later name for the Western Health Reform Institute, founded by Seventh-day Adventists in 1866.

[126]The first part of this book is authored by Mrs. White, the last part by James White. Much of what here appears from her pen is found in one form or another in earlier publications, such as journals and pamphlets, as far back as 1864.

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were led to change life-long habits, and to renounce practices thoroughly fixed by heredity as well as by long indulgence. So great a revolution could not be brought in a body of people without the aid of some powerful incentive, which in this case was undoubtedly the belief that the writings referred to not only bore the stamp of truth, but were indorsed by a higher than human authority. This is not the proper place for the consideration of the grounds upon which this belief was based, but the reader’s attention is invited to a few facts of interest in this connection:—

“1. At the time the writings referred to first appeared, the subject of health was almost wholly ignored, not only by the people to whom they were addressed, but by the world at large.

“2. The few advocating the necessity of a reform in physical habits, propagated in connection with the advocacy of genuine reformatory principles the most patent and in some instances disgusting errors.

“3. Nowhere, and by no one, was there presented a systematic and harmonious body of hygienic truths, free from patent errors, and consistent with the Bible and the principles of the Christian religion.

“Under these circumstances, the writings referred to made their appearance. The principles taught were not enforced by scientific authority, but were presented in a simple, straightforward manner by one who makes no pretense to scientific knowledge, but claims to write by the aid and authority of the divine enlightenment.

“How have the principles presented under such peculiar circumstances and with such remarkable claims stood the test of time and experience? is a question which may very properly be asked. Its answer is to be found in facts which are capable of the amplest verification. The principles presented have been put to the test of practical experience by thousands; and whenever intelligently and consistently carried out, the result has been found in the highest degree satisfactory. Thousands have testified to physical, mental, and moral benefits received. Many of the principles taught have come to be so generally adopted and practiced that they are no longer recognized as reforms, and may, in fact, be regarded as prevalent customs among the more intelligent classes. The principles which a quarter of a century ago were either entirely ignored or made the butt of ridicule, have quietly won their way into public confidence and esteem, until the world has quite forgotten that they have not always been thus accepted. New discoveries in science and new interpretations of old facts have continually added confirmatory evidence, until at the present time every one of the principles advocated more than a quarter of a century ago is fortified in the strongest possible manner by scientific evidence.

“Finally, the reformatory movement based upon the principles advocated so long ago has lived and prospered until the present time, and the institutions [398] developed by it have grown to be the most extensive and the most prosperous establishments of the sort in the world; while other efforts, looking somewhat in the same direction, but contaminated by error, have either abandoned the principles of truth, and been given over to error, or have fallen into obscurity. It certainly must be regarded as a thing remarkable, and evincing unmistakable evidence of divine insight and direction, that in the midst of confused and conflicting teachings, claiming the authority of science and experience, but warped by ultra notions and rendered impotent for good by the great admixture of error,—it must be admitted to be something extraordinary, that a person making no claims to scientific knowledge or erudition should have been able to organize, from the confused and error-tainted mass of ideas advanced by a few writers and thinkers on health subjects, a body of hygienic principles so harmonious, so consistent, and so genuine that the discussions, the researches, the discoveries, and the experience of a quarter of a century have not resulted in the overthrow of a single principle, but have only served to establish the doctrines taught.

“The guidance of infinite wisdom is as much needed in discerning between truth and error as in the evolution of new truths. Novelty is by no means a distinguishing characteristic of true principles, and the principle holds good as regards the truths of hygienic reform, as well as those of other reformatory movements. The greatest and most important reformatory movements of modern times have not been those which presented new facts and principles, but those which revived truths and principles long forgotten, and which have led the way back to the paths trodden by men of by-gone ages, before the world had wandered so far away from physical and moral rectitude.”—Pages iii, iv.[127]

The Proof of a Good Guide

A guide need not build roads in order to provide proof of his genuineness and worth, he needs only to be able to distinguish between roads, and to lead travelers on the right one. And is it not part of the task of one who speaks for God to direct us, amid the maze of paths on the journey of life, to that path which will most surely and safely carry us forward to our destination? It is through the voice of His prophets that the Lord sometimes fulfills the promise:

“And thine ears shall hear a word behind thee, saying, This is the way, walk ye in it, when ye turn to the right hand, and when ye turn to the left.” Isaiah 30:21.

[127]See General Conference Daily Bulletin, March 8, 1897, p. 309, for Dr. Kellogg’s statement that he wrote this preface.

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If Mrs. White needed divine illumination in order to be able to discern between the paths that were said to lead to health—and they were many and often at right angles to each other—then we have really met the charge that she gave no evidence of knowing more than was current knowledge in her day, and that thus her visions are proved frauds.

But we do not say that Mrs. White simply pointed out the right road. She also blazed new trails when there was no road, or when all the roads led astray. That is evident as one compares her writings with those of other health reformers.

What of That Visit to “Our Home”?

Let us look, in conclusion, at the key statement on which this charge rests. As already noted, James White wrote in 1865 that he and Mrs. White made a three weeks’ visit to Dr. Jackson’s health institution, called “Our Home,” at Dansville, New York, in September, 1864. Her writings in How to Live were in 1865, and her voluminous discussions of health in other bound books were later still. Hence, say the critics, it is clear that she gained her knowledge of the main ideas of healthful living at “Our Home.”

But there are some facts that the critics forget to state when they are presenting this apparently simple chronological proof of Mrs. White’s dependence on others for her ideas on health. Let us list these briefly:

1. Dr. H. S. Lay, a Seventh-day Adventist physician, who became a member of the staff of “Our Home” in the summer of 1864, and the editor of The Health Reformer in 1866, wrote thus, in 1863, to James White as to the significance of certain reform work that he and Mrs. White had been doing:

“I now see clearer than ever before that while you both have so ardently labored to discountenance the use of tobacco, tea, and coffee among us, you have been doing the work of God.”—Letter, October 11, 1863.

2. In the spring of 1864 Mrs. White’s pamphlet entitled An Appeal to Mothers was published. This dealt chiefly with one [400] aspect of health and reveals that Mrs. White’s mind and pen were already exercised on the care of the body. She includes in this a discussion of proper diet.

3. Not later than July, 1864, Mrs. White completed the writing of Spiritual Gifts, volume 4, for the preface is dated “July,” and it was published in August. Pages 120 to 151 constitute a chapter entitled “Health.” In this chapter she discusses at length the subject of diet, the evils of drugging as then senselessly practiced, and other principal aspects of the broad subject of health.[128]

4. James White, in his article in How to Live, number 1, which tells of their visit to “Our Home,” specifically states as to the diet there: “As we had lived almost entirely without meat, grease, and spices, for more than a year, we were in a condition to have our wants in the line of food fully met at the tables at ‘Our Home.’”—Page 16. Evidently he and Mrs. White did not go there to learn those features of reform!

5. While at the 1897 General Conference session Dr. J. H. Kellogg delivered an address in which he said, in part:

“Just before I came to the Conference I had a talk with Dr. Lay, and he told me of how he heard the first instruction about health reform away back in 1860, and especially in 1863. While he was riding in a carriage with Brother and Sister White, she related what had been presented to her upon the subject of health reform, and laid out the principles which have stood the test of all these years—a whole generation.”—General Conference Daily Bulletin, March 8, 1897, p. 309.[129]

Mrs. White’s Own Answer

In the setting of these facts we are prepared to give maximum credence to the answer that Mrs. White returned to a straightforward question, asked by fellow Seventh-day Adventists in 1867, long before the critics framed their charges:

[128]The same issue of the Review and Herald in which James White states, “We now design to spend a few weeks at the health institution called Our Home, at Dansville, N.Y.,” announces that Spiritual Gifts, Volumes 3 and 4 are “ready.” (See issue of Sept. 6, 1864, pp. 116, 120.)

[129]This statement by Dr. Kellogg is not to be classed as an unsupported reminiscence. He had just talked with the person he quoted, and he immediately left a permanent record of the substance of that talk. Furthermore, Dr. Lay’s reminiscence regarding Mrs. White’s promotion of certain health teachings in 1863 tallies with his 1863 letter we quoted. Incidentally, it also tallies with a reminiscence of W. C. White, son of Mrs. E. G. White, who was present on one occasion when she and Dr. Lay talked together on health. (See The Review and Herald, November 12, 1936, pp. 3, 4.)

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“Did you receive your views upon health reform before visiting the Health institute at Dansville, N. Y., or before you had read works on the subject?”[130]

We give, in full, her answer as set forth in the church paper:

“It was at the house of Bro. A. Hillard, at Otsego, Mich., June 6, 1863, that the great subject of Health Reform was opened before me in vision. I did not visit Dansville till August,[131] 1864, fourteen months after I had the view. I did not read any works upon health until I had written Spiritual Gifts, Vols. iii and iv, Appeal to Mothers, and had sketched out most of my six articles in the six numbers of ‘How to Live.’ I did not know that such a paper existed as the Laws of Life, published at Dansville, N. Y. I had not heard of the several works upon health, written by Dr. J. C. Jackson, and other publications at Dansville, at the time I had the view named above. I did not know that such works existed until September, 1863, when in Boston, Mass., my husband saw them advertised in a periodical called the Voice of the Prophets, published by Eld. J. V. Himes. My husband ordered the works from Dansville and received them at Topsham, Maine. His business gave him no time to peruse them, and as I determined not to read them until I had written out my views, the books remained in their wrappers. As I introduced the subject of health to friends where I labored in Michigan, New England, and in the State of New York, and spoke against drugs and flesh meats, and in favor of water, pure air, and a proper diet, the reply was often made, ‘You speak very nearly the opinions taught in the Laws of Life, and other publications, by Drs. Trall, Jackson, and others. Have you read that paper and those works?’ My reply was that I had not, neither should I read them till I had fully written out my views, lest it should be said that I had received my light upon the subject of health from physicians, and not from the Lord. And after I had written my six articles for How to Live, I then searched the various works on Hygiene and was surprised to find them so nearly in harmony with what the Lord had revealed to me. And to show this harmony, and to set before my brethren and sisters the subject as brought out by able writers, I determined to publish ‘How to Live,’ in which I largely extracted from the works referred to.”[132]—The Review and Herald, October 8, 1867, p. 260.

[130]This question, along with several others, was sent to Mrs. White, as she explains in a prefatory note, by the “Wisconsin and Illinois Conference Committee.” Her letter of reply, sent to the Review and Herald for publication that all the readers of the church paper might be informed, is dated, “Pilot Grove, Iowa, Sept. 26, 1867.”

[131]That the actual time of Mrs. White’s stay at Dansville was September is clearly established by James White’s statements before and after their stay. The apparent discrepancy of the “August” date disappears when the facts concerning their journeyings are presented. They left Battle Creek August 24 “to spend something like three months in the Eastern States.” (The Review and Herald, August 30, 1864, p. 112.) They spent Sabbath, August 27, in Rochester, New York. Following this they went to Dansville. (The Review and Herald, September 6, 1864, p. 116.) It is evident, then, that when Mrs. White spoke of visiting Dansville in “August,” she was referring to the date when they left headquarters in Battle Creek on their long trip that was to include Dansville.

[132]Mrs. White does not mean that her articles in How to Live were largely extracted from others, but that these six pamphlets contained many articles from others. As already stated, each pamphlet contained only one article by her.

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The Testimony of a Pioneer

The words of J. H. Waggoner may fittingly be quoted here. He mentions having listened to Mrs. White preach on the subject of health reform. He speaks with fervor of his conviction that her message on health and on other subjects is from God. Then he adds:

“We do not profess to be pioneers in the general principles of the health reform. The facts on which this movement is based have been elaborated, in a great measure, by reformers, physicians, and writers on physiology and hygiene, and so may be found scattered through the land. But we do claim that by the method of God’s choice it has been more clearly and powerfully unfolded, and is thereby producing an effect which we could not have looked for from any other means. As mere physiological and hygienic truths, they might be studied by some at their leisure, and by others laid aside as of little consequence; but when placed on a level with the great truths of the third angel’s message by the sanction and authority of God’s Spirit, and so declared to be the means whereby a weak people may be made strong to overcome, and our diseased bodies cleansed and fitted for translation, then it comes to us as an essential part of present truth, to be received with the blessing of God, or rejected at our peril.”—The Review and Herald, August 7, 1866, p. 77.

Here is a frank statement in the church paper, long before critics spread their charges abroad, that we make no attempt to claim for Mrs. White exclusive possession of health reform ideas. What we do claim is this: That she was not dependent on others for her ideas; that she guided us safely and sanely on the road to health, warning us against many and tempting bypaths; and that she placed the health teachings in a certain spiritual context, cheering us along with the revelation that these teachings are designed of God to smooth our upward path to the kingdom.

We think the reader will agree that the evidence supports these claims. [403]

Chapter 28—Mrs. White’s Literary Borrowings

The Plagiarism Charge—Part I

Charge: In certain of her books Mrs. White “copied extensively from other authors without giving credit,” generally without even using quotation marks, and this she pretends was all revealed to her directly from heaven.

In 1883 she published her work Sketches From the Life of Paul. She “copied a large part of her book directly from” an 1852[133] English work by Conybeare and Howson, The Life and Epistles of Saint Paul. The publishers declared, in the preface, that it was written by “special help from the Spirit of God.” Adventists “innocently read her book as material given to her by revelation.” “So plainly and fully was Mrs. White’s book copied from the older book, that the publishers of Conybeare and Howson’s work threatened prosecution if her work was not suppressed. Hence it was withdrawn from sale.”

“‘The Great Controversy’ is her most popular book with her people. Every line is accepted as original with her; all inspired by the Holy Spirit. Carefully studying it, we found that it was taken largely from Andrews’ ‘History of the Sabbath,’ Wylie’s ‘History of the Waldenses,’ D’Aubigne’s ‘History of the Reformation,’ Smith’s ‘Sanctuary,’ Elder White’s ‘Life of Wm. Miller,’ itself a copied book,[134] and other works.”

“As soon as this book [the 1884 edition of Great Controversy] was read by some of the leading brethren, they discovered that it was largely taken from other publications. They very earnestly protested to Mrs. White,” but without avail, as edition after edition was published “between 1884 and 1888.”

“Protest against using the thoughts of others without credit continued to be presented to Mrs. White so that in 1892 [correct date, 1888] a new and enlarged edition was published in which a few of the plagiarized portions were enclosed in quotation marks, but without credit.” In the preface to this edition she “admits that she had

[133]The critics cite “1855,” but the first edition was published in 1851 and 1852; 1855 was the date of the Scribner “third edition,” or reprint from the first English edition.

[134]On the title page of the book, and in the Introduction, James White states explicitly the sources from which he drew.

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taken some of her information from other authors.” Not until 1911 did she “come out honestly and give the proper credit to the authors from which she had plagiarized so much.”

These two books are the ones routinely presented as proof that Mrs. White plagiarized and that she deceived her followers into thinking that these plagiarisms were inspired. It is insinuated that various of her works are heavily tainted with plagiarism, but for some reason the charge is largely confined to these two books.[135]

The Form of the Answer

The answer to this charge will be in the form of an answer to the following questions:

1. What really constitutes plagiarism?

2. What is the historical background of Sketches From the Life of Pauland The Great Controversy?

3. In copying certain passages from other writers, did Mrs. White practice deceit upon the communicants of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, for whom her books were initially and primarily published?

4. Approximately how much did she borrow from other authors without employing quotation marks?

5. In thus borrowing, was she guilty of plagiarism?

6. Does the evidence support the charge that she was threatened with a lawsuit?

7. Does the fact that Mrs. White borrowed certain passages from other writers throw a cloud over her claim to having written by inspiration from God?

The Historical Background of Literary Borrowing

In order rightly to evaluate the charge before us, we need to examine the subject of literary borrowings in its historical setting. The old saying that there is nothing new under the sun finds ample illustration in the history of literature. Literary ideas, themes, plots, et cetera, seem to be strangely alike century after

[135]Strictly speaking, it is only necessary to establish a case with one book. Conversely, if we are able to show that the two prime exhibits do not prove the charge, it may reasonably be assumed that no secondary exhibits could. The facts are that other exhibits are rarely submitted, except, at times, a few citations from Patriarchs and Prophets.

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century. Different writers fall into similar forms of expression in describing similar incidents. One writer, though patently borrowing phrases or sentences from another writer, may use these simply as part of his foundational material on which he rears a literary edifice that is sufficiently different from that of the other writer to warrant the judgment that it is a piece of truly original literary architecture. It is in this very area that much of the dispute and uncertainty have arisen.

Works on plagiarism cite numerous instances where a poet, for example, has taken couplets from an earlier poet’s work, turning the phrases, embellishing the thought, changing the literary figure. Then another poet, and still another, down through the years has continued the changing. There is newness, yet there is no doubt that the original couplets are the substratum of their work. Many, we might safely say most, of the great poets have thus drawn, at times, on the past. One poet reasonably justifies such a procedure in these words:

“Though old the thought and oft exprest,

‘Tis his at last who says it best.‘”

So general has been the practice, by prose writers as well as by poets, of drawing more or less from earlier works that the noted author, Vicente Blasco-Ibañez, declared, in a vein of hyperbole:

“One is compelled not only to say, but also to believe, that all the great writers, absolutely all, are plagiarists, and that the best of each does not belong to him, because he has taken it from others.”—Quoted by MAURICE SALZMAN in Plagiarism, The “Art” of Stealing Literary Material, p. 22.

Another writer on this general subject observes: “The great [literary] artist is only one of a long chain of borrowers and adapters.”—W. A. EDWARDS, Plagiarism, An Essay on Good and Bad Borrowing, p. 114.

Religious Writers Borrowed Without Acknowledgment

The greatest difficulty of all in evaluating a charge of plagiarism against an author has been in the field of religious writing. Religious writers, in general, have felt that they were writing, not to advance their own interests, but the interests of the kingdom of [406] God, and that Whatever might contribute to that objective should be drawn upon. They have also felt that the common source of all religious writing is the Bible, on which no one has a monopoly. Listen to this frank statement by none other than John Wesley as to how he proceeded in his writing in relation to other authors:

“I once designed to write down barely what occurred to my own mind, consulting none but the inspired writers. But no sooner was I acquainted with that great light of the Christian world, (lately gone to his reward) Bengelius, than I entirely changed my design, being thoroughly convinced it might be of more service to the cause of religion, were I barely to translate his Gnomon Novi Testamenti, than to write many volumes upon it. Many of his excellent notes I have therefore translated. Many more I have abridged, omitting that part which was purely critical, and giving the substance of the rest....

“I am likewise indebted for some useful observations to Dr. Heylin’s Theological Lectures: and for many more to Dr. Guyse, and to the Family Expositor of the late pious and learned Dr. Doddridge. It was a doubt with me for some time, whether I should not subjoin to every note I received from them the name of the author from whom it was taken; especially considering I had transcribed some, and abridged many more, almost in the words of the author. But upon farther consideration, I resolved to name none, that nothing might divert the mind of the reader from keeping close to the point of view, and receiving what was spoken only according to its own intrinsic value.”—Explanatory Notes Upon the New Testament, Preface.

All Commentators Have Borrowed—Often Without Credit

A Bible commentator makes this general statement with regard to the practice followed by theological writers through the years in quoting from men who had preceded them:

“All the commentators have drawn largely from the fathers, especially from St. Augustine; and most of them have made general property of Patrick, Lowth, and Whitby. Poole has exhausted the old continental writers; Henry has made very free with Bishop Hall and others; Scott and Benson have enriched their pages abundantly from Henry; Gill has translated the spirit of Poole’s ‘Synopsis,’ but he most generally gives his authorities; Adam Clarke and Davidson have been much indebted to all the best critics, though the former does not always mention his obligations, and the latter never; but his preface to his admirable ‘Pocket Commentary’ is an honest confession that he pretends to be no more than a compiler; some original thoughts appear, however, to be scattered among his notes.”—INGRAM COBBIN, The Condensed [407] Commentary and Family Exposition of the Holy Bible (London: William Tegg, 1863), Preface, p. iv.

In general, it did not occur to these writers to put quotation marks around every phrase or sentence they might borrow, much less to give documentary reference. They seemed to reason that they were drawing from a common pile of building material that had been produced by earlier literary builders. They saw no reason why they ought not to be free to pick up a brick here or a board there, or even several boards nailed together, to incorporate into the edifice that they were constructing.

Or, to change the figure: They felt that they could rightly borrow from the blueprints of earlier author-architects a design for a pillar, a cornice, or some other detail of the new edifice they were creating. They felt that in turn the blue print of their finished literary edifice would provide further material from which later authors would draw, and thus they would be making a contribution that would ethically justify their borrowings. Nor did they feel that the finished structure which came from their hand and pen was any the less theirs because they had followed this procedure. It never occurred to them that they must label the pillar, or the cornice, or whatever it was that they borrowed in design, as having come from an earlier design, in order to be considered honest builders.

Canright as an Author

Lest any doubt remain in some reader’s mind that we are glossing over the literary picture of the past in order to make out a case for Mrs. White, we wish to give one more exhibit from the field of religious writers. In 1878 Canright published a book called The Bible From Heaven. This had been the title of a book by Moses Hull issued in 1863. Both men were Seventh-day Adventist ministers at the time they wrote, and both books were published at the Seventh-day Adventist publishing house in Battle Greek, Michigan. A comparison of these two books reveals that Canright borrowed much from Hull, sometimes whole pages. Nor was the borrowing merely of the thought, with occasional phrases, sentences, [408] or paraphrases. He simply copied verbatim. We give one specific illustration from the midst of an extended borrowing:

Moses Hull, 1863

D. M. Canright, 1878

“We now come directly to the question, Are the sciences really against the Bible? We answer, No. It is true that the Bible does not abound with lectures upon physiology, anatomy, hygiene, materia medica, chemistry, astronomy, or geology. It is not given to teach these subjects. God has given us the stars to teach us astronomy, the earth to teach us geology, and the Bible to teach us religion. Yet we are not willing to admit that anything in the Bible contradicts any of the sciences.
“As each new science has been discovered, it has been supposed by infidels that in it they would find a new ally, but, alas for infidelity, the older sciences have all proved to be of heavenly birth, and have given their testimony in behalf of God and the Bible; so will the new ones when more perfectly understood. Of all the sciences, geology, if it may be termed a science, has proved itself the most fallible, and yet its professors are the most noisy in their boasts of what they intend to do.”—The Bible From Heaven, pp. 168, 169.

“We now come directly to the question, Are the sciences really against the Bible? We answer, No. It is true that the Bible does not abound with lectures upon physiology, anatomy, hygiene, materia medica, chemistry, astronomy, or geology. It is not given for the purpose of teaching these subjects. God has given us the stars to teach us astronomy, the earth to teach us geology, and the Bible to teach us religion. Yet nothing in the Bible contradicts the sciences. As each new science has been discovered, it has been supposed by infidels that in it they would find a new ally; but, alas for infidelity, the older sciences have all proved to be of heavenly birth, and have given their testimony in behalf of God and the Bible; so will the new ones when more perfectly understood. Of all the sciences, geology, if it may be termed a science, has proved itself the most fallible; and yet its professors are the most noisy in their boasts of what they intend to prove.”—The Bible From Heaven,p. 288.

Neither in his preface, nor anywhere else in his book, did Canright indicate that he was borrowing from Hull. Indeed, he did not indicate, even by quotation marks, that he was borrowing this material from anyone.

Why Parallels Are Cited

Canright borrowed with a vengeance; he never even troubled to adapt the wording or to paraphrase it to fit it into the structure of his own thought, as Mrs. White and other truly creative writers [409] did. But we doubt not that he felt entirely clear in conscience in doing what he did. Now, nowhere in Mrs. White’s writings are there such extended verbatim borrowings as those of Canright from Hull. Yet Canright was the man who soberly and solemnly initiated against Mrs. White the charge of plagiarism!

In thus giving a recital of some of the literary practices of the past, particularly in the field of religious writing, we are not necessarily saying that such practices were ideal—we are sure they were not. For some generations there has been a steadily growing conviction that an author should give to his readers clear evidence of his literary borrowings. In fact, the trend has gone almost to the extreme today, so that many writers feel that they should not only use quotation marks, but also give the name of the author, if they borrow so much as a part of a sentence.

Both the moral and the legal angles of literary borrowing have provoked endless dispute and revealed every shade of opinion. Authors who have devoted books to the subject confess to difficulty in framing a wholly satisfactory definition of plagiarism. Courts have likewise found themselves in difficulty. It is not an uncommon thing for higher courts to reverse lower courts in suits for infringement, infringement being the legal aspect of plagiarism.

A modern writer on this subject said, with regard to the writing of his own book:

“I am fully aware of the difficulty of deciding what is plagiarism and what is legitimate borrowing. This very chapter is plagiarism of a sort. If I had indicated the source of every statement made, the notes would have been so numerous as to interfere with the continuity of the letterpress: I have, therefore, confined myself to occasional references, and have indicated the quotations I have made; but I must bear the blame of having sometimes used the investigations of others with only a general acknowledgment of indebtedness.”—H. M. PAULL., Literary Ethics, pp. 126, 127.

The Legal Aspect of Plagiarism

Because of the well-defined copyright laws that now obtain in the United States—and in most other countries for that matter—it is possible for an author who feels that another writer has plagiarized his work to enter suit against him. Needless to say [410] many such suits have been instituted. As a result there is a rather large body of decisions that set forth the consensus of legal thinking on this matter. The following is quoted from the authoritative summary of the current rulings of the courts regarding this matter:

“In determining the question of infringement, the amount of matter copied from the copyrighted work is an important consideration, but to constitute infringement it is not necessary that the whole or even a large portion of the work shall have been copied, although on the principle of de minimis non curat lex it is necessary that a material and substantial part of it shall have been copied, it being insufficient that mere words or lines have been abstracted. If so much is taken that the value of the original is sensibly diminished, or the labors of the original author are substantially and to an injurious extent appropriated by another, that is sufficient in point of law to constitute a piracy. The question is one of quality rather than quantity and is to be determined by the character of the work and the relative value of the material taken, and it has been said that in deciding questions of this sort the court must look to the nature and objects of the selections made, the quantity and value of the materials used, and the degree in which the use may prejudice the sale, diminish the profits, or supersede the objects of the original work.”—18 Corpus Juris Secundum, Sec. 94, p. 218.

“Making extracts, even if they are not acknowledged as such, appearing under all the circumstances of the case, reasonable in quality, number, and length, regard being had to the object with which the extracts are made and to the subjects to which they relate, is a fair and noninfringing use.”—Ibid., Sec. 105. p. 224.

What Is the Essence of Plagiarism?

After we have considered the legal aspect, and the changing viewpoint of different generations as to how extensively a writer may properly copy from others without acknowledgment, we still have before us the primary question: Morally speaking, what is the essence of the offense called plagiarism? The answer is evident: The attempt of a writer to deceive his readers into thinking that the entire work which bears his name is wholly his own, when in fact some strands of the fabric were drawn, not from his own mental spinning wheel, but from the fabric of some other author’s work.[136]

[136]Paull well observes that a plagiarist is distinguished by the fact that he “always hopes that he will not be found out.”—Op. cit., p. 45.

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There are two ways by which a writer usually seeks to protect himself against the charge of plagiarism: 1. First and most generally, by using quotation marks, which marks fully protect him, even though he does not cite the source of the quotations. 2. By making some introductory statement that informs the reader at the outset that the author has drawn in part from others. This latter procedure is sometimes followed when the matter drawn from others is a minor amount and is essentially background material, not central to the main theme of the writer.[137]

With these facts regarding plagiarism and infringement before us, let us turn to an examination of the two books by Mrs. White that are so uniformly presented as exhibits by those who wish to charge her with flagrant violation of the rules of elementary honesty in literary borrowing.

The Historical Background of “The Great Controversy”

We turn, first, to the book, The Great Controversy. On March 14, 1858, Mrs. White took part in a funeral service at Lovett’s Grove schoolhouse near Bowling Green, Ohio. As she was speaking she was taken off in vision. In 1860 she wrote of this experience as follows:

“In this vision of Lovett’s Grove, most of the matter of the Great Controversy which I had seen ten years before, was repeated, and I was shown that I must write it out.”—Spiritual Gifts 2:270.

Six months after this experience, her book, Spiritual Gifts. The Great Controversy, Between Christ and His Angels, and Satan and His Angels,[138] came from the press.

The range of this work—in which is found the present Great Controversy in embryo—is described in the following item in the Review and Herald:

“It is a sketch of her views of the great controversy between Christ and his angels, and the Devil and his angels, from the fall of Satan until the controversy

[137]These two ways, though protecting a writer against the charge of deceit, do not protect him from the charge of infringement—the legal aspect of plagiarism—if the work from which he has quoted is copyrighted and the publishers owning the copyright feel that their property rights have been damaged. The legal aspect of plagiarism involves other grounds than that of deceit.

[138]Generally referred to now simply as Spiritual Gifts, volume 1.

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shall close at the end of the 1000 years of Rev. xx, by the destruction of sin and sinners out of the universe of God. It will contain between two and three hundred pages.”—June 24, 1858, p. 48.

In this first brief presentation—219 small pages—important facts of history, coupled with the divine plan of God behind history, are set forth.

This 1858 volume, Spiritual Gifts, volume 1, is not only the present Great Controversy in embryo, it is really the present five-volume Conflict of the Ages Series in embryo. This first volume of Spiritual Gifts, plus volume 3, and a portion of volume 4, both published in 1864,[139] constitute Mrs. White’s original sketch of the plan of salvation from the fall of Satan, through the creation and fall of man, the antediluvian period, the history of Israel, the first advent of Christ and the activity of the apostles, the history of the Dark Ages, the Advent Movement of the nineteenth century, the delusions of the last days, the conflict ended, and the earth re-created.

The “Spirit of Prophecy” Volumes

But Mrs. White’s vision at Lovett’s Grove in 1858 was not the only vision she received concerning the great controversy between Christ and Satan. In the years that followed she received other visions that brought more sharply into focus further areas and aspects of the great subject and made more clear some parts of former visions. She therefore set out to enlarge and thus quite completely rewrite the material on the plan of God through the ages. This enlarged presentation was published in a series of four volumes bearing the general title, The Spirit of Prophecy. Volume 1, published in 1870, covers the period from the fall of Lucifer to Solomon’s reign. Volumes 2 and 3, published in 1877 and 1878, cover the life of Christ and the work of the apostles. In 1884 volume 4 was published (with the specific title The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan From the Destruction of Jerusalem to the End of the Controversy). This covers the period from the early church to the inheritance of the saints upon the New

[139]Volume 2 is biographical.

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Earth. In other words, it covers the period discussed in the current book, The Great Controversy.

This five-hundred-page work met with an immediate and favorable response. From its first publication in 1884 up until 1888, it went through ten editions, or rather printings, and until the 1888 revision the text of this work remained unchanged.[140]

In 1888 Mrs. White amplified and in part rewrote this 1884 volume, in order to present the subject in still greater detail and better to adapt the subject matter to the broadened reader audience. The text of this work continued unchanged from 1888 to 1911.[141] In 1911, when it became evident that the plates were worn out and the type would have to be reset for new plates, certain minor revisions were made, such as to free passages of ambiguity, to complete the work of placing within quotation marks all passages drawn from other writers, and to give the source of each quotation.

Writers Quoted in “The Great Controversy”

The charge against Mrs. White is that her book The Great Controversy was “taken largely” from the following named works: Andrews’ History of the Sabbath, D’Aubigne’s History of the Reformation, Wylie’s History of the Waldenses, Uriah Smith’s Sanctuary, and James White’s Life of Wm. Miller. The problem before us is not whether she borrowed, but how much she borrowed and whether she borrowed in such a way as to deceive the reader. The first question to consider is this: Were these five works here mentioned unfamiliar to Seventh-day Adventists so that citations from them, without quotation marks, could easily be palmed off on the unsuspecting membership, preachers and laity alike, as the words and thoughts of Mrs. White? This is obviously a most

[140]In the first two editions (printings), in 1884 and 1885, the volume is designated on the title page as the fourth of the four-volume work The Spirit of Prophecy. But only the main title, The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan, appears on the cover of the special printing for colporteur sale as a separate work. The third edition (1885), planned especially for colporteurs, drops the series title and volume number from the title page and preface, adds illustrations, and enlarges the page size, but in this new dress it continues to be issued from the same plates.

[141]The 1888 edition, with a revised and enlarged text, drops all connection with the four-volume set called The Spirit of Prophecy. As the first issue of the work in its present form, it introduces the text which is now known as the “old edition” in contrast to the “new edition” as revised in 1911.

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important question. Fortunately, an unequivocal answer can be given

What of D’Aubigne’s History? Mrs. White specifically encouraged, not only our ministers, but our people at large, to read this work. Less than two years before the 1884 edition of The Great Controversy was published, she wrote:

“Provide something to be read during these long winter evenings. For those who can procure it, D’Aubigne’s History of the Reformation will be both interesting and profitable. From this work we may gain some knowledge of what has been accomplished in the past in the great work of reform.”—The Review and Herald, December 26, 1882, p. 789.[142]

Wylie’s History of the Waldenses must also have been in a great many Adventist libraries, both ministerial and lay. This fact Mrs. White knew. So enthusiastic were the Adventist leadership regarding the book that in January, 1883, it was offered as a premium with Review and Herald subscriptions. (See the Review of Jan. 2, 1883, p. 16.) This was almost a year and nine months before the 1884 edition of The Great Controversy came from the press. In January, 1884, the Signs of the Times, published by the Pacific Press Publishing Association, and widely circulated both within and without the denomination, offered the book as a premium with subscriptions. (See The Signs of the Times, January 31, 1884, p. 80.) This was many months before The Great Controversy was published.[143] Needless to remark, Mrs. White was acquainted with these premium offers.

And what of Uriah Smith’s Sanctuary, J. N. Andrews’ History of the Sabbath, and James White’s Life of Wm. Miller? These three Seventh-day Adventist books were certainly in most ministerial libraries and in the libraries of a great many of the laity. The membership had been encouraged to read them carefully. This fact, of course, Mrs. White knew.

Now what do all these facts add up to? One obvious conclusion:

[142]In The Review and Herald, December 11, 1883, p. 783, is found a brief list of “Valuable Books for Reference,” which are offered for sale. Included is D‘‘Aubigne’s History.

[143]The Great Controversy came out in September, 1884. The Signs of the Times, October 2, p. 592, announced that it was ready in time for the camp meeting, which was held in September. (Ibid., p. 584.)

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Mrs. White must have known that her readers, preachers and laity alike, in the denomination, would see immediately that certain passages in The Great Controversy were not original with her, in other words, that she could not have thought that she was going to deceive them into thinking that the writing was wholly hers. And that leads on to another equally obvious conclusion: Mrs. White must have felt that she had nothing dishonorable to hide in the matter of this literary borrowing, and that her borrowings could be harmonized with her claims to inspiration. To draw any other conclusions than these would be equivalent to saying that in publishing The Great Controversy Mrs. White deliberately set out to expose herself as a literary thief and a prophetic fraud.

The “Protest” of “Leading Brethren”

Apparently the critics did not think of this when they made the charge: “As soon as this book [The Great Controversy, 1884 edition] was read by some of the leading brethren, they discovered that it was largely taken from other publications,” and accordingly “they very earnestly protested to Mrs. White.” If this charge were true, it would prove too much; namely, that Mrs. White’s borrowings were so evident that it was impossible to believe that she had any thought of deceiving her readers when she borrowed literary passages. Let that point be clear at the outset. Whether the “brethren” did or did not protest to Mrs. White, would not affect that point. Incidentally, if “leading brethren” could discover Mrs. White’s literary borrowings, why could not intelligent laymen discover them also? If the charge were true, we should really expect a general protest to rise from the church membership at large. And that would certainly be something large enough and grave enough to leave an indelible mark on the documentary records of the denomination.

But what are the facts? A search of the correspondence of those times that is available at the office of the Ellen G. White Publications—and it is plentiful—reveals not even a suggestion of any protest against this literary borrowing for The Great Controversy. Strange indeed! The matter should have saturated the [416] correspondence in 1884 and 1885. Nor is there anything in the Review and Herald, the church paper, that gives a hint of such uprising, though the paper certainly took note of numerous controversial matters, directly and pungently, in the style of those times.

Even more incredible is this further part of the charge:

“Protest against using the thought of others without credit continued to be presented to Mrs. White so that in 1892 [correct date, 1888] a new and enlarged edition was published in which a few of the plagiarized portions were enclosed in quotation marks, but without credit.” In the preface to this edition she “admits that she had taken some of her information from other authors.”

Here is a singular situation. To meet the criticism she encloses “a few,” but only a few, of the quotations in quotation marks! Do we not have here an added deception? She appears to give full credit but does not. We should expect the protest to increase to deafening volume. But incredible as it seems, the protests, we are permitted to believe, died right out with the publication of this 1888 edition! The critics do not even suggest that there was any protest beyond that date![144]

The 1888-Edition Preface

And what of the preface of the 1888 edition in which she “admits that she had taken some of her information from other authors”? It would be superfluous for her to make an admission in the preface when this edition contains numerous quotation marks that make evident that “some” material is being “taken ... from other authors.” A few facts will suggest why she wrote that preface. The 1884 edition did not contain an author’s preface. Soon, however, colporteurs began to sell the book to the world at large. With that expanded non-Adventist audience before her

[144]It seems almost profitless to inquire: On what evidence is the charge of protest by the brethren based? But to make the record complete, we should explain that the only evidence submitted is a statement made by Dr. J. H. Kellogg in 1907, to a committee of the Battle Creek church who called upon him just before he was disfellowshiped from the church. He spoke to them extemporaneously, and with few interruptions, for seven hours, his words being taken down stenographically. We leave the reader to judge how much weight should be given to the unsupported charge of a man who was openly hostile to the denomination in general and Mrs. White in particular, who looked back twenty-three years, through the distorting vapors of that hostility to an alleged incident of 1884. It is painful to have to refer, even briefly, to this distressing episode of 1907. But we have no option if we are to place this charge in its historical context.

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mind’s eye she enlarged the work and wrote a preface. Naturally she might wish to make a statement as to the principle that governed her in using quotations from various historians. We say “naturally,” because the question had been raised as to how the words of a secular writer could be incorporated in a book and still the book be viewed as “all inspired by the Holy Spirit.”

In what appears to be Canright’s first major attack, in writing, on the Seventh-day Adventist Church, and on Mrs. White—a series of articles in the Michigan Christian Advocate in 1887[145]—his only reference to her literary borrowings is this brief paragraph:

“She often copies, without credit or sign of quotation, whole sentences and even paragraphs, almost word for word, from other authors. (Compare The Great Controversy, 96, with ‘History of the reformation,’ by D’Aubigne, page 41.) This she does page after page. Was D’Aubigne also inspired?”—October 8, 1887, p. 2.

This statement concerning Mrs. White’s literary borrowings is significant, not only because of its brevity, but also because it does not use the word “plagiarize,” or raise the grave charge of theft. Canright here poses simply this question: “Was D’Aubigne also inspired?” and leaves the reader to conclude that neither D’Aubigne nor Mrs. White was inspired. That this kind of question had some currency is revealed by the fact that the Seventh-day Adventist Church paper, in discussing charges against Mrs. White, presents this as one of them: “She quotes sometimes from history; are all historians inspired?”—The Review and Herald, October 18, 1887, p. 649.[146]

[145]The articles appeared in the issues of July 16, 30, August 6, 13, 20, 27, September 10, 17, 24, October 1, 8, 15. The articles from July 16 through October 1 focus on the Sabbath doctrine. The issues of October 8 and 15 discuss Mrs. White. His article in each of these issues was printed on page 2.

[146]The historical development of the charge against Mrs. White in relation to her literary borrowings is interesting to say the least. Canright, in his first book against her, published in 1889, expands his 1887 charge to three short paragraphs. The essence of the charge is still that of false claim to inspiration, inasmuch as the works of secular writers are quoted. But the third paragraph concludes thus: “This proves her guilty of stealing her ideas and matter from other authors and putting them off on her followers as a revelation from God!” In his 1919 book on Mrs. White’s life he focuses on the “plagiarism” side of the matter, discussing it at length. The striking change in emphasis in this literary-borrowing charge probably reflects two facts: 1. In the 1880’s, when many of the best writers borrowed with only casual credit, at most, a prime emphasis on Mrs. White’s alleged “plagiarism” would not have sounded too impressive to the reader. 2. As the years passed and literary customs and laws changed, the plagiarism charge could naturally be made to seem impressive. We might also add that the passing years had probably erased from Canright’s mind all memory of his 1878 book, The Bible From Heaven, which as we have noted, was so largely copied from a similarly named work by Moses Hull in 1863!

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Quite apart from critics, whom Mrs. White sometimes answered, this question of historians and inspiration might very understandably have perplexed some sincere church members.[147] And in the light of such a question, and of the fact that she was enlarging the book for wider circulation, how natural that she should provide a preface that would clarify the whole matter. Listen to her words, as we quote at length from her preface the part that is here relevant:[148]

Mrs. White Describes Prophet’s Work

“Through the illumination of the Holy Spirit, the scenes of the long-continued conflict between good and evil have been opened to the writer of these pages. From time to time I have been permitted to behold the working, in different ages, of the great controversy between Christ, the Prince of life, the author of our salvation, and Satan, the prince of evil, the author of sin, the first transgressor of God’s holy law. Satan’s enmity against Christ has been manifested against his followers. The same hatred of the principles of God’s law, the same policy of deception, by which error is made to appear as truth, by which human laws are substituted for the law of God, and men are led to worship the creature rather than the Creator, may be traced in all the history of the past....

“As the Spirit of God has opened to my mind the great truths of his Word, and the scenes of the past and the future, I have been bidden to make known to others what has thus been revealed,—to trace the history of the controversy in past ages, and especially to so present it as to shed a light on the fast-approaching struggle of the future. In pursuance of this purpose, I have endeavored to select and group together events in the history of the church in such a manner as to trace the unfolding of the great testing truths that at different periods have been given to the world, that have excited the wrath of Satan, and the enmity of a world-loving church, and that have been maintained by the witness of those who ‘loved not their lives unto the death.’

“In these records we may see a foreshadowing of the conflict before us. Regarding them in the light of God’s Word, and by the illumination of his Spirit, we may see unveiled the devices of the wicked one, and the dangers which they must shun who would be found ‘without fault’ before the Lord at his coming.

“The great events which have marked the progress of reform in past ages, are matters of history, well known and universally acknowledged by the

[147]This could have provided a shadowy foundation for the charge that “leading brethren” “protested.”

[148]In the 1911 edition the “Author’s Preface” becomes the “Introduction.”

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Protestant world; they are facts which none can gainsay. This history I have presented briefly, in accordance with the scope of the book, and the brevity which must necessarily be observed, the facts having been condensed into as little space as seemed consistent with a proper understanding of their application. In some cases where a historian has so grouped together events as to afford, in brief, a comprehensive view of the subject, or has summarized details in a convenient manner, his words have been quoted; but except in a few instances no specific credit has been given, since they are not quoted for the purpose of citing that writer as authority, but because his statement affords a ready and forcible presentation of the subject. In narrating the experience and views of those carrying forward the work of reform in our own time, similar use has occasionally been made of their published works.”—Author’s Preface, pp. (g), (h). (Preface dated “Healdsburg, Cal., May, 1888.”)

Thus since 1888 Mrs. White has been on record, not simply as declaring openly that she borrowed from other works—though that fact is generally revealed by quotation marks—but more particularly as explaining why she thus borrowed, and the relation of such borrowing to her revelations from God. The very principle that she set forth in the preface to The Great Controversy as to the use of historical descriptions, can apply equally to other descriptions, or even to comments on a point at issue, provided those comments simply present, in the most succinct form, a statement of a truth already divinely presented to her. The very fact that The Great Controversy has had such wide and continuing sale to the world has made rather unnecessary a further statement in any later work which might have incorporated matter from other writers.[149]

The Total of Literary Borrowing in “The Great Controversy”

According to the charge, The Great Controversy “was taken largely” from other works. Mrs. White definitely indicates in her preface that the borrowed part was both small in amount and secondary in significance. In our examination of The Great Controversy we shall take the 1911 edition—known as the new edition

[149]We shall not here expand on the subject of literary borrowing and inspiration. It will be considered at length in chapter 30.

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—as our guide and standard, because, according to the critics themselves, this edition gives “proper credit to the authors from which she had plagiarized so much.” The paging of this 1911 edition is almost identical with that of the 1888, or old edition, as is also the text. Hence it is a simple task to compare quotations. Furthermore, the 1884 edition—The Spirit of Prophecy, volume 4—is sufficiently similar to the 1888 and 1911 editions, in subject sequence, and sometimes in construction, to enable us to make comparisons.

Borrowed Matter in “The Great Controversy”

Let the reader go through the pages of the 1911 edition, noting the quotation marks enclosing statements by other writers, and excluding quotations from Scripture. Does the total of quoted portions warrant the critics’ sweeping statement that the book “was taken largely” from the writings of others? The answer is patently No. By actual count, excluding Bible quotations, only 12 per cent of the book is quoted matter.

But let us look more closely at this quoted material. In a majority of instances such quotations are largely, if not wholly, the words of some notable person in history, such as Luther or some martyr. Thus, the historian is himself simply copying. Mrs. White may quote Luther’s words as found in Wylie, but she might have quoted them as found in any one of a hundred church histories. To the extent that anyone, including a prophet, discusses history—and The Great Controversy has a historical framework—he must certainly quote the words of various notable personages connected with that history. Such words are the common property of all writers.

To be exact, then, we should subtract from The Great Controversy total of quotations drawn from D’Aubigne, Wylie, and others, all the lines that consist of the words of historical personages, and view the quotations in terms of the words actually borrowed from the historians themselves. A breakdown of the 12 per cent of quoted matter reveals that exactly two thirds of it (8 per cent of the book) consists of quotations from various historical personages, [421] thus only one third of it (4 per cent of the book) is material drawn from original writing by other authors, such as D’Aubigne, Wylie, et cetera. In other words, only 4 per cent of the 1911 edition of The Great Controversy is borrowed from the actual words of other authors.

So much for the 1911 edition. Let us compare its almost identical pages with those of the 1888 edition. According to the critics, we should expect to find most of the quotation marks missing in the 1888 edition. Instead, we find that quotation marks stand out almost as prominently on the pages of this edition as on those of the 1911 edition, even though the source of the quotations is generally not given.[150]

Let us look, finally, at the 1884 edition. Fortunately, copies of its numerous printing are not really rare; hence, many readers will be able to check personally on the statements here made. The number of pages in this edition is much less than in the others, but so is the number of quotations. If the reader really wishes to make a careful check, he can generally follow in the 1884 edition the sequence of the narrative as given in the later editions. Thus he can check the quoted material. He will discover that many of the quotations have quotation marks, and that the grand total of quoted passages that have no quotation marks is small in relation to the total volume of the book.[151]

“Taken Largely”!

The critics say that when the first (1884) edition of The Great Controversy came out it was found to have been “taken largely” from other works, that in the 1888 edition “a few of the plagiarized portions were enclosed in quotation marks,” and that finally in the current (1911) edition Mrs. White gave “the proper credit to the authors from which she had plagiarized so much.” If these words mean anything, they mean that this 1911 edition was “taken

[150]In some instances a different quotation may be used on a page, but we are here discussing, not the text of quotations, but the acknowledgment of quoting by the use of quotation marks.

[151]In the 1888 and 1911 editions less space is given to certain historical aspects of the Sabbath question than in the 1884 edition. If the reader will compare the section in the 1884 edition that discusses the Sabbath, with J. N. Andrews’ History of the Sabbath, he will find that it contains about a hundred or so lines that cover the same ground, but are only in part paraphrased or similarly worded. But even if the whole hundred lines were paraphrased, which is by no means the case, it would be equivalent to less that 1 per cent of the book.

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largely” from other works. But, as just noted, a count of lines in this edition discloses that the actual words of other writers constitute only 4 per cent of the contents. Again, if the critics’ words mean anything, they mean that the same amount of borrowing was done in the preceding editions. Probably the reader now has a better idea of what they mean when they say “taken largely“: namely, taken in very small part, taken very limitedly, that is, 4 per cent!

“Sketches From the Life of Paul”

Let us now examine the book Sketches From the Life of Paul, which, with The Great Controversy, is the chief alleged plagiarism exhibit of the critics. In Spiritual Gifts, volume 1 (1858), to which we have earlier referred, Mrs. White devotes three or four chapters to the apostle Paul. In volume 3 of The Spirit of Prophecy (1878) she expands her discussion of Paul, though she confines herself to the first part of his career. In a pamphlet on Paul published the same year (one of the Redemption series),[152] she traces the story three chapters further, but still not beyond the second missionary journey.

She later added to all this and brought forth in June, 1883,[153] a book entitled Sketches From the Life of Paul. This book was most evidently published, not simply as a devotional work, but also as a Sabbath school lesson help. Beginning with the second quarter of the year 1883 and going through to the end of the second quarter of 1884, the Sabbath school lessons in all Seventh-day Adventist churches were on the Acts of the Apostles.

The charge against Mrs. White in relation to this book is that she “copied a large part” of it “directly from” an English work by Conybeare and Howson, entitled The Life and Epistles of St. Paul.

[152]Redemption: or The Teachings of Paul, sometimes bound with seven other pamphlets (1874-1878) under the cover title Life of Christ and His Apostles, in two volumes.

[153]A letter dated “Oakland, Cal., June 5, 1883,” from Mary K. White to her husband, W. C. White, states: “The last signature of Life of Paul was printed last night between ten and one o’clock. The plates will be shipped to B. C. [Battle Creek] to-day. Fifty books will be ready to mail this afternoon....” An announcement in the Signs of the Times, published by the Pacific Press at Oakland, in 1883, carries the heading “Sketches From the Life of Paul,” and states in part: “This is the title of a book of 334 pages, just issued from this office.... For sale at this office, and at the office of the Review and Herald, Battle Creek, Mich.”—June 7, 1883, p. 264. It is evident from this that the work was jointly published.

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That she did draw from this work is freely admitted at the outset—the quality and the quantity of the borrowing we shall consider later. But first let us ask: Was the Conybeare and Howson book a rare work unknown to Adventists in general, so that there would be little likelihood of their recognizing quotations from it if they were given in Mrs. White’s book on Paul?

Conybeare and Howson Book Widely Circulated

We have just stated that her book was published in June, 1883, with a special view to serving as a Sabbath school lesson help. But that was not the only lesson help. The Conybeare and Howson book was also used, and with this difference: It was promoted and widely circulated in the denomination before Mrs. White’s book on Paul was printed. In fact, it began to be circulated in January, 1883, as a premium with subscriptions to the Review and Herald and to the Signs of the Times.[154] This widespread promotion of the Conybeare and Howson book Mrs. White heartily endorsed. As a part of an advertisement for the book in the Signs in February, 1883, is found this statement from her:

“The Life of St. Paul by Conybeare and Howson, I regard as a book of great merit, and one of rare usefulness to the earnest student of the New Testament history.”—The Signs of the Times, February 22, 1883, p. 96.

This widespread and impressive promotion, coupled with the study of the book as a lesson help, must have made its very words and sentences familiar in a great many Adventist homes by the middle of 1883. All this Mrs. White knew when she sent forth her work on Paul’s life at that time.

And what do all these facts add up to? The answer is the same as that already given in connection with the book, The Great Controversy. Mrs. White knew that a great host of her readers would note that there had been certain borrowings from the other book on Paul. Therefore she must have felt that those borrowings were in no way dishonorable and could be harmonized with her claim to inspiration. And, we repeat here for emphasis: To draw any

[154]See announcement of this in the Review of Jan. 2, 1883, p. 16, and in the Signs of Jan. 11, 1883, p. 24.

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other conclusion than this would be equivalent to saying that in publishing her work on Paul Mrs. White deliberately set out to expose herself as a literary thief and a prophetic fraud! A most irrational conclusion!

The Extent of Mrs. White’s Borrowings in Her Work on Paul

The charge asserts that Mrs. White “copied a large part of her book” from Conybeare and Howson. But what are the facts?[155] Sketches From the Life of Paul might be described as a series of spiritual lessons hung on a framework of historical facts and descriptions. And it is in the framework that the borrowings from Conybeare and Howson are found. Direct quotations of words, phrases, and clauses, plus any accompanying close paraphrase, constitute about 7 per cent of Sketches From the Life of Paul.[156]

It is an interesting fact that the Conybeare and Howson work borrowed from other religious writers, and without credit or quotation marks. The second chapter (written by Howson) opens with a comment on what some “modern Jews”—unnamed—have written concerning Christianity. A footnote remarks concerning the works of these Jews: “Some of these works have furnished us

[155]In dealing with the question of literary borrowing in The Great Controversy, we had a common point of departure with the critics—the 1911 edition which they willingly admit encloses all of the quotations within quotation marks. But in regard to Mrs. White’s book on Paul, the case is different. We must simply go through the book page by page, comparing it with the Conybeare and Howson work. Now, quotations may be verbatim or they may be paraphrases. And paraphrases may shade all the way from being nearly verbatim quoting to being little more than similar in literary construction. No two literary examiners would agree as to where the line divides and genuine similarity disappears. In this particular case the problem is further complicated by the fact that both books follow a common historical sequence, that of the book of Acts, and both often quote, either directly or indirectly, the phrasings of Scripture. Obviously, a critic might find, or at least think that he had found, a larger number of instances of copying, in the area of paraphrase, than other readers might. However, the estimates from which are derived the percentages noted herein have been made on a liberal basis, allowing for even more of the context than the critics’ samples would indicate. Mrs. White has been given the benefit of the doubt where the similarity of wording or construction is easily attributable to the common Biblical source, but whole paragraphs are included which may show duplication of wording in only a few scattered spots, if the connecting material follows the thought so closely as to suggest a paraphrase. This has doubtless resulted in the inclusion of some parallelisms arising from the independent use of similar language by two authors describing the same events. An example of this error is a passage marked, in the initial survey, as somewhat similar to a parallel section in Farrar’s The Life and Work of St. Paul, but afterward discovered to have been taken from one of Mrs. White’s earlier works published in 1878, a year before Farrar’s book came out! Thus the effort to be fair has doubtless raised the percentages somewhat higher than they would be if all the facts could be known. We do not believe that the figures we give would be materially changed by a dispassionate literary examiner. The edition of the Conybeare and Howson work used in this examination was published by T. Y. Crowell, 744 Broadway, New York. The edition bears no date.

[156]“Close paraphrases” describes generously the kind of paraphrased matter cited by the critics as exhibits of Mrs. White’s “plagiarism.” To be still more generous we should state that an additional 2.5 per cent of her book might be considered loose paraphrases.

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with useful suggestions, and in some cases the very words have been adopted.” But nowhere in the nearly fifty pages of that chapter can we discover when Howson is quoting from these Jewish writers. Evidently he did not consider it necessary to give any more credit than this very brief and very vague footnote. (See Conybeare and Howson, The Life and Epistles of St. Paul, vol. 1 [1st ed., 1851], p. 34, footnote.)

Borrowings From Farrar

If we were to take literally the charge before us, we would investigate the matter of literary borrowings no further. Mrs. White is alleged to have “copied a large part of her book directly from” Conybeare and Howson. In fact, a present-day critic assures his readers that she copied “practically all” of her book from the English work. However, some have declared that she borrowed a few passages from Farrar’s The Life and Work of St. Paul.

Mrs. White’s borrowings from Farrar—direct quotations, plus any accompanying close paraphrase—constitute about 4 per cent of her book.[157]

An interesting fact comes to light in this connection, which probably explains why most critics have referred only to Mrs. White’s borrowings from Conybeare and Howson, though Farrar’s book was certainly well known. Farrar’s book reveals a number of paraphrases from Conybeare and Howson when he deals with historical matters! Quite likely Mrs. White’s critics may have thought that she was simply borrowing from Conybeare and Howson when, strictly speaking, she was drawing from Farrar!

In the preface to his work Farrar, who was an eminent divine of the Church of England, frankly admits that “all students of St. Paul” are indebted to Conybeare and Howson. But he immediately explains that his work has been “written in great measure with a different purpose, as well as from a different point of view.”[158]

[157]An additional 1.85 per cent of her book might be considered loose paraphrases. The full title of the work and the edition used in making this examination of borrowings is F. W. Farrar, The Life and Work of St. Paul. New York: E. P. Dutton & Company, 713 Broadway, 1879. (2 volumes.)

[158]In his preface Farrar says: “Circumstances have precluded me from carrying out my original intention of actually visiting the countries in which St. Paul laboured; and to do this was the less necessary because abundant descriptions of them may be found in the works of many recent travellers. This branch of the subject has been amply illustrated in the well-known volumes of Messers. Conybeare and Howson, and Mr. Thomas Lewin. To those admirable works all students of St. Paul must be largely indebted, and I need not say that my own book is not intended in any way to come into competition with theirs. It has been written in great measure with a different purpose, as well as from a different point of view.”—Page viii. This relationship between Farrar’s work and Conybeare and Howson’s warrants the statement that Mrs. White was making no attempt to deceive her readers into thinking certain historical statements were hers, even though they may have come from Farrar, which was not as widely circulated among the Adventist membership as was the other work.

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Thus he justifies his paraphrastic borrowings and occasional verbatim phrases without quotation marks. His prefatory statement met every ethical demand, because his readers were made conscious of Conybeare and Howson at the outset and of the possibility, at least, that that work would be drawn upon.

If the preface to Mrs. White’s work had stated what she knew was evident to her readers, that she had drawn on the Conybeare and Howson work, there would hardly have been even a technical ground for a charge against her. However, she might have said, as did Farrar, that her book was “written in great measure with a different purpose, as well as from a different point of View,” though that was also rather evident. In fact the preface, written by her publishers, declared that “the distinctive feature of the book” was not the “historical narrative” but certain “moral lessons” that were drawn. And it was repeatedly advertised, from the first, as valuable chiefly for “the lessons that are drawn” from Paul’s experiences, and “their practical application to our own times.”[159]

If all the critics scrutinizing through the years Mrs. White’s book on Paul, have never even suggested that she drew from other writers than those named, we should hardly be asked to comb the libraries in search of further possible borrowed lines. Thus we may conclude that the total verbatim borrowings and close paraphrases, reckoned generously, are about 11 per cent, and consist almost entirely of historical data and descriptions.

Do the Facts Justify the Charge of Plagiarism?

We have found that: 1. The principal works Mrs. White quoted in The Great Controversy and Sketches From the Life of Paul were widely found in Adventist homes. 2. That her borrowings were chiefly historical or descriptive background material. 3. And

[159]See The Signs of the Times, June 7, 1883, p. 264, Aug. 23, p. 384, etc.

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that those borrowings constitute a minor part of her two works. In the light of these facts we ask: Can Mrs. White rightly be charged with plagiarism? Let us break down the question into several parts to cover the moral and the legal phases:[160]

1. Was there an intent to deceive? We believe the unprejudiced reader will willingly answer No. And that answer removes completely the shady color of evil intent that some have sought to cast over Mrs. White in this matter.

(In the following questions we have quoted phrases from the summary of the current court rulings on infringement—the legal side of plagiarism—which was cited earlier in this chapter.)

2. Did Mrs. White take “so much ... that the value of the original is sensibly diminished, or the labors of the original author are substantially and to an injurious extent appropriated”? The answer is surely an emphatic No.

The material in Mrs. White’s book on Paul drawn from Conybeare and Howson was equivalent to less than 4 per cent of this English book, for it was a large work. And that drawn from Farrar was equivalent to less than 2 per cent of his book, for it also was a large work. As to The Great Controversy (1911 edition), only 4 per cent of the material is borrowed from other authors. But this 4 per cent is drawn from a number of works, with only a very small per cent being drawn from any particular work. The same would be essentially true of the 1888 edition and the 1884 edition. And it is only the 1884 edition against which any really plausible argument can be presented that plagiarism occurred.

3. Were the borrowings “reasonable in quality, number, and length,” particularly in regard “to the nature and objects of the selections made” and “the subjects to which they relate”? The answer is Yes. The material quoted was background material, not

[160]Strictly speaking, plagiarism can acquire a legal quality only when the work plagiarized is covered by a copyright, the purpose of the copyright being to protect the work, among other things, from being plagiarized. Legally speaking, plagiarism is known as infringement. In democratic countries, like America, laws are the crystallization of the thinking and viewpoint of the citizenry. Hence the questions asked in a court of law to discover if there has been infringement are essentially the same questions that should be asked in the court of public opinion to discover if there has really been plagiarism. We should remember that not only has the whole subject of plagiarism been viewed differently in different generations, but that in our present day the subject is held by the courts to be a confessedly complex one.

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central to the spiritual theme that always distinguished Mrs. White’s writing.[161]

Only one point more in the charge of plagiarism against Mrs. White remains to be examined—the lawsuit that was allegedly threatened if her work on Paul was not taken off the market. This will be considered in the next chapter.[162]

[161]Patently, nothing that we have written or have quoted from legal or other authorities warrants any slothful, intellectually lazy, or unimaginative person in feeling that he is given license to appropriate the work of others simply to save himself from study or creative effort. Such a person cannot meet the stipulations set down in this chapter.

[162]See Appendix K, p. 643, for a discussion of a charge that certain pictures in The Great Controversy were “purloined.”

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Chapter 29—That Threatened Lawsuit

The Plagiarism Charge—Part II

Charge: The publishers of the Conybeare and Howson book on Paul “threatened prosecution” if Mrs. White’s book on Paul “was not suppressed,” so greatly had she plagiarized. “Hence it was withdrawn from sale.” “It was suddenly taken off the market.”

“It is foolish and dishonest” for her defenders “to try to make people believe that Mrs. White took this book off the market because she wanted to revise and enlarge it. It was about 1893-4 when the edition was exhausted, and she did not get out the revised edition until 1911.”

The charge of plagiarism is supposed to find its most certain proof and to acquire its most reprehensible quality in this alleged threat of a lawsuit against Mrs. White. Let us trace the origin and development of this lawsuit story, checking it against the available documentary facts. The first fact that stands out is that this story most evidently was not born until the twentieth century. Canright had been one of the “leading brethren,” and therefore most certainly knew the facts about the denomination up to the time of his apostasy in 1887. Yet when in 1889 he wrote his first book against Adventists, which includes three short paragraphs on Mrs. White’s alleged plagiarism, he made no mention of a lawsuit story. This book went through fourteen editions in the next twenty-five years. But the plagiarism statement in the book remains the same.[163]

So far as we are able to discover from any documentary sources, the roots of the now-flourishing lawsuit story draw their nutriment from the black soil of a sorry controversy that occurred in Battle

[163]This 1889 book was entitled Seventh-day Adventism Renounced. The 14th edition is dated 1914. The text of the book has remained virtually unchanged through the fourteen editions, though there were a few changes made. Would Canright or his publishers have hesitated at the small cost of remaking a page in the book, if by so doing they could include so sensational a charge as that Mrs. White had been threatened with a lawsuit?

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Creek, Michigan, in 1907. In that year a tension that had been building up between the leadership of the Battle Creek Sanitarium and the elected leadership of the denomination came to a head with the disfellowshipment of a number of persons. In that year, by depressing coincidence, a man who had for long years been prominent in the Review and Herald publishing house, a member of its board, and who had recently withdrawn, entered an unsuccessful suit against it because of some alleged injustice in the matter of royalties.

Such a situation always presents a temptation to a certain type of newspaper to publish defamatory gossip and rumors. Battle Creek in 1907 was no exception.[164] Thus in the public press there began to appear articles and stories that were sometimes wholly unfounded, sometimes a mixture of half truths.

Amadon’s Article in the Newspaper

One such article, seeking to belittle Mrs. White, discussed her book on Paul with such vigor and venom that George W. Amadon, loyal former employee of long experience in the Review and Herald publishing house, made reply. This reply, which was published in the Battle Creek Daily Journal of May 27, 1907, was entitled “A Few Facts,” and subtitled: “Concerning Mrs. White’s Book, ‘Sketches From the Life of Paul.’” The article opens thus:

“About three weeks since there appeared in a sheet printed in Battle Creek, a quite lengthy article concerning Mrs. E. G. White, calculated to injure her reputation as an author, and to humiliate the Seventh-day Adventist people before the public. More than probable the article in this respect was something of a success, and so its inspirers have had a brief space in which to gloat over what they have achieved....

“And first, in reference to the book ‘Sketches from the Life of Paul.’ This little work of 334 pages was not gotten up by the Review and Herald, but was written, planned and printed at Oakland, California, in 1883. A set of the stereo plates were shipped to Battle Creek, and from these a small edition was soon published. But hardly had the covers been placed on the books when it was discovered that an unfortunate mistake had been made in the

[164]In fact, until very recent decades the American press, in general, too often permitted itself to indulge in rumors and gossip in its allegedly news pages.

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publiction. In preparing the volume, free reference had been made in the publication. In[165] but by some unaccountable oversight, while numerous passages had been made use of, no credit was given for the same. This should have been done in a suitable acknowledgment in the preface, or by marks of quotation, or by footnotes, or by all.

“Now what did the publishers at this juncture do? They promptly withdrew the volume from the market, and no more books were printed. The demand for them was great, very great, but the books could not be had. As an illustration of this the writer had a daughter, a missionary in Cape Town, South Africa, for a number of years. She had a copy of this book. A young English lady wanted the same for her father, and she got a copy of it in this way. Being expert with the pen, she transcribed the entire volume from the title page to the last sentence in the work. That was certainly a unique edition of just one book.”

The remainder of the article presents Amadon’s views about Mrs. White’s being an honorable woman, the writer of many helpful volumes, et cetera, but contains nothing further that is really relevant to the charge before us. Note carefully what Amadon wrote as to how soon the “mistake” concerning quotation marks was discovered: “Hardly had the covers been placed on the books” when the discovery was made. What does he say the publishers did: “They promptly withdrew the volume from the market, and no more books were printed.”

When publishers speak of withdrawing a book they mean only one thing, taking it off the market. This is done, first by refusing to sell further copies, and then, of course, by making no further printings. Now Sketches From the Life of Paul was published in June, 1883. Amadon’s statement would demand that certainly no later than the opening of 1884 the book would have been withdrawn and no more copies available for anyone. But is there any evidence that this was done? None whatsoever!

If this book was thus summarily withdrawn, the fact would have been common knowledge to no small number of the Review

[165]The text here given is copied from a photostat of the original article. At this point there is a typographical error quite common in linotype composition—a line of type reset to correct an error is inserted in the wrong place. The line “had been made in the publication. In” was apparently intended to correct the error “publiction” above, but it was mistakenly substituted for another line, which of course was discarded. Just what the original wording of the passage might be we have no way of knowing. However, with the opening word “In” deleted, the sentence makes sense.

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and Herald workers. The books would have to be disposed of in some way, probably as waste paper, and workmen would have to do the disposing, which is another way of saying that the incident was one which could not, in the very nature of the case, have been kept quiet. Canright, who wrote so critically from 1889 onward, certainly would have known the matter as promptly as anyone. We have already noted his silence, at least up to the year 1914.

But is it a fact that the publishers “withdrew the volume from the market” before the covers were hardly placed on the books? No, it is a fact that the book was sold for several years, just how long, is not certain. A present-day critic says that it was sold until the edition ran out. He gives this date as 1893-94. Amadon speaks of his daughter who was a missionary in South Africa and of her acquaintance with a young English woman who wanted a copy of this book, which could not be secured. But his daughter did not reach South Africa until early in 1894.[166] How long after that she met the woman from England we do not know. Hence Amadon’s reference to his daughter is irrelevant to his statement that the book was “promptly” withdrawn from circulation. How “great” was the “demand” for the book will be reasonably clear when certain letters of the 1880’s are examined.

Good Men and Bad Memories

We give these facts regarding the primary errors in Amadon’s statement, not to indict his honesty—we think he was a most honorable man—but simply to show the undependability of his memory. That part of his reminiscence which is capable of verification is proved inaccurate, a fact that will be doubly evident as this chapter progresses. We may therefore rightly raise a question concerning the rest of it. And again we say, we may question without impugning his honesty or the high motives that prompted him to reminisce. He was an old man when he wrote this, in his seventy-sixth year, and was recalling from memory an alleged incident of twenty-four years before. Memory plays strange tricks with all of us. At best

[166]Miss Grace Amadon sailed from New York, December 20, 1893, for Africa. She would thus reach her mission post, Claremont Union College, no earlier than January, 1894. See The Review and Herald, January 2, 1894, p. 16; Seventh-day Adventist Year Book, 1894, pp. 46, 86.

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our memory of happenings twenty-four years before is highly undependable, and if an event of a quarter century ago becomes entangled with a current rumor, the whole memory of the incident may become hopelessly distorted, and thus worthless.

The reader will recall that in an earlier chapter we took note of a letter that Uriah Smith, editor of the Review, was said to have written to Canright in the 1880’s, concerning certain past events, including a statement that he had not seen the pamphlet, A Word to the “Little Flock” since the early 1850’s. We then quoted from an editorial by Smith in the Review and Herald of 1866 in which he discussed that leaflet and quoted from it by page number. The best of people may have the worst of memories.

An Eyewitness Sees Too Much

A writer in the Review in 1887 gives, in retrospect, his eyewitness account of the falling of the stars in 1833, when he was seven years old. Childhood memories are generally considered to be the sharpest. But his account of the falling of the stars includes descriptive statements that obviously belong to the account of the darkening of the sun, which occurred in 1780, or 46 years before he was born. (See The Review and Herald, February 22, 1887, p. 115.) In a case like this the explanation is evident. Not only had he seen the falling of the stars; he had also read and heard much of the darkening of the sun, for Adventists often discuss the two phenomena together. Through the years the two incidents had become intermingled in his mind. Those who knew no facts regarding either heavenly event would probably have had little reason to question his story. Why should they? Was he not giving an eyewitness account?

Such confusing of two historically recorded incidents is not uncommon. And it is because of this fact that a grave suspicion is cast on the dependability of memory, especially when a historical incident must be recalled through a fog of distorting stories. If we might be permitted, we would like to refer once more to that most sensational exhibit of groundless stories that quickly gained credence among honest people throughout America—the ascension [434] robe story! In the light of the fact that good people, with no desire to deceive or defame, recalled in books of reminiscences that Millerites had worn such robes, though the documentary evidence of 1844 is overwhelmingly against it, we have no trouble in understanding how Amadon might have confused some facts with current fiction to produce the statement he made.

His article in the Battle Greek Journal seems to be the foundation on which the forbidding-looking edifice of a lawsuit threat is reared. The onlooker is permitted, or encouraged, to believe that underneath is a subfoundation of hard, flinty facts that support the lawsuit charge. Would the book really have been withdrawn from circulation unless there was a lawsuit threat?

This much can reasonably be assumed regarding the scurrilous article to which Amadon replied: If Mrs. White and the Review and Herald publishing house had really been threatened with a lawsuit, the fact would be known to the leaders of the dissident group—one of them had until a short time before been a member of the Review and Herald board of trustees. His connections with the publishing house extended back through the years. And would those who openly sought to defame Mrs. White, along with other leaders, have failed to capitalize on the sensational possibilities in a lawsuit threat? The answer to this question is so evident that the failure of the scurrilous article to present the lawsuit story would rightly provide the strongest evidence that the story was a myth.

The Anonymous Article That Amadon Answered

And what does that article say? We have never seen it quoted by the critics. Whether this is because they have not wished to or could not secure it, we know not.[167] Patently, the article is of prime importance in the investigation of the lawsuit charge. We publish it now, in full, as it appeared in the Battle Creek Moon, April 29, 1907. It is entitled “Testimonies Under the Limelight:”[168]

[167]We think that current critics have not seen it. One of them declares, though without offering any proof, that it appeared in the Battle Creek Journal, but makes no further reference to it. He quotes Amadon’s reply at length and proceeds to build his lawsuit story on it.

[168]There are three subtitles: “Mrs. Ellen G. White’s Prophecies Show Evidence of Plagiarism. Seems to Have Been Inspired By A Trinity College Professor at Cambridge. More Than 200 Passages Are Copied From a Single Book Without Sign of Credit.” Next is displayed a dictionary definition of plagiarism. Then follows the text of the article.

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“Prophetess Ellen G. White, alleged mother of Seventh Day Adventism, is a plagiarist. Instead of receiving her inspirations from On High, or even from Holy writ, the latter of which is deemed scarcely necessary in her case, she seems to be receiving them or at least a portion of them from a book published back in 1855 [correct date 1851-52], and long since out of print.

“The volume wherein she copied from it, without quotation or credit is also out of print, but a few copies of each remain. A Moon reporter, after having been denied an interview by several followers of the prophetic Ellen, determined to do a little investigating for himself, and in reviewing her ‘Sketches from the Life of Paul,’ found a striking similarity to something which he had read long ago. Comparison told the tale.

“Her book published by The Review & Herald Publishing Company, of Battle Creek, in 1883, and soon suppressed, contains over two hundred borrowed sentences, from the ‘Life and Epistles of the Apostle Paul,’ by Rev. W. J. Conybeare, of Trinity College, Cambridge, and published in 1855 [sic].

“No credit is given to that author, no quotation marks are used. In fact, quotation marks are never used by the prophetess. Her plan of authorship is to pick up the pen, and the Lord guides it. The publishers of ‘Mother’ White’s ‘Sketches from the Life of Paul,’ preface her work by putting it this way: ‘This is the distinctive feature of the book, and is that which makes it particularly valuable. The writer, having received especial help from the Spirit of God is able to throw light upon the teachings of Paul and their application to our time, as no other authors are prepared to do.’

“And the rank and file of ‘Mother’ White’s followers look upon all her writings and sayings, in practically that same light. Criticism of her or any of her doings, is considered an insult to the Creator, because she ‘seeth with his eyes, speaketh with his tongue, and writeth with his pen.’ Attempt to interview one of them about her, and they will elucidate upon her wisdom in much the same language as the Apostles were prone to elucidate upon the wisdom of Christ. Hence, the recent difficulties in the West End [of Battle Creek].

“The ‘Great’ prophetess hath spoken, and her followers have listened with the same nervous tension as though it had been Gabriel’s trumpet.

“The exodus which followed her tirade against the Sanitarium and Battle Creek, makes an exposition of her inspiration of more than local interest. Her book was probably suppressed because the clumsy copying she had done, was brought to the attention of the Review & Herald, and it was feared that for it to fall into the hands of the learned and scholarly world would mean a siege of muckrakism that might disrupt the entire Adventist church. Accordingly they called in as many of the volumes as possible in order that they might [436] continue to use Mrs. White as the ‘Voice of God’ to humbug a superstitious people.

“It would be impossible and perhaps not interesting, from a newspaper standpoint, to give all of the 200 sentences ‘stolen’ by Mrs. White from the work of the Rev. Conybeare. Let it suffice to say, that practically chapter by chapter she has followed his book, with slightly changed headings, even following his paragraphs, sometimes almost in toto. The Rev. Mr. Conybeare, when he wrote his book in 1855 [sic], undoubtedly never dreamed that it would one day be mistaken for the ‘Spirit of God.’

“A few of these, more than 200, ‘inspired’ utterances, contained in Prophetess White’s book, but ‘inspired’ by Rev. Conybeare’s previous publication, will be sufficient to convince the casual reader. To save space, the quotations from the latter are marked ‘W.J.C.,’ and those from the former, ‘E.G.W.’ Note the similarity....

[Then follow four parallel passages, equivalent to a page and a half of typewritten matter. They can be seen in the writings of any critic. To save space we therefore omit them here.]

“The Adventists in the West End [of Battle Creek], however, are gradually growing wiser. A considerable portion of them no longer believe that Ellen G. White writes her books, or her prophecies, but that they are the work of her son ‘Willie,’ and often dictated by Elder Daniel’s [Daniells] et cetera. Her stronghold is now at Washington, D.C., not Battle Creek, where the Review & Herald, the acknowledged mouthpiece of the Whiteites, is still claiming that such utterances as above quoted were written under the direct guidance of the Almighty, while thoroughly denouncing all who are unwilling to blindly accept the preposterous pretense.”

The defamatory style and tone of this anonymous article leaves no doubt that its author, or authors, would not have hesitated to set forth the lawsuit story if it had then been in circulation and had had even a shadow of plausibility. They specifically speak of the book’s being “suppressed,” and of there being “called in as many of the volumes as possible.” For this no proof is offered. How repeatedly we have discovered that critics make the most sweeping charges, but forget to provide the proof!

A Strange Oversight

The calling in of books that have been scattered over the country in thousands of homes would have been no small undertaking. It would have required notices to be run in the church paper, or a flood of letters to be written, which in turn would precipitate [437] no small number of letters in return, and then some kind of settlement, financial or otherwise. Many clerks would be conversant with the facts. We search in vain for any trace of such “suppression” in the records of the 1880’s, for the book was allegedly “soon suppressed.”

Note that the writers of this scurrilous article are not even sure why it was “suppressed.” They venture a “probably.” Here was the place for at least a sly insinuation of a threatened lawsuit. What a chance they missed!

Probably most of our readers will be ready to dismiss the whole matter at this point. But so widely has the lawsuit story traveled, so plausibly has it been constructed out of bits of fact and fiction, that we believe it should be completely exposed once and for all to remove whatever questions might still remain in the mind of any reasonable person. Fortunately, there is sufficient documentary evidence and other factual data available to make possible a full refutation of this fantastic story.

