The White Lie

Almost from the first time I heard of her, early in my teens, I became a devotee of Ellen G. White and her writings. I learned to type by copying from her book Messages to Young People. In high school and college, I often went from room to room in the dormitory, gathering Ellen White quotations from others to use in my preparations for becoming a minister in the Seventh-day Adventist Church. It was during those days that I conceived the idea of preparing an Adventist commentary by compiling from the writings of Ellen White all the statements pertaining to each book of the Bible, each doctrine, and each Bible character.

Early in my ministerial life (which began in central California in the latter 1940s), I compiled two volumes of Old and New Testment Bible biographies, incorporating with each entry the pertinent quotations found in Ellen Whités works. Some prominent persons in the church encouraged me in this project and thought that the Ellen G. White Estate might publish these collections to use through the book club the church was operating in those days. After a good deal of time and correspondence, I finally realized that I had been naive and that the White Estate had no thought of collaborating in such a way with anyone who appeared to be encroaching on their turf. They let me know in no uncertain terms that they held that «heavenly franchise» and that they would look with disfavor on anyonés getting into their territory.²

Independently, however, I did publish two volumes of Bible biographies and a third volume on Daniel and Revelation, all based on Ellen Whités works, and soon these books were sold in most Adventist Book and Bible houses and used in many Adventist schools and colleges in North America.

The White Estate people were not very happy about all of this, and they brought up the subject with my regional union and local conference presidents. After some backing and hauling, pushing and shoving, they all agreed that the books could be sold if I would keep a low profile inasmuch as they didn't think my volumes would be accepted on a broad scale anyway. In subsequent years, however, tens of thousands were sold.

While working on my projected volume four (Ellen Whités quotations on Bible doctrines), I happened across something interesting at Orlando, Florida, where I was pastor of the Kress Memorial Church, named for Doctors Daniel H. and Lauretta E. Kress, noted pioneers in the Adventist medical work. The Kress family gave me an old book by Ellen White, Sketches from the Life of Paul, published in 1883 but never reprinted. When I showed this book to a church member one day, I was told that the problem of the book was that it was too much like another book that had not been written by Ellen White, and that it had never been reprinted because of the close similarities. Being of an inquiring mind, I did a comparison study and discovered that some of the criticism seemed to be true.³

Later, after I transferred to California, the Wellesley P. Magan family, also from established pioneer Adventists, were members of my congregation. At the death of Wellesley's father's widow, Lillian E. Magan, I was given a book from the Magan library – Elisha the Prophet by Alfred Edersheim.⁴ On the flyleaf was Ellen Whités signature. By now, because of my constant use of Ellen Whités books, I had become so familiar with them that I readily recognized similarities of wording and thought as I examined Edersheim's book.

Still later on, while I was studying at the University of Southern California toward a Ph.D. degree, I was shocked to come across a seven-volume work on Old Testament history by the same Edersheim.⁵ This time I found, in volumes one to four, that Edersheim's chapter titles, substitles, and page headings paralleled and were many times almost identical with the chapter titles of Ellen Whités Patriarchs and Prophets (1890). Time and study made it obvious that Mrs. White had obtained liberal help from these additional Edersheim works. Further investigation would reveal that Edersheim had written also a New Testament history on the life of Christ, and in this too there were additional similarities with Mrs. Whités The Desire of Ages.⁶

Although disturbing, these findings were not too upsetting to me at that time, because the White Estate in Washington always seemed to have excuses for Ellen's «borrowing.» Not until Bruce Weaver, a young seminary student at the Adventist Andrews University in Michigan, discovered an unmarked file of my work and comparisons (in the White Estate duplicate material housed in the library there) did things begin to take on the air of a mystery tale. The White Estate accused Bruce of stealing the material from the library, although he only copied and returned it. In the end, Bruce was dismissed from the seminary and from the ministry – but not before he had taken a significant part in the drama.

What he had found in the file was not just my material and the critique of it, but copies of some White Estate in-house letters by Robert W. Olson and Arthur L. White revealing the concern these men at the office in Washington showed about Brucés discovery of the material I had been sending to them as evidence of Ellen Whités copying. Both had recorded their suggestions for dealing with the Rea problem. Subsequent years revealed that they had adopted Arthur Whités method – which was, in essence, to stonewall the matter and use as much pressure and double-talk as possible.