The Anonymous 1907 Pamphlet

The next document that we have been able to find that bears on the matter, was published in October, 1907, in Battle Creek. It is an eighty-nine-page pamphlet. The preface states that “the major portion of this pamphlet was sent May 8, 1907, to W. C. White” with the request that he pass it on to his mother if he thought best to do so. As the subtitle of this pamphlet indicates, it treats of “contradictions, inconsistencies and other errors in her writings.” [169]We quote:

“I find upon inquiry that your work ‘Sketches from the Life of Paul,’ is no longer in print and can not be had. In conversation with a gentleman who was formerly a member of the Review and Herald Board, I found upon making inquiry that he was of the opinion that the publishers of the Conybeare and Howson’s book requested that the Review and Herald stop publishing your book for the reason that it contained so much material which was identical with and similar to that contained in Conybeare and Howson’s book. Whether or not this is a fact, I am not prepared to say, but this I do

[169]See chapter 24, “Did Mrs. White Break a Promise?” for a discussion of the “urgent testimony from Mrs. White.”

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know, that the book is no longer published and that it is very difficult to obtain a copy.”

“It is now nearly a quarter of a century since this book was suppressed. Do you sanction the suppression of the writings of the Spirit of Prophecy?”

The 1907 Pamphleteer’s Statement Analyzed

The anonymous writer of this pamphlet conversed with a man “who was formerly a member of the Review and Herald Board.” This man gave him no certain information, but was simply “of the opinion.” Nor did that “opinion” suggest that a suit was threatened, but only that the Review and Herald had been “requested” to “stop publishing” Mrs. White’s book on Paul’s life. The pamphlet writer displays the refreshing frankness of admitting: “Whether or not this is a fact, I am not prepared to say.” If this former board member knew nothing more certain than this, how could anyone else ever hope to know anything for certain about the matter. Note, in passing, the pamphlet statement that the book had been “suppressed” for “now nearly a quarter of a century.” In other words, the book would have had to be suppressed almost immediately on publication—from 1883 to 1907 is only twenty-four years. No proof of suppression is offered. Remember, also, that a present-day critic states that the book was circulated until 1893-4, or until the edition was “exhausted.”

The first published story of a lawsuit threat that we have been able to find is in Canright’s book, Life of Mrs. E. G. White, published in 1919. Says he: “The publishers of Conybeare and Howson’s work threatened prosecution if her work was not suppressed.”—Pages 196, 197. A 1907 anonymous story that it was “requested” that Mrs. White’s book not be published, becomes, in 1919, a “threatened prosecution.”

Canright does not trouble to cite any authority for his statement, not even a conversation with a former Review and Herald board member!

A Present-Day Critic Speaks

Finally, a present-day critic restates the lawsuit charge and adds a new time element to the story. He declares that “it was about 1893-4 when the edition was exhausted.” But he also says, “It was [439] suddenly taken off the market,” and explains that this was on account of a threatened lawsuit.

There is a fatal discrepancy in these reminiscences and charges. The 1907 Battle Creek Moon article does not even hint that a lawsuit was threatened. But it does say, though without proof, that the book was “suppressed.” Amadon’s reply gives no hint of a lawsuit or even of a request that Mrs. White’s book be withdrawn from the market. He simply states that it was “promptly” withdrawn, presumably about 1883-4. The 1907 pamphleteer expresses the opinion that the Review and Herald was “requested” to withdraw the book and states that it had been “suppressed” for “now nearly a quarter of a century,” which would carry us back to the date of publication. A critic in 1919 says nothing about the date when it was allegedly withdrawn, but bluntly states that there was a “threatened prosecution.” The present-day critic lets the book be sold for ten years, and then “when the edition was exhausted” “it was suddenly taken off the market”! In support of his version, he declares:

“Mrs. White had placed an order for a new edition. H. W. Kellogg, manager of the Review & Herald publishing house, notified Mrs. White that they had been threatened and informed her that they would get out another edition if she would give bonds to protect them against the threatened damage suit. She did not produce the bonds and the new edition was never issued.”

Naturally, the question arises: If H. W. Kellogg had to deal with a threatened suit, is it reasonable to believe that the unidentified “former Board member,” with whom the anonymous 1907 pamphleteer conversed, did not know the facts about this suit? And what about those who fed scurrilous articles to the daily press in Battle Creek in 1907? Would none of that whole group, which included a former Review and Herald board member, have heard of this threatened lawsuit? Had the secret been kept inviolate by H. W. Kellogg so that none knew of it?

Most Amazing Part of Story

That question introduces us to the most amazing and incredible part of the current form of the story, and at the same time reveals the source of the present-day critic’s statement. That source, he [440] explains, was a man named John Kolvoord, who in the 1890’s was editor of a Dutch language paper published at the Review and Herald. In 1926 Kolvoord put the following in print in a little paper published by the critic:

“More than thirty years ago Henry W. Kellogg was manager or superintendent of the Review and Herald. As I passed by his office one day, he was standing by his desk and began a conversation with me, of which the only part worth repeating is contained in the following story:

“Mrs. White, or her agent, had previously given the publishing house an order to print a second edition of her book. No action was taken on that order because the Review and Herald had been notified that legal proceedings would be instituted if the sale of Mrs. White’s named book was not stopped. When the second order for a reissue was received the said manager found it necessary to explain the situation to Mrs. White. He informed her that the publishing house had been warned of an impending restraint and claim for damages, wherefore its directors would incur a liability upon themselves for infringement on patent rights. At the same time she was informed that her book would be printed if she would bind herself to assume the consequences. She refused to assume the obligation.”

Kolvoord Story Analyzed

Note these facts that bear on this Kolvoord statement: He does not date this incident except to say that it was “more than thirty years ago.” That would bring it earlier than 1896. The critic who cites Kolvoord declares that “it was about 1893-4 when the edition was exhausted.” A search of the records for several years each side of 1893-94 reveals that from 1888 onward to 1897, when Kolvoord left the publishing house, Kellogg was at no time manager. He was, for a part of this time, superintendent and also a director, a member of the board. Now, it would be the manager rather than the superintendent, even though a director, who would discuss with Mrs. White this very important matter of a threatened lawsuit. Accordingly, Kolvoord calls Kellogg the “manager.” The present-day critic likewise thus speaks of him.

If it is hard to believe that the “directors” of the publishing house commissioned the superintendent to negotiate so delicate a matter with Mrs. White, it is even harder to believe that these directors would consider it wise to share the knowledge of this [441] matter with an employee, Kolvoord, who held only a minor editorial position. If the knowledge of this grave matter was shared with Kolvoord, what reason is there to believe that he was the only employee told? He does not even suggest that he was pledged to secrecy. Hence, human nature being what it is, we should soon expect the whole publishing house to be abuzz with the story, and almost as soon, the whole Adventist community in Battle Creek. Yet neither the writer of the anonymous Moon story in 1907 nor the anonymous pamphleteer of the same year were aware of all this, even though the pamphleteer had talked with a former director![170]

Add to this incredible story one more fact and the alleged incident becomes wholly unbelievable, if, indeed, it is not already so. In 1907 Kolvoord was the joint author of a pamphlet that attacked one of the basic doctrines of the Seventh-day Adventist Church. The preface reveals that his sympathies had departed from the movement some years before. Yet this man, hostile enough to the church in 1907 to join in writing a pamphlet against its beliefs, kept locked within himself the most sensational story of all, and allowed others who were attacking the church to content themselves with pitifully minor charges and incidents! In due time he whispers it in the ear of a present-day critic, and writes it out in 1926, about a third of a century after he had been informed of the allegedly threatening lawsuit!

The Final “Proof” Examined

Only one further “proof” in support of the lawsuit story remains to be considered.[171] It is a fact that the book went out of

[170]In thus exposing the unreliability of Kolvoord’s story we are not necessarily casting any aspersion on his character as an honest man. This may simply be another case of where a man’s memory of the long ago has played tricks with him. We are not concerned with determining the degree of reliability of men, but of evidence. And we think it is clear that the evidence submitted by Kolvoord will not stand up under examination.

[171]Technically, there is still another “proof” that is submitted. A present-day critic quotes Clinton Rhodes as declaring in a letter to Sumner A. Whittier: “It is true that the publishers had to stop the printing of the LIFE OF PAUL or face a law-suit.” What the context of this brief quotation is, we know not, for it is not given. Is it possible that Rhodes introduces the quoted part with some such phrase as “I believe,” or “it is my opinion that”? That was the way the anonymous board member introduced his statement to the anonymous pamphleteer in 1907. Nor are we informed as to when the letter was written. Was it while events were fresh, or long after? Inquiry of the critic as to so important a bit of evidence as this brought the reply that he had not preserved the letter, and was quoting from memory! We do not believe the reader wishes us to use his time or ours in seriously discussing such “proof”.

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print probably not later than 1893-4, possibly before, and that the book by Mrs. White which took its place, Acts of the Apostles, was not published until 1911. Now, say the critics, it is unreasonable to believe the explanation offered by W. C. White for not printing further editions; namely that his mother wished first to add to the book before it was reprinted. She could not possibly have been planning that in the early 1890’s, for she did not produce the new book till 1911.

We have waited until this closing “proof” to bring on certain documentary evidence in refutation of the whole collection of proofs. We preferred to let the critics first present their case in chronological sequence. The letter files of the Ellen G. White Publications cover a wide range of denominational incidents and activities, particularly as they relate to the writings of Mrs. White, and fill in gaps in the publishing history of the denomination that were created by the disastrous fires that destroyed both the Review and Herald and the Pacific Press, with all their records, in the early 1900’s. In the period covered by the letters we examined, W. C. White was a most influential and active leader in the Adventist organization. To him came letters from General Conference presidents and other key men which discussed every kind of denominational problem. These letters, not written for publication, naturally give a far more intimate picture of the denomination than any published writings could do, and discuss frankly the problems and crises as well as the progress and glories of the work. And could there be any greater crisis than that of a legal threat to Mrs. White’s writings!

Do these files throw any light on Mrs. White’s 1883 book on Paul? They do. Do they discuss or even hint at a threatened lawsuit? They do not. Do they even darkly suggest that the book was “suppressed” for any reason? They do not. Finally, do these letter files discuss plans for a revised work on Paul’s life? They do.

From June 1883 onward for several months the letters to and from W. C. White reveal that Mrs. White’s work on Paul was being given intensive promotion in camp meetings and in Sabbath schools as not only a good book for devotional reading but as a [443] special help for the Sabbath school lessons on the Acts of the Apostles. The book was also being promoted as a premium with Review and Herald and Signs of the Times subscriptions. We would naturally expect that under such promotion the market for the book among the church membership would shortly be saturated.

Letters Between Haskell and White

On April 2, 1884, S. N. Haskell, a key leader in the denomination, and particularly in the Tract Society work, wrote to W. C. White[172] and raised this question: “Now if it [Mrs. White’s book on Paul] has had its run among our people would it be policy to try it for a canvassing book?” Evidently he thought the Adventist market was saturated. He discusses the possibility of resetting the type, using heavier paper, etc., in order to make a book that would be attractive for sale by colporteurs.

In 1907, Amadon, trying to recall the events of twenty-four years before, declares not only that the book was “promptly” withdrawn, but that such withdrawal was made despite “very great” “demand” for it. Haskell, writing at the very time when this withdrawal is supposed to have taken place, not only fails to hint of such a step, but suggests a further edition, which might be used by colporteurs. So far from thinking that the Adventist demand for the book was then “very great”—and remember, he was one of the leaders in book promotion in the denomination—he suggests that probably the book “has had its run among our people.”

Incidentally, if the book had “had its run” there would hardly be much point to using space in the Review for special advertising of it. That probably explains why the advertising promotion of it in that journal ended with the close of 1884. However it continued to be promoted in the Signs of the Times, as a premium, during most of 1885.

But let us go on with our examination of the Haskell letters.

On April 7, 1884, Haskell writes to White from Battle Creek,

[172]The letter is dated, “Wellsville, N.Y.,” and opens thus: “I am on my way to Ohio and stopped over one train here.”

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Michigan, and again raises the question of preparing a special colporteur edition. This time he suggests that the book should be illustrated. He evidently feels that the colporteurs are needing a new book, because he adds: “If you think it not best to make that use of your mother’s book then I will try R & H [Review and Herald publishing house] on [Uriah Smith’s] U. S. in Prophecy.”

All Set to Publish New Edition

On June 17, 1884, Haskell writes from South Lancaster, Massachusetts, a brief note to White. All that it contains regarding the book is this: “R & H [Review and Herald] just sent me a dummy for Life Sketches of Paul which they propose to print after the sample for 27 cts. for 5000 copies. All that is wanting is plates. Is this move all right?”

Amadon, writing long after the event, and in the midst of a swirl of stories about the book’s being “suppressed,” wrote that it was withdrawn “promptly.” But Haskell’s letter reveals that a year after the initial printing the Review and Herald in Battle Creek was awaiting only the approval of W. C. White before printing another and larger edition, this one for colporteurs, we judge, in view of the preceding letters!

And why should the publishers wait for approval from W. C. White? In those days Mrs. White’s office generally carried the initial cost of launching a new book by her, and owned the plates. The royalty rate was set accordingly. W. C. White cared for his mother’s business affairs.

We do not have a copy of his reply to Haskell. Not until 1885 did the White office begin to use typewriters, and thus to keep copies of correspondence. Evidently his reply was negative, for we find him writing thus to Haskell on March 11, 1885:

“I am sorry that we did not go ahead and publish sketches of ‘PAUL,’ when you first suggested it. There seem to be serious obstacles in the way, and now that times are so hard, and we are bending all our efforts to put an illustrated edition of ‘Vol. 4’ [The Great Controversy, 1884 edition] upon the market, it may be best to wait a little longer.”

Perhaps the initial cost of placing The Great Controversy on [445] the market as a colporteur book had proved too heavy to warrant an investment in another book. Possibly, also, the colporteur army was too limited in those days to justify bringing forth these two books for them at the same time, in addition to other books that they were selling. Besides, there is evidence that the leading brethren thought that Mrs. White’s The Great Controversy, just off the press, was the book that then merited the special attention of the colporteurs.[173] Furthermore, times were hard.

Here, indeed, was the place for White to add one more to the list of “obstacles.” Did he not know that the book was supposed to be “suppressed”? But no shadow of such an idea creeps into any of the correspondence.

The next few years saw the 1884 Great Controversy enjoying an unexpectedly good and increasing sale by colporteurs. As the advertising promotion for Mrs. White’s work on Paul ended in the Review and Signs, promotion for The Great Controversy took its place. This ran for several years. The interesting feature of these advertisements is that many of them refer to the author of this new book as being also the author, among other works, of Sketches From the Life of Paul.[174]

Even more interesting is this fact: Beginning with the first edition, The Great Controversy carried several pages in the back advertising a number of works by Mrs. White and other writers, dropping some of her books and adding others, but continuing to include Sketches From the Life of Paul. This was direct advertising of the book for sale as late as 1887, in the editions of The Great Controversy being sold by colporteurs to non-Adventists. As early

[173]An important feature of the colporteur work in the 1880’s was the taking of short-term subscriptions to the Signs of the Times in combination with a premium book. The premium, however, was not free; the cost was added, thus making a sales item of sufficient amount to he worth while to the colporteur. W. C. White, writing to A. J. Breed, on Feb. 20, 1885, speaks of the discussion that some of the “leading brethren” had had as to the book that should be used in a recanvass for longer term Signs subscriptions, and of their conclusion that the book should be the 1884 edition of The Great Controversy. White speaks of having had a certain “plan” in mind, though he does not name it, but of his being “convinced” that the plan of the brethren is best. Then he adds: “Elder Haskell argues that there is nothing more important to be placed before the people than the contents of ‘Vol. 4,’” that is, The Great Controversy. It would seem that one of the “serious obstacles” in the way of the formerly proposed colporteur edition of Sketches From the Life of Paul was this focusing on The Great Controversy.

[174]The advertising of Great Controversy, with mention of Mrs. White’s authorship of the work on Paul, first appeared, so far as we have been able to find, in the ?Signs, March 19, 1885, p. 191, and in the Review, March 8, 1887, p. 159.

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as 1886 these editions listed, under her name on the title page, some of her books, including Sketches From the Life of Paul, with the statement that she was the “author of” these. This practice was followed for a number of years. The mention of Sketches From the Life of Paul on the title page of The Great Controversy can be traced at least to 1892 in printings in the United States.[175] Editions published by the Seventh-day Adventist publishing house in England carry the mention of Mrs. White’s book on Paul at least as late as 1907. What a strange way to “suppress” a book!

This evident desire on the part of the publishers to keep Sketches From the Life of Paul in the memory of all who might read Mrs. White’s works, seems almost to be sufficient in itself to expose the absolutely unsupported story that the book had been “suppressed,” even to the extent of calling “in as many of the volumes as possible,” and that this suppression had actually taken place almost immediately upon publication, as the 1907 pamphleteer declared. Even Amadon’s well-intentioned statement in the press that same year becomes quite incredible.

So successful was the colporteur promotion of the 1884 Great Controversy (Spirit of Prophecy, vol. 4), that, as mentioned in the earlier historical sketch, Mrs. White revised and enlarged it in 1888 to meet the larger non-Adventist audience. Her traveling in Europe and her writing of this enlarged work had kept her from giving attention to the possible enlargement of others of the four volumes known as Spirit of Prophecy. Reference again to the historical sketch reveals that they dealt in part with certain periods of sacred history, even as volume 4.

The Conflict of the Ages Series

The question would naturally arise: Is Mrs. White going to provide expanded works on the other periods of religious history? And is there to be an expanded work on Paul?

[175]Reference to Mrs. White as the author of Sketches From the Life of Paul occurs on the title page of an 1892 printing of The Great Controversy, but it may also have appeared later. The dates of these various printings are not always given on the title page. When we speak of tracing reference to Sketches From the Life of Paul on the title page of The Great Controversy “at least to 1892,” we are basing our chronology on the fact that in one particular printing the book Steps to Christ, which was not published until 1892, is listed as one of Mrs. White’s works. The actual date of this printing may have been much later.

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A letter raising questions of this character was written by L. C. Chadwick, of Williamsport, Pennsylvania, to W. C. White. We quote in full White’s reply of July 10, 1888:

“I have your letter inquiring about the republication of ‘Great Controversy’ in four volumes.[176]

“Volume Four [The Great Controversy] has been revised and enlarged and will soon be issued with an enlarged page, larger type, and 700 pages. As soon as possible ‘Volume One’ [which in enlarged and revised form became Patriarchs and Prophets] will be published greatly enlarged. I think there will be about twice as much matter as in the first edition. It [Patriarchs and Prophets] will be issued in the same style as ‘Volume Four’ [The Great Controversy], the same size pages as D. & R. [Daniel and the Revelation], and making 700 or 800 pages. We hope this will be ready for sale sometime during the winter.

“Sometime during the coming year we hope to reprint ‘Volume Two’ and a portion of ‘Volume Three’ in similar style, putting ‘Life of Christ’ [which in enlarged and revised form became The Desire of Ages] complete in one book. I cannot tell how long it will be before ‘Life of Paul’ will be incorporated in another volume covering the life of the apostles and making a connection between the life of Christ and the lives of the apostles.”

Delays in Carrying Out Plans

Here is a picture of long-range plans for the expansion of Mrs. White’s earlier works, a four-volume set of subscription books, which finally became five, and is now known as the Conflict of the Ages Series. One of these projected works was to take the place of Sketches From the Life of Paul. Note the time that is suggested for the execution of the plan: Patriarchs and Prophets was to be published as “soon as possible,” which proved to be about two years. It was hoped that “during the coming year,” 1889, The Desire of Ages could be published. It came from the press ten years later, or in 1898. There was no certainty as to when the volume on the lives of the apostles, which would incorporate Mrs. White’s 1883 work on Paul, would appear. It was published in 1911.

[176]The four volumes generally known as The Spirit of Prophecy were also known as The Great Controversy. Both titles appeared on the title page. As volume 4 of this quartet of books was featured for colporteur use to the general public, it dropped the words Spirit of Prophecy from the title page. In due time the title The Great Controversy came to be confined to the fourth volume, particularly when that volume was revised and enlarged in 1888. In the letter under consideration, Chadwick is inquiring about the republication of the four volumes of Spirit of Prophecy.

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A look at Mrs. White’s diary, which tells of her arduous labors, her illnesses, and her travels, provides an adequate explanation for the delay in the time schedule of these books.

Three letters written by Mrs. White in the year 1903 throw further light on the matter. All three letters were written from her home near Sanitarium, California. In a letter to “Dear Brother and Sister [W. O.] Palmer” on July 14, she refers to her plans regarding revision of her book on Paul. We quote all that is said on this:

“As you know, I am not always master of my own time; for often I must do much writing without delay. Many letters must be answered, and, besides, I am trying to write some concerning the apostle Paul, preparatory to revising my book, ‘Sketches from the Life of Paul.’ After completing this revision, I hope to add something to the book, ‘Life Sketches’ [in part, an autobiographical work], in order that another edition may be published.” [The revised Life Sketches was not published until 1915.]—Letter 145, 1903.

On July 19, 1903, Mrs. White, in a letter to her son Edson, includes a reference to her work on Paul, which we quote in full:

“I think that a new edition of ‘The Life of Paul’ should be published. I shall make some additions to this book, however, before it is republished.”—Letter 150, 1903.

On August 9, 1903, she wrote to H. W. Kellogg. Kellogg is the man who while still connected with the Review and Herald—he left about 1897—is alleged to have shown to Kolvoord a letter from the Conybeare and Howson publishers threatening a lawsuit if Mrs. White’s work on Paul was not taken from the market. We quote all that she says as to her plans concerning this work, placing it in its context:

“I greatly desire to write on the life of Solomon and on the history following his reign. And I desire, too, to write on the life of Paul and his work in connection with the other apostles. At times the thought of this neglected work keeps me awake at night. The writing that I desire to do on my books is greatly hindered because I am obliged to write many letters to those who are endeavoring to establish the work on a right basis, and many letters to those in despondency and sorrow. Then, too, I have to spend much time in contradicting fabulous reports.”—Letter 176, 1903. [449]

From her letter to her son Edson it is evident that in 1903 she was thinking of a new edition of the 1883 book on Paul, and that the “revising” mentioned in the letter to the Palmers was anticipated to be in terms of “some additions to this book.” No hint of lawsuit threats, not even to Kellogg, who allegedly demanded protective bonds from her before he would consider republishing her work on Paul! She had always been confronted with “fabulous reports.” Every prominent person in public life is thus confronted. She did not live long enough, however, to contradict the lawsuit report. It evidently did not get into circulation until after her death in 1915.

W. C. White Discusses 1907 Rumors

On July 30, 1907, W. C. White wrote to M. N. Campbell, then pastor of the Battle Creek, Michigan, church, in regard to the newspaper story on Mrs. White’s work on Paul, which we earlier quoted. We give the letter in full:

“I ought to write you a few lines regarding the criticisms that were made in one of the Battle Creek papers on Mother’s work in ‘Sketches from the Life of Paul.’

“If I remember correctly, this was the first of Mother’s works which was issued after Father’s death. The management of her business affairs was new to me. I was young, and my time and thought were taken up principally with the affairs of Pacific Press of which I was for a short time manager.

“If you will read carefully the preface to Mother’s work, ‘The Great Controversy between Christ and Satan,’ you will find the following statement:

“As the Spirit of God has opened to my mind the great truths of his Word, and the scenes of the past and the future, I have been bidden to make known to others what has been thus revealed,—to trace the history of the controversy in past ages, and especially to so present it as to shed a light on the fast-approaching struggle of the future. In pursuance of this purpose, I have endeavored to select and group together events in the history of the church in such a manner as to trace the unfolding of the great testing truths that at different periods have been given to the world, that have excited the wrath of Satan, and the enmity of a world-loving church, and that have been maintained by the witness of those who “loved not their lives unto the death.”

“In these records we may see a foreshadowing of the conflict before us. Regarding them in the light of God’s Word, and by the illumination of his Spirit, we may see unveiled the devices of the wicked one, and the dangers [450] which they must shun who would be found “without fault” before the Lord at his coming.

“The great events which have marked the progress of reform in past ages, are matters of history, well known and universally acknowledged by the Protestant world; they are facts which none can gainsay. This history I have presented briefly, in accordance with the scope of the book, and the brevity which must necessarily be observed, the facts having been condensed into as little space as seemed consistent with a proper understanding of their application. In some cases where a historian has so grouped together events as to afford, in brief, a comprehensive view of the subject, or has summarized details in a convenient manner, his words have been quoted; but except in a few instances no specific credit has been given, since they are not quoted for the purpose of citing that writer as authority, but because his statement affords a ready and forcible presentation of the subject. In narrating the experience and views of those carrying forward the work of reform in our own time, similar use has occasionally been made of their published works.

“It is not so much the object of this book to present new truths concerning the struggles of former times, as to bring out facts and principles which have a bearing upon coming events. Yet viewed as a part of the controversy between the forces of light and darkness, all these records of the past are seen to have a new significance; and through them a light is cast upon the future, illuminating the pathway of those who, like the reformers of past ages, will be called, even at the peril of all earthly good, to witness “for the Word of God, and for the testimony of Jesus Christ.”

“In the ten or twelve lines underscored [italicized] above, you will find an acknowledgment regarding the use that Mother has made of the work of historians.

“A similar acknowledgment ought to have been made in Mother’s work ‘Sketches from the Life of Paul,’ and it was undoubtedly due to my lack of experience in the publishing work that such acknowledgment was not made.

“It has been claimed by our critics that Mother borrowed passages from Conybeare and Howson ‘Life of Paul,’ supposing that it was an old book out of print. But this is very absurd in view of the fact that one or two years after Mother’s book was issued, I selected Conybeare and Howson ‘Life and Epistles of the Apostle Paul’ published by T. Y. Croel [Crowell] of Boston, as a premium book for new subscriptions to the ‘Signs of the Times’; and this book was widely advertised and frequently quoted from in the ‘Signs’ for a period of about two years. During this time I think we disposed of nearly five thousand copies. This shows most conclusively that there was no effort to cover up or hide what had been done in the matter of borrowing descriptive phrases or sentences from Conybeare and Howson.

“I think that Mother’s book ‘Sketches from the Life of Paul’ was regularly [451] advertised by Review and Herald and Pacific Press for eight or ten years after this and until the whole edition had been sold. I do not know of any effort ever being made by author, publisher, or agent to suppress the book or to call it in. When the stock at the publishing house was exhausted, there may have been calls made for any agent who had books to spare, to send them back so that the small orders coming in might be filled.

“When the stock of books was exhausted and requests were made for a new edition; I laid the matter before Mother and she said that there were many things which she had written and other things which she wished to write regarding the experience of other apostles which she hoped some day to incorporate with what she had written about the life of Paul, into a book regarding the life and work of the apostles which would make a connection between the story of the life of Christ as given in ‘Desire of Ages’ and ‘Great Controversy,’ Vol. 4; therefore it was better to wait until this volume could be prepared. At the time we hoped the volume could be prepared soon, but other work has pressed in and this has been delayed from time to time until now. It is my hope that the volume may yet be prepared because I think it would be of great service to the people.

“From time to time I have received letters of inquiry regarding this book and my answer has been in harmony with what I am now writing to you.

“The people have been very impatient while waiting so long for a new edition. Some have advertised far and wide for copies of the book, and this may have given the impression to some that we hesitated to reprint it because of the criticisms made regarding the similarity of certain paragraphs between this book and Conybeare and Howson ‘Life of Paul.’ But I have always considered that it would be possible when we are bringing out a new edition either to make these passages an exact quotation and put them in quotes or to give general credit as has been done in the preface of ‘Great Controversy.’

“If you will note carefully the paragraphs referred to by our critics, you will find that they are not an essential part of the book. They are mostly descriptive matter which could be spared without seriously affecting the argument or the spiritual instruction; and after you have studied the matter from this view point, you will agree with me, I believe, in saying that the claim made in the preface of the book is a true and correct claim.”[177]

[177]W. C. White says that the edition of the Conybeare and Howson work on Paul that was used as a premium was published by “T. Y. Croel of Boston.” This should read, “T. Y. Crowell of New York,” according to the title page. However, the actual printing of at least one edition was done at the “Press of Wright & Potter Printing Company, 79 Milk Street, Boston.” He also says that this work was selected “one or two years after Mother’s book was issued.” It was selected before, not after—a very important point, as we have seen—though it was used afterward as well. It is a small matter, probably, as to just how long Mrs. White’s book was advertised. W. C. White says he thought it was advertised for “eight or ten years,” or “until the whole edition had been sold.” The two statements together are doubtless fairly accurate. The book was not advertised that long in denominational journals, though it was promoted by another form of publishing house advertising—in copies of The Great Controversy—for a number of years.

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Comments on W. C. White Letter

W. C. White’s explanation for his failure to include a statement in the preface as to the use of other authors’ material in the 1883 work on Paul’s life might be considered, also, a reasonable explanation, in part, for the failure to include such a statement in the 1884 edition of The Great Controversy. The reader will recall that the statement first appears in the 1888 edition.

However, the primary explanation, we believe, for the failure to publish such an explanatory preface was that the question of literary borrowing in relation to inspiration and to plagiarism had not been raised by Mrs. White’s critics in the years immediately preceding the publication of these two works. We need not spend time anticipating the question of someone who may now say that W. C. White cannot, by accepting the blame for the absence of such explanatory prefaces, excuse his mother, for she was a prophet and should have anticipated the hostile questioning that arose. This is simply a variant of the unwarranted charge that we have repeatedly exposed; namely, that a prophet is proved false if it can be shown that he does not know all things. W. C. White, in his statement regarding the preface, was not implying that he shared in any way her prophetic office or had partnership in the writing of her books. There is a difference between writing a book and assuming responsibility for seeking to make the purpose and the method of the book writing free from misunderstanding.

Note what W. C. White says regarding the interest in the book after the edition was exhausted: “The people have been very impatient while waiting so long for a new edition. Some have advertised far and wide for copies of the book, and this may have given the impression to some that we hesitate to reprint.”[178] It is frequently the experience of publishers that after a book goes out of print there are persons who make a clamor for it; in fact, the impossibility of securing it adds to their desire for it. That has been true of various of Mrs. White’s earlier works which were

[178]There is no conflict between White’s statement in 1907 and Haskell’s in 1884 to the effect that the book had “had its run among our people.” From 1884 to 1907 is twenty-three years, and many new members had been added, some of whom probably had had their interest in the book stimulated by the reference to it that appeared for years on the title page of The Great Controversy!

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out of print for years and then were published again, but generally in enlarged and revised form. A study of the bibliography at the end of this book will provide ample proof of this statement that various of her books, after being out of print, were reprinted in revised, and often enlarged, form.

Let us cite two examples. Gospel Workers was allowed to go out of print. It was years before the new enlarged, revised edition was published. In the meantime there were those who much desired copies but could not secure them. Experience and Views, published in 1851, was out of print for years, and finally was reprinted in 1882 as a part of the book Early Writings. And before the republication there were repeated endeavors to secure copies. Incidentally, as the reader will recall, critics charged that the denomination had “suppressed” the book because of certain of its contents. We really have before us a variant form of the charge of suppression, and that charge, we think, has been rather fully canvassed in chapter 17.[179]

Which Publisher Threatened Suit?

On such evidence as we have related thus far in this chapter the colorful story of the threatened lawsuit rests. At least if there is better evidence, no one has ever produced it over the years. We think that the recital of this worthless hearsay and gossip, so plausibly mixed with faded memories, serves a good purpose. It makes evident, once again, how shaky is the foundation on which the various charges against Mrs. White rest.

If the critics had stayed by the easily obtainable facts, they never would have brought this charge. As usually framed, the

[179]Perhaps we might be permitted to mention a personal, incident, to illustrate, the point under discussion. In the spring of 1944 the book Answers to Objections was “withdrawn from sale.” In fact, it was “suddenly taken off the market”—to borrow the ominous words of Mrs. White’s critics. At least would-be customers suddenly found that they could not purchase it. The type was wearing out, and besides, suggestion had been made to the publishers that the book might be revised and probably enlarged. Inquirers were assured that the new edition would be ready shortly. That assurance, from both publishers and author, has been repeated each year, until at the time of this writing, nearly seven years have gone by. Meanwhile, as the publishers’ records will reveal, orders for the book have continued to come in. In view of the tact that the book deals with the doctrines of the Adventist faith, we hope no critic, poring over dates of issue of books in some future year, will try to read into this delay some dark meaning. There is a simpler explanation—the pressure of travel and other tasks. Many an author could duplicate this story. The history of the publishing business is as much an account of books going out of print as of books being published. Most books go out of print before very long. Indeed, some books of the holy prophets are not available to us, and so far as we can learn, have been unavailable since before the opening of the Christian Era. This point was discussed in chapter 17.

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charge alleges simply that the “publishers” threatened suit. One critic says it was the T. Y. Crowell Company. He probably mentions this name because it was from the Crowell Company that the Pacific Press and the Review and Herald in 1883 purchased some thousands of copies of the Conybeare and Howson book to use as a premium with subscriptions and in connection with the Sabbath school lessons. Kolvoord, from whose 1926 story we quoted earlier in this chapter, prefaces that story with the declaration:

“‘Sketches From the Life of Paul’ was an infringement on the copyright owned (I believe) by the S. S. Scranton Co., on Conybeare and Howson’s treatise on the same subject.”

Obviously, his whole story of threatened suit for infringement of copyright would be pointless unless there was a copyright on the book that could be infringed.[180]

The Facts Regarding Copyright Law

Here are the facts regarding copyright and publishers as those facts apply to the relations between the United States and Great Britain at the time of the publication of the Conybeare and Howson work and Mrs. White’s book on Paul:

There were no copyright relations between the United States and Great Britain until the issuance of the Presidential proclamation on July 1, 1891, which proclamation extended copyright protection to the works of British authors upon compliance with the provisions of the United States copyright law. (The Conybeare and Howson book was first published in England in 1851-52.) British authors residing in England whose books were published prior to that date could not secure any copyright protection in the United States, hence their works were in the public domain as far as United States publishers were concerned. Thus anyone in the United States might reprint them without infringing any copyright or without the necessity of securing permission from the English

[180]The present-day critic, who builds his charge largely on Kolvoord’s story, admits in 1950, that Kolvoord made a “slight mistake” in declaring that the Conybeare and Howson book was copyrighted in the United States. That is equivalent to saying that a builder made only a “slight mistake” in building a house without a foundation.

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publisher. As many United States publishers as desired could publish such English works, but could not copyright them in the United States. Although a United States publisher could copyright his own revised or enlarged edition of a work already in the public domain, the copyright protection would cover only the new matter, not the original text. The 1891 proclamation was not retroactive; that is, it did not take out of the public domain any English work that had been printed previous to 1891. (See the Act of March 3, 1891, 26 Star. 1106; and Presidential proclamation of July 1, 1891, 27 Stat. 981.)[181]

A Publisher of Conybeare and Howson Book Testifies

If no American publisher had a legal claim to the Conybeare and Howson book, and if no English publisher could make lawful claim against the American publishers of the book, how could there conceivably be even a shadow of a foundation for the story of a threatened lawsuit against Mrs. White and her publishers who simply took quotations from the book?

On January 15, 1924, C. E. Holmes, who for some years was an employee of the Review and Herald publishing house, wrote the following letter to the T. Y. Crowell Company in New York:

“T. Y. Crowell Co.,

New York City.

“Messrs:

“Some years ago you published a book entitled ‘Life and Epistles of the Apostle Paul.’ In 1883 a book was printed by the Review and Herald Publishing Co., of Battle Creek, Mich., entitled ‘Sketches from the Life of Paul.’ For a long time it has been claimed that because of a similarity of ideas and words in several instances in this book, you at one time threatened prosecution unless the book was withdrawn from circulation.

“This report is now being scattered about in printed form and I should be pleased to know if there is any truth in it. Any information that you can give me regarding this matter will be greatly appreciated.

“Respectfully yours,
“[Signed] C. E. Holmes.”

[181]For this information concerning Copyright relations between the United States and Great Britain the author is indebted to Louis C. Smith, senior attorney, Copyright Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

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On January 18, 1924, the Crowell Company replied to him as follows:

“Mr. C. E. Holmes

511 North Grove Ave.

Oak Park, Ill.

“Dear Sir:—

“Your letter of Jan. 15th received. We publish Conybeare’s LIFE AND EPISTLES OF THE APOSTLE PAUL but this is not a copyrighted book and we would have no legal grounds for action against your book and we do not think that we have ever raised any objection or made any claim such as you speak of.

“We shall be very glad to see the printed matter to which you refer.

“Very truly yours,
“THOMAS Y. CROWELL COMPANY,
“[Signed] T. I. C.”

Every other American publisher of the Conybeare and Howson book would have had to make the same admission: “no legal grounds for action.”

The Threatened Lawsuit Quashed

We believe the reader will conclude that the threatened lawsuit has been quashed, and with the quashing of the lawsuit disappears all the sinister significance that critics have tried to inject into the simple fact that no further edition of Sketches From the Life of Paul was published.

We have traced the story of a threatened lawsuit through a labyrinth of hearsay, gossip, innuendo, and evil implication, and now, at the end of the path, we remind the reader that we have explored what the critics consider is perhaps their choicest, most plausibly presented “proof” of Mrs. White’s fraud and evil activity, particularly in relation to the charge of plagiarism.

Note.—We are under no obligation to offer an explanation of how the lawsuit myth started, but for those who are understandably affected by the old saying that where there is so much smoke there must be some fire, we venture the following, frankly admitting it is only a surmise based on a reminiscence:

Mrs. White’s son, W. C. White, when asked whether there was any letter from Crowell Company that might have provided even a shadow of a foundation for a lawsuit story, is reported by his son to have replied in substance thus: The Pacific Press and Review and Herald publishing houses [458] purchased several thousand copies of the Conybeare and Howson work in 1883 in connection with the Sabbath school lessons, and as a premium book. Then when orders for the books ceased, the Crowell Company wrote inquiring about the matter. Just what the company said in its letter, we do not know, for the correspondence files of both the Pacific Press and the Review and Herald were destroyed in disastrous fires in later years.

Now an inquiry in the 1880’s could easily become, in 1907, a “request” to cease publishing Mrs. White’s book, and a threat of prosecution in 1919. There are many stories to the effect that Adventists, in the early 1840’s climbed up in trees all over New England in anticipation of the end of the world. Some of these stories are in impressive reference works. Exhaustive examination of old newspapers and journals reveals that this story stemmed from a newspaper item in 1843 about a certain named man who allegedly climbed a tree, jumped, broke his neck, and died. The newspaper item was widely reprinted in the press. There is no other incident that can provide even a semblance of a historical foundation for the numerous stories of Adventists climbing trees. It should also be added that a correction appeared shortly in the 1843 newspapers. From it and certain investigation these facts appear: The man did not die of a broken neck; in fact, there was no evidence he broke his neck, no evidence that he jumped from a tree, no evidence that he was an Adventist, but rather clear evidence that he was not an Adventist, and that his actions whatever they were, were those of a demented man.

Now, if a little item in the press of 1843 could produce, erelong, a whole forest of trees, filled with a whole company of Adventists, it should not be difficult to see how a bland letter of inquiry in the 1880’s could produce at least one threatened lawsuit in the twentieth century. Hence it would seem to follow that the old saying about much smoke and some fire is not too dependable, though it must be admitted that one tree in 1843 provided, shortly, enough wood for a very great fire.[182]

This is probably the setting in which to offer comment on another idle story. A present-day critic at the close of his charge of plagiarism adds for good measure: “When I was active with the denomination it was currently reported that people, on entering Mrs. White’s room, frequently found her copying from a book on her lap, but as they entered, she tried to conceal the book.”

If Mrs. White wished to copy something from a book, why should she wish to hide the fact from a visitor? In the preface to the 1888 edition of The Great Controversy she announced to all the world that she did borrow, at times, the words of others. Which is another way of saying that sometimes she would have their books before her!

Exhaustive inquiry and investigation produces the following as the only apparent source of this story: Mrs. White was writing. A young minister entered her study. She quickly covered her writing with her apron. She happened to be writing a letter that discussed him, and, incidentally, discussed him favorably, and she did not wish him to learn that fact at the time!

[182]For documentation on the 1843 tree climbing story, see F. D. Nichol, The Midnight Cry, pp. 377, 378.

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Chapter 30—Literary Borrowings and Inspiration

The Plagiarism Charge—Part III The obvious purpose behind the charge of plagiarism is the endeavor to show that Mrs. White really did not write, as she claimed, by inspiration of God. We have discovered that her literary borrowings were limited, and that she cannot rightly be charged with any attempt to deceive. Thus only one question more remains to be considered: Did Mrs. White’s borrowings invalidate or in any degree dilute her claim that she wrote by inspiration of God?

We could hardly hope to provide an answer to this question that would be satisfactory to all, and for the reason that it involves at least in part, another question: What is the nature of inspiration? Devout theologians through the centuries have never been able to agree on the answer. And this is to be expected, for the divine inspiration of a prophet, whereby he presents to us messages that are different in quality and authority from the messages of others, is obviously a manifestation of the supernatural, and thus beyond our full comprehension. However, some observations may be made that will bring the matter into clearer focus and help us to settle the particular problem before us, that of the inspiration of Mrs. White’s writings.

There are two extreme positions that have been held on the subject of inspiration. At one extreme stand certain ultraloyal believers in the Bible and the supernatural, who picture a prophet as being so essentially different from other men that he dwells in a kind of vacuum, isolated completely from any human influence or ideas, with his hand moving, as it were, automatically under divine dictation, and lo an inspired manuscript is created! We [460] respect those who hold such an extreme position, but we disagree with them in their view.

The other extreme is that of the religious liberals, who think of prophets simply as good men, but perhaps no more inspired than great poets, or artists, for example, According to this view, prophets, though they wrote with great spiritual power, revealed an insight that might be different in degree but not in kind from that of other great writers.

A Middle Position on Inspiration

We believe that the Bible justifies neither extreme position. The Bible pictures a prophet as someone very human, a man of like passions as we are, who employs human language and human facilities. But the Bible also pictures him as a man who in a supernatural way is filled with the light of Heaven, and who conveys to men the light, the instruction, that God has given to him.

But in conveying to men his divinely secured message, he must employ human language. If he is describing a vision that includes a scene of earthly events, and finds, for example, that a historian has phrased tersely that scene, why must we conclude that he is a fraud because he draws from a historian a few lines of description?

Or why should it be considered an evidence that a prophet is false because he borrows something from the writings of a Bible commentator, for example? There are those who would attempt to challenge the inspiration of Moses because various of the laws he penned parallel closely certain codes already on record in surrounding nations. And others would attempt to discredit the inspired character of the sermon on the mount because some of the beatitudes sound very much like certain sayings of non-Christian holy men and philosophers. But what the Bible critics forget is that Christ is the light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world. Thus in all ages there have been men who uttered great truths, though those truths were often intermingled with errors.

The uniqueness of the prophet is that in a wholly distinctive manner his mind is illumined by God to write only truth. If he finds that a Bible commentator has aptly and tersely stated a truth, [461] why should the borrowing of that terse statement prove that the prophet is a fraud? We think it may reasonably prove the opposite. Only a prophet of God could know with certainty whether a particular statement by some writer presented a great truth in wholly accurate form.

“The Words ... Are My Own”

Early in her public life Mrs. White declared, in commenting on the relationship between a scene portrayed before her in vision and the writing out of that scene:

“Although I am as dependent upon the Spirit of the Lord in writing my views as I am in receiving them, yet the words I employ in describing what I have seen are my own, unless they be those spoken to me by an angel, which I always enclose in marks of quotation.”—The Review and Herald, October 8, 1867, p. 260.

Place beside this her statement in the Author’s Preface first published in The Great Controversy in 1888, and quoted at length in chapter 28. Mrs. White there describes how a prophet receives revelations and how he conveys those revelations to men: There is illumination by the Holy Spirit. Scenes are presented. Spiritual thoughts and ideas are brought to the mind. Then the prophet takes up his pen and proceeds to present, in the language of men, what has been seen and heard and impressed on his mind in vision. And it is in this context that Mrs. White frankly states that she has drawn, at times, on the language of men as found in histories and other sources.

Someone may say that this is not the way he understands inspiration. But he must know that he is expressing simply his own understanding of a very great mystery. The Bible gives us no detailed information on how the prophets related their writing of visions to their receiving of them. We can only draw inferences from their very brief and almost incidental remarks. Mrs. White gives us a rather explicit statement of how one who claims that she wrote by inspiration actually did her writing. We think that explanation reasonable and entirely consistent with Scripture and with the basic fact that the human and the divine are united in some mysterious way in the work of a prophet. [462]

The burden of proof rests upon the critic to show that Mrs. White’s presentation of the combining of the human and the divine in a prophet’s work is inconsistent with all that we definitely know concerning the way in which Bible prophets received and wrote out their visions. We do not believe that such proof can be produced. And in the absence of that proof, Mrs. White’s explanation of how she wrote The Great Controversy, for example, permits us to believe that she truly wrote by inspiration, even though she borrowed passages from the writings of others. And, needless to add, the general principles she presented in her preface to The Great Controversy apply also to her other works.

Is there any reason why a prophet, because he is a prophet, should not read and study attentively what others have written? Even though inspiration in a prophet consists of a uniquely divine illumination of mind on events and spiritual principles, why may not he seek from every written form of speech the most effective, the most graphic, ways to convey the truth and the light that has been revealed to him in vision?

Human and Divine Related in Miracles

No one believes more fully than do Seventh-day Adventists that there is a distinctly supernatural, and thus miraculous, operation involved in the manifestation of the prophetic gift. But, speaking of the miraculous, we note from Scripture that when Christ worked mighty miracles He displayed His power only to do that which men could not do for themselves, For example, He put clay on a blind man’s eyes. He then told the man to go wash it off. He restored the dead man, Lazarus, to his sisters. But strictly speaking, He performed only the miracle of restoring life to Lazarus. He then left to men the task of unwinding the funeral bandages so that Lazarus could walk and see and act as a living man.

But Christ’s miracles are no less supernatural because of the human actions in connection with them. We believe God has a purpose in this combining of divine and human, a purpose so often forgotten by those who superstitiously would look for miraculous happenings of every sort, as if the divine should substitute [463] for the human on every side and in every feature of life. A careful reading of Scripture reveals that God is sparing of the miraculous, and at no time displays His power merely to create wonder or substitute for accomplishments that men could produce if they diligently tutored and employed all the talents and resources He has already given to them.

Without seeking to draw a close analogy, we believe that this principle of divine economy in the display of the miraculous may help us to reach a right conclusion on the question before us. We think that the unprejudiced reader of The Great Controversy, for example, will have no difficulty in concluding that the book gives evidence of a grand design that was not copied from human writings, and that the limited borrowings from other authors do not dim the conviction as to that grand design. Or, to change the figure: There is a pulsing life in that book that cannot be found in secular or church histories, certainly not in the histories from which Mrs. White borrowed some of her descriptions. We believe the life that pulses in that book is God breathed—inspired of God. That there should be the human touch of human hands before this miracle of life actually speaks to men, detracts nought from the miracle.

Not only were Mrs. White’s literary borrowings limited; they were also not central to the grand design or purpose of her writing. They are, by and large, part of the frame of the inspired pictures of truth that she seeks to bring before our eyes. The measure of the inspiration of an artist is not the frame of his picture, but the picture!

A Critic’s Own Testimony

No one can read any of Mrs. White’s works, very particularly the two cited so generally in the plagiarism charge—Sketches From, the Life of Paul and The Great Controversy—without sensing immediately that the historical, or merely descriptive, part of her writings is incidental to the spiritual, and though good, is not the real justification for the publication of any of her books; that even the occasional words of a Bible commentator that might be woven [464] into the fabric of certain works are not indispensable to them.

We shall let Canright be witness to this fact. Here is what he wrote in 1885—two years before he left the Seventh-day Adventist Church—concerning the four volumes of The Spirit of Prophecy. First his statement on volumes 1 to 3:

“While I have carefully read the first, second, and third volumes of ‘Spirit of Prophecy,’ heaven has seemed very near to me. If the Spirit of God does not speak to us in these writings, then I should despair of ever discerning it. Oh, how precious the dear Saviour looks! How infinitely valuable the salvation of one soul! How hateful and inexcusable sin appears! God is good, and the sweetest thing on this earth is to love and serve Him.”—The Review and Herald, January 6, 1885, p. 16.

And in the same issue he comments on volume 4 of The Spirit of Prophecy, which is also called volume 4 of The Great Controversy:[183]

“I have read many books, but never one which has interested me so intensely and impressed me so profoundly as Vol. IV. of ‘The Great Controversy,’ by Sr. White. Perhaps it may be partly because I see things differently; but I am sure that is not wholly the reason. The historical part is good, but that which was of the most intense interest to me, was the last part, beginning with the ‘Origin of Evil.’ The ideas concerning the nature and attributes of God, the character of Christ, and the rebellion of Lucifer in heaven, carry with them their own proof of inspiration. They moved the depths of my soul as nothing else ever did. I feel that I have a new and higher conception of the goodness and forbearance of God, the awful wickedness of Satan, and the tender love of Christ. I wish everybody could read it whether of our people or not. Get it, brethren, and read it carefully.”—Spiritual Gifts 4a:9.

Canright did not have to write this eulogy of Mrs. White’s writings. He wrote it of his own free will as a spontaneous expression of his conception of the uniqueness of her work, its spiritual significance, and its effect upon his own heart. That testimony he could not have borne after reading all the histories in the world or all the other secular works from many of which Mrs. White might have drawn to provide background and framework for a presentation of spiritual truths. Nor do we think he would have written thus after reading all the Bible commentaries available.

[183]This is the 1884 edition that became the special object of attack by Canright and others.

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He confesses: “The historical part is good.” But what really stirred him, what he saw unique in the writing, was Mrs. White’s presentation of spiritual truths and her explanation of the ways of God to men that could not be found elsewhere. These presentations of the deep things of God, said he, “moved the depths of my soul as nothing else ever did.”

That two years later he should, in his enmity against all things Seventh-day Adventist, seek to indict Mrs. White’s writings, provides no grounds for invalidating this glowing testimony that he freely bore in 1885.

An Impressive Similarity

The thoughts he here expresses are so similar to those set forth in certain sentences in the publishers’ preface in The Great Controversy as it appeared in 1885, that it might easily have been written by him. Listen to these words from it: “We believe that the writer has received the illumination of the Holy Spirit in preparing these pages.... No one who knows what it is to hold communion with our heavenly Father, will fail to realize that the writer of these pages has drawn from the heavenly fountain, and received help from the sanctuary.”[184] But it is these very words that have been held up to ridicule through the years by all critics as they have echoed the charge, initially framed by Canright, that Mrs. White’s borrowing from other writers proved that she did not receive “the illumination of the Holy Spirit,” and was really a false prophet. The critics declare that as soon as The Great Controversy came from the press “leading brethren” “discovered” that Mrs. White had borrowed from other writers. Canright was one of the “leading brethren.” But instead of raising a “protest,” he wrote a eulogy.

Amadon wrote in his newspaper article of 1907 of the Englishwoman in South Africa who saw a copy of Sketches From the Life of Paul, and sought to buy one, but could not because the book

[184]Though the text of The Great Controversy remained the same from 1884 to 1888, the Publishers’ Preface was expanded in 1885, when an illustrated edition of the work was prepared for use by colporteurs. The different printings from 1884 to 1888 were described on the title page as “Second Edition,” “Third Edition,” etc. But because the text of the book remained unchanged, we have ignored these in speaking of different editions of the work.

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was out of print. Then she finally copied out the book by hand. The critics do not question this story; instead they cite it as a choice proof of the wide demand. Then, as we have noted, they draw unwarranted deductions from that “proof.” But we think there is a deduction that can rightly be drawn, that proves something quite contrary to what the critics desire. Why would this woman be so thrilled with this book that she would go to such labor to copy it if it were “largely” copied from Conybeare and Howson’s work? And we know that such borrowing as Mrs. White actually did, consisted almost wholly of historical background material that could probably have been drawn from any one of several current works on Paul’s life. Here is a strange situation indeed! That is, strange to those who have not read her book, or who have read it in the hostile way in which unbelievers often read the Bible. To those who have read it with unprejudiced hearts, the matter is easily understandable. Mrs. White’s work contained certain revelations of spiritual truth from Paul’s life and epistles that no other current writer on the apostle was able to present.

Correct Statement in Preface

The critics declare that the publishers’ preface to Sketches From the Life of Paul is deceitful, in view of her borrowings, because it says: “The writer of this book, having received especial help from the Spirit of God, is able to throw light upon the teachings of Paul and their application to our own time, as no other authors are prepared to do.” But the Englishwoman in South Africa would evidently agree with the publishers. The preface further declares:

“The historical narrative is traced down in a clear and connected manner.... Besides this, from his [Paul’s] labors and sufferings, and from the instruction which he gave to the churches under his care, practical moral lessons are drawn for the church of to-day. This is the distinctive feature of the book, and is that which makes it particularly valuable.”—Page iii.

We think the Englishwoman would fully agree that these “moral lessons” were “the distinctive feature of the book.” [467]

How could the publishers have stated the matter more correctly!

And so we come to the end of this most plausible charge of plagiarism with these evident conclusions before us: During her long life Mrs. White wrote many thousands of pages of manuscripts, which became articles and books. Of all this vast amount of matter only an insignificant part is borrowed from other authors. And the borrowed part is most certainly not central to the spiritual theme that distinguishes her writing. Thus if the little that she borrowed were deleted, it would scarcely affect the total of the writings, but much more importantly, it would not affect the quality and the force of the message that is contained in her writings. She borrowed the little she did with no attempt to deceive and for reasons which she clearly stated. The lawsuit threat is a groundless rumor, refuted by every available documentary fact. Need more be said! [468]

Chapter 31—Did Mrs. White’s Secretaries Write Her Books?

Charge: “No prophet of God ever made stronger claims than did Mrs. White. In Spiritual Gifts 2:293, she says: ‘I am just as dependent upon the Spirit of the Lord in relating or writing a vision as in having a vision.’ Here she claims that the very words in which her visions are recorded are of divine inspiration. But ...:

“1. She often changed what she had written, and wrote it very differently. I have seen her scratch out a line, a sentence, and even a whole page, and write it over differently....

“2. I have seen her sit with pen in hand and read her manuscript to her husband, while he suggested changes, which she made. She would scratch out her own words and put in his....

“3. As she was ignorant of grammar, she employed accomplished writers to take her manuscript and correct it, improve its wording, polish it up, and put it in popular style, so her books would sell better....

“4. One of her employees worked for over eight years preparing her largest book. After completing it, she said: ‘I got a little here, and a little there, and a little somewhere else, and wove it all together.’ The manager of one of their largest publishing-houses, who was intimately acquainted with her work, said that he did not suppose that Mrs. White ever prepared a whole chapter for one of her popular subscription books.”

“Just recently we received the best of evidence that Fannie Bolton wrote ‘Steps to Christ’ without any dictation or assistance from Mrs. White whatever. It was her product in toto, but was published as Mrs. White’s production.”

We believe that the chapters on the question of plagiarism have provided at least a partial answer to the charge before us. Except for the part that relates to the writing of Steps to Christ, this charge rests on the following reasoning: Mrs. White claimed that she wrote the very words of her visions by direct dictation of the Spirit. It is evident that her husband and literary assistants did make corrections, at least of grammar and construction. Therefore her claim is fraudulent. [469]

As a foundation for the charge the following words are quoted from her pen: “I am just as dependent upon the Spirit of the Lord in relating or writing a vision, as in having the vision.” These words, standing alone, might support the doctrine known as verbal inspiration; namely, that a prophet, in recording his message, writes exactly and only those words dictated to him by God. But let us put this quoted sentence in its context:

“After I come out of vision I do not at once remember all that I have seen, and the matter is not so clear before me until I write, then the scene rises before me as was presented in vision, and I can write with freedom. Sometimes the things which I have seen are hid from me after I come out of vision, and I cannot call them to mind until I am brought before a company where that vision applies, then the things which I have seen come to my mind with force. I am just as dependent upon the Spirit of the LORD in relating or writing a vision, as in having the vision. It is impossible for me to call up things which have been shown me unless the LORD brings them before me at the time that He is pleased to have me relate or write them.”—Spiritual Gifts 2:293 (1860).

Doctrine of Verbal Inspiration Not Taught

It is evident, with the addition of the related sentences, that Mrs. White is not teaching verbal inspiration at all. Her dependence on the Spirit of the Lord in relating a vision has to do with the Lord’s bringing sharply before her mind again, at the time that He wishes her to relate or write the vision, that which she had seen before. Otherwise she felt that she was unable to present her message. The Lord did not always call upon her at once to write out a vision or to relate it. When the right time came, the Lord refreshed her mind as to what she had seen in vision, and then she wrote or related it. Place alongside this quotation another in which Mrs. White describes the difference between what she sees in vision, by revelation of the Spirit, and what she writes of that vision. We quoted these words in the chapter on plagiarism. They apply here also:

“Although I am as dependent upon the Spirit of the Lord in writing my views as I am in receiving them, yet the words I employ in describing what [470] I have seen are my own, unless they be those spoken to me by an angel, which I always enclose in marks of quotation.”—The Review and Herald, October 8, 1867, p. 260.

In full accord with this clearcut disavowal of verbal inspiration, is an official pronouncement of the General Conference. The following is quoted from the preamble to a resolution passed at the session of 1883:

“We believe the light given by God to his servants is by the enlightenment of the mind, thus imparting the thoughts, and not (except in rare cases) the very words in which the ideas should be expressed.”—The Review and Herald, November 27, 1883, p. 741.

Why She Read Her Manuscripts to Others

In the setting of these statements by Mrs. White, and the General Conference pronouncement, how pointless is the critic’s inquiry: “If God gave her the words, why did she scratch them out and alter them?” In fact, most of the sections of this charge disappear in the light of her statements. Why should she not read her manuscripts to her husband? Authors often read their manuscripts to those who will listen to them. An author’s purpose in so reading may not be with a view to making any change of thought in the writing, but only to make sure that he has expressed his thought in language that will be most effective, most clear, most expressive, and least capable of misunderstanding. The listener may suggest changes in words, but that does not necessarily imply changes in thought. There is a world of difference. How often a listener may say to an author: “I believe I understand the thought you seek to present, but it would be clearer to me if you expressed it in a little different words.” Does the listener thus feel that he is in any way entering into the creative work of that author? Not at all.

The Illustration of Lazarus

We would repeat, in a slightly different context, an illustration used in the preceding chapter: We do not minimize the miracle-working power of Christ because Lazarus, whom He [471] raised from the dead, could not speak until human hands had unwound the funeral sheets that bound him. Then why should we feel it necessary to conclude that Mrs. White was not displaying a miraculous gift from God in the writing she brought forth, simply because the human hands of secretaries released some inhibiting bands of faulty grammar before the vision spoke to men?

Of course it may be said that if the Lord had really been with Mrs. White, He would have given her good grammar as well as given her true visions. Or that if the Lord had really been with the Seventh-day Adventist people, He would have selected for them a prophet who really was well educated and did not make errors of grammar.

Saved From One Problem

But what if the Lord had selected for the prophetic gift a person highly educated in English and possessed of obvious natural gifts in literary lines? Then someone would declare that there was nothing at all unusual about her good writing, her beautiful thoughts, her incisive expressions, because she had been well trained in literary lines, and gave natural evidence that she was thus well gifted.

Certainly God might have given to Mrs. White a miraculous gift of perfect grammar as she wrote out her visions. But her failure, sometimes, to employ correct grammar or flawless literary constructions does not thereby prove that God did not give her visions. Because of the fact that most readers of the Bible do not read the Greek, they do not know that the apostle John wrote many ungrammatical sentences in the book of the Revelation. Yet we have never heard any lover of the Bible offering derogatory remarks about John as a prophet of God, nor have we ever heard any of them criticizing the English translators of the book of Revelation as tamperers with the Word of God because they corrected John’s grammar. But the English translators did for John’s Revelation precisely what Mrs. White’s literary assistants did for some of her work. [472]

Assistants Did Not Change Thought

Someone may interject here: “But the translators changed only errors of grammar and construction. They did not add new thoughts or make sweeping changes.” That is correct. Neither did Mrs. White’s literary assistants. What evidence is presented to support the charge that “the manager of one of their largest publishing houses ... did not suppose that Mrs. White ever prepared a whole chapter for one of her popular subscription books. They were all the work of others”? The answer is, No evidence at all. Obviously there were changes of words in revising grammar and of phrases in smoothing literary construction. But that was true of the translators’ work on the Revelation.

We have found repeatedly that the critic’s charges have been proved groundless. The same is true here. Note that he identifies neither “the manager” nor the publishing house, nor does he say to whom this unidentified manager said what he is supposed to have said. Yet because the critic declares that an unnamed manager said to another unnamed individual that he “did not suppose that Mrs. White ever prepared a whole chapter for one of her popular subscription books,” therefore the reader is supposed to conclude that she did not. In fact, the reader is supposed to conclude that Mrs. White was such an ignorant woman, so unversed in grammar and all literary matters, that nothing she wrote was halfway presentable until much work had been done upon it.

We freely admit that her grammar and literary constructions, at times, were not perfect, and that literary assistants did, by making certain grammatical corrections, improve the clarity and give a certain polish to the writing. But that is something fundamentally different from what is being charged. And what proof can we present that the charge is false? Strictly speaking, we ought not to be required to defend Mrs. White against a charge which is based on hearsay and gossip and supposition, and the indirect testimony of an unnamed manager speaking to an unnamed individual.

But so great is the power of hearsay, so fatal a fascination has gossip and supposition for many minds, that a critic always has [473] a heavy advantage. He needs only to start a rumor in circulation, to tell a plausible story with a certain intonation of the voice, in order to play havoc with a reputation. Against the unsupported charge that Mrs. White was so hopelessly unlettered and ignorant that any quality or worth in her writings was edited in by assistants, some very specific evidence may be presented.

Literary Quality of Mrs. White’s Earliest Writings

1. In the first decades of Mrs. White’s writings she had no literary assistant aiding her, except her husband. But he, the same as she, had but a few grades of formal education, yet Mrs. White’s writings in those earlier decades reveal that she had no mean grasp of English, and only occasionally is a grammatical error revealed. What is more important, by far, her writings reveal there the same pulsing life and vital drive that they reveal in the later decades. There is a distinctive style running through all her writings, so much so that those who are well acquainted with her writings rarely have difficulty in identifying them without seeing her name.

2. A great many of her letters and manuscripts, beginning with the late 1840’s have been preserved. Examination of these—and some of them have been on exhibit at different times in various parts of the world—reveal several interesting facts. There are differences in grades of handwriting. Sometimes she wrote under much greater pressure than at other times. Indeed, in her later years the pressure of her writing became very great. She would often rise at an early hour in the morning and write as rapidly as possible, hour after hour. At such times the penmanship, as would be expected, is poorer than at other times. When she was not under pressure her handwriting is often superior to that of the average college student. And, as also might be expected, the grammar and the literary constructions are definitely better in those manuscripts that do not reveal pressure of writing. But all her letters and original handwritten book manuscripts—that is, writings untouched by any other hands—reveal the same pulsing life, the same [474] vigorous spiritual drive, the same incisive presentation of spiritual truth that her printed books reveal. This is an impressive fact.

Mrs. White’s Public Addresses

3. Not only did Mrs. White write; she spoke, and her speaking was often on important occasions, and before large Adventist and non-Adventist congregations. Nor was she routinely dependent, as some notable people are, upon a manuscript, in order to be sure that she had something worth while to say to her audience. She generally Spoke extemporaneously, with no more than the Bible before her.[185] Now if she was the woefully benighted person that the critics, with their suppositions, hearsay, and gossip would have the reader believe, how painfully embarrassing it would have been to the Adventist leadership through all the years to have Mrs. White standing before great congregations as one of the chief spokesmen for the movement.

But did the church leaders seek to bar nonchurch members from hearing her, lest the movement be brought into embarrassment? No. On the contrary, they sought always to secure for her the largest hearing possible before those who were not church members. And not only in America but in Europe and in Australia. We do not say that her words, when stenographically reported, showed perfect grammar and construction. Rare is the public speaker who, speaking extemporaneously, can stand revealed as free of literary errors in a stenographic report. We simply say that Mrs. White, in her public speaking, compares favorably with other public speakers, as far as the use of the English language is concerned. In public address we look for conformity to ordinary rules of grammar, for vigor and quality of thought, for effective illustrations, and for sequence and fitting climax. Mrs. White had all these. We think she had more. We think that she presented spiritual truths with a force and a vigor and an appeal to the heart that was not found in the sermons of others. There are many still living who can testify to the truth of this statement.[186]

[185]D. E. Robinson, who served as one of her secretaries during the last twelve years of her life, and who reported many of her sermons, states that she never even used notes when preaching.

[186]The writer of these lines heard her speak on a number of occasions.

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Newspaper Comments on Her Speaking

At the time of her husband’s death, in 1881, some of the newspapers included in their sketch of his life a comment on Mrs. White and her public platform ability. We quote briefly from two:

“He has been admirably aided in his ministerial and educational labors by his wife, Ellen G. White, one of the ablest platform speakers and writers in the west.”—Lansing [Michigan] Republican, Aug. 9, 1881.

“In 1846 he married Ellen G. Harmon, a woman of extraordinary endowments, who has been a co-laborer in all his work and contributed largely to his success by her gifts as a writer and especially her power as a public speaker.”—The Echo [Detroit], Aug. 10, 1881.

Of a lecture delivered by Mrs. White on the subject of Christian temperance, in Battle Creek, Michigan, in 1887, a newspaper of that city said:

“There was a good attendance including a large number of our most prominent people, at the lecture of Mrs. Ellen G. White, at the Tabernacle, last evening.

“This lady gave her audience a most eloquent discourse, which was listened to with marked interest and attention. Her talk was interspersed with instructive facts which she had gathered in her recent visit to foreign lands, and demonstrated that this gifted lady has, in addition to her many other rare qualifications, a great faculty for attentive careful observation and a remarkable memory of details, this together with her fine delivery and her faculty of clothing her ideas in choice, beautiful and appropriate language, made her lecture one of the best that has ever been delivered by any lady in our city. That she may soon favor our community with another address, is the earnest wish of all who attended last evening, and should she do so, there will be a large attendance.”—Battle Creek Daily Journal, Oct. 5, 1887.[187]

No one has ever suggested that she had literary assistants on the platform when she spoke, to polish her words as they poured forth extemporaneously!

Literary Assistants Testify

4. There is the personal testimony of Mrs. White’s literary assistant, Marian Davis, who from the year 1879, until her death, in 1904, worked for Mrs. White. Intimately connected with Mrs.

[187]The newspaper gave the following title and subtitle to this news story: “Mrs. Ellen G. White’s Able Address. A Characteristic and Eloquent Discourse by This Remarkable Lady.”

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White for a longer period than any other of her assistants—except her own son, William C.—Miss Davis should be able to offer valuable testimony. In the year 1900 the story was being circulated that literary assistants were so largely doing Mrs. White’s work that in one instance, at least, she had instructed an assistant to write out a testimony and send it to a prominent member in Battle Creek. Needless to say, Mrs. White declared that there was no truth in this story. Her statement on the matter may be found in a letter to G. A. Irwin.[188] But we are not here concerned with what Mrs. White said in denial, but with a statement that Marian Davis wrote at the time and sent as an enclosure in Mrs. White’s letter to Elder Irwin. Her statement follows:

“A report in circulation in Battle Creek has just come to my notice. Lest, through this report, any should be led to reject the instruction and warning of the Spirit of God, I feel it a duty to say what I know in regard to the matter in question.

“It is reported that the writing of a testimony for a prominent man in Battle Creek was intrusted to one of Sister White’s former workers, or that she was given matter for him, with instruction to fill out the points, so that the testimony was virtually her work.

“I cannot think that any one who has been connected with Sr. White’s work could make such a statement as this. I cannot think that any one who is acquainted with Sr. White’s manner of writing could possibly believe it. The burden she feels when the case of an individual is presented before her, the intense pressure under which she works, often rising at midnight to write out the warnings given her, and often for days, weeks, or even months, writing again and again concerning it, as if she could not free herself from the feeling of responsibility for that soul,—no one who has known anything of these experiences, could believe that she would intrust to another the writing of a testimony.

“For more than twenty years I have been connected with Sister White’s work. During this time I have never been asked either to write out a testimony from oral instruction, or to fill out the points in matter already written. The one who is reported to have made the statement was never, to my own knowledge, either asked or permitted to do such a thing. And from my own knowledge of the work, as well as from the statements of Sister White herself, I have the strongest possible ground for disbelieving that such a thing was done.

[188]Listed in the files of the Ellen G. White Publications office as Letter 61, 1900.

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“A word more. Letters are sometimes sent to Sister White making inquiries to which, for want of time, she cannot write out a reply. These letters have been read to her, and she has given directions as to how they should be answered. The answers have been written out by W. C. White or myself. But Sister White’s name was not appended to these letters. The name of the writer was signed, with the words, For Mrs. E. G. White.

“Hoping that this statement may bring relief to some minds, I remain,

“Yours in the work,
“[Signed] M. Davis.”

While the question Miss Davis is discussing is not the writing of a book but the writing of a testimony, the principle is the same so far as the relation of literary assistants is concerned.

5. Another literary assistant, D. E. Robinson, who connected with Mrs. White’s office in 1903 and labored there until 1915, testifies as follows:

“In all good conscience I can testify that never was I presumptuous enough to venture to add any ideas of my own or to do other than follow with most scrupulous care the thoughts of the author.”—Quoted in The Ellen G. White Books, p. 8.[189]

Mrs. White’s Own Statement

6. We have also Mrs. White’s straightforward statement as to the relationship of her assistants to the writing of her books:

“She [Marian Davis] is my book-maker. Fannie [Bolton, who had put in circulation the false story that an assistant had written a testimony,] never was my book-maker. How are my books made? Marian does not put in her claim for recognition. She does her work in this way. She takes my articles which are published in the papers, and pastes them in blank books. She also has a copy of all the letters I write. In preparing a chapter for a book, Marian remembers that I have written something on that special point, which may make the matter more forcible. She begins to search for this, and if when she finds it, she sees that it will make the chapter more clear, she adds it.

“The books are not Marian’s productions, but my own, gathered from all my writings. Marian has a large field from which to draw, and her ability to arrange the matter is of great value to me. It saves my poring over a mass of matter, which I have no time to do.[190]

[189]This is a sixteen-page brochure by W. C. White, D. E. Robinson, and A. L. White, and issued by the Trustees of the Ellen G. White Publications, General Conference, Takoma Park, D.C.

[190]Reference is here made to the preparation of the later subscription books. Many of her earlier books Mrs. White wrote chapter by chapter in consecutive order.

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“So you understand that Marian is a most valuable help to me in bringing out my books. Fannie had none of this work to do. Marian has read chapters to her, and Fannie has sometimes made suggestions as to the arrangement of the matter.

“This is the difference between the workers. As I have stated, Fannie has been strictly forbidden to change my words for her words. As spoken by the heavenly agencies, the words are severe in their simplicity; and I try to put the thoughts into such simple language that a child can understand every word uttered. The words of some one else would not rightly represent me.

“I have written thus fully in order that you may understand the matter. Fannie Bolton may claim that she has made my books, but she has not done so. This has been Marian’s field, she has qualified herself for this, and her work is far in advance of any work Fannie has done for me.”—Letter 61a, 1900.

The foregoing six points of evidence we present in answer to the undocumented hearsay quoted by the critics in support of their charge that Mrs. White was a grossly ignorant woman, with so little literary knowledge that she was utterly dependent on others, and that indeed her books are largely the work of others.

The Sad Story of Fannie Bolton

Note again that Mrs. White, in the letter we have quoted, refers to two literary assistants, one Marian Davis and the other Fannie Bolton. It is evident from the letter that Mrs. White is critical of Miss Bolton, and for very specific reasons. As already indicated, it was Miss Bolton who invented the story that Mrs. White had instructed her to write a testimony to someone in Battle Creek. It was Miss Bolton, also, who declared that she had played a very important role in preparing Mrs. White’s writings for publication, that indeed she edited into those writings some of their choicest passages. Furthermore, the present-day critic whom we have cited as charging that Fannie Bolton wrote Steps to Christ in toto, declares that it was she who made this claim to him.

Now we confess that bringing out into the light charges and counter-charges regarding those long dead is a sorrowful business at best. But we must either bring out the sorry facts, or else leave Mrs. White’s critics free to gloat over a most damaging charge. Perhaps no charge against Mrs. White ever seemed more plausible [479] or ever could have been more disastrous in its implications than this claim by Fannie Bolton.

How eagerly wound people listen to a woman who had worked right in Mrs. White’s home on her manuscripts. Surely she should know whereof she speaks. And if she has done such creative work on the manuscripts, how selfish and deceiving of Mrs. White not to give her recognition. That is what makes her charge so potentially dangerous. Of course if everyone who heard this charge had taken time to examine the six points of evidence just presented, Miss Bolton’s statements would have been viewed with great incredulity. But then, too few people take time to examine a matter carefully and critically before coming to a conclusion. Hence Miss Bolton’s declarations, as might easily be imagined, created no small stir. And needless to add, Mrs. White’s critics found in Fannie Bolton the kind of support that they were wanting. Hence the charge before us that Fannie Bolton wrote Steps to Christ “in toto,” “without any dictation or assistance from Mrs. White whatever.”

We are glad the charge is specific. We shall seek to answer it in the same way. But first, a general statement concerning Miss Bolton to put the whole matter in proper perspective.

Miss Bolton’s Service for Mrs. White

Miss Bolton began service for Mrs. White early in 1888, at the age of 28. The record of her seven years of service is a rather tempestuous one. Previous to her employment by Mrs. White she had written a few articles for a Chicago newspaper. Other than that we have found no evidence that she had done any literary work.

In the files of the E. G. White Publications is a long exchange of correspondence between Mrs. White and Miss Bolton. The record reveals that previous to final severance in 1895, she was several times dropped from employment. The prime reason for her discontent was that she felt that her literary ability was much greater than Mrs. White’s and that she could therefore much improve the manuscripts placed in her hands by editing into them [480] her own language and her own thoughts. On this point Mrs. White wrote to her on February 6, 1894:

“If you had the task given you of handling Old and New Testament writings, you would see large improvements to be made, great additions and subtractions and changes of expression; you would put in words and ideas to suit your standard of how it should appear. We should then have Fannie Bolton’s life and expressions, which would be considered by you a wonderful improvement; but disapproved of God.”

It was Miss Bolton, as indicated earlier, who created the story that one of Mrs. White’s secretaries had drafted a testimony for a certain person in Battle Creek. It seems that she composed this story, not so much to discredit Mrs. White, as to prove that she also had the prophetic gift.

After her final severance from Mrs. White’s employ in 1895 in Australia, where Mrs. White had been living for several years, Miss Bolton came to America. Over the years she had several times written letters of abject apology to Mrs. White for her vain and unseemly words and actions. The only picture that one can draw from these letters is that of an unstable personality kept in constant turmoil by an overweening conceit as to literary ability. Back in America she began to display the same characteristics in her statements on Mrs. White and religious subjects in general. A letter from G. A. Irwin[191] to Mrs. White, regarding Fannie Bolton’s activities, makes this observation: “It is the general opinion of the better class of brethren in Battle Creek that the poor woman is not sound in mind.”—June 11, 1900.

An undated manuscript of Miss Bolton’s, which was evidently written sometime in 1901, and addressed to “Dear Brethren in the truth” once more expresses her contrition over any wrong conceptions of Sister White that she had created by anything that she had said in the past, and confirming her confident belief that God was leading His people forward uniquely through Mrs. White.

In the years that followed she wavered back and forth. It is no secret, but a matter of open, public record, that her mind finally

[191]President of the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists from 1897-1901.

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became unbalanced to the point that required her confinement in State hospitals for three different periods.[192] She died in 1926.

Did Fannie Bolton Write “Steps to Christ”?

This, in brief, is the sad story of Fannie Bolton, not as hearsay and gossip have it, but as the documents reveal it. Only the merciful God, who knows the limitations of body and mind of all His creatures, should rightly be judge in her case. We have written with no desire to judge or to censure, but only because the name of Fannie Bolton has been so widely and plausibly used by critics.

There is naturally one question that arises in anyone’s mind at this point: if Fannie Bolton, wholly unaided, wrote a book like Steps to Christ, in 1892, when a relatively young woman, why did she not write other books to stir the hearts of men and quicken their desire for heaven? It is true that she did write a few poems, some of them of good quality, but we search in vain for anything from her pen that might be a companion volume to Steps to Christ. How strange this flash of brilliance in 1892 that never again threw light across the path of spiritually needy mankind! One of the reasons she was restive working at what she called monotonous tasks for Mrs. White was that she felt that she herself could write. Mrs. White released her. Ever afterward she had opportunity to write, but the writings never came.

We have already noted that Miss Bolton began to work for Mrs. White early in 1888. Steps to Christ was published in 1892. We present, now, in parallel columns (1) certain passages from Mrs. White’s writings published previous to 1888 and (2) certain passages from Steps to Christ:[193]

An Exhibit of Early Sources of “Steps to Christ” Expressions

1872—Testimonies for the Church 3:106, 107

Steps to Christ, 47

“The warfare against self is the greatest battle that was ever fought. The yielding of self, surrendering all

“The warfare against self is the greatest battle that was ever fought. The yielding of self, surrendering all to the will of God, requires a

[192]Twice in a State hospital in Michigan, once in a State hospital in Florida.

[193]Page references are to the 1908 illustrated edition.

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to the will of God, and being clothed with humility, possessing that love that is pure, peaceable, and easy to be entreated, full of gentleness and good fruits, is not an easy attainment.”

struggle; but the soul must submit to God before it can be renewed in holiness.”

1885—Review and Herald, February 3

Steps to Christ, 126-128

“‘Trust in the Lord.’ Each day has its burdens, its cares, and perplexities; and when we meet, how ready we are to talk of our difficulties and trials. So many borrowed troubles intrude, so many fears are indulged, such a weight of anxiety is expressed, that one might almost suppose that we had no pitying, loving Saviour, ready to hear all our requests, and to be to us a present help in every time of need.”

“The Psalmist says, ‘Trust in the Lord, and do good; so shalt thou dwell in the land, and verily thou shalt be fed.’ ‘Trust in the Lord.’ Each day has its burdens, its cares and perplexities; and when we meet, how ready we are to talk of our difficulties and trials. So many borrowed troubles intrude, so many fears are indulged, such a weight of anxiety is expressed, that one might suppose we had no pitying, loving Saviour, ready to hear all our requests, and to be to us a present help in every time of need.

Some are always fearing and borrowing trouble. Every day they are surrounded by the tokens of God’s love, every day they are enjoying the bounties of his providence; but they overlook these present blessings. Their minds are continually dwelling upon something disagreeable which they fear may come; or some difficulty may really exist, which, though small, blinds their eyes to the many things which demand gratitude. The difficulties which they encounter, instead of driving them to God, the only source of help, separate them from him, because they awaken unrest and repining.

“Some are always fearing, and borrowing trouble. Every day they are surrounded with the tokens of God’s love; everyday they are enjoying the bounties of His providence; but they overlook these present blessings. Their minds are continually dwelling upon something disagreeable, which they fear may come; or some difficulty may really exist, which, though small, blinds their eyes to the many things that demand gratitude. The difficulties they encounter, instead of driving them to God, the only source of their help, separate them from Him, because they awaken unrest and repining.

“Brethren and sisters, do we well to be thus unbelieving? Why should we be ungrateful and distrustful? Jesus is our friend. All heaven is interested in our welfare; and our

“Do we well to be thus unbelieving? Why should we be ungrateful and distrustful? Jesus is our friend;

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anxiety and fear grieve the Holy Spirit of God. We should not indulge in a solicitude which only frets and wears us, but does not help us to bear trials....

all Heaven is interested in our welfare. We should not allow the perplexities and worries of every-day life to fret the mind and cloud the brow. If we do, we shall always have something to vex and annoy. We should not indulge a solicitude that only frets and wears us, but does not help us to bear trials.

“You may be perplexed in business; your prospects may grow darker and darker, and you may be threatened with loss. But do not become discouraged; cast your care upon God, and remain calm and cheerful. Begin every day with earnest prayer, not omitting to offer praise and thanksgiving. Ask for wisdom to manage your affairs with discretion, and thus prevent loss and disaster. Do all you can on your part to bring about favorable results. Jesus has promised divine aid, but not aside from human efforts. When, relying upon your tried Helper, you have done all you can, accept the result cheerfully....

“You may be perplexed in business; your prospects may grow darker and darker, and you may be threatened with loss; but do not become discouraged; cast your care upon God, and remain calm and cheerful. Pray for wisdom to manage your affairs with discretion, and thus prevent loss and disaster. Do all you can on your part to bring about favorable results. Jesus has promised His aid, but not apart from our effort. When, relying upon our Helper, you have done all you can, accept the result cheerfully.

“It is not the will of God that his people should be weighed down with care. But our Lord does not deceive us. He does not say to us, ‘Do not fear; there are no dangers in your path.’ He knows there are trials and dangers, and he deals with us plainly. He does not propose to take his people out of a world of sin and evil, but he points them to a never-failing refuge. His prayer for his disciples was, ‘I pray not that thou shouldst take them out of the world, but that thou shouldst keep them from the evil.’ ‘In the world,’ he says, ‘ye shall have tribulation; but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.’”—Page 65.

“It is not the will of God that His people should be weighed down with care. But our Lord does not deceive us. He does not say to us, ‘Do not fear; there are no dangers in your path.’ He knows there are trials and dangers, and He deals with us plainly. He does not propose to take His people out of a world of sin and evil, but He points them to a never-failing refuge. His prayer for His disciples was, ‘I pray not that Thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that Thou shouldest keep them from the evil.’ ‘In the world,’ He says, ‘ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.’”

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1885—Review and Herald,
October 27

Steps to Christ, 10

“Notwithstanding the curse was pronounced upon the earth that it should bring forth thorns and thistles, there is a flower upon the thistle. This world is not all sorrow and misery. God’s great book of nature is open for us to study; and from it we are to gain more exalted ideas of his greatness and unexcelled love and glory....

“The world, though fallen, is not all sorrow and misery. In nature itself are messages of hope and comfort. There are flowers upon the thistles, and the thorns are covered with roses.

“Every spire of grass, every opening bud and blooming flower is a token of God’s love, and should teach us a lesson of faith and trust in him. Christ calls our attention to their natural loveliness.”—Page 657.

“‘God is love,’ is written upon every opening bud, upon every spire of springing grass.”

1886—Review and Herald, September 21

Steps to Christ, 57

“Here is where thousands are failing. They do not really believe that Jesus pardons them personally, individually. They fail to take God at his word.”—Page 593.

“Here is where thousands fail: they do not believe that Jesus pardons them personally, individually. They do not take God at His word.”

1887, Feb. 6, E. G. White Letter 35

Steps to Christ, 121

I had a dream not long since. I was going through a garden and you were by my side. You kept saying, ‘Look at this unsightly shrub, this deformed tree, that poor stunted rose bush. This makes me feel bad, for they seem to represent my life and the relation I stand in before God.’ I thought a stately form walked just before us and he said, ‘Gather the roses, and the lilies, and the pinks, and leave the thistles and unsightly shrubs, and bruise not the soul that Christ has in His choice keeping.’ I awoke. I slept again, and the same dream was repeated.”

“I dreamed that I was in a garden, and one who seemed to be the owner of the garden was conducting me through its paths. I was gathering the flowers and enjoying their fragrance, when this sister, who had been walking by my side, called my attention to some unsightly briers that were impeding her way. There she was, mourning and grieving. She was not walking in the pathway, following the guide, but was walking among the briers and thorns. ‘O,’ she mourned, ‘is it not a pity that this beautiful garden is spoiled with thorns?’ Then the guide said, ‘Let the

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thorns alone, for they will only wound you. Gather the roses, the lilies, and the pinks.’”

1887—Review and Herald, June 7

Steps to Christ, 85

“The only way to grow in grace is to be interestedly doing the very work Christ has enjoined upon us to do,—interestedly engaged to the very extent of our ability to be helping and blessing those who need the help we can give them.”—Page 353.

“The only way to grow in grace is to be disinterestedly doing the very work which Christ has enjoined upon us,—to engage, to the extent of our ability, in helping and blessing those who need the help we can give them.”

These parallel passages give conclusive proof that some of the material of Steps to Christ was actually written before Miss Bolton ever connected with Mrs. White’s office. This exhibit provides sufficient proof in itself of the utterly groundless nature of the present-day critic’s amazing charge that “Fannie Bolton wrote ‘Steps to Christ’ without any dictation or assistance from Mrs. White whatever. It was her product in toto, but was published as Mrs. White’s production.”

In the future, when our readers note in the writings of a critic the confident line, “the best of evidence,” as an introduction to some charge against Mrs. White, their minds will probably turn to this Steps to Christ incident, and they can quickly decide for themselves how worthless may be the critic’s “best of evidence,” and how doubly worthless the rest of his evidence.

We ask the reader to remember that the charge with regard to Steps to Christ is the only specific one that we have been able to find offered in support of the blanket declaration that literary assistants did a large part of Mrs. White’s writings!

The Polishing of Her Manuscripts

Her assistants were called upon, not to do creative, original work on her manuscripts, not to change the thought or intent, but simply to correct possible errors of grammar, to improve sentence structure, and the like, which, for lack of a better word, is sometimes described as polishing a manuscript. It would have been a [486]

very unprofitable use of Mrs. White’s time if she had done this painstaking, detail work.

All the polishing in the world will not make a pebble into a precious stone. Nor does polishing change in any way the intrinsic quality of a diamond. The polishing only makes the quality more evident. Even so with Mrs. White’s writings and the so-called polishing done by literary assistants.[194]

[194]See Appendix L, p. 644, for Mrs. White’s extended statement concerning the work of her literary assistants through the years.

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Chapter 32—Was Mrs. White “Influenced to Write Testimonies”?

Charge: Mrs. White’s allegedly inspired testimonies to different persons presented only what she had learned from gossip, or what some interested party had influenced her to write. She really had no more enlightenment than anyone else. She included the names of people in her early printed testimonies. Later she left them out. That proves false her claim that God directed her writing. That she had no special inspiration is further revealed in her claim to reveal hidden sins, which claim she could not support.

As might be expected, certain “proofs” in support of this charge are wholly in the realm of rumor and hearsay, with no documentary evidence submitted for examination. No reasonable person will expect us to take time considering seriously, for example, an alleged conversation of the long ago that is said to have disclosed damaging evidence against Mrs. White, but which conversation, if it really took place, was recorded only in the memory of an avowed enemy of Mrs. White. When such worthless “proofs” are eliminated there remain two specific exhibits in the writings of Mrs. White’s most voluminous critic that can be examined.

What Mrs. White Actually Said-Quotation Number 1

But first, let us ask: Just what did Mrs. White say regarding the factors that prompted her to write her testimonies to individuals and church organizations? Here is what she says in Testimonies, volume 3:

“God has been pleased to open to me the secrets of the inner life, and the hidden sins of his people. The unpleasant duty has been laid upon me to reprove wrongs and to reveal hidden sins. When I have been compelled by the Spirit of God to reprove sins that others did not know existed, it has stirred up the natural feelings in the hearts of the unsanctified. While some have humbled their hearts before God, and with repentance and confession have forsaken [488] their sins, others have felt a spirit of hatred arise in their hearts. Their pride has been hurt when their course has been reproved....

“Some are ready to inquire, Who told Sister White these things? They have even put the question to me, Did any one tell you these things? I could answer them, Yes; yes, the angel of God has spoken to me. But what they mean is, Have the brethren and sisters been exposing their faults? For the future, I shall not belittle the testimonies that God has given me, to make explanations to try to satisfy such narrow minds, but shall treat all such questions as an insult to the Spirit of God. God has seen fit to thrust me into positions in which he has not placed any other one in our ranks. He has laid upon me burdens of reproof that he has not given to any other one.”—Pages 314, 315.

Quotation Number 2

And here are her words in volume 5, addressed to the church at Battle Creek in regard to a testimony she had earlier sent to them:

“Suppose—as some would make it appear, incorrectly however—that I was influenced to write as I did by letters received from members of the church. How was it with the apostle Paul? The news he received through the household of Chloe concerning the condition of the church at Corinth was what caused him to write his first epistle to that church. Private letters had come to him stating the facts as they existed, and in his answer he laid down general principles which if heeded would correct the existing evils. With great tenderness and wisdom he exhorts them to all speak the same things, that there be no divisions among them.

“Paul was an inspired apostle, yet the Lord did not reveal to him at all times just the condition of his people. Those who were interested in the prosperity of the church, and saw evils creeping in, presented the matter before him, and from the light which he had previously received he was prepared to judge of the true character of these developments. Because the Lord had not given him a new revelation for that special time, those who were really seeking light, did not cast his message aside as only a common letter. No, indeed. The Lord had shown him the difficulties and dangers which would arise in the churches, that when they should develop, he might know just how to treat them.”—Page 65.

Quotation Number 3

Then note her words in another testimony in the same volume, in which she discusses certain basic principles that governed her course in the matter of giving testimonies to individuals and to church institutions; [489]

“In some cases it has been represented that in giving a testimony for churches or individuals, I have been influenced to write as I did by letters received from members of the church. There have been those who claimed that testimonies purporting to be given by the Spirit of God were merely the expression of my own judgment, based upon information gathered from human sources. This statement is utterly false. If, however, in response to some question, statement, or appeal from churches or individuals, a testimony is written presenting the light which God has given concerning them, the fact that it has been called forth in this manner in no wise detracts from its validity or importance....

“The Lord does not give a vision to meet each emergency which may arise in the different attitudes of his people in the development of his work. But he has shown me that it has been his way of dealing with his church in past ages, to impress the minds of his chosen servants with the needs and dangers of his cause and of individuals, and to lay upon them the burden of counsel and warning.

“So in many cases God has given me light in regard to peculiar defects of character in members of the church, and the dangers to the individual and the cause if these defects are not removed. Under certain circumstances, wrong tendencies are liable to become strongly developed and confirmed, and to work injury to the cause of God, and ruin to the individual. Sometimes, when special dangers threaten the cause of God or particular individuals, a communication comes to me from the Lord, either in a dream or a vision of the night, and these cases are brought vividly to my mind. I hear a voice saying to me, ‘Arise and write; these souls are in peril.’ I obey the movings of the Spirit of God, and my pen traces their true condition. As I travel, and stand before the people in different places, the Spirit of the Lord brings before me clearly the cases I have been shown, reviving the matter previously given me.

“For the last forty-five years the Lord has been revealing to me the needs of his cause, and the cases of individuals in every phase of experience, showing where and how they have failed to perfect Christian character. The history of hundreds of cases has been presented to me, and that which God approves, and that which he condemns, has been plainly set before me. God has shown me that a certain course, if followed, or certain traits of character, if indulged, would produce certain results. He has thus been training and disciplining me in order that I might see the dangers which threaten souls, and instruct and warn his people....

“When I see men and women taking the very course, or cherishing the very traits, which have imperiled other souls and wounded the cause of God, and which the Lord has reproved again and again, how can I but be alarmed? When I see timid souls, burdened with a sense of their imperfections, yet conscientiously striving to do what God has said is right, and know that the [490] Lord looks down and smiles on their faithful efforts, shall I not speak a word of encouragement to these poor trembling hearts? Shall I hold my peace because each individual case has not been pointed out to me in direct vision?”—Pages 683-687.

Three Conclusions That Follow

Let us summarize these three quotations:

1. In the first statement Mrs. White declares that she is not dependent in any way on “brethren and sisters” for information when she writes a testimony to “reveal hidden sins.” Obviously, it would be deceitful for her to pose as a revealer of “hidden sins” if she had received her information from “brethren and sisters.”

2. In the second she declares, regarding a particular testimony that she sent to the Battle Creek church, that she was not “influenced” to write as she did “by letters received from members of the church.” Then she makes clear that even if she had been informed of the conditions by letters from church members, that would not invalidate the testimony she wrote. And she cites the case of Paul, who wrote First Corinthians at least partly as a result of information sent to him by brethren. (1 Corinthians 1:11.) Paul did not claim to have received a special revelation that disclosed the Corinthian church’s sins, or a special revelation at the time that guided his pen in correcting those sins. But it never occurs to those who believe in the Bible that his letter should be discounted, considered a fraud, because he was “influenced” to write as a result of information brought to him by “the house of Chloe.”

3. In the third she deals with the broad principles that govern her writing of testimonies to individuals and church organizations. In this she frankly declares that such testimonies may be written “in response to some question, statement, or appeal from churches or individuals.” And she explains the relation of such testimonies to special revelations from the Lord.

It is evident that critics use the word “influenced” in describing the contact of anyone with Mrs. White, because of the evil import that attaches to that word. They would make it appear that if someone said something to Mrs. White about another person and Mrs. White then wrote a testimony to that person, she was therefore [491] “influenced” to write as she did. That kind of reasoning would indict the apostle Paul as well. The critic apparently would have us conclude that Mrs. White should have lived in a vacuum, with no earthly contacts. We do not know how he could draw that conclusion from reading the Bible, certainly not from reading Paul.

Critic’s Exhibit Number One of “Influenced” Testimonies

“About the year 1882, two Adventist ministers, E. P. Daniels and E. R. Jones, were laboring together in Michigan. In giving a health talk one of them had made some remarks quite offensive to esthetic tastes.

“Not long afterward Elder Daniels received a testimony from Mrs. White, rebuking him for the offense, which she said took place at Parma, Mich. But, as the event turned out, she rebuked the wrong man, and the incident did not occur at Parma, but at another place.

“Instead of Mrs. White acknowledging her mistake, Elder Daniels, the man wrongly accused, was induced to make the following explanation:

“Through a misunderstanding, I happened to be the person rebuked, in the place of the one for whom the rebuke was intended, and who justly merited it. Were all the facts known, it would leave no room for even the slightest disrespect for the motives that influenced her, as she had, as she supposed, the best of reasons for believing that her informant had told her the truth. And, indeed, he had, but he made a mistake in the name of the person. All that he had said was true of another, though the incident did not occur at Parma’ (Review and Herald Supplement, Aug. 14, 1883, p. 10).

“At best this is ‘a lame apology for an inspired blunder.’ It demonstrates beyond question that in this instance at least Mrs. White was influenced to write the testimony in question by some one reporting to her.”

But why did not the critic quote all that Daniels said, and why did he not quote the introduction to Daniels’ statement? We shall now give the context and the reader will probably be able to answer the question himself:

“Elder E. P. Daniels’ Reply.

“In the Advocate Extra, Prof. McLearn[195] tells a little story which he claims to have heard from a ‘prominent minister in the cars,’ to the effect that Mrs.

[195]This Review and Herald Supplement was published primarily to meet certain charges against Seventh-day Adventists in general, and Mrs. White in particular, that had been published in an Extra of a paper called the Advocate. One of the contributors to the Advocate was a Prof. McLearn.

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White met Eld. E. P. Daniels, and said, ‘Bro. Daniels, I have a Testimony for you. The Lord has shown me that you said things, and acted in a manner, unbecoming a Christian minister, when you preached in Parma, Mich.;’ and that Bro. Daniels replied, ‘You must be mistaken; for I never preached in Parma in my life.’ This, of course, is a very nice little story for our opposers to use; and they have a great fondness for such, and take no end of pains to circulate them. This is just about as true as many others they circulate. It is but justice to Bro. Daniels that he should have a chance to reply to it. The following from his pen is to the point.

G. I. BUTLER.

“TO ALL WHOM IT MAY CONCERN.”

“The story is in circulation that at an audience granted me by Mrs. White, I was informed by her that in a temperance lecture given by me in the village of Parma, I had used language unbecoming a Christian minister, and deported myself in a manner disgraceful to the pulpit, and that God had shown this to her in vision, all of which I then and there denied. This story I deny publicly, as I have several times already done in private. Mrs. White never told me that she had ever seen anything of this kind in vision, either about me or any one else. Through a misunderstanding, I happened to be the person rebuked, in the place of the one for whom the rebuke was intended, and who justly merited it. Were all the facts known, it would leave no room for even the slightest disrespect for the motives that influenced her, as she had, as she supposed, the best of reasons for believing that her informant had told her the truth. And indeed he had, but had made a mistake in the name of the person; all that she had said was true of another, though the incident did not occur at Parma. More than this, Mrs. White told me plainly that this report came from a gentleman whose acquaintance they had formed when traveling in the West.

“Those who fight against Mrs. White and spiritual gifts would do well to forge their weapons of something more substantial than flying reports.

“E. P. DANIELS,

“July 25, 1883.
Rankin Post Office,

Genesee Co., Mich.”
—Review and Herald Supplement, Aug. 14, 1883, p. 10.

In this larger context, how different the matter looks. Mrs. White sent no testimony to Daniels. Just what she said to him, in person, we do not know, for there is no record. But the record does reveal that she made no pretense of having received any kind of revelation that he had done thus and so, that instead she said that the “report came from a gentleman” she had met. It is difficult [493] to see how she could have been more frank. In view of the fact that the available record gives no support to the charge that she professed to speak to him by revelation, or as a result of special insight at the moment, or that the Lord had sent her to him with rebuke; and in view of the fact that we have no text of her conversation with Daniels, how can the critic cite this as an exhibit of Mrs. White’s being “influenced to write testimonies”?

For good measure he seeks to show how unheavenly is Mrs. White’s status by adding immediately: “When God rebukes a man he does not rebuke the wrong man. When he sent the prophet Nathan to David with the message, ‘Thou art the man,’ he hit the right man.” But Mrs. White did not here claim that God “sent” her with a testimony to E. P. Daniels!

The Notable Case of Nathan

Strange, indeed, that Nathan should be cited in this connection. It is true that he was a prophet of God. The record makes clear that “the Lord sent Nathan unto David” to rebuke him for his sin in taking Bathsheba to wife. (See 2 Samuel 12:1.) But only a few pages earlier in the divinely recorded story of the ancient Israelites is the account of David’s expressing to Nathan his desire and evident plan to build a house for the Lord in Jerusalem. “And Nathan said to the king, Go, do all that is in thine heart; for the Lord is with thee.” 2 Samuel 7:3. Now listen to what follows immediately:

“And it came to pass that night, that the word of the Lord came unto Nathan, saying, Go and tell my servant David, Thus saith the Lord, Shalt thou build me an house for me to dwell in?” Verses 4, 5.

Nathan presents, perhaps, the most interesting exhibit in the Bible of the fact that a prophet may make a personal observation, offer a personal comment, which is not correct, which comment may be reversed by divine illumination later, but which reversal does not invalidate the prophet’s credentials.

If no more were required of Mrs. White than is required of Bible prophets, there would be no charges to bring against her. [494]

A Postscript to the Exhibit

As a kind of postscript to the so-called false Daniels “testimony,” the critic charges:

“The mistake Mrs. White made in this case shook his faith in her testimonies, so much so that he came nearly leaving the work then. The writer had a long conference with him, trying to relieve his doubts; but they always stuck to him, and opened his eyes to other mistakes of Mrs. White. Finally, after years of struggle, he withdrew from the denomination, and opposes it now.”

Note the following in comment on this sweeping declaration:

1. We have only the critic’s word for this. He cites no document of any kind.

2. In the only documentary data known regarding this so-called false “testimony” there is nothing to suggest that Daniels’ faith in Mrs. White was shaken in any way. On the contrary, he relates the facts in defense of her work against a critic’s misrepresentation.

3. The file of correspondence between Mrs. White and Daniels in the years between the so-called false “testimony” and the critic’s departure from the denomination, in 1887,[196] reveals that Daniels was a devout believer in the divine source of Mrs. White’s testimonies. In his letters to her he addresses her by such names as these: “Dear Mother in Christ,” and “My dear Mother in Christ.”

4. The documentary evidence available for the 1880’s also discloses that Daniels had repeated difficulties with his finances. He stated that his heavy debts were due to illness in his home. More than once he dropped out of preaching for a time to recoup his finances. In 1885 his credentials were not renewed. Mrs. White counseled the brethren to deal gently with him. He was given credentials again in 1886. His financial condition failed to right itself, and on December 13, 1889, he turned in his credentials and left the ministry permanently. His letter of that date to J. N. Loughborough, who was then president of the California Conference, gives as his reason for withdrawing, his heavy debts, and the fact that the conference committee were not agreeable to his supplementing his salary with any nonministerial labors.[197]

[196]Canright withdrew from the denomination in February, 1887.

[197]See letter of E. P. Daniels to J. N. Loughborough, dated, “Napa, Cal., Dec. 13, 1889.”

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It is true that almost immediately after this he became bitter against Mrs. White. But was this because of her so-called false testimony “about the year 1882”? No. We have discovered no reference to it in the correspondence between them. But we do find that on November 5, 1889—only a few weeks before he relinquished his credentials—Mrs. White had written to him regarding one of his endeavors to improve his financial situation. He had been selling mining stock, and calling upon the members of the church to invest in it monies that might have been solicited for the work of God. We disclose no secret when we mention this fact. His dealings were known to all men. Nor do we relate this with any desire to throw a shadow over the dead. Far from it. We wish only to give an honest record of facts, so far as the record must be given, to refute false accusations made against Mrs. White. She, also, is among the dead! Human nature being what it is, how natural it would be for Daniels to set his heart against Mrs. White as a result of her reproof—but reproof of a different nature from that alleged in the charge.

Again we are led to remark: How different the picture looks when the facts are set down.

Critic’s Exhibit Number Two of “Influenced” Testimonies

“Mrs. White herself has given an illustration of how her testimonies were given to order as requested by officials needing them. In 1867 the first building for the Health Reform Institute (Sanitarium) was being planned and built at Battle Creek, Mich. Elder White was sick and away from home. So Elder Loughborough and others went ahead with the work. Money was needed. As usual, they went to Mrs. White and asked for a testimony to the brethren to donate the means. This was delivered as ordered.... (Testimonies for the Church 1:492, 494)....

“The building was begun, and the first story up, when Elder White returned. He was angry because he had not planned and bossed it. It had all to come down—every stone. Then he put it all up again another way at a loss of $11,000 of the Lord’s money!

“This put Mrs. White in a bad fix. He demanded another testimony repudiating the first one. She had to humbly obey, and did. Here is her confession:

“‘What appeared in Testimony No. 11 concerning the Health Institute should not have been given until I was able to write out all [496] I had seen in regard to it.... They [the officials at Battle Creek] therefore wrote to me that the influence of my testimony to the institute was needed immediately to move the brethren upon the subject. Under these circumstances I yielded my judgment to that of others, and wrote what appeared in No. 11 in regard to the Health Institute.... In this I did wrong’ (Testimonies for the Church 1:563). [Deletions in the quotation from Mrs. White are by the critic.]

“This proves that Mrs. White was influenced by the officials to write a testimony, just as they wanted it, to use to get money. Then, at Elder White’s demand, she writes another testimony, confessing that the first one was wrong!”

Before accepting the conclusions of the critic, who so confidently discusses events that occurred half a century before he wrote, let us recite some history from the published records.

In a vision given to her on December 25, 1865, at Rochester, New York, Mrs. White stated that she was shown, among other things, “that we should provide a home for the afflicted, and those who wish to learn how to take care of their bodies that they may prevent sickness.”—Testimonies for the Church 1:489 (Testimony No. 11, article entitled “The Health Reform”).

This vision was not written out until January, 1867, a fact important to an understanding of the matter before us. However, it seems evident that in the light of this vision she made an oral appeal for a health institution at the General Conference Daily Bulletin, May, 1866.

Land was purchased in Battle Creek. The cottage on it, plus “the new Bath building,” constituted the physical facilities of the Western Health Reform Institute, which opened its doors in September, 1866, to provide the called-for “home for the afflicted.”[198]

The institution, though small, met with immediate success, and the problem became one of housing the patients. Wrote Dr. J. F. Byington, less than four months after the institution opened its doors:

“The present prospect is that our great difficulty will be to accommodate all who wish to avail themselves of the benefit of the Health Institute. But we

[198]See The Health Reformer, September, 1866. Also The Review and Herald, June 19, August 7, August 14, September 11, 1866, for items concerning the inception, financing, and opening of the institution.

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hope the time is not distant when our accommodations will be sufficient to receive all who may wish to come.”—The Review and Herald, January 1, 1867, p. 43.[199]

The same issue of the church paper contains this editorial item:

“We call attention to the article in another column in reference to the Health Institute. For the length of time it has been in operation, the Institution has been successful beyond all our expectations. Yet but a little over half of the $25,000.00, originally called for by the committee, have been pledged, and but little is now doing in the way of pledges; and more means are needed at once to make the Institution what it may and should speedily become.”—The Review and Herald, January 1, 1867, p. 48.

Two Facts That Explain Much

The combination of these two facts, (1) the immediate and potential patronage, that seemed to call for immediate, large expansion; and (2) the limited financing that the Institute had thus far received, explain certain events that followed quickly.

Some of the leaders at Battle Creek urged Mrs. White to place in writing the revelation given to her on December 25, 1865, regarding health reform and a health reform institute. It was naturally felt that the publication of this vision without delay would greatly aid in raising money needed for the Institute. She responded by writing out part of that revelation, and this was included as a chapter for Testimony No. 11, bearing the title “The Health Reform.” This was published in January, 1867.

On page 84 of the The Review and Herald, January 22, 1867, is this item entitled “Testimony to the Church, No. 11“:

“This work will be ready in a few days. Address Eld. James White, Battle Creek, Mich....

“Testimony No. 12, may be expected soon; but the matter for No. 11, is regarded of such importance at this time that it is thought not best to wait till the matter now designed for No. 12 can be prepared.

“Every brother and sister interested in the interests of the cause should have a copy at once.

“James White.”

Note the fact that James White’s name is signed to this announcement.

[199]The issue of January 8 contains an article by Dr. H. S. Lay stating that a new building, which, with furnishing, would cost some $25,000, was needed, and asking, “What shall be done?”—Page 54.

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Large Building Plans Develop

As nearly as we can reconstruct the picture from the news items in the Review and Herald, the building plans and the urge to build immediately seemed to grow as the months passed by. In August, 1867, less than twelve months after the opening of the institution, E. S. Walker, the secretary of the Health Reform Institute, announced through the church paper that certain building materials for the new structure had been delivered and paid for, but that the funds were exhausted, and $15,000 was “wanted immediately.” Here is how he calls on Mrs. White’s words to support his appeal for more funds:

“We have no doubt that you all know your duty, but we are all so liable to forget that we think a few short quotations from Testimony No. 11, would not be amiss to stir up our minds by way of remembrance.”—The Review and Herald, August 27, 1867, p. 169.[200]

Two thirds of Walker’s article consists of quotations from this particular testimony (No. 11). The only conclusion that any reader could draw from his article, which was typical of the promotion employed for the new, “large building,” was that Mrs. White gave to all this expansive building program her unqualified endorsement. But her Testimony No. 11, published in January, 1867, gave no such endorsement. It was based on a vision given December 25, 1865, and called for the support of the brethren in founding a medical institution. James White, who had been a leading spirit, and who has been described, even by the critics of Adventism, as an astute businessman, had seen in that testimony no license to engage in unsound building expansion, because, as

[200]Walker states: “We have purchased and had delivered on the ground about all the timber and finishing lumber necessary for the building, to the amount of about $6,000.00, and have completed the lower story of stone, all of which is paid for. We are now ready for the brick, and have expended all our ready means.”—Page 169. If we conservatively estimate $4,000 for the work already done (the critic says $11,000) plus $6,000 for lumber purchased and ready to use, plus the $15,000 “wanted immediately,” we have a total of $25,000. This is the figure given by Dr. Lay (The Review and Herald, January 8, 1867, p. 54) for the “erection and furnishing” of the new, large building then being discussed. But Walker’s appeal for funds up to a total of at least $25,000 was only for completion and furnishing of such part of the building as seemed to be immediately required. Thus do building programs sometimes grow. He assured his readers that “the remainder of the building could be finished as means came in and the wants of the cause demanded.” How many thousands more would be required to complete the building is not here revealed. We are left to surmise the amount, and also to speculate on how the fact of the unfinished “remainder” would be the occasion for an endeavor on the part of those interested in the Institute to draw from a limited church constituency monies for finishing the building that should go into other branches of missionary endeavor.

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already noted, he heartily endorsed what she had written.[201] But as things had developed, there was grave danger that the Health Institute, so well begun, in modest dimensions, would, under enthusiastic but inexperienced leadership, become top heavy and collapse under debt. In view of the imminent financial danger from overexpansion, that confronted the Institute, Mrs. White included in Testimony No. 12, published in September, 1867, a chapter entitled “The Health Institute.”[202] As might be expected the chapter is filled with counsel against overexpansion and other dangers For example:

Counsel Given in Testimony No. 12

“I saw that a very extensive work could not be accomplished in a short time, as it would not bean easy matter to find physicians whom God could approve, and who would work together harmoniously, disinterestedly, and zealously, for the good of suffering humanity.”—Testimonies for the Church 1:554.

“As to the extent of the accommodations of the Health Institute at Battle Creek, I was shown, as I have before stated, that we should have such an institution, small at its commencement, and cautiously increased, as good physicians and helpers could be procured and means raised, and as the wants of invalids should demand; and all should be conducted in strict accordance with the principles and humble spirit of the third angel’s message.... Should the physicians fail, ... or should means fail to come in when extensive buildings were in process of erection, and the work stop, capital would be sunk, and a general discouragement would come over all interested....

“I have publicly appealed to our brethren in behalf of an institution to be established among us.... This I have said upon the authority of what God has shown me. If necessary, I would unhesitatingly repeat all that I have said. I have no desire to withdraw one sentence that I have written or spoken. [That would include Testimony No. 11, which the critic says she repudiated by writing No. 12.] The work is of God, and must be prosecuted with a firm, yet cautious hand....

“With every stirring appeal to our people for means to put into the Institute, there should have been a caution not to rob other branches of the work.... Move no faster, brethren, than the unmistakable providence of God opens the way before you.”—Testimonies for the Church 1:558-560.

[201]However, his ill-health, following his “stroke” in 1865, had largely kept him out of active leadership. In fact, he was away from Battle Creek most of the year 1867.

[202]For the date of publication of No. 12, see The Review and Herald, September 17, 1867, p. 224, where notices signed by J. N. Loughborough and James White, state that No. 12 is ready. The chapter, “The Health Institute,” appears in current form in Testimonies for the Church 1:553-564.

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The Key Passage Examined

Then follows her statement from which the critic abstracts a few lines in support of his charge that she had been “influenced by the officials to write a testimony, just as they wanted it, to use to get money” for the Health Institute. And remember: When the critic says “influenced,” he means that the source, or inspiration, for her testimonies, was people who came to her with gossip either against someone or in behalf of some special project they wished to promote, and that for all practical purposes they determined the text of the testimonies written. With this fact in mind, note Mrs. White’s words:

“The relation which I sustain to this work demands of me an unfettered expression of my views. I speak freely, and choose this medium to speak to all interested. What appeared in Testimony No. 11 concerning the Health Institute, should not have been given until I was able to write out all I had seen in regard to it. I intended to say nothing upon the subject in No. 11, and sent all the manuscript that I designed for that Testimony, from Ottawa Co., where I was then laboring, to the office at Battle Creek, stating that I wished them to hasten out that little work, as it was much needed, and as soon as possible I would write No. 12, in which I designed to speak freely and fully concerning the [Health] Institute. The brethren at Battle Creek who were especially interested in the Institute, knew I had seen that our people should contribute of their means to establish such an institution. They therefore wrote to me that the influence of my testimony in regard to the Institute was needed immediately to move the brethren upon the subject, and that the publication of No. 11 would be delayed till I could write.

“This was a great trial to me, as I knew I could not write out all I had seen, for I was then speaking to the people six or eight times a week, visiting from house to house, and writing hundreds of pages of personal testimonies and private letters. This amount of labor, with unnecessary burdens and trials thrown upon me, unfitted me for labor of any kind. My health was poor, and my mental sufferings were beyond description. Under these circumstances I yielded my judgment to that of others, and wrote what appeared in No. 11 in regard to the Health Institute, being unable then to give all I had seen. In this I did wrong. I must be allowed to know my own duty better than others can know it for me, especially concerning matters which God has revealed to me. I shall be blamed by some for speaking as I now speak. Others will blame me for not speaking before. The disposition manifested to crowd the matter of the Institute so fast has been one of the heaviest trials I have ever borne. If all who have used my testimony to move the brethren, had been equally [501] moved by it themselves, I should be better satisfied. Should I delay longer to speak my views and feelings, I should be blamed the more both by those who think I should have spoken sooner, and by those also who may think I should not give any cautions. For the good of those at the head of the work, for the good of the cause and the brethren, and to save myself great trials, I have freely spoken.”—Testimonies for the Church 1:562-564.

The Nature of Mrs. White’s Confession

Mrs. White plainly declares: “I did wrong.” We do not have to read the critic’s writings to discover that. In fact he turns to her currently published works to discover his choicest charge of “influenced” testimony writing. But did Mrs. White say that her doing “wrong” consisted in letting someone invent a testimony that she signed, or in having an alleged vision to further someone’s interests, as is implied in the charge? The answer is evident from her statement. But note how the critic hides this fact. We give in parallel columns his quotation of the key sentence, and the full text, printing in boldface the key clause he omitted.

Critic’s Quotation

Full Text of Original

“Under these circumstances I yielded my judgment to that of others, and wrote what appeared in No. 11 in regard to the Health Institute.... In this I did wrong.”—Testimonies for the Church 1:563.

“Under these circumstances I yielded my judgment to that of others, and wrote what appeared in No. 11 in regard to the Health Institute, being unable then to give all I had seen. In this I did wrong.”

The clause: “Being unable then to give all I had seen,” is the key to the whole passage. But the critic suppressed it.[203] It is easy to understand why he did so—this clause exposes the falsity of his charge. But what is not easy to understand is this: How he, and others who have taken him as their source and guide, can, with sober faces, set out to charge Mrs. White with suppression!

Are Prophets Infallible?

Let the critic make what he can of her admission. This much is certain, he cannot make anything out of it in support of the

[203]Reference to pages 495-496 reveals that the critic quotes a variant of this clause earlier in his quotation from Mrs. White, but that does not protect the whole passage from the false deduction that is naturally drawn when the clause in question is deleted as it is, immediately preceding the key sentence, “In this I did wrong.”

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charge he has raised. No one thought up a vision for Mrs. White. No influence from outside framed the words she employed. Perhaps he may wish, now, to change his charge and contend that if she had been a prophet she would not have made any mistake, never would have done “wrong,” never would have been guilty of an error of judgment. But nothing in the Bible supports the idea that prophets are infallible when they are exercising their private judgment.

Do we not all feel sad that Elijah, after his glorious triumph of faith on Mount Carmel, should have made so great an error of judgment as to decide to flee when someone informed him that Jezebel threatened to take his life? And do we not all think that he made a sorry blunder in contending, “I, even I only, am left”? A Bible critic may argue that if Elijah had been a true prophet, the Lord would have revealed to him that Jezebel could not succeed in her evil plan, and that there were seven thousand in Israel who had not bowed the knee to Baal. But no lover of the Bible and its prophets is impressed by such an argument. We are not concerned with the mysterious question of just how much God should have revealed to Elijah. We hold that the credentials of the prophet are to be judged only by what he claims to know by revelation from God.

Might it not be that the Lord purposely refrains from giving prophets all knowledge of events and developments, lest they become filled with unholy pride over their ability to steer their way with magical skill through all the mazes of changing events? Prophets are as much in danger of pride as are all others. A limitation to their knowledge, with resulting errors of judgment on their part, and confessions that they are “wrong” and can of themselves do nothing wisely or correctly may be ordained of God for their salvation.

James White’s Relation to the Matter

But let us look a moment at James White. He is said to have been “sick and away from home,” that is, from Battle Creek, when number 11 was published. We have given chapter and verse to [503] show that though he was sick, he was so definitely responsible for the publication of number 11 that he announced when it was ready for distribution, urged everyone to read it, and instructed them to send their orders to him at Battle Creek. The announcement of number 12 was not only by James White, but also by J. N. Loughborough, who is specifically named by the critic as the one who led out in securing Mrs. White’s support for a health statement in number 11!

The critic pictures James White as suddenly appearing on the scene in high dudgeon, tearing down the partially constructed building, and turning around to erect it on another plan, with great loss to the cause.

Strictly speaking, we would not be considering James White’s acts, or attempting to defend them, in this book, were it not for the fact that his acts are merged with Mrs. White’s acts and words in this particular instance, as in some others. What are the facts on this particular point?

Resolution Exonerates Elder and Mrs. White

It is true that a beginning had been made on the “large building,” though only a beginning. All work was stopped. But not because James White wanted to build it another way, but because he, and others with him, believed that it should not be built at all. It was the overextended financial situation of the Health Institute and the inexperience of the management[204] that led to the stopping of the construction, and not James White’s overextended sense of pride and importance. The echo of all this is found in a resolution passed at the second annual meeting of the Health Reform Institute:

“Resolved, that we consider it due to Bro. and Sr. White, and to our brethren abroad, that we make a statement of the following points: 1. That they have acted a noble and generous part toward the Health Institute; and that the errors committed in its management are not to be in any wise laid to their charge, Bro. White being unable at that time from sickness to have

[204]See The Review and Herald, January 18, 1870, p. 32, for editorial statement that “by bad management” the institution “was nearly brought to ruin.” J. N. Andrews was then editor.

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any part in the business. Those, therefore, who attribute blame to them concerning it, act unjustly and without any ground for such censure. On the contrary, they are entitled to the thanks of all our people for their efforts in sustaining the Institute, and for counseling a course of sound wisdom in its management. Nothing therefore can well be more unjust and cruel than to hold them responsible for the errors of others.”—The Review and Herald, May 25, 1869, p. 174.

Here are the facts as they stand out on the yellowed pages of the old volumes of the church paper, and out of the writings of Mrs. White, when the full text of those writings is given. The most charitable way to explain the erroneous charges of the critic is to say that when he sat down to write almost half a century after the events, he consulted a dim and hostile memory rather than the documented record.

The Critic’s “Proof” From Deleted Names

Earlier published testimonies gave the names of the persons addressed, but since 1883, “when her testimonies were revised,”[205] the names were omitted. “But if it was proper for her to publish these names thus at first, why did she not continue to do so? The omission of these names in this way is an open confession on the face of it that she was not inspired by God to put them in the first place.” “One of her testimonies incriminating a certain individual provoked a $50,000 suit for damages. The suit was settled out of court.”

The critic offers no data by which we may identify names or places in connection with the alleged suit. There are none to submit. No suit was ever brought against Mrs. White for anything she ever wrote in any testimony to anyone.[206] Hence there was no suit to be “settled out of court.” Nor did Mrs. White ever pay a

[205]At the General Conference of 1883 a resolution was passed to republish the volumes of the Testimonies. Part of the resolution reads thus: “Whereas, Many of these testimonies were written under the most unfavorable circumstances, the writer being too heavily pressed with anxiety and labor to devote critical thought to the grammatical perfection of the writings, and they were printed in such haste as to allow these imperfections to pass uncorrected; and—“Whereas, We believe the light given by God to his servants is by the enlightenment of the mind, thus imparting the thoughts, and not (except in rare cases) the very words in which the ideas should be expressed; therefore—“Resolved, That in the re-publication of these volumes such verbal changes be made as to remove the above-named imperfections, as far as possible, without in any measure changing the thought.”—The Review and Herald, November 27, 1883, p. 741. In harmony with this resolution “her testimonies were revised.” In the absence of a knowledge of this resolution the reader might naturally conclude that the revision of her testimonies involved tampering with the essential texture of them. The critic makes no reference to this resolution!

[206]If a critic replies that he can name a person who threatened to sue her, we answer: A threat of suit is not a suit. It is a common practice of a certain type of person to make bold threats to sue. Most times such suits never materialize, and if they do not materialize, there is no suit to settle out of court.

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dollar on threat of suit to anyone, anytime, anywhere, because of any testimony she ever wrote. This statement can be made without fear of refutation.

With the obscuring dust of a “revision” and a “suit” removed, we come directly to the alleged evidence of the noninspired character of Mrs. White’s writings, her failure to continue using the names of individuals in the printings of the Testimonies. “If it was proper for her to publish these names thus at first,” the critic inquires, “why did she not continue to do so?” Has he not read the inspired dictum: “All things are lawful unto me, but all things are not expedient”? 1 Corinthians 6:12. And does he not know that Paul, who voiced those words, actually declared himself ready to refrain from doing certain things he had formerly done, even though lawful? We read: “Wherefore, if meat make my brother to offend, I will eat no flesh while the world standeth.” 1 Corinthians 8:13.

When the Testimonies were first written the Adventist group was small. The testimonies frequently consisted of special messages to individuals or local church groups. There was ample reason for giving names and places, in order to deal most specifically with problems and crises. The very definiteness of the testimonies contributed to their authentication. But in later years the particular conditions that called forth the testimonies were simply memories, though the principles set forth were timeless. Why continue to focus on the individual? And, also, why bring needless embarrassment to such individuals in later years, when probably long ago they had rectified the mistakes discussed in the testimonies? Or why bring needless embarrassment to close relatives?

The Critic’s “Proof” Regarding “Hidden Sins”

Mrs. White says, “The unpleasant duty has been laid upon me to reprove wrongs and reveal hidden sins.” (Testimonies for the Church 3:314.) Numbers of instances could be cited when she failed to reveal such sins. Thus is “exposed the falsity” of her claim that God revealed to her “hidden sins.”

The critic calls attention to the fact that sometimes flagrant sin in the life of a prominent individual was exposed by confession or in some similar way, and that following such exposure Mrs. [506] White wrote a testimony regarding the sin and the sinner. He reasons, therefore, that she had no revelations, she knew nothing more than could be known by others.

To show the weakness of his charge we need only to set forth his reasoning in this formal style: Mrs. White claimed that God had called on her to “reveal hidden sins.” That means that she sweepingly claimed to reveal always and without exception, all hidden sins. Therefore, her failure to reveal certain sins proves her whole claim false.

But that reasoning is patently false, for Mrs. White made no such sweeping claim. When she spoke as she did about the duty that had been laid upon her to reveal hidden sins, she was speaking of actual experiences through which she had been called to pass, particularly in the early years of the movement. Her own words show clearly that she made no sweeping claim:

“The unpleasant duty has been laid upon me to reprove wrongs and to reveal hidden sins. When I have been compelled by the Spirit of God to reprove sins that others did not know existed, it has stirred up the natural feelings in the hearts of the unsanctified.”—Testimonies for the Church 3:314.

The natural meaning of her words is that at times, not necessarily always, the Spirit revealed hidden sins to her.

We are really dealing here with a variant of the argument that unless Mrs. White knew all truth about everything, she knew nothing about anything, and that indeed her confession that she did not know some certain things self-condemns her claims to the prophetic gift. We believe that the fallacy of that argument has been too clearly revealed to need further elaboration here.

God Is Sparing of Miracles

If Mrs. White had been given a knowledge of all hidden sins, and revealed that knowledge by routinely exposing all such sins whenever she met people, in private or in public, what a singular state of affairs would soon have developed. That she should know of any hidden sins is an evidence of the miraculous. And do not most students of the Scriptures believe that the Lord is sparing of miracles? He allows a display of the supernatural only occasionally, [507] and then because it best suits His divine plans. For example, occasionally it may please God to work a miracle and suddenly raise up a sick man. Most times the Lord sees fit to allow him to recover by means of what we call the “natural processes.” But this does not cause us to doubt God, or to doubt the spiritual relationship to God of those who have prayed for the sick who were not miraculously healed. Then why not think of the matter of revealing “hidden sins” in the same way?

Occasionally, and very particularly at the outset of the movement, when hypocritical pretenders sought to wreck churches, God saw fit to work a miracle by revealing to Mrs. White certain hidden sins. Other times He permitted those sins to come to light by the “natural processes.” And may we not see the great wisdom of God in this? Many sins come to light by confession on the part of a conscience-smitten chief offender or by confession on the part of someone drawn into evil by him. And is there not a great spiritual value in the act of confession?

Now, Mrs. White wrote continuously from 1845 to 1915, a period of seventy years. Her books, her articles in journals, and her personal testimonies to individuals that were never published, represent many thousands of pages. She discussed persons and principles, gave counsel on numerous matters. Yet when her chief critic, who posed as having intimate knowledge of the Seventh-day Adventist Church for long years, set out, in 1919, to prove that her testimonies merely reflected what others had told her, and were not revelations, he presented nothing more impressive than we have here been considering! Singular, is it not!

Certain Facts to Consider in Rejoinder

We now ask the reader to consider a few facts. In the vaults of the E. G. White Publications office are found approximately fifty thousand pages of manuscript material. This consists largely of copies of (1) letters that Mrs. White wrote to individuals, (2) letters to church leaders regarding church problems, and (3) manuscripts on general themes. The manuscripts of her large books are not included in this total, except as material from one of the three [508] types of writings just described, was drawn upon. For example, the nine volumes of Testimonies for the Church reproduce hundreds upon hundreds of pages of these personal letters of warning, counsel, reproof, and encouragement. The fifty thousand total of manuscript pages represents largely her writings—minus most of her books and periodical articles—since 1885, when a methodical practice of filing copies of all material began to be followed.[207]

Let the reader go down through all these pages of reproduced letters in the Testimonies for the Church, for they are typical of the letters she wrote. He will find there pen pictures of individuals so sharply focused, so specifically detailed, as to enable him to form a clear mental picture of the people discussed. We read character delineations that call for an understanding of the working of the innermost heart. We find definite rebukes given, definite warnings, definite guidance. Hundreds of pages of letters are anything but vague and general. We cannot read at length without exclaiming, How did Mrs. White ever know all this about all these people? She writes as though she had watched their downsittings and their uprisings and as though she understood their thoughts afar off!

Did She Conduct a Gossip Department?

We found that the critics answer in the only way they can answer, consistent with their contention that she was a fraud: She learned all this by reports brought to her in person or by mail! In other words, she conducted a great gossip department, gathering from endless sources, and from those sources, plus a few personal observations she herself might make, wrote out an amazing array of letters. And to cap it all, she placed hundreds of pages of that matter in print and persuaded the Adventist membership to pay good money for it.

We are really asked to believe something that stretches our faith more than does Mrs. White’s claim that God gave to her visions regarding people. She learned all this chiefly by gossip? The person who has read the thousands of pages of her letters and other messages can only exclaim: Then she had a network of

[207]Approximately 5,000 pages bear dates before 1885, and 45,000 bear dates from 1885 onward.

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informants over the land that quite puts in the shade the secret police of certain modern lands.[208] And her “secret police” must have been thought police, mind readers! She traveled constantly. Her letters are dated from a wide array of States and cities. In the days when she was writing the greatest number of letters to individuals, the mails were poor and uncertain. Yet in some way unexplained the endless stream of information from which she allegedly drew, is supposed to have kept pouring in to her.

How Gossipmongers Work

But there is a further and more incredible feature to this whole matter. We have all seen gossipmongers. Even a small community has at least one. And, with wheat and tares growing together, even churches have them. Now what happens when an individual gathers gossip from every side and then begins to dispense it, especially in the form of letters to different persons, pointing out what the gossiper thinks is very specifically the matter with these individuals? Is the church edified, more closely bound together, revived in spirit, and advanced on the Christian way? Those questions answer themselves.

And why is such havoc wrought by a gossiper in the church who translates his gossip news into letters? There are several parts to the answer. In the first place the letters invariably are such a strange mixture of truth and error, with the latter generally predominating, that the recipients of the letters are uniformly outraged that such lying reports should be circulated concerning them. Second, the person who peddles gossip reveals no constructive pattern in his work. His gossipy speech or letters simply reveal an avid interest

[208]J. N. Andrews tells of spending “four months” traveling with Elder and Mrs. James White. He writes in part concerning this trip: “The Review bears evidence to the industry of Brother W. in writing for its columns. But very few of its readers have any adequate idea of the labor of sister W. in writing for the benefit of the people of God. Her messages of reproof and of instruction that she is sending to those to whom they pertain, amount, I think, in the period that I have been with them to more than 1000 pages. The task imposed on sister W., to write out all with her own hand while actively engaged in holding meetings, is very great. Every hour has to be filled up, and many are taken from needful sleep, in order to meet this ever-present and unending labor.”—The Review and Herald, March 3, 1868, p. 184. Then he adds immediately, these words: “The nature of this writing is such that the manual labor required to pen the words is really the smallest part of the task. It is no pleasant thing to sister W. to utter words of sharp reproof, or stern rebuke, yet these things often enter largely into what she is called to write. I have too often witnessed the deep distress and tears of anguish which this work imposes on sister White, to entertain one thought that she engages in it to please herself.” Thus wrote an eyewitness to the labors of Mrs. White!

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in relating things that cast shadows over men’s characters. Third, the gossiper who writes letters of judgment and rebuke to individuals quite invariably does so in cold, calculating, and even vindictive terms.

Effects Produced by Mrs. White’s Letters

But look, now, at Mrs. White’s letters. What was their effect upon the church, and by “church” we may think both of the members of a local church company and of the whole body of believers known as Seventh-day Adventists. Here comes to light the amazing quality of those letters. Quite generally the most heartening results followed the receipt of a letter, either by an individual or by a church company—conviction of sin, confession of wrong, revival, and reconsecration.

Let anyone read the letters that appear in the nine volumes of Testimonies for the Church—and the letters there are typical—and then ask himself: Do these carry any of the telltale marks of the gossip? We have no doubt what the answer will be. The strength of the critic’s attack lies in the fact that his readers, with rare exceptions, have never read any of those letters.

Now, Seventh-day Adventists are the same flesh and blood as other men. It is no easier for them to accept rebuke than it is for others. How do we explain their readiness, in the majority of instances, to accept contritely the rebukes and counsels that came in the letters to them? The critic may seek to make a last stand here and answer: The poor people were so bewitched by her bold claims that they blindly accepted her words, though those words were often counter to the facts.

Adventists Far From Being Bewitched

There is nothing in the records or in the reminiscences of pioneers that supports the attempt to explain the amazing phenomenon under consideration by the claim that Adventists were bewitched by Mrs. White and accepted her testimonies against the witness of their own senses. In fact, we can find right in her current works a statement she wrote in 1867 that reveals the very opposite of this. At that time James White was recuperating from [511] a “stroke.” Financial embarrassment confronted the White home. They had sold certain of their furniture to secure ready cash. Then they appealed to the brethren in Battle Greek for aid. Of their appeal, she wrote, “No notice was taken of the matter only to use it to wound us in our want and deep affliction.”—Testimonies for the Church 1:583.

In 1883, George I. Butler, then president of the General Conference, wrote this in an article entitled “The Visions“:

“We have found in a long, varied, and in some instances, sad experience, the value of their counsel. When we have heeded them, we have prospered: when we have slighted them, we have suffered a great loss. Many instances of this kind could be given from our past history. As a people, we have no reason to boast of our faithfulness to them. On the contrary, we have shown much unbelief and indifference to their teachings. But when we have regarded them most highly, we have enjoyed the greatest prosperity. It is clear to every one who has closely noticed the workings of this cause that in those Conferences where these Testimonies are most highly regarded, there the greatest degree of prosperity is seen; and in those where they are least respected, there the work drags heavily.”—Review and Herald Supplement, Aug. 14, 1883, pp. 11, 12.

These statements by Mrs. White and George I. Butler do not flatter the denomination. But we are glad they wrote frankly—they wrote for our learning—for they thereby exploded any semblance of plausibility to the argument that attempts to explain away the phenomenon of the very general acceptance of Mrs. White’s testimony-letters by church members. The troubles that Mrs. White, with her husband, experienced in 1867 were somewhat like the troubles that ancient prophets experienced with the Israelites. It is not strange that prophets of God should suffer rebuffs and meet with incredulity at times right among those who presumably should be their ardent supporters.

But, we repeat, for this most remarkable fact bears repeating, despite the conditions described, that reveal so forcefully that the Adventists of earlier days were far from bewitchment, Mrs. White continued to write letters of counsel, warning, and rebuke—often to members at headquarters in Battle Creek—and those letters were [512] generally accepted, and reform and revival frequently followed in their wake.

How shall we explain this? We think there is only one rational explanation. The recipients of Mrs. White’s letters found in them such amazing revelations of themselves, written with such convicting power, that they could do no other than acknowledge the divine source of these testimonies, and act accordingly. As we before remarked, one needs only to read her published letters to discover that they often deal with the secret thoughts of the heart, thoughts that only He who reads the heart could disclose.

Dr. J. H. Kellogg Testifies for Mrs. White

In the latter part of the nineteenth century no Adventist leader was more prominent than Dr. J. H. Kellogg, medical superintendent of the Battle Creek Sanitarium. He therefore had frequent occasion to correspond with Mrs. White and to note the character of her work and her writings. In a letter bearing the date line “Battle Creek, Mich., Sep. 9, 1892,” he wrote to her in part as follows:

“There are so many who are ready to say that Sr. White has been influenced to do or to say this or that, I often hesitate about writing you concerning things which I would like to write to you about, so that in case remarks of that sort are made I can say with the utmost confidence that there had been no possible opportunity for you to be influenced, by me at any rate. It has been to me a source of more confidence and satisfaction than I can express to you, that I have often seen in my acquaintance with you and your work, wrongs set to right through the special leading of your mind by the Lord.

“I used often to make a test in my mind, saying nothing to anybody. I would say to myself, Now here is an evident wrong. Sister White knows nothing about it, or if she knows anything about it, the circumstances are such as would produce a personal prejudice in favor of the wrong rather than against it. If the Lord leads her to denounce and correct this evil, I shall know that she is being specially led. In not a single instance did the test fail, and so my confidence grew. I mention these facts very often to those whom I find doubting.”

Canright Testifies for Her

We will now let her chief critic, D. M. Canright, who left the Seventh-day Adventist ministry in 1887, testify concerning the amazing quality of her testimonies. We quote from an article he [513] published in 1868, when he could speak from immediate experience, and without the handicap of long memory, or darkening hostilities:

“I am acquainted with many individuals for whom she has had testimonies. Many of them have been very striking indeed. I have been in this section [New Vineyard, Maine] some time, and have become pretty well acquainted with individuals and things. When sister White came she had testimonies for different individuals. She bore these testimonies without asking questions of any one, whether the things she was about to say were correct or not. She has invariably told facts in the case plainer than any one else who was familiar with the person and circumstances could have told them. This has not been once or twice. She has repeatedly had testimonies and delivered them to persons in public meetings the first time she ever saw them, and even before she knew their names....

“Think of it a moment. She has had visions for twenty years, or more, and has borne her testimonies in public and in private, by word and by writing to hundreds and even to thousands of individuals, all through the Northern States. She has reproved public sins and secret sins. She has had these testimonies for friends and foes; yet in all these times and numberless testimonies no one has ever convicted her of making a wrong statement. We must suppose her to be a wonderful person indeed, to do all this without the help of the Lord.”—The Review and Herald, February 25, 1868, p. 167.

The Most Remarkable of All the Facts

That is Canright speaking in 1868! Strange that he would “play up” this feature of Mrs. White’s spiritual labors, her writing of amazingly revealing letters, if there were numerous instances where she had sent testimonies to the wrong people, had disclosed “facts” that were not facts, or had otherwise given evidence that she had only gossip sources for her letters to individuals. Yet in the years when Mrs. White was most actively writing testimonies to church members and church groups, often giving names and describing events and acts and thoughts, Canright and others who wrote in behalf of her inspiration used this very letter writing as perhaps their best proof. We repeat, it passes credulity to believe that such spokesmen for Mrs. White would have placed these revelatory testimonies so confidently in the forefront of their arguments for her if such testimonies had been shot through with errors of fact and judgment concerning individuals. [514]

We read in vain the endless columns of the old issues of the Review and Herald for anything that suggests that these proponents of Mrs. White ever felt hesitancy in presenting the letters in proof. Nor do we find any lengthy defenses in the Review and Herald against charges that these letters were full of errors. That is even more amazing, for the columns of the church paper often contain defenses of the denomination, including Mrs. White, on various matters. Even in Extras and Supplements of the Review and Herald which were published with a particular view to meeting charges against her we find scarcely anything of defense on this point. Nor does the chief critic of Mrs. White cite other references in the church paper.

Surely through the years, with thousands upon thousands of pages from Mrs. White’s pen going out to Adventist homes throughout the land, and sometimes to homes overseas, there would have been enough instances of glaring errors—if she were only a gossip dispenser—to cause many incensed and outraged people to proceed to provide a critic here or there with a generous number of affidavits or other well-documented proofs of the falsity of her testimonies.

But where is all this material? We have found little of it, though we have searched diligently through a motley array of books, pamphlets, and leaflets against Mrs. White. And we have here examined the most impressive exhibits that Mrs. White’s most voluminous critic gathered together in his 1919 book, the principal source work of other and later critics. This paucity of exhibits is unquestionably the most remarkable of all the facts that we can offer to the reader in closing our examination of the gossip charge against Mrs. White.

The Nature of Our Claim for Mrs. White

We do not say that every letter that Mrs. White ever wrote to anyone displays inspired insights—some of them were patently only friendly epistles, and not intended to give special counsel. Nor do we dogmatically assert that nowhere in the great array of letters she wrote through the years can be found no instances of [515] apparent failure to disclose the actual facts or no apparent contradictions. We cannot make such a claim for the writers of the Bible. The critics of the Holy Book keep us reminded on that point of apparent errors and contradictions in the Bible. But we answer them that the evidence of divine direction in the writings of the ancient prophets is so overwhelming that a reasonable person will not permit the few apparent exceptions to decide the case, but rather, will conclude that those seeming exceptions could be explained if only we had the full details or could reconstruct the historical framework of the incidents.

We should not be asked to prove more for the writings of Mrs. White, including her testimonies to various individuals. Faith may sometimes be required in dealing with certain details that appear to contradict the claim to a divine origin for her writings—faith is needed in relation to some Bible passages. But rank credulity is required if we are to believe that those writings had no higher source than Mrs. White’s mind—aided by a steady stream of gossip!

Note.—See Appendixes L and N. [516]

Chapter 33—Mrs. White’s Financial Affairs

Critics bring against Mrs. White the blanket charge that she handled her financial affairs in a way contrary to her own teachings and the practice of Bible prophets. The details of this charge we shall set forth as we proceed. The principal attack is on her financial affairs in the latter part of her life. Let us examine, first, the charge of an early critic:

Charge Number 1

“Mrs. White and her husband began poor.... But as soon as they became leaders, they commercialized their work.... They soon had abundance, and used means for themselves lavishly.”

Yes, they began pathetically poor. They were leaders from the first. But after twenty years of leadership they were still so far from affluence that when James White had a “stroke” in 1865, they were compelled to sell some of their household belongings to provide necessary cash for living. The story is found in Testimonies for the Church 1:582, 583. In the years that followed, until his death in 1881, during which time he suffered much from ill-health, there is no evidence that he acquired any great possessions. The critic frankly admits he has no better authority than “it is said,” for his statement that James White left behind “some $15,000 or $20,000.” There are no facts to support the “it is said.”

It may be remarked, in passing, that one of the reasons why Mrs. White and her husband never laid by any sum of money was that they consistently put back into the work of God most of what they received. Here is a statement she made in 1888, not many years after her husband’s death:

“I do not begrudge a cent that I have put into the cause, and I have kept on until my husband and myself have about $30,000 invested in the cause of [517] God. We did this a little at a time and the Lord saw that He could trust us with His means, and that we would not bestow it on ourselves. He kept pouring it in and we kept letting it out.”—MS. 3, 1888.

A present-day critic, focusing on her later years, and noting that she received not only salary but also royalties on her books, has raised the question as to what she did with her money. He admits that she “was not extravagant in her home or person.” Hence she must have spent her money in some unusual, perhaps questionable, way. The real import of his question will be evident when we come to charge number 2. But first let us answer the question: What did she do with her money? There are two parts to the answer:

What She Did With Her Money

1. She maintained a staff of assistants who cared for her extensive correspondence and the preparation of her articles and books. She also assumed, for many years, certain initial costs in the production of books; for example, the heavy cost of typesetting and making plates, and often the cost of illustrations. She had grown up with the movement and was active in writing before there was a close-knit organization. Very understandably, she continued to care for many aspects of the writing and publishing of her books, that would not be handled by other authors. But in connection with all this there were substantial expenses. These Mrs. White met from her salary and other income.

Generous Gifts to the Needy

2. Mrs. White was a very generous person, a generosity quickened and ever kept active because of her conviction that she was simply the steward of such means as God gave to her. Here is the way she expressed that conviction:

“I do not profess to be the owner of any money that comes into my hands. I regard it as the Lord’s money, for which I must render an account.”—Letter 41, 1895.

Here is an illustration of how she discharged her stewardship:

“Please pay to the order of------$100 (one hundred dollars) as a gift from the Lord who has made me his steward of means.

“Ellen G. White.”—Letter 28, 1889. [518]

The foregoing were the terms used in a letter concerning the providing of financial help for a destitute widow.

While Mrs. White was in Australasia she did much to launch the work there. She was particularly interested in the training of youth, many of whom lacked money to secure an education. Here is a paragraph from a letter she wrote in 1893, while in New Zealand:

“I have already appropriated two thousand dollars of royalties on books, to help students to attend the school. They would never have been able to enjoy the advantages of the school unless someone did help them, and as no one assumed the responsibility, it dropped on me. I carried several through the first term of school, and am paying the expenses of six during the present term, and the number may swell to eight.”—Letter 65, 1893.

It is needless to remark that if she had already “appropriated two thousand dollars” to help students, and was continuing to do so on a rising scale, the two-thousand-dollar total would rise, and rapidly.

Here is another letter, written in 1893, in which is revealed the fact that Mrs. White had been helping students in Healdsburg, California, before she went to Australia.

“Brother and Sister A. have been laboring in Ormondville, about one hundred miles from here, with good results.... I met him in Napier, and he told me I was the one who sent him to school in Healdsburg, paying his expenses to obtain an education. I was so thankful to see the results of this investment.”—Letter 79, 1893.

That Mrs. White spent money in other ways than helping students through school, is revealed in the following letter:

“We send Brother A ... to the Institute at St. Helena.[209] ... He is a great sufferer. I have appropriated three hundred dollars to this case, although there are many cases where every dollar is needed, but I feel perfectly clear in helping in this case. It is a case where those who love and fear God must show their sympathy in a tangible manner, and bear in mind that Christ identified his interest with suffering humanity.”—Letter 33, 1893.[210]

[209]The St. Helena Sanitarium, California.

[210]There was no sustentation fund or sick-benefit policy in operation in the Seventh-day Adventist Church in 1893.

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“Is Not Mrs. White Worth Millions?”

And here is a revealing statement made by her in 1904:

“Sometimes it has been reported that I am trying to get rich. Some have written to us, inquiring, ‘Is not Mrs. White worth millions of dollars?’ I am glad that I can say, ‘No.’ I do not own in this world any place that is free from debt. Why?—Because I see so much missionary work to be done. Under such circumstances, could I hoard money?—No, indeed. I receive royalties from the sale of my books; but nearly all is spent in missionary work.

“The head of one of our publishing houses in a distant foreign land, upon hearing from others recently that I was in need of means, sent me a bill of exchange for five hundred dollars; and in the letter accompanying the money, he said that in return for the thousands upon thousands of dollars royalty that I had turned over to their mission field for the translation and distribution of new books and for the support of new missionary enterprises, they regarded the enclosed five hundred dollars as a very small token of their appreciation. They sent this because of their desire to help me in my time of special need; but heretofore I have given, for the support of the Lord’s cause in foreign lands, all the royalties that come from the sale of my foreign books in Europe; and I intend to return this five hundred dollars as soon as I can free myself from debt.”—MS. 8, 1904.

To a brother from whom she was requesting a loan, Mrs. White wrote thus in 1904:

“I invest in the work of God all the means that I can possibly spare. I sent one thousand dollars to Eld.------to help in beginning the work in New York City....

“It was thus that I helped in the advancement of the work in Australia.... I borrowed money for the erection of meeting houses, and to provide facilities for tent meetings.... I used the royalties on my books to help in starting a school in Melbourne, and then I borrowed money from those who were interested in the work....

“Besides what I have invested in Australia and in Europe, I have also made donations to the Southern field. I have borrowed money to send to them when in strait places. I shall continue to do all I can to help the needy fields. Time is short, and I wish to see the money of our people that is tied up in banks put into circulation where it can help the work of God.

“When I receive what I have invested in my books, I hope to have money sufficient to repay what I have borrowed, and to have more of my own money to use.”—Letter 103, 1904.

In a letter written to a brother in 1905 Mrs. White says in part: [520]

“I have recently added to my indebtedness by borrowing two thousand dollars from the bank to help in the purchase of the Paradise Valley Sanitarium property. I could not endure the thought that the opportunity to purchase this property for so low a price should not be improved, and Sister------and I clasped hands over the table in a resolution that we would purchase it and set the sanitarium in operation.”—Letter 81, 1905.

These exhibits of Mrs. White’s stewardship speak for themselves. They are but typical of many more exhibits found in her letter files. It is not difficult to see how Mrs. White, by following such a policy of liberality, could easily expend a substantial income annually.

Charge Number 2

In her latter years, when she was living near St. Helena, California, “she owned nearly seventy-four acres of very fine bottom land at the foot of Mt. Howell, just below St. Helena Sanitarium, one hundred and twenty acres of land on the side of Mt. Howell, ten lots and a bungalow in St. Helena, besides other scattered pieces of real estate.” “What business had Mrs. White to speculate in real estate?” She did not live up to her own testimonies in which she told the brethren that they “should be cutting down their possessions instead of increasing them. Testimonies for the Church 5:152.”

In her real estate holdings we are evidently supposed to find the answer to the question as to what she did with her money, and also a proof that she disobeyed her own instruction. What are the facts?

Let us look first at her property holdings. From 1891 to 1900 Mrs. White lived in Australia. There, from 1895 to 1900, she owned a modest dwelling place. At the time she left to return to America plans were being laid for the erection of a sanitarium at Wahroonga, near Sydney, Australia. Funds were short, and so on leaving Mrs. White informed the brethren that they could have, on loan, whatever money was received from the sale of her home. When she arrived a little later in California she was virtually without funds, nor did she know, at first, even where she would locate. She soon visited the St. Helena Sanitarium, about sixty miles north of San Francisco. There she heard of a property at the foot of the sanitarium hill that could be purchased for eight thousand dollars. It was an eight-room, two-story frame building, [521] fifteen years old, but completely furnished, ready for occupancy. Included with the house were about seventy-five acres of land, less than half of which was tillable. This she bought. Because she did not have ready cash she sold part of the acreage and took out a five-thousand-dollar mortgage. In this way she obtained what has been known through the years as Elmshaven.

In purchasing this property, Mrs. White was thinking, not simply of herself, but of those who would be associated with her in her work. She wanted a property sufficiently large to have in it the possibility of providing homes for those who worked with her. She gave some of the land to certain of these helpers, and on it they erected their own homes. A less thoughtful person would not have had his workers in mind when he purchased his property. Near her two-story house was erected a small two-story office building and other modest quarters, which provided a place where secretarial and literary work could be carried on more effectively. Such improvements naturally increased the value of the property. At the time of her death she owned only thirty-seven acres.

A Survey of “Two Hundred Acres”

The present-day critic in summarizing her holdings describes her as being “possessed with over 200 acres of land.” The reader, of course, is supposed to understand that these two hundred acres were very valuable and that thus Mrs. White was hoarding great riches when she should have been distributing it. Let us survey this property. Elmshaven, with its limited acreage, some of which was tillable, constituted a small part of the two hundred acres mentioned by the critic. The greater part of her land was a hillside of one hundred and twenty acres, valued at—note the price—S4.58 per acre. This hundred and twenty acres was situated some distance from the Elmshaven property.

And how did she happen to purchase this hundred and twenty acres? When she settled at Elmshaven she found that wood for cooking and heating cost one dollar a cord, standing timber. She had the opportunity to purchase this acreage of standing timber on the side of Howell Mountain at a cost of $550. From this she [522] could get her wood supply. The wood was used by her and also by her helpers. Some was sold to neighbors. The cutting of wood also furnished work to some needy Adventist brethren who otherwise would have been out of employment. If, through the years, she and those who labored with her had purchased their firewood on the open market, they would have paid out very much more than the cost of this piece of land.

Lots Given to Church

After the wood had been cut from this hundred and twenty acres, and it was no longer of value to Mrs. White, an Adventist in St. Helena, who owned several lots in the town, wished to trade some of these lots for Mrs. White’s hill land. Accordingly, an agreement was reached whereby she gave over the hill land, a wagon, horse, and certain other items in exchange for the town lots. After this exchange had been completed Mrs. White gave several of the lots to the St. Helena church to provide a place for the erection of their church school. Later the St. Helena church was built on this land. This, in fact, was another reason why she was encouraged and led to make this exchange.

Thus, when the facts are all presented—facts which are no secret—Mrs. White stands forth not as the possessor of rich landed estates, not as one who was adding farm to farm in a feverish desire to gain great possessions, but as someone who was seeking only to provide modest quarters and a fuel supply for herself and those who assisted her.

There is nothing in her land transactions that goes counter to the counsel she gave through the years concerning the holding of property. It is true that she urged the sale of land on certain occasions. It is also true that she spoke out against those who, filled with a desire for material possessions, added farm to farm. But nowhere in her writings did she declare that there was anything amiss in owning land for a home. That fact is evident when we remember that she did not counsel believers to rent rather than own, and she counseled believers, as far as consistent, to move into the country. [523]

Charge Number 3

“When Mrs. White died she was $90,000 in debt; and practically all of this was in the form of notes given for borrowed money.” “Aside from the valuation of the copyrights, plates, etc., her assets fell short of her debts to the amount of more than $64,000.” “Let the reader harmonize Mrs. White’s indebtedness with some of her utterances. She says: ‘But, from the light He [God] has given me, every effort should be made to stand free from debt.’ T7 206.”

It is a fact that when Mrs. White died she owed a substantial sum of money. It is also a fact that in her writings are found warnings against debt. Therefore, we are presumably to conclude that she violated her own teachings and thus exposed herself as a false prophet. No believer in the Bible would concede for a moment that a prophet is proved false because at some time or other he failed to live up to his own inspired teachings—the teachings are divine; the prophets are human, of “like passions as we are.” But what are the facts in the case before us?

We believe that the evidence will show that Mrs. White did not violate the spirit and intent of the counsel she gave concerning freedom from debt. In earlier chapters we discovered that even for inspired writings, the adage applies that circumstances alter cases. We have provided illustrations of this from Holy Writ.

There are different kinds of debts. There is a kind that can be made by prudent businessmen, whose actions are entirely free from criticism. A debt may be incurred, at times, to enlarge a business, because all the experience of the concern up to that time warrants the confident belief that if the business is expanded so that more can be produced by the plant, the sales will be larger, and the debt will be met safely and surely. There come such times of expansion in the history of almost all the great business concerns of the country. They float loans, sell bonds, and against those bonds or other obligations they set up a certain per cent of anticipated earnings over a period of years.

In the light of these facts let us look at Mrs. White’s debt. As already stated, her publishing relationships to the denomination were unique in this respect, that through the long years she assumed certain costs in connection with the production of her [524] books that were not assumed by other authors. She had to make a large investment before any returns could come in. In a letter she wrote in 1904 this point is brought out:

“When I receive what I have invested in my books, I hope to have money sufficient to repay what I have borrowed, and to have more of my own money to use.”—Letter 103, 1904.

Heavy Debts in Latter Years

The critics call attention to the fact that it was in her latter years that much of the debt was incurred. It was in these latter years that Mrs. White did some of her heaviest work in preparing books, both in English and by translation into other languages. She realized that her days were short. She had already passed the threescore years and ten when she entered the twentieth century. She felt also that there was much work yet to be done to place her writings in the form that she wished to have them before her death. Thus her latter years were the busiest years of her life, so far as actual book preparation was concerned. Anyone who has engaged in the publishing business knows how easy it is to invest five thousand or ten thousand or more dollars in a book before it ever goes on the press. That is particularly true if the books are to be illustrated with original art work. In the later years, when original paintings were used to illustrate her books, Mrs. White’s office bore the heavy cost of these illustrations, even as it bore other costs in the production of her books.

There were only two ways in which such expenses of book preparation could be met—either from profits from former publishing, that is from royalties, or by borrowing against anticipated royalties. If Mrs. White had been the rich woman that some critics would like to have their readers think, she could easily have drawn on her bank account to underwrite the cost of further book preparation. But we have found that she was not rich, and that she disbursed right and left to worthy causes such monies as she received, even giving, at times, to worthy causes from borrowed money. Therefore, the only way that she could secure the money for the book making was by borrowing it. [525]

Speaking from a business standpoint, was that justified borrowing, or was Mrs. White providing simply an illustration of reckless expenditure of money? Was that setting out on a course that could mean only endless financial embarrassment, or on a course that permitted her, or her executors, to liquidate the debt in due time?

We think the answer to these questions becomes evident when we keep in mind a fact that the critics themselves seek to impress upon us; namely, that there came annually to Mrs. White substantial sums from royalties on the sales of her books. Was there any reason to believe that these books would suddenly cease selling, or that if other books were published by her, they would fail to have a sale? The answer is No. On the contrary there was every reason to believe that the sales would increase, because the denomination was steadily enlarging its membership, and the writings of Mrs. White, by the admission of the critics themselves, are central in the literature of Seventh-day Adventists.

What the Figures Reveal

What do the figures actually show concerning her financial state at the time of her death? Critics have examined the figures at the county court house in Napa, California, and have broadcast their interpretation of the figures. We think our readers are entitled to the facts. When Mrs. White died the court appointed appraisers to place a value upon her estate, preparatory to probating her will. Here is the summary of their findings as regards liabilities and assets:

Liabilities—Consisting almost wholly of notes owing to individuals

$87,958.57

Assets—Comprising property, bookplates, furniture, fixtures, etc.