Olson took to the stump in an all-out effort to blunt the impact that my findings were beginning to have, for by now people in various regions of North America were asking for the evidence found in my research. At an afternoon presentation by Olson in January 1979 at Loma Linda University in California, someone in the audience asked about Mrs. Whités borrowing from published sources. Olson's reply was to the effect that there was nothing to it, that all of her writings were her own. He then volunteered that there was some minister in Southern California making waves with allegations about borrowed material for her key book, The Desire of Ages, but that there was nothing to these rumors.

To say that I was in a state of shock after the meeting is to put it mildly. My file at that very time already held several letters from that same Olson encouraging me to keep sending him my comparisons of Ellen with her contemporaries. Furthermore, he had personally talked with me when he was in California only a short time before and had sought my promise that I would not publish any report on my work until he and the White Estate staff had been given additional time to survey the material. I had agreed to his request, and the fact of the agreement had been recorded in the in-house memo that he wrote afterward and that I held in my files.

So now I knew that Robert Olson either had a very short memory or was telling a white lie. In any case, it was obvious that the White Estate people knew much more that they were telling.

The files of the White Estate had referred to a book by William Hanna called The Life of Christ.⁷ Within twenty-four hours after the Loma Linda meeting, therefore, I had obtained Hannás book. From that time on, I have learned more than I ever wanted to know.

Spectrum, a journal published independently by the Association of Adventist Forums, gave a background account of a January 1980 committee meeting at Glendale, California. This meeting was called by General Conference President Neal C. Wilson at my urging that consideration be given to the scope of the findings of Ellen Whités literary indebtedness. Eighteen of the church's appointed representatives went on record that what my research showed was alarming in its proportions but that the study should continue – with additional help.⁸

Likewise, Spectrum later reported my dismissal by the church⁹ (after thirty-six years of service) primarily because of the disclosure article initiated and written by religious editorJohn Dart and published in the Los Angeles Times.¹⁰ Not one of the officials doing the firing had ever talked with Dart. Not one had seen the research on which the article was based. The heart of the issue itself was not important to church officials. It was necessary only that someone be punished so that others would stay in line and so that both Ellen White and the Seventh-day Adventist Church would appear to be innocent of any wrongdoing.

In view of what I have observed, experienced, and learned, I have thought it proper and necessary to record for future generations the findings of my ongoing study. These coming generations will want to know the truth about what has been unearthed from the past. It will be a part of what they will take into consideration in their religious experience and judgments.

Despite much good counsel to the contrary, I have chosen the title THE WHITE LIE for my book. I do not apply that term separately and only to Ellen G. White. When we (any of us) give our consent or support to perpetuating a myth (in whole or in part) about any person or any thing, we ourselves are thereby party to a white lie. The message of this book is to help reveal to all of us that often we do indeed carry on a legend.

The worst lies that are told are often the ones told in religion – because they are told in a way that the assumption is that God endorses them and that therefore they are for our good. That that good can, and does, become harmful, wrongful, and even evil does not usually occur to those zealous persons who promote legends in the name of God.

In this study I have intended to deal not only with the facts as I have found them but also with their outworking in the church and in us personally as I have come to view that outworking. I hope also to leave a lesson or two for those who may be looking for such lessons.

Much study remains to be done on the question of why some of us accept as much as we do from whomever we do. What thing is it deep within us that is tapped to make us react as unquestioningly as we do to unreliable information – so that we make it «truth» and let it govern our thinking and our lives?

At this stage in my thinking, if there is blame left to be assessed or portioned out, I must accept much of it for having been so gullible, without adequate study or research on my own part, as to consent to much of that which was originally portrayed to me as «the truth» but which, in fact, contains much untruth that diverts us from that about which we ought to be concerned primarily. The major regret I have is that time will not allow me to correct some of the misinformation that I myself unwarily «bought» and passed on to others as the white lie.

Every institution, every corporate entity, every established system – whether political, economic, social, or religous – must have its patron saint. That saint may be a founder, a benefactor, a charismatic leader, or a long-dead mystic figure. Regardless of the category or the time period of existence, the patron is venerated even if he was a vampire; he is canonized even if he was a con artist; he is given sainthood even if he was a known sinner.

There is something in the human mind that seeks to create the unreal – to imagine or pretend that something is so even if all logic says it is not so. What is unseeable we claim is a vision; what is fallible we label perfection; what is illusory we give authority. Much study has been given to why we want to believe, and indeed have to believe, the «permissible lie.» For my purpose here, it is enough to say that we do so – and we seem to have to do so. For if we reject the fantasy we now hold, probably we will find or invent another in our effort to keep from facing reality.

The sellers of nostrums for fantasizers (who tend to hold psychic manifestations in awe) are the supersalesmen of the psychic. They are the ones who manipulate, maneuver, and massage the conscience of those they wish to convince. In all times and in all places, they have been the magicians that led the populace to believe that the emperor really was dressed with the unseeable, and that those who will listen and come to them for counsel and guidance (for which, of course, proper payment must be given) will be among the few who really do see what isn't there to see.

The element that is essential, without exception, to any con game is the lie. To be sure, it is a white lie, a small thing that deviates from the truth a little, over and over until, with the passing of time and under the right circumstances, it expands into an enormous hoax.

The techniques of the supersalesmen are few, but absolutely essential. They consist of playing down the humanity of the one to be venerated; exalting the venerated onés virtues to the level of the miraculous; denying access to reliable source records and facts of the significant past; appealing to the inclination to be superstitious (or at least gullible); and buying time.

One Webster dictionary edition says that a white lie is a minor lie uttered from polite, amiable, or pardonable motives; a polite or harmless fib.

The fact of Ellen Whités borrowing or plagiarizing has been documented and acknowledged by recognized representatives of the Seventh-day Adventist Church over the years. But the information revealing the extent of her literary dependence has been deliberately kept from lay members until independent researchers began to make the facts public. Thus new problems arise because of these discoveries that have not yet been faced by the Adventist people or their present leaders. For example:

Why did Ellen change most, if not all, of the

copied author's speculations and suppositions into absolutes, so that the

copywork made it appear that she was always on the scene of action in some

«visionary» form, when obviously she wasn't?

How do the footnotes and Bible texts she copied

as fillers from others meet the criteria established for inspiration?

How do the abuse and misuse of others' material

on an extensive scale fit into the ethics of either her time or ours?

Inasmuch as the extent of the copywork makes it

certain that for Ellen to have done it all herself was humanly impossible,

who among her helpers gets the credit for her «inspiration»?

Whose authority are we now dealing with?

We much acknowledge that since the beginning of the 1844 movement a great many people have regarded Ellen White as Adventism's principal authority. They must now find room for adjustment in their thinking (and, for many, in their living) on a level different from that of the past. This could be very distressing. Whether or not the situation in which the church now finds itself fits our definition of a white lie, and whether or not the fib has been harmless to onés own personal values, way of thinking, and life experience, each person will have to judge for himself.

To understand, in a small way, how people arrive at where they are is possible only if one looks at where they have been, what manner of salesmen sold them the trip, and what motivated them to go. It is not possible to view all these aspects in one lump. But we will touch on what circumstances make a «true believer,» what kind of supersalesmen have sold the wares, and what happens to those who buy.

Books such as The Status Seekers, The Permissible Lie, and The True Believer¹¹ hint at the connection between all disciplines – economic, social, and religious. In all these disciplines salesmen sell their product by using the white lie. Though the salesmen of social and economic ideas claim to be interested in your present, they are really more interested in theirfuture. Salesmen of the psychic claim to be interested in your future, but what they are really interested in is their present. All hucksters sell the white lie in whatever size or shape they think their public will buy. Adventists know and accept these facts of life about the systems of others; but they believe that their own system is «different» and therefore better. Very little study has been offered to prove or to disprove their belief.

Most people accept the fact that there are few, if any, holy men left selling merchandise in social or economic or political reform. What is harder for them to acknowledge or accept is that there are likewise few, if any, saints in religion. There are no holy men or women except as we ourselves make them so by our own wishful thinking. Because we have always with us this pretense factor, it is easy for the supersalesmen of religion to gain control through our own quirks and consciences and to exercise authority over our minds and actions. There have been many on this planet who have sold themselves to the world as saints offering salvation for the future – when in reality they were just supersalesmen who, by instilling guilt and fear and by bending their followers to their own will, have robbed us of our freedom to think.