66,756.74

----------

$21,201.83

When court appraisers list assets they quite invariably are ultraconservative. When they list liabilities they are less likely to be so, for liabilities are generally in the form of notes payable or accounts payable, the exact amount of which can generally [526] be determined. Thus the figure of $21,201.83 may be considered a maximum estimate for deficit, the critics to the contrary not-withstanding.[211]

But what the figures of the appraisers did not disclose were the potential assets, the royalties that Mrs. White’s estate would annually receive from her books—returns on the heavy investment that she had made in the production of those books.

Without lengthening our recital unduly, we may say that the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists advanced a sum sufficient to meet the full note indebtedness, and the White Estate, through its Board of Trustees, gave in return its interest-bearing note for the full amount. Then out of the royalties and the sale of property the note was steadily reduced, and finally paid in full with interest, so that there was no loss, either to the individuals from whom Mrs. White had borrowed or to the General Conference, that had assumed the liabilities. In the years subsequent to the liquidation of this note the royalty money has gone, not into some private individual’s pocket, but into the General Conference, which, in turn, disburses the funds for the maintenance of that feature of the work known as the Ellen G. White Publications, and for the general activities of the church.

Charge Number 4

“If the writings of Mrs. White were as she claimed, ‘What God has opened before me in vision,’ then what right had she to have God’s messages copyrighted so no one could broadcast God’s messages to His people or to the world without her consent? Or what right had she to demand ten per cent royalty on all the messages the Lord wanted to go to His people Can you think of Paul, or John, or Jeremiah getting a copyright on the revelations they received so they could have a ‘corner’ on their sale? What would you think of Paul’s epistles if you should find out that he refused to allow any one to copy them without first paying him for the privilege and used the money, or a part of it, to buy a two hundred acre ranch in the suburbs of Rome?”

We do not know what “a two hundred acre ranch in the

[211]The books kept by Mrs. White’s accountant very properly list her assets at a definitely higher figure, with the result that her financial affairs appear in a much better state. The fact that her debts and court-estimated deficit were paid in full in due time from the earnings from her estate would indicate that the court appraisers greatly underestimated the value of some of her assets.

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suburbs of Rome” would have cost. Probably a great deal. But we do know that the large part of Mrs. White’s real estate holdings, far removed from San Francisco, cost only $4.58 an acre. Let us therefore leave the ranch and examine the other parts of the charge. We confess we do not know what Paul or John or Jeremiah might have done if there had been a copyright law in their day, and if there had been printing presses also, and if they had been involved in heavy costs for the production of plates and illustrations and for secretarial help.

But this much is certain, that if there had been printing presses in those long-ago days, and the prophets had been obligated to underwrite the cost of plates and illustrations and translations and the like, they would certainly have had to find the money somewhere. And what more sensible or equitable way could they have discovered for underwriting those costs than by asking for certain returns on the books that were sold? Furthermore, if the hope of receiving back the money that they expended to produce the books depended, at least in part, on protecting those books, why would we not expect them to copyright the books?[212]

The real point at issue, of course, is this: If, in ancient times, there had been printing presses and copyright laws, and the cost of production of his books was an obligation against the prophet-author, in what way would he have sinned against God or man if he had copyrighted his books and asked for royalty upon them, especially since most book authors are remunerated for their work only through royalty? The question answers itself.

Mrs. White might have stood apart from all the business features so inevitably involved in book production by leaving them wholly to the church, through a conference subsidy, or through gifts raised in the churches. We believe that it is an evidence of divine supervision that Mrs. White operated her affairs in a more or less autonomous fashion, so that she was not dependent upon any possible changing mood of administrators or of the constituency

[212]There would have been a further good reason for copyrighting their works—to maintain the purity of the text. One modern Bible translation carries the line: “Copyright ... to insure purity of text.” See Revised Standard Version of New Testament.

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in order to bring forth such writings as she felt ought to go to the church. And by thus carrying on her work she deprived critics of the charge that could so plausibly have been made, that her published testimonies reflect only what the church was willing to print.

Charge Number 5

In her will, Mrs. White left certain cash gifts to her children and a per cent on the royalties from her books. This seems “strange in view of some things which she had written. In a testimony on ‘Wills and Legacies,’ written in 1880, she said: ‘Some are so situated that wills must be made. But in doing this, care should be taken not to give to sons and daughters means which should flow into the treasury of God.’ Tes. Vol. 4, p. 484. In the same chapter she said: ‘His [God’s] claims should have your first consideration.’ p. 482.”

There is nothing in what Mrs. White has written concerning wills that condemns giving some portion of an estate to the children. On the very page from which the critic quotes, Mrs. White declares: “In disposing of your property by will to your relatives, be sure that you do not forget God’s cause.”—Testimonies for the Church 4:482. How often ministers say to their churches: “Care should be taken not to spend upon ourselves and our family money that should flow into the treasury of God.” Do we mean that church members should not spend a dollar upon themselves or their children, and that every dollar of their income ought to go to the Lord? Not at all. Mrs. White’s counsel on the matter of wills is simply an exemplification of the divine principle that we should seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness: “His [God’s] claims should have your first consideration.”

Her will reveals that ten per cent of the income from her properties[213] was to go to one son, ten per cent to another (and after the death of this son and his wife their ten per cent was to go to the denomination), and five per cent of the income was to be set aside each year for an educational fund for the grandchildren and great-grandchildren and other worthy persons.[214] That would total at the outset twenty-five per cent, or only one fourth of the

[213]Technically, her properties consisted of her real estate and book rights; however, it was only the book rights which would yield a steady annual income, and that in the form of royalties.

[214]See Appendix Q, p. 674, for full text of the will.

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income. Seventy-five per cent—later to rise to eighty-five per cent—was to go to the church. If every individual who made out a will designated that this percentage of the anticipated income to his estate should go to the church, we think that the church would be in a marvelously well-fortified financial position, and the ministry at large would be ready to say that God’s claims had had “first consideration” in the minds of the testators.

It is true that Mrs. White made provision for certain bequests at the time of the probating of her will. The grand total of these was only $6,006.75, and was constituted of certain cash gifts and her furniture and personal belongings.

What If She Had Forgotten Her Children?

There seems clearly implied in the charge before us that Mrs. White did wrong in giving any money to her children. But what if she had not given anything to them? Then we would hear another kind of charge. Some one would piously quote Paul: “But if any provide not for his own, and specially for those of his own house, he hath denied the faith, and is worse than an infidel.” 1 Timothy 5:8. No matter which way Mrs. White moved in this matter she could not hope to escape criticism. We are glad she moved to remember her children.

But the critic reminds us that she remembered them with royalty money she received by exercising her gift as a prophet. Indeed! And why should a prophet be penalized? How did she pay her grocery bill and coal bill and any other kind of material bill? Was it not from money she received through exercising her gift as a prophet of the Lord? Paul says, concerning the gifts of the Spirit: “God hath set some in the church, first apostles, secondarily prophets, thirdly teachers, after that miracles, then gifts of healings, helps, governments, diversities of tongues.” 1 Corinthians 12:28. Now, no one would think it wrong for an apostle to remember one of his children with a small fraction of any earthly goods he might have, or for a teacher to do so, or for conference administrators, who have the gift of “government.” Then why should it be considered amiss for a prophet to do the same? [530]

However, Mrs. White’s children, in return for an equitable cash gift, signed a quitclaim to any continuing interest in the estate—of which the royalty was the chief part. Thus all the royalty money, for many years, has been going directly and exclusively to the church, and will continue to do so.

It is an interesting fact that a present-day critic offers to the public copies of her will—for a price.[215] Thus, actually, the only private individual who receives any continuing income as a result of Mrs. White’s will is the critic who publishes and sells it at so much per copy!

We agree with the earlier critic who opened his chapter on Mrs. White’s finances with the words: “There is no example in the Bible where a prophet took advantage of his inspiration to enrich himself. The prophets of the Bible generally worked hard, had little and died poor.” Mrs. White worked hard; even her critics admit that. She had little, for all the money that came in flowed out immediately to good causes. She died poor; the critics emphasize that fact. Thus by their own admissions and by the undebatable evidence Mrs. White compares very favorably in financial as well as in other matters with the prophets of the Bible.

[215]The text of the will was copied from the court records of Napa County, California. To secure such a copy it is not necessary to obtain the permission of the family of the deceased, because such court records as wills are in the public domain.

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Chapter 34—In Conclusion

As we come to the end of our examination of the charges brought against Mrs. White, we think we hear our readers exclaiming: “Have the critics, after searching the seventy years of her public life and the thousands of pages of her writings, nothing more impressive than this to bring against her!” And that exclamation will probably be followed with the inquiry: “How did it come about that these charges ever seemed impressive and convincing to men?” To provide an answer to that question is the purpose of this concluding chapter. From our study of the charges we have discovered that their strength and plausibility resided in the kind of procedure that the critics employed in presenting their case. Let us analyze it:

1. Mrs. White has been judged by an arbitrary, artificial standard of perfection and omniscience that they have set up, a standard that neither they nor we employ when studying the lives of the prophets. It is true that “holy men of old spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost,” and that when they thus spake their messages possessed a unique authority, the direct authority of heaven (2 Peter 1:21; 2 Timothy 3:16, 17). But the Bible is also explicit that the prophets were “subject to like passions as we are.” James 5:17. Only thus can we understand certain facts concerning them, such as Moses’ striking the rock, David’s gross sin, Elijah’s error in saying, “I, even I only, am left,” or Nathan’s mistake in endorsing David’s desire to build a temple for the Lord, which endorsement he had to withdraw on the morrow because of a vision during the night. No lover of the Bible would claim that everything a prophet of God ever said or did was inspired.

But when Mrs. White’s critics discuss her their reasoning is built on the false premise that if she were a true prophet, she [532] would have been infallible and omniscient, able to foreknow and discern all things. But we make no such claim for her, nor does she make such a claim. Why claim more for her than we would for Bible prophets? We have sought to present a true portrait of her, as one through whom was manifested the gift of the Spirit of prophecy. But in doing so we have made no presumptuous attempt to discover just what inspiration is, nor to speculate on the question of where holy ground begins. As we draw near to the burning bush we feel we have come on to holy ground. We do not think it proper to pull up the bush to see what makes it burn. We are satisfied simply to know that the bush truly burns and that it dispels the darkness about us.

False Conclusions Drawn From Evidence

2. Mrs. White has been charged with inconsistency, of failing to follow her own counsel to the church, of even going contrary to principles, set down in Holy Writ. But we have discovered that there is a fallacy in the reasoning underlying this charge. The critics are really saying in effect that there are no exceptions to rules, that neither circumstances, time, nor place have a bearing on how counsel should be applied. But we all know there are exceptions, and our study, we believe, has revealed that fact, as we have reconstructed the historical context for her various statements and deeds under criticism.

3. Stray statements in her writings have been lifted out and made to carry a meaning never intended by the author. This is a favorite but reprehensible method employed by infidels in their attacks upon the Bible. They may point to James, for example, and declare that the Bible teaches salvation by works. Then they may point to another kind of Scriptural passage and contend that it contradicts James. The infidel’s argument sounds impressive to many listeners because they do not know the Bible and so cannot place the particular passages in their true context. In this book we have sought to place in their right context the stray phrases or paragraphs from Mrs. White that critics have used against her. And how different they have then looked! [533]

4. Where there is more than one conclusion that might be drawn from the available facts the critics have consistently been satisfied to draw the conclusion that will make Mrs. White appear in the worst light. We confess that their conclusions have sometimes seemed plausible. But we have sought to show that a conclusion may sound plausible without being true. And then we have gathered all the facts together to present what we believe is the true conclusion, the one best supported by those facts, the conclusion that best fits the picture of Mrs. White’s whole manner of life and speech. And how different that conclusion has proved to be!

False Picture of Early History

5. Finally, some of the primary charges have had to do with events at the very beginning of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, in fact before there was such a church in the true sense of the word. By inference, at least, the one who listens to the charges is led to conclude that it is altogether reasonable to take hold of any stray sentence by any man connected with the earliest days of Adventism and declare: This is the historic teaching of Seventh-day Adventists. Ill-formed statements of belief, divergence of theological views by pioneers—all these serve only to provide what the critics would have their readers consider as clear evidence of the irrational, un-Scriptural teachings of this church. And in the midst of all this they have placed Mrs. White, hoping thereby to provide the strongest kind of proof that she was an uninspired, deluded visionary, because she was a leader of this whole religious group. But we have found the facts far otherwise.

For these and other reasons that might possibly be listed, the charges have seemed impressive and convincing to many who have heard them through the years. We trust that sufficient evidence has been presented in this work to show how unimpressive and unconvincing the reasoning of the critics really is. We say this, not because we rejoice in controversy, but because we wish to exonerate the good name of one who, we sincerely believe, was entrusted by God with the gift of the Spirit of prophecy, and [534] because we wish to protect the reader against further charges that critics might someday bring.

Though we have come to the end of our examination of the charges against Mrs. White, we do not say that we have come to the end of the charges. But there are limits to the size of a volume. Nor do we think it necessary to refute every possible accusation that may have been framed in order to free Mrs. White from the dark suspicions with which critics have sought to surround her. However, we believe we can truthfully say that we have examined all the major charges that have come down through the years, plus a number of minor ones.[216]

Weeds in the Elmshaven Garden

Charges have much in common with weeds. They spring up in the most unexpected places, grow rank without cultivation, and are quickly scattered to far places by the winds that carry their seeds abroad. And so, though we may clear all the tall weeds, long standing, and most of the small ones, from the Elmshaven garden, in which Mrs. White once quietly walked, we cannot say that the seed of some new weed may not blow that way in the future or that there may not even yet lurk some small weeds by shrub or flower bed. But that a few such weeds have eluded us really matters not at all. Once the tall weeds have been cleared away sufficiently that Mrs. White can clearly be seen, those remaining stand revealed for what they truly are, obnoxious intruders in a beautiful garden.

We have found that these weeds, though luxuriant and tall, were not deeply rooted, but rather, surface feeders. They had often fed upon a strange kind of soil called rumor, hearsay, and gossip—and what stimulating nutriment these provide for a certain type of vegetation! The weeds took no pains to send their roots deep down in search of the subsoil of hard facts or sound logic. Botanists, we understand, believe that some plants can sustain

[216]In this connection it should be remembered that the purpose of this present book has not been to provide an encyclopedic commentary on every conceivable charge that anyone at anytime, even anonymously, might have raised. Rather the purpose has been to examine those charges most typical and most frequently presented. Even comprehensive works in defense of the Bible do not attempt more than this.

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themselves almost wholly from the breezes that blow upon them; they seem to possess a singular ability to draw from the air certain ingredients to maintain their life. At least this is true of some of the weeds that have confronted us. They have had no root whatever, but have been sustained only by the air breathed upon them by those who planted them, a breath now hot with animosity, now cold with derision. But they seem to have withered when exposed to the breath of investigation.

We have also found a kind of weed that thrives only in the shade, and in the shade it takes on strange and impressive colorings. Such have required for their destruction only that they be exposed to the light of day.

Some weeds have proved to be of a climbing nature, their tendrils reaching out everywhere. We have sought to eradicate these, not by attacking each small tendril, but by cutting the main stem at the base. If those who have sowed such weeds seek to show that we have not completed our task because some tendrils remain, we think we need only to point to the severed stem.

It has been beyond the range of this book to discuss, except in an incidental way, the person or the character of Mrs. White, the greatness or the extent of her labors, the beauty or the significance of her writings. That task has been ably performed by others, some of them men who walked and talked with her as they journeyed together on the heavenly pilgrimage. We commend those works to all who sincerely wish to learn more fully of this frail handmaiden of the Lord, who now stands forth clearly in her Elmshaven garden, amid the flowers, with the light of heaven shining upon her face. [536]

APPENDIXES

[537]

APPENDIX A: Brief History of Elder Canright’s Connection With This People

[Under the above title George I. Butler discusses at some length Canright’s life among Seventh-day Adventists. The article appears in an Extra of the The Review and Herald, December, 1887, which carries the streamer head: “Reply to Eld. Canright’s Attacks on S. D. Adventists.” We quote a portion of Butler’s article which appears on pages 2 and 3.]

Some twenty-eight years ago, D. M. Canright embraced the views of S. D. Adventists. For several years he labored to acquire some necessary education, and soon after commenced to preach their doctrines. He was blessed with a good degree of earnestness, with fair ability, and with ambition to succeed, and he had excellent success in his labors, and was considered for many years a growing man in the denomination. He had a strong taste for debates and controversy, and applied himself especially to them, and had good success in them. These qualities always attract attention, and they gave him quite a prominence. For a dozen years his labors were valuable to this cause, and he traveled extensively in different States and Conferences. He then had quite fully the confidence of our people. But from that point their confidence began to lessen, and it has continued to decrease ever since. We will briefly relate the causes. Eld. Canright’s good opinion of his own abilities had, during the meantime, become quite pronounced. He was never noted for patience, forbearance, or special regard of the opinions of others. He was a person who formed his conclusions remarkably quick, and was inclined to be rash; and though in the main a genial, pleasant, frank companion, yet his desire to have his own way sometimes got him into trouble. He never could bear reproof with patience, or feel composed when his way was crossed. When he came to mingle in important matters with brethren in prominent positions, these and other traits naturally got him into trouble. S. D. Adventists believe in order, and that positions of responsibility should be respected. [538] Eld. C. had little respect for any one’s opinion unless it coincided with his own. The reader can readily see that very naturally there would be friction. He always hated reproof, hence bore it like a fractious child. So he had some unpleasant experiences, as we well remember.

On such occasions the Elder was immediately greatly troubled with doubts. When everything went pleasantly, he could usually see things with clearness. When he was “abused,“ as he always thought he was when things did not go to suit him, the evidences of our faith began immediately to grow dim. Dark clouds of unbelief floated over his mental sky, and he felt that everything was going by the board. Here was the Elder’s special weakness. He is a strong man in certain directions when all goes smoothly, but very weak in adversity. He failed to “endure hardness as a good soldier of Jesus Christ.” He was good in a fight, and appeared at best advantage when in a hot debate. This was his forte. But when things apparently were against him, he seemed to have no staying, recuperative qualities.

These weaknesses began to manifest themselves as far back as 1870. In the last of December of that year he held a debate with Eld. Johnson, Presbyterian, in Monroe, Iowa. The writer was present. Eld. C. was not feeling in good spirits through the debate, though he presented his arguments quite clearly and met with success. The night following the debate I occupied a room with him. I was greatly astonished to find him under powerful temptations to give up religion and the Bible, and become an absolute infidel. I labored with him all night long; neither of us slept a wink. In the morning he seemed more calm, and a few weeks later he came to the General Conference at Battle Creek, Mich., made some confessions of his feelings, and went away in a much happier state of mind. He went on quite zealously for two or three years. In the summer of 1873, he went to Colorado with Eld. and Mrs. White, for his health. Some unpleasant circumstances arose. He received some reproof, felt very much aggrieved, and for several months ceased to preach. He went to California, and for a season he worked with his hands on a farm. He came very near giving up everything. But his brethren tried to help his mind and cheer him up all they could, till finally he commenced to preach again. He labored on for several years, held several important positions of trust in the work, and we all hoped he would show his weakness no more.

But in October of 1880, he had another backset. He became discouraged—we never knew from what special cause—and ceased to preach. He had been studying elocution, and when he gave up preaching he began to lecture on elocution, and traveled considerably in Wisconsin and Michigan, holding classes. He told me himself that [539] for a time he then ceased to observe the Sabbath, though he still believed it to be obligatory as the Bible Sabbath. He thought then quite seriously of preaching for the Methodists, and it is currently reported on what seems to be good authority, that he visited a Methodist presiding elder to make such arrangements; but this we do not personally know. But the Elder’s conscience troubled him greatly at times. He wrote me, desiring to see me and have a long talk. We met in Battle Creek the following January, and had some fifteen hours’ conversation. The poor man was in great distress of mind, and our sympathies were deeply enlisted for him. Suffice it to say that he took his stand once more and commenced to preach again.

The fourth instance of his lapsing into doubt and darkness occurred in the fall of 1882, when he gave up preaching and went to farming at Otsego, Mich. He returned to us again the last of September, 1884. During this time he had little or no faith in the peculiar doctrines of S. D. Adventists; and in a letter before me, written to a friend in December, 1883, he says: “If I was situated differently, would just as soon join some other church.” And speaking of the work of our people, he says: “Hence, as you can see, my faith in the whole thing has been shaken.” So notorious was his apostasy at the time, that without doubt the church stood where a little encouragement would have led them to withdraw the hand of fellowship from him. But some of us who felt a pity for him, knowing his weakness, counseled delay, and commenced to labor earnestly to help him. After special efforts had been made by the writer and other friends, he came to our camp-meeting in September, 1884, at Jackson, Mich. After some further talk with him, and explaining some things which he viewed in an exaggerated light, he came out and publicly took his stand with us once more, making a very affecting confession before a thousand people, which moved the whole congregation to tears. He confessed his great darkness of mind which he had felt for a long time, and said that now all was clear to him. Soon after this, in the issue of the REVIEW of Oct. 7, 1884, he made quite a full confession, which is given in another column. This was wholly voluntary on his part.

Eld. Canright for some time after this seemed indeed like a changed man. He seemed more as he used to a dozen years ago, and we had great hopes of him that he had now become a staunch, reliable man. He labored with us till last January, when he became somewhat cast down again, and has finally given up his experience for a quarter of a century, and has gone out from our ranks, and commenced a bitter raid upon us. [540]

A Friend of Canright Reminisces

[The following matter is a chapter entitled “D. M. Canright,” from the book I Remember, by D. W. Reavis. It has the limitation of being a reminiscence of the long ago. It has the advantage of being a report by one who was intimately acquainted with D. M. Canright. The chapter constitutes pages 117-120 of the Reavis book.]

Whatever Elder Canright said and wrote in those days [preceding his apostasy in 1887] meant as much to our people as the words of our most prominent leaders do today. But in view of what he has said and written since that time, and because of my intimate association with him, I feel it to be my duty to make a brief statement, with all the love in my heart it is possible for a human being to have for an admired, fallen friend.

I was acquainted with the Canright family during his first marriage, his first wife, who died in the faith, being a close friend of some of my intimate friends, and I felt highly honored by being selected by Elder Canright to do special Sabbath school work in Ohio. This appointment proved to be the beginning of a very close, mutual, friendly association.

Elder Canright talked freely with me about everything in which he was interested, about his personal difficulties, about his past trials and sorrows, and of his future hopes and plans. He seemed to find consolation in going over these things with me. He evidently felt that while I sympathetically listened, I would not repeat. Not until the present have I made any public statement of the facts I am now to state, and these are given not to condemn him, but, if possible, to save others even as strong as he from the pitfall into which he fell.

His estrangement began and developed through harboring that greatest seductive thing that finds its way into some human hearts, which I name an abnormal desire to be great, not great in the true meaning of the word, but great only in the estimation of people—to be popular.

The elder was remarkably bright, and grew rapidly from his humble beginning, through the blessing of God, and the power of the message he proclaimed with Heaven-bestowed ability. He was so greatly admired and openly praised by our workers and the laity, that he finally reached the conclusion he had inherent ability—that the message he was proclaiming was a hindrance to him rather than the exclusive source of his power. He gradually grew sensitive and resentful, and when reproof came through the testimonies, he rejected it, and finally gave up everything and began warring against the Spirit of prophecy and the message which had made him all he was. [541]

During the summer and fall of 1880, immediately after graduation, I, with other students from Battle Creek College, attended Professor Hamill’s School of Oratory in Chicago. Elder Canright, inoculated, at heart, with a belief that through a thorough study in, and mastery of, expression he could accomplish his consuming desire to be a popular public speaker, joined us; and because of my former pleasant association with him, I became his critic as he lectured, upon invitation, through the influence of the School of Oratory, in many of the largest popular churches in Chicago during the summer vacation of the pastors of these churches. In these lectures he applied the oratorical principles taught in the school, and needed a critic versed in these principles, to follow him in his lectures and later point out his misapplications, and of course to compliment him on all that were rightly applied. He had more invitations than he could possibly accept; so he selected the largest and most popular churches.

One Sunday night, in the largest church of the West Side, he spoke on “The Saints’ Inheritance” to more than 3,000 people, and I took a seat in the gallery directly in front of him, to see every gesture and to hear every tone, form of voice, emphasis, stress, and pitch, and all the rest. But that was as far as I got in my part of the service, for he so quickly and eloquently launched into this, his favorite theme, that I, with the entire congregation, became entirely absorbed in the Biblical facts he was so convincingly presenting. I never thought of anything else until he had finished.

After the benediction I could not get to him for more than half an hour, because of the many people crowding around him, complimenting and thanking him for his masterly discourse. On all sides I could hear people saying it was the most wonderful sermon they had ever heard. I knew it was not the oratorical manner of the delivery, but the Bible truth clearly and feelingly presented, that had appealed to the people—it was the power in that timely message. It made a deep, lasting impression upon my mind. I saw that the power was all in the truth, and not in the speaker.

After a long time we were alone, and we went into a beautiful city park just across the street, which was almost deserted because of the late hour of the night, and sat down to talk the occasion over and for me to deliver my criticisms. But I had none for the elder. I frankly confessed that I became so completely carried away with that soul-inspiring Biblical subject I did not think once of the oratorical rules he was applying in its presentation. Then we sat in silence for some time. Suddenly the elder sprang to his feet and said, “D.W., I believe I could become a great man were it not for our unpopular message.” [542]

I made no immediate reply, for I was shocked to hear a great preacher make such a statement; to think of the message, for which I had given up the world, in the estimation of its leading minister, being inferior to, and in the way of, the progress of men, was almost paralyzing. Then I got up and stepped in front of the elder and said with much feeling, “D.M., the message made you all you are, and the day you leave it, you will retrace your steps back to where it found you.”

But in his mind the die was evidently cast. The decision had doubtless been secretly made in his mind for some time, but had not before been expressed in words. From that night the elder was not quite the same toward our people and the work at large. He continued as a worker for several years afterward, but was retrograding in power all the time. The feeling that being an Adventist was his principal hindrance increasing as time passed, he finally reached the conclusion that he could achieve his goal of fame through denouncing the unpopular doctrines of the denomination, and he finally worked himself out of the denomination and into his self-imposed task of attempting to “expose” it.

All the years intervening between the time of our Chicago association in 1880, and 1903, I occasionally corresponded with Elder Canright, always attempting to do all in my power to save him from wrecking his life and injuring the cause he had done so much to build up. At times I felt hopeful, but every time my encouragement was smothered in still blacker clouds.

I finally prevailed upon him to attend a general meeting of our workers in Battle Creek in 1903, with the view of meeting many of the old workers and having a heart-to-heart talk together. He was delighted by the reception given him by all the old workers, and greatly pleased with the cordiality of the new workers. All through the meetings he would laugh with his eyes full of tears. The poor man seemed to exist simultaneously in two distinct parts—uncontrollable joy and relentless grief.

Finally when he came to the Review and Herald office, where I was then working, to tell me good-by before returning to his home in Grand Rapids, Michigan, we went back in a dark storeroom alone to have a talk, and we spent a long time there in this last personal, heart-to-heart visit. I reminded him of what I had told him years before in Chicago, and he frankly admitted that what I had predicted had come to pass, and that he wished the past could be blotted out and that he was back in our work just as he was at the beginning, before any ruinous thoughts of himself had entered his heart.

I tried to get him to say to the workers there assembled just what [543] he had said to me, assuring him that they would be glad to forgive all and to take him back in full confidence. I never heard any one weep and moan in such deep contrition as that once leading light in our message did. It was heart-breaking even to hear him. He said he wished he could come back to the fold as I suggested, but after long, heartbreaking moans and weeping, he said: “I would be glad to come back, but I can’t! It’s too late! I am forever gone! Gone!” As he wept on my shoulder, he thanked me for all I had tried to do to save him from that sad hour. He said, “D.W., whatever you do, don’t ever fight the message.”

This is a brief statement of the downfall of one of the leading men in our denominational work, brought about through the gradual development of a germ of self-exaltation.

[See also Appendixes O and P.]

APPENDIX B: Perpetuity of the Gifts

[Under the above head there appeared in the Review and Herald (beginning September 29, 1949) a series of articles by W. E. Read, that gives special attention to the phrase, “the testimony of Jesus,” in the book of the Revelation. With the kind permission of its author, we give here the series.]

Not only the writers of the New Testament but the prophets of the Old Testament tell about the church of the last days. In the main, they call it the remnant of the people of God. In the Holy Scriptures we find listed a number of important characteristics of those who are waiting for the return of the Saviour. We might profitably meditate on the following references to the remnant:

1. They will be gathered. (Isaiah 11:11.)

2. They will be a peculiar people, distinguished from all others. (Micah 5:7, 8.)

3. They will travel the highway of holiness. (Isaiah 11:16; 35:8.)

4. They will keep the commandments of God. (Revelation 12:17.)

5. They will have the testimony of Jesus Christ. (Revelation 12:17.)

6. They will be saved from sin. (Zephaniah 3:13.)

7. They will be saved in the kingdom of God. (Romans 9:27.)

It will be observed that one of the special features of the remnant church is “the testimony of Jesus Christ.” This expression occurs in this form in the book of Revelation only; and seeing that it is specifically mentioned as one of the marks of God’s remnant people, we do well to investigate and seek to understand what the Lord means by it. [544]

In Revelation 19:10 John calls it “the spirit of prophecy.” If this refers to one of the gifts of the Spirit, of which prophecy was one (1 Corinthians 12:10), it would certainly indicate that spiritual gifts would be seen in the true church in the last days.

This question, however, has been one upon which there has been considerable discussion in the Christian church for centuries. Most people believe that such gifts as prophecy and healing ceased just after apostolic days. Let us study this question and seek to ascertain what the New Testament suggests so far as the perpetuity of spiritual gifts is concerned.

Necessity of Spiritual Gifts

Spiritual gifts were bestowed upon the church by the Lord. They did not grow out of any demand made by men, nor did they come upon men because of any particular longing on their part; they were given by the Spirit of God, who divided “to every man severally as he will.” 1 Corinthians 12:11. In the twelfth chapter of First Corinthians there is recorded the fact that such gifts were given to the church but with no particular reference as to time, the period for which they should serve, whether it was a temporary bestowment, or whether it was God’s purpose that they should be in the church until the Saviour’s appearing.

In Ephesians 4, where certain of the gifts are enumerated, specific reference is made to the fact of their continuance in the church. After naming certain of the gifts and giving some indication as to the purpose they were to serve, the apostle tells us how long they were to be in the church. Note his words: “Till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ.” Ephesians 4:13.

What vital significance is attached to the words of the apostle: “Till,” or “until,” we “arrive at” (Weymouth), or “attain unto” (R.V.), the unity of the faith, until we come to “the personal knowledge of the Son of God” (Rotherham), “unto perfect manhood” (Cunnington), yea, even “the perfection of manhood and that degree of development of which the ideal to be found in the Christ is the standard” (Twentieth Century). The divine purpose looks forward to the complete deliverance of man from the thralldom of sin; it contemplates also his restoration to the likeness of Christ.

“The plan of redemption contemplates our complete recovery from the power of Satan. Christ always separates the contrite soul from sin. He came to destroy the works of the devil, and He has made provision that the Holy Spirit shall be imparted to every repentant soul, to keep [545] him from sinning.... The ideal of Christian character is Christlikeness.”—The Desire of Ages, 311.

Spiritual gifts play a large part in the purpose of God in the development of His people, and these divine bestowments will continue to be given, and will continue to function in the church, until Christ’s ideal for His children is reached. This means the grand culmination, the time when the Saviour shall return to gather those in whose hearts the likeness of Christ is seen.

Spiritual Gifts in Last Days

This Scriptural passage teaches the perpetuity of these gifts, and we need not be surprised to find Scriptural evidence that such gifts will be seen in the last days. That this is so, we observe in 1 Corinthians 1:6, 7. Here the apostle writes to the church, “The testimony of Christ was confirmed in you: so that ye come behind in no gift; waiting for the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

Though the apostle is writing to the church at large, his words apply particularly to the church that is waiting for the Advent of the Saviour. In them the testimony of Christ is to be confirmed, and the fact that this gift is to be in their midst is evidence to the great apostle that the church “waiting for the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ” was to have all the gifts. This is seen in the expression, “that ye come behind in no gift.” Furthermore John’s declaration concerning the remnant church in Revelation 12:17 specifically mentions that they “have the testimony of Jesus Christ.” Allowing that the interpretation given to this expression by the same apostle is “the spirit of prophecy” (Revelation 19:10), it seems that the divine outline foreshadows the revival not only of the spiritual gifts in the church but in a particular sense of the gift of prophecy.

“Jesus promised His disciples, ‘The Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in My name, He shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you.’ ‘When He, the Spirit of truth, is come, He will guide you into all truth: ... and He will shew you things to come.’ John 14:26; 16:13. Scripture plainly teaches that these promises, so far from being limited to apostolic days, extend to the church of Christ in all ages.”— The Great Controversy, Introduction, viii.

Prophetic Gift Still With Us

We are counseled to “covet earnestly the best gifts” (1 Corinthians 12:31), and to “desire spiritual gifts, but rather that ye may prophesy” (1 Corinthians 14:1). This is one instance where coveting is allowable, and with earnest [546] longing of soul we are to seek God for the bestowal of His gifts upon the church.

In order to obtain spiritual gifts it is important that we enjoy the “fellowship of the Spirit” (Philippians 2:1), the “unity of the Spirit” (Ephesians 4:3), and have the “fruit of the Spirit” (Ephesians 5:9). Upon those who possess these graces our heavenly Father takes delight in bestowing, as it pleases Him, the gifts of the Spirit. Thus we may be fully equipped, fully qualified, for the service of God.

“Before He left His disciples, Christ ‘breathed on them, and saith unto them, Receive ye the Holy Ghost.’ Again He said, ‘Behold, I send the promise of My Father upon you.’ But not until after the ascension was the gift received in its fulness. Not until through faith and prayer the disciples had surrendered themselves fully for His working, was the outpouring of the Spirit received. Then in a special sense the goods of heaven were committed to the followers of Christ. ‘When He ascended up on high, He led captivity captive, and gave gifts unto men.’ ‘Unto every one of us is given grace, according to the measure of the gift of Christ,’ the Spirit ‘dividing to every man severally as He will.’ The gifts are already ours in Christ, but their actual possession depends upon our reception of the Spirit of God.”—Christ’s Object Lessons, 327.

Some, looking at the Christian church at large and failing to see the prophetic gift in the ranks of God’s people, argue that, because this gift, together with others, ceased shortly after apostolic days, this is ample evidence to show that God never intended these gifts to continue beyond the early days of Christianity. Such should remember, however, that not long after the apostles passed from the stage of action, a great apostasy set in, and men departed from the truth of God. When worldliness and indifference came into the church, the Spirit of God in a large measure left the church, and many of these gifts were withdrawn.

In the last days, however, with a revival of godliness, when men return to the “old paths” and keep the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus, the gifts, and among them the prophetic gift, were to be restored. The keeping of the commandments of God and the manifestation of the gift of prophecy have usually been closely associated through the centuries. This can be seen from such Old Testament scriptures as: “Where there is no vision the people perish: but he that keepeth the law, happy is he.” Proverbs 29:18.

“Her gates are sunk into the ground; he hath destroyed and broken her bars: her king and her princes are among the Gentiles: the law is no more; her prophets also find no vision from the Lord.” Lamentations 2:9. [547]

Let us then seek the Lord for power in our lives. Let us seek Him more earnestly for the willingness and the disposition to surrender our wills to His divine control. Thus we shall make it possible for Christ the Lord to take possession of our hearts and to dwell within us “to will and to do of his good pleasure.”

Distinguishing Characteristic of “Remnant”

One of the distinguishing characteristics of the remnant people is called by the writer of the Apocalypse “the testimony of Jesus Christ.” This is interpreted as “the spirit of prophecy.” These two expressions are peculiar to the book of Revelation. They are not found in any other book of the Bible.

The actual words “testimony of Jesus” occur but twice in the Authorized Version of the book of Revelation, in the same verse (Revelation 19:10.) The term appears, however, in another form, “testimony of Jesus Christ,” three times. (Revelation 1:2, 9; 12:17.) There is still one other phrase of similar intent. In this case it is rendered “witness of Jesus.” (Revelation 20:4.) The word “witness” in this case is from the same Greek word which is rendered in the other texts by the word “testimony.” Hence, in these forms the expression is used by the prophet John six times in the last book of the Bible.

There are two similar expressions to be found in the writings of the apostle Paul. They are as follows: “testimony of Christ” (1 Corinthians 1:6), and “testimony of our Lord” (2 Timothy 1:8). Although the word “testimony” is used in this relationship eight times altogether, the expression “spirit of prophecy” is unique, in that Revelation 19:10 is the only place in the Divine Record where the term appears.

Seventh-day Adventists, accepting the testimony of the apostles, believe in the perpetuity of spiritual gifts. That being the case, it has not been difficult for them to understand the divine forecast that “the testimony of Jesus,” “the spirit of prophecy,” would be operative in the remnant church. They have felt that this means a revival of the spiritual gifts, and that among them would be seen the “spirit of prophecy.” They understand this expression to mean that particular revelation which comes through those whom the Word of God calls prophets. Through the years they have believed and taught, and still believe and teach, that this gift has been exercised among them in the life and work of Mrs. E. G. White, who for several decades received revelations and visions from the Lord. They prize very highly the counsel and admonition which have come through this divine agency. Through the years this counsel was given to the church by oral word and by the written page. This counsel was incorporated in periodical [548] articles, pamphlets, and books, such as Testimonies for the Church and other volumes.

This claim on the part of the Advent people has met with opposition from many quarters. This is not difficult to understand, especially when it comes from those who believe that the necessity for spiritual gifts ceased shortly after apostolic days. Those who do not accept John’s interpretation of “testimony of Jesus” as the “spirit of prophecy” naturally endeavor to find other meanings for both these terms.

The Word “Testimony” in the Bible

As we look at the word “testimony” as used in the Sacred Scriptures, and examine the words in the original language which have been translated “testimony,” “witness,” “to bear testimony or witness,” in the Authorized Version, we shall find that they have several meanings. Mention might be made of the following:

1. The ten-commandment law. (Exodus 31:18; Revelation 15:5.) It is applied this way in both the Old and the New Testament. In the Scriptures we read of the tables of the testimony, the ark of the testimony, the tabernacle of the testimony, the veil of the testimony—the “testimony” itself being the law of God as written on the two tables of stone.

2. The law of Moses other than the ten-commandment law. This thought is emphasized in 2 Kings 23:3 and also Nehemiah 9:34 and other scriptures. There we read of “his commandments and his testimonies.”

3. The legal witness for or against another. (Deuteronomy 19:16, 18.) The witness borne in court is called the testimony, and the person who bears such witness is said to testify. Furthermore, we read, “In the mouth of two or three witnesses shall every word be established.” 2 Corinthians 13:1.

4. The testimony borne concerning another. In this sense it is used frequently in both Testaments. One might think of such texts as John 5:39, where we read that the Scriptures “testify of me,” or John 15:27, where Jesus speaks of the disciples and says they “also shall bear witness.”

5. The testimony borne by the individual himself. It is used with this meaning quite frequently. One might meditate on John 5:31, where definite reference is made to the witness borne by Christ Himself, both by word and by life.

6. The messages of the prophets. In the Old Testament days the messages conveyed by God’s servants, the prophets, to His people Israel were called testimonies. In bearing such testimonies the prophets are said to have “testified against them.” (2 Kings 17:15; Nehemiah 9:26.) [549]

This is referred to also in New Testament days. The apostle Peter, referring to the work of the prophets before the advent of the Saviour, mentions concerning the witness of the Spirit borne through the prophets when it “testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ.” 1 Peter 1:11. This is in full accord with the declaration of the same apostle when preaching before Cornelius and his household, when he declared that “to him give all the prophets witness.” Acts 10:43.

A still further reference is found in the Apocalypse in the passage already referred to, where the apostle John, using the expression “testimony of Jesus,” clearly and definitely defines this to be “the spirit of prophecy.”

Hence, in the foregoing classification giving references to the varied meanings of this word, it will be observed that in both the Old and the New Testament one of the meanings makes definite reference to the specific messages that come through God’s servants, the prophets, to His people.

The Divine Definition

In view of the fact that in the Scriptures there are varied meanings to the word “testimony,” it would have to be conceded that a correct understanding of the meaning of the term in any particular place it is used must of necessity be determined by its context. A careful study of the texts given in the afore-mentioned classification will show that this is true.

When we apply this principle to the expression “testimony of Jesus,” as we find it in the book of Revelation, we must also think of it, not only in the light of its context, but also in the light of the definition given to it by its author. Singularly enough, the Lord has removed the meaning of this expression from the realm of doubt and uncertainty. There is no need for anyone to be in any perplexity on the matter whatsoever.

The apostle John records the message given to him, the message he received from “his angel.” (Revelation 1:1.) The angel is called “his“: this refers not to John but to Christ. The Revelation is the revelation of Jesus Christ which God gave to Him, and Christ sent and signified it by His angel to John. Further, when John tells us that the “testimony of Jesus” is the “spirit of prophecy,” it is not a definition given by John; it is the word of the angel who revealed it to him.

We must remember also that this is part of the revelation of Jesus as referred to in the first chapter of the Apocalypse. This revelation Christ gave to the angel. But it goes back further still; it is the revelation that God gave to Christ. So this is a divine definition in a special [550] sense. It is from God and from Christ, and Christ the divine Son, through His angel, tells us that the “testimony of Jesus” is the “spirit of prophecy.”

Hence, in our study of this question in the book of Revelation we need not concern ourselves with other ways in which the word testimony is used in the Scriptures generally. Our minds are directed into one channel, and that by the Lord Himself, when He gives us the definition of what the testimony of Jesus really means when He says the “spirit of prophecy.”

Commentators and Bible students generally recognize, in the main, two ways in which the expression “testimony of Jesus” is understood. Many, overlooking the definition given by the angel (Revelation 19:10), interpret this as meaning “the testimony borne concerning Jesus Christ.” Hence, their understanding of the phrase is that it refers to the testimony we as Christians bear when we witness for the Saviour before the world and before our friends by precept and example. Others feel that the expression means the testimony of Jesus Himself, the witness He bore in His own life while here on earth, and the witness He continues to bear now in and through His servants the prophets.

Significance of the Genitive Form

The term in the original Greek is in the genitive case (generally the equivalent of the English of construction, most commonly indicating possession). Hence it can be understood as Jesus’ testimony—the testimony which Christ Himself bears today when He manifests Himself in a special way through those who have the gift of prophecy. When they tell of what they have seen in vision, it is just as verily the Spirit of Christ which is in them as it was in the prophets in olden days. In this connection we would submit the following considerations:

1, We refer first of all to Revelation 1:1, 2, where we read of the “Revelation of Jesus Christ.” This revelation “God gave unto him.” An angel is used by the Lord to convey this revelation to the prophet John. John bears record of “the testimony of Jesus Christ.” It will be observed that here we have the possessive genitive in each case. It is the “Revelation” of Jesus Christ. It is the “testimony” of Jesus Christ. It is His “witness,” for the Father gave it to Him, and He gave it to His servant John.

2. The same thought is emphasized in Hebrews 1:1, 2. There we read that God, who “spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets,” speaks to us today “by his Son.” The message was not that of the prophet; it was God’s message. The same thing is true today. God speaks through His beloved Son, and Christ speaks through the [551] prophets. That which He speaks is His testimony—the testimony of Jesus.

3. We might observe also the word given to us in 1 Peter 1:11. Again we refer to the prophets of ancient days. When they ministered, when they bore their testimony, it was the result of the “Spirit of Christ which was in them.” These prophets were God’s servants; He sent them; He spake through them. God claimed the prophets as His own. He calls them “my servants the prophets.” Jeremiah 29:19. God also gave His word to them, for He said to His servant Jeremiah, “Behold, I have put my words in thy mouth.” Jeremiah 1:9.

God’s word through the prophets was obligatory, for we read in 2 Chronicles 29:25: “So was the commandment of the Lord by his prophets.” God also revealed His secrets to the prophets. “He revealeth his secret unto his servants the prophets.” Amos 3:7.

God revealed Himself to His prophets in visions and dreams. “If there be a prophet among you, I the Lord will make myself known unto him in a vision, and will speak unto him in a dream.” Numbers 12:6. It was in this manner that He revealed His will to them.

The Testimony of Jesus Himself

4. The form of the expression in Revelation is “testimony of Jesus.” It is not testimony to Jesus or concerning Jesus, but the testimony of Him. This is in the genitive case; and another way of rendering this, as we have already seen, is “Jesus’ testimony.”

5. Whenever the expression is used in the book of Revelation it is in this form in the original Greek; never any other. Note the occasions of its use: Revelation 1:2: “Testimony of Jesus Christ.” Revelation 1:9: “Testimony of Jesus Christ.” Revelation 12:17: “Testimony of Jesus Christ.” Revelation 19:10: “Testimony of Jesus.” Revelation 20:4: “Witness of Jesus.”

Most translations reproduce this genitive by an of construction in Revelation 19:10 also, as can be seen by consulting the following: Authorized, Revised, Weymouth, The Greek English New Testament (interlinear), Emphatic Diaglott, Murdock’s translation from the Syriac, Douay, Moulton, Goodspeed, Montgomery, Verkuyl, Tyndale, Cranmer, Geneva, Rheims, Cunnington, Rotherham, Wycliffe, and Fenton.

There is but one of these translations of the New Testament to which we have access that uses the word to in Revelation 19:10, and that is the Twentieth Century New Testament. One not listed above, but which uses neither the word of nor to, is the translation by Moffatt, and it is very definite. His rendering is, “The testimony borne by Jesus.” [552]

6. Referring to the list of texts given under section 5, we would call attention again to the fact that in each instance the genitive form is indicated. This is either by the genitive form of the Greek words Jesus and Christ, or as it is in most instances, by the possessive form of the article the. There is no preposition in the Greek text to indicate our English word of. We supply that word merely to indicate the genitive.

Perhaps the matter will be clearer if we give the wording of the Greek and English in the first form of the phrase in Revelation 19:10: Tçn marturian tou Iesou (“The testimony [of] Jesus”).

It will be observed that the expression “tou Iesou” is in the genitive form; this naturally calls for the preposition of in English. Furthermore, the Greek article before a proper noun is not usually translated into English. Hence, we have the expression “testimony of Jesus” with the word of supplied to indicate the genitive form.

Some would urge that in order to understand John’s expression in the Apocalypse, we should observe his use of similar expressions in his Gospel, such as: “the scriptures ... testify of me“: “the Comforter ... shall testify of me.” These, they contend, are certainly objective, and being so, indicate what John means when he uses the expression “testimony of Jesus” in the last book of the Bible. This might sound plausible, but on investigation the argument will be found to be without foundation. Whatever similarity there is in these terms as they appear in our English Bible, the similarity of form is not found in the Greek New Testament.

We shall notice certain of the expressions in the Gospel of John similar to the two cited above.

John 5:39—The Scriptures “testify of me.”

John 15:26—The Comforter will “testify of me.”

John 1:7, 8, 15—John bears “witness of” Him.

John 5:31—Jesus says “I bear witness of myself.”

John 8:13, 14—Jesus is said to “bear record of” Himself.

Acts 23:11—“Thou hast testified of me.”

1 Corinthians 15:15—“We have testified of God.”

In none of these instances is the word of indicated as part of the genitive, but is the translation of the preposition, meaning, “concerning” found in the Greek text.

Furthermore, the comparison in this instance with John’s Gospel is in any case irrelevant, because it so happens that in the texts referred to we have the verb followed by a preposition and its noun object; whereas in the book of Revelation we have an altogether different construction: a noun followed by another noun in the genitive case. [553]

There are a few instances in other books of the New Testament where a form is found similar to that used in the book of Revelation, as well as those in which we find the preposition, that refer in the main to the testimony borne by others concerning Christ rather than the testimony of Jesus Himself (Acts 4:33, 2 2 Timothy 1:8, 1 1 Corinthians 2:1); but this is indicated by the context.

The Conclusions of Commentators

But let us notice also the testimony of others with reference to the possessive meaning of the expression “testimony of Jesus.” Though most Biblical commentators, with their view of the cessation of spiritual gifts early in the Christian Era, interpret the “testimony of Jesus” to be the testimony His people bear concerning Him, it is true that quite a few recognize the possessive force of the genitive, and hence give it the meaning of the witness Jesus bears in His own testimony through His servants the prophets.

W. Robertson Nicoll comments:

“For the testimony or witness of (i.e., borne by) Jesus is (i.e., constitutes) the spirit of prophecy.’ This ... specifically defines the brethren who hold the testimony of Jesus as possessors of prophetic inspiration. The testimony of Jesus is practically equivalent to Jesus testifying (xxii. 20). It is the self-revelation of Jesus ... which moves the Christian prophets. He forms at once the impulse and subject of their utterances (cf. Ignat. Rom. viii.; Eph. vi.).... Furthermore, there is an implicit definition of the spirit of prophecy ... in its final phase as a revelation of Jesus Christ. Even the O.T. prophetic books, with which the Apocalypse claims to rank, were inspired by the spirit of the pre-existent Christ.”—The Expositor’s Greek Testament (Grand Rapids, Mich.: W. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company), vol. 5, p. 465.

Dr. Friedrich Düsterdieck remarks:

“From the closing words of the verse, it might be inferred, that ‘they who have the testimony of Jesus’ are not believers in general, but only the prophets, so that the angel would call himself a fellow-servant only of the prophets, as Hengstenb. also (xxii. 6) understands by the äïõëïéòÜõôïõ [doulois hautou, His servants] only prophets.”—Critical and Exegetical Handbook to the Revelation of John. Translated by Henry E. Jacobs, in Meyer’s Commentary on the New Testament, Revelation of John, p. 456.

The writings of Mrs. E. G. White make clear her interpretation of the expression “testimony of Jesus” as “the spirit of prophecy” in Revelation 19:10.

“As the apostle beheld the final deliverance of the church, he was [554] carried away with the glory of the scene, and with deep reverence and awe fell at the feet of the angel to worship him. The heavenly messenger instantly raised him up, and gently reproved him, saying, ‘See thou do it not; I am thy fellow servant, and of thy brethren that have the testimony of Jesus; worship God; for the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy.’ The angel then showed John the heavenly city with all its splendor and dazzling glory, and he, enraptured and overwhelmed, and forgetful of the former reproof of the angel, again fell to worship at his feet. Again the gentle reproof was given, ‘See thou do it not; for I am thy fellow servant, and of thy brethren the prophets, and of them that keep the sayings of this book. Worship God.’”—Early Writings, 230, 231.

“It was Christ that spoke to His people through the prophets. The apostle Peter, writing to the Christian church, says that the prophets ‘prophesied of the grace that should come unto you, searching what, or what manner of time the Spirit of Christ which was in them did signify, when it testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ, and the glory that should follow.’ It is the voice of Christ that speaks to us through the Old Testament. ‘The testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy.’”—Patriarchs and Prophets, 366, 367.

Spirit of Prophecy

In the light of all the foregoing considerations we feel there is good reason for understanding the expression “testimony of Jesus” as “His testimony,” or the testimony, or witness, Christ bears in and through His servants to whom the prophetic gift has been granted.

But what about the expression “spirit of prophecy”? What does this mean? We have already noticed that it is used but once in the entire Bible, and that in Revelation 19:10. Furthermore, we have no exact counterpart of this expression in Holy Scripture to guide us. There are, of course, terms similar in meaning, such as “the gift of the Holy Ghost.” There are also other expressions similar in form, such as “the Spirit of life” (Revelation 11:11), “the spirit of glory” (1 Peter 4:14), “the Spirit of grace” (Hebrews 10:29). But never do we find the expression “spirit of prophecy” in any other passage in the Sacred Scriptures.

An Objection Considered

As to the expression “testimony of Jesus” we have guidance, in that we have a divine definition. But let us lay this aside for the moment, and look to the Old and the New Testament records, to see whether we can ascertain what this expression means.

Some who are not too favorable to the Advent Movement tell us [555] that this should be understood not as “the spirit of prophecy” but as “the spirit of this prophecy,” their evident intent being that it means the book of Revelation itself. Reference is made to seven expressions in the last chapter of the Bible; namely, “in this book” (verses 18, 19), “the sayings of the prophecy of this book” (verses 7, 10), “the sayings of this book ((verse 9), “the words of the prophecy of this book” ((verse 18), and “the words of the book of this prophecy” ((verse 19).

So they say, inasmuch as John used a similar expression with the word “this” seven times, he naturally indicates what prophecy he has in mind. It is this prophecy; it is this book of the prophecy—the Revelation—so the expression should read, “The spirit of this prophecy.”

This claim, however, will not bear the test of investigation, because in the original Greek there is no justification for the word “this” in connection with the expression “spirit of prophecy.” The Bible translators saw no reason to use the word “this,” for it is not in the Greek text of this expression. It is a fact, however, that in the seven references made to the book of this prophecy, the word “this” is found not only in our English text but also in the Greek text. Hence, it must be clear to anyone, that if the apostle John in recording the words of the angel had meant “this” to be understood with the expression “spirit of prophecy,” he would have used it in order to convey that meaning, but he did not do so. Hence we affirm that the contention is unsupported by the evidence and that this is not what was meant.

Further Objection Examined

A few commentators take the position that in a certain sense all the children of God have the “spirit of prophecy“: hence, this expression should be understood as applying to them. They argue that as the gifts are bestowed upon the children of God, all God’s people are actuated by the “spirit of prophecy.” This argument, however, is not at all well founded. The fruit of the Spirit, God longs to see in the lives of all His children, and He has through the Divine Spirit distributed the gifts of the Spirit to His people. But while one individual has one gift and another person a different gift, all do not have the gift of healing; all do not have the gift of government; all do not have the gift of prophecy. In the very nature of the case, they could not all be in possession of all these gifts.

Gifts Bestowed by the Lord

The Divine Record emphasizes the thought that the Spirit divides “to every man severally as he will.” In other words, the gifts are bestowed by the Lord. No man receives any specific spiritual gift because [556] he particularly wants it or claims it. God determines to whom He will entrust these gifts. The Word of the Lord further states that “to one is given ... the word of wisdom; ... to another the gifts of healing. 1 Corinthians 12:8, 9. So in the plan of God one here and one there is singled out from the believers, and made the depositories of these specific spiritual gifts. This is particularly true with the prophetic gift. Among commentators in good standing there are those who recognize the truth of this, as will be seen in the following extract:

“For the testimony or witness of (i.e., borne by) Jesus is (i.e., constitutes) the spirit of prophecy’. This ... specifically defines the brethren who hold the testimony of Jesus as possessors of prophetic inspiration. The testimony of Jesus is practically equivalent to Jesus testifying (xxii. 20). It is the self-revelation of Jesus (according to i. 1, due ultimately to God) which moves the Christian prophets.”—W. ROBERTSON NICOLL, The Expositor’s Greek Testimonies for the Church 5:465, on Revelation.

“Spirit” and “Gift” Intimately Related

“The spirit of prophecy” is intimately related to the gift of prophecy.[217] The one is the Spirit which indites the prophecy; the other is the gift bestowed. They go together; they are inseparably connected. Where you find the one you find the other. The gift is the manifestation of that which the Spirit of God distributes to men, according to His own good purpose and plan. The apostle John not only gives us the definition of the term “testimony of Jesus” but also reveals in another passage in the Apocalypse something which keys the expression “testimony of Jesus” to the prophetic gift.

If, after considering the evidences presented in this article, some should still feel constrained to urge that the expression “testimony of

[217]The term “spirit of prophecy” with reference to the prophetic gift is found in the ancient Jewish writings. The expression occurs in The Targums on the Book of Genesis. Both the Onkelos and the Jerusalem Targum on Genesis 41:38 read the same as follows: “And Pharaoh said to his servants, Can we find a man like this, in whom is the spirit of prophecy from the lord?” See The Targums of Onkelos and Jonathan ben Uzziel on the Pentateuch; with the Fragments of the Jerusalem Targum, translated by J. W. Etheridge, vol. 1 (London: Longman, Green, Longman, and Roberts, 1862), pp. 131, 303. Also Edward Lewis Curtis says that the Targum or paraphrase on Chronicles “explains somewhat similarly, except that the Sucathites are those ‘covered’ with a spirit of prophecy.”—International Critical Commentary, vol. 10 (on Chronicles), p. 98. Commenting on 2 Kings 22:14, Joseph Priestley remarks concerning Huldah: “It pleased God to distinguish several women with the spirit of prophecy, as well as other great attainments, to shew that, in his sight, and especially in things of a spiritual nature, there is no essential pre-eminence in the male sex.”—Theological and Miscellaneous Works, vol. 11, p. 477. Other writers who use the expression are: James Darmesteter, “Prophets of Israel,” in his Selected Essays, p. 43. Houghton, Mifflin and Company, New York, 1895. G. S. Streatfeild, The Incarnation, p. 41. London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1910. Grace Aguilar, The Women of Israel, p. 325. George Routledge and Sons, Limited, [n. d.]. Andrew C. Zenos, “Prophecy, Prophet,” Funk and Wagnalls New Standard Bible Dictionary (1936 ed.), sec. 14, p. 743, (cf. sec. 6, p. 741).

[557]

Jesus” should be understood somewhat in its objective rather than its subjective sense, we would reply that the objective might be considered, but only as a secondary meaning. We believe we have established the thought that the primary significance of this expression is subjective—that the testimony of Jesus means Jesus’ testimony, either in Himself or in and through the servants He might choose through whom to reveal Himself or His message. Certainly, after the prophet has received the divine illumination and goes forth with his message to man, in the giving of that message he is surely bearing testimony concerning his Lord and Master.

Comparing Two Vital Passages

At this point we might compare certain expressions in Revelation 19 and 22. In both passages we read that John falls at the feet of the angel to worship him. In both places we read the counsel of the angel: “See thou do it not“: “worship God.” In both instances the angel says, “I am thy fellowservant.” But notice how the next expression is rendered. In Revelation 19 it is in one form and in Revelation 22 in another. In Revelation 19:10 we read, “I am ... of thy brethren that have the testimony of Jesus“: and in Revelation 22:9, “I am ... of thy brethren the prophets.” In this comparison we have further evidence concerning the “testimony of Jesus” being connected definitely with the prophetic gift. The angel is referring to those whom he calls his brethren. But who are they? In one place he says that they are the prophets. In the other they are those who have the “testimony of Jesus.” So we affirm that in the apostle John’s thinking the expression “testimony of Jesus” is intimately associated with, and an integral part of, the prophetic gift.

Equivalent Statements Prevent Misunderstanding

We would repeat John’s declaration. It seems that in order to prevent any misunderstanding as to the meaning he gives to the expression, the beloved apostle makes the matter unmistakably clear when he gives us the following equivalent statements: “I am thy fellowservant, and of thy brethren that have the testimony of Jesus.” Revelation 19:10. “I am thy fellowservant, and of thy brethren the prophets.” Revelation 22:9.

Here the testimony of Jesus is linked with the work of the prophets of God in a way that surely cannot be misunderstood. This fact, together with others already mentioned, should enable us clearly to understand why, in Revelation 19:10, “the testimony of Jesus” is called “the spirit of prophecy.” [558]

APPENDIX C: A Remarkable Test

[Under the above title there appeared the following from the pen of James White in the The Signs of the Times, August 29, 1878, page 260.]

The prophets of God have been shown events of the past, present, and future. The best evidence of the truthfulness of those revelations is that they accorded with the facts in the case.

Some fifteen years since one of our preachers, whose name we withhold because of apostasy, gave a course of lectures in the town of Ionia, Michigan. About thirty persons embraced the third angel’s message, but, in consequence of a want of thoroughness and power on the part of the preacher, these souls were not very strong in the message. Brother King, local elder of the Orleans church, and Brother Maynard, local elder of the Greenville church, proposed to go with us and hold a grove meeting. We immediately wrote a notice of the prospective meeting without consulting the brethren in Bushnell, and sent it to the Review and Herald.

The next Sabbath only seven of the Bushnell brethren met for worship, and, under this discouragement decided to give up their meeting. On leaving the house, however, they were met by a neighbor who had brought the Review from the postoffice which contained the appointment of the grove meeting the following week. On seeing this they determined to attend the meeting and also labor to have their brethren attend it, most of whom had given up the Sabbath.

When the meeting was held, however, there were only twenty of the Bushnell brethren present on the Sabbath. But as there was a general turnout from the Greenville and Orleans churches, our congregation was good and the meeting was an excellent one. On Sunday the attendance was large; all who had observed the Sabbath in that place were present, and also large representations from the Orleans and Greenville churches, besides a large number of outsiders. The meeting was such a decided success that the Bushnell brethren, who were all becoming deeply interested again requested that a two days’ meeting be held there the following week.

Accordingly the next Sabbath all in that place who had kept the Sabbath met with us in the morning. Mrs. White arose, Bible in hand, and began to speak from a text of Scripture. She suddenly stopped speaking, laid aside her Bible, and began to address those who had embraced the Sabbath in that place. She had never before seen one of them with the natural eye, and of course could not call them by name. But she designated each brother and sister by his or her position, as the [559] one by that tree, or the one sitting by that brother or sister of the Greenville or Orleans Church, with whom she was personally acquainted, and whom she called by name.

She described each peculiar case, stating that the Lord had shown her their cases two years previous, and that, while she was just then speaking from the Bible, that view had flashed over her mind, like sudden lightning in a dark night distinctly revealing every object around. When she had spoken in this manner about one hour, the preacher who had been instrumental in bringing the Bushnell brethren to the light of the Sabbath, asked them if the things that had been spoken were true. He insisted that they should rise and testify to the facts in the case, urging that a strong test be made. Each person present knew whether or not the truth had been spoken in regard to his or her case. Either these things were true or they were not; if they were not true he, and all present, wished to know it; and if they were true they also wished to know it, and from that day have a settled faith in the testimonies.

The persons thus addressed accordingly arose one by one, and testified that their cases had been described better than they could have done it themselves. It was not enough for that intelligent company to know that the testimony given that day was correct in the majority of cases present, but it was necessary that it be proven correct in every particular of the case of each person, in order that their faith should be fully established. Had the testimony failed in a single instance, it would have destroyed the faith of all present. As it was they had a settled faith from that hour, and all took their position on the third message.

On Sunday morning we gave a discourse upon Christian Baptism. The preacher before referred to had been ordained by a tobacco-user in whom he now had no confidence; he therefore requested baptism and ordination at our hand. The congregation immediately repaired to a beautiful lake where we bowed down with Brethren King and Maynard upon the green grass, and according to the New Testament rule ordained the brother. We then baptized him, after which he then and there baptized his converts. A church was immediately organized, names enrolled, and proper officers chosen. From that day till this time the Bushnell church has been among the most decided of the good Michigan Conference.

By their fruits ye shall know them. This is a Bible test. The testimony was in harmony with the facts in the case, and the fruit has been excellent. “An evil tree cannot bring forth good fruit, neither can a good tree bring forth evil fruit.”

J. W. [560]

APPENDIX D: A Word to the “Little Flock”

On May 30, 1847, James White published a twenty-four-page tract entitled A Word to the “Little Flock.” This contained three contributions from Mrs. White, which occupy approximately one third of the space. These are, in order of their appearance in the tract:

1. Pages 11 and 12, a letter to “Bro. Eli Curtis, New York City,” bearing the date line, “Topsham, April 21, 1847.” This letter was never reprinted.

2. Pages 14 to 18, Mrs. White’s first vision, entitled “To the Remnant Scattered Abroad.” Certain deletions from this vision, as it appears in Experience and Views, pages 9-15 (Early Writings, 13-20), have been the objects of attack by critics. (For comments on deletions, see Appendix J, pp. 621-623.)

3. Pages 18-20, a letter to “Dear Brother Bates,” bearing the date line, “Topsham, Me., April 7, 1847.” In the current work, Early Writings, 32-35, this material is entitled “Subsequent Visions.” Certain deletions from this letter, as it appears in Experience and Views, pages 15-19, have been the object of attack by critics. (For comments on deletions see Appendix J, pp. 626, 627.) Footnotes are by the publisher, James White, and the parenthetical number “(666)” in the “Dear Brother Bates” letter is probably by Bates. For comment on this see chapter 18.

The complete text of the twenty-four-page tract is found on the following pages:

A Word to the “Little Flock”

The following articles were written for the Day-Dawn, which has been published at Canandaigua, New York, by O. R. L. Crosier. But as that paper is not now published, and as we do not know as it will be published again, it is thought best by some of us in Maine, to have them given in this form. I wish to call the attention of the “little flock” to those things which will very soon take place on this earth.

After our Savior had spoken of “distress of nations, with perplexity,” he said, “And when these things begin to come to pass, then look up, and lift up your heads: for your redemption draweth nigh.”—Luke 21:28.

We do not rejoice to know that our fellow men are distressed, and famishing for want of food: but, still, the true believer will look up, and rejoice, in view of redemption, while this sure token of the coming of the Son of Man is beginning to come to pass. When we look abroad to other nations, and see them looking to this country for food: and then look at the scarcity, and rising price of food in our own nation, we cannot doubt but that the “time of trouble such as never was,” is fast coming upon the nations of the earth.

Brunswick, Maine, May 30, 1847.

JAMES WHITE [561]

THE SEVEN LAST PLAGUES

“And I saw another sign in heaven, great and marvelous, seven angels having the seven last plagues; for in them is filled up the wrath of God.”—Revelation 15:1.

For more than one year, it has been my settled faith, that the seven last plagues were all in the future, and that they were all to be poured out before the first resurrection.

It may not be my duty to attempt to point out each plague separately, but only give some of my reasons for believing that they are yet to be poured out, prior to the second advent. By the light of the brightly shining lamp, (the bible) we can see the events of our past experience distinctly; while future events may not be seen in their order so clearly.

If it be true that the plagues are yet to be poured out upon the earth before the resurrection and change of the saints, has not the time fully come for us to see the light in relation to them, that we may better see, and feel the force of Christ’s words? Watch ye, therefore, and pray always, that ye may be accounted worthy to escape all these things that shall come to pass, and to stand before the Son of man. Luke 21:36.

From the last clause of Revelation 15:1, “for in them is filled up the wrath of God,” it seems clear that all the wrath of God to be poured out on the living wicked, is contained in the plagues. The vails of wrath will certainly be poured out, in the day of the wrath of God, and of the Lamb.

Jesus is clearly represented in the bible, in his different characters, offices, and works. At the crucifixion he was the meek, slain lamb. [562]

From the ascension, to the shutting of the door, Oct. 1844, Jesus stood with wide-spread arms of love, and mercy; ready to receive, and plead the cause of every sinner, who would come to God by him.

On the 10th day of the 7th month, 1844, he passed into the Holy of Holies, where he has since been a merciful “high priest over the house of God.” But when his priestly work is finished there, he is to lay off his priestly attire, and put on his most kingly robes, to execute his judgment on the living wicked. Now where shall we look for the day of wrath, in which will be poured out the viols of wrath? Not to the crucifixion, nor while Jesus is fulfilling his Priesthood in the Heavenly Sanctuary. But, when he lays off his priestly attire, and puts on the “garments of vengeance” to “repay fury to his adversaries, recompence to his enemies;” then the day of his wrath will have fully come. As the “wrath of God” on the living wicked is “filled up” in the plagues, and as the day of wrath is future, it follows that the plagues are all future. I think the following is a prophesy which has been fulfilling since Oct. 1844.

“And judgment is turned away backward, and justice standeth afar off: for truth is fallen in the street, and equity cannot enter.

“Yea, truth faileth; and he that departeth from evil maketh himself a prey; and the Lord saw it, and it displeased him that there was no judgment.

“And he saw that there was no man, and wondered that there was no intercessor.” Isaiah 59:14, 15, 16.

I think that the next two verses, which speak of our Lord’s putting on the “garments of vengeance for clothing,” to “repay fury to his adversaries,” point to the wrath of God in the seven last plagues. God has shown this day of wrath, in prophetic vision, to some of his servants by different symbols. Ezekiel saw it in the men with “slaughter-weapons,” slaying “utterly, old and young.”—Ezekiel 9:5, 6. John saw it the “seven last plagues;” while Esdras saw it in the famine, pestilence, and the sword. The Bible contains many descriptions of this soon expected day of wrath.

“A thousand shall fall at thy side, and ten thousand at thy right hand; but it shall not come nigh thee”—see Psalm 91:5-10.

“Howl ye; for the day of the Lord is at hand; it shall come as a destruction from the Almighty. Therefore shall all hands be faint, and every man’s heart shall melt;”—see Isaiah 13:6-11.

“And this shall be the plague wherewith the Lord will smite all the people that have fought against Jerusalem (the saints): Their flesh shall consume away while they stand upon their feet, and their eyes shall consume away in their holes, and their tongues shall consume away in their mouth.”—Zechariah 14:12.

“Alas for the day! for the day of the Lord is at hand, and as a destruction from the Almighty shall it come.”

“The seed is rotted under their clods, the garners are laid desolate, the barns are broken down, for the corn is withered.”—see Joel 1:15-18; Jeremiah 30:23, 24; Daniel 12:1; Habakkuk 3:12, 13; Zephaniah 1:17, 18; 2nd Esdras, 15:10-13. I am quite sure that our Savior referred to the same, when he spake of “distress of nations, with perplexity;” “Men’s hearts failing them for fear, and for looking after those things which are coming on the earth.”—Luke 21:26, 27. In the 36th verse we are exhorted to constant watchfulness and prayer, that we “may be accounted worthy to escape all these things that shall come to pass, and to stand before the Son of man:” at his appearing. [563]

This makes it sure, that the trouble comes before the second advent; for the saints are to escape it, before they “stand before the Son of man.” At the second appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ, the living wicked, who are not swept off by the plagues, are to be destroyed by the “brightness of his coming.”—2 Thessalonians 2:8.

This is positive proof that the plagues come before, and not after the advent; for the wicked will not suffer by the plagues, after they are destroyed by the burning glory of his coming.

The plagues of Egypt, and the deliverance of ancient Israel from bondage, clearly shadow forth the seven last plagues, and the deliverance of the saints.

“I will bring them (the saints) with a mighty hand and a stretched-out arm, and smite Egypt with plagues AS BEFORE,” etc.—2 Edras, 15: 11. “Zion shall be redeemed with judgment,” etc.—Isaiah 1:27. see Ezekiel 20:33-38. The plagues were poured out on Egypt just before, and at the deliverance of Israel; so we may expect the last plagues on the wicked, just before and at the deliverance of the saints.

We may see by the 91st Psalm, that many of the wicked are to be cut off, while the saints are on the earth, in their mortal state; for they are to fall by thousands all around them.

The saints are exhorted not to fear the plagues at that time, for God will give his angels charge over them, so that no plague shall come nigh their dwellings; but such an exhortation would be useless, if the saints are immortal before the plagues are poured out.

The men with slaughter-weapons in their hands have this charge, “come not near any man upon whom is the mark;” which shows that the marked saints are in their mortal state, at the slaying time.

But the humble followers of the Lamb, have nothing to fear from the terrors of the day of his wrath; for they will be sealed before the plagues are poured out.

The man “clothed with linen,” marks the saints before the slaying commences.

The “four angels” are not to hurt the “earth, neither the sea, nor the trees,” till the servants of God are sealed in their foreheads.—Revelation 7:1-3.

The marking or sealing of the saints, seems to be shadowed forth by the marking of the side posts and upper door posts of the houses of all Israel, before the Lord passed through Egypt, to slay the first-born of the Egyptians.

Israel was safe; for God was their protector in that perilous night. The true Israel of God will be safely protected, when Christ rules the nations with a “rod of iron,” and dashes them “in peices like a potter’s vessel;” for he has promised to give his angels charge over them, to keep them in all their ways.

Those who keep the word of Christ’s “patience” in this time of waiting, and trial, will then be kept “FROM the hour of temptation, (or trial) which shall come on all the WORLD, to try them that dwell upon the earth.”—Revelation 3:10.

Those who do every well known duty to God, and his children: and confess their faults to God, and to one another: and are healed from their faults: will safely rest in the arms of the holy angels, while the burning wrath of God is being poured out on those who have rejected his counsel, and commandments. But I must leave this subject for the present, and close with the exhortation of the prophet:

“Seek ye the Lord, all ye meek of the earth, which have wrought [564] his judgment; seek righteousness, seek meekness: it may be ye shall be hid in the day of the Lord’s anger.”—Zephaniah 2:3.

THE VOICE OF GOD

“The Lord also shall roar out of Zion, and utter his voice from Jerusalem; and the heavens and earth shall shake: but the Lord will be the hope of his people, and the strength of the children of Israel.” Joel 3:16.

Second Advent writers and lecturers, have usually confounded the voice of God, which is to shake the heavens and the earth, with the “voice of the Son of God,” which will call forth the saints. But I think, that we shall clearly see, that here are two distinct events. The voice of God, that is to shake the heavens and the earth, comes “out of Zion,” and is uttered “from Jerusalem;” but before the voice of Jesus calls forth the sleeping saints, he is to leave the heavenly Sanctuary, and “descend from heaven,” with his holy angels. Then, and not till then, will he send his angels to “gather his elect, from the four winds;” while his voice calls them forth to meet him “in the air.” If the voice of God, which is to be uttered “from Jerusalem,” raises the saints, then they will be caught up to meet the Lord in Jerusalem. But I think we shall all agree on this point, that Jesus is first to “descend from heaven” with the angels: then commission the heavenly host, to conduct the saints to meet him “in the air,” while his voice calls them forth.—Matthew 24:30, 31. Thess. 4:16, 17. 2 Thessalonians 1:7.

At the pouring out of the seventh vial, Revelation 16:17, we read: “and there came a great voice out of the temple of heaven, from the throne, saying, It is done.” At the same time, there is a great earthquake, produced by the “voice from the throne,” which shakes down the cities of the nations, and removes the islands and mountains. This “voice from the throne,” which causes the earthquakes, must be the same as the voice uttered “from Jerusalem,” which shakes the heavens and the earth.—Joel 3:16, and Jeremiah 25:30, 31. It seems clear that this voice which is to come “out of the temple of heaven, from the throne,” is not the “voice of the Son of God,” that raises the saints; for if the voice that raises the saints, comes out of the heavenly temple, “from the throne:” then Jesus remains in heaven, on the throne, and calls his elect up to meet him in the temple; which is not in harmony with the teachings of St. Paul.

“For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the arch-angel, and with the trump of God; and the dead in Christ shall rise first;

Then we, which are alive and remain, shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air.”—Thess. 4:16, 17. Therefore, I think we are safe, in believing that we shall hear the voice of God, which will shake the heavens and the earth, before Jesus descends from heaven, with his angels and trumpet, to awake and gather the elect in the air.

Will not the day and hour of Jesus’ appearing, be made known by the voice of the Eternal God?

That the day and hour will be known by the true children of God, and no others, appears plain from the fact, that we are exhorted to waatch for it; and if we do not watch, Jesus will come on us “as a thief,“ [565] and we shall “not know what hour” he will come upon us. So, that none but those who truly watch, and “hold fast,” will know the true time.—Revelation 3:2, 3. Here I will introduce a quotation from “The True Midnight Cry,” of Aug. 22, 1844.

“Concerning the time of that (Christ’s) coming, he says, in Mark 13:32, “But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels which are in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father.” It is thought by many, that this passage proves that men are never to know the time. But if it proves this, it likewise proves, that the Son of God, himself, is never to know the time; for the passage declares precisely the same concerning him, that it does concerning angels and men. But can any person believe that our glorious Lord, to whom all power in heaven and earth is given, is, and will remain ignorant of the time until the very moment that he comes to judge the world?

If not, then certainly this text can never prove that men may not be made to understand the time. An old English version of the passage, reads, “But that day and hour no man maketh known, neither the angels which are in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father.”

This is the correct reading according to several of the ablest critics of the age. The word know is used here, in the same sense as it is by Paul in 1 Corinthians 2:2. Paul well understood many other things, besides Christ and him crucified, but he determined to make known nothing else among them. So in the passage first quoted, it is declared that none but God the Father, maketh known the day and hour; that is, the definite time of the second coming of his Son. And this necessarily implies that God makes the time known.”

I believe the above, to be a fair and correct view of the subject, and that the Father will make known the true time of the advent, without the agency of men, angels, or the Son. The following prophesy is to the point.

“Son of man, what is that proverb that ye have in the land of Israel, saying, The days are prolonged, and every vision faileth?

“Tell them therefore, Thus saith the Lord God; I will make this proverb to cease, and they shall no more use it as a proverb in Israel; but say unto them, The days are at hand, and the effect of every vision.

“For there shall be no more any vain vision nor flattering divination within the house of Israel.

“For I am the Lord: I will SPEAK, and the word that I shall speak shall come to pass; it shall be no more prolonged; for in your days, O rebellious house, will I SAY THE WORD, and will perform it, saith the Lord God.”—Ezekiel 12:22-25.

The burden of this prophesy is time, concerning which, there has been true, and false visions. The true vision (or light) on time, was written on the Chart, or table.—Habakkuk 2:2. God approved of the proclamation of 1843, and the 10th day of the 7th month 1844: by the pouring out of the Holy Ghost. Since the 7th month 1844, the “rebellious house” of Israel, have been removing the “land-marks,” and writing, and proclaiming false visions; but we all know that it has been the work of man, and not of God. These flattering divinings, have cheered on the “rebellious house” of Israel to some extent; but the work has not had the holy, sanctifying influence, as when God’s hand was in the work on time.

The proverb that “every vision faileth,” is, or soon will be complete; and God will make it, and the false visions to cease, by speaking from heaven, and giving his people the true time. “For I am the Lord: I [566] will SPEAK, and the word that I shall speak, shall come to pass; etc.”

Now if the burden of this prophecy is time; I think all will admit, that the word that the Lord God is to speak, is the true time. The false visions that have been written, and proclaimed by the “rebellious house” of Israel, have failed: but the word to be spoken by the “Lord God,” will be the true time, and will surely come to pass.

Jesus has left us the sure promise, that his Father will make known the day and the hour of his coming. The “Lord God” has promised to speak, and assures us that the word that he will speak, “shall come to pass.” With such testimony as this before us, from the Father and Son, what other conclusion can we come to, than that the “word which the Father is to speak, is the true time, and when he speaks, his voice will make it known to his saints?”

As the signs in the sun, moon, and stars, have been literal, the shaking of the powers of the heavens, Mat. 24: 29, must also be literal.

This sign is not in the past, and as it is a sign, it must come prior to the advent itself.

Therefore, it is clear, that this last sign will appear when the “Lord roars out of Zion,” and shakes the heavens and the earth. We believe that the signs in Revelation 6:12-14, are the same as in Mat. 24: 29, and Mark 13:24, 25. Then the shaking of the powers of the heavens, Mat. 24: 29, is the same as the heavens departing “as a scroll, when it is rolled together.” Revelation 6:14: for they both follow the falling of the stars.

Now what is this heaven that is to be shaken and rolled together as a scroll? We may not see this event so clearly now, as we shall about the time of its fulfilment; but still, it is our duty to receive, and cherish all the light that we can see on this, or any other future event. As we travel onward toward the Holy City, our burning lamps discover new objects: but we cannot see all at once. If we reject a little light, because we cannot see the whole clearly at once, it will displease our heavenly leader; and we shall be left in the dark. But if we cherish the light, as fast as it is our Lord’s will to open it to us, he will increase the light; and our souls will feast upon the opening truths of the blessed bible.

The word heaven, is applied to at least four places or things in the scriptures. 1st, It is applied to Paradise, where St. Paul was taken in vision, 2 Corinthians 12:2-4. 2nd. To the region of the sun, moon, and stars, Genesis 1:8-17. 3d. To the atmosphere which encompasses this earth, in which the fowls of heaven fly. Revelation 19:17, 18. And 4th, To the church of God on earth. Revelation 14:6, 7. It cannot be Paradise, nor the region of the heavenly lights, neither the church of God on earth, that is to be shaken and rolled together as a scroll: therefore, it must be the air around the earth, in which the fowls of heaven fly.

“And the seventh angel poured out his vial into the AIR; and there came a great voice out of the temple of heaven from the throne, saying, It is done.” Revelation 16:17.

We may now see that it is the seventh vial, and voice of God, which will shake the powers of the heavens, and cause the great earthquake or the shaking of the earth: and that this event constitutes the last literal sign, just before the sign of the Son of man appears in heaven.

It seems clear that all the vials, the voice of God from the throne, the voices, and thunders, and lingtnings, and the great earthquake, and the falling of the cities of the nations, and the removing of the mountains and the islands, are to take place before the advent. [567]

This view no doubt, will at once be rejected by many who profess to be looking for Jesus every day and hour; but I think it will appear very plain, by comparing Revelation 16:17-21, with chap. 6: 14—17.

After the heavens depart “as a scroll when rolled together,” and the “mountains and islands are moved out of their places,” “the kings of the earth, and great men, etc.” “hide in the dens, and in the rocks of the mountains,” from the awful glory of the coming Jesus, attended by “all the holy angels;” and call for the rocks and mountains to fall on them, and hide them from the brightness of his coming (which is to destroy all the living wicked at his coming.—2 Thessalonians 2:8.); and overwhelmed with anguish, in view of their expected fate, (when Christ and the angels draw near the earth to raise and gather the elect,) they cry out: “For the great day of his wrath is come, and who shall be able to stand?”—Revelation 6:17.

Here we see that the wicked who are hid, are still looking forward to the time when the saints alone will “be able to stand” before Christ as his appearing. If Christ should burst in upon the world as suddenly and unexpectedly as some teach, no one would think of hiding in caves, dens, and rocks: for they are not within their reach. This shows that an entire change must take place in the earth’s surface prior to the second advent, by the voice of God, in order for the wicked to have a chance to hide from the expected Lamb, in caves, dens, and rocks OF the mountains. When the Father utters his voice “from the throne,” which is to cause “a great earthquake, such as was not since men were upon the earth:” then there will be a chance for all the wicked, who are not swept off by the former plagues, to hide from the presence of the Lamb. But rocks, caves, and dens, will not shelter them from the burning glory of that holy throng, for all the living wicked are to be destroyed “with the brightness of that coming.”—2 Thessalonians 2:8.

God has promised to be the “hope of his people,” at the time his voice shakes the heavens and the earth. His children have nothing to fear from the terrors of that day; for they will be sheltered from the falling of cities, mountains, and houses. God’s promise cannot fail.

That will be a glad day for the saints; for they will then be “delivered” from every outward foe, and be filled with the Holy Ghost, to prepare them to gaze on Jesus, and stand before him at his appearing. Then the saints will better know the real worth of the blessed hope; and they will rejoice that they have been accounted worthy to suffer reproach for clinging close to the truth, and strictly obeying all the “commandments of God.” When God spake to Moses in Sinai, his “voice then shook the earth;” and we are taught by St. Paul, in Hebrews 12:22-27, that he is yet to speak from the “City of the living God,” and “shake not only the earth, but also heaven.” When God spake to Moses, the glory rested on him so that he had to cover his face with a vail, before his brethren could stand before him, and hear the word of the Lord from his mouth. And may we not expect the same effect, from the same cause? If so, then when God speaks from the Holy City to all his people, as he did to Moses: all will have the glory poured on them, as Moses had it poured on him. This out-pouring of the Holy Ghost must take place before the second advent, to prepare us for the glory of that scene: for in our present state, none of us could stand a single moment before the brightness of that coming, which is to destroy the “man of sin.” At the presence of one angel at the resurrection of Christ, the Roman guard fell like dead men to the ground. It is therefore necessary, that the saints should share largely in the [568] glory of God, to prepare them to stand before the Son of God, when he comes with all the holy angels with him.

Our present trying, waiting, watching state, is represented by a dark night; and the coming glory before us, by the morning. There are two parts to the morning: first, the dawn of day, and second, full day light, which is completed by the rising of the sun. So in the glad morning before us; the day of rest will dawn at the voice of God, when his light, and glory, rest upon us; then we shall rise from glory to glory, till Christ appears, to clothe us with immortality, and give us eternal life. O, Glory! Hallelujah!! my poor heart is set on fire for the kingdom, while I dwell on this sweet prospect, before the true believer. If we “hold fast” but a few days more, the dark shades of night will vanish before the glory of the preparatory scenes of the coming of the Son of man.

THE TIME OF TROUBLE

“And at that time shall Michael stand up, the great prince which standeth for the children of thy people: and there shall be a time of trouble, such as never was since there was a nation even to that same time: and at that time thy people shall be delivered, every one that shall be found written in the book. And many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake,” etc.—Daniel 12:1, 2.

We are taught by some, that the standing up of Michael, the time of trouble, and the delivering of the saints are in the future; and that all these events are to be accomplished at the second appearing of Christ. Others teach, that Michael stood up on the 10th day of the 7th month, 1844, and that since that time we have been passing through the “time of trouble, such as never was;” and that the deliverance of the saints, is at the first resurrection. But as I cannot harmonize either of these views with the bible, I wish to humbly give my brethren and sisters my view of these events. It is clear to me, that here are four distinct events, all in the future. 1st. The standing up of Michael. 2nd. The time of trouble. 3d. The deliverance of the saints; and 4th. The resurrection of the just, to everlasting life.

That Jesus rose up, and shut the door, and came to the Ancient of days, to receive his kingdom, at the 7th month, 1844, I fully believe. See Luke 13:25; Matthew 25:10; Daniel 7:13, 14. But the standing up of Michael, Daniel 12:1, appears to be another event, for another purpose. His rising up in 1844, was to shut the door, and come to his Father, to receive his kingdom, and power to reign; but Michael’s standing up, is to manifest his kingly power, which he already has, in the destruction of the wicked, and in the deliverance of his people. Michael is to stand up at the time that the last power in chap. 11, comes to his end, and none to help him. This power is the last that treads down the true church of God: and as the true church is still troden down, and cast out by all christendom, it [569] follows that the last oppressive power has not “come to his end;” and Michael has not stood up. This last power that treads down the saints is brought to view in Revelation 13:11-18. His number is 666. Much of his power, deception, wonders, miracles, and oppression, will doubtless by manifested during his last struggle under the “seven last plagues,” about the time of his coming to his end. This is clearly shadowed forth by the magicians of Egypt, deceiving Pharoah and his host, in performing most of the miracles, that Moses performed by the power of God. That was just before the deliverance of Israel from Egyptian bondage; and may we not expect to see as great a manifestation of the power of the Devil, just before the glorious deliverance of the saints? If Michael stood up in 1844, what power came “to his end, and none to help him,” “AT THAT TIME”? The trouble that is to come at the time that Michael stands up, is not the trial, or trouble of the saints; but it is a trouble of the nations of the earth, caused by “seven last plagues.” So when Jesus has finished his work of atonement, in the Holy of Holies, he will lay off his priestly attire, and put on his most kingly robes and crown, to ride forth, and manifest his kingly power, in ruling the nations, and dashing them in pieces.

We believe, that our great High Priest is attired as the Jewish high priest was. See Leviticus 16 c. But when Michael stands up to reign, KING OF KINGS, AND LORD OF LORDS, he has on, many crowns, in one crown. Revelation 19:16.

The deliverance of the living saints, is before the first resurrection; for it is spoken of, as a separate event.

If the deliverance of the living saints is not until the first resurrection; why is the resurrection spoken of, as a separate event, after the deliverance? It seems clear that the deliverance is at the voice of God. Then, from that time till Christ appears, the saints will have power over the nations, who remain of the former plagues.

THE TIME OF JACOB’S TROUBLE.

Alas! for that day is great, so that none is like it; it is even the time of Jacob’s trouble, but he shall be saved out of it. Jeremiah 30:7.

By comparing Gen. c. 32, with Jeremiah 30:7, and the prophesy of Obadiah, we may see that Jacob represents believers, and Esau represents unbelievers. I doubt not, but these two characters will be brought out, and clearly seen in the closing strife with the Image Beast, which is just before us. See Bev. 13 : 11-18. Jacob’s trouble was when the messengers returning to him, said, “We came to thy brother Esau, and also he cometh to meet thee, and four hundred men with him. Then Jacob was greatly afraid, and distressed.” Genesis 32:6, 7.

The true saints will be brought into a similar situation, at the time of the fulfilment of Revelation 13; 11-18. [570]

Not that the saints will be killed; for then none would remain till the change: but to fulfil this prophesy, a decree must go forth to kill the saints, which will cause fear, and distress. When Jacob was troubled, he wrestled with the angels “until the breaking of the day.” Genesis 32:34. In the last closing strife with the Image Beast, when a decree goes forth that as many as will not worship the image of the beast shall “be killed”, the saints will cry day and night, and be delivered by the voice of God. Then “the house of Jacob shall be a fire. and the house of Joseph a flame, and the house of Esau for stubble, and they shall kindle in them, and devour them, and there shall not be any remaining of the house of Esau; for the Lord hath spoken it.” Obadiah 18th verse. I have not been able to see any thing in our past and present history, which answers to Jacob’s trouble, and the day and night cry of the elect. Luke 17:7. I have been astonished at some of our brethren, while they have urged us to go about the work of crying day and night for deliverance. Not long since, I was in a meeting where the sentiment prevailed, that if all would then go about the work they might pray Christ down to the earth in twenty-four hours. It is clear that when the time comes for this cry, that the elect will have the spirit of prayer poured upon them. “And I will pour upon the house of David, and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the spirit of grace and suplication,” etc. “And the land shall mourn, every family apart; the family of the house of David apart, and their wives apart;” See Zechariah 12:14; Ezekiel 7:15, 16.

When Jesus has finished his work in the Heavenly Sanctuary and comes out upon the great white cloud, with his sharp sickle, then will be the time for the day and night cry, which is represented by the angel’s crying to Jesus, to thrust in his sharp sickle, and reap.—Revelation 14:14, 15.

The desire, and prayer of every pure soul is, “Thy kingdom come.” But the special mourning, praying time of the saints, is evidently yet to come.

THOUGHTS ON REVELATION 14.

The 13th chapter of Revelation, and the first five verses of the 14th, is one connected chain of past, present, and future events, down to the complete redemption of the 144000 : then the 6th verse commences another chain of events, which carry us down through the history of God’s people in this mortal state. John had a view of the beast and his image, as recorded in chapter 13th; and how natural it would be for him to view on a little further, and see the 144000, who had gotten the victory over the beast, and over his image, standing on mount Zion with the Lamb; etc., as recorded in chapter 14 :1-5. So I think the division should be between the 5th, and 6th verses of the 14th chapter; and the 6th verse commences a series of events, relative to the successive messages of holy advent truth.

All classes of second advent believers agree, that the angel brought to view in the 6th, and 7th verses of this chapter, represents [571] the advent message, to the church and world. If this is true, then all five of the angels brought to view in this chapter, represent five distinct messages, prior to the advent, or we are left without a rule to interpret this chapter.

The work of the second angel, was to show to the advent host that Babylon had fallen. And as a large portion of them did not learn this fact, until the power of the MIDNIGHT CRY waked them up, just in time for them to make their escape from the churches, before the 10th day came on; it follows, that the second angel brought us to the 7th month, 1844. The third angel’s message was, and still is, a WARNING to the saints to “hold fast,” and not go back, and “receive” the marks which the virgin band got rid of, during the second angel’s cry.

And has not the true message for God’s people, since the 7th month 1844, been just such a warning ? It certainly has. I cannot agree with those who make two messages of the cry, “Babylon the great, is fallen,” and the voice, “Come out of her my people”; for every sermon that was printed, or preached on this subject, contained them both in one message. The 12th verse reads, “Here is the patience of the saints: here are they that keep the commandments of God,” etc. Where did you see them, John? Why, “here” during this third angel. As the patient waiting time has been since the 7th month 1844, and as the class that keep the sabbath, etc. have appeared since that time : it is plain that we live in the time of the third angel’s message.

The last two angels are messages of prayer. We shall, no doubt, better understand them at the time of their fulfilment.

JAMES WHITE.
TOPSHAM, April 21, 1847.

To Bro. Eli Curtis, New York City.

Dear Bro :—In the Day-Dawn, Vol. 1, Nos. 10 and 11, you kindly invite me to address you a communication.

The only apology I have to offer for not writing before is, I have not had a clear duty to write till now. You will, I doubt not, excuse me for addressing you so publicly, at this time. I have been much interested in your writings in the Dawn, and Extra; and fully agree with you on some points, but on others we widely differ.

Your Extra is now on the stand before me; and I beg leave to state to you, and the scattered flock of God, what I have seen in vision relative to these things on which you have written. I fully agree with you, that there will be two literal resurrections, 1000 years apart.

I also agree with you, that the new heavens, and the new earth, (Revelation 21:1. Isaiah 65:17. 2 Peter 3:13.) will not appear, till after the wicked dead are raised, and destroyed, at the end of the 1000 years. I saw that Satan was “loosed out of his prison,” at the end of the 1000 years, just at the time the wicked dead were raised; and that Satan deceived them by making them believe that they could take the Holy City from [572] the saints. The wicked all marched up around the “camp of the saints,” with Satan at their head; and when they were ready to make an effort to take the City, the Almighty breathed from his high throne, on the City, a breath of devouring fire, which came down on them, and burnt them up, “root and branch.”

And I saw, that as Christ is the vine, and his children the branches : so Satan is the “root”, and his children are the “branches;” and at the final destruction of “Gog and Magog,” the whole wicked host will be burnt up, “root and branch,” and cease to exist. Then will appear the new heaven and the new earth. Then will the saints “build houses,” and “plant vineyards.” I saw, that all the righteous dead were raised by the voice of the Son of God, at the first resurrection; and all that were raised at the second resurrection, were burnt up, and ceased to exist.

You think, that those who worship before the saint’s feet, (Revelation 3:9), will at last be saved. Here I must differ with you; for God shew me that this class were professed Adventists, who had fallen away, and “crucified to themselves the Son of God afresh, and put him to an open shame.” And in the “hour of temptation,” which is yet to come, to show out every one’s true character, they will know that they are forever lost; and overwhelmed with anguish of spirit, they will bow at the saint’s feet.

You also think, that Michael stood up, and the time of trouble commenced, in the spring of 1844.

The Lord has shown me in vision, that Jesus rose up, and shut the door, and entered the Holy of Holies, at the 7th month 1844; but Michael’s standing up (Daniel 12:1) to deliver his people, is in the future.

This, will not take place, until Jesus has finished his priestly office in the Heavenly Sanctuary, and lays off his priestly attire, and puts on his most kingly robes, and crown, to ride forth on the cloudy chariot, to “thresh the heathen in anger,” and deliver his people.

Then Jesus will have the sharp sickle in his hand, (Revelation 14:14) and then the saints will cry day and night to Jesus on the cloud, to thrust in his sharp sickle and reap.

This, will be the time of Jacob’s trouble, (Jeremiah 30:5-8) out of which, the saints will be delivered by the voice of God.

I believe the Sanctuary, to be cleansed at the end of the 2300 days, is the New Jerusalem Temple, of which Christ is a minister. The Lord shew me in vision, more than one year ago, that Brother Crosier had the true light, on the cleansing of the Sanctuary, &c; and that it was his will, that Brother C. should write out the view which he gave us in the The Day-Star, Extra, February 7, 1846. I feel fully authorized by the Lord, to recommend that Extra, to every saint.

I pray that these lines may prove a blessing to you, and all the dear children who may read them.

E. G. WHITE. [573]

“And it shall come to pass in the last days, saith God, I will pour out of my Spirit upon all flesh : and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see Visions, and your old men shall dream dreams : And on my servants, and on my hand-maidens, I will pour out in those days of my Spirit; and they shall prophesy : And I will shew wonders in heaven above, and signs in the earth beneath; blood and fire and vapor of smoke. The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before that great and notable day of the Lord come”. Acts 2:17-20.

“When the day of Pentecos was fully come,” and the disciples were “all with one accord in one place,” filled with the Holy Ghost, “Peter standing up with the eleven,” quoted the above scripture from the prophesy of Joel. His object was to show that the marvelous work which was wrought in the disciples at that time, was a subject of prophesy, and the work of God. I conclude that there is not one Second Advent believer who will take the ground, that all of the prophecy of Joel, quoted by Peter, was fulfilled on the day of Pentecost; for there is not the least evidence that any part of it was then fulfilled, only that part which related to the pouring out of the Holy Ghost. We cannot believe that the signs in the sun, and the moon, etc, were seen on that day, or that there were any having visions, or dreaming among them at that exciting hour; for there is no proof of any such thing. A part of this prophecy was fulfilled on the day of Pentecost; and ALL of it is to be fulfilled “IN THE LAST DAYS, SAITH GOD.” Dreams and Visions are among the signs that precede the great and notable days of the Lord. And as the signs of that day have been, and still are fulfilling, it must be clear to every unprejudiced mind, that the time has fully come, when the children of God may expect dreams and visions from the Lord.

I know that this is a very unpopular position to hold on this subject, even among Adventists; but I choose to believe the word of the Lord on this point, rather than the teachings of men. I am well aware of the prejudice in many minds on this subject; but as it has been caused principally by the preaching of popular Adventists, and the lack of a correct view of this subject; I have humbly hoped to cut it away, with the “sword of the Spirit,” from some minds, at least. We will bear it in mind, that these dreams and visions, are to be in the “LAST DAYS”. As there cannot be any days later than the last, it is certain that we may expect just such revelations, until Christ appears in the clouds of heaven. I know that it is a very popular opinion among Adventists, that there was nothing more to be revealed by visions, after John closed up the revelation in A. D. 96. But if this opinion is correct, then the last days ended while John was on the isle of Patmos.

The Bible is a perfect, and complete revelation. It is our only rule of faith and practice. But this is no reason, why God may not show the past, present, and future fulfilment of his word, in these last days, by dreams and visions; according to Peter’s testimony. True visions are given to lead us to God, and his written word; but those that are given for a new rule of faith and practice, separate from the bible, cannot be from God, and should be rejected.

The following vision was published in the Day-Star, more than a year ago. By the request of friends, it is republished in this little work, with scripture references, for the benefit of the little flock.

I hope that all who may read it, will take the wise, and safe course, pointed out to us by the following passages of scripture. “Despise not [574] prophesyings. Prove all things; hold fast that which is good.” Paul. “To the law and to the testimony, if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them.” Isaiah 8:20.

TO THE REMNANT SCATTERED ABROAD.

As God has shown me in holy vision the travels of the Advent people to the Holy City, and the rich reward to be given those who wait the return of their Lord from the wedding, it may be my duty to give you a short sketch of what God has revealed to me. The dear saints have got many trials to pass through. But our light afflictions, which are but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory—while we look not at the things which are seen, for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal. I have tried to bring back a good report, and a few grapes from the heavenly Canaan, for which many would stone me, as the congregation bade stone Caleb and Joshua for their report, (Numbers 14:10.) But I declare to you, my brethren and sisters in the Lord, it is a goodly land, and we are well able to go up and possess it.

While praying at the family altar, the Holy Ghost fell on me, and I seemed to be rising higher and higher, far above the dark world. I turned to look for the Advent people in the world, but could not find them—when a voice said to me, “Look again, and look a little higher.” At this I raised my eyes and saw a straight and narrow path,[218] cast up high above the world. On this path the Advent people were travelling to the City, which was at the farther end of the path. They had a bright light set up behind them at the first end of the path, which an angel told me was the Midnight Cry.[219] This light shone all along the path, and gave light for their feet so they might not stumble. And if they kept their eyes fixed on Jesus, who was just before them, leading them to the City, they were safe. But soon some grew weary, and they said the City was a great way off, and they expected to have entered it before. Then Jesus would encourage them by raising his glorious right arm, and from his arm came a glorious light which waved over the Advent band, and they shouted Hallelujah! Others rashly denied the light behind them, and said that it was not God that had led them out so far. The light behind them went out leaving their feet in perfect darkness, and they stumbled and got their eyes off the mark and lost sight of Jesus, and fell off the path down in the dark and wicked world below. It was just as impossible for them to get on the path again and go to the City, as all the wicked world which God had rejected. They fell all the way along the path one after another, until we heard the voice of God like many waters,[220] which gave us the day and hour of Jesus’ coming.[221] The living saints, 144,000 in number, knew and understood the voice, while the wicked thought it was thunder and an earthquake.[222] When God spake the time, he poured on us the Holy Ghost, and our faces began to light up and shine with the glory of God as Moses’ did when he came down from Mount Sinai.[223]

By this time the 144,000 were all sealed and perfectly united. On their foreheads was written, God, New Jerusalem, and a glorious Star containing Jesus’ new name.[224] At our happy, holy state the wicked

[218]Matthew 7:14.

[219]Matthew 25:6.

[220]Ezekiel 43:2. Joel 3:16. Revelation 16:17.

[221]Ezekiel 12:25. Mark 13:32.

[222]John 12:29.

[223]Isaiah 10:27.

[224]Revelation 3:12.

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were enraged, and would rush violently up to lay hands on us to thrust us in prison, when we would stretch forth the hand in the name of the Lord, and the wicked would fall helpless to the ground. Then it was that the synagogue of Satan knew that God had loved us who could wash one another’s feet, and salute the holy brethren with a holy kiss, and they worshipped at our feet.[225] Soon our eyes were drawn to the East, for a small black cloud had appeared about half as large as a man’s hand, which we all knew was the Sign of the Son of Man.[226] We all in solemn silence gazed on the cloud as it drew nearer, lighter, and brighter, glorious, and still more glorious, till it was a great white cloud.[227] The bottom appeared like fire, a rainbow was over it, around the cloud were ten thousand angels singing a most lovely song. And on it sat the Son of Man,[228] on his head were crowns,[229] his hair was white and curly and lay on his shoulders.[230] His feet had the appearance of fire,[231] in his right hand was a sharp sickle,[232] in his left a silver trumpet.[233] His eyes were as a flame of fire,[234] which searched his children through and through. Then all faces gathered paleness, and those that God had rejected gathered blackness. Then we all cried out, who shall be able to stand? Is my robe spotless? Then the angels ceased to sing, and there was some time of awful silence,[235] when Jesus spoke. Those who have clean hands and a pure heart shall be able to stand, my grace is sufficient for you. At this, our faces lighted up, and joy filled every heart. And the angels struck a note higher and sung again while the cloud drew still nearer the earth. Then Jesus’ silver trumpet sounded, as he descended on the cloud, wrapped in flames of fire[236] He gazed on the graves of the sleeping saints, then raised his eyes and hands to heaven and cried out,[237] Awake! Awake! Awake! ye that sleep in the dust, and arise. Then there was a mighty earthquake. The graves opened, and the dead came up clothed with immortality. The 144,000 shouted, Hallelujah! as they recognized their friends who had been torn from them by death, and in the same moment we were changed and caught up together with them to meet the Lord in the air.[238] We all entered the cloud together, and were seven days ascending to the sea of glass, when Jesus brought along the crowns and with his own right hand placed them on our heads.[239] He gave us harps of gold and palms of victory.[240] Here on the sea of glass the 144,000 stood in a perfect square. Some of them had very bright crowns, others not so bright. Some crowns appeared heavy with stars, while others had but few. All were perfectly satisfied with their crowns. And they were all clothed with a glorious white mantle from their shoulders to their feet.[241] Angels were all about us as we marched over the sea of glass to the gate of the City. Jesus raised his mighty glorious arm, laid hold of the gate and swung it back on its golden hinges, and said to us, You have washed your robes in my blood, stood stifly for my truth, enter in.[242] We all marched in and felt we had a perfect right in the City. Here we saw the tree of life, and the throne of God. Out of the throne came a pure river of water, and on either side of the river was the tree of life.[243] On one side of the river was a trunk of a tree and a trunk on the other side of the river, both of pure transparent gold.

[225]Revelation 3; 9.

[226]Matthew 24; 30.

[227]Revelation 14; 14.

[228]Luke 21; 27.

[229]Revelation 19; 12.

[230]Revelation 1; 14.

[231]Revelation 1; 15.

[232]Revelation 14; 14.

[233]Thess. 4; 16.

[234]Revelation 1; 14.

[235]Revelation 8; 1.

[236]2 Thessalonians 1:7, 8

[237]John 5; 25.

[238]Thess. 4; 17.

[239]2 Esdras, 2; 43.

[240]Revelation 15; 2. Revelation 7; 9.

[241]Revelation 7:9.

[242]Isaiah 26:2.

[243]Revelation 22; 1, 2.

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At first I thought I saw two trees. I looked again and saw they were united at the top in one tree. So it was the tree of life, on either side of the river of life; its branches bowed to the place where we stood; and the fruit was glorious, which looked like gold mixed with silver. We all went under the tree, and sat down to look at the glory of the place, when brothers Fitch and Stockman, who had preached the gospel of the kingdom, and whom God had laid in the grave to save them, came up to us and asked us what we had passed through while they were sleeping. We tried to call up our greatest trials, but they looked so small compared with the far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory[244] that surrounded us, that we could not speak them out,[245] and we all cried out Hallelujah, heaven is cheap enough, and we touched our glorious harps and made heaven’s arches ring. And as we were gazing at the glories of the place our eyes were attracted upwards to something that had the appearance of silver. I asked Jesus to let me see what was within there. In a moment we were winging our way upward, and entering in; here we saw good old father Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Noah, Daniel, and many like them. And I saw a vail with a heavy fringe of silver and gold, as a border on the bottom; it was very beautiful. I asked Jesus what was within the vail. He raised it with his own right arm, and bade me take heed. I saw there a glorious ark, overlaid with pure gold, and it had a glorious border, resembling Jesus’ crowns; and on it were two bright angels—their wings were spread over the ark as they sat on each end, with their faces turned towards each other and looking downward.[246] In the ark, beneath where the angels’ wings were spread, was a golden pot of Manna, of a yellowish cast; and I saw a rod, which Jesus said was Aaron’s; I saw it bud, blossom and bear fruit.[247] And I saw two long golden rods, on which hung silver wires, and on the wires most glorious grapes; one cluster was more than a man here could carry. And I saw Jesus step up and take of the manna, almonds, grapes and pomegranates, and bear them down to the city, and place them on the supper table. I stepped up to see how much was taken away, and there was just as much left; and we shouted Hallelujah—Amen. We all descended from this place down into the city, and with Jesus at our head we all descended from the city down to this earth, on a great and mighty mountain, which could not bear Jesus up, and it parted asunder, and there was a mighty plain.[248] Then we looked up and saw the great city, with twelve foundations, twelve gates, three on each side, and an angel at each gate, and all cried out, “the city, the great city, it’s coming, it’s coming down from God, out of heaven;”[249] and it came and settled on the place where we stood. Then we began to look at the glorious things outside of the city. There I saw most glorious houses, that had the appearance of silver, supported by four pillars, set with pearls, most glorious to behold, which were to be inhabited by the saints;[250] in them was a golden shelf; I saw many of the saints go into the houses, take off their glittering crowns and lay them on the shelf, then go out into the field by the houses to do something with the earth;[251] not as we have to do with the earth here; no, no. A glorious light shone all about their heads, and they were continually shouting and offering praises to God.

[244]2 Corinthians 4; 17.

[245]Isaiah 65; 17.

[246]Exodus 25; 18, 20. Hebrews 9; 3-5.

[247]Numbers 17; 8.

[248]Zechariah 14; 4.

[249]Revelation 21, 10-13.

[250]Isaiah 65, 21.

[251]Isaiah 65:21.

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And I saw another field full of all kinds of flowers, and as I plucked them, I cried out, well they will never fade. Next I saw a field of tall grass, most glorious to behold; it was living green, and had a reflection of silver and gold, as it waved proudly to the glory of King Jesus. Then we entered a field full of all kinds of beasts—the lion, the lamb, the leopard and the wolf, altogether in perfect union;[252] we passed through the midst of them, and they followed on peaceably after. Then we entered a wood, not like the dark woods we have here, no, no; but light, and all over glorious; the branches of the trees waved to and fro, and we all cried out, “we will dwell safely in the wilderness and sleep in this woods.”[253] We passed through the woods, for we were on our way to Mount Zion. As we were travelling along, we met a company who were also gazing at the glories of the place. I noticed red as a border on their garments; their crowns were brilliant; their robes were pure white. As we greeted them, I asked Jesus who they were? He said they were martyrs that had been slain for him. With them was an innumerable company of little ones; they had a hem of red on their garments also.[254] Mount Zion was just before us, and on the Mount sat a glorious temple, and about it were seven other mountains, on which grew roses and lillies,[255] and I saw the little ones climb, or if they chose, use their little wings and fly to the top of the mountains, and pluck the never fading flowers. There were all kinds of trees around the temple to beautify the place; the box, the pine, the fir. the oil, the myrtle, the pomegranate, and the fig tree bowed down with he weight of its timely figs, that made the place look all over glorious.[256] And as we were about to enter the holy temple, Jesus raised his lovely voice and said, only the 144,000 enter this place, and we shouted Hallelujah.

Well, bless the Lord. dear brethren and sisters, it is an extra meeting for those who have the seal of the living God[257] This temple was supported by seven pillars, all of transparent gold, set with pearls most glorious. The glorious things I saw there, I cannot describe to you. O, that I could talk in the language of Canaan, then could I tell a little of the glory of the upper world; but, if faithful, you soon will know all about it. I saw there the tables of stone in which the names of the 144,000 were engraved in letters of gold; after we had beheld the glory of the temple, we went out. Then Jesus left us, and went to the city; soon, we heard his lovely voice again, saying—“Come my people, you have come out of great tribulation, and done my will; suffered for me; come in to supper, for I will gird myself, and serve you.”[258] We shouted Hallelujah, glory, and entered into the city. And I saw a table of pure silver, it was many miles in length, yet our eyes could extend over it. And I saw the fruit of the tree of life, the manna, almonds, figs, pomegranates, grapes, and many other kinds of fruit. We all reclined at the table. I asked Jesus to let me eat of the fruit. He said, not now. Those who eat of the fruit of this land, go back to earth no more. But in a little while, if faithful, you shall both eat of the fruit of the tree of life, and drink of the water of the fountain; and he said, you must go back to the earth again, and relate to others, what I have revealed to you. Then an angel bore me gently down to this dark

[252]Isaiah 11:6-9.

[253]Ezekiel 34:25.

[254]Jeremiah 31:15-17. Matthew 2:18.

[255]2 Esdras, 2 : 19.

[256]Isaiah 60:13. Isaiah 41:19.

[257]Revelation 14:3.

[258]Luke 12:37.

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world. Sometimes I think I cannot stay here any longer, all things of earth look so dreary—I feel very lonely here, for I have seen a better land. O, that I had wings like a dove, then would I fly away, and be at rest.

Topsham, Me., April 7, 1847.

Dear Brother Bales :—Last Sabbath we met with the dear brethren and sisters here, who meet at Bro. Howland’s.

We felt an unusual spirit of prayer. And as we prayed, the Holy Ghost fell upon us. We were very happy. Soon I was lost to earthly things, and was wrapped up in a vision of God’s glory. I saw an angel swiftly flying to me. He quickly carried me from the earth to the Holy City. In the city I saw a temple, which I entered. I passed through a door before I came to the first vail. This vail was raised, and I passed into the Holy Place. Here I saw the Altar of Incense, the candlestick with seven lamps, and the table on which was the showbread, etc. After viewing the glory of the Holy, Jesus raised the second veil, and I passed into the Holy of Holies.[259]

In the Holiest I saw an ark; on the top and sides of it was purest gold. On each end of the ark was a lovely Cherub, with their wings spread out over it. Their faces were turned towards each other, and they looked downwards.[260] Between the angels was a golden censor. Above the ark, where the angels stood, was an exceeding bright glory, that appeared like a throne where God dwelt.[261] Jesus stood by the ark. And as the saints’ prayers came up to Jesus, the incense in the censor would smoke, and He offered up the prayers of the saints with the smoke of the incense to His Father.[262] In the ark, was the golden pot of manna, Aaron’s rod that budded, and the tables of stone which folded together like a book.[263] Jesus opened them, and I saw the ten commandments written on them with the finger of God.[264] On one table was four, and on the other six. The four on the first table shone brighter than the other six. But the fourth (the Sabbath commandment,) shone above them all; for the Sabbath was set apart to be kept in honor of God’s holy name.[265] The holy Sabbath looked glorious—a halo of glory was all around it. I saw that the Sabbath was not nailed to the cross. If it was, the other nine commandments were; and we are at liberty to go forth and break them all, as well as to break the fourth. I saw that God had not changed the Sabbath, for He never changes.[266] But the Pope had changed it from the seventh to the first day of the week; for he was to change times and laws.[267]

And I saw that if God had changed the Sabbath, from the seventh to the first day, He would have changed the writing of the Sabbath commandment, written on the tables of stone, which are now in the ark, in the Most Holy Place of the Temple in heaven;[268] and it would read thus:

The first day is the

[259]Hebrews 9:1-24.

[260]Exodus 250:18-22.

[261]Exodus 25:20-22.

[262]Revelation 8:3, 4.

[263]Hebrews 9:4.

[264]Exodus 31:18.

[265]Isaiah 58:13, 14.

[266]Malachi 3:6.

[267]Daniel 7:25.

[268]Revelation 11:19.

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Sabbath of the Lord thy God. But I saw that it read the same as when written on the tables of stone by the finger of God, and delivered to Moses in Sinai, “But the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God.”[269] I saw that the holy Sabbath is, and will be, the separating wall between the true Israel of God and unbelievers; and that the Sabbath is the great question, to unite the hearts of God’s dear waiting saints. And if one believed, and kept the Sabbath, and received the blessing attending it, and then gave it up, and broke the holy commandment, they would shut the gates of the Holy City against themselves, as sure as there was a God that rules in heaven above. I saw that God had children, who do not see and keep the Sabbath. They had not rejected the light on it. And at the commencement of the time of trouble, we were filled with the Holy Ghost as we went forth[270] and proclaimed the Sabbath more fully. This enraged the church, and nominal Adventists, as they could not refute the Sabbath truth. And at this time, God’s chosen, all saw clearly that we had the truth, and they came out and endured the persecution with us. And I saw the sword, famine, pestilence, and great confusion in the land.[271] The wicked thought that we had brought the judgments down on them. They rose up and took counsel to rid the earth of us, thinking that then the evil would be stayed.[272]

I saw all that “would not receive the mark of the Beast, and of his Image, in their foreheads or in their hands,” could not buy or sell.[273] I saw that the number (666) of the Image Beast was made up;[274] and that it was the beast that changed the Sabbath, and the Image Beast had followed on after, and kept the Pope’s, and not God’s Sabbath. And all we were required to do, was to give up God’s Sabbath, and keep the Pope’s, and then we should have the mark of the Beast, and of his Image.

In the time of trouble, we all fled from the cities and villages,[275] but were pursued by the wicked, who entered the houses of the saints with the sword. They raised the sword to kill us, but it broke, and fell, as powerless as a straw. Then we all cried day and night for deliverance, and the cry came up before God.[276] The sun came up, and the moon stood still.[277] The streams ceased to flow.[278] Dark heavy clouds came up, and clashed against each other.[279] But there was one clear place of settled glory, from whence came the voice of God like many waters, which shook the heavens, and the earth.[280] The sky opened and shut, and was in commotion.[281] The

[269]Exodus 20:10.

[270]Ho. 6 : 2, 3.

[271]Ezekiel 7:10-19. 2 Esdras,15: 5-27

[272]2 Esdras, 16 : 68—74.

[273]Revelation 13:15-17.

[274]Revelation 13:18.

[275]Ezekiel 7:15, 16. Luke 17:30-36. See Campbell’s Translation.

[276]Luke 18:7, 8.

[277]Habakkuk 3:11.

[278]2 Esdras, 6 : 24.

[279]2 Esdras, 15 : 34, 35.

[280]Joel 3:16. Hebrews 12:25-27.

[281]Revelation 6:14. Matthew 24:29.

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mountains shook like a reed in the wind, and cast out ragged rocks all around. The sea boiled like a pot, and cast out stones upon the land.[282] And as God spoke the day and hour of Jesus’ coming,[283] and delivered the everlasting covenant to His people,[284] He spoke one sentence, and then paused, while the words were rolling through the earth![285] The Israel of God stood with their eyes fixed upwards, listening to the words as they came from the mouth of Jehovah, and rolled through the earth like peals of loudest thunder! It was awfully solemn. At the end of every sentence, the saints shouted, Glory! Hallelujah! Their countenances were lighted up with the glory of God; and they shone with the glory as Moses’ face did when he came down from Sinai. The wicked could not look on them, for the glory.[286] And when the never ending blessing was pronounced on those who had honored God, in keeping His Sabbath holy, there was a mighty shout of victory over the Beast, and over his Image.

Then commenced the jubilee, when the land should rest. I saw the pious slave rise in triumph and victory, and shake off the chains that bound him, while his wicked master was in confusion, and knew not what to do; for the wicked could not understand the words of the voice of God.[287] Soon appeared the great white cloud.[288] It looked more lovely than ever before. On it sat the Son of Man.[289] At first we did not see Jesus on the cloud, but as it drew near the earth, we could behold his lovely person. This cloud when it first appeared was the Sign of the Son of Man in heaven.[290] The voice of the Son of God called forth the sleeping saints,[291] clothed with a glorious immortality. The living saints were changed in amoment, and caught up with them in the cloudy chariot.[292] It looked all over glorious as it rolled upwards. On either side of the chariot were wings, and beneath it wheels. And as the chariot rolled upwards, the wheels cried Holy, and the wings as they moved, cried Holy, and the retinue of Holy Angels around the cloud cried Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God Almighty. And the saints in the cloud cried Glory, Hallelujah. And the cloudy chariot rolled upwards to the Holy City. Jesus threw open the gates of the Golden City, and led us in.[293] Here we were made welcome, for we had kept the “Commandments of God,” and had a “right to the tree of life.”[294]

From your sister in the blessed hope,

E. G. WHITE.

[282]Habakkuk 3:8-10. Isaiah 2:19-21.

[283]Ezekiel 12:25. Mark 13:32.

[284]Ezekiel 20:37. Hebrews 12:22-25.

[285]Jeremiah 25:30, 31.

[286]Wis. Sol. 5 : 1—5.

[287]Daniel 12:10.

[288]Revelation 14:14.

[289]Luke 21:27.

[290]Matthew 24:30.

[291]John 5:25-28.

[292]Thess. 4:17.

[293]Isaiah 26:2.

[294]Revelation 22:14.

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Remarks.—I do not publish the above vision thinking to add or diminish from the “sure word of prophecy.” That will stand the test of men and wreck of worlds! “It is written that man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word of God.” Amen.

It is now about two years since I first saw the author, and heard her relate the substance of her visions as she has since published them in Portland (April 6, 1846). Although I could see nothing in them that militated against the word, yet I felt alarmed and tried exceedingly, and for a long time unwilling to believe that it was any thing more than what was produced by a protracted debilitated state of her body.

I therefore sought opportunities in presence of others, when her mind seemed freed from excitement, (out of meeting) to question, and cross question her, and her friends which accompanied her, especially her elder sister, to get if possible at the truth. During the number of visits she has made to New Bedford and Fairhaven since, while at our meetings, I have seen her in vision a number of times, and also in Topsham, Me., and those who were present during some of these exciting scenes know well with what interest and intensity I listened to every word, and watched every move to detect deception, or mesmeric influence. And I thank God for the opportunity I have had with others to witness these things. I can now confidently speak for myself. I believe the work is of God, and is given to comfort and strengthen his “scattered,” “torn,” and “pealed people,” since the closing up of our work for the world in October, 1844. The distracted state of lo, heres! and lo, theres! since that time has exceedingly perplexed God’s honest, willing people, and made it exceedingly difficult for such as were not able to expound the many conflicting texts that have been presented to their view. I confess that I have received light and instruction on many passages that I could not before clearly distinguish. I believe her to be a self-sacrificing, honest, willing child of God, and saved, if at all, through her entire obedience to His will.

At a meeting in Fairhaven, 6th of the last month, I saw her have a similar vision, which I then wrote down. It may be said that I send this out to strengthen the argument of my late work on the Sabbath. I do in the sense above stated. Respecting that work I entertain no fears. There is no scriptural argument to move it.

The above vision can be had by application, post paid, to James White, Gorham, Me., or to the editor.

JOSEPH BATES.
Fairhaven, Mass. [582]

Some of our friends have seen this last vision and brother Bates’ “remarks,” published on a little sheet; but as that sheet cannot be circulated without considerable expense, I have put the vision with Scripture references and the remarks, into this little work, so that they may be widely circulated among the saints.

Those who have received the little sheet will see by referring to Exodus 26:35, that there is a mistake in the 10th and 11th lines from the top of the first column. This mistake is not in the original copy now in my possession, written by the author. I have therefore, corrected this mistake, that I made in hastily copying the vision to send to brother Bates.

It would be gratifying no doubt, to some of the readers of this little work, to know something of the experience and calling of the author of these visions. I have not room to say but very little now, but will make a statement of a few facts well known by the friends in the East. I will first give an extract of a letter from a beloved brother, who has stated I doubt not, his honest views in relation to the visions.

“I cannot endorse sister Ellen’s visions as being of divine inspiration, as you and she think them to be; yet I do not suspect the least shade of dishonesty in either of you in this matter. I may perhaps, express to you my belief in the matter, without harm—it will, doubtless, result either in your good or mine. At the same time, I admit the possibility of my being mistaken. I think that what she and you regard as visions from the Lord, are only religious reveries, in which her imagination runs without control upon themes in which she is most deeply interested. While so absorbed in these reveries, she is lost to every thing around her. Reveries are of two kinds, sinful and religious. Here is the latter. Rosseau’s, “a celebrated French infidel,” were the former. Infidelity was his theme, and his reveries were infidel. Religion is her theme, and her reveries are religious. In either case, the sentiments, in the main, are obtained from previous teaching, or study. I do not by any means think her visions are like some from the devil.”

However true this extract may be in relation to reveries, it is not true in regard to the visions : for the author does not “obtain the sentiments” of her visions “from previous teaching or study.” When she received her first vision, Dec. 1844, she and all the band in Portland, Maine, (where her parents then resided) had given up the midnight-cry, and shut door, as being in the past. It was then that the Lord shew her in vision, the error into which she and the band in Portland had fallen. She then related her vision to the band, and about sixty confessed their error, and acknowledged their 7th month experience to be the work of God.

It is well known that many were expecting the Lord to come at the 7th month, 1845. That Christ would then come we firmly believed. A few days before the time passed, I was at Fairhaven, and Dartmouth Mass., with a message on this point of time. At this time, Ellen was with the band at Carver, Mass., where she saw in vision, that we should be disappointed, and that the saints must pass through the “time of Jacob’s trouble,” which was future. Her view of Jacob’s trouble was entirely new to us, as well as herself. At our conference in Topsham, Maine, last Nov., Ellen had a vision of the handy works of God. She was guided to the planets Jupiter, Saturn, and I think one more. After she came out of vision, she could give a clear description of their Moons, etc. It is well known, that she knew nothing of astronomy, and could not answer one question in relation to the planets, before she had this vision. [583]

THE TEMPLE OF GOD.

“And the temple of God was opened in heaven and there was seen in his temple the ark of his testament.“—Revelation 11:19.

The Temple of God in which is the ark of his testament, is in heaven. St. Paul while in vision, was caught up to the third heaven, or paradise which we believe is the New Jerusalem. The word heaven, is applied to other places beside the New Jerusalem, see Genesis 1:8 and 17; Revelation 14:6. But as they do not contain God’s Temple, I must believe that the heaven in which is the Temple of God, is the New Jerusalem. Old Jerusalem, and its Temple were types of the New Jerusalem, and God’s Temple which is in it. The ark containing the tables of stone, on which God wrote the ten commandments with his own finger, were put into the Holiest. When John had a view of the opening of the New Jerusalem Temple, he saw the ark in the same place in the antitype, that it was in the type.

Therefore it is clear that Old Jerusalem, its Temple, and the furniture of that Temple, have distinct antitypes in Paradise. That Paradise was taken up from the earth after the fall of man, is plain, as there is no such place on the earth which answers the description of it given by Moses.—Genesis 3:23, 24. Also, the prophet says : “Behold, the time shall come, that these tokens which I have told thee shall come to pass, and the Bride shall appear, and she coming forth shall be seen, that now is withdrawn from the earth.—2 Esdras, 7: 26. The foundations, walls, and gates, of the New Jerusalem, have certainly been formed in Paradise, since Old Jerusalem was built : if not, then the New, is older than the Old. Abraham by faith looked for this City “which hath foundations;” but he did not expect to find it, until the faithful were raised. The Temple of Old Jerusalem was built purposely for the Old Covenant worship. The Temple, or Sanctuary of New Jerusalem, of which Christ is a minister, the Lord pitched and not man, purposely for the New Covenant worship. Therefore, when Christ has finished his ministry in the Heavenly Sanctuary, and has redeemed his people, there will be no more use for the New Jerusalem Temple, than there was for the Temple at Old Jerusalem, after Jesus had nailed the ceremonial law to the cross. John had a view of the Holy City when it shall come down, Revelation 21:10, at the close of the 1000 years, Revelation 20:7-9, and said, “And I saw no temple therein : for the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are the temple of it—Revelation 21:22. He does not tell us what had become of it; but his saying that he saw no Temple therein at that time, indicates that he had seen one there before. The Holy City is called the Tabernacle of God, Revelation 21:3; Isaiah 33:20; but it is not called so, until it is situated on the New Earth. The City is also called the Temple of God, Revelation 17:15; but not until the saints are raised, and gathered up into the City, where they will serve God “day and night.” Then the Holy City alone, will be the Tabernacle, or Temple of God.

THE JUDGMENT.

“When the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory : And before him shall be gathered all nations : and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd devideth his sheep from the goats : And he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left.” Mat. 25 : 31-33. [584]

This scripture evidently points out the most important events of the day of Judgment. That day will be 1000 years long.—2 Peter 3:7, 8. The event which will introduce the Judgment day, will be the coming of the Son of Man, to raise the sleeping saints, and to change those that are alive at that time.

The second event, will be the King’s sitting “upon the throne of his glory.” The King will not sit upon the throne of his glory, until those who have followed him are raised, and sit upon the thrones of Judgment with him.—Matthew 19:28. John saw in Vision, the length of time that Christ, and the saints would set on the thrones of Judgment, and has written : “And I saw thrones, and they sat upon them, and judgment was given unto them : and I saw the souls of them that were beheaded for the witness of Jesus, and for the word of God, and which had not worshipped the beast, neither his image, neither had received his mark upon their foreheads, or in their hands; and they lived and reigned with Christ a THOUSAND YEARS,” Revelation 20:4. The third event, will be the gathering of all nations before the King, in their separate places. All nations cannot be thus gathered, until the end of the 1000 years, when the wicked dead will be raised, and gathered up around the Holy City. The saints will then be in the City, and the wicked out side of it. All nations will then be before him.

The fourth event, will be the delivering of the sentence by the King. His sentence upon the whole host of Gog and Magog, will be, “Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels,” Mat. 25 : 41. If this is not the final sentence of the judgment on the wicked, I think we shall not find it in the bible. Therefore the wicked are not sentenced before Christ comes; but they will hear their sentence after they are raised, at the close of the 1000 years.

It is not necessary that the final sentence should be given before the first resurrection, as some have taught; for the names of the saints are written in heaven, and Jesus, and the angels will certainly know who to raise, and gather to the New Jerusalem. The fifth event, will be the execution of the final judgment. Some have taken the ground, that the 1000 years will be taken up, in executing the judgment on the wicked : but this cannot be; for the man of sin is to be destroyed with the brightness of Christ’s second coming : therefore the wicked are to remain silent in the dust, all through the 1000 years. How can the judgment be executed on the wicked, before they are raised? It is certainly impossible. John saw the wicked, all raised and gathered up around “the camp of the saints,” at the end of the 1000 years. He also saw fire come down “from God, out of heaven,” which devoured them. This will be the execution of the final judgment on all the wicked.

God executed his judgments on the wicked, in the days of Lot, and Noah, and at the destruction of Jerusalem, and will execute his judgments on the living wicked, at the pouring out of the seven last plagues; but the pouring out of all these judgments cannot be the final execution of the judgment. That will be at the second death. Then God will make all things new. Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.”—Mat. 25 : 34. Then God will have a clear Universe; for the Devil, and his angels, and all the wicked, will be burnt up “root and branch.”

JAMES WHITE.

This Pamphlet can be had by application, post paid, to the subscriber. My Post Office address is Gorham, Me. [585]

APPENDIX E: That Typographical Change in J. N. Loughborough’s Book

Canright, whose words we have used for the text of the charge in chapter 7, refers to a footnote in Loughborough’s book:

“By the time Elder Loughborough had written his book, ‘Rise and Progress of Seventh-day Adventists,’ another moon [of Saturn] had been discovered, and the publishers had the audacity to change her words to read, ‘I see eight moons.’ (See page 126 of that work.) This was in 1892. When Elder Loughborough revised this book in 1905, and issued it under another title [The Great Second Advent Movement], still more moons had been discovered to this planet, hence his admission.”

Loughborough’s “admission” in his footnote on page 258 of his 1905 book, The Great Second Advent Movement, which is in comment on the phrase, “I see seven moons,” states in part: “More moons to both Jupiter and Saturn have since been discovered.”

Canright charges that the “publishers” made the change from “seven” to “eight” moons for Saturn, in Loughborough’s 1892 book. A later critic makes the charge more personal by declaring: When Loughborough wrote his book [Rise and Progress of Seventh-day Adventists, 1892] an eighth moon had been discovered, so he deliberately doctored the vision to fit the new discovery.

Strictly speaking, we are not concerned with the deeds or the declarations of anyone except Mrs. White. But we think it not out of place to devote at least a few paragraphs to defending the good name of a man now unable to defend himself.

Remember that Rise and Progress, published in 1892, says “eight moons“: The Great Second Advent Movement, published in 1905, says “seven moons“: and that there is no other source for these figures in the vision except Loughborough’s words in these books. The critic who says that Loughborough “doctored the vision” had no way of knowing which was the number of “moons” Mrs. White mentioned except as he read it in Loughborough. Nor could he know that the total should be “seven” instead of “eight” except as he read the footnote on page 258 of the 1905 edition. That footnote reads in full as follows:

“In ‘Rise and Progress,’ it says she saw eight moons to Saturn. This change was made after the proofs went out of my hands. More moons to both Jupiter and Saturn have since been discovered.”

If Loughborough had wished to be dishonest, he need not have made the change from “eight” to “seven”—he need not have written [586] the footnote. No one would have known the difference. But he had a desire to keep the record straight, hence the footnote. Canright clearly saw that the responsibility rested with the “publishers.” But the present-day critic seeks to intensify the charge by attacking the narrator of early Adventist history, and hence accuses Loughborough himself of doctoring the vision.

Now what of the “audacity” of the publishers of the 1892 edition? Even though Canright is right in placing responsibility upon the publishers, he is sure, also, that the change reflects deliberate, evil intent. It could not possibly be a typographical error. True, Loughborough says the “change was made after the proofs went out of” his hands. An author would need to make that clear in defense of himself. But he does not thereby impute evil intent to the publishers. The change could be made by mistake as easily as by intent. With that statement, and with the further statement that changes and typographical blunders constantly and embarrassingly appear in printed books, every book publisher will agree.

Indeed, we do not have to go beyond Canright’s book from which we quoted in opening chapter 7 in order to find a choice exhibit. He states that he is quoting the astronomy vision story as “told by Loughborough on page 258 of his book,” The Great Second Advent Movement. But Canright’s quotation uses the words, “eight moons,” whereas page 258 of that book says “seven moons.” Did Canright’s publishers have the “audacity” to make this change? We bring no charge against either the publishers or Canright. We give them the same decent benefit of the doubt that all fair-minded people give to authors and publishers, and attribute the “eight” simply to an error of copyists or typesetters.

APPENDIX F: Mrs. White’s 1883 Statement Regarding Deletions

My attention has recently been called to a sixteen-page pamphlet published by------, 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 [587] 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 omitted, it is proper that several facts be stated. When my earliest views were first published in pamphlet form [A Word to the “Little Flock”], the edition was small, and was soon sold. This was in a few years followed by a larger book, The Christian Experience and Views of Mrs. E. G. White, printed in 1851, and containing much additional matter.

In our frequent change of location in the earlier history of the publishing work, and then in almost incessant travel as I have labored from Maine to Texas, from Michigan to California,—and I have crossed the plains no less than seventeen times,—I lost all trace of the first published works. When it was decided to publish Early Writings at Oakland last fall, we were obliged to send to Michigan to borrow a copy of Experience and Views. And in doing this we supposed that we had obtained an exact copy of the earliest visions as first published. This we reprinted, as stated in the preface to Early Writings, with only verbal changes from the original work.

And here I will pause to state that any of our people having in their possession a copy of any or all of my first views, as published prior to 1851, will do me a great favor if they will send them to me without delay. I promise to return the same as soon as a copy can be produced.

So far from desiring to withhold anything that I have ever published, I would feel great satisfaction in giving to the public every line of my writings that has ever been printed.

There is another fact that should be stated here. I am not responsible for all that has been printed as coming from me. About the time that my earliest visions were first published, several articles did appear purporting to have been written by me, and to relate what the Lord had shown me, but sanctioning doctrines which I did not believe. These were published in a paper edited by a Mr. Curtis. Of the name of the paper I am not certain. In the years of care and labor that have passed since then, some of these less important particulars have been forgotten, but the main points are still distinct in my mind.

This man took articles that came from my pen, and wholly transformed and distorted them, picking out a sentence here and there, without giving the connection, and then, after inserting his own ideas, he attached my name to them as if they came direct from me.

On seeing these articles, we wrote to him, expressing our surprise and disapprobation, and forbidding him thus to misconstrue my testimonies. He answered that he should publish what he pleased, that he [588] knew the visions ought to say what he had published, and that if I had written them as the Lord gave them to me, they would have said these things. He asserted that if the visions had been given for the benefit of the church, he had a right to use them as he pleased.

Some of these sheets may still be in existence, and may be brought forward as coming from me, but I am not responsible for them. The articles given in Early Writings did pass under my eye; and as the edition of Experience and Views published in 1851 was the earliest which we possessed, and as we had no knowledge of anything additional in papers or pamphlets of earlier date, I am not responsible for the omissions which are said to exist.

The first quotation mentioned by------is from a pamphlet of twenty-four pages published in 1847, entitled A Word to the “Little Flock.” Here are the lines omitted in Experience and Views:

“It was just as impossible for them [those that gave up their faith in the ‘44 movement] to get on the path again and go to the City, as all the wicked world which God had rejected. They fell all the way along the path one after another.” [A Word to the “Little Flock,“ p. 14.]

I will give the context, that the full force of the expressions may be clearly seen:

“While praying at the family altar, the Holy Ghost fell on me, and I seemed to be rising higher and higher, far above the dark world. I turned to look for the Advent people in the world, but could not find them—when a voice said to me, ‘Look again, and look a little higher.’ At this I raised my eyes and saw a straight and narrow path, cast up high above the world. On this path the Advent people were travelling to the City, which was at the farther end of the path. They had a bright light set up behind them at the first end of the path, which an angel told me was the Midnight Cry. This light shone all along the path, and gave light for their feet so they might not stumble. And if they kept their eyes fixed on Jesus, who was just before them, leading them to the City, they were safe. But soon some grew weary, and they said the City was a great way off, and they expected to have entered it before. Then Jesus would encourage them by raising his glorious right arm, and from his arm came a glorious light which waved over the Advent band, and they shouted Hallelujah! Others rashly denied the light behind them, and said that it was not God that had led them out so far. The light behind them went out leaving their feet in perfect darkness, and they stumbled and got their eyes off the mark and lost sight of. Jesus, and fell off the path down in the dark and wicked world below.”

Now follows the passage said to be in the original work, but not found in Experience and Views or in Early Writings: [589]

“It was just as impossible for them [those that gave up their faith in the ‘44 movement][295] to get on the path again and go to the City, as all the wicked world which God had rejected. They fell all the way along the path one after another.”

It is claimed that these expressions prove the shut-door doctrine, and that this is the reason for their omission in later editions. But in fact they teach only that which has been and is still held by us as a people, as I shall show.

For a time after the disappointment in 1844, I did hold, in common with the advent body, that the door of mercy was then forever closed to the world. This position was taken before my first vision was given me. It was the light given me of God that corrected our error, and enabled us to see the true position.

I am still a believer in the shut-door theory, but not in the sense in which we at first employed the term or in which it is employed by my opponents.

There was a shut door in Noah’s day. There was at that time a withdrawal of the Spirit of God from the sinful race that perished in the waters of the flood. God Himself gave the shut-door message to Noah:

“My spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh: yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years.”

There was a shut door in the days of Abraham. Mercy ceased to plead with the inhabitants of Sodom, and all but Lot, with his wife and two daughters, were consumed by the fire sent down from heaven.

There was a shut door in Christ’s day. The Son of God declared to the unbelieving Jews of that generation, “Your house is left unto you desolate.”

Looking down the stream of time to the last days, the same infinite power proclaimed through John:

“These things saith he that is holy, he that is true, he that hath the key of David, he that openeth, and no man shutteth; and shutteth, and no man openeth.”

I was shown in vision, and I still believe, that there was a shut door in 1844. All who saw the light of the first and second angels’ messages and rejected that light, were left in darkness. And those who accepted it and received the Holy Spirit which attended the proclamation of the message from heaven, and who afterward renounced their faith and pronounced their experience a delusion, thereby rejected the Spirit of God, and it no longer pleaded with them.

Those who did not see the light, had not the guilt of its rejection. It was only the class who had despised the light from heaven that the

[295]Brackets in original.

[590]

Spirit of God could not reach. And this class included, as I have stated, both those who refused to accept the message when it was presented to them, and also those who, having received it, afterward renounced their faith. These might have a form of godliness, and profess to be followers of Christ; but having no living connection with God, they would be taken captive by the delusions of Satan. These two classes are brought to view in the vision,—those who declared the light which they had followed, a delusion, and the wicked of the world who, having rejected the light, had been rejected of God. No reference is made to those who had not seen the light, and therefore were not guilty of its rejection.

In order to prove that I believed and taught the shut-door doctrine, Mr.------gives a quotation from the Review of June 11, 1861, signed by nine of our prominent members. The quotation reads as follows:

“Our views of the work before us were then mostly vague and indefinite, some still retaining the idea adopted by the body of advent believers in 1844, with William Miller at their head, that our work for ‘the world’ was finished, and that the message was confined to those of the original advent faith. So firmly was this believed that one of our number was nearly refused the message, the individual presenting it having doubts of the possibility of his salvation because he was not in ‘the ‘44 move.’”

To this I need only to add, that in the same meeting in which it was urged that the message could not be given to this brother, a testimony was given me through vision to encourage him to hope in God and to give his heart fully to Jesus, which he did then and there.

In another passage from the book A Word to the “Little Flock,“ I speak of scenes upon the new earth, and state that I there saw holy men of old “Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Noah, Daniel, and many like them.” [A Word to the “Little Flock,“ p. 16.] Because I speak of having seen these men, our opponents conjecture that I then believed in the immortality of the soul and that having since changed my views upon this point, I found it necessary to suppress that passage. They are as near the truth here as in other Conjectures.

In the year 1844 I accepted the doctrine we now hold, concerning the nonimmortality of the soul, as may be seen by reference to Life Sketches of Ellen G. White, 170, 171 [1880 ed. See also 1915 ed., p. 49; Testimonies for the Church 1:39, 40], and I have never, by voice or pen, advocated any other. Had we suppressed this passage on account of its teaching the immortality of the soul, we would have found it necessary to suppress other passages.

In relating my first vision, page 13 of Early Writings [1882 ed.; present ed., p. 17], I speak of having seen brethren who had but a short [591] time previous fallen asleep in Jesus, and on page 14 [present ed., pp. 18, 19] I state that I was shown a great company who had suffered martyrdom for their faith.

The immortality of the soul is no more taught in the “suppressed” passage than in the two last cited.

The fact in the case is, that in these visions I was carried forward to the time when the resurrected saints shall be gathered into the kingdom of God. In the same manner the judgment, the second coming of Christ, the establishment of the saints upon the new earth have been presented before me. Does any one suppose that these scenes have yet transpired? My adversaries show the spirit by which they are actuated in thus accusing me of deception on the strength of a mere “conjecture.”

In this quotation are also found the words, “I saw two long golden rods, on which hung silver wires, and on the wires most glorious grapes.”

My opponents ridicule “that weak and childish expression of glorious grapes growing on silver wires, and these wires attached to golden rods.”

What motive impelled the writer of the above to misstate my words? I do not state that grapes were growing on silver wires. That which I beheld is described as it appeared to me. It is not to be supposed that grapes were attached to silver wires or golden rods, but that such was the appearance presented. Similar expressions are daily employed by every person in ordinary conversation. When we speak of golden fruit, we are not understood as declaring that the fruit is composed of that precious metal, but simply that it has the appearance of gold. The same rule applied to my words removes all excuse for misapprehension.

Another “suppression” reads as follows:

“Well, bless the Lord, dear brethren and sisters, it is an extra meeting for those who have the seal of the living God.” [A Word to the “Little Flock,“ p. 17.]

There is nothing in this that we do not still hold. Reference to our published works will show our belief that the living righteous will receive the seal of God prior to the close of probation; also that these will enjoy special honors in the kingdom of God.

The following passage is said to be omitted from the vision related on pages 25-28 [pp. 32-35, present ed.] of Early Writings:

“And if one believed, and kept the Sabbath, and received the blessing attending it, and then gave it up, and broke the holy commandment, they would shut the gates of the Holy City against themselves, as sure as there was a God that rules in heaven above.” [A Word to the “Little Flock,“ p. 19.]

Those who have clearly seen and fully accepted the truth upon the [592] fourth commandment, and have received the blessing attending obedience, but have since renounced their faith, and dared to violate the law of God, will find, if they persist in this path of disobedience, the gates of the city of God closed against them.

A statement published in 1851 in Experience and Views, and found on page 49 [p. 58, present ed.] of Early Writings is quoted as proving my testimonies false:

“I saw that the time for Jesus to be in the most holy place was nearly finished, and that time can last but a very little longer.”

As the subject was presented before me, the period of Christ’s ministration seemed almost accomplished. Am I accused of falsehood because time has continued longer than my testimony seemed to indicate? How is it with the testimonies of Christ and His disciples? Were they deceived?

Paul writes to the Corinthians:

“But this I say brethren, the time is short: it remaineth, that both they that have wives be as though they had none; and they that weep, as though they wept not; and they that rejoice, as though they rejoiced not.”

Again, in this epistle to the Romans, he says,

“The night is far spent, the day is at hand: let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armour of light.”

And from Patmos, Christ speaks to us by the beloved John:

“Blessed is he that readeth, and they that hear the words of this prophecy, and keep those things which are written therein: for the time is at hand.” “The Lord God of the holy prophets sent his angel to shew unto his servants the things which must shortly be done. Behold, I come quickly: blessed is he that keepeth the sayings of the prophecy of this book.”

The angels of God in their messages to men represent time as very short. Thus it has always been presented to me. It is true that time has continued longer than we expected in the early days of this message. Our Saviour did not appear as soon as we hoped. But has the word of the Lord failed? Never! It should be remembered that the promises and the threatenings of God are alike conditional.

God had committed to His people a work to be accomplished on earth. The third angel’s message was to be given, the minds of believers were to be directed to the heavenly sanctuary, where Christ had entered to make atonement for His people. The Sabbath reform was to be carried forward. The breach in the law of God must be made up. The message must be proclaimed with a loud voice, that all the inhabitants of earth might receive the warning. The people of God must purify [593] their Souls through obedience to the truth, and be prepared to stand without fault before Him at His coming.

Had Adventists, after the great disappointment in 1844, held fast their faith, and followed on unitedly in the opening providence of God, receiving the message of the third angel and in the power of the Holy Spirit proclaiming it to the world, they would have seen the salvation of God, the Lord would have wrought mightily with their efforts, the work would have been completed, and Christ would have come ere this to receive His people to their reward.

But in the period of doubt and uncertainty that followed the disappointment, many of the advent believers yielded their faith. Dissensions and divisions came in. The majority opposed with voice and pen the few who, following in the providence of God, received the Sabbath reform and began to proclaim the third angel’s message. Many who should have devoted their time and talents to the one purpose of sounding warning to the world, were absorbed in opposing the Sabbath truth, and in turn, the labor of its advocates was necessarily spent in answering these opponents and defending the truth. Thus the work was hindered, and the world was left in darkness. Had the whole Adventist body united upon the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus, how widely different would have been our history!

It was not the will of God that the coming of Christ should be thus delayed. God did not design that His people, Israel, should wander forty years in the wilderness. He promised to lead them directly to the land of Canaan, and establish them there a holy, healthy, happy people. But those to whom it was first preached, went not in “because of unbelief.” Their hearts were filled with murmuring, rebellion, and hatred, and He could not fulfill His covenant with them.

For forty years did unbelief, murmuring, and rebellion shut out ancient Israel from the land of Canaan. The same sins have delayed the entrance of modern Israel into the heavenly Canaan. In neither case were the promises of God at fault. It is unbelief, the worldliness, unconsecration, and strife among the Lord’s professed people that have kept us in this world of sin and sorrow so many years.

There are two other passages said to be found in my first book, but not given in my later writings. Concerning these I shall only say, when I can obtain a book containing them, so that I can be assured of the correctness of the quotations and can see for myself their connection, I shall be prepared to speak understandingly in regard to them.

From the beginning of my work, I have been pursued by hatred, reproach, and falsehood. Base imputations and slanderous reports have been greedily gathered up and widely circulated by the rebellious, the [594] formalist, and the fanatic. There are ministers of the so-called orthodox churches traveling from place to place to war against Seventh-day Adventists, and they make Mrs. White their textbook. The scoffers of the last days are led on by these ministers professing to be God’s watchmen.

The unbelieving world, the ministers of the fallen churches, and the First Day Adventists are united in the work of assailing Mrs. White. This warfare has been kept up for nearly forty years, but I have not felt at liberty even to notice their vile speeches, reproaches, and insinuations. And I would not now depart from this custom, were it not that some honest souls may be misled by the enemies of the truth who are so exultantly declaring me a deceiver. In the hope of helping the minds of the honest, I make the statements that I do.

I do not expect to reach those who, having seen the light of truth, refuse to heed it, those who have given themselves up to prejudice, and intrenched their souls in unbelief.

Jesus, the Majesty of heaven, He who was equal with God, was in the world thirty-three years, and yet there were but few who acknowledged His divine character. And can I, who am so weak, so unworthy, a frail creature of humanity, expect greater success than was enjoyed by the Saviour of the world?

When I first gave myself to this work, to go when God should bid me, to speak the words which He should give me for the people, I knew that I should receive opposition, reproach, persecution. I have not been disappointed. Had I depended on human applause, I would long ago have become discouraged. But I looked to Jesus, and saw that He who was without a fault was assailed by slanderous tongues. Those who made high pretensions to godliness followed as spies upon the Saviour’s course, and made every exertion in their power to hedge up His way. But although He was all-powerful, He did not visit His adversaries as their sins deserved. He might have launched forth against them the bolts of His vengeance, but He did not. He administered scathing rebukes for their hypocrisy and corruption, and when His message was rejected and His life threatened, He quietly passed to another place to speak the words of life. I have tried, in my weakness, to follow the example of my Saviour.

How eagerly the Pharisees sought to prove Christ a deceiver! How they watched His every word, seeking to misrepresent and misinterpret all His sayings! Pride and prejudice and passion closed every avenue of the soul against the testimony of the Son of God. When He plainly rebuked their iniquity and declared that their works proved them to be the children of Satan, they angrily flung back the accusation, saying, “Say we not well that thou art a Samaritan, and hast a devil?” [595]

All the arguments urged against Christ were founded in falsehood. So was it in the case of Stephen, and of Paul. But the weakest and most unreliable statements made on the wrong side had an influence, because there were so many whose hearts were unsanctified, who desired those statements to be true. Such are ever eager to fasten upon any supposed error or mistake in those who speak to them the unpalatable truth.

It should not surprise us when evil conjectures are greedily seized upon as undoubted facts by those who have an appetite for falsehood. The opposers of Christ were again and again confounded and put to silence by the wisdom of His words; yet they still eagerly listened to every rumor, and found some pretext to ply Him again with opposing questions. They were determined not to abandon their purpose. They well knew that if Jesus should continue His work, many would believe on Him, and the scribes and Pharisees would lose their power with the people. Hence they were ready to stoop to any base or contemptible measure to accomplish their malicious intentions against Him. They hated the Herodians, yet they joined these inveterate enemies in order to invent some plan to rid the earth of Christ.

Such was the spirit with which the Son of God was met by those whom He came to save. Can any who are seeking to obey God, and to bear to the world the message of His truth, expect a more favorable reception than was granted Christ?

I have no ill will toward those who are seeking to make of none effect the message which God has given me to reprove, warn, and encourage His people. But as the ambassador of Christ, I must stand in defense of the truth. Who are those that so zealously array themselves against me? Are they the pure and holy children of faith? Have they been born again? Are they partakers of the divine nature? Do they love Jesus, and manifest His spirit of meekness and humility? “By their fruits ye shall know them.” Do they resemble the early disciples, or those cunning scribes and Pharisees who were constantly watching to entrap Christ in His words? Notice the sharp practice of those ancient opposers of the faith—how lawyers, priests, scribes, and rulers combined to find something against Him who was the light of the world.

And why were they so intent upon condemning Christ? They did not love His doctrines and precepts, and they were displeased as they saw the attention of the people turned to Him and away from their former leaders.

Human nature is human nature still. Let not those who seek to hedge up my way and destroy the influence of my words, deceive themselves with the belief that they are doing God service. They are serving [596] another master, and they will be rewarded according to their work.

Rebellion will exist as long as Satan exists. Those who are actuated by his spirit will not discern the Spirit of God or listen to its voice until the mandate shall go forth, “He that is unjust, let him be unjust still: and he which is filthy, let him be filthy still: and he that is righteous, let him be righteous still: and he that is holy, let him be holy still.” Revelation 22:11. I expect to encounter the malice of those who despise the light which God has been pleased to give me.

It is God’s plan to give sufficient evidence of the divine character of His work to convince all who honestly desire to know the truth. But He never removes all opportunity for doubt. All who desire to question and cavil will find occasion. I pity those who have set their feet in the path of doubt and unbelief. I would gladly help them if I could, but the experience of the past gives me little hope that they will ever come to the light. No amount of evidence will convince men of the truth so long as they are unwilling to yield their pride, subdue their carnal nature, and become learners in the school of Christ.

Self-will and pride of opinion lead many to reject the light from heaven. They cling to pet ideas, fanciful interpretations of Scripture, and dangerous heresies; and if a testimony is borne to correct these errors, they will, like many in Christ’s day, go away displeased.

It matters not how blameless the character and life of those who speak to the people the words of God; this procures for them no credit. And why? Because they tell the people the truth. This, brethren, is my offense. But if a false report is circulated, if by some inference or conjecture an imputation is cast upon the character of Christ’s ambassador, with what absurd credulity is it received! How many are ready to magnify and spread the slander! Such are revealing their real character, “He that is of God heareth God’s words: ye therefore hear them not, because ye are not of God.” John 8:47.

Calumny and reproach will be the recompense of those who stand for the truth as it is in Jesus. “All that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution.” 2 Timothy 3:12. Those who bear a plain testimony against sin will as surely be hated as was the Master who gave them this work to do in His name. Like Christ, they will be called the enemies of the church and of religion; and the more earnest and true their efforts to honor God, the more bitter will be the enmity of the ungodly and hypocritical. But we should not be discouraged when thus treated.

We may be called “weak and foolish,” enthusiastic, even insane. It may be said of us as it was of Christ, “He hath a devil.” But the work which the Master has given us to do is our work still. We must direct [597] minds to Jesus, not seeking praise or honor of men, but committing ourselves to Him who judgeth righteously. He knows how to help those who, while following in His steps, suffer in a limited degree the reproach He bore. He was tempted in all points like as we are, that He might know how to succor those who should be tempted.

Whatever wrong construction may be placed upon my testimony by those who profess righteousness yet know not God, I shall in humility go forward with my work. I will speak the words which God gives me to speak in encouragement, reproof, and warning. There remains but a little remnant of my life on earth. The work that my Father hath given me, I will, by His grace, perform with fidelity, knowing that all my deeds must pass the scrutiny of Jehovah.—ELLEN G. WHITE, MS. 4, 1883.

APPENDIX G: Fanaticism and Sabbathkeeping Adventists

The Sabbathkeeping group, the embryo Seventh-day Adventist Church, as it began to form under the preaching of the earliest pioneers, was remarkably free from fanatical excesses. In instances where fanatical persons did seek to disrupt the work, Mrs. White’s clear testimony against them generally sufficed to break their influence. This fact is so significant, so contrary to legends that critics have nurtured, and places Mrs. White in such a favorable light, that occasionally a critic seeks to obscure the fact by citing certain incidents in connection with the Sabbathkeepers’ meetings. And then he endeavors to heighten the effect of what he has allegedly disclosed by implying that he has revealed something known to few.

What are these incidents? Briefly this: There is an instance, or perhaps two or three, where someone spoke in an unknown tongue; then certain instances where ministers and others fell prostrate in connection with special seasons of prayer. Finally, there is an instance of where a minister fell prostrate at a meeting, just as officers of the law sought to arrest him on what proved to be a trumped-up charge of disturbing the peace. The officers, for a time, fell back, unable to lay hands on him.

We confess we do not know why there should have been an instance or two of someone’s speaking in an unknown tongue in a meeting of Sabbathkeeping Adventists in the 1840’s. Neither do we know why the Corinthian church should have had members who spoke in strange [598] tongues. But this much we do know: that there was no confusion, no fanatical tumult, that resulted from such an incident.

As to the instances of prostration, we need only remark that there is nothing in the record of those instances that warrants the conclusion that any kind of disorder ensued, unless the simple fact of a person’s being prostrated constituted disorder. Why there should have been a few such manifestations at that time we do not know. Neither do we know why the preaching of the great evangelists in the early nineteenth century resulted in the prostration of thousands of people.

What sources does the critic give for most of his statements concerning prostration? Some documents we have “suppressed”? No, he quotes the Testimonies for the Church, which are currently in print, and Life Sketches of James and Ellen, G. White.[296] He also cites Spiritual Gilts, volume 2, which was reprinted several years ago in a facsimile edition and offered for general sale. Despite this, writing in 1949, he closes his summary of these instances here mentioned with the declaration: “These experiences are not published in the current literature [of the Seventh-day Adventists].” The only thing hidden in regard to these incidents is this: The critic hides the fact that we have not hidden them. It never occurred to us that there was anything to hide.

APPENDIX H: From Shut Door to Open Door

A Supplement to Chapter 13

In chapter 13 we gave the initial statements on the shut door that were made by the leading pioneers, James White and Joseph Bates, after 1844. In the interests of brevity we then gave certain quotations from James White—a statement in the early 1850’s and his historical recital in 1868 that show approximately the time and the manner in which the Sabbathkeeping Adventists moved from their early view on the shut door to their later one on the open door. In this Appendix we wish to give a more fully documented account of the steps in the transition from 1849 onward. To the casual reader the array of passages cited will seem endlessly repetitious. But it is our duty, in the presentation of source material, to give, not easy, fast moving writing, but an accurate historical record. This Appendix is prepared for the student of this early period of Adventist history.

[296]This is a James White work, Not to be confused with Life Sketches of Ellen G. White.

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By the year 1849 the still very small group of Sabbathkeeping Adventists was beginning to have a sense of cohesion. Such men as Joseph Bates and James White felt that they represented not only ideas but companies of people who held those ideas. Furthermore, they felt that these ideas were now rather clearly outlined, well buttressed with Scripture, definitely interlocked, and prophetically timed as “present truth.” Those feelings, coupled with a vision given to Mrs. White regarding the importance of publishing a paper, led to the founding of The Present Truth, July, 1849.[297]

The Good Book declares that “the path of the just is as the shining light, that shineth more and more unto the perfect day.” Proverbs 4:18. All light and understanding do not come immediately. Let us now look at the unfolding picture from 1849 onward for a few years, as the light increased and the slowly crystallizing Seventh-day Adventist movement began to envision its task of preaching a message to all men everywhere. We quote, first, from a long article on the shut door by David Arnold in the The Present Truth, December, 1849. After he gives the history of the Advent movement, in relation to the fulfillment of certain prophecies, he declares:

“Therefore, we are brought, by the force of circumstances, and the fulfilment of events, to the irresistible conclusion that, on the tenth day of the seventh month, (Jewish time,) in the autumn of 1844, Christ did close his daily, or continual ministration or mediation in the first apartment of the heavenly sanctuary, and shut the door, which no man can open; and opened a door, in the second apartment, or Holiest of all, which no man can shut, (see Revelation 3:7, 8,) and passed within the second vail, bearing before the Father, on the breast-plate of judgment, all for whom he is now acting as intersessor [intercessor]. If this is the position that Christ now occupies, then there is no intercessor in the first apartment; and in vain do misguided souls knock at that door, saying ‘Lord, Lord, open unto us.’ The words of the prophet apply to the fulfilment of this point in the parable.

“They shall go with their flocks and with their herds to seek the Lord; but THEY SHALL NOT FIND HIM—HE HATH WITHDRAWN HIMSELF FROM THEM.

“They have dealt treacherously against the Lord, for they have begotten strange children; now shall a month devour them with their portions.—Hosea 5:6, 7.

[297]See Life Sketches of Ellen G. White, 125, for record of vision,

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“But, says the objector, does not this leave the present generation, who have passed the line of accountability, since that time without an intercessor or mediator, and leave them destitute of the means of salvation? In reply to this objection, I would remark, that as they were then in a state of INNOCENCY, they were entitled to a record upon the breast-plate of judgment as much as those who had sinned and received pardon; and are therefore subjects of the present intercession of our great high priest.

“The professed conversions, through the instrumentality of the different sects, are also urged as positive proof that the door is not shut. I cannot give up the clear fulfilment of prophecy, in our experience, which shows the shut door in the past, for the opinions, fancies and feelings of men, based upon human sympathy and a superstitious reverence for early imbibed views. God’s word is true, though it prove all men liars. As a stream is of the same character as the fountain that sends it forth, (see James 3:11,) and does not rise higher than the fountain, so these professed converts will not rise to a better state than the low standard of the fallen sects; therefore, they are converted to the religion of the various sects, but not to God, and the high and holy standard of the Bible. The Prophet Hosea saw this time; and for ‘our learning’ and guide has written—‘They have dealt treacherously against the Lord; for they have begotten strange children.’“—Volume 1, no. 6, pp. 45, 46. (Emphasis his.)

Let us note two or three statements in this quotation. Arnold does not say that there is no intercessor after 1844, but that Christ’s intercessory work is carried on in a new place, the Most Holy place of the sanctuary. The knocking at the door, as in the marriage parable, is here described as a knocking at the door of the first apartment. But those who knock are not described as lost, doomed souls, but as “misguided souls.”

Arnold sets before those who have come to the years of accountability since 1844 the same opportunity of salvation “as those who had sinned and received pardon.”

The “professed conversions” give him no reason for believing that Christ has not shut the door of the first apartment and moved into the second. Further, Arnold observes that these “professed converts” have not been converted to present truth and are therefore simply a part of the “misguided souls” that mistakenly seek Christ in the first apartment when He has gone into the second. [601]

Arnold applies, in this connection, a statement from Hosea 5:6, 7. We shall meet that statement again.

Note, finally, that Arnold reflects the interpretation that Mrs. White had already given to Revelation 3:7, 8, thus involving an open door with the shut door.

James White on Door of Mercy

A few months later James White, the editor, discusses at length the shut door. He comes to the point where he speaks of Christ’s shutting the door of the holy and passing into the most holy, and observes: “Now we may see that the only place for the shut door was in 1844.” We quote in full from this point onward to the end of his article:

“But says the objector—‘The door of mercy will not be closed until Jesus comes.’ We do not read of such a door as ‘the door of mercy’ in the Bible; neither do we teach that such a door was shut in 1844. God’s ‘mercy endureth for ever.’ See Psalm 136; 106:1; 118:1. He is still merciful to his saints, and ever will be; and Jesus is still their advocate and priest. But the sinner, to whom Jesus had stretched out his arms all the day long, and who had rejected the offers of salvation, was left without an advocate, when Jesus passed from the Holy Place, and shut that door in 1844. The professed church, who rejected the truth, was also rejected, and smitten with blindness, and now, ‘with their flocks and with their herds’ they go ‘to seek the Lord’ as still an advocate for sinners; but, says the prophet, [Hosea 6, 7,] ‘they shall not find him; he hath WITHDRAWN HIMSELF from them. They have dealt treacherously against the Lord; for they have begotten strange children.’

“The reason why they do not find the Lord is simply this, they seek him where he is not; ‘he hath withdrawn himself’ to the Most Holy Place. The prophet of God calls their man-made converts, ‘STRANGE CHILDREN;’ ‘now shall a month devour them, and their portions,’

“Says the objector—‘I believe that Jesus is still on the mercy-seat.’ In answer to this oft repeated assertion, let me say; Jesus never was on the mercy-seat, and never will be. The mercy seat is in the Most Holy Place, where Jesus entered at the end of the 2300 days. It’s position is upon the ark of the ten commandments; and over it are the cherubims of glory. Before the mercy-seat stands our Great High Priest pleading his blood for Israel.

“If the door (represented by the door in the parable) is not to be shut until Jesus descends from heaven in flames of fire, then where will be the knocking, and saying ‘Lord, Lord, open unto us’? It is evident that the door is shut prior to the second advent, and that unbelievers [602] are ignorant of the fact of its being shut; therefore they knock at the shut door, and say, [‘]Lord Lord, open unto us.’ When the great day of God’s wrath is come, and unbelievers are apprised of their lost situation, they will not knock, with a hope of being admitted, no, no; but they will flee to rocks and mountains for shelter. See Isa. if, 19-21; Revelation 6:15-17. Now their prayer is, ‘Lord, Lord, OPEN UNTO US;’ but then their prayer will be to ‘rocks and mountains,’ ‘FALL ON US, and HIDE us FROM the face of him that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb.’

“It is impossible to harmonize such portions of the Word as Isa. if, 19-21; Revelation 6:15-17, with the idea of the shut-door, and knocking being at, and after the advent. The 2300 days and cleansing the Sanctuary of Daniel 8:13, 14, the parable of the ten virgins, and other parallel portions of Scripture clearly fix the shut door in 1844. This view establishes our holy advent experience in the past, gives certainty to the ‘blessed hope’ of very soon seeing Jesus, and causes our path to shine ‘more and more unto the perfect day.’ Amen.”—The Present Truth, May 1850, p. 79. (Emphasis his.)

Comments on Editor’s Exposition

James White, as do all our other writers, consistently refuses to say that the door of mercy was shut in 1844. Those rejected and “left without an advocate, when Jesus passed from the Holy Place, and shut that door in 1844,” are those “who had rejected the offers of salvation.” This thought that there was a great host of people who had sinned away their day of grace by rejecting God’s offers of salvation, is a primary point in the thinking of these men who were now writing on the shut door. They had, of course, abundant Scriptural precedent for believing that men can sin away their day of grace.

He declares also that “the professed church, who rejected the truth, was also rejected, and smitten with blindness.” This is a reference, evidently, to the preaching of the second angel’s message. The Bible declares that the day will come, near the end of time, when “Babylon is fallen.”

James White uses Hosea 5:6, 7 and declares that “the reason why they do not find the Lord is simply this, they seek him where he is not.” This seems to imply that members of “the professed church,” whom Arnold described as “misguided souls,” could avail themselves of the intercessory service of our High Priest in heaven if they would but seek Him where He is to be found, that is, in the most holy place. If these Present Truth writers did not always reason consistently with this implication, it was simply because they failed to see, at the outset, [603] that their very interpretation of Hosea 5:6, 7 really laid the foundations for preaching that “whosoever will,” may come.

Note finally that James White makes belief in “the shut door in 1844” necessary to the validity of the great Advent movement. “This view,” says he, “establishes our holy advent experience in the past, gives certainty to the ‘blessed hope’ of very soon seeing Jesus, and causes our path to shine ‘more and more unto the perfect day.’” How clear it is that they stressed the shut door of the parable, not from a desire to keep anyone out of the kingdom, but from a resolute determination to hold onto their belief that God had raised up the Advent movement in fulfillment of prophecy.

Joseph Bates, who, as we have seen in chapter 13, wrote in 1849 that a portion of the 144,000 will be constituted of sincere persons over the whole earth who were not, presumably, in the Advent movement of 1844, spoke as follows in 1850 concerning the ending of Christ’s ministry in the first apartment in 1844:

“Here his work ceased; Ministering and Mediating for the whole world forever; and he like his pattern in the type, entered the Most Holy Place, bearing upon his breast plate of Judgment the twelve tribes of the House of Israel.”—An Explanation of the Typical and Anti-typical Sanctuary, p. 9. (Italics his.)

Harmonization of Bates’s Statement

This statement, standing alone, would indicate advocacy of the doctrine of the end of probation for all men in 1844, but when compared with Bates’s own statement regarding the 144,000, quoted in chapter 13, who are to be constituted in part of sincere people over the whole world who were not a part of the late Advent movement, it would seem that in this 1850 statement, “the whole world,” must be understood in a modified sense as describing those who have willfully refused to accept God’s proffered mercy. Such an understanding makes Bates consistent with himself and with James White, Arnold, and others. And do not even the critics of Seventh-day Adventism advocate the plan of comparing scripture with scripture, with a view to harmony, particularly when dealing with a difficult Bible passage?

In the The Review and Herald, December, 1850 (volume 1, number 3), Joseph Bates declares that the main Adventist body are in rebellion against God because of their repudiation of certain prophetic beliefs that had distinguished the whole movement in 1844. And borrowing the word of Hosea 5:6, 7, he calls their converts “strange children.” Then he declares:

“We say, that as long as they continue rebellious against their [604] lawful Prince, it is morally impossible for them to beget for him one peaceful subject. God has a true test, by which to try every individual since the Midnight Cry. It is ‘the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus.’ Revelation 14:9-12. We have yet to learn, that one single one of their professed converts, or reclaimed backsliders, have reached this standard.—But we fully believe they have some honest souls that they have drawn away with them, into their delusive snares, by their treacherous dealing with the Lord, and false teaching. Our hearts yearn after these. We would use every right way to get them from this Laodicean state. This then is one strong reason why we send forth this article, to open the eyes of those who were, and still are honest, and may possibly be saved, if they will at once flee from this rebellious house of Israel.”—Page 24.

Willful turning away from light makes these ministers unable to bring in true converts. This is what Bates tells us here. But he also tells us that there are “some honest souls” among them who “may possibly be saved.” Then note Bates’s words regarding the ministers—“as long as they continue rebellious.” The natural meaning of those words is that if these ministers cease being rebellious, their labors will be acceptable to God. There is evidently a possibility of salvation not only for them but also for those whom they “beget.” A little further on in the same paragraph he exclaims: “Talk about searching out sinners, that the work of the Midnight Cry left in outer darkness six years ago!” Bates wishes it clearly understood that the willfully rebellious in the world have sinned away their day of grace.

Hope for Adventist Children

In a following issue of the Review, Bates writes thus, under the title, “Duty to Our Children“:

“When the Master of the house (the Lord Jesus) rose up and shut to the door, all honest believers, that had submitted to his will, and children that had not arrived to the years of accountability, were undoubtedly borne in on his breast-plate of judgment which is over his heart.—The names of all that fully keep the commandments are retained. Those that do not, will have their names erased before Jesus leaves the Holiest.

“The children, that are taught, and that keep the commandments of God, as they come to the years of accountability, are believers just as fully as adult persons, that are now embracing all of the commandments, in addition to what they believed before.

“It is true, some persons that are ignorant of this message may, and undoubtedly will be saved if they die before Jesus leaves the Holiest.—I [605] mean those that were believers before 1844. Sinners and backsliders cannot get their names on the breast-plate of judgment now. God in infinite mercy has borne with our ignorance on this subject until now; and our children have been neglected as they should not have been.—Let us then do all that our hands find to do towards their salvation.”—January, 1851, vol. 1, no. 5, p. 39.

The thought here seems to be that children have opportunity for salvation because they had not been formerly of “years of accountability,” and likewise “some persons that are ignorant of this message.” He believes it is too late for “sinners and backsliders.” They had had opportunity to accept truth and rejected it.

James White, in the February, 1851, issue, comments on a criticism by a Mr. Dennett, who implies that the Review was an advocate of “spurious doctrines, such as the old Jewish Sabbath, door of mercy closed, dreams, visions, &c.” White, who was the editor of the Review, comments thus, in part:

“Mr. Dennett speaks of the ‘door of mercy;’ but the Bible speaks of no such ‘door.’ True, Bro. Miller, and others, have used this unscriptural term, (which gives a very wrong idea of our views,) to express their work done for the world; but if we believed that God had forgotten to be merciful to his erring children, we should cease to present truth to them.”—Page 46.

The editor here offers no comment on the phrase “erring children.”

Immediately following this editorial note is a long, unsigned communication entitled “A letter written by a Second Advent brother to his son.” The editor evidently thought it contained truth and worthwhile counsel for his readers. Said this letter writer, in part:

“I think it is more safe to acknowledge that we may have been mistaken in what constituted the coming of the Bridegroom, and the shut door, than to throw the whole prophecy away....

“My time and your patience might be exhausted, were I to undertake to bring to your view the whole subject connected with the Shut Door. Suffice it to say, it does not in my opinion, exclude all conversion. But it does exclude those who have wilfully rejected all these Messages.”—Ibid., p. 47.

Three Classes Who Have Hope

Two months later, in the Review, is printed a letter from a Marshall M. Truesdell to the editor, the main point of which is as follows:

“I am not ready to endorse your view of the shut door, but if it is truth I hope I shall see it. I would like to have you answer one question [606] through your paper. Does the shut door exclude all conversions?”—The Review and Herald, April 7, 1851, p. 64.

Here is the editor’s reply:

“Conversion, in the strictest sense, signifies a change from sin to holiness. In this sense we readily answer that it does not ‘exclude ALL conversions,’ but we believe that those who heard the ‘everlasting gospel’ message and rejected it, or refused to hear it, are excluded by it. We have no message to such. They have no ears to hear us, unless we lower the standard of truth so low that there would be no salvation in it. But there are those who may be converted.

“1. Erring brethren. We believe there are many in the Laodicean[298] church, who will yet be converted as the Apostle directs in his epistle to the waiting brethren. ‘Brethren, if any of you do err from the truth, and one CONVERT him; let him know, that he which converteth the SINNER from the error of his way shall save a soul from death, and shall hide a multitude of sins.’—James 5, 19, 20.

“2. Children, who were not old enough to understandingly receive or reject the truth, when our Great High Priest closed his mediation in the Holy Place at the end of the 2300 days, are subjects of conversion from sin to holiness. Their names were borne in upon the breastplate of judgment, and they are subjects of the mediation of Jesus. God’s ways are equal. He will give every intelligent being a chance to be saved.

“3. When Elijah thought that he was alone, God said to him, ‘I have reserved to myself seven thousand men, who have not bowed to the image of Baal.’ We believe that God has reserved to himself a multitude of precious souls, some even in the churches. These he will manifest IN HIS OWN TIME. They were living up to what light they had when Jesus closed his mediation for the world, and when they hear the voice of the Shepherd in the message of the third angel they will gladly receive the whole truth. Such will be converted to the truth, and from their errors. But we think we have no message to such now, still ‘he that hath an ear to hear let him hear.’ Our message is to the Laodiceans, yet some of these hidden souls are being manifested.” (Emphasis his.)

The leaven of larger vision in spiritual labor for sinners is here seen working most clearly. “Even in the churches,” which constitute fallen Babylon, God has “precious souls.” They are to be made manifest in God’s own time, and so the editor feels that he and his associates can, for the present, direct their message “to the Laodiceans.” After

[298]The term used by the Sabbathkeeping group to describe other Adventists.

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all, there was only a tiny handful of poverty-stricken, Sabbathkeeping Adventists, and a very great number of “Laodiceans,” that they felt they must reach first.

Further Interpretation of Marriage Parable

In June, 1851, the Review carries a long contribution from the editor on the marriage parable of Matthew 25. He recounts the experience of the Adventists in “warning the world with tears to be ready for the Lord’s coming,” but adds that the burden “for unbelievers rolled off from us,” when Christ “ceased to plead for the world, and moved within the second vail,” on October 22, 1844. Then he remarks:

“We might here remark also that on the day of atonement for cleansing the earthly Sanctuary, the high priest bore into the Holiest, upon the breast-plate of judgment, the names of all Israel that could be benefited by the tenth day atonement. Thus our High Priest bore in, on the tenth day of the seventh month, 1844, all that had not rejected light and truth sufficient to be cut off from Israel.”—June 9, p. 102.

A few paragraphs farther on the editor declares emphatically:

“The idea that the door of God’s mercy is closed, or ever was to be closed to those who do not reject the offers of mercy, is not found in the Bible. No such door is mentioned in Scripture. But that there ever has been a point, beyond which men may go, where, according to the plan of salvation, the intercession of Christ could not benefit them, is evident. The Jewish church, having rejected and condemned Christ, could not be benefited by his mediation in the Holy. The nominal Gentile church, as a body, having rejected the Second Advent, cannot be benefited by his intercessions in the Most Holy.”

But from the “rejected” Jewish church came multitudes of individual converts to Christ. With this fact James White was well acquainted. We may therefore understand him to mean that there are multitudes of men and women in “the nominal Gentile church” who may avail themselves of salvation. Still further on in his editorial he offers this comment on the foolish virgins who knocked for admission after the door was shut:

“The word knock, in this text represents earnest and urgent cries and entreaties for the presence and favor of God, such as ever have been necessary in the conversion of men from sin to holiness. It is evident that the knocking, after Jesus has risen up from his mediation in the Holy, is of the same nature. But those who thus ‘knock’ and say ‘Lord, Lord,’ and seek the favor of God, are evidently under a similar deception to that of the five foolish, who expected admission after the [608] door was shut not to be opened. If this position is correct, then the knocking will appear very much like the work of God in past time; therefore, we may expect to see what the churches and Adventists who have gone back with them, call reformations. This is strikingly taught in the following testimony from the Prophet:

“They shall go with their flocks and with their herds to seek the Lord; [a mediator for all the world, in the Holy;] but they shall not find him; he hath withdrawn himself [to the Most Holy] from them.—They have dealt treacherously against the Lord, for they have begotten STRANGE CHILDREN; [apparent converts,] now shall a month devour them with their portions.—Hosea 5, 6, 7.

“Those who refuse to follow down the track of Prophecy, so as to learn the present position and work of our Great High Priest, will ‘knock,’ or seek the Lord as a Minister in the Holy, where he is not. T[h]erefore they will not find him, and his present intercessions in the Most Holy Place will not benefit them, any more than the blood of beasts, and the services of the priests in the worldly Sanctuary benefited the Jewish nation, after Christ ascended on high, a Minister of the ‘True Tabernacle’ in heaven. Had the Jews believed John and Christ, and then followed down the track of Prophecy to the day of Pentecost, they would have received the Holy Ghost, that was then poured out, which signified that the way of the heavenly Sanctuary was then opened.”

Failure to Accept Further Light

The bracketed comments in the quotation from Hosea are by the editor, and are most enlightening. His comments on this text show clearly that he believes that the sorry state of “the churches and Adventists who have gone back with them,” is due to their failure to accept further light. The intercession of Christ will not benefit them, he declares, because they “seek the Lord as a Minister in the Holy, where he is not.” Then, to show a Scriptural parallel to the dangerous possibilities that reside in a failure to accept a further revelation of the plan of God for our salvation, he cites the case of the ancient Jews.

It becomes increasingly evident, as our spiritual forefathers disclose their thinking, that they believed that the ones knocking at the shut door are “those who refuse to follow down the track of Prophecy, so as to learn the present position and work of our Great High Priest.” Such persons Arnold has described as “misguided souls.” The implication is clearly resident in their reasoning, though they did not sense it at the outset, that those who first refused light might still be potential subjects of salvation. Jerusalem, representative of all Israel, had so [609] consistently rejected light through the centuries, that it suffered the awful condemnation of Christ: “Your house is left unto you desolate.” Yet after His resurrection our Lord told His disciples to begin their preaching in Jerusalem. The glorious results are recorded in the book of Acts. Our spiritual fathers said that the “churches,” which they described as fallen Babylon, and the “Adventists who have gone back with them,” should be likened to the ancient Jews!

The implications in such statements from the pioneers as we have just quoted, go even further. The sorry state of certain Adventists is described as due to their failure to accept further light on the sanctuary. But this further light did not break forth till after October 22, 1844. In fact, the light was not clearly set forth until Crosier’s article in 1846. How, then, could all opportunity of salvation have ended for these “misguided souls” on October 22, 1844? Obviously, by the very logic of the pioneers’ statements, it could not.

No Attempt to Blur Narrow Views

This reference to the reasoning of the pioneers is not given in any attempt to blur other and earlier statements by them that seem to teach that probation did end for all, except Adventists, on October 22, 1844. We refer to the implications in their logic simply to show that they had no sooner come out of the first moments of foggy bewilderment following the great disappointment than they began to formulate theological views that had implicit in them a hope of salvation for all who had not stubbornly set themselves against “light and truth.” Their pattern of thinking in regard to this matter of salvation becomes increasingly clear as we continue to quote from them.

In September, 1851, we find the editor of the Review and Herald stating:

“We do not say that the ‘everlasting gospel’ has ceased to have effect upon all, for some are now embracing the doctrine of the speedy coming of the Lord, who have not been identified with the Advent people in the past movements.”—September 2, p. 20.

In February, 1852, a J. Philbrick writes a short letter to James White in which is found this sentence: “I feel solemn in view of that time when there will no longer be a mediator between God and man.”—The Review and Herald, February 3, 1852, p. 87. Note that this writer is looking into the future for the end of Christ’s intercessory work for man.

“Who May Hear the Truth?”

In the next issue is an editorial entitled “Who May Hear the Truth?” which opens thus:

“Answer. ‘He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith [610] unto the churches.’ Revelation 3:13. This verse immediately precedes the call to the Laodiceans to buy ‘gold tried in the fire,’ ‘white raiment’ and ‘eye-salve,’ and the exhortation to them to be ‘zealous’ and ‘repent.’ If, therefore, we are living in the period of the Laodicean church, then he that now hath an ear to hear may hear.

“The Prophet speaks of those [Jeremiah 6:10] whose ‘ears are uncircumcised, and they cannot hearken.’ ‘The word of the Lord is unto them a reproach: they have no delight in it.’ The condition of the Jewish Church, as a body, after they had rejected the first advent of Christ is described as follows by the prophet Isaiah: ‘Hearing ye shall hear, and shall not understand; and seeing ye shall see, and not perceive. For the heart of this people is waxed gross, and their ears are dull of hearing, and their eyes have they closed; lest they should see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart, and should be converted, and I should heal them.’ Acts 28, 26, 27. The mass of the present generation, having rejected the doctrine of the Second Advent, are in a similar condition, having ears, but have no disposition to hear the truth. The condition of those who once rejoiced in the advent faith, and have since pronounced their past experience the work of some unclean spirit, is no better.

“As the large mass of mankind have not an ear to hear the word of God, the Spirit of God, gives us no message for them. But, thank Heaven, there are those who have an ear to hear the truth, and we say of such, ‘let them hear.’ Those whose hearts are not hardened in sin, who have not wickedly trampled on offered mercy, who have not understandingly rejected the glad tidings of the coming kingdom, and who can feel the power of truth, ‘let them hear.’ We never felt greater liberty in pointing out the way of life to sinners in past years, than to such now.

“Many of our brethren in this state, who are fully with us in our views of the message of the third angel, had no part in the messages of the first and second angels. And quite a number of young people are fully with us, who have recently found Jesus, and experienced his pardoning love.”—The Review and Herald, February 17, 1852, p. 94.

The only reason, says this editorial, why they had “no message” for “the large mass of mankind” was that the majority of men had no ear to hear. To all others they were preaching, the editor adds, with great “liberty” and converting “many.” And all this had been taking place between 1844 and 1852, when this editorial was written.

Preachers of an Open Door

On the same page of this issue of the Review, the editor comments on “the remarks of M.” in a first day Adventist paper, in which “M.” [611] describes James White as “a prominent leader among those: of the Shut-Door [Note 1] and Seventh day Sabbath theory.” White replies as follows:

“Note 1. What does M. understand by the shut door theory? If he means what is ignorantly called the ‘door of mercy,’ we reply that we know of no such door. The Bible mentions no such door. The parable of the ten virgins [Matt. xxv] mentions a shut door, but that shut door was literal, in the eastern marriage. It however represents an important event with which the church is connected, that was to occur prior to our Lord’s return from the wedding. That event shuts out none of the honest children of God, neither those who have not wickedly rejected the light of truth, and the influence of the Holy Spirit.

“It is declared by some that Jesus is still on the mercy seat. And this expression is often used in preaching, praying and singing. But because we teach that Jesus now stands before the mercy seat in the most holy place of the Heavenly Sanctuary, we are represented as being one of the leaders of the shut door theory. We say that Jesus is not on the mercy seat. He never was there, and never will be there. The place for the mercy seat is over the Ark of the covenant, within the second vail, in the holiest of all. Over the mercy seat is the cherubim of glory. They overshadow, or cover the mercy seat. No place for the priest on the mercy seat.

“We teach that Jesus our Great High Priest in the Heavenly Sanctuary, has fulfilled the following texts:

“And the key of the house of David will I lay upon his shoulder; so he shall open, and none shall shut; and he shall shut, and none shall open.’ Isaiah 22, 22. ‘And to the angel of the church in Philadelphia write: these things saith he that is holy, he that is true, he that hath the key of David, he that openeth, and no man shutteth; and shutteth and no man openeth. I know thy works; behold I have set before thee an open door, and no man can shut it.’ Revelation 3, 7, 8.

“This OPEN DOOR we teach, and invite those who have an ear to hear to come to it and find salvation through Jesus Christ. There is an exceeding glory in the view that Jesus has OPENED THE DOOR into the holiest of all, or has passed within the second vail, and now stands before the Ark containing the ten commandments. ‘And the temple of God was opened in heaven, and there was seen in his temple the ark of his testament.’ Revelation 11, 19. If it be said that we are of the OPEN DOOR and seventh day Sabbath theory, we shall not object; for this is our faith.”—February 17, 1852, pp. 94, 95. (Emphasis his.)

These “Sabbath and Shut Door people,” as our fathers were known, because of their advocacy of the Sabbath and of the certainty of the 1844 [612] movement, now wish the world to know that they can be more accurately described as the Sabbath and Open Door people, because the Shut Door leads to an open door, the belief in the prophecy of the 2300 days leads to the most holy place in heaven above, the door of which Christ has opened.

Story of Growth Throws Light

In May, 1852, we find James White writing of the progress to date in the preaching of the truth. Says he:

“From the time of the great disappointment in 1844, to 1846, a number of the advent brethren in different States embraced the Sabbath.”—The Review and Herald, May 6, 1852, p. 5.

But the keeping of the seventh-day Sabbath was a great cross to bear and heavy was the opposition to it on the part of former fellow believers in the Advent. That helps to explain a further statement by him in the same issue regarding the growth of the work:

“But this work is not confined to those only who have had an experience in the past advent movement. A large portion of those who are sharing the blessings attending the present truth were not connected with the advent cause in 1844. Their minds not being particularly called to it then, consequently they did not reject it, they are now prepared to receive the truth when presented to them in a proper manner. Some of this number have had their attention called to the advent since the great movement of 1844, others are leaving the churches where they may be free to observe the Sabbath of the Bible, and enjoy the advent hope, and not a few of the precious, tender youth, who are being converted, help make up this number.”—The Review and Herald, May 6, 1852, pp. 4, 5.

From 1846 onward to 1852, when he is writing, we are to conclude, then, that a rapidly increasing number of those accepting the present truth “were not connected with the advent cause in 1844.” Evidently there must have been evangelistic labor bestowed on a circle wider than what one would suppose from some of the statements made by the pioneers regarding the shut door. But on the other hand these pioneers, virtually from their first expressions in print, were declaring, either directly or by implication, that those who had not willfully rejected light might find salvation.

E. S. Sheffield, writing in the Review in October, 1852, presents, in introduction, a testimony in confirmation of James White’s statement:

“Although I have not participated in any of the former movements of the Advent cause, yet I feel bound to acknowledge my firm belief that it is the work of an Almighty hand.”—October 28, 1852, p. 103. [613]

In a February, 1853, installment of a lengthy series entitled “The Sanctuary,” J. N. Andrews discusses Christ’s opening of the door into the most holy place:

“To this open door in the heavenly sanctuary, [Revelation 3, 7, 8; Isaiah 22, 22-25,] we invite those to come for pardon and salvation, who have not sinned away the day of grace. Our High Priest stands by the MERCYSEAT (the top of the ark,) and here he offers his blood, not merely for the cleansing of the sanctuary, but also for the pardon of iniquity and transgression. But while we call men to this open door, and point them to the blood of Christ, offered for us at the mercy-seat, we would remind them of the LAW OF GOD beneath that mercy-seat, which made the death of God’s beloved Son necessary in order that guilty man might be pardoned....

“The close of the third angel’s message is marked by the Son of man taking his position upon the white cloud. Revelation 14, 9-14. The last message of mercy will then have closed, and there will be no intercessor between an offended God and guilty, offending man.”—The Review and Herald, February 3, 1853, pp. 148, 149.

Enlarged View of Sanctuary Service

Somewhere between their first glimpse of the sanctuary truth, immediately after the disappointment, in 1844, and this date in February, 1853, the Sabbathkeeping group had greatly enlarged their understanding of the service of Christ in the most holy place. They first thought of His going into the most holy to receive a kingdom and to cleanse the sanctuary, that is, to dispose of the confessed sins of the faithful. This earliest view of Christ’s work in the most holy seemed to have in it little, if any, of the idea of intercession for sin. But in this 1853 quotation, Andrews specifically declares that in the most holy place Christ “offers his blood, not merely for the cleansing of the sanctuary, but also for the pardon of iniquity and transgression.”

In The Day-Star, in 1846, O. R. L. Crosier set forth, in a formal way, the truth of the ministry of Christ in the most holy place in heaven above, and stabilized the thinking of Sabbathkeeping Adventists. For a little while he was numbered with the Sabbathkeeping group of Adventists. But he soon turned away and became a militant critic of both the Sabbath and the sanctuary doctrines. In 1853 he wrote an article in the Harbinger, one of the Adventist papers, chiding our Sabbathkeeping fathers for quoting, still, from his [1846 Day-Star] article, and for two reasons: First, because he had now “somewhat changed” his views on the subject of the sanctuary. Second: “The above named persons [certain Sabbathkeepers] appear to me insincere [614] in quoting from that article, (1) because they know that it was written for the express purpose of explaining and proving the doctrine of the ‘shut door,’ which they now, I understand, disclaim.”

We quote Crosier’s statements as they appear in an editorial note in the Review of March 17, 1853, page 176. Here, in part, is the editor’s reply. On the first:

“We have quoted from C’s article, for no other reason than this, it contained precious truth, which we wished to spread before the flock of Christ.”

On the second:

“As C. has informed the readers of the Harbinger that we disclaim the doctrine of the shut door, that paper should no longer reproachfully call us ‘shut-door Sabbatarians.’ But we say that C’s article on the law of Moses [in the Day-Star, 1846], no more goes to prove a shut door than it does an open door. It is in harmony with the Bible doctrine which we hold, that at the termination of the 2300 days, in 1844, there was a change in the work of our High Priest—a door was then opened into the Most Holy, while another was shut.”

Crosier also made a general observation, intended to be critical, of the Sabbathkeepers’ philosophy:

“I think we have no means of knowing the precise time when the antitype of the ancient 10th day of the 7th month service did or will begin: but we have evidence that it will not close the ‘door of mercy’ against all the previously impenitent.”

The editor’s comment was this:

“As to the ‘door of mercy’ of which C. speaks, we read of no such door, only in the writings of uninspired men. But the truth that C. wished to state here, for truth it is, is this, that there would be those who might come to God through the mediation of Jesus Christ, and find pardon of their sins, after the work of the antitype of the tenth day of the seventh month services should commence. This, to us who believe that this is the period of the antitypical tenth day service, is an important truth. While the great work of saving men closed with the 2300 days, a few are now coming to Christ, who find salvation.”

The important point here is not that James White—and he reflected the view of the group—should still believe that the majority of men had sinned away their day of grace, but that he believed that those who would might come to Christ and receive salvation.

In an issue of the Review the next month is a long editorial entitled “The Shut Door.” Near the close of the editorial is this statement:

“Although there is a shut door which excluded those represented by the foolish virgins, (those moved by the proclamation of the Advent, [615] who had none of the grace of God, no real faith,) and also those who were foolish and wicked enough to reject, and fight against the glorious news of a soon coming Saviour, yet we rejoice to publish to those that have an ear to hear, that there is an Open Door.”—April 14, 1853, p. 189.

Restricted View of Salvation Surrendered

That the idea of restricted salvation had quite disappeared from our publications by the early 1850’s is specifically affirmed by James White in an editorial in the Review of July 4, 1854, to which we referred in chapter 13. He quotes from critical statements made by a Mrs. Seymour in the Harbinger, in which she speaks thus of Sabbathkeepers: “They have ceased preaching repentance, saying it is too late! They have stifled their sympathies for the impenitent, and have virtually said, Sinner, you cannot turn to God and live.”—Page 173. To this James White replies:

“Now all this is entirely false. Those who have read our publications, especially for the past two years, and have known any thing of the labors of the brethren in the Sabbath cause, know, that Mrs. S. has penned untruths, and that the Harbinger has published the same.”—Ibid.

It is evident that the Sabbathkeeping group have definitely moved from the shut door to the open door.

APPENDIX I: The Spurious Camden Vision, Dated June 29, 1851

Spurious documents have plagued the Christian world through all the centuries, and particularly has this been true in connection with the alleged sayings of those who have held a unique status as spiritual leaders. The century of the Seventh-day Adventist denomination has provided exhibits of such documents that are supposed to set forth the words of Mrs. White. It could hardly be otherwise, human nature being what it is. Such documents are not necessarily a proof of studied deception and fraud; rather, they may be an exhibit of uncritical acceptance of unsupported stories and word-of-mouth reports of what Mrs. White is supposed to have said. Finally a report or story is placed in writing. Such a writing may be, in part, true. But generally it is so hopelessly mixed with words and thoughts that Mrs. White did not utter that it is quite worthless. In most instances there is no way to disentangle truth from fiction. [616]

In earlier years, before the staff of the Ellen G. White Publications had carefully cross-indexed Mrs. White’s extensive manuscripts, it was not possible always to say with certainty whether a reputed statement by Mrs. White, which might be in circulation, was really authentic or not. The question of authenticity often turned on whether someone had a memory of a certain meeting or incident when Mrs. White was supposed to have been present and spoken. How woefully unreliable memories can be, we have noted several times in this book. That is particularly true when men attempt to remember the exact words spoken years before, even though everyone concerned has the best of intentions and is loyally seeking to strengthen the church by the recalling of an experience.

But if even loyal members have generally provided exhibits of wholly unreliable so-called words of Mrs. White, what is to be said of an alleged vision of hers that has been transmitted through the years only by avowed enemies! Here are the facts regarding the alleged “Camden Vision of June 29, 1851“:

The “vision” was first given circulation by an R. R. Chapin, some years after 1851. Chapin had been a Seventh-day Adventist, but at the time he circulated this “vision” he was a member of an opposing group called the Messenger Party that was bitterly attacking Seventh-day Adventists in general and Mrs. White in particular. This fact in itself would seem almost sufficient to becloud any claim to authenticity for the “vision,” at least the text of it as transmitted to us by avowed enemies.

J. N. Loughborough, writing in 1905, states briefly that “Elder and Mrs. White during the winter of 1849-50” visited “the town of Camden, N.Y.,” and that at this place there was a certain hypocritical woman who made much pretense of holiness, but who was corrupt. He then speaks of a conversation he had in 1884 with a “Mr. Preston, who was a resident of Camden” at the time of the Whites’ visit. This man told him that Mrs. White had a vision in the presence of this hypocritical woman and rebuked her. “So,’ said Mr. Preston, ‘what is called the Camden vision applied definitely and especially to the case of that woman, and not to the condition of sinners generally, and we so understood it at the time.’”—J. N. LOUGHBOROUGH, The Great Second Advent Movement, p. 233.

This is the only reference we have been able to find in Loughborough’s work to a so-called Camden vision that allegedly taught the close of probation for the wicked world. Yet critics cite this reference as proof of such a vision, and of course, as proof of the accuracy of the text of the vision as passed down through the years by Chapin. [617]

Did not Loughborough refer to it as a fact? But note carefully the following:

1. Loughborough does not give the text of the “vision.” And it is the text that makes this “vision” significant to the critics.

2. He does not give a firsthand statement that Mrs. White had a vision at that time. He simply quotes what someone told him in 1884, about a third of a century after the alleged incident.

3. Though we today know the text of this alleged Camden vision only as presented by Chapin, we do not know that Preston is referring to such a text. He might have heard by word of mouth of some other text of it. We do not even know for sure that he is referring to the vision mentioned by Chapin, because of the discrepancy in time, as mentioned in Number 4.

4. Loughborough refers to a visit of Mrs. White to Camden in “the winter of 1849-50.” And we know from her own testimony that she had a vision in connection with this visit to Camden and in the presence of an unnamed hypocritical woman.[299] But the alleged Camden vision, the text of which is given to us through Chapin, is dated specifically “June 29, 1851.” Then how can it be said that Loughborough is really admitting the actuality of the alleged vision mentioned by Chapin?

So much for the argument in behalf of the authenticity of the Chapin text of this “vision” that is built on the claim that Loughborough admits it.

We have found that in a certain instance—the Dorchester vision, 1848—where a bona fide vision was copied down by Bates in terms of exclamatory statements by Mrs. White while in vision, the text was incomplete. Therefore the deductions drawn from it are unwarranted. Could Chapin or anyone else be relied on to provide us anything more dependable? Even if he were allegedly giving what she said after coming out of vision, the same question would still hold, for only a good shorthand reporter can hope to furnish a reliable text of a speaker’s words.

The Ellen G. White manuscript files contain nothing that would even suggest a vision of which the alleged Camden vision might be a paraphrase or a distortion. The critics cannot reply that the church would fear to reveal it, for the chapters discussing the shut door show that our currently published works and the facsimile reprints of out-of-print works contain statements which, according to the declarations of the critics, give as much appearance of teaching the shut-door

[299]See Spiritual Gifts 2:124-127; also Life Sketches of Ellen G. White, 129, 130,

[618]

doctrine as does this alleged Camden vision. In other words, there would be no reason to conceal it.

We have noted a discrepancy between the date, “the winter of 1849-50,” and the date, “June 29, 1851.” It is a fact that James and Ellen White were in Camden again in June, 1851. But when we look up the record of their itinerary we find this further discrepancy: They were not in Camden on June 29! The The Review and Herald, June 2, 1851, announced a conference to be held in Camden, June 20, beginning at 9 A.M., and a conference at West Milton, New York, beginning Friday, June 27, at 2 P.M., and holding over “the Sabbath and First-Day.”—Page 96. In the Review and Herald of June 9, James White writes: “Our Post Office address from the 18th to the 23d of June will be Camden N. Y. From the 25th to the 30th of June, West Milton, Saratoga Co. N. Y. After that our address will be Paris, Me.”—Page 104.

In a four-page Extra of the Review printed at Saratoga Springs, New York, July 21, 1851, James White gave a report of their travels during the month of June. He tells of the Camden Conference, which was held “on the 20th, 21st and 22d of June.” Then he speaks of the West Milton Conference: “According to appointment this meeting commenced June 27th, and held three days.” That Mrs. White traveled with him on this trip, is equally clear from the record. The Office of the White Publications has the text of a short vision dated Camden, June 21, 1851, which is also published in the four-page Extra. But this deals with the question of time, and has nothing in common with the Camden “vision” of June 29.

To sum up: The records reveal that there are two genuine Camden visions:

1. A vision during the winter of 1849-50, which rebuked a hypocritical woman. No text of this vision is known to exist. Mrs. White evidently did not write it out.

2. A vision given to Mrs. White on a later visit to Camden and dated June 21, 1851. This vision dealt with the subject of time and appeared in print shortly afterward.

Then there is an alleged Camden vision dated June 29, 1851, when Mrs. White was not even in Camden, and dealing with the shut door, but the text of which is available only through avowed critics of Mrs. White.

The makers of more than one spurious document have endeavored to provide the atmosphere of authenticity by giving a definite date. They wish to convey the impression that they are so sure that they can even give the very day of the month. But in more than one instance [619] such bold definiteness has been the means of exposing the fraud. Perhaps the case before us is another exhibit. The purveyors of the “Camden Vision, June 29, 1851,” should have been more careful readers of the Review and Herald.

APPENDIX J: Deleted Passages Examined

The charge of “suppression” that has been brought against Mrs. E. G. White is quite exclusively in terms of deletions from her earliest writings, that is, those writings that precede the publication of Experience and Views in 1851. Most critics cite only those deletions which they allege teach the shut-door doctrine, and declare that the deletions are to be explained as an attempt to cover up the fact that Mrs. White thus formerly believed and taught. A few critics cite one or two more deletions which they declare are to be explained as an attempt to cover up other abandoned views. They have only one explanation for these deletions they discuss; namely, that they were intended to conceal formerly held views.

Let us, therefore, examine all of Mrs. White’s earliest writings to see what deletions were made. When we speak of deletions we obviously do not mean minor grammatical changes, or the change of a word, a phrase, or possibly even a sentence, provided that it neither adds to nor subtracts from the line of thought being presented. To list these minor deletions with necessary context to make them intelligible, would needlessly encumber this discussion. Suffice it to say that if no critic through all the years has found in such minor deletions any possible ground for a charge, such deletions must be transparently harmless and pointless so far as the charge of “suppression” is concerned. In fact, we shall cite a number of substantial deletions which critics, quite uniformly, and for reasons that will become evident, have never quoted.

The regular practice of critics has been to cite the few standard exhibits of deleted passages that appear to teach the shut door, and then remark that lack of space prevents their citing a great many more that teach this and other abandoned doctrines. The reader’s imagination is supposed to do the rest. This argument by implication and insinuation, aided by imagination, we wish to expose by examining all of Mrs. White’s writings that were published up to the time of the printing of Experience and Views in 1851. These writings appear in the following: [620]

The Day-Star, a first-day Adventist paper, in 1846.

The broadside To the Little Remnant Scattered Abroad, April 6, 1846.

The broadside A Vision, April 7, 1847.

The tract A Word to the “Little Flock,“ May 30, 1847.

The broadside To Those Who Are Receiving the Seal of the Living God, January 31, 1849.

The paper Present Truth, in issues of 1849 and 1850.

Review and Herald Extra, July 21, 1851.

In some instances Mrs. White’s contribution appearing in one of the foregoing seven, is a first printing, other times a reprint. These contributions may be divided into three groups:

1. Those reprinted in full—or with no more than minor grammatical changes—right through to their printing in Experience and Views.

2. Those reprinted in Experience and Views with deletions or additions.

3. Those not included, even in part, in Experience and Views.

So far as the question of “suppression” is concerned it obviously focuses on groups 2 and 3.

Mrs. White’s earliest contributions frequently carry no title, only a salutation, as “Dear Brethren and Sisters,” or simply “Dear Bro.------,” in the case of letters to individuals. Sometimes one contribution may contain more than one vision or subject, with only dividing spaces, or dividing lines, to indicate the introduction of the second vision or the new line of thought. For purposes of identification we have given a descriptive title to all the clearly defined subdivisions of her earliest contributions that were not later published under a title in Experience and Views. When a title is given in the early printings we have used it within quotation marks. For the purpose of this investigation we have divided Mrs. White’s earliest writings into twenty parts. These we shall now consider in their chronological order.

These earliest writings will not be traced beyond the publication of Experience and Views in 1851. With only minor editorial or grammatical changes, which no critic seems to have questioned, Experience and Views was reprinted in 1882 as the first half of Early Writings, a work still current. We shall give, in each instance, not simply the reference in Experience and Views, if the contribution is included in it, but also, parenthetically, the corresponding reference in the current printing of Early Writings. The text of the deleted portions that will be quoted is that of the last printing. [621]

1. “To the Little Remnant Scattered Abroad”

FIRST PRINTING

This vision was received December, 1844.[300] First appeared in print in the The Day-Star, January 24, 1846, pages 31, 32, under the title “Letter from Sister Harmon. Portland, Me., Dec. 20, 1845.” Addressed to the editor, Enoch Jacobs, the letter carries this note after the signature at the close: “N.B. This was not written for publication; but for the encouragement of all who may see it, and be encouraged by it.” In another column, on page 32, the editor wrote: “The vision of Sister Harmon in the present number, is published at the request of many friends that have heard it read.” (Ellen G. Harmon, after her marriage to James White in August, 1846, is known as Ellen G. White.)

SECOND PRINTING

In the April 6, 1846, broadside. At one point in the letter, as first printed, the sentence occurs: “Well bless the Lord, Bro. Jacobs, it is an extra meeting for those who have the seal of the living God.” As reprinted in the broadside, “dear brethren and sisters” is substituted for “Bro. Jacobs.” This is an illustration of what is meant by minor deletions that have no bearing on the controversy over “suppression.”

THIRD PRINTING

In the tract A Word to the “Little Flock,“ pages 14-18, under the title “To the Remnant Scattered Abroad.”

FOURTH PRINTING

In the Review and Herald Extra, July 21, 1851. It appears as the second section of a three-section contribution by Mrs. White. The sections, in order, are: (1) A sketch of her early life, (2) this first vision, (3) a vision on the Sabbath truth, which originally appeared as a letter to “Dear Brother Bates.” Sections 1 and 3 we shall consider later. In this Review and Herald Extra the first vision is prefaced with these words: “Here I will give the view that was first published in 1846. In this view I saw only a very few of the events of the future. More recent views have been more full. I shall therefore leave out a portion and prevent repetition.” It is in this printing, therefore, that we find the deletions in this first vision that have been the subject of so much discussion.

[300]This date is established by a letter from Mrs. White to Joseph Bates, written from Gorham, Maine, July 13, 1847.

[622]

Note, however, that these deletions, instead of being made secretly, in the hope that no one would notice a change in the text, are announced openly, and a frank and rational reason offered for them. We shall here give simply the text of the three deletions. Those who wish to note the context will turn to Appendix D, page 574, which gives the full text. Deletions

(1) “It was just as impossible for them to get on the path again and go to the City, as all the wicked world which God had rejected. They fell all the way along the path one after another.”

(2) “And as we were gazing at the glories of the place our eyes were attracted upwards to something that had the appearance of silver. I asked Jesus to let me see what was within there. In a moment we were winging our way upward, and entering in; here we saw good old father Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Noah, Daniel, and many like them. And I saw a vail with a heavy fringe of silver and gold, as a border on the bottom; it was very beautiful. I asked Jesus what was within the vail. He raised it with his own right arm, and bade me take heed. I saw there a glorious ark, overlaid with pure gold, and it had a glorious border, resembling Jesus’ crowns; and on it were two bright angels—their wings were spread over the ark as they sat on each end, with their faces turned towards each other and looking downward. (cc)[301] In the ark, beneath where the angels’ wings were spread, was a golden pot of Manna, of a yellowish cast; and I saw a rod, which Jesus said was Aaron’s; I saw it bud, blossom and bear fruit. (dd) And I saw two long golden rods, on which hung silver wires, and on the wires most glorious grapes; one cluster was more than a man here could carry. And I saw Jesus step up and take of the manna, almonds, grapes and pomegranates, and bear them down to the city, and place them on the supper table. I stepped up to see how much was taken away, and there was just as much left; and we shouted Hallelujah—Amen. We all descended from this place down into the city.”

(3) “Well, bless the Lord, dear brethren and sisters, it is an extra meeting for those who have the seal of the living God.” Comments on Deletions

(1) This first deletion is discussed at length in the chapter: “Mrs. White and the Shut Door—Part II.” We believe that that discussion shows that the doctrine of no more mercy for sinners is not taught in this passage.

[301]These and similar parenthetical letters refer to footnotes added by those who published the material.

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(2) It is alleged that this deletion was made because it teaches that the righteous dead are in heaven and that Mrs. White, after having this vision, accepted the doctrine that the dead are unconscious till the resurrection day. For good measure the criticism is made that this passage teaches the very foolish notion that grapes grow on “silver wires.”

Some evil motive must be found for the deletion. Lacking such a motive, critics, rarely refer to a particular deletion. It would be too evident to the reader that if she had no evil motive in deleting a passage, she must have had an honorable one. But did Mrs. White have an evil motive in the instance before us? Did she wish to conceal an abandoned doctrine or to hide a foolish notion regarding grapes? We shall let her speak for herself. In Appendix F is found an extended statement made by Mrs. White in 1883 in which she gives a clear answer to these charges. The reader is referred to that statement.

The substance of most of what constitutes deletion number 2 is presented in the 1847 vision (the letter to “Dear Brother Bates”), which is also printed in the Extra. (See Early Writings, 32, 33.)

(3) This is brief, is free of doctrinal implications that might be supposed to embarrass, and has never, so far as we have discovered, been cited by the critics. We list it here rather to indicate what we mean by minor deletions. Apparently, in 1883, a critic must have cited this deletion, for Mrs. White in her 1883 statement comments on it. See Appendix F, p. 591.

FIFTH PRINTING

In the first edition of a collection of Mrs. White’s writings, the little book Experience and Views, pages 9-15. (Early Writings, 13-20.) The text of the fourth printing is used.

2. “End of the 2300 Days”

FIRST PRINTING

First part of a second letter to Enoch Jacobs, entitled simply “Letter from Sister Harmon. Falmouth, Mass., Feb. 15, 1846.” Published in his paper, the The Day-Star, March 14, 1846, page 7. Describes events occurring in connection with the ending of the 2300 days.

SECOND PRINTING

In the April 6, 1846, broadside. The opening lines are deleted as follows: [624]

Deletion

“Bro. Jacobs:—

“My vision which you published in the Day-Star was written under a deep sense of duty, to you, not expecting you would publish it. Had I for once thought it was to be spread before the many readers of your paper, I should have been more particular and stated some things which I left out. As the readers of the Day-Star have seen a part of what God has revealed to me, and as the part which I have not written is of vast importance to the Saints; I humbly request you to publish this also in your paper. God showed me the following, one year ago this month.” Comment on Deletion

It is evident why these opening lines would be deleted when the letter was reprinted by and for our early Sabbathkeeping forebears. The lines were irrelevant. In their place the following introductory line is used: “In February, 1845, I had a vision of events commencing with the Midnight Cry.”

THIRD PRINTING

In Experience and Views, pages 43, 44 (Early Writings, 54-56), with the following further deletions: Deletion

(1) “There [in “the Holy of Holies”] I saw thrones that I had never seen before.”

(2) “Then Jesus shew[ed] me the difference between faith and feeling.”

(3) “I saw one after another leave the company who were praying to Jesus in the Holiest, and go and join those before the throne, and they at once received the unholy influence of Satan.” Comments on Deletions

(1) This is but a description of what Seventh-day Adventists have believed from the first; namely, that when the Ancient of Days went into the holy of holies, at the end of the 2300 days, as Mrs. White is here describing, “the thrones were cast down [“placed”].” Daniel 7:9.

(2) There is no possible doctrinal question involved in this deletion. Neither it nor number 1 is cited by critics as an example of suppression.

(3) This deletion is the closing sentence of the vision. If the reader will turn to Early Writings, 55, 56, he will see that this deletion is merely a restatement of what has already been said in that vision. We have not noted that any critic cites this passage. [625]

3. Time of Jacob’s Trouble

FIRST PRINTING

Second part of Ellen Harmon letter of February 15, 1846, to Enoch Jacobs. Published in the The Day-Star, March 14, 1846, page 7.

SECOND PRINTING

In the April 6, 1846, broadside. This was the last printing. The vision, “deleted,” or rather omitted, from later writings of Mrs. White reads as follows in this second printing: Deletion

“About four months since I had a vision of events all in the future. I saw the time of trouble, such as never was. Jesus told me it was the time of Jacob’s trouble, and that we should be delivered out of it by the voice of God. Then I saw the four angels cease to hold the four winds. And I saw famine, pestilence and sword—nation rose against nation, and the whole world was in confusion. Then we cried to God day and night for deliverance, until we began to hear the bells on Jesus’ garment. And I saw Jesus rise up in the Holiest, and as he came out we heard the tinkling of the bells and knew that our High Priest was coming out. Then we heard the voice of God which shook the heavens and the earth, and gave the 144,000 the day and hour of Jesus’ coming. Then the saints were free, united, and full of the glory of God, for he has turned their captivity. And I saw a flaming cloud come where Jesus stood. Then Jesus laid off his priestly garment and put on his kingly robe, and took his place on the cloud which carried him to the East, where it first appeared to the saints on earth—a small black cloud which was the sign of the Son of Man. While the cloud was passing from the Holiest to the East, which took a number of days, the synagogue of Satan worshipped at the saint’s feet.”

Comments on Deletions

The substance, and sometimes the exact phrasing, of this vision is found in closing chapters of The Great Controversy, and in such chapters as the following in Early Writings: “The Sealing,” “Duty in View of the Time of Trouble,” “Deliverance of the Saints.” See also Testimonies for the Church 1:183, 184. We have not found any critic making a point out of this deletion. Obviously this deleted vision, whose entire teaching is reproduced in other forms, could not have been “suppressed” to conceal repudiated beliefs.

Incidentally, this vision has a direct bearing on a certain statement by James White. Mrs. White wrote it out on February 15, 1846, as the [626] Day-Star printing reveals. She states that she had the vision “about four months since.” That would be about October 15, 1845. Now listen to James White in A Word to the “Little Flock,“ in 1847:

“It is well known that many were expecting the Lord to come at the 7th [Jewish] month, 1845 [that is, the autumn]. That Christ would then come we firmly believed. A few days before the time passed, I was at Fairhaven, and Dartmouth, Mass., with a message on this point of time. At this time, Ellen [Harmon—not yet Mrs. White] was with the band at Carver, Mass., where she saw in vision, that we should be disappointed, and that the saints must pass through the ‘time of Jacob’s trouble,’ which was future. Her view of Jacob’s trouble was entirely new to us, as well as herself.”—Page 22.

Evidently, then, this vision was intended to meet a particular need in October, 1845. Later, the substance of it appeared in various of Mrs. White’s writings.

4. Letter to Brother Bates (“Subsequent Visions”)

FIRST PRINTING

On the broadside A Vision, April 7, 1847. Bates printed this broadside and added “Remarks,” in which he offered reasons why he accepted Mrs. White’s visions as of God.

SECOND PRINTING

In A Word to the “Little Flock,” pages 18-20.

THIRD PRINTING

In Review and Herald Extra, July 21, 1851, pages 2, 3, with deletions, as follows:

Deletion

(1) “And if one believed, and kept the Sabbath, and received the blessing attending it, and then gave it up, and broke the holy commandment, they would shut the gates of the Holy City against themselves, as sure as there was a God that rules in heaven above.”

(2) “I saw all that ‘would not receive the mark of the Beast, and of his Image, in their foreheads or in their hands,’ could not buy or sell. (o) I saw that the number (666) of the Image Beast was made up; (p) and that it was the beast that changed the Sabbath, and the Image Beast had followed on after, and kept the Pope’s, and not God’s Sabbath. And all we were required to do, was to give up God’s Sabbath, and keep the Pope’s, and then we should have the mark of the Beast, and of his Image.” [627]

Comments on Deletions

(1) This is not cited, we believe, by current critics as an exhibit of a passage “suppressed” to conceal an abandoned teaching. In 1883 Mrs. White, in meeting charges of “suppression,” wrote thus regarding this deletion:

“Those who have clearly seen and fully accepted the truth upon the fourth commandment and have received the blessing attending obedience, but have since renounced their faith, and dared to violate the law of God, will find if they persist in this path of disobedience, the gates of the city of God closed against them.” See Appendix F, pp. 591, 592.

This is in harmony with the Scriptural principle enunciated by Christ: “If I had not come and spoken unto them, they had not had sin: but now they have no cloke for their sin.” John 15:22. Also with the words of James: “Therefore to him that knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it is sin.” James 4:17. And with the further words of James: “For whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all. For he that said, Do not commit adultery, said also, Do not kill. Now if thou commit no adultery, yet if thou kill, thou art become a transgressor of the law. So speak ye, and so do, as they that shall be judged by the law of liberty.” James 2:10-12. Finally, this deleted passage squares with the words of John: “Blessed are they that do his commandments, that they may have right to the tree of life, and may enter in through the gates into the city.” Revelation 22:14.

A reading of Mrs. White’s current writings will reveal that she has more than once set forth the substance of deletion number 1.

(2) This is discussed in chapter 18, “The Image Beast and 666.”

In Experience and Views, pages 15-19. (Early Writings, 32-35.) The text of the third printing is used.

5. Letter to Eli Curtis

FIRST AND ONLY PRINTING

In A Word to the “Little Flock,” pages 11, 12.

See Appendix D, pages 571, 572 for full text of this letter.

Comments on Deletions

The fact that this letter has been dropped out of all subsequent printings—wholly “suppressed”—has rarely, if ever, been the occasion of any indictment by critics. This is an interesting fact. Evidently [628] critics are not really convinced in their own minds, or at least they do not believe they can bring convincing evidence to the minds of their readers, that there is anything evil, per se, in Mrs. White’s not reprinting something she has written. At most they can call attention only to the fact that this letter contains the statement that “Jesus rose up, and shut the door” in 1844. But they need not turn to the Eli Curtis letter to find this thought expressed. It is found in Mrs. White’s works currently in print! A fact which would seem to be a sufficient answer to any possible charge that “suppression” of abandoned beliefs is involved in the failure to reprint the Curtis letter.

However, the person who wishes to take the time to check the key words and phrases of this letter against the Index to the Writings of Mrs. E. G. White will find that all the main thoughts of that letter are found elsewhere in her writings.

6. “Shaking of the Powers of Heaven”

FIRST PRINTING

On the January 31, 1849, broadside: To those who are receiving the seal of the living God.

SECOND PRINTING

The Present Truth, August, 1849 (volume 1, number 3), page 24.

THIRD PRINTING

Experience and Views, pages 23, 24. (Early Writings, 41.) No deletions.

7. “The Sealing”

FIRST PRINTING

On the January 31, 1849, broadside.

SECOND PRINTING

In The Present Truth, August, 1849 (volume 1, number 3), pages 22, 23, with the following deletion:

Deletion

“I saw the state of some who stood on present truth, but disregarded the visions,—the way God had chosen to teach in some cases, those who erred from Bible truth. I saw that in striking against the visions they did not strike against the worm—the feeble instrument that God spake through; but against the Holy Ghost. I saw it was a small thing to speak against the instrument, but it was dangerous to slight the words of [629] God. I saw if they were in error and God chose to show them their errors through visions, and they disregarded the teachings of God through visions, they would be left to take their own way, and run in the way of error, and think they were right, until they would find it out too late. Then in the time of trouble I heard them cry to God in agony—‘Why didst thou not show us our wrong, that we might have got right and been ready for this time?’ Then an angel pointed to them and said—‘My Father taught, but you would not be taught.—He spoke through visions, but you disregarded his voice, and he gave you up to your own ways, to be filled with your own doings.’”

Comment on Deletions

We have never read of any charges preferred on account of this deletion. And why should there be? The passage teaches what the denomination still believes as to the danger of disregarding the visions. Similar counsel is given in variant form in later writings of Mrs. White.

As to the reason that prompted the elimination of the passage in this particular connection, we know not. We do know that in the earliest days there was much opposition to the very idea of visions, even on the part of devout Adventists. Because of certain fanatical persons who claimed to have visions and whose unreasonable conduct brought Adventism into disrepute in a few places, it is easily understandable why the very idea of visions would be suspect. The warning by Mrs. White, which might have had a proper timeliness for the limited number to whom it first went in broadside form, was perhaps considered not expedient as a message to appear in the paper that was to have much more general circulation. We think it no twisting of Paul’s words to say here that “all things are lawful..., but all things are not expedient.” Solomon says there is a time to speak and a time to keep silence. And may not prophets avail themselves of that inspired counsel? But if you “speak” on paper, the only way you can “keep silence,” if a later “time” demands it, is by deleting that part on which you should “keep silence.”

THIRD PRINTING

In Experience and Views, pages 19-21. (Early Writings, 36-38.) The text of the second printing is used.

8. “God’s Love for His People”

FIRST PRINTING

On, January 31, 1849, broadside. [630]

SECOND PRINTING

In The Present Truth, August 1849 (volume 1, number 3), pages 23, 24.

THIRD PRINTING

In Experience and Views, pages 21-23. (Early Writings, 39, 40.) No deletions.

9. “Duty in View of the Time of Trouble”

FIRST PRINTING

On January 31, 1849, broadside.

SECOND PRINTING

In Experience and Views, pages 44-47 (Early Writings, 56-58), with the following deletions:

Deletion

(1) “The Lord has shown me that some of his children would fear when they see the price of food rising, and they would buy food and lay it by for the time of trouble. Then in a time of need, I saw them go to their food and look at it, and it had bred worms, and was full of living creatures, and not fit for use.”

(2) “Dispose of their houses and lands.”

(3) “This seal [“of the living God”] is the Sabbath.”

(4) “If any among us are sick, let us not dishonor God by applying to earthly physicians, but apply to the God of Israel. If we follow his directions (James 5:14, 15,) the sick will be healed. God’s promise cannot fail. Have faith in God, and trust wholly in him, that when Christ who is our life shall appear we may appear with him in glory.”

Comments on Deletions

(1) The substance of this is found in the immediately preceding sentences. Perhaps deleted to “prevent repetition,” and conserve space.

(2) This deletion is part of the following sentence: “I saw it was the will of God that the saints should cut loose from every encumbrance—dispose of their houses and lands before the time of trouble comes, and make a covenant with God by sacrifice.”

This seems evidently to be a deletion to avoid repetition, for the preceding sentence states: “Houses and lands would be of no use in the time of trouble.” The same thought is found in currently printed works.

(3) No critic will say that Mrs. White abandoned the belief that the Sabbath is the seal of God. That has always been Seventh-day [631] Adventist teaching. See, for example, Mrs. White’s current work, The Great Controversy, 452. No deletion could more clearly reveal that some other motive than a desire to “suppress” allegedly abandoned beliefs must have prompted deletions from Mrs. White’s earliest writings that found a permanent place in her works, via Experience and Views. Whether this deletion, in common with many others, was made to “prevent repetition,” or to conserve space, we know not. We do know that poverty prevented bringing out more than a sixty-four-page book. The removal of a phrase here, a sentence there, or sometimes a paragraph, would serve to simplify the making up of the pages by the printer, and to keep down the total of pages, both of which had a direct relation to cost.[302]

(4) This deletion might be explained in one of two ways: It might be viewed as an illustration of how prophets, at times, make an intense and unqualified application of a truth, calling on God’s children to make the supreme display of faith. Christ made a number of breathtaking statements regarding faith. He said to His disciples: “If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place; and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible unto you.” Matthew 17:20. We presume that the disciples were tempted to respond, as did the Jews, in general, regarding His teachings: “This is an hard saying; who can hear it?” John 6:60. The reading of James 5:14, 15, does not reveal any qualifying clause. “Is any sick among you? let him call for the elders of the church.” They were to pray and anoint him. “And the prayer of faith shall save the sick.” By implication, the statement of James is as unqualified as Mrs. White’s statement. And she makes direct reference to James. That explanation of the matter would lead to the conclusion that the deletion was made later because the statement in its brief, blunt form could easily be misunderstood. Mrs. White later wrote at length on the proper relation of faith to medical care, in which she shows the proper balance between faith in God and working together with God in medical treatment.[303]

Or Mrs. White’s statement in the deleted passage might be understood in terms of the kind of medical care that was available in those

[302]The economical way to print tracts, pamphlets, or books, is in multiples of eight, or more generally, sixteen pages. If the matter for Experience and Views was enough for, let us say, sixty-five or sixty-six pages, the only practical question in view of poverty, would be: What can be deleted? It is true that some of this material appeared with deletions before Experience and Views was printed, that is, in The Review and Herald Extra, July 21, 1851. In addition to the desire there expressed, to “prevent repetition,” there would also be the necessity of conserving space. The Extra had four pages. To add more would have added substantially to the cost. Furthermore, at the time the Extra was published, it was already decided to print Experience and Views, including in it Mrs. White’s long article in the Extra.

[303]See, for example, her statements in The Ministry of Healing.

[632]

days, a kind of care that certainly did not work together with the laws of the body, which are God’s laws, for the healing of the sick. Strychnine, calomel, and opium were much relied upon by physicians. In those days someone, perhaps a victim of such drugging, paraphrased Scripture thus: “Saul has slain his thousands, but calomel its tens of thousands.” The deletion might then be explained simply as an instance of saving space, certainly not of “suppressing” an abandoned view, for Mrs. White later on made very vigorous statements on the kind of medical service that was being offered. In fact, it is in the light of the drugging, purging, and bleeding administered in those days that we can rightly understand her statement in 1864: “If there was in the land one physician in the place of thousands, a vast amount of premature mortality would be prevented.”—Spiritual Gifts 4a:133.

10. “The Open and the Shut Door”

FIRST PRINTING

In The Present Truth, August, 1849, pages 21, 22. (See chapter 14, pages 220-222 for full text of this vision.)

SECOND PRINTING

In Experience and Views, pages 24-27 (Early Writings, 42-45), with the following deletions:

Deletion

(1) “The Lord has shown me that it is my duty to relate to you, what he has revealed to me relating to the present truth, our present tried, scattered and tempted state, and our duty in view of the coming judgments of God.”

(2) “... but from bad to worse; for those who professed a change of heart, had only wrapt about them a religious garb, which covered up the iniquity of a wicked heart. Some appeared to have been really converted, so as to deceive God’s people; but if their hearts could be seen, they would appear as black as ever.”

Comments on Deletions

(1) This is the introductory paragraph immediately preceding the vision. Obviously there would be no need of such a paragraph preceding a particular vision when a collection of writings were brought together.

(2) This passage is discussed at length in chapter 14. There we present evidence to show that the passage does not teach what critics charge that it teaches; namely, no more mercy for sinners. Hence, its deletion cannot be presented as an exhibit of “suppression” of abandoned [633] teachings. We add here the further comment: Reference to chapter 14 will show that the deleted passage is followed immediately by these closing lines: “My accompanying angel bade me look for the travel [travail] of soul for sinners as used to be. I looked, but could not see it; for the time for their salvation is past.” What would the critics have said if these closing lines had been deleted? What would they not have said! But the lines were not deleted! Mrs. White taught that there were those who had sinned away their day of grace. She here speaks of the lost state of some such, and what she said has come down to us today. Incidentally, this passage helps to explain why critics in the 1860’s and 1870’s, when Experience and Views was out of print, triumphantly declared that we were ashamed to republish it, because of its shut-door teaching, and that we had decided to suppress it! Instead, we republished it.

In large part, deletion number 2 is a repetition of what has already been related in the vision. (The reader can follow this point better if he opens Early Writings, 44 and 45.) On page 45 the deletion has been made. But on page 44, directly opposite, are these lines:

“While they [“ministers who have rejected the truth and are given over to strong delusions to believe a lie”] were preaching or praying, some would fall prostrate and helpless, not by the power of the Holy Ghost, but by the power of Satan breathed upon these agents, and through them to the people. While preaching, praying, or conversing, some professed Adventists who had rejected present truth used mesmerism to gain adherents, and the people would rejoice in this influence, for they thought it was the Holy Ghost. Some even that used it were so far in the darkness and deception of the devil that they thought it was the power of God, given them to exercise.”

The deleted passage is little more than a commentary on this.

11. “The Trial of Our Faith”

FIRST PRINTING

In The Present Truth, September, 1849, pages 31, 32.

SECOND PRINTING

In Experience and Views, pages 27-29 (Early Writings, 46-48), with deletion of the closing paragraphs, as follows:

Deletion

“The Lord has shown me that precious souls are starving, and dying for want of the present, sealing truth, the meat in due season; and that the swift messengers should speed on their way, and feed the flock with [634] the present truth. I heard an Angel say, ‘speed the swift messengers, speed the swift messengers; for the case of every soul will soon be decided, either for Life, or for Death.’

“I saw that those who had the means, were required to help speed those messengers, that God had called to labor in his cause, and as they went from place to place, they would be safe from the prevailing pestilence. But if any went that were not sent of God, they would be in danger of being cut down by the pestilence; therefore all should earnestly seek for duty, and be sure and move by the direction of the Holy Spirit.

“What we have seen and heard of the pestilence, is but the beginning of what we shall see and hear. Soon the dead and dying will be all around us. I saw that some will be so hardened, as to even make sport of the judgments of God. Then the slain of the Lord will be from one end of the earth, to the other; they will not be lamented, gathered, nor buried; but their ill savor will come up from the face of the whole earth. Those only who have the seal of the living God, will be sheltered from the storm of wrath, that will soon fall on the heads of those who have rejected the truth.”

Comments on Deletions

A critic explains this deletion thus: “The pestilence here referred to was local, brief, and soon checked. No such tiling happened as she predicted. She simply expressed the fears common to frighten[ed] persons at the time. That is all. The vision absolutely failed, and therefore these lines had to be suppressed!”

Now what failed? Mrs. White made two predictions: (1) That those called to labor “would be safe from the prevailing pestilence” as they worked for God; (2) that this pestilence was but a foretaste of what is “soon” to come when “the slain of the Lord will be from one end of the earth, to the other.”

If the first prediction failed, then what shall we do with the words of Psalm 91? To the faithful child of God the promise is given: “Surely he shall deliver thee from the snare of the fowler, and from the noisome pestilence.... Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night; nor for the arrow that flieth by day; nor for the pestilence that walketh in darkness; nor for the destruction that wasteth at noonday.” Psalm 91:3-6.

As to the second prediction, is it not the practice of Bible writers to use a local judgment of God as the text for a warning against the last and terrible judgments that are to come on the whole earth? Mrs. White quotes the very language of Jeremiah, as he speaks of God’s last judgments when “the Lord hath a controversy with the nations“: [635] “The slain of the Lord shall be at that day from one end of the earth even unto the other end of the earth.” Jeremiah 25:31, 33. When? “At that day.” And what is the practice of the New Testament writers as they picture the end of the world and God’s judgments? Do they speak of “that day” as far off? No. Then in what way is Mrs. White’s statement different from that of Bible writers? In no way.

Mrs. White spoke of the local pestilence as “but the beginning of what we shall see and hear.” That statement is not difficult to believe today. The critic’s statement which we quoted was published in 1919. That was before the full effects of the first world war were evident, and before the times of the second world war. Yet he should have been impressed by the influenza epidemic that is estimated to have killed 20,000,000 people. It is also estimated that in connection with the first world war, and immediately after, as many persons died of disease, malnutrition, and outright famine, as were killed in the war. And who can estimate the second world war in terms of lives lost?

The trouble with the critic is that he was restive about that word “soon.” He was willing that the Bible prophets should be given ample time. But Mrs. White—No! Or perhaps he had imbibed the popular notion, which was dominant even beyond the shock of the first world war, that the world is gradually improving and that we are on the road, not to judgment and pestilence, but to an earthly millennium. Most men believed just that, and that is why their faces are filled with confusion today. Seventh-day Adventists, and very particularly Mrs. White, never believed that. We have no confusion of face over this deleted passage. We would restore it. Indeed, we have restored it by printing a facsimile edition of Present Truth. However, the substance of it is in the current works by Mrs. White.

Whatever the cause for the deletion, it was not because of abandoned belief, not from a desire to suppress an embarrassing statement. Probably it was simply another instance of cutting to fit the sixty-four pages of pamphlet they could afford to print in 1851.

12. Vision Concerning Brother Rhodes

FIRST AND ONLY PRINTING

In Present Truth, December, 1849, page 35. A communication from Hiram Edson quotes Mrs. White’s account of a vision (of November 19) which reads as follows:

“While in vision the Angel pointed to the earth, where I saw Bro. Rhodes in thick darkness; but he still bore the image of Jesus. I saw [636] that it was the will of God that Brn. Edson and Ralph should go after him. Then I was shown Bro. Rhodes’ past labors in the Advent cause; that he had been mighty in word and in deed. I saw him standing before the people, with the Bible in his hand, and a stream of light coming from his mouth, which found its way to the hearts of the people. Some rejoiced, while others, who were in darkness, were troubled. I saw that he had proclaimed the advent with great confidence, and had shown his faith by his works, and when the time passed, the disappointment was very great. Then some professed Adventists wounded his heart, and I saw him overwhelmed with discouragement, and grief, as he left the little flock, and retired to the wilderness.

“I saw that Jesus was pleading his blood for Bro. Rhodes, and that the Angel was ready to enroll his name, as soon as he would come out of that dark place, and stand on all the present truth. The Angel pointed me to the snare of Satan that bound him; and I saw that he thought that there was no hope, no mercy for him; and it would be of no use for him to try. I saw that Brn. Edson and Ralph should make him believe there was hope, and mercy for him, and tear him away, then he would come among the flock; and that Angels would attend them on their journey. I heard an Angel say—‘Can ye not see the worth of the soul? Pull him out of the fire.’ I saw that in Bro. Rhodes’ mouth there had been no guile in speaking against the present truth, relating to the Sabbath, and Shut Door. I also saw that the Lord had laid Bro. Rhodes’ case heavily on Bro. Edson.”

Comments on Deletions

This vision appears in a report from Hiram Edson concerning the “cause in Western New-York,” and the endeavor that had been made to bring “Bro. Rhodes” back into active service in the Adventist cause. Edson’s report is dated “Oswego, N. Y. Nov. 26, 1849.”

Samuel Rhodes had been active in the Millerite movement. After the great disappointment he had withdrawn to the frontier country, the “wilderness,” and there was living as a recluse. There had been difference of opinion as to what endeavor should be made to bring him back. Edson had a great burden in that direction. That same burden took hold of a “Bro. Ralph,” who was also attending the “Centreport Conference.” All this Edson relates, and then states that Mrs. White had a vision on the subject. The text of the vision immediately follows, in quotation marks, and below it, in larger type, “E. G. White.”

Her use of the words, “Shut Door,” in this vision is no different from her use of those words in current works now available. Her only comment on the question of salvation is with regard to Rhodes himself. She said there was “hope, and mercy for him.” [637]

Here is an excellent illustration of a vision with a local application. When the vision was fulfilled—carried out—its purpose was accomplished. Hence it was not reprinted. And no critic, so far as we know, has ever raised a question about “suppression.” It would be too transparent to any reader as to why the vision was not republished. Yet it has been as thoroughly “suppressed” as the passages over which critics raise a question. It is hard for us to believe that they really wish to be taken seriously when they make the sweeping statement that everything a prophet writes should ever afterward be available to all mankind to read. That statement simply does not hold up when applied to such writing as this vision regarding Rhodes, for example.

13. False Reformations

FIRST AND ONLY PRINTING

In The Present Truth, March, 1850 (volume 1, number 8), page 64.

This message is quoted in full and discussed in chapter 14, pages 219, 220.

Comments on Deletions

We offer a comment only as to the probable reason why it was not reprinted. The point of this brief message is a warning against certain time setting by the publishers of the Watchman, one of many post-1844 Adventist papers. That point would obviously be lost on readers in later years. Her general statements about “excitements and false reformations,” of Christ’s rising up and shutting the door of the first apartment and withdrawing into the second, are all given, and at greater length, in the vision of March 24, 1849. The reader can compare with the text of that brief message the vision of March 24, 1849 (quoted in full in chapter 14, pages 220-222), and judge for himself whether Mrs. White suppressed some abandoned beliefs when she failed to reprint the brief message that appears only in The Present Truth, March, 1850, page 64.

The fact is that critics do not generally cite this message as an instance of suppression.

14. “To the ‘Little Flock’”

FIRST PRINTING

In The Present Truth, April, 1850, pages 71, 72.

SECOND PRINTING

In Experience and Views, pages 29-33 (Early Writings, 48-52), in full. [638]

15. Warning Against Eli Curtis

FIRST AND ONLY PRINTING

In The Present Truth, May, 1850, page 80. The warning reads thus:

“Eli Curtis.—It is well known by many of the brethren, that Eli Curtis has published many of my visions. He has pursued such an inconsistent course for some time past; and his influence on the cause of truth is such at this time that I feel it my duty to say to the brethren that I have no faith in his course; and that he has published my visions contrary to my wishes, even after I had requested him not to publish them.

“E. G. WHITE.”

Comments on Deletions

Eli Curtis was one of many Adventists who, in the days immediately following 1844, published papers. In the style of those days he copied freely and without permission from every source. He published the Girdle of Truth, and Advent Review, in New York. An Extra of that paper, dated January 20, 1848, contains two of Mrs. White’s visions. We know little about Curtis, and nothing about his paper, except this one copy. The reason for Mrs. White’s writing as she did concerning him, and the reason why her message was not reprinted, are both evident. We have found no critic citing this as an instance of suppression.

16. “The Last Plagues and the Judgment”

FIRST PRINTING

In The Present Truth, November, 1850, page 86. (This is the first part of an extended contribution that carries only the salutation, “Dear Brethren and Sisters.” The second and third parts of this contribution are considered below under numbers 17 and 18.)

SECOND PRINTING

In Experience and Views, pages 33-35. (Early Writings, 52-54), with the deletion of the opening paragraphs, as follows: Deletion

“Dear Brethren and Sisters—I wish to give you a short sketch of what the Lord has recently shown to me in vision. I was shown the loveliness of Jesus, and the love that the angels have for one another. [639] Said the angel—Can ye not behold their love?—follow it. Just So God’s people must love one another. Rather let blame fall on thyself than on a brother. I saw that the message ‘sell that ye have and give alms’ had not been given, by some, in its clear light; that the true object of the words of our Saviour had not been clearly presented. I saw that the object of selling was not to give to those who are able to labor and support themselves; but to spread the truth. It is a sin to support and indulge those who are able to labor, in idleness. Some have been zealous to attend all the meetings; not to glorify God, but for the ‘loaves and fishes.’ Such had much better been at home laboring with their hands, ‘the thing that is good,’ to supply the wants of their families, and to have something to give to sustain the precious cause of present truth.

“Some, I saw, had erred in praying for the sick to be healed before unbelievers. If any among us are sick, and call for the elders of the church to pray over them, according to James 5, 14, 15, we should follow the example of Jesus. He put unbelievers out of the room, then healed the sick; so we should seek to be separated from the unbelief of those who have not faith, when we pray for the sick among us.

“Then I was pointed back to the time that Jesus took his disciples away alone, into an upper room, and first washed their feet, and then gave them to eat of the broken bread, to represent his broken body, and juice of the vine to represent his spilled blood. I saw that all should move understandingly, and follow the example of Jesus in these things, and when attending to these ordinances, should be as separate from unbelievers as possible.”

Comments on Deletions

There is nothing in this deletion that suggests embarrassing, abandoned belief that Mrs. White would wish to suppress. There is a general statement about the “loveliness of Jesus,” which can be duplicated in currently available works. The same is true of the statement about not supporting people in idleness.

The paragraphs dealing with healing the sick and the communion service set forth no strange doctrine. We turn aside from the world, we withdraw ourselves, the Bible says, when we seek the mercies of God, and engage in special services commemorative of Christ’s death in our behalf. There was probably a special appropriateness to this counsel at the time it was given. Few, if any, stable church companies had been formed. Various unruly individuals, troublemakers, and scoffers sometimes disturbed their meetings.

We have not found any critic citing this passage as an exhibit of “suppression.” [640]

17. The Shepherds

FIRST PRINTING

In The Present Truth, November, 1850, page 86. (This is the second part of Mrs. White’s extended contribution in this issue of Present Truth. It is only one paragraph long, but it is typographically set off from the preceding portion, and is introduced with the phrase, “I also saw that the shepherds ...” Because of this, and because it is later reprinted separately from the rest of the contribution, we list it here separately.)

SECOND PRINTING

In Experience and Views, page 49 (Early Writings, 61, 62), in full. The paragraph beginning “I saw that the shepherds ...” in the chapter entitled “The Messengers.” No deletion.

18. “The Gathering Time”

FIRST PRINTING

In Present Truth, November, 1850, pages 86, 87. (This is the third and concluding section of Mrs. White’s contribution to this number of Present Truth, and begins thus: “September 23d, the Lord showed me ...”)

SECOND PRINTING

In Experience and Views, pages 61, 62 (Early Writings, 74-76), with the following deletions:

Deletion

(1) “It is as necessary that the truth should be published in a paper, as preached.”

(2) “I saw that the reason why they [“some who are in the great error, that the saints are yet to go to Old Jerusalem, &c., before the Lord comes”] were left to go into this great error, is because they have not confessed and forsaken their errors, that they have been in for a number of years past.”

Comments on Deletions

(1) There is nothing in this that we have not believed increasingly through the years. Nothing is more clearly stated in Mrs. White’s various works.

(2) This deleted passage is the closing sentence of the vision. It teaches no strange doctrine, later abandoned. It merely expresses the [641] thought that those who walk in darkness will stumble into greater darkness and into worse pitfalls of error.

For those who wish to make further comparison of the texts of the first and later printings, we would say that there have been two important additions to this brief vision. The first full paragraph on page 75 of Early Writings, beginning, “The Lord has shown me,” is an addition to the text; it is a part of the Camden Vision of June 21, 1851. (Not to be confused with the pseudo-Camden vision dated June 29, 1851.) See number 19 following. Beginning twelve lines from the bottom of page 75, with the words, “I saw that such a mission,” and on to the end of the paragraph, had already been added in Experience and Views. The history of those early days of Adventism reveals that there were those who had lately been with the Advent movement, who sought to stir up interest in a pilgrimage to Jerusalem to convert the Jews. The interest, however, was limited, and apparently soon died out.

19. “Time Not Connected With the Message of the Third Angel, Revelation 14, 9-12”

FIRST PRINTING

In Review and Herald Extra, July 21, 1851, page 4.

SECOND PRINTING

In Experience and Views, page 48 (Early Writings, the first full paragraph on page 75, in the chapter entitled “The Gathering Time”), with the following deletion:

Deletion

“I saw that some were making every thing bend to the time of this next fall—that is, making their calculations in reference to that time. I saw that this was wrong, for this reason: Instead of going to God daily to know their PRESENT duty, they look ahead, and make their calculations as though they knew the work would end this fall, without inquiring their duty of God daily.” (Emphasis hers.)

Comments on Deletions

This is the second paragraph of the two paragraphs warning against time setting. It is simply the local application of the general warning given in the first paragraph. When the vision was printed in a work that was to go beyond 1851 there was good reason why this second paragraph need not be reprinted. [642]

20. Autobiographical Article, “Experience and Views”

FIRST PRINTING

In Review and Herald Extra, July 21, 1851, pages 1, 2. (This is a brief autobiographical sketch. It is immediately followed, on page 2, with the narration of the first vision.)

SECOND PRINTING

In Experience and Views, pages 3-9. (Early Writings, 11-13, 20-24. In Early Writings, Mrs. White’s first vision is inserted in the running text of her autobiographical sketch—pages 13-20—where it naturally comes. Experience and Views follows the text of the Extra and inserts the first vision immediately after the biographical sketch.)

With the exception of a slight rearrangement and rewording of sentences in the description of a storm at sea, the text is essentially unchanged.

Summary and Conclusion

The reader now has before him the total deletions in Mrs. White’s earliest writings. It is clear beyond all question that most of these deletions could not possibly have been prompted by a desire to “suppress” some belief, which fact leads to the conclusion that deletions, as such, affect in no way Mrs. White’s honesty or her claim to the prophetic gift, and are to be explained as an endeavor to “prevent repetition” or to save space or because the deleted passage was of only local or personal application. And that should lead us to the reasonable assumption that in the absence of incontrovertible evidence of evil intent, the rest of the deletions, which are supposed to prove “suppression,” should be viewed in the same light as we view all other deletions. We leave the reader to judge, after examining the chapters on the shut door and suppression, as to whether incontrovertible evidence of suppression has been offered by the critics! as to whether the critics have presented even plausible evidence!

Thus collapses the whole edifice of indictment that has been reared from the various passages that were dropped from Mrs. White’s writings. With the cement of insinuation and implication the builders of the critical edifice have sought to hold it together. But as with other poorly built structures, exposure reveals its weakness and produces its collapse. [643]

Additional Material in “Experience and Views”

We have come to the end of our examination of Mrs. White’s earliest writings before the little book Experience and Views, the first edition of her writings, was published in 1851. We have noted the page numbers in that book where each contribution there reprinted is to be found. The purpose of our study in this appendix, namely, to examine the earliest writings in relation to possible “suppression” at the time of the printing of Experience and Views, does not call for us to list material that had its first printing in that book.

However, for the benefit of some who might wish to have a complete record of all that appeared in that book, we list these remaining items, first printed in Experience and Views, using for each the title given in the current work, Early Writings.

1. “Mark of the Beast.” Experience and Views, pp. 52-55. (Early Writings, 64-67.)

2. “Mysterious Rapping.” Experience and Views, pp. 47, 48. (Early Writings, 59, 60.)

3. “Preparation for the End.” Experience and Views, pp. 57-59. (Early Writings, 69-71.)

4. “The Messengers.” Experience and Views, pp. 49-52. (Early Writings, 61-64.)

5. “The Blind Leading the Blind.” Experience and Views, pp. 55, 56. (Early Writings, 68, 69.)

6. “Prayer and Faith.” Experience and Views, pp. 59-61. (Early Writings, 72, 73.)

7. “Dear Reader.” Experience and Views, pp. 62-64. (Early Writings, 76-78.)

These seven items, added to those already discussed, constitute the text of Experience and Views, which text constitutes approximately the first seventy-eight pages of Early Writings.

APPENDIX K: Pictures in “The Great Controversy”

A present-day critic adds for good measure to his plagiarism charge: “Mrs. White not only purloined the thoughts of others, but she was also guilty of using illustrations without credit.” Then he lists some pictures that appeared in The Great Controversy in 1885 that were taken from Wylie’s History of Protestantism, an English work. He speaks of such use of pictures as stealing. [644]

This indictment is not properly before us in this book which deals with charges against Mrs. White. There is no reason to believe that she, any more than any other author, concerned herself with illustrations and credit lines for them. That is a part of the mechanics of bookmaking.

It is true that Mrs. White’s literary assistants included in their task the providing of illustrations on many books. However, in this particular instance the critic himself notes that the credit line on the pictures in question is that of the printers and publishers, and not Mrs. White’s office.

We are not here concerned to defend the practices of publishers, even Mrs. White’s publishers. However, if her publishers were thieves for using such illustrations, then American publishers in general in those days were thieves, for it was the common custom for these publishers to use, without payment, and often without credit, such pictures as they might desire from English books. The facts are, they were not thieves. Such pictures, along with the books in which they were found, were in the public domain, for they were covered by no copyright law in the United States. We have no interest in discussing with the critics the question of publishers’ ethics. There was nothing unlawful in what the various American publishers did. These pictures were as certainly in the public domain as was Mrs. White’s last will and testament which the present-day critic, who brings this picture charge, copied free and regularly sells!

APPENDIX L: The Writing and Sending Out of the Testimonies to the Church

[Under this title a thirty-two-page tract was published some years ago by the Pacific Press. It is now out of print. The first section of the tract (pp. 3-9) consisted of a letter from Mrs. White dated July 8, 1906. The last section (pp. 26-32) consisted of a statement by W. C. White, her son, entitled “The Influence of Sister White’s Helpers Over the Testimonies.” These two sections are reproduced below.]

A Letter by Mrs. White

Sanitarium, California,
July 8, 1906.

Dear Brother,—

There are some who think they are able to measure the character and to estimate the importance of the work the Lord has given me [645] to do. Their own mind and judgment is the standard by which they would weigh the testimonies.

My instructor said to me, Tell these men that God has not committed to them the work of measuring, classifying, and defining the character of the testimonies. Those who attempt this are sure to err in their conclusions. The Lord would have men adhere to their appointed work. If they will keep the way of the Lord, they will be able to discern clearly that the work which He has appointed me to do is not a work of human devising.

Those who carefully read the testimonies as they have appeared from the early days, need not be perplexed as to their origin. The many books, written by the help of the Spirit of God, bear a living witness to the character of the testimonies.

In the early days of our experience in the message, the Spirit of God often came upon a few of us as we were assembled, and I was taken away in vision. The Lord gave such light and evidence, such comfort and hope and joy, that His praises were upon our lips.

While my husband lived, he acted as a helper and counselor in the sending out of the messages that were given to me. We traveled extensively. Sometimes light would be given to me in the night season, sometimes in the daytime before large congregations. The instruction I received in vision was faithfully written out by me, as I had time and strength for the work. Afterward we examined the matter together, my husband correcting grammatical errors and eliminating needless repetition. Then it was carefully copied for the persons addressed, or for the printer.

As the work grew, others assisted me in the preparation of matter for publication. After my husband’s death, faithful helpers joined me, who labored untiringly in the work of copying the testimonies, and preparing articles for publication. But the reports that are circulated, that any of my helpers are permitted to add matter or change the meaning of the messages I write out, are not true.

While we were in Australia, the Lord instructed me that W. C. White should be relieved from the many burdens his brethren would lay upon him, that he might be more free to assist me in the work the Lord has laid upon me. The promise had been given, “I will put My Spirit upon him, and give him wisdom.”

Since my return to America I have several times received instruction that the Lord has given me W. C. White to be my helper, and that in this work the Lord will give him of His Spirit.

It requires much wisdom and sound judgment, quickened by the Spirit of God, to know the proper time and manner to present the [646] instruction that has been given. When the minds of persons reproved are under a strong deception, they naturally resist the testimony; and having taken an attitude of resistance, it is difficult for them afterward to acknowledge that they have been wrong.

In the early days of this cause, if some of the leading brethren were present when messages from the Lord were given, we would consult with them as to the best manner of bringing the instruction before the people. Sometimes it was decided that certain portions would better not be read before a congregation. Sometimes those whose course was reproved would request that the matters pointing out their wrongs and dangers should be read before others, that they, too, might be benefited.

Often after testimonies of reproof were read, hearty confessions were made. Then we would unite in a season of prayer, and the Lord would manifest His pardoning grace to those who had confessed their sins. The acceptance of the testimonies brought the rich blessing of God into our assemblies.

Faithfully I endeavor to write out that which is given me from time to time by the divine Counselor. Some portions of that which I write are sent out immediately to meet the present necessities of the work. Other portions are held until the development of circumstances makes it evident to me that the time has come for their use. Sometimes in ministers and physicians bearing responsibilities there has developed a disposition to discard the testimonies, and I have been instructed not to place testimonies in their hands; for having yielded to the spirit that tempted and overcame Adam and Eve, they have opened mind and heart to the control of the enemy. Being on a false track, and laboring under deceptive imaginings, they will read into the testimonies things that are not there, but which are in agreement with the false statements that they have listened to. By reading the testimonies in the light of their own kindling, they are deceived, and will deceive others.

Sometimes, after very clear-cut, decided reproofs have been written out, they are held for a time until by personal correspondence I have endeavored to change the spirit of those to whom they are addressed. If these efforts are unsuccessful, the messages, with all their strength of rebuke or reproof, are sent to them, whether they will hear, or whether they will deny the truthfulness of the message.

If those whose errors are pointed out make confession of their wrong-doing, the spell of the enemy may be broken. If they will repent and forsake their sins, God is faithful and just to forgive their sins, and to cleanse them from all unrighteousness. Christ, the sin-pardoning [647] Redeemer, will remove the filthy garments from them, give them change of raiment, and set a fair miter upon their head. But so long as they refuse to turn from iniquity, they can not develop a character that will stand in the great day of judgment.

Often concealed wrongs in the life of individuals are opened before me, and I am bidden to bear a message of reproof and warning.

I have been told that many who give heed to the false science of the enemy would denounce my work as that of a false prophet, and would place upon the testimony such interpretations as tend to change the truth of God into a lie. Satan is on the alert; and some who in the past have been used by the Lord in doing His work, but who have permitted themselves to be deceived, will be stirred up to make an improper use of the messages given. Because they do not wish to listen to the words of reproof, because they will not hear counsel, and improve their course of action, and do their appointed work, they will misconstrue the messages to the church, and confuse many minds.

Nevertheless, I am to bear the message that is given me to bear, so long as the Lord shall choose. He has not given me the work of settling all the misunderstandings that are cherished in hearts of unbelief. Just as long as a door is open to receive the tempter’s suggestions, difficulties will multiply. The hearts of those who will not come to the light are open to unbelief. If my time and strength are consumed upon such matters, this serves Satan’s purposes. The Lord has said to me: “Bear the testimonies. Your work is not to settle difficulties; your work is to reprove, and to present the righteousness of Christ.”

At one time in the early days of the message, Father Butler and Elder Hart became confused in regard to the testimonies. In great distress they groaned and wept, but for some time they would not give the reasons for their perplexity. However, being pressed to give a reason for their faithless speech and manner, Elder Hart referred to a small pamphlet that had been published as the visions of Sister White, and said that to his certain knowledge, some visions were not included. Before a large audience, these brethren both talked strongly about their losing confidence in the work.

My husband handed the little pamphlet to Elder Hart, and requested him to read what was printed on the title page. “A SKETCH of the Christian Experience and Views of Mrs. E. G. White,” he read.

For a moment there was silence, and then my husband explained that we had been very short of means, and were able to print at first only [648] a small pamphlet, and he promised the brethren that when sufficient means was raised, the visions should be published more fully in book form.

Elder Butler was deeply moved, and after the explanation had been made, he said, “Let us bow before God.” Prayers, weeping, and confessions followed, such as we have seldom heard. Father Butler said: “Brother White forgive me; I was afraid you were concealing from us some of the light we ought to have. Forgive me, Sister White.” Then the power of God came into the meeting in a wonderful manner.

The Influence of Sister White’s Helpers Over the Testimonies By W. C. White

The supposition that those who are closely associated with Sister White have a potent influence over the character and contents of the messages that she sends to the people, is not a new thought. In the days of Jeremiah the princes questioned Baruch the scribe as to how he received and wrote the words of Jeremiah. They evidently suspected that he had brought in some of his own ideas.

For many years there has been brought against the testimonies to the church the charge that some one has influenced Sister White to write as she has done. Referring to early experiences, mother wrote, June 20, 1882, as follows:

“Many excused their disregard of the testimonies by saying, ‘Sister White is influenced by her husband; the testimonies are moulded by his spirit and judgment.’ Others were seeking to gain something from me which they could construe to justify their course, or to give them influence.”

In the early days of our denominational work, this experience was often repeated. Elder James White, in his preaching, brought out new expositions of Scripture, and new thoughts regarding the best way to advance the cause of present truth; and shortly afterward Sister White, in her testimonies to the church, advocated the same doctrine and policies. Then the critics cried out, “Is it not evident that she is following the lead of her husband’s mind?”

But the true explanation of this was not difficult to find by those who sought it. The facts were these: The Lord had given to Sister White clear light regarding doctrines and policies. As this new light was given to her, it was most natural that she should first tell it to her husband. Thus he learned enough about what had been revealed to her to give a new zest and direction to his studies, and a new mould and increased power to his discourses, and fresh vigor and greater breadth [649] to his plans. Later on, when Sister White found time to write out her views for publication, they must necessarily agree with the teachings and plans of her husband, so far as his teachings and plans had been influenced by what he had learned from her.

It was most natural that James and Ellen White should discuss freely and interestedly between themselves, plans and methods and ways and means for the advancement of the publishing work and the work of the ministers in the field, and that she should tell him of the views given her regarding the most effective methods of labor. As a result, he would shape his plans to harmonize with these views. Often his brethren would criticize these plans, which seemed too broad, and urge other policies. Then when Sister White was appealed to, and it was seen that her testimony was in harmony with the plans and teachings of her husband, some said, “She is influenced by him; her testimony is a transcript of her husband’s mind.”

As James White gained experience and confidence as a leader, he sometimes made plans and inaugurated policies that were not in harmony with instruction given to his wife. But when reproved or instructed, through the testimonies to the church, for his error, he was quick to respond to counsel or reproof, and hearty in his confession of error.

Four years after father’s death, I went with mother to Europe, and during our two years of work there, I had extraordinary opportunities to learn, by listening to her counsels, admonitions, and advice, regarding the plans and policies that should be maintained in the work of our denomination. During the two years that we were in Eurpoe, so many questions were brought to mother, about all phases of our field and institutional work, that she sometimes said her past experience of thirty years was all being reviewed.

When we returned to America, I found myself in disagreement with some of my brethren regarding several features of the plans and policies being adopted. Later on, mother’s testimonies were found to be in agreement with some of the things I had been standing for, and the word went around that Brother W. C. White had been influencing his mother. But the truth was that I had been endeavoring in a very imperfect way, to stand for what I had learned from mother while we were in Europe.

From 1903 to 1909 the thought was entertained by some that Sister White’s movements, her testimonies, and her attitude toward certain men and enterprises, were largely influenced by the president of the General Conference, and by the editor of the “Review.”

The facts regarding this matter are that the views of these men, and [650] the views of many of their associates, have been largely influenced by the written testimonies which they have received and read, and by the oral messages given them, in which they were warned of perils that threatened the church of God, and were charged in the most solemn manner to stand as faithful sentinels and wide-awake watchmen, guarding, warning, and protecting the church against the many wily attacks of the enemy.

Many times I carried messages from Sister White to Elder Daniells, to Elder Prescott, and to other brethren in leading positions of responsibility, asking them to visit her, and I have been present as a learner and as a witness at the interviews. During these interviews, she would question them regarding their plans and policies, and would relate to them what the Lord had shown to her regarding the work to be done, and the dangers and perils that surrounded the church, and the difficulties that confronted the various branches of its work. Often have I heard these men warned of the subtle and secret workings of the enemy to undermine the faith of our people in the peculiar truths which make us Seventh-day Adventists, and of his efforts to bring in discord that would rob the church of its strength. I have repeatedly heard the charge most solemnly given to Elders Daniells and Prescott that they must stand in defense of the truth, and must do all in their power to save the people from deception.

Having had this experience, it seems to be plainly my duty to testify that these men have not, as some have supposed, led Sister White to take strong positions to harmonize with their minds and their views; but that THEY were led to take strong positions because they heard and heeded the solemn messages borne to them by her.

I have known of messages of warning being sent to these men, pointing out that in their connection with ambitious leaders in certain branches of the work, there were dangers that they had not discovered. I have seen them read reproofs to themselves and to others, regarding the popular and accepted policies for the conduct of the publishing work and the medical work, and I have known of the struggle it cost them to decide that they would act upon the counsel received. I have knelt with them in prayer, and have heard their humble pleadings for grace to give up their will and way, and for strength and wisdom from on high to follow the course marked out for them.

Regarding the development of our institutional work in Washington, D.C., it is my duty to testify that I had abundant opportunity to know that Sister White’s visits to Washington, her interest in the institutions there, and her anxiety that the sanitarium and the nurses’ training school should be quickly put upon a strong footing, were the [651] result of revelations from God, and not the result of the influence of men.

[See also Appendixes M and N.]

APPENDIX M: Mrs. White Discusses Inspiration

[At different times Mrs. White wrote on the subject of inspiration. Probably her preface to The Great Controversy is the best known of her statements on this theme. We quoted at length from it on pages 418, 419. We give below two further statements by her.]

The Inspiration of the Bible

This is a time when the question with all propriety may be asked, “When the Son of man cometh shall He find faith on the earth?”

Spiritual darkness has covered the earth and gross darkness the people. There are in many churches skepticism and infidelity in the interpretation of the Scriptures. Many, very many are questioning the verity and truth of the Scriptures. Human reasoning and the imaginings of the human heart are undermining the inspiration of the Word of God, and that which should be received as granted, is surrounded with a cloud of mysticism. Nothing stands out in clear and distinct lines, upon rock bottom. This is one of the marked signs of the last days.

This Holy Book has withstood the assaults of Satan, who has united with evil men to make everything of divine character shrouded in clouds and darkness. But the Lord has preserved this Holy Book by His own miraculous power in its present shape,—a chart or guidebook to the human family to show them the way to heaven.

But the oracles of God have been so manifestly neglected that there are but few in our world, even of those who profess to explain it to others, who have the divine knowledge of the Scriptures. There are learned men who have a college education, but these shepherds do not feed the flock of God. They do not consider that the excellencies of the Scriptures will be continually unfolding their hidden treasures as precious jewels are discovered by digging for them.

There are men who strive to be original, who are wise above what is written, therefore their wisdom is foolishness. They discover wonderful things in advance, ideas which reveal that they are far behind in the comprehension of the divine will and purposes of God. In seeking to make plain, or to unravel mysteries hid for ages from mortal man, they are like a man floundering about in the mud, unable to extricate himself, and yet telling others how to get out of the muddy sea they themselves are in. This is a fit representation of the men who set themselves [652] to correct the errors of the Bible. No man can improve the Bible by suggesting what the Lord meant to say or ought to have said.

Some look to us gravely and say, “Don’t you think there might have been some mistake in the copyist or in the translators?” This is all probable, and the mind that is so narrow that it will hesitate and stumble over this possibility or probability, would be just as ready to stumble over the mysteries of the Inspired Word, because their feeble minds cannot see through the purposes of God. Yes, they would just as easily stumble over plain facts that the common mind will accept, and discern the Divine, and to which God’s utterance is plain and beautiful, full of marrow and fatness. All the mistakes will not cause trouble to one soul, or cause any feet to stumble, that would not manufacture difficulties from the plainest revealed truth.

God committed the preparation of His divinely inspired Word to finite man. This Word arranged into books, the Old and New Testaments, is the guidebook to the inhabitants of a fallen world; bequeathed to them, that by studying and obeying the directions, not one soul would lose its way to heaven.

Those who think to make the supposed difficulties of Scripture plain, in measuring by their finite rule that which is inspired and that which is not inspired, had better cover their faces, as Elijah when the still small voice spoke to him; for they are in the presence of God and holy angels, who for ages have communicated to men light and knowledge, telling them what to do, and what not to do, unfolding before them scenes of thrilling interest, waymark by waymark in symbols and signs and illustrations.

And He has not, while presenting the perils clustering about the last days, qualified any finite man to unravel hidden mysteries, or inspired one man or any class of men to pronounce judgment as to that which is inspired or is not. When men, in their finite judgment, find it necessary to go into an examination of Scriptures to define that which is inspired and that which is not, they have stepped before Jesus to show Him a better way than He has led us.

I take the Bible just as it is, as the Inspired Word. I believe its utterances in an entire Bible. Men arise who think they find something to criticize in God’s Word. They lay it bare before others as evidence of superior wisdom. These men are, many of them, smart men, learned men, they have eloquence and talent, the whole lifework is to unsettle minds in regard to the inspiration of the Scriptures. They influence many to see as they do. And the same work is passed on from one to another just as Satan designed it should be until we may see the full [653] meaning of the words of Christ, “When the Son of man cometh shall He find faith on the earth?”

Brethren, let not a mind or hand be engaged in criticizing the Bible. It is a work that Satan delights to have any of you do, but it is not a work the Lord has pointed out for you to do.

Men should let God take care of His own Book, His Living Oracles, as He has done for ages. They begin to question some parts of revelation, and pick flaws in the apparent inconsistencies of this statement and that statement. Beginning at Genesis they give up that which they deem questionable, and their minds lead on, for Satan will lead to any length they may follow in their criticism, and they see something to doubt in the whole Scriptures. Their faculties of criticism become sharpened by exercise, and they can rest on nothing with a certainty. You try to reason with these men, but your time is lost. They will exercise their power of ridicule even upon the Bible. They even become mockers, and they would be astonished if you put it to them in that light.

Brethren, cling to your Bible, as it reads, and stop your criticisms in regard to its validity, and obey the Word, and not one of you will be lost. The ingenuity of men has been exercised for ages to measure the Word of God by their finite minds and limited comprehension. If the Lord, the Author of the Living Oracles, would throw back the curtain and reveal His wisdom and His glory before them, they would shrink into nothingness and exclaim as did Isaiah, “I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips.” Isaiah 6:5.

Simplicity and plain utterance are comprehended by the illiterate, by the peasant, and the child as well as by the full grown man or the giant in intellect. If the individual is possessed of large talents of mental powers, he will find in the Oracles of God treasures of truth, beautiful and valuable, which he can appropriate. He will also find difficulties, and secrets and wonders which will give him the highest satisfaction to study during a long lifetime, and yet there is an infinity beyond.

Men of humble acquirements, possessing but limited capabilities and opportunities to become conversant in the Scriptures, find in the Living Oracles comfort, guidance, counsel, and the plan of salvation as clear as a sunbeam. No one need be lost for want of knowledge, unless he is willfully blind.

We thank God that the Bible is prepared for the poor man as well as for the learned man. It is fitted for all ages and all classes.—MRS. E. G. WHITE MS 16, 1888. [654]

Objections to the Bible

Human minds vary. The minds of different education and thought receive different impressions of the same words, and it is difficult for one mind to give to one of a different temperament, education, and habits of thought by language exactly the same idea as that which is clear and distinct in his own mind. Yet to honest men, right-minded men, he can be so simple and plain as to convey his meaning for all practical purposes. If the man he communicates with is not honest and will not want to see and understand the truth, he will turn his words and language in everything to suit his own purposes. He will misconstrue his words, play upon his imagination, wrest them from their true meaning, and then intrench himself in unbelief, claiming that the sentiments are all wrong.

This is the way my writings are treated by those who wish to misunderstand and pervert them. They turn the truth of God into a lie. In the very same way that they treat the writings in my published articles and in my books, so do skeptics and infidels treat the Bible. They read it according to their desire to pervert, to misapply, to wilfully wrest the utterances from their true meaning. They declare that the Bible can prove anything and everything, that every sect proves their doctrines right, and that the most diverse doctrines are proved from the Bible.

The writers of the Bible had to express their ideas in human language. It was written by human men. These men were inspired of the Holy Spirit. Because of the imperfections of human understanding of language, or the perversity of the human mind, ingenious in evading truth, many read and understand the Bible to please themselves. It is not that the difficulty is in the Bible. Opposing politicians argue points of law in the statute book, and take opposite views in their application and in these laws.

The Scriptures were given to men, not in a continuous chain of unbroken utterances, but piece by piece through successive generations, as God in His providence saw a fitting opportunity to impress man at sundry times and divers places. Men wrote as they were moved upon by the Holy Ghost. There is “first the bud, then the blossom, and next the fruit,” “first the blade, then the ear, after that the full corn in the ear.” This is exactly what the Bible utterances are to us.

There is not always perfect order or apparent unity in the Scriptures. The miracles of Christ are not given in exact order, but are given just as the circumstances occurred, which called for this divine revealing of the power of Christ. The truths of the Bible are as pearls [655] hidden. They must be searched, dugout by painstaking effort. Those who take only a surface view of the Scriptures, will, with their superficial knowledge, which they think is very deep, talk of the contradictions of the Bible, and question the authority of the Scriptures. But those whose hearts are in harmony with truth and duty will search the Scriptures with a heart prepared to receive divine impressions. The illuminated soul sees a spiritual unity, one grand golden thread running through the whole, but it requires patience, thought, and prayer to trace out the precious golden thread. Sharp contentions over the Bible have led to investigation and revealed the precious jewels of truth. Many tears have been shed, many prayers offered, that the Lord would open the understanding to His Word.

The Bible is not given to us in grand superhuman language. Jesus, in order to reach man where he is, took humanity. The Bible must be given in the language of men. Everything that is human is imperfect. Different meanings are expressed by the same word; there is not one word for each distinct idea. The Bible was given for practical purposes.

The stamps of minds are different. All do not understand expressions and statements alike. Some understand the statements of the Scriptures to suit their own particular minds and cases. Prepossessions, prejudices, and passions have a strong influence to darken the understanding and confuse the mind even in reading the words of Holy Writ.

The disciples traveling to Emmaus needed to be disentangled in their interpretation of the Scriptures. Jesus walked with them disguised, and as a man He talked with them. Beginning at Moses and the prophets He taught them in all things concerning Himself, that His life, His mission, His sufferings, His death were just as the Word of God had foretold. He opened their understanding that they might understand the Scriptures. How quickly He straightened out the tangled ends and showed the unity and divine verity of the Scriptures. How much men in these times need their understanding opened.

The Bible is written by inspired men, but it is not God’s mode of thought and expression. It is that of humanity. God, as a writer, is not represented. Men will often say such an expression is not like God. But God has not put Himself in words, in logic, in rhetoric, on trial in the Bible. The writers of the Bible were God’s penmen, not His pen. Look at the different writers.

It is not the words of the Bible that are inspired, but the men that were inspired. Inspiration acts not on the man’s words or his expressions but on the man himself, who, under the influence of the Holy Ghost, is imbued with thoughts. But the words receive the impress of the individual mind. The divine mind is diffused. The [656] divine mind and will is combined with the human mind and will; thus the utterances of the man are the Word of God.—MRS. E. G. WHITE MS 24, 1886.

APPENDIX N: W. C. White’s Statement Regarding Sister White’s Work

[W. C. White was the son of Mrs. E. G. White, and was for long years closely associated with her in the production of her books, et cetera. Following is a portion of a talk he gave at the 1913 General Conference Session, as reported in the The General Conference Bulletin, June 1, 1913, pp. 219-221.]

Now, it has been a part of my plan this morning to answer or to speak of some of the questions and some of the perplexities which are in the minds of our people regarding our future work, and particularly regarding that part of the work with which I am most intimately connected, that is, the work of Sister White.

What would be the influence upon our work if Sister White should die? [Voice: God lives!] Has the Lord made known to her who is to be her successor?—No. The Lord has not told her how long she will live. He has not told her in a positive way that she is to die; but she expects to rest in the grave a little time before the Lord comes. About fifteen years ago, in one of her night visions, she came out of a very dark place into a bright light, and father was with her. When he saw her by his side he exclaimed in great surprise, “What, have you been there too, Ellen?” She always understood that to mean that the Lord would let her rest in the grave a little while before the Lord comes. She has been trying to work with reference to that. Oftentimes she has had messages to hasten her work,—the work of preparing her books,—because she had but a short time in which to work. She has been endeavoring to get her writings into book form, so that they may be of service to the church.

Does she know who will be her successor?—No. Repeatedly people write to her, and some come long distances to visit her, and some bring their friends to her, with the belief and confidence that God has selected them or their friends, as the case may be, to take up the work which the Lord has committed to her, when she lays it down. Some think that they are to take it at her death; others think that the time has come already, and they have full confidence that when they come into her presence, she will recognize them, and that she will tell them that the Lord has shown her that they are the ones. But in every case she has been obliged to tell them, “The Lord has given me no such commandment.” [657]

I do not know as I can do better in giving a more full answer to some of these questions than to read extracts from letters which she has written at various times in answer to questions along this line. Here is one written July 8, 1906:—[This letter is Appendix L, which see.] ...

I will now read a portion of another letter, written Oct. 23, 1907:—

“Dear Brother: I received and read your recent letter. Regarding the sister who thinks that she has been chosen to fill the position that Sister White has occupied, I have this to say: She may be honest, but she is certainly deceived.

“About a year after the death of my husband, I was very feeble, and it was feared that I might live but a short time. At the Healdsburg camp-meeting, I was taken into the tent where there was a large gathering of our people. I asked to be raised up from the lounge on which I was lying, and assisted to the speaker’s platform, that I might say a few words of farewell to the people. As I tried to speak, the power of God came upon me, and thrilled me through and through. Many in the congregation observed that I was weak, and that my face and hands seemed bloodless; but as I began speaking, they saw the color coming into my lips and face, and knew that a miracle was being wrought in my behalf. I stood before the people healed, and spoke with freedom.

“After this experience, light was given me that the Lord had raised me up to bear testimony for him in many countries, and that he would give me grace and strength for the work. It was also shown me that my son, W. C. White, should be my helper and counselor, and that the Lord would place on him the spirit of wisdom and of a sound mind....

“The assurance was given me: ‘You are not alone in the work the Lord has chosen you to do. You will be taught of God how to bring the truth in its simplicity before the people. The God of truth will sustain you, and convincing proof will be given that he is leading you. God will give you of His Holy Spirit, and his grace and wisdom and keeping power will be with you....

“The Lord will be your Instructor. You will meet with deceptive influences; they will come in many forms, in pantheism and other forms of infidelity; but follow where I shall guide you, and you will be safe....

“This word was given me in 1882.... More recently, in a time of perplexity, the Lord said: ‘I have given you my servant, W. C. White, and I will give him judgment to be your helper. I will give him skill and understanding to manage wisely.’”

W. C. White: Some of this may seem to be quite personal, but, [658] brethren, I do not know how to bring before you the instruction that has been given mother with reference to the handling of her work, without presenting it to you in the connection in which it has been written. So please forgive me if in reading this, I am presenting some things that it might seem better for me not to present. I want you to know what has been presented to mother as the basis of her confidence regarding the future and the basis of her plans regarding the handling of her manuscripts and her books. I continue reading:—

“The Lord has given me other faithful helpers in my work. Many of my discourses have been reported, and have been put before the people in printed form. Through nearly the whole of my long experience I have endeavored, day by day, to write out that which was revealed to me in visions of the night. Many messages of counsel and reproof and encouragement have been sent out to individuals, and much of the instruction that I have received for the church has been published in periodicals and books, and circulated in many lands.

“As the work has grown, the number of my helpers has increased.

“Sister Marian Davis was a great help in copying my testimonies, and in preparing for publication the manuscripts which I placed in her hands. I appreciated her help very much. She now sleeps in Jesus.

“For eleven years Miss Maggie Hare was among my workers. She was a faithful and true helper. She returned to New Zealand. [She again connected with the work in 1911.]

“Recently Miss Minnie Hawkins, of Hobart, Tasmania, who was one of my copyists in Australia, has joined my staff of workers. [This communication from which I am reading, you will bear in mind, was written in 1907.]

“During the General Conference of 1901, Brother C. C. Crisler was impressed by the Spirit of God that I needed him in my work, and he offered his services. I gladly accepted his help. He is a faithful, efficient, and conscientious worker.

“Dores Robinson has assisted in copying my testimonies, and he has been diligently preparing ‘Life Incidents’ for publication.

“Helen Graham is a good stenographer, and helps Sister Sara McEnterfer and W. C. White in their work of correspondence.

“Sister Sarah Peck was my bookkeeper and helper for a number of years. She has left us to engage in school work at College View. We now have as bookkeeper, Brother Paul C. Mason.

“Sister McEnterfer is my traveling companion, nurse, and helper in many ways.

“Sister Mary Steward and her mother are with us now; and Mary, [659] who for many years has served as proof-reader in the offices at Battle Creek and Nashville, has united with my workers.

“The work is constantly moving forward. We are making earnest efforts to place my writings before the people. We hope that several new books will go to press shortly. If I am incapacitated for labor, my faithful workers are prepared to carry forward the work.

“Abundant light has been given to our people in these last days. Whether or not my life is spared, my writings will constantly speak, and their work will go forward as long as time shall last. My writings are kept on file in the office, and even though I should not live, these words that have been given to me by the Lord will still have life and will speak to the people. But my strength is yet spared, and I hope to continue to do much useful work. I may live until the coming of the Lord; but if I should not, I trust it may be said of me, ‘Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord from henceforth: yea, saith the Spirit, that they may rest from their labors; and their works do follow them.’

“The Lord Jehovah is the one to specify how the work shall be carried on under all circumstances. W. C. White has his commission. I have instructed him to labor untiringly to secure the publication of my writings in the English language first, and afterward to secure their translation and publication in many other languages.... I rejoice that with the faithful helpers that God has given me, I am able to carry forward, in its many varied lines, the work given me to do.

“Both of my sons are engaged in giving this present truth to the world. I am glad that they are both connected with the publishing work.

“I thank God for the assurance of his love, and that I have daily his leading and guidance. I am very busy with my writing. Early and late, I am writing out the matters that the Lord opens before me. The burden of my work is to prepare a people to stand in the day of the Lord. The promise of Christ is sure. The time is not long. We must work and watch and wait for the Lord Jesus. We are called upon to be steadfast, unmovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord. All our hopes have their foundation in Christ.”

It may be interesting to you to know that mother’s corps of workers has changed very little since the communication that I have just read to you was written, nearly six years ago. The same ones are with her now, with a broadened experience; for we are learning better every day what our duty is in connection with this work. And God has blessed in the preparation of books. You have seen some of the more recent ones,—the “Acts of the Apostles,” and possibly the book just from the press, “Counsels to Teachers.” The latter is made up of a portion of [660] two volumes out of print, the old “Christian Education,” and the smaller volume entitled “Special Testimonies on Education,” together with considerable new matter; and it has been prepared with reference to the needs of parents and students, as well as of teachers. We trust that it will be a steadying influence, and an encouragement, in our school work, as long as we shall have to conduct schools and colleges in this world.

Our workers are now gathering together material for a new edition of “Gospel Workers.” We are also gathering into chapters what mother has written on Old Testament history. Probably nine tenths of this work is already done, and we hope that the book may be published before Christmas. Some of this matter was about ready, we thought, to place in the printers’ hands, when mother, upon going over some of the chapters, expressed herself as not fully satisfied. She thought there were other things she had written that we had not yet found, and she desired that these be searched out, if possible, and included. So we have laid the manuscript away in our fire-proof vault, and after this Conference probably four different persons will spend six or eight weeks in reading through the thousands of pages of manuscript in the file to see if we can find the additional matter that she thinks is in existence.

It would be comparatively easy to hasten along the preparation of these manuscripts for publication in book form, if we were to write in a little here and there where she has written only a portion of the story on certain topics and has left a portion incomplete. I say, if her secretaries were authorized by God to do that work, and could write in the connections, the book could be prepared for the printer much faster. But this cannot be done; we can deal only with the matter which we have in hand.

For this reason, when you get the book on Old Testament history, you will find that there are some stories partly told, and not fully completed. You will find that there are many things you hoped to read about, that are not mentioned. Mother has written quite fully on Solomon, something on the divided monarchy, a little about Elijah and Elisha, quite fully about Daniel, Ezra, and Nehemiah; and we are gathering this and other matter and grouping it into chapters.

You may say, What do you mean by this “gathering”? Did not Sister White sit down and write out quite fully and connectedly that which she had to say about the controversy, about Jeroboam and Rehoboam, about Jeremiah and Isaiah and other Old Testament characters?—No; not on all the principal characters. Her life has been a busy one. She has been kept constantly at the front, speaking [661] to the people, meeting emergencies. Some of the most precious things she has written about Old Testament and New Testament characters were written first in letters to individuals. Some of the most precious paragraphs in “Desire of Ages,” passages describing Christ controversies with the Pharisees and the Herodians, were written under circumstances like these:—

At Ashfield, New South Wales, Elder Corliss and some faithful helpers had been presenting the truth until there was a group of about thirty people keeping the Sabbath, ready to be baptized and organized into a church. The Campbellites could not bear to see that done. A bitter opponent came and challenged our brethren personally and through the papers. This was ignored as long as it could be. Finally, our friends, those in the truth, demanded that there be a discussion. So a discussion was arranged for.

In the night season this matter was laid before mother. She had never seen the Campbellite champion; but the man was shown to her—his spirit, his methods, his tactics. He had nothing to lose in that community; and it was presented to mother that his plan would be to endeavor to irritate Elder Corliss, and get him to say things that would discredit him before the people who were embracing the truth.

During the progress of that discussion, mother wrote to Elder Corliss, stating that it had been presented to her that his opponent in the discussion would work on certain lines, and he must take such a course as to disappoint the enemy. As she wrote these cautions, her memory would be revived as to what had been presented to her about the work of Christ, and how the Pharisees and the Sadducees and the Herodians had followed him with accusations and questions, endeavoring to discredit him before the people.

When we came to make up the chapters for “Desire of Ages,” we found in those letters the most vivid description of those experiences, that she had written anywhere. And we found other most precious passages that had been written first in letters to members of the General Conference Committee, and to conference presidents, regarding situations which were illustrated by the experiences of these Old and New Testament characters.

Being written in this way, it takes much time to search through the writings and find these passages, and bring them together into manuscripts. After these are gathered, and grouped into chapter form, the manuscript is always submitted to mother. She reads it over carefully. Up to the present time every chapter of every book, and all the articles for our periodicals—unless they happen to be reprints—have passed through her hands, and have been read over by her. Sometimes she [662] interlines; sometimes she adds much matter; sometimes she says, “Can not you find more on this subject?” And then, when more has been found, and added, the manuscript is recopied, and handed back to her again for examination. And when she finally signs it and returns it to us we are permitted to send it out.

Some criticism has been made because letters are sent out with a rubber-stamp signature. We feel that it is not necessary to ask mother to sign several copies. It is her custom to sign the original copy, and our workers claim that it is their right to keep this signed copy on file in our office, so that if anybody should challenge its authenticity, we have on file the copy signed with her own hand. The other copies are usually stamped with a rubber stamp. I merely mention this in passing, that all may know how much reason there is an any criticisms that are made about “rubber-stamp testimonies.”

While gathering the matter for “The Acts of the Apostles,” day after day Brother Crisler and his associates in the work would pass in to mother the chapters as they were prepared, and she would read them. Sometimes she would pass them back without comment. Perhaps for three days in succession they would be passed back without a word of comment; and then she would say, What about such a subject? Where is the description of this? or of that? and she would name the different matters she had in mind. In his explanation Brother Crisler might say, “The first matter you have mentioned is dealt with fully in a chapter you read some time ago; the second you inquire about is to be dealt with in a chapter to be prepared later; and as to the other matter that you wish to have incorporated, we had not thought of that. We will search the file, and see if we can find anything that has been written on that point.”

At one time she said to him: “This book will be read by the same classes of people that the apostles were trying to reach in Paul’s day. Take great pains to gather just as fully as you can what I have written regarding Paul’s appeals to the heathen. The arguments that led the heathen to a knowledge of the true God in the days of the apostles, will appeal to the heathen in many lands in our day. These arguments were inspired of God, and in them there is convicting power. We must make the most of them in telling the story of the labors of the apostles.”

At another time she said: “Have you made a careful study of what I have written about the Jews? The gospel must be preached to the Jews today. The appeals that were made to them by the apostles, will have great weight now. This book should be of value to the Jews, and to those who are working for the Jews, and also to those who ought to [663] be working for the Jews. Take pains to gather carefully what I have written about Paul’s work in appealing to the Jews.”

These directions that she gives us have largely to do with the value of our work in the preparation of matter for the press. Of course at the beginning of the work on each book, we talk over the plan, and she gives general directions; and then she gives counsel as the work goes forward. Although mother is doing only a little writing now, and although she attends only a few public meetings, yet her counsels, and her directions to her workers, are of great value to this people, as found in the completeness of her published works.

APPENDIX O: Canright Condemns Himself

Appendix A presents a historical sketch of Canright’s connection with the Seventh-day Adventist Church up to the time of his final departure in February, 1887; also a reminiscence by an old friend who related certain incidents in Canright’s life both before and after 1887, which indicate that the cause of his spiritual instability and his ultimate departure from the Advent Movement was an excessive vanity, pride, and conceit.

On page 81 of this work is found a quotation from an article that Canright wrote in the Review and Herald in 1877. The article was one of a series that carried the general title: “A Plain Talk to the Murmurers,” and subtitled “Some Facts for Those Who Are not in Harmony With the Body.” In this particular article he gave a word picture of Mrs. White, reminding his readers that he was well qualified to write because he had “been acquainted with Sr. White for eighteen years,” and had often lived in her home. In that article he said in part: “I know Sr. White to be an unassuming, modest, kind-hearted, noble woman. These traits in her character are not simply put on and cultivated, but they spring gracefully and easily from her natural disposition.”

On page 82 of this work is a quotation from an article that Canright wrote in 1884, shortly after the end of a two years’ lapse into doubt, critical questioning, and withdrawal from the ministry. In that article he frankly recounts his experience, and explains that central to his trouble was a refusal to accept certain strong testimonies that had come to him from Mrs. White. Then he tells of having had a new spiritual experience, with the following result: “All my hard feelings toward Sr. White vanished in a moment, and I felt a tender love towards her. Everything looked different.” He follows this with a confession [664] that he had “lacked in spirituality, humility,” and observes: “I think that my disbelief of the testimonies and other truths has come by opening my heart to doubts, cherishing them and magnifying them.”

Then for the The Review and Herald, February 10, 1885 (pages 84-86), Canright wrote an article entitled “To Those in Doubting Castle,” which is reproduced in the appendix immediately following. In that article he observes that “it is always easier to doubt than to believe,” and that many have found plausible reasons for doubting the Bible. “The fact is that God has never at any time given so much light and evidence that man had to believe whether he wanted to or not.” He adds that “when men become proud and self-sufficient, then the Lord leaves them to be filled with their own ways.” He gives Scriptural illustrations of how pride prevented acceptance of truth. He observes also that the accepted rule in the affairs of life, where uncertainties and doubts are always arising, is to decide a question “by the balance, or preponderance, of evidence.”

In the setting of these general principles, he declares: “But I wish more especially to apply this to the testimonies.” Then, as will be seen from reading his long article, he presents most reasonable grounds for accepting the writings of Mrs. White as being inspired by God. Toward the close he makes the sweeping statement: “I am profoundly convinced in the depths of my soul, after an experience of twenty-five years, that the same thing is true of the testimonies,” as of the Bible; namely, the honesthearted read and believe, while the Tom Paines and Ingersolls, read only to disbelieve. His closing line returns to the factor of pride as a deterrent to belief: “The real trouble lies close at home, in a proud, unconverted heart, a lack of real humility, an unwillingness to submit to God’s way of finding the truth.”

A few months after he wrote this last article Mrs. White sailed to Europe. Before she returned in August, 1887, he had left the denomination and was writing against it! With no opportunity to study further her life, he quite suddenly and completely reversed his conclusions regarding her—conclusions based on long years of intimate acquaintance. And the farther in time he moved from the vivid incidents of his years of fellowship, the more libelous his writing became!

We think these facts are sufficient in themselves to invalidate all the shallow, scurrilous charges that he brought against her through the long years following 1887. We believe that the evidence in this book, and the amazing admissions by Canright himself, while still with us, make transparently clear that the trouble was not with Mrs. White but with his own “proud and self-sufficient” heart—“I think that my disbelief of the testimonies and other truths has come by opening my [665] heart to doubts, cherishing them and magnifying them.” And it is on Canright that almost all later critics of Mrs. White have depended for ammunition!

Following is his 1885 article, including title and author as they appeared at the head of that article.

APPENDIX P: To Those in Doubting Castle

By Eld. D. M. Canright

[See preceding Appendix for comments on this article by Canright.]

Among the most dangerous of the places which pilgrims had to pass in the days of Bunyan was Doubting Castle. Many a poor pilgrim was caught on these grounds, shut up in this terrible old castle, and finally destroyed by the keeper, Giant Despair. But some were finally lucky enough to make their escape. That same old castle still stands by the way, as grim, and dark, and dreadful as ever. Every now and then some poor pilgrim, venturing too near, is caught. Some are rescued, but many are not. Hoping to help some of these, and to warn others, I write these lines.

Twenty-five years ago I embraced this message. The complete system of truth which it presented seemed to me something wonderful and very glorious. The study of the Bible was a continual feast to me. To preach it to others, and see them embrace it, filled my heart with gladness and peace. But at length things came up which threw me into doubt on some points, and finally were the occasion of my ceasing to preach the message. As the same things have affected others more or less, and will be liable to affect still others in the future, I wish to give a few of the reasons why I still think that the work is all right, that the Lord is in it, and that these doubts are not well founded.

It is well for us to remember that it is always easier to doubt than to believe. Jesus commanded his disciples to preach the gospel. Those who should believe would be saved, but those who should not believe would be damned. He knew full well that only a few would believe, and such has been the case. The great mass of men from that day to this have rejected the gospel. They claim that the evidence is not sufficient to prove that the message is from God. Could not God have given more evidence, and clearer, to sustain the gospel had he thought best? He gave enough so that every one who really hungers and thirsts after light, who is willing to seek for it as for hid treasures, who is willing to humble his soul before God, and cry earnestly to him for direction, can find it to the complete satisfaction of his soul. [666]

But even the gospel is not so plain that objections cannot be raised against it if men try hard to find them. Well informed infidels even raise many objections against the Bible itself,—objections which are difficult to answer, and which they claim never have been satisfactorily answered. And so they go on scoffing and disbelieving. But Christians don’t give up their faith for all that. The evidence on the other hand is too clear and too abundant to be overbalanced by a few seeming objections. We must remember that there are always two sides to every question. Whatever position may be taken on any question, some one can be found to dispute it and to raise arguments against it. So generally has this been the case that the main tenet of one sect of the old philosophers was that we could not know anything certainly, not even our own existence. And yet for all that, common men go right on believing that they know some things. It is the accepted rule in all the affairs of this life to decide the questions, even where life or death is at stake, by the balance, or preponderance, of evidence. The existence of God, the inspiration of the Bible, the truth of Christianity, etc., are accepted and firmly believed upon these grounds. I firmly believe that the truth of our message can be just as clearly proved in the same manner. It is by ignoring this rule of evidence that men become skeptical concerning God, the Holy Scriptures, and all religious faith. In just the same way some of our people come to be doubters concerning our message, the testimonies, etc. They let a few light objections on one side outweigh a mountain of truth on the other.

All the doubters and those troubled with unbelief have not been outside the church. Even some of the real children of God all along the ages have been troubled with unbelief. Jesus had to meet it in his disciples, till it saddened his heart. Thus he said, “O fools, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken.” Luke 24:25. They had seen sufficient proof that Jesus was the Messiah; but when some things transpired which they had not expected, and could not understand, they let these outweigh the evidence which had been clear and satisfactory to them before.

Thomas belonged to this class of doubters; but it did not seem to profit himself, benefit the cause, or please his Master. All we ever hear of him is about his asking questions. When all his brethren positively assured him that they had actually seen Jesus, and had talked with him, Thomas refused to believe it. He must see for himself, and put his finger into the wounds in Jesus’ hands, before he would be convinced. The Lord granted him the proof he demanded, and then said to him, “Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed; blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.” John 20:29. [667] Thomas thought he could not help his unbelief; for there were the stubborn facts, and what could he do with them? But the Lord thought differently; and evidently his reproof of the doubting apostle was designed also for all others of a like disposition in every age.

We must remember that we may demand too much evidence—more than God sees best to give. Take one case as an illustration; John the Baptist came with a solemn warning from God. Jesus says that the Pharisees, in rejecting him, rejected the counsel of God against themselves; but that the publicans and common people “justified God, being baptized with the baptism of John.” Luke 7:29, 30. How did these justify God? Let us pass over to the Judgment. These Pharisees will be surprised to find themselves rejected. They will plead that they were honest, that they would have believed if John had only worked a miracle or had given sufficient evidence of his mission. But the simple people who did believe John will rise up, and say, “We lived at the same time you did, and in the same town; we heard the same things that you heard, and we believed. The evidence was sufficient for us.” Thus they will justify God, and condemn the unbelievers. So will it be in every age. Those who have believed will rise up and testify that the evidence was sufficient if the heart had only been humble enough to submit to God’s ways. Why is it that the word of God so often and so earnestly insists upon humility of heart and contrition of soul as necessary to a right understanding of his work? Let the boastful doubter think of this, and beware.

From the very beginning God’s work has been doubted by some who have had a full knowledge of it and a close connection with it. Thus Abel by faith offered unto God an acceptable gift; but Cain’s sacrifice was not accepted of God. For this Cain was angry,—angry with God and with his brother. He thought that Abel was a fool, and God was unjust. From that day to this there have been the same two classes,—the believing Abels and the doubting Gains. By faith Noah condemned the world. Hebrews 11:7. He had the same evidence which the world had. He believed, they disbelieved. He was right, they were wrong.

No man ever came from God with better evidences of his divine mission than Moses; and yet right among his own people and followers and coworkers doubters were constantly springing up. It now seems to us that one or two clearly wrought miracles would forever settle our doubts as to the divine mission of the person working them. But look at this case. Consider the wonderful miracles which the people saw Moses perform,—the river turned to blood, all the plagues in Egypt, the pillar of cloud constantly attending them day and night, the sea [668] opened, etc. How strong their faith was then! how confident their song after their triumph at the Red Sea! But they start on, and for several days in a hot climate there is not a drop of water for man or beast. Soon they begin to murmur, then to question, and finally to doubt whether the Lord was leading them. Doubtless they reasoned, “Didn’t God know we must have water? If he were leading, would he have made such a terrible blunder?” “Is the Lord among us, or not?” (Exodus 17:7) was the all-absorbing question of debate in tents, by the camp-fires, and in little groups of earnest talkers. What about all the miracles they had witnessed, the faith they had expressed but a few days before? These were not quite as weighty and conclusive now as they had thought them to be.

The same spirit of fault-finding and of doubt was continually cropping out during the whole forty years. Yet at the same time there was the pillar of cloud always with them, the manna falling day after day for forty years, besides many other miracles. In the face of all this, a few objections which they could not, or would not, understand outweighed everything else.

Look at the remarkable occurrences related in Numbers 16. Over two hundred and fifty leading men headed a rebellion against Moses. They said, “Moses, you promised to lead us right into a land flowing with milk and honey, and to give us possession; but you have done no such thing. Here you have led us round and round for twenty years. We are no nearer the promised land than when we started. Our brethren have died of hunger and thirst, and we are nearly worn out. You cannot deceive us any longer. We are going back to Egypt. Our mission is a failure.” (See verses 12-14.) They thought they had a clear case. But Moses proposed to appeal to God to decide who was right. They readily accepted his proposition, and boldly went out with their censers, and stood before God for him to answer. This showed that they were in earnest, and thoroughly believed that they were right. But when God did answer, they all went down into the earth in a moment, and perished. Just so now: fault-finders and doubters become so confident in their positions that they are willing to go up to God and to the Judgment with it. Take care! Korah and his sympathizers did that, and did it to their eternal ruin.

But what is more astonishing still, is that “on the morrow all the congregation of the children of Israel murmured against Moses and against Aaron, saying, Ye have killed the people of the Lord.” Ver. 41. Was not that astonishing after all they had witnessed the day before? But such is the power of unbelief when once fortified in the heart. This should teach us great caution in rejecting manifest light and [669] because of some seeming difficulties and objections connected with it.

The faith of even the best men has sometimes wavered when hard pressed. Elijah had a special work to do in reforming Israel in the days of Ahab. God wrought through him mightily. The priests of Baal were slain, and a great victory gained. Elijah was exultant. He thought that the king and queen and all the people were coming over to the Lord. But when it did not turn out so, and the queen threatened to kill him, he ran for his life, and went into the wilderness, and lay down requesting to die. 1 Kings 19:1-4. He thought his mission was a failure. And even when the Lord said to him, “What doest thou here, Elijah?” (ver. 9) he was ready to argue his case, and defend his course, till the Lord convinced him that he was wrong.

So also even John the Baptist, after being left in prison for a long time, and being threatened with death, became shaken in his faith in Jesus. If Jesus was the Messiah, why did he leave him there to perish? He sends two of his disciples to inquire if after all he is really the Messiah? Luke 7:19. What a sad exhibition of human weakness this was after his strong faith in Jesus when he cried, “Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world”! John 1:29. When such men as these falter and doubt for a moment, no wonder that weaker ones yield to temptations, and apostatize entirely when trials and discouragements come upon the cause. So it always has been, and so it always will be.

Even Christ’s disciples went through the same process of doubting and sifting and apostatizing; and that, too, after they had seen many and wonderful miracles wrought by him. When Jesus performed the miracle of feeding the multitude with a few loaves and fishes, they were so moved that they proposed to take him by force and make him a king. John 6:9-15. The next day when Jesus rebuked them for seeking the things of this world, their faith suddenly cooled off, and they demanded of him another miracle that they might believe. Ver. 30. And when he rebuked them still more sharply, they said, “This is an hard saying: who can hear it?” Ver. 60. “From that time many of his disciples went back, and walked no more with him.” Ver. 66. We see them turning away with a sneer. They have been deceived and misled; but now their eyes are open, and they will be fooled no longer. Such is unbelief, such it always has been, and such it always will be. Luther’s work developed hundreds of these doubters,—men who were at first warm believers. Wesley found the same class. If God’s work now does not develop them, it will be a new thing under the sun.

The fact is that God has never at any time given so much light and [670] evidence that man had to believe whether he wanted to or not. Nor has he been careful to remove all objections out of the way of those who have believed and embraced his truth....

Notice what God says of Christ: “Behold, I lay in Zion a stumblingstone and rock of offense.” Romans 9:23. Didn’t God know that man would stumble over him? Yes; and so he knows that they will also stumble over other truths just as they always have done, and always will do. But those who seek God humbly and with tears will not be left to fall. God would send every angel from heaven before one such should miss the way. All these facts apply with equal force to the cause of God in our day, to the third angel’s message, and to all connected with it.

But I wish more especially to apply this to the testimonies. What evidence do we have that they are of God? Every argument in favor of the third angel’s message is an argument in favor of the testimonies. Why? If it be a fact that the time has come for a special warning to the world on the advent near, the law of God, and other truths which we hold, then we may be sure that God would prepare the way for that message by raising up proper persons to give it. God by his providence raised up Moses to lead his people out of Egypt. Before Jeremiah was born, God had set him apart to do the work before him. Jeremiah 1:5. So of John the Baptist. Before his birth the angel announced his mission. Luke 1. Who does not believe that Luther was a man of God’s providence, raised up to do that special work? So of Wesley. Shall, then, the last closing message to the world fall due and God provide no fit instruments to proclaim it, and push it through to the end? That is absurd, and contrary to all God’s doings in the past, as we have already seen.

Now, admitting that ours is a special message from God designed to warn this generation, look at its history. Sr. White and her work have not only been connected with the message from the very first, but she has had a leading influence in that work, has stood front and foremost, and with voice and pen has done more to guide and mold the message than any other half dozen laborers now in the cause. From the beginning her teachings have been accepted by all the leading ministers and believers as light from God. Now would it not be the very height of absurdity to accept the message and the work as the truth and God’s work, and yet reject the very one who had done the work? A deceiver, an imposter, a false teacher stand at the head of God’s special work for forty years! No, that will never do. We must either reject the message or receive the testimonies. They stand or fall [671] together. So I repeat that every argument in favor of the main doctine of our faith is an argument in favor of the testimonies.

Another argument in favor of the testimonies is the fact that all those parties who have drawn off from our people in opposition to the testimonies have come to naught, or at best have had only a feeble existence. Time and again this has been tried by different persons proposing to preach all the message except the testimonies. Now if that position is right, why don’t God prosper them? Why don’t they succeed better than those who hold and teach them?

Another evidence in favor of the testimonies is the fact that those who have accepted them have always stood together, and have perfectly agreed in faith and practice; while those who have opposed them have disagreed in doctrine and discipline, and have split up into little factions.

And still another evidence is found in the fact that those who remain among us, and still oppose the testimonies, soon lose their love for the message, their spirituality, their devotion, their zeal for God and for the salvation of souls. I have seen many such cases, and have never yet known an exception to this rule. Why is this so? If they are right, why does it always have this effect? On the other hand, the most devoted and zealous members in all our churches are those who have the strongest faith in the testimonies.

Again, the tendency and influence of the testimonies is not, like the teachings of Spiritualist mediums, to lead away from the Bible, away from God, and away from faith in Christ; nor, like Mormonism, to lead to sensuality, dishonesty, and crime; but they lead to faith in the Holy Scriptures, devotion to God, and a life of humility and holiness. Can a corrupt tree bear good fruit? Jesus said not. What is a tree known by?—Its fruit. Here is a tree which has been standing among us for forty years, and bearing fruit. What has been the nature of that fruit? What have been its effects upon those who have partaken most of it?

It seems to me now that no one who has ever felt the power of the Spirit of God upon his own heart can candidly read through the four volumes of “Spirit of Prophecy” without being deeply convicted that the writer must live very near to God, and be thoroughly imbued with the same Spirit that inspired the Bible, and animated the apostles and prophets. Such lofty thoughts of God, of heaven, and of spiritual things cannot come from a carnal heart, nor from a mind deceived and led by Satan.

But are there not difficulties in these writings hard to explain? passages which seem to conflict one with another, or with some passage [672] in the Bible, or with facts? I freely grant for myself that there are some passages which bother me, and which I do not know how to explain. But I believe them for all that just as I do the Bible. There are many passages in the Bible which I should have to admit I could not explain nor harmonize. If any man says that he can explain and reconcile all the statements of the Scriptures, he simply shows his self-conceit and ignorance. Yet I profoundly believe the Bible for all that.

I have not a shadow of a doubt about the sleep of the dead, the annihilation of the wicked, the Sonship of Christ, baptism by immersion, etc.; and yet there are scriptures, such for instance, as the rich man and Lazarus, which are as difficult for me to harmonize with these plain Bible doctrines as it is for me to explain the hardest passage in Sr. White’s writings. Peter admitted that there were some things in the Scriptures hard to be understood. 2 Peter 3:16. He says that some wrest the Scriptures to their own destruction. And that is just what some are doing with the testimonies. When we consider how extensive these writings are, extending over a period of nearly forty years, embracing ten bound volumes besides many smaller works, it would be a wonder indeed if in all these there should not be anything in the wording, the sentiment, or the doctrine, hard to understand and explain, or on which a sharp opponent could not make a plausible argument. We know that God’s revelations in the past have not been given free from all obscurity and difficulties. Neither will they be now.

If a man reads the Bible on purpose to find objections, as Tom Paine did, and as Ingersoll does, he will find plenty of them to satisfy his unbelief, and confirm him in his infidelity. But if, like thousands of others equally learned and intelligent, he goes to the Scriptures to find light and God and salvation, he will find them full and clear, to the joy of his soul. I am profoundly convinced in the depths of my soul, after an experience of twenty-five years, that the same thing is true of the testimonies.

And now I want to reason awhile with those among us who are holding off and living in doubt about the testimonies. I believe that your course is not only wrong, but that it is unsatisfactory to you here, and will be unsatisfactory at the Judgment. You take very little interest in the progress of the cause, you carry a very light burden in the work of the church, you take but little part, if any, in the Sabbath-school, you do next to nothing in the missionary work, you pay no tithes, you give nothing anywhere, you have no burden for the salvation of souls, or if you have you never show it; if you say anything at all it is mostly in raising queries and objections. My brethren, my sisters, are you willing to let your short life slip by year after year, [673] and finally come up to the searching test of the Judgment in this way? Beware! Many will land in perdition who do not intend to. Shut your eyes to it as you may, such a course must inevitably end in disaster.

But you say, “I would like to believe and have full confidence in the whole work if I only could; but I am afraid I shall believe an error.” Well, let us see if there is really any danger in going this way. You certainly know that our people hold all the cardinal doctrines of salvation,—faith in God, the Bible, Jesus Christ, repentance, a holy life, etc. Isn’t this safe? You know that Sr. White and all our ministers not only so teach, but exert all their influence to have our people live lives of devotion, of honesty, of purity, of love, of plainness, of sacrifice, and of every Christian virtue. You know that every sin is condemned among our people, and the most solemn warnings are constantly given against even the appearance of evil. You know that in almost every church of our people there are at least some who are living blameless Christian lives. You know that there is not one immoral doctrine taught or practiced by our people. Bad men and poor examples there are, to be sure; but they are such in spite of all our efforts to make them better. You know that if any man will strictly live up to the teachings of the testimonies and our people, he will certainly be saved.

Now will it not be better for you,—better in this life and safer in the next,—to believe and labor heartily with this people than it is to believe with nobody, be in harmony with no church, and have no settled system of doctrine? Of all the miserable, unsatisfactory places to be in, that is the worst. There is no comfort in it, there is no strength in it, there is no usefulness in it. Better to believe something, better to run in somewhere, rather than to stand out there in the storm all alone. A hut, a hovel, is better than that. What a pitiable condition a man must be in at this day when there are so many churches and kinds of doctrine, who can neither believe nor work with any of them! Such a person must be badly befogged some way.

My friend, is this your condition? How long have you been there? One year? five years? ten years? Haven’t you settled it yet? Then give it up, and come in with those who have settled it, where there is faith and hope and zeal and active work for God and man. Look at the grand truths which our people hold,—the new earth, the beautiful city, the resurrection, the real life hereafter, the literal coming of Christ, the sleep of the dead, the destruction of sin and sinners, the law of God, all those grand lines of prophecy unmistakably pointing to the end near. Can you give these all up, forget them, and shut them from your heart? Can you once more have confidence in intangible spirits, eternal [674] hell, sprinkling for baptism, Sunday-Sabbath, or the millennium? Pshaw! strain at a gnat, and swallow a camel!

I find that there is peace and joy, hope and confidence, love for souls, and the blessing of God in giving full confidence to the whole message; and these I have never found in doubting it, nor have I ever seen any one who did find them that way. All admit that we have truth enough, if lived out, to save us. We know that all other churches have many errors. How shall we gain anything, then, by going there? Start a new church of our own? Well, the success of those who have left us and tried that has not been very encouraging.

No, the real trouble lies close at home, in a proud, unconverted heart, a lack of real humility, an unwillingness to submit to God’s way of finding the truth.—The Review and Herald, February 10, 1885, pp. 84-86.

APPENDIX Q: Last Will and Testament of Mrs. Ellen G. White

IN THE NAME OF GOD, AMEN.

I, Ellen G. White, (widow) a resident of Sanitarium, Napa County, California, of the age of eighty-four (84) years, and being at the date hereof of sound and disposing mind and memory, and not acting under duress, menace, fraud, or undue influence of any person whomsoever, do make, publish, and declare this my last will and testament, in the manner following, that is to say:

FIRST: I direct that my body shall be interred with appropriate religious services of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, without undue ceremony or ostentation.

SECOND: I desire and direct that as soon as possible, payment shall be made of the expenses of my last sickness and funeral, and in order that no property belonging to my estate shall be disposed of or sold at a sacrifice, I earnestly request all my creditors to waive and relinquish their claims against my estate and accept payment thereof under the provisions, which I am hereinafter making, for the liquidation of their claims through the handling of my properties by trustees.

THIRD: I hereby give, devise, and bequeath to my son, James Edson White, now residing at Marshall, Michigan, the sum of Three Thousand Dollars ($3,000).

FOURTH: I hereby give and bequeath to my son, William C. White, now residing at Sanitarium, California, all my right, title, and interest [675] in the copyrights and book plates in all languages of the books entitled: “The Coming King” and “Past, Present and Future,” also all manuscripts (and right to publish the same) pertaining to the following books and proposed books:

“Life Sketches of Elder James White and Ellen G. White”

“Life Incidents of Elder James White”

“Spiritual Gifts, Volumes 1-4”

“Facts of Faith”

“How to Live”

“Appeal to Youth”

“Experience and Views of Ellen G. White”

“Experience of Ellen G. White in connection with the Health Reform Movement among Seventh-day Adventists”

“Story of Mrs. White’s European Travels”

“Story of Mrs. White’s Australasian Travels”

“Mrs. White’s Letters to Mothers and Children”

“Youth’s Life of Christ”

“The Southern Work”

“Education”

“Christian Education”

“Special Testimonies on Education”

“Bible Sanctification”

Also, my personal library, and all manuscripts, letters, diaries, and writings not otherwise herein devised.

FIFTH: I hereby give, devise, and bequeath to William C. White, Clarence C. Crisler, Charles H. Jones, Arthur G. Daniells, and Frank M. Wilcox all the real property of which I may die seized or possessed, all my live stock and farm tools, and implements, all notes and accounts due to me and also all of my right, title, and interest in the copyright and book plates in all languages of the following publications:

“Desire of Ages”

“Patriarchs and Prophets”

“The Acts of the Apostles”

“Great Controversy”

“Early Writings”

“Testimonies for the Church,” volumes 1-9 inclusive

“Gospel Workers”

“Christian Temperance and Bible Hygiene”

“Christ’s Object Lessons”

“Ministry of Healing”

“Steps to Christ” [676] “Mount of Blessing”

“Christ Our Saviour”

“Testimonies for Sabbath-school Workers”

“Manual for Canvassers”

“Special Testimonies”

Also, my general manuscript file and all indexes pertaining thereto; also my office furniture and office library.

Together with all and singular, the tenements, hereditaments and appurtenances thereunto belonging, or in any wise appertaining in trust nevertheless for the uses and purposes hereinafter contained.

TO HAVE AND TO HOLD, the said real and personal property unto said trustees, and their successors, upon the trust to enter into and upon and take possession of the said real estate and said personal property, to collect and receive the rents, issues and profits thereof, to manage and control said real and personal property, and to rent and lease the same, or any part thereof, to sell parts or portions of said real and personal property, excepting the book copyrights, for the purpose of re-investing the same in other real or personal property to be held under the same trust, and after paying all taxes, assessments, charges and encumbrances thereon and the expenses of repairing, administering, preserving, and protecting the said real property and of handling said personal property, and publishing and selling said books and manuscripts and conducting the business thereof, to distribute, pay over and apply the net proceeds from the rents and profits of said real property and from the business of publishing and selling said books and property in the manner following, that is to say:

(a) To pay over to my son, James Edson White,[304] annually, during his natural life ten (10) per cent of the net proceeds of said properties for his sole use and benefit, and upon his death to Emma L. White, his wife, during her natural life should she survive him.

(b) To pay over to my son William C. White,[305] annually, for his sole use and benefit ten (10) per cent of the net proceeds of said properties during his natural life, and upon his death, to Ethel M. White, his wife, during her natural life should she survive him.

(c) To pay over annually to William C. White, Ethel M. White and Dores E. Robinson as trustees[306] five (5) per cent of the net proceeds of the said properties, to be devoted to the education of my grandchildren, great grandchildren and other worthy individuals.

[304]Shortly after Mrs. White’s death, the two sons here named as recipients of a percentage of the accruing income from her estate, for a relatively modest consideration relinquished all claims upon such income. See chapter 33, page 530.

[305]Shortly after Mrs. White’s death, the two sons here named as recipients of a percentage of the accruing income from her estate, for a relatively modest consideration relinquished all claims upon such income. See chapter 33, page 530.

[306]These three trustees relinquished without any consideration, all claims to this proposed educational fund.

[677]

(d) The said trustees shall use the remainder of said net proceeds for the following purposes:

1. For the payment of creditors with accruing interest upon the principal indebtedness to the extent to which my creditors have agreed to relinquish their claims against my estate; such payments from said net proceeds to continue until all remaining indebtedness with interest has been fully paid.

2. If the entire remainder of said net proceeds from my said properties is more than sufficient to pay my said debts, with interest, in the manner in which my creditors shall agree to receive payment of their respective claims, then my said trustees shall use the overplus for the improvement of the books and manuscripts held in trust by them, and herein provided; for the securing and printing of new translations thereof; for the printing of compilations from my manuscripts; for general missionary work of the Seventh-day Adventist denomination; for the support of mission schools, under the negro department of the Seventh-day Adventist General Conference; for the support of mission schools for the illiterate whites in the Southern States, Provided, however, that said trustees are hereby empowered and directed to sell my said real property or so much thereof as may be necessary to pay the following sums:—to my granddaughter Ella May Robinson, now residing at Sanitarium, California, the sum of Five Hundred Dollars ($500); to my granddaughter, Mabel E. Workman, now residing at Loma Linda, California, the sum of Five Hundred Dollars ($500); to my faithful friend and helper, Sara McEnterfer, now residing at Sanitarium, California, the sum of Five Hundred Dollars ($500); to May Walling, now residing at Sanitarium, California, the sum of Five Hundred Dollars ($500); and to my faithful friend and helper Clarence C. Crisler, the sum of Five Hundred Dollars ($500).[307]

SIXTH: After the death of both James Edson White and his wife, my said trustees are hereby empowered and directed to apply the amount prescribed in subdivision (a) of paragraph FIFTH toward the discharge of any legal claims against the estate of said James Edson White, and then after the full discharge of such claims, the said amount mentioned in subdivision (a) shall be applied to the maintenance of the mission schools for negroes now conducted by the negro department of the Seventh-day Adventist General Conference.

SEVENTH: After the death of both William C. White and his wife, my said trustees are hereby empowered and directed to pay over to their surviving children, or grandchildren, if any, the respective amounts

[307]These bequests were not paid until all creditors had been paid in full.

[678]

prescribed in subdivision (b) of paragraph FIFTH of this will; and if there be no children or grandchildren of my said son, then said respective amounts shall be devoted and used for the purposes set forth in subdivision (d) of said paragraph FIFTH of this will.

EIGHTH: Upon the termination of the trusts, or any of them, created and set forth in this will, from any cause whatsoever, I give, bequeath, and devise all of the real and personal property mentioned in paragraph FIFTH or so much thereof as may from any cause be released or relieved from said trust to my said son, William C. White; or if he be not living, then to his heirs at law.

NINTH: My household furniture, dishes, carpets, pictures, photographs and clothing, I give and bequeath in equal parts to my sons, James Edson White and William C. White.

TENTH: All the rest, residue and remainder of my estate, real, personal and mixed, of which I may die seized or possessed, I give, bequeath, and devise to my son, William C. White.

ELEVENTH: I hereby appoint William C. White and Charles H. Jones the executors of this my last will and testament, without bonds; and my executors are hereby authorized to sell any property of my estate without order of Court, and at either public or private sale, and with or without notice as the executors may determine.

I also direct that no bond be required of any of the trustees named or their successors.

TWELFTH: If a vacancy shall occur for any reason among said trustees, or their successors, a majority of the surviving or remaining trustees are hereby empowered and directed to fill such vacancy by the appointment of some other fit person, and in the event that the majority does not agree upon the appointment, then such vacancy shall be filled by the Executive Committee of the Seventh-day Adventist General Conference; and the new trustee or trustees, so appointed, shall have the same power touching the trust premises and in the execution of the trusts, herein contained, as the original trustees named herein.

THIRTEENTH: I hereby revoke all former wills by me made.

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand and seal this 9th day of February, 1912.

[Signed] Ellen G. White [679]

BIBLIOGRAPHY

PRINCIPAL SOURCES

In the writing of this book we have drawn, principally, from the following Sources:

1. Certain Millerite publications. These have been chiefly used in writing chapter 13, which gives the historical background of Seventh-day Adventism.

2. Certain current medical works. These have been drawn upon in the writing of the section: “Were Mrs. White’s Visions Due to Nervous Disorders?”

3. The writings of the critics of Mrs. White, chiefly from two books by D. M. Canright. Other critics have largely borrowed from him. Their Writings consist of pamphlets, tracts, and articles, most of them short-lived, but soon reincarnated in some variant form and under some new name and title, and by a new publisher. Sometimes no name or publisher is given. Such secondary, ephemeral literature hardly rates bibliographical notice.

4. Other non-Seventh-day Adventist works in the fields of history, sociology, theology, literary practices, etc.

5. The writings of Ellen G. White. These consist of broadsides, pamphlets, books, periodical articles, manuscripts on various subjects, and personal letters. Almost all the manuscripts and letters are filed in the office of the Ellen G. White Publications.

6. The writings of other founders and spokesmen for the Seventh-day Adventist Church. These consist of books, pamphlets, articles in Seventh-day Adventist papers, and letters. The early Seventh-day Adventist books, the files of old church publications, and the manuscript material are found chiefly in (1) the library of the Review and Herald Publishing Association, (2) the Archives of the Ellen G. White Publications, (3) the Advent Source Collection, in the library of the Seventh-day Adventist Theological Seminary. All are located at Takoma Park, Washington, D.C.

For a rather complete bibliography of Millerite publications the reader is referred to the author’s The Midnight Cry.

Note.—The term bound book describes volumes bound in cloth, leather, etc., in contrast to those in paper covers.

PART I: Non-Seventh-day Adventist Works

Books, Pamphlets, Tracts

Bloomer, D. C. Life and Writings of Amelia Bloomer. Boston: Arena Publishing Company, 1895. 387 pp.

The author was the husband of Amelia Bloomer. He presents the story of her activities in behalf of women’s rights, including a reform dress, and quotes extensively from her writings.

Canright, D. M. The Bible From Heaven: A Summary of Plain Arguments for the Bible and Christianity. Battle Creek: Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association, 1878. 304 pp.

An apologetic for the divine origin of the Scriptures. The author was a Seventh-day Adventist in 1878. This work is interesting primarily because it reveals an extreme case of nineteenth-century borrowing from earlier works without acknowledgment, taking extended portions, often without change of a word, from a book by a similar title written by Moses Hull in 1863. [680] ------. Seventh-day Adventism Renounced. New York: Fleming H. Revell Company, 1889. 413 pp.

According to the author, a complete refutation of Seventh-day Adventist teachings. Chapter 2, “An Experience of Twenty-Eight Years in Adventism,” is a brief autobiographical sketch. Only one chapter, “Mrs. White and Her Revelations,” pages 129-165, is devoted to a discussion of Mrs. White. An edition before us carries a “Preface to Fourteenth Edition,” dated 1914; however, in a preliminary chapter, “My Present Standing,” the author gives “1915” as date of writing that chapter. In the preface he notes the fact that since he wrote his book in 1889, which gave the then-current paging of Adventist works quoted, such works have, in many instances, been reprinted and repaged. He explains that he has not revised the page references because his book is in plates. Thus the various “editions” through the years should more properly be described as “printings.” However, a comparison of editions reveals that a few changes have been made, chiefly in the preface and introductory matter.

------. Life of Mrs. E. G. White. Cincinnati: The Standard Publishing Company, 1919. 291 pp.

The scope of the book is summarized in the subtitle: “Her False Claims Refuted.” Her life and teachings are considered at length. This most complete of all works against Mrs. White sets out in formal fashion to examine the whole sweep of her teachings. It owes much of its plausibility to the fact that the author can repeatedly remind the reader that he was for years an Adventist minister, a friend of Mrs. White’s. Added plausibility resides in the facts that he frequently quotes, though with studied brevity, from Adventist works—and that most of his readers never have opportunity, or inclination, to examine the quotations in the original context.

The Chronicles of America Series. Allen Johnson, editor. New Haven: Yale University Press; London: H. Milford, Oxford University Press [etc., etc.], 1918-21. 50 vols.

Brief surveys, by various authors, of important phases of American history.

Clarke, Adam. The Holy Bible, ... With a Commentary and Critical Notes. New York: Lane & Scott, for the Methodist Episcopal Church, 1850-51. 6 vols.

This is the well-known work that generally is known simply as Clarke’s Commentary.

Cobbin, Ingram. The Condensed Commentary and Family Exposition of the Holy Bible.London: William Tegg, 1863. 1396 pp.

The text of the Authorized Version with commentary and marginal notes in one volume.

Conybeare, William J., and Howson, John S. The Life and Epistles of St. Paul. London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1851-52. 2 vols.

Written “to give a living picture of St. Paul himself, and of the circumstances by which he was surrounded”—social, religious, political, geographical. It contains the complete Epistles in modern English. Conybeare did all the translating, including any speeches of Paul in the narrative, and wrote nine of the chapters (see enumeration in the introduction).

There was a revised and corrected edition in 1856; a third, the “People’s Edition,” was edited by Howson, after Conybeare’s death, with notes abridged and foreign references translated.

In America the work was published by Scribner’s in 1854 and repeatedly thereafter from the same plates, apparently, in numerous printings numbered as “editions.” In 1869 a number of American publishers began to issue one-volume reprints of the “People’s Edition” for sale by canvassers, several houses using the same plates. The book was later reprinted by Thomas Y. Crowell & Co., in a smaller volume without footnotes, under the title The Life and Epistles of the Apostle Paul, printings undated. [681] Corpus Juris Secundum. Edited by William Mack and others. Brooklyn, N.Y.: The American Law Book Co., 1936. In progress.

The nature and scope of the work is indicated in the subtitle: as “a complete restatement of the entire American law as developed by all reported cases.” The latest volume (1950) is 67, “Numbers” through “Parties.” It is an authoritative legal reference work.

Dunning, William Archibald. Reconstruction, Political and Economic, 1865-1877. (The American Nation: A History, Albert Bushnell Hart, editor, vol. 22.) New York: Harper & Brothers, 1933. 378 pp.

As is evident from the full title, this work, which is one volume of an extended series, deals with the years immediately following the Civil War in the United States.

Edwards, William A. Plagiarism; An Essay on Good and Bad Borrowing. Cambridge [Eng.]: Gordon Fraser, The Minority Press, 1933. 120 pp.

The Le Bas prize essay for 1932. A study of various kinds and examples of artistic borrowing.

Farrar, F. W. The Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Hebrews, With Notes and Introduction. Cambridge: At the University Press, 1896. 196 pp. (In The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges, old edition, edited by J. J. S. Perowne.)

This comprises the text and commentary.

------. The Life and Work of St. Paul. New York: E. P. Dutton & Company, 1879. 2 vols.

A study of Paul’s life and writings, with chief emphasis on his teachings, and on the occasion and the theology of his epistles.

Fleming, Walter Lynwood. The Sequel of Appomattox. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1919. 322 pp. (In The Chronicles of America Series, Allen Johnson, editor.)

The subtitle reads: “A Chronicle of the Reunion of the States.” A brief, readable description of conditions in the South in the years immediately following the Civil War.

Hammerton, Sir John, and Barnes, Harry Elmer, editors. The Illustrated World History. New York: Wm. H. Wise & Co., 1935. 1144 pp.

A history of the world from the earliest dawn to the days of the great depression and the rise of dictatorships following World War I.

Harman, Ellen Beard. Dress Reform: Its Physiological and Moral Bearings. New York: Davies & Kent, Printers, 1862. 33 pp.

“A Lecture Delivered at the Hall of the Young Men’s Christian Association, Washington City, February 10, 1862,” vigorously scoring current women’s fashions.

Jackson, James C. “Flesh as Food for Man,” How to Live, No. 1, pp. 18-31.

An extract from a tract by the same title, reprinted in How to Live, which see.

------. How to Treat the Sick Without Medicine. Dansville, N.Y.: Austin, Jackson & Co., 1868. 537 pp.

Title page states that he is “Physician-in-Chief of Our Home on the Hill-Side,” Dansville, Livingston Co., N.Y. In the mid-nineteenth century his book was prominent among writings that promoted drugless therapeutic procedures.

Jamieson, Robert, Fausset, A. R., and Brown, David. A Commentary, Critical and Explanatory, on the Old and New Testaments. Hartford: The S. S. Scranton Company. 2 vols.

This American edition of the English work carries no date of publication.

Kenyon, Sir Frederic. Our Bible and the Ancient Manuscripts. 4th ed. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1940. 266 pp. [682] A discussion, for the non-specialist reader, of the ancient backgrounds, texts, and versions of the Bible, and of the various forms of the English Bible, in a modern edition revised by its author.

Lange, John Peter, editor. A Commentary on the Holy Scriptures. New York: Charles Scribner & Co., 1868-79. 24 vols.

The general title page states: Translated from the German, and edited, with additions, by Philip Schaff and others. The portion on Timothy is by J. J. van Oosterzee, translated, with additions, by E. A. Washburn and E. Harwood.

McClellan, Elisabeth. Historic Dress in America, 1800-1870. Philadelphia: G. W. Jacobs & Co., [1910]. 458 pp.

Contains illustrations in pen and ink and half tone, and reproductions from photographs of rare portraits, original garments, etc.

Merritt, M. Angeline. Dress Reform Practically and Physiologically Considered. Buffalo: Printed by Jewett, Thomas and Co., 1852. 171 pp.

Subtitle reads: With Plates, Illustrations, Opinions of the Press and the Private Testimony of Various Prominent Individuals. Though its pages are few, and its page size small, it stands out as one of the first of such works.

Miller, William. Wm. Miller’s Apology and Defence. Boston: J. V. Himes, 1845. 36 pp.

Miller recounts his experience in coming to his conclusions on prophecy and in preaching them. A formal statement.

Monaghan, Frank. Heritage of Freedom. Princeton, N. J.: Princeton University Press, 1947. 150 pp.

Subtitle reveals scope: The History & Significance of the Basic Documents of American Liberty. “A book presenting and explaining the documents on the Freedom Train.” It contains many photographic reproductions of historic documents.

Paull, H. M. Literary Ethics. London: T. Butterworth, Limited, 1928. 358 pp.

Preface states: “Confined ... almost entirely to English literature.”

The Pulpit Commentary. Edited by H. D. M. Spence, and Joseph S. Exell. New edition. London and New York: Funk & Wagnalls Company, [n.d.]. 52 vols.

This undated edition of the English work carries the statement: “This Book Is Manufactured Under Wartime Conditions,” etc., thus revealing that it was published sometime during the paper regulation period of the Second World War.

Salzman, Maurice. Plagiarism, the “Art” of Stealing Literary Material. Los Angeles: Parker, Stone & Baird Co., 1931. 268 pp.

Written by a lawyer, with chief emphasis on cases involving plagiarism.

Stephenson, Nathaniel W. The Day of the Confederacy. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1919. 214 pp. (In The Chronicles of America Series, Allen Johnson, editor.)

The subtitle reads: “A Chronicle of the Embattled South.” A brief, readable portrayal of conditions in the South from the time of the secession movement to Appomattox.

Theory and Practice in Historical Study: A Report of the Committee on Historiography. New York: Social Science Research Council, 1946. Church and Sabbath School Bulletin, 54. 177 pp.

The introductory page states: “The Social Science Research Council was organized in 1923 and formally incorporated in 1924. Its members are chosen from seven associated professional societies in the social sciences and from related disciplines. It is the purpose of the Council to plan and promote research in the social fields.” One of the “Associated Organizations” listed below the statement is the “American Historical Association.” Different chapters are written by different historians. It thoroughly exposes the fallacy that history can rather easily be written from an assortment of undebatable, objective facts, and discusses subjective prejudices of various writers. [683] United States Statutes at Large.

The permanent record of the acts of the United States Congress, beginning with the first session, and still in progress. It includes laws, resolutions, proclamations, treaties, etc. Vols. 1-8 are a compilation (1789-1845); thereafter each volume contains the various kinds of enactments for the years covered by the volume.

Wesley, John. Explanatory Notes Upon the New Testament. 4th American ed. New York: J. Soule and T. Mason, for the Methodist Episcopal Church in the United States, 1818. 768 pp.

Periodicals

The Advent Herald.

Beginning with February, 1844, this was the name of the Boston journal formerly known as Signs of the Times, one of the principal and official organs of the Millerites, under the control of Himes. It continued for some years after 1844 as a chief organ of the central body of first-day Adventists.

Canright, D. M. “Seventh-day Adventism Renounced,” The Michigan Christian Advocate, July 16-Oct. 15, 1887 (vol. 13, nos. 30, 32-36, 38-43), p. 2 in each issue.

The basis for his book of the same title published in 1889.

Crosier, O. R. L. “The Law of Moses,” The Day-Star, Extra, February. 7, 1846 (vol. 9), pp. 1-8.

This article constitutes the entire issue with the exception of about a column and a half. The Day-Star was a Millerite paper published in Cincinnati, Ohio, for a few years.

Editorial, “Fashion as a Dress Reformer,” The Independent, Oct. 23, 1913 (vol. 76, no. 3386), pp. 151, 152.

Royden, A. Maude. “The Destructive Younger Generation,” Ladies’ Home Journal, March, 1924 (vol. 41, no. 3), p. 31.

Soehren, Irene E. “Coronary Thrombosis Not a Death Sentence,” Hygeia, March, 1948 (vol. 26, no. 3), pp. 182, 183, 214, 215.

Hygeia (now Today’s Health) is one of the publications of the American Medical Association.

Newspapers

The Battle Creek Daily Journal, May 27, 1907.

The Battle Creek Moon, April 29, 1907.

The [Detroit] Echo, Aug. 10, 1881.

The Lansing Republican, Aug. 9, 1881.

The Times (London), Jan. 20, July 4, 1863.

Medical Literature Consulted in the Preparation of Chapter 4 Books

[In harmony with the usual style in bibliographies, the medical and other learned degrees of the authors are not listed.]

Brain, W. Russell. Diseases of the Nervous System. 3d ed. London: Geoffrey Cumberlege, Oxford University Press, 1947. 987 pp.

Brawner, James N. The Mind and Its Disorders. Atlanta: Walter W. Brown Publishing Co., 1942. 228 pp.

Cecil, Russell L., editor. A Textbook of Medicine by American Authors. 5th ed., rev. Philadelphia and London: W. B. Saunders Co., 1940. 1744 pp. [684] Cobb, Stanley. Foundations of Neuropsychiatry. 2d ed., rev. and enlarged. Baltimore: The Williams & Wilkins Co., 1941. 231 pp. [Formerly known as A Preface to Nervous Disease.]

Ewen, John H. Mental Health. London: Edward Arnold & Co., 1947. 270 pp.

Grinker, Roy R., and Bucy, Paul C. Neurology. 4th ed., completely rev. Springfield, Ill.: C. C. Thomas, 1949. 1138 pp.

Muncie, Wendell. Psychobiology and Psychiatry. 2d ed. St. Louis: The C. V. Mosby Company, 1948. 620 pp.

Nielsen, J. M. A Textbook of Clinical Neurology. 1st ed. New York, London: P. B. Hoeber, Inc., 1941. 672 pp.

Noyes, Arthur Percy. Modern Clinical Psychiatry. 3d ed. Philadelphia: W. B. Saunders Co., 1948. 525 pp.

------, and Hayden, Edith M. A Textbook of Psychiatry. 3d ed. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1940. 315 pp.

Richards, Thomas William. Modern Clinical Psychology. 1st ed. New York, London: McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc., 1946. 331 pp.

Strecker, Edward A., and others. Practical Clinical Psychiatry. 6th ed. Philadelphia: The Blakiston Co., 1947. 476 pp.

Tredgold, Alfred Frank. Manual of Psychological Medicine. London: Baillière, Tindall and Cox, 1943. 298 pp.

Wechsler, Israel S. A Textbook of Clinical Neurology. 5th ed., rev. Philadelphia: W. B. Saunders Co., 1943. 840 pp.

Yater, Wallace Mason. The Fundamentals of Internal Medicine, 2d ed. New York and London: D. Appleton-Century Company, Incorporated, 1944. 1204 pp. Periodical

Lennox, William G. “Psychiatry, Psychology and Seizures,” The American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, July, 1949 (vol. 19, no. 3), pp. 432-446.

PART II: Seventh-day Adventist Works

(Except Works by Mrs. E. G. White)

Listed here are all the publications by Seventh-day Adventists—other than Mrs. White—up to 1851. Included is the T. M. Preble tract. Preble was, for a few years—1844 to 1847—a Sabbathkeeping Adventist. Works issued after 1851 are listed here only if they are cited in this present book or if some portion of them is from the pen of Mrs. E. G. White.

The first publishing plant of the Seventh-day Adventists, formerly located in Battle Creek, and known under various names, eventually became known as the “Review and Herald Publishing Association,” now located in Washington, D.C. Books published by it while in Battle Creek bear various imprints, as (Steam Press of the) Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association, Review and Herald Office, etc.

The second publishing house, established at Oakland, California, as the Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association, later took its present name “Pacific Press,” and afterward moved to Mountain View, California.

Books—Pamphlets—Tracts

Andrews, John N. The Three Messages of Revelation XIV, 6-12. Particularly the Third Angel’s Message, and Two-Horned Beast. Battle Creek: Review and Herald Office, 1860. 135 pp. [685] This paper-covered volume gives one of the earliest extended treatments, in pamphlet form, of the three angels’ messages and the second beast of Revelation 13.

An Appeal to Mothers. See White, Ellen G. and others, in this same section of the Bibliography.

An Appeal to the Youth. Battle Creek: Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association, 1864. 95 pp.

The occasion for the book was the death of Mrs. White’s son, Henry, Dec. 8, 1863, at age of 16, buried in Battle Creek, Mich., Dec. 21. The first part is the funeral address by Uriah Smith; the second, a “Brief Narrative of the Life, Experience, and Last Sickness of Henry N. White,” by Adelia P. Patten. Pages 40-80 are “His Mother’s Letters,” letters she had written to her three sons, Henry, Edson, and Willie, between Dec. 24, 1857 and Oct. 23, 1863. Pages 81-95 are “Words of Sympathy” from leading workers.

Bates, Joseph. The Opening Heavens. New-Bedford: Press of Benjamin Lindsey, 1846. 39 pp.

The author gives, in his preface, two prime reasons for writing: first, to present the truth of God; second, to correct the spiritualizing view that the Second Advent of Christ is only the spiritual coming of Christ into hearts of those converted. The preface is dated “Fairhaven, May 8, 1846.” A bracketed note below the preface reads: “The copy right is secured with Him that sits upon the Throne in the coming Heavenly Sanctuary. The grant to use it is unlimited. Those only are punished that abuse the right.” The contents of the pamphlet are indicated by the subtitle: “A Connected View of the Testimony of the Prophets and Apostles, Concerning the Opening Heavens, Compared with Astronomical Observations, and of the Present and Future Location of the New Jerusalem, the Paradise of God.” By “opening heavens” Bates refers to the nebula in Orion then recently brought under study through a “monster” telescope. He writes chiefly of the literal Second Advent and a literal sanctuary in heaven.

------. The Seventh Day Sabbath, A Perpetual Sign, From the Beginning, to the Entering Into the Gates of the Holy City, According to the Commandment. New-Bedford: Benjamin Lindsey, 1846. 48 pp.

Preface dated “Fairhaven, August 1846.” The author discusses the main points of the Sabbath doctrine. He states that sixteen months ago he read an article by T. M. Preble and was persuaded that the “seventh day was the Sabbath,” but “contrary views did, after a little, shake my position some.” But now, he says, he is firmly and forever established.

A “second edition revised and enlarged” (63 pp.) was printed in 1847, with the preface dated “Fairhaven, Jan. 1847.” The most striking addition is a section setting forth, for the first time in Seventh-day Adventist literature, the view that the mark of the beast is the false Sabbath, Sunday. See pages 58, 59.

------. Second Advent Way Marks and High Heaps. New-Bedford: Benjamin Lindsey, 1847. 80 pp.

The scope of the pamphlet suggested by the subtitle: “A Connected View, of the Fulfilment of Prophecy, by God’s Peculiar People, From the year 1840 to 1847.” The title is borrowed, in part, from Jeremiah 31:21. Bates tersely discusses ten “way marks” in connection with the experience of the Advent believers during the preceding seven years. The discussion is a blend of prophetic and historical; some important early historical facts can be gleaned from it.

------. A Seal of the Living God. New Bedford: Benjamin Lindsey, 1849. 72 pp.

Preface dated “Fairhaven, Mass., Jan. 1849.” The subtitle reads: “A Hundred Forty-four Thousand, of the Servants of God Being Sealed, In 1849.” It is rather diffuse and includes speculations as to certain nations that Bates thought would fulfill certain prophecies. He discusses also Mrs. White’s visions, including [686] sentences she spoke while in vision at Dorchester, Mass., November, 1848. It is the earliest systematic endeavor by a Seventh-day Adventist writer to expound the meaning of the apocalyptic 144,000.

------. An Explanation of the Typical and Anti-Typical Sanctuary, by the Scriptures. With a Chart. New Bedford: Benjamin Lindsey, 1850. 16 pp.

Brief treatment of the sanctuary doctrine. Bates states that when Christ entered the most holy place to perform His ministry there, the “door was shut.” He explains that the coming of the Bridegroom, which the Millerites had interpreted as Christ’s coming to earth, was Christ’s coming before the Father, in fulfillment of Daniel 7:9, 10, 13. By faulty analogy he reasoned: “The seven spots of blood on the Golden Altar and before the Mercy Seat, I fully believe represents the duration of the judicial proceedings on the living saints in the Most Holy, ... even seven years.”—Page 10. Thus he fell into a time-setting error, that fixed Christ’s return as the autumn of 1851.

------. The Early Life and Later Experience and Labors of Elder Joseph Bates. Edited by James White. Battle Creek: Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association, 1878. 320 pp.

The editor’s preface states: “The body of this work is a reprint of the Autobiography of Elder Joseph Bates.” The author’s preface gives 1868 as the date of writing. The editor states that he has written simply the “introduction and closing remarks.” These, though brief, throw some light on the character of Bates.

Historical Sketches of the Foreign Missions of the Seventh-day Adventists. Basle: Imprimerie Polyglotte, 1886. 294 pp. (Printed in double columns.)

A compilation consisting of the history of the birth and growth of Seventh-day Adventist missions in certain lands, written by different church leaders; of reports of missionary councils; and of certain addresses and notes of travel by Mrs. E. G. White. See, under the section on her works, “Practical Addresses,” etc. (1886).

How to Live. Edited by James White. Battle Creek: Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association, 1865. 6 pamphlets.

A series of six pamphlets on general subject of health, each separately identified by a subtitle, “Number One,” “Number Two,” etc.; 64 pages each, except No. 5, which is 80 pages. Each number contains contributions by various writers who stress the importance of right habits of living, proper food, etc., as vital to good health. In each number is an article by Mrs. White, carrying the general title, “Disease and Its Causes,” and progressively subtitled Chapter 1, Chapter 2, etc. These contributions total 75 pages of the 400 pages.

Hull, Moses. The Bible From Heaven: or, A Dissertation on the Evidences of Christianity. Battle Creek: Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association, 1863. 182 pp.

An apologetic for the Bible and Christianity. From this work Canright drew heavily in writing his book by a similar name in 1878.

Loughborough, J. N. Rise and Progress of the Seventh-day Adventists. Battle Creek: General Conference Association of the Seventh-day Adventists, 1892. 392 pp.

A brief history of Seventh-day Adventists, With discussion of the Millerite Movement in early chapters. The preface, dated “April 14, 1892,” states: “Since November, 1853, I have kept a diary of daily occurrences. The narrative from that date is from the record of this diary.”

------. The Great Second Advent Movement. Washington: Review and Herald Publishing Assn., [n. d.]. 480 pp.

A rewrite and enlargement of his Rise and Progress. The preface is dated “May 1, 1905.” The copyright was secured in 1905 by Southern Publishing Association, Nashville, and transferred in 1909 to Review and Herald Publishing Association. [687] Nichol, Francis D. The Midnight Cry. Washington: Review and Herald Publishing Association, 1944. 560 pp.

Documented work on Advent Awakening in America in 1840’s, known generally as Millerism. The subtitle of second printing (Jan. 1945) reads: “A defense of the character and conduct of William Miller and the Millerites, who mistakenly believed that the second coming of Christ would take place in the year 1844.” It contains a rather complete bibliography of Millerite publications.

------. Reasons for Our Faith. Washington: Review and Herald Publishing Assn., 1947. 444 pp.

A discussion of certain historical and doctrinal aspects of Seventh-day Adventist belief, particularly in relation to erroneous conceptions of these beliefs that have been entertained by some non-Adventists.

Preble, T. M. Tract, Showing That the Seventh Day Should Be Observed as the Sabbath, Instead of the First Day; “According to the Commandment.” Nashua [N. H.]: Printed by Murray & Kimball, 1845. 12 pp.

Content of tract rather fully stated in lengthy title. The prefatory note reads: “The substance of the following pages, was first published in ‘The Hope of Israel,’ Feb. 28, 1845.” The author explains that he considers the subject so important that he deems it a “duty to publish it in the present form, with an enlargement, that it may have as wide a circulation as possible.” This explanatory note is dated “March, 1845.” Joseph Bates read this presentation and was persuaded of the Sabbath truth. Preble, however, soon abandoned the doctrine.

Reavis, D. W. I Remember. Washington: Review and Herald Pub. Assn., [1935]. 143 pp.

D. W. Reavis was for many years intimately associated with the work of the Seventh-day Adventist denomination; he was actively connected with the Review and Herald publishing house until almost the close of his life.

Seventh-day Adventist Year Book for 1894. Battle Creek: General Conference Association of Seventh-day Adventists, [1894].

A directory of the General Conference and of various conferences, missions, and institutions.

Smith, Uriah. The Visions of Mrs. E. G. White. Battle Creek: Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association, 1868. 144 pp.

Brief answers to 52 objections to the visions and teachings of Mrs. White. A number of these objections no longer have vogue. Others have been revamped and restated by opponents in later years. It is paper-covered, and the page size is small. The reader could wish only that the author had written more comprehensively on many objections. It is largely a reprint of material published shortly before in the Review and Herald.

A Solemn Appeal. See White, James, editor.

White, Ellen G. and James. Christian Temperance and Bible Hygiene. Battle Creek: Good Health Publishing Company, 1890. 268 pp.

Division into two parts is indicated on title page, with display line Christian Temperance, and below it, “by Mrs. E. G. White“: then the display line, Bible Hygiene, and below it, “by Eld. James White.” To page 162 constitutes Christian Temperance. The preface is by Dr. J. H. Kellogg, who speaks at length of Mrs. White’s remarkable insight into the subject of healthful living. The portion of book by James White was compiled from his writings.

------, and others. An Appeal to Mothers. Battle Creek: Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association, 1864. 63 pages.

First 34 pages written by Mrs. White on subject of moral purity, particularly as relating to children and youth. Pages 35-63 consist of statements by “men of high standing and authority in the medical world, corroborative of the views presented in the preceding pages.”—Page 34. [688] White, James. Life Incidents, in Connection With the Great Advent Movement, as Illustrated by the Three Angels of Revelation XIV. Battle Creek: Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association, 1868. 373 pp.

Largely a reprint from a series of articles for the Review and Herald regarding important incidents in connection with the rise of the Advent movement. It is semiautobiographical.

------. Life Sketches. Ancestry, Early Life, Christian Experience, and Extensive Labors, of Elder James White, and His Wife, Mrs. Ellen G. White. Battle Creek: Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association, 1880. 416 pp.

James White weaves in a portion of Mrs. White’s life history in her own words, by an extended quotation from her (pp. 131-324), followed immediately by James White’s words: “The volume from which the foregoing is taken was written by Mrs. White in 1860.” He refers to Spiritual Gifts, volume 2. The second major quotation from her (pp. 362-365) was taken from the section “Our Publications,” in Testimony No. 29.

Pages 9-125 contain essentially the same material as that found on pages 2-120, 168-184, 191-209 of James White’s Life Incidents (published in 1868). The last part of the book deals largely with the history and growth of the denomination.

An 1888 edition by the same publisher contains 453 pages. The first nine chapters (through page 327) follow the lives of James and Ellen White as they are given in the 1880 edition. Chapter 10 is an account of travel quoted from Mrs. White, and a story of the death of Henry N. White written by Adelia P. Patten. The remainder of the book (chapters 11-16), prepared by an unidentified author, sketches further development of denominational work and describes further experiences of James White, including his last illness and death.

------, editor. A Solemn Appeal. Battle Creek: Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association, 1870. 272 pp.

The nature of the book is revealed by the full title: A Solemn Appeal Relative to Solitary Vice, and the Abuses and Excesses of the Marriage Relation. Certain chapters were written by Mrs. White. See, under the section on her works, “Appeal to Mothers,” etc. (1870).

------, editor. A Word to the “Little Flock.” Gorham, Me.: James White, 1847. 24 pp.

First publication to present collective viewpoint on the part of those who constituted nucleus of slowly developing group that later became Seventh-day Adventist denomination. The work is primarily a James White production. His contributions fill about 15 pages; Mrs. White’s, about 8; and Bates’s, one. The material had been written for the Millerite paper the Day-Dawn, but it ceased publication suddenly. James White’s introductory note is dated “Brunswick, Maine, May 30, 1847.” On page 24 is: “This Pamphlet” could be “had by application, post paid,” which we understand to mean “free,” as much of the early literature of the Adventists was thus distributed. He gives his post office address as “Gorham, Me.” A facsimile edition, plus title page, page of introduction, and six pages of appendix, was published in 1944 by the Review and Herald Publishing Association, Washington, D.C. For further comment on authorship, see pages 274, 275 of the present work.

------, editor. See also How to Live.

White, W. C., Robinson, D. E., and White, A. L. The Ellen G. White Books. 5th ed. Takoma Park, D.C.: The Trustees of the Ellen G. White Publications, 1950. 15 pp.

“The story of the writing and publication of the ‘Conflict of the Ages Series’ and the ‘Testimonies for the Church.’” It is one of five brochures reprinted from The Ministry, issued by the Trustees. The others, all by Arthur [689] L. white, are: Ellen G. White—The Human-Interest Story; The Prophetic Gift in Action; Prophetic Guidance in Early Days; The Custody and Use of the Ellen G. White Writings.

Periodicals

(In Chronological Order)

The Present Truth.

First periodical published by Seventh-day Adventists. The first volume, of eleven eight-page numbers, was published between July, 1849, and November, 1850. Dates and places of publication are as follows:

No. 1, Middletown, Conn., July, 1849

No. 2, Middletown, Conn., August, 1849

No. 3, Middletown, Conn., August, 1849

No. 4, Middletown, Conn., September, 1849

No. 5, Oswego, N. Y., December, 1849

No. 6, Oswego, N. Y., December, 1849

No. 7, Oswego, N. Y., March, 1850

No. 8, Oswego, N. Y., March, 1850

No. 9, Oswego, N. Y., April, 1850

No. 10, Oswego, N. Y., May, 1850,

No. 11, Paris, Me., November, 1850.

It is devoted largely to an exposition and a defense of the Sabbath. Its notes and news items have value to the historian. Republished in photographic facsimile, with The Advent Review, by the Review and Herald, Washington, D.C., in a bound book entitled Facsimile Reproductions of the Present Truth and the Advent Review (1946), prefaced with a four-page statement entitled “Historical Setting of These Documents.”

The Advent Review.

Not to be confused with The Advent Review and Sabbath Herald. The title, The Advent Review, describes:

(1) a publication consisting of five numbers: Vol. 1, Nos. 1, 2, August, 1850; Nos. 3, 4, September, 1850; No. 5, November, 1850. The first four (16 pages each) were published in Auburn, New York, the fifth (8 pages), was published in Paris, Maine. The purpose of the publication, as set forth in No. 1, was “to cheer and refresh the true believer, by showing the fulfilment of Prophecy in the past wonderful work of God, in calling out, and separating from the world and nominal church, a people who are looking for the second advent of the dear Saviour.” Many extracts from Millerite leaders were printed, partly to prove to other Millerites that this Sabbathkeeping group were the ones truly keeping the “original faith.” The following are listed as “Publishing Committee“: Hiram Edson, David Arnold, Geo. W. Holt, Samuel W. Rhodes, and James White.

(2) a 16-page Extra, carrying the same main head, The Advent Review, consisting of one article by Hiram Edson. The only date line, “Port Gibson, N. Y. Sept. 1850,“ is at the close, accompanying the author’s name. The subject largely consists of questions in controversy between first-day and Sabbathkeeping Adventists.

(3) a 48-page reprint of leading articles that had appeared in the first four numbers of the Advent Review. The same “Publishing Committee” that sponsored Nos. 1 to 5 sponsored this. The only date given is “1850” on the cover page.

See under The Present Truth regarding facsimile reproduction.

The Advent Review and Sabbath Herald. General church paper of Seventh-day

Adventists. Vol. 1, No. 1, carries the date line “Paris, Me., November, 1850.” The first title was Second Advent Review, and Sabbath Herald, but beginning [690] with volume 2, August 5, 1851, the opening word Second was dropped off. It is rather generally called, simply, Review and Herald. It was first published monthly, then semi-monthly, with some irregularity, and later weekly. The first issue contained this editorial note: “The REVIEW and HERALD is designed to be strictly confined to those important truths that belong to the present time. We hope to be able to send you this enlarged size of the paper quite often, containing a simple and clear exposition of those great and sanctifying truths embraced in the message of the third angel, viz: the ‘commandments of God and the faith of Jesus.’ “—Page 7. “This enlarged size of the paper,” refers certainly to Present Truth, and probably was intended to include also the Advent Review.

The Health Reformer.

First health periodical published by Seventh-day Adventists. Vol. 1, No. 1 was dated “Battle Creek, Mich., August, 1866.” It was a monthly. Early volumes carried the display line: “Published monthly at the Western Health-Reform Institute.” This was the original name of the Battle Creek Sanitarium. With Vol. 14, No. 1, Jan., 1879, the name was changed to Good Health. The explanation was: “People are afraid of reforms. They are willing to be improved, to be educated, to have errors pointed out and new truths brought to their notice; but to be reformed, they are not so desirous.”—The Health Reformer, December, 1878, p. 380.

The Signs of the Times.

A weekly doctrinal, evangelizing journal founded by James White at Oakland, California, in 1874. After the first few issues he turned it over to the California Conference, and the next year the publishing house was established as the Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association (now the Pacific Press Publishing Association), which has issued the Signs ever since.

General Conference Daily Bulletin.

A special paper published, generally daily, during a session of the General Conference, giving proceedings, addresses, etc. Sometimes the word Daily is not used in the title. Issued first in 1887. [691]

Chart

Nichols, Otis. A Pictorial Illustration of the Visions of Daniel & John and Their Chronology. Dorchester, Mass.: O. Nichols, [1851]. (30 × 43½ in.)

Manuscripts

Archives of the Ellen G. White Publications, General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists, Takoma Park, Washington, D.C.

This manuscript collection, coming from the E. G. White Estate, includes three groups:

1. The Ellen G. White Manuscript File, comprising (a) letters, and (b) other manuscripts, written by Ellen G. White, which are designated serially by letter numbers or manuscript numbers, as the case may be, under each year.

2. The Document File: miscellaneous historical documents, compilations, and reference material, listed under Document File numbers.

3. The Miscellaneous Correspondence File: letters received by Mrs. White and letters to and from members of her Office staff.

Edson, Hiram. Fragment of an undated manuscript on his life and experience, in the Advent Source Collection, Seventh-day Adventist Theological Seminary, Washington, D.C.

This portion of his manuscript deals with his experience following the disappointment of October 22, 1844, and his new view of the sanctuary.

Miller, William. Letter to I. O. Orr, Dec. 13, 1844, in the Adventual Collection, Aurora College, Aurora, Ill.

PART III: Ellen G. White’s Works

(In Chronological Order)

Mrs. White’s writings, including compilations and posthumous works, present a certain problem to the bibliographer. It is not difficult to present an annotated list of all her major writings, even though some of these were published as pamphlets. And that has been done here. But, as might be expected, through the long years a considerable number of E. G. White leaflets and pamphlets have been published. For example, a sermon she preached at some place or an address at an institution might be published as a leaflet and given a limited circulation in a local area. Again, a letter that she wrote to a church might likewise be published and briefly circulated in an area, or the circulation might be widespread, if the matters discussed were of general significance. Almost invariably the material in such special leaflets was ultimately incorporated either in part or in whole in one or another of Mrs. White’s books, which, in most instances, are still currently published. Again, some special situation or denominational need might prompt the publication of a few selections from her works on a particular subject, for example, on education or on medical work.

These leaflets and pamphlets, with the exception of a few in the early years, are not in the main stream of Mrs. White’s writings, but rather are rivulets flowing either into or out from the main stream. To list all these would only needlessly lengthen a bibliography of her writings, and would discuss many small publications that are no longer available in any library for study. The mortality rate of leaflets, whether secular or religious, is always appalling. They seem to disappear, like man, who, with the grass, today is and tomorrow is cast into the oven. And the place thereof knows them no more. Only in the office of the Ellen G. White Publications is there a complete list of these peripheral publications.

The technical reader of a bibliography of Mrs. White’s writings will need to keep in mind another fact. The publisher listed is the one first publishing the work. By a special arrangement among the Seventh-day Adventist publishing houses in North America, certain books published by one house may later be published by the others, each publishing house giving only its own name on the title page, or in a few instances, the names of the other houses in small type below. In the case of certain of Mrs. White’s major works, there is a subscription edition and a trade edition. The first is on heavier paper and well illustrated, the second is on thin paper and generally not illustrated. The text is the same in both editions, but in some instances the pagination is different.

With the foregoing exceptions noted, the following list may he described as a complete bibliography of Mrs. White’s works from her first printed article in 1846, until the latest compilation work in 1950.

Mrs. White’s works carry her name variously as Ellen G. White, E. G. White, and Mrs. E. G. White, except her initial writings, which are under her maiden name, Ellen G. Harmon.

Bibliographical data are based on the oldest edition available. If the edition is not the first, a bracketed note gives date of first edition as ascertained by the office of the Ellen G. White Publications.

Many of Mrs. White’s works have gone through various printings and editions. No attempt has been made to list these except in those instances where a significant change in form or content is involved.

Periodical Articles

“Letter From Sister Harmon,” The Day-Star, January 24, 1846 (vol. 9, nos. 7, 8), pp. 31, 32.

This letter, dated “Portland, Me., Dec. 20, 1845,” presents Mrs. White’s first vision. This is the first time she appears in print. [692] “Letter From Sister Harmon,” The Day-Star, March 14, 1846 (vol. 10, no. 2), p. 7.

This letter, dated “Falmouth Mass., Feb. 15, 1846,” presents further visions, and is Mrs. White’s second appearance in print.

Broadsides

The term broadside describes a work printed on one side of one sheet. The first of Mrs. White’s three broadsides, dated April 6, 1846, was printed before her marriage, and thus carries her maiden name, Ellen G. Harmon.

To the Little Remnant Scattered Abroad. Portland, [Maine], April 6, 1846. (12 × 16 in.)

Other than the date line below signature at bottom of page, there is nothing to identify the source of this document. The first 76 per cent of the matter is material now appearing in Early Writings, 13-20. The next 17 per cent is matter now appearing in Early Writings, 54-56, as the section entitled “End of the 2300 Days.” The remaining 7 per cent is a vision on the time of Jacob’s trouble; it has not been reprinted. Rare.

A Vision. New-Bedford [Mass.]: Benjamin Lindsey, April 7, 1847. (8½× 13 in.)

Under the head is a line, in the format of a periodical, displayed from left to right thus: “Vol. 1. Topsham (Me.) April 7, 1847. No. 1.” There is nothing in available sources to suggest that more than one number was published. Approximately 70 per cent of the matter is a vision now currently printed in Early Writings, 32-35. The remaining 30 per cent is a comment by Joseph Bates, who describes himself, in closing, as “the editor,” in which he gives certain reasons that have persuaded him that Mrs. White manifests the true gift of the Spirit of prophecy. Rare.

To Those Who Are Receiving the Seal of the Living God. Topsham, [Maine], Jan. 31, 1849. (11 × 16 in.)

Other than the date line below the signature at the bottom of the page, there is nothing to identify the source of this broadside. Under the title, in display lines across the page, appear the words of Acts 2:16-18. There are four separate items, divided typographically. The first 37 per cent of the matter now constitutes pages 36-38 of Early Writings; the next 8 per cent constitutes page 41 of Early Writings; the next 25 per cent constitutes pages 39, 40 of Early Writings; and the remaining 30 per cent appears, with some deletions and additions, as the chapter, “Duty in View of the Time of Trouble,” Early Writings, 56-58. Rare.

Books—Pamphlets

Letter to Eli Curtis, Apr. 21, 1847, also reprints of “To the Remnant Scattered Abroad,” and Letter to Joseph Bates, April 7, 1847, in A Word to the “Little Flock” (edited by James White), pp. 11-14, 14-18, and 18-20 respectively. Gorham, Me.: James White, 1847.

The letter to Curtis is published only in this pamphlet, but the other two items are reprinted from the broadsides To the Little Remnant Scattered Abroad (1846) and A Vision (1847), which see. For the authorship and composition of A Word to the “Little Flock,“ see pages 274, 275 of the present work.

A Sketch of the Christian Experience and Views of Ellen G. White. Saratoga Springs, N. Y.: James White, 1851. 64 pp.

Significant, historically, as the first E. G. White volume. The first few pages give autobiographical data, and the remainder consists of the relation of her visions and spiritual exhortation. It is largely a reprint of material that had appeared on a broadside and in articles from Present Truth. It is usually called simply Experience and Views.

In 1882 this work was reprinted (with a short appendix) along with the 1854 Supplement under one cover, the latter with separate pagination but no [693] title page; it carried a “Preface to the Second Edition,” followed by the original 1851 preface of James White. Later in 1882 this second edition was, with another work, combined in, and supplanted by, a publication under the general title Early Writings of Mrs. White, which see.

Supplement to the Christian Experience and Views of Ellen G. White. Rochester, N. Y.: James White, 1854. 48 pp.

First 14 pages are comments on and clarification of passages in her 1851 pamphlet that had been misunderstood or critically attacked. Pages 15-23 carry an article on “Gospel Order.” Then follow reprints of articles by her from the Review and Herald, and additional new material of a spiritual nature or in further explanation of her 1851 work.

In 1882 the Supplement was appended to a second edition of Experience and Views, in which form it was incorporated immediately into Early Writings, which see.

Testimony for the Church, No. 1, etc.

A series of works from Mrs. White’s pen, carrying a consecutive numbering, that began to be published in 1855 under the title Testimony for the Church. Following is the list of these as they appeared, with number, year of publication, and pages.

No. 1—1855, 16 pp.

No. 2—1856, 16 pp.

No. 3—1857, 16 pp.

No. 4—1857, 39 pp.

No. 5—1859, 32 pp.

No. 6—1861, 64 pp.

No. 7—1862, 63 pp.

No. 8—1862, 64 pp.

No. 9—1863, 32 pp.

No. 10—1864, 64 pp.

No. 11—1867, 53 pp.

No. 12—1867, 96 pp.

No. 13—1867, 80 pp.

No. 14—1868, 102 pp.

No. 15—1868, 96 pp.

No. 16—1868, 104 pp.

No. 17—1869, 192 pp.

No. 18—1870, 208 pp.

No. 19—1870, 96 pp.

No. 20—1871, 199 pp.

No. 21—1872, 200 pp.

No. 22—1872, 192 pp.

No. 23—1873, 116 pp.[308]

No. 24—1875, 192 pp.

No. 25—1875, 192 pp.

No. 26—1876, 208 pp.

No. 27—1876, 190 pp.

No. 28—1879, 192 pp.

No. 29—1880, 192 pp.

No. 30—1881, 192 pp.

No. 31—1882, 244 pp.

No. 32—1885, 238 pp.

No. 33—1889, 288 pp.

Nos. 1-30 paper covered, with average over-all page size about 4 × 6 in.; Nos. 31-33 clothbound, with larger page size.

Nos. 1-25 published at Battle Creek, Mich., by what is now known as the Review and Herald Publishing Association.

Nos. 26, 27 published by the Pacific Press, Oakland, Calif.

Nos. 28-30 published by the Review and Herald.

Nos. 31-33 carry names of both publishing houses.

(Beyond No. 33 the Testimonies appear only as consecutive volumes of Testimonies for the Church.)

The greater part of Testimony No. 4 was reprinted in 1860 as part of a work called Spiritual Gifts, vol. 2. Testimonies Nos. 1-10, except No. 4, were reprinted in Spiritual Gifts, vol. 4, with an introductory note reading in part: “It has been thought best to re-print them, as given in the following pages, omitting local and personal matters, and giving those portions only which are of practical and general interest and importance.... E.G.W.”

From 1871 to 1879 Nos. 1-28 appeared in bound volumes, grouped as follows:

1871—Nos. 1-11, 535 pp., reset and consecutively numbered.

1871—Nos. 12-16, 495 pp., reset and consecutively numbered.

1871—Nos. 17-19, not reset, separate paging of each No. retained.

1873—Nos. 20-22, not reset, separate paging of each No. retained.

1875—Nos. 23-25, not reset, separate paging of each No. retained.

1879—Nos. 26-28, not reset, separate paging of each No. retained.

(None were bound in this form beyond No. 28. These bound books carried the general title The Testimonies to the Church, plus a listing of the particular

[308]Plus 47 pp., separately numbered, by James White.

[694]

numbers included in each volume. All were published in this form by the Review and Herald.)

In 1885 began the republication of these Testimonies in what became, finally, a series of nine volumes, carrying the title: Testimonies for the Church, with type reset, index for each volume, and certain minor editing for purposes of grammar, etc. The nine volumes, with dates of publication, and contents, are as follows:

Vol. 1—1885, Nos. 1-14

Vol. 2—1885, Nos. 15-20

Vol. 3—1885, Nos. 21-25

Vol. 4—1885, Nos. 26-30

Vol. 5—1889, Nos. 31-33

Vol. 6—1900, No. 34

Vol. 7—1902, No. 35

Vol. 8—1904, No. 36

Vol. 9—1909, No. 37

Volumes 1-6 carry two publishers’ names: Pacific Press and Review and Herald. Volumes 7, 8 carry only Pacific Press. Volume 9 carries Review and Herald in large type; below, in small type, Pacific Press, Mountain View, Cal., and Southern Publishing Assn., Nashville, Tenn. The pagination is maintained to present time. The volume numbering is fixed in terms of these nine volumes.

Later, the publishers brought out an edition bound in three books. That was soon supplanted by a four-book edition, the current one. In this the 9 volumes in 4 are grouped as follows:

Book 1, old vols. 1, 2.

Book 2, old vols. 3, 4.

Book 3, old vols. 5, 6.

Book 4, old vols. 7, 8, 9.

The distinctive character of the nine volumes—separate title page, table of contents, pagination, and index—was retained. Reference to a particular volume of Testimonies for the Church, for all indexing purposes, is always in terms of the nine-volume set.

In 1936 the Southern Publishing Association published Selections From the Testimonies in three books, with contents and size of each book as follows:

Book 1—selections from Testimonies for the Church, vols. 1-3, 527 pp.

Book 2—selections from Testimonies for the Church, vols. 4, 5, 630 pp.

Book 3—selections from Testimonies for the Church, vols. 6-9, 656 pp.

In 1948 the Pacific Press published a new edition of its four-book printing of the Testimonies of the Church, the changes being a new type face and a statement, prefatory to each of the nine original volumes, giving the setting of the times in which each volume was written. There is no change in text, and the pagination is essentially the same.

In 1949 the Pacific Press Publishing Association published Testimony Treasures, in 3 volumes, consisting almost wholly of selections from the nine volumes of the Testimonies for the Church, plus a few E. G. White articles from periodicals, etc. This three-volume work was prepared primarily to provide a uniform text for abbreviated overseas editions.

Vol. 1, 605 pp.

Vol. 2, 575 pp.

Vol. 3, 591 pp.

Testimonies for the Church, volumes 1-9, consists mainly of (1) personal messages, or testimonies, to individuals or churches; and (2) general counsel on questions of holy living, church order; and discipline, and forward-looking instruction on the advancement of the institutions and world program of the church. The first half of the nine volumes of Testimonies for the Church are largely (1) and the last half largely (2). Preceding “Testimony No. 1” in the bound volumes of Testimonies for the Church are found about 100 pages of autobiographical matter, in which Mrs. White describes, chiefly, the early years of her life and labors.

Spiritual Gifts. Battle Creek: James, White, etc., 1858-64. 4 vols.

Currently available in photographic facsimile. Washington: Review and Herald Publishing Association, 1944-45. 4 vols. in 2.

The four small volumes are not numbered 1-4 on title pages, but each [695] carries the general title at the head, Spiritual Gifts, and below, and separated by a line, the distinctive title of each volume.

Volume 1. The Great Controversy, Between Christ and His Angels, and Satan and His Angels. Battle Creek: James White, 1858. 219 pages. The Preface, presenting the doctrine of spiritual gifts in the church, written by “R.F.C.” (R. F. Cottrell), is the only part not by Mrs. White. Scope of book: the fall of Satan, of man, plan of salvation, Christ’s first advent, ministry, death, resurrection, ascension, the early apostolic activity, the great apostasy, error of immortality doctrine, Reformation, succeeding declension, Advent Awakening of Nineteenth Century, Spiritualism, covetousness, the “shaking,” Babylon’s end, earth’s closing scenes.

Volume 1 was reprinted in 1882 with an altered title (Sketches From, the Life of Christ, and the Experience of the Christian Church), with a publisher’s preface in addition to the original introduction. 154 pp. In the same year it was combined with another work in Early Writings, which see.

Volume 2. My Christian Experience, Views and Labors in Connection With the Rise and Progress of the Third Angel’s Message. Battle Creek: James White, 1860. 304 pages. Almost wholly autobiographical. It is valuable as source material on history of the early years of the Seventh-day Adventist Church. A few chapters reproduce, in a historical context, portions of the early Testimonies. Pages 301-304 are a kind of postscript. The section is beaded “Testimonies,” and opens thus:

“In view of the slanderous reports circulated by a few individuals against Bro. and sister White, we feel called upon to testify that we have been personally acquainted with them and their course since 1844, and therefore know that any statements that would represent them as being in any wise connected with, or countenancing in any degree, those fanatical abominations into which some in Maine and elsewhere were drawn during the years 1844-1846, are wicked and malicious falsehoods. We have never known them to be in the least infected with the spirit or works of fanaticism, but on the contrary, as the untiring and unflinching opposers of the same.” Then follows a list of 29 names. Further statements, followed by lists of names, deal with particular incidents mentioned by Mrs. White in volume 2.

Volume 3. Important Facts of Faith, in Connection With the History of Holy Men of Old. Battle Creek: Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association, 1864. 304 pages. Introductory chapter on spiritual gifts in the church, signed “J.W.” (James White), is only part of book not by Mrs. White. The author’s preface is dated “Battle Creek, July, 1864.” It presents the story of God’s dealings with man from creation to the giving of the Decalogue at Mount Sinai.

Volume 4. Important Facts of Faith: Laws of Health, and Testimonies Nos. 1-10. Battle Creek: Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association, 1864. 156 and 160 pages. In very small type. Up to page 119 the volume is a continuation of the narrative of volume 3, carrying the story through the wilderness wanderings, Joshua, Samuel, Saul, David, Solomon, the ark of God, and the Messiah. Pages 120-151 constitute chapter 39, entitled “Health.” Here are set forth some of Mrs. White’s earliest statements on healthful living. Pages 151-156 contain two short chapters, the first a discussion of health in an autobiographical setting; the second, “Delusions of Progression,” contrasts the mighty intellects of old with those of the present day. Following page 156 a section title page reading “Testimony for the Church, Numbers One to Ten” introduces a new numbering. The introductory remark explains that the testimonies are abridged and that No. 4, largely reprinted in Spiritual Gifts, vol. 2, is not included here. Reprint fills 160 pages.

“His Mother’s Letters,” in An Appeal to the Youth, 40-80. Battle Creek: Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association, 1864.

A series of letters written to her three sons, Henry, Edson, and Willie, between Dec, 24, 1857, and Oct, 23, 1863, comprising almost half the contents [696]

of the composite work. (See An Appeal to the Youth, in Part II of this bibliography.) These letters are valuable because they reveal the character and personality of the writer; in themselves they sufficiently refute the charge that Mrs. White was mentally and nervously deranged.

“Appeal to Mothers,” in An Appeal to Mothers, 5-34. Battle Creek: Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association, 1864.

Admonitions concerning social purity in the youth. For the volume as a whole, see White, Ellen G., and others, in Part II of this bibliography.

“Disease and Its Causes,” in How to Live (edited by James White), No. 1, pp. 51-60; No. 2, pp. 25-48; No. 3, pp. 49-64; No. 4, pp. 54-64; No. 5, pp. 66-74; No. 6, pp. 57-64. Battle Creek: Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association, 1865.

See How to Live in Part II of this bibliography.

“Appeal to Mothers,” “The Marriage Relation,” “Obedience to the Law of God,” “Female Modesty,” “Sentimentalism,” five chapters in A Solemn Appeal, 49-80, 102-181. Battle Creek: Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association, 1870.

As the titles of these chapters indicate, the theme of Mrs. White’s portion of this book is largely social purity. The chapter “Appeal to Mothers” is a slightly abridged form of the chapter by the same title, published in a book by that title in 1864.

The Spirit of Prophecy. Battle Creek: Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association, 1870-1884. 4 Vols.

The theme of Spiritual Gifts, Vols. 1, 3, 4, is amplified in The Spirit of Prophecy, Vols. 1-4. The subject is much more fully covered in the latter, and generally in a wholly new way.

Volume 4 was published jointly at Pacific Press and Review and Herald. At the top of the title page of each volume appears the line “Spirit of Prophecy“: below and separated by a dividing line is the separate title of each volume.

Volume 1. The Great Controversy Between Christ and His Angels and Satan and His Angels. 1870. 414 pp. After the opening chapter on the fall of Satan, the book covers from creation through to days of Solomon.

Volume 2. The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan. Life, Teachings and Miracles of Our Lord Jesus Christ. 1877. 398 pp. Contents: From first Advent of Christ to His triumphal ride into Jerusalem.

Volume 3. The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan. The Death, Resurrection and Ascension of Our Lord Jesus Christ. 1878. 392 pp. Continues theme of Vol. 2. It carries the sacred narrative from Christ’s weeping over Jerusalem through to the labors of the apostles, ending with the visit of Paul and Silas to Thessalonica.

Volume 4. The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan From the Destruction of Jerusalem to the End of the Controversy. 1884. 506 pp. Contents: Destruction of Jerusalem, persecution of early centuries, Roman apostasy, Dark Ages, Reformation and post-Reformation periods, Advent Awakening of early nineteenth century, origin of evil, Satan’s activities, Spiritualism, aims of Papacy, earth’s closing events, deliverance of saints. Ten editions of this volume were printed between 1884 and 1888; the text was unchanged until the 1888 revision. There were many printings, largely because of the fact that the book was sold by colporteurs. With the “third edition,” in 1885, illustrations were added; the words, “The Spirit of Prophecy,” and “Vol. IV,” removed from title page, and the title revised to read: The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan From the Destruction of Jerusalem to the End of Time.

The Great Controversy as the one-volume work known today dates from 1888, when the former Spirit of Prophecy, vol. 4, was published in a revised and enlarged illustrated edition, introducing substantially the text in its present form, with an appendix of general and biographical notes. All connection with the four-volume work is now dropped, and the title The Great Controversy in Seventh-day Adventist circles is generally confined to the 1888 [697] edition (which subsequently came to be described as the “old edition”), and to the “new edition” of 1911.

The 1911 edition has a few minor revisions for clarity, etc., with the pagination essentially retained, certain quotations from histories changed for others, and quotation marks added for any quotations not thus enclosed in the old edition, also credit line for all quotations. It is one of five books now known as the Conflict of the Ages Series.

Redemption. Battle Creek: Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association, 1874-78. 8 vols.

A series of pamphlets, covering the sacred narrative from the first advent of Christ to the midst of Paul’s ministry. At least some issues bore consecutive volume numbers on the paper covers, but not on the title pages. It was also bound in two volumes, with the cover title Life of Christ and His Apostles. Full titles, dates of publication; and number of pages in each, and the cover numbering as given in an 1880 series, are as follows:

Life of Christ, No 1. Redemption: or the First Advent of Christ, With His Life and Ministry. 1877. 104 pp.

No. 2. Redemption: or the Temptation of Christ in the Wilderness. 1874. 96 pp.

No. 3. Redemption: or the Teachings of Christ, the Anointed One. 1877. 128 pp.

No. 4. Redemption: or the Miracles of Christ, the Mighty One. 1877. 126 pp.

No. 5. Redemption: or the Sufferings of Christ; His Trial and Crucifixion. 1877. 96 pp.

No. 6. Redemption: or the Resurrection of Christ; and His Ascension. 1877. 80 pp.

Apostles of Christ, No. 1. Redemption: or the Ministry of Peter and the Conversion of Saul. 1878. 78 pp.

No. 2. Redemption: or the Teachings of Paul, and His Mission to the Gentiles. 1878. 80 pp.

The earliest of the eight, The Temptation of Christ (1874), was apparently written and published before the larger sweep of the subject of redemption had been planned as a series; it covers not only the Temptation, but also the “Birth and Life of Christ,” “Sacrificial Offerings,” etc., and ranges from the temptation of Adam and Eve to Christian temperance.

The theme of this series of eight, and even considerable portions of the text, are found in The Spirit of Prophecy, volumes 2, 3, and Sketches From the Life of Paul.

Bible Sanctification: A Contrast of True and False Theories. Oakland: Pacific Press, 1881. 82 pp.

This matter was reprinted in 1937 by the Review and Herald as a bound volume entitled The Sanctified Life, 69 pp.

Early Writings of Mrs. White. Battle Creek: Review and Herald; also Oakland: Pacific Press, 1882. 71, 40, 154 pp.

First there were issued separately, in 1882:

(1) A second edition of A Sketch of the Christian Experience and Views of Mrs. E. G. White (first published 1851), with a short appendix, and a publisher’s “Preface to the Second Edition” preceding the original James White preface (totaling 71 pages); to this was appended, without title page, a 40-page reprint of the 1854 Supplement to Experience and Views.

(2) A second edition of Spiritual Gifts, vol. 1 (first published in 1858), with a new title, and a new publisher’s preface (in addition to the original introduction) explaining the reasons for the reprint, and totaling 154 pages.

Later in 1882 these two reprints were combined under the general title Early Writings of Mrs. White, followed by the specific title Experience and [698] Views, and Spiritual Gifts, Volume One. Since the same plates were used, the term “second edition,” the three paginations, and the two prefaces were retained; however, the two separate title pages disappeared and were replaced by one. The preface following it, which was written concerning Experience and Views and the Supplement, says that there are no changes in text in reprinting, except minor ones dealing with grammar, etc.

A new edition of the same text was published in 1907, from new plates, with continuous paging throughout, one new publisher’s preface for whole book, and subdivisions of three parts indicated simply by subtitles. 316 pp.

Sketches From the Life of Paul. Battle Creek: Review and Herald; Oakland: Pacific Press, 1883. 334 pp.

A sketch of his life from his days as Saul the persecutor to the time of his martyrdom, from which as “the distinctive feature of the book,” “practical moral lessons are drawn for the church of today.” A joint publication, but prepared at the Pacific Press.

“Practical Addresses,” “Notes of Travel,” “Appeals for Our Missions,” three sections in Historical Sketches of the Foreign Missions of the Seventh-day Adventists, 119-249, 280-294. Basle: Imprimerie Polyglotte, 1886.

Book is divided into sections dealing with different parts of the world, plus sections on related matter. Different authors wrote these sections. Book contains 294 pp., double-column. Valuable to Adventist historian.

Testimonies for the Church. 1885. See Testimony for the Church, No. 1, etc. (1855).

The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan During the Christian Dispensation. Oakland: Pacific Press, The Ellen G. White 1888 Materials, 704 pp.

A rewriting and enlargement of volume 4 of The Spirit of Prophecy (1870-84), which see.

Special Testimonies to Ministers and Workers, Series A.

Title given to series of 12 pamphlets that consist largely of letters and portions of letters from Mrs. White to O. A. Olsen (president of the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists, 1888-1897) and other messages from her to the ministry in general. The series is numbered consecutively, but the term “Series A” was applied only after Series B was published. No publisher or dates of publication are given. The dates of letters are: from 1890 in No. 1, to 1905 in No. 12. Most of this matter was later reprinted in Testimonies to Ministers and Gospel Workers.

Patriarchs and Prophets. Battle Creek: Review and Herald; Oakland: Pacific Press, [1890]. 756 pp.

The subtitle reads: The Great Conflict Between Good and Evil as Illustrated in the Lives of Holy Men of Old. It is an amplification of the theme developed in The Spirit of Prophecy, volume 1; a first edition is not available; the earliest printings carry only the copyright date. It is a revision and an enlargement.

A new edition was issued in 1908, with minor changes in title. A scripture index and general index were added. Reillustrated. It is one of five books now known as the Conflict of the Ages Series.

“Christian Temperance,” printed in combination with James White’s “Bible Hygiene” in Christian Temperance and Bible Hygiene, 7-162. Battle Creek: Good Health Publishing Company, 1890.

A discussion of a number of basic principles of healthful living as it affects body, mind, and soul. For the complete volume see White, Ellen G. and James, in Part II of this bibliography.

Steps to Christ. Chicago: Fleming H. Revell Company, 1892. 153 pp.

Sets forth steps needed to enter into fellowship with Christ. The copyright was transferred to the Review and Herald, and from it to Ellen G. White, [699] There are many editions. There has been no change in text except for the addition of the present first chapter, which has been included continuously since the second edition. A Scripture index and general index have been added. A 144-page edition is the standard pagination for index purposes in Index to the Writings of Ellen G. White.

Gospel Workers. Battle Creek: Review and Herald, 1892. 480 pp.

Subtitle and descriptive statement on title page give scope of book and source of material: “Instruction for the Minister and the Missionary. Compiled largely from ‘Testimonies to the Church;’ together with Morning Talks Given to the Ministers of the General Conference of 1883.”

A revised and enlarged edition was published in 1915 by the Review and Herald, Washington, D.C. 534 pp. The statement on title page reads: “Compiled From the Complete Published Writings of the Author, and from Unpublished Manuscripts.” Large portions of the old edition were included, and without change of text, but the whole pattern of book was rearranged because of the additions.

Christian Education. Battle Creek: International Tract Society, 1893. 255 pp.

“Note to the Reader” states: “Some of the matter in this book has already been printed in permanent form, but scattered through various volumes; some has appeared in different periodicals, while a considerable portion has never been presented to the public before.... Articles credited to MSS. have never been published before. Other articles or extracts are credited to the book or periodical from which they were taken.” The note also states: “The book is designed not only for teachers, but also for parents.”

Thoughts From the Mount of Blessing. Battle Creek: International Tract Society, 1896. 205 pp.

Spiritual lessons drawn from Christ’s sermon on the mount. A 218-page edition, published by Pacific Press, 1900, is standard pagination for index purposes in Index to the Writings of Ellen G. White.

Christ Our Saviour. Battle Creek: International Tract Society, [1896]. 158 pp.

The earliest printings available carry only the 1896 copyright date, not date of printing. Under Mrs. White’s name on title page is the word “Adapted.” An adaptation by an unnamed writer, or writers, of certain of Mrs. White’s writings, for reading by children. It covers the whole life of Christ. It was reprinted in 1949 by the Southern Publishing Association, Nashville, under the title The Story of Jesus, 189 pp.

Instruction Relating to the Principles of Healthful Living. Battle Creek: Medical Missionary Board, 1897. 292 pp.

A compilation from the writings of Mrs. White, generally known as Healthful Living. It consists of many short selections, with an identifying reference at the close of each. 3d edition, 1898, revised and enlarged.

The Desire of Ages. Oakland: Pacific Press, [1898]. 866 pp.

A life of Christ. Many editions printed. The earliest copies available bear only the copyright date 1898; it is not possible to tell whether they were printed in that year. The book proper ends on page 835, and the remainder is notes and index. All the principal editions in English since then have retained essentially the same pagination for the book up to page 835. One of five books now known as the Conflict of the Ages Series.

Christ’s Object Lessons. Oakland: Pacific Press, 1900. 436 pp. Currently published by the Review and Herald.

Spiritual lessons drawn from the parables of Christ.

Testimonies on Sabbath-School Work. Washington, D.C.: Review and Herald, [1900]. 121 pp.

A compilation from Mrs. White’s writings, extracts arranged in chronological [700] order, with source references. Early printings carry only the copyright date. A later printing, after 1905, has 128 pages, additional extracts being inserted on pages 115 ff.

In 1938 a revised and enlarged edition was published by the Review and Herald as Counsels on Sabbath School Work, 192 pp.

Manual for Canvassers. Oakland: Pacific Press, [1902]. 70 pp.

A compilation from Mrs. White’s writings, without separate source credits. The number of pages varies, there being 78 in the printings available.

An enlargement and rearrangement was put out by the Pacific Press in 1920 as The Colporteur Evangelist, 112 pp. Each extract carries a source reference except a few, which are credited to Manual for Canvassers.

Special Testimonies. Series B.

Title given to a consecutively numbered series of 19 pamphlets to ministers, physicians, and other denominational workers on a wide range of subjects having to do chiefly with the ideals of the work, the dangers besetting it, and the advances that should be made. Most of the pamphlets are dated. No. 1, 1903. No. 19, 1913. They are published by several different publishers; some, by the author. A portion of this material is republished in Testimonies for the Church, volumes 7, 8, 9, and in Testimonies to Ministers.

Education. Oakland: Pacific Press, 1903. 321 pp.

Deals with the subject of Christian education. It is not to be confused with the 1893 book Christian Education. It is an entirely new treatment of the subject.

The Ministry of Healing. Mountain View: Pacific Press, 1905. 541 pp.

Jointly issued also by the Review and Herald and the International Tract Society. It is addressed in part to physicians, nurses, and laity, and deals with Christian principles involved in the care of the sick and the maintenance of the home. Published currently by the Pacific Press.

In 1943 the Pacific Press published an abridged edition, reillustrated, under the title Your Home and Health. 388 pp.

The Acts of the Apostles. Mountain View: Pacific Press Publishing Association, 1911. 630 pp.

As the name indicates, this work treats of the lives of the apostles. It develops the theme presented in the last part of The Spirit of Prophecy, volume 3, and, in an adapted form, draws heavily from Sketches From the Life of Paul. It is one of the five books now known as the Conflict of the Ages Series.

Counsels to Teachers, Parents and Students Regarding Christian Education. Mountain View: Pacific Press, 1913. 574 pp.

Preface states that the book is a compilation chiefly from three sources: (1) Christian Education, then out of print, (2) Special Testimonies on Education, also out of print, and (3) unpublished manuscripts. Only parts of Nos. (1) and (2) are incorporated. No. (2) is a small booklet containing much material from Mrs. White not previously published. It is not cataloged in this bibliography because it bears no title page, no date, no publisher, no author’s name, but the office of Ellen G. White Publications states it was published in 1897; all of it is reprinted either in Counsels to Teachers or in Fundamentals of Christian Education, 1923.

In 1948 the Pacific Press printed an edition entitled Counsels to Parents, Teachers, and Students Regarding Christian Education (same pagination), by which title the book will be known henceforth.

Life Sketches of Ellen G. White. Mountain View: Pacific Press, 1915. 480 pp.

Up to page 254 the work is by Mrs. White, who gives, briefly, a narrative of her life and labors up to the death of her husband in 1881. This is drawn, in part, from his Life Sketches of James and Ellen G. White (first published, 1880). [701] From page 255 to the close the narrative is continued by C. C. Crisler, assisted by W. C. White and D. E. Robinson. Large parts of this consist of quotations from her correspondence and other writings. The story carries through to the funeral service in Battle Creek, Michigan, July 24, 1915.

The Story of Prophets and Kings. Mountain View: Pacific Press, 1917. 753 pp.

The story of Israel from the time of Solomon to the prophecies of the Messiah. It was first published, with 1917 copyright, under the title The Captivity and Restoration of Israel, then changed shortly to The Story of Prophets and Kings. It is one of five books now known as the Conflict of the Ages Series. The book was prepared under Mrs. White’s supervision until “all but the last two chapters had been completed, ... and these final chapters had been sufficiently blocked out to admit of completion by the inclusion of additional matter from her manuscript file.”—Life Sketches of Ellen G. White, 436.

The Colporteur Evangelist, 1920. See Manual for Canvassers (1902).

Christian Experience & Teachings of Ellen G. White. Mountain View: Pacific Press Publishing Association, 1922. 268 pp.

Publishers’ preface states: “In this little volume there is gathered for busy readers a choice selection of short articles from the writings of Mrs. E. G. White.... It was the cherished plan of Mrs. White to prepare for publication several small volumes, containing in the fewest pages, the mighty, soul-saving truth she loved to repeat to the people by voice and pen. And the initial steps in the compilation of these volumes were taken a short time before her death.... But she did not live to see its completion.... It is a selection from her writings as found in several books and periodicals.” Her part of the work ends on page 236. On pages 259, 260 under “Sources” is found the source of each part of the body of the book.

Fundamentals of Christian Education. Nashville, Tennessee: Southern Publishing Association, 1923. 576 pages.

Preface states: “The articles in this present volume have been drawn from various sources [arranged in chronological order]. They have been selected from ‘Christian Education,’ ‘Special Testimonies on Education,’ ‘Christian Temperance and Bible Hygiene,’ Review and Herald, Signs of the Times, Youth’s Instructor, and Bible Echo. With the exception of one article, ‘Proper Education,’ no selections have been made from any other volumes of the author’s writings already in print.” Each extract carries source reference. See also Counsels to Teachers (1913).

Counsels on Health. Mountain View: Pacific Press Publishing Association, 1923. 696 pp.

Subtitle adds: and Instruction to Medical Missionary Workers. A note below the author’s name states: “A compilation from the published writings of Mrs. White as found in her books, leaflets, and periodical articles covering a period of over fifty years.” It covers the subjects of personal health, medical institutions, Christian physicians, teaching health principles, health food work, medical missionary work, and personal holiness as related to health and Christian ideals. Each extract carries source reference.

Testimonies to Ministers and Gospel Workers. Mountain View: Pacific Press Publishing Association, 1923. 544 pp.

Note on title page reads: “Selected from ‘Special Testimonies to Ministers and Workers,’ Numbers One to Eleven; and Series B, Numbers One to Eighteen; with numerous selections from other booklets and from periodicals.” The preface states that not all the material in these series is reproduced. Each extract carries source reference.

Instruction for Effective Christian Service. Washington: Home Missionary Department of the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists, 1924. 284 pp. [702]

A compilation from the writings of Mrs. White on the subject of Christian service. This is composed of numerous short quotations, each with a reference to the source from which it is drawn. It is better known as Christian Service.

Scriptural and Subject Index to the Writings of Mrs. Ellen G. White. Mountain View: Pacific Press Publishing Association, 1926. 865 pp. A comprehensive index prepared in the office of the Ellen G. White Publications.

A supplement was later added to include E. G. White works issued from 1926 to 1940.

Messages to Young People. Nashville, Tenn.: Southern Publishing Association, 1930. 499 pp.

A compilation from Mrs. White’s articles in church papers and from her books. Each extract carries source reference.

Medical Ministry. Mountain View: Pacific Press Publishing Association, 1932. 348 pp.

Subtitle gives scope of book: A Treatise on Medical Missionary Work in the Gospel. The publisher’s note states that “most of the selections in this book are from the letters and manuscripts of Ellen G. White.” Selections are drawn also from various of her published works. They are particularly focused on problems of medical education, conduct of sanitariums, teaching of health principles, and medical missionary work in large cities. Each extract carries source reference.

A Brief Sketch of the Life and Teachings of Ellen G. White. Mountain View: Pacific Press Publishing Association, 1933. 128 pp.

A paper-covered book. It is divided into two parts: “Childhood and Youth,” and “Public Ministry,” and is a compilation from various of her writings, plus connecting passages in boldface type by the compilers.

The Sanctified Life, 1937. See Bible Sanctification (1881).

Counsels on Diet and Foods. Washington: Review and Herald Publishing Association, 1938. 511 pp.

A compilation. The selections are drawn from a wide range of Mrs. White’s writings. The book consists of numerous short quotations, each with reference to original source. The book is divided into 25 principal parts.

Counsels on Sabbath School Work, 1938. See Testimonies on Sabbath-School Work (1900).

Counsels to Editors. Washington: General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists, 1939. 118 pp.

Subtitle reads: A Grouping of Messages of Counsel Addressed to Editors. The book consists of many brief selections with source reference at the close of each. Paper covered.

A second, enlarged, bound edition was published in 1946 by Southern Publishing Association, Nashville, and entitled Counsels to Writers and Editors. The second edition adds “a few articles broadening the scope to better fit the needs of the larger group to which the volume is now being released, and there has been some rearrangement of the articles.”

Counsels on Stewardship. Washington: Review and Herald Publishing Association, 1940. 377 pp.

A compilation from the writings of Mrs. White on the large subject of the proper handling of money in relation to the Bible doctrine that we are but stewards of God’s means. Each extract carries source reference.

Your Home and Health. 1943. See The Ministry of Healing (1905).

Evangelism. Washington: Review and Herald Publishing Association, 1946. 747 pp.

A compilation from the writings of Mrs. White on the subject of evangelism. It contains many brief selections, with source reference at the close of each.

The Story of Redemption. Washington: Review and Herald Publishing Association, 1947. 445 pp. [703]

A compilation from the writings of Mrs. White that presents, briefly, the sacred story from the fall of Lucifer down through earth’s history to the new earth. Selections are from The spirit of Prophecy, volumes 1, 3, and 4, Early Writings, and from articles by Mrs. White in the journal The Signs of the Times. Source references are not with the separate extracts, but are given in the contents.

Counsels to Parents, Teachers, and Students, 1948. See Counsels to Teachers, etc. (1913).

The Story of Jesus, 1949. See Christ Our Saviour (1896).

Temperance. Mountain View: Pacific Press Publishing Association, 1949. 309 pp.

A compilation from the writings of Ellen G. White on the subject of temperance. It consists of many short selections with source references.

The Remnant Church. Mountain View: Pacific Press Publishing Association, 1950, 72 pp.

A paper-covered book. The material is drawn from various of Mrs. White’s writings, including an earlier published pamphlet entitled “The Remnant Church Not Babylon.” The book was compiled, as the preface states, to settle the “matter of whether God is leading today the same people He has led for a century, and whether He will continue to lead them to a glorious climax.”

Manuscripts

See Archives of the Ellen G. White Publications, in Part II of this bibliography, for a description of the Ellen G. White Manuscript File.