As you read, keep in mind that someone has sold you the idea that what you believe deep within yourself is «unique» and has authority from God, the highest court of appeal; that you are «different» because of this authority; and that you will be «saved» if you follow the rules. The problem with this line of thinking is that your truth may be only your saint's interpretation of truth, and the pronouncements you have accepted as authority may be ideas your saint borrowed from others.

This, I think, is what the study will show concerning Ellen G. White. And if the same amount of information were available on the saints of other groups, the same would be true of them as well. Why we still want to believe what we have come to believe is what the white lie is all about.

In this odyssey that we take together, the supersalesmen will be the clergymen, the preachers, the reverends, the divines – who more than any professionals have been granted license (both by the people themselves and by the state) to peddle their wares to the unwary, to project their fears on the fearful, and to sell their guilt to the remorseful.

The patron saint will be Ellen Gould White, the canonized leader of the Seventh-day Adventist Church – who symbolizes all saints of whatever faith, and through whom the adherents approach their concept of God and seek to obtain the unobtainable salvation by appeasement of or through that saint.

The true believers will be the unwary, the fearful, the guilt-ridden, the overzealous, the well-intentioned, the unquestioning. Lacking personal confidence in God, they seek him through their chosen saint, who they think has an unfailing pipeline to the heavenly places.

Inasmuch as the body of the material presented has to do with the «literary appropriation of works of others,» I too have copied from everybody. With no sense of shame I have used material that has been lifted, borrowed, or otherwise taken outright from whatever source available or thought necessary to use for evidence and clarity.

I would gladly glve credit to all those who, by whatever method and from whatever source, brought forth material for my use so that readers may see the evidence for themselves and know the nature and extent of the Adventist white lie. But because of the nature of the subject and the administrative and peer pressures brought to bear on both position and person, those many to whom I am indebted cannot be named.

This book seeks to trace the birth, growth, and full bloom of the white lie in Adventism. It cannot explain all the strings that bind us, Gulliver-like, on our travel – because access is thus far denied to many sources of the facts. It can only point the reader to certain sources so that he can see for himself what is there to be seen.

I do not seek to show those who, having eyes, do not wish to see, or to shout at those who, having ears, do not wish to hear. But because someone has an obligation to the generations that will follow, this material is put forth to light a little candle in a world of superstition and fear and guilt. It may be that the flame, though even a small one, can help light the path to the real Saint of all saints – Jesus Christ.

– Walter Rea

With the turn of the century to the 1800s the world had a lot of patching up to do. America had had her contest with Britain and was on the doorstep of becoming a nation. The European continent was staggering to its feet after another bruising and exhausting fight with itself, not unlike what had been going on for centuries. The nations of the East (Russia being the large symbol) were still causing concern to the West, as had been so since the territories of Russian religions had fought the Battle of Tours in 732 and the Mongolian hordes had come down from the North to try to take the Holy Land from the Christians.

Though the years from 1800 to 1900 would be a time of stabilization, they would also be years of change and uncertainty, a dichotomy that is not unusual in history. Political, religious, and social values would all be re-examined-and on many levels discarded. In American politics, the two-party system would emerge, and the territories that were to become states would begin to copy some form of nationalism. Personalities would leave their mark on national and local law and political framework. The Civil War would weaken and yet unite a nation. The European nations would continue their struggle for identity and power.

The expansion of the American West brought great change in values. Land and individualism became important considerations in the lives of people. Property was available to many for the first time. Things became desirable, many things. Life and progress that for many (for almost a millennium) had hardly seemed desirable, and for most (elsewhere in the world) hardly obtainable, now lay on the golden shores of the new land and seemed within reach of those who would work and strive to obtain. Opportunity, a word scarcely recognized in most of the world, seemed at hand.

In religion, the early part of the century, from the 1820s to the 1850s, was to see one of the last gasps of the old-time drama of fear and hellfire in the name of God and heaven. That theme which had been played out on the stages of Europe, by both Catholics and Protestants, leaped the seas and became an exclusive American phenomenon in the Millerite movement. New in only some of its details, it replayed for the fearful and the guilt-ridden the old-time religious song that «every. body wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die.» But die you must, said William Miller and his followers, and they even set the time for the event. After a lot of trouble with the heavenly calculators, they set the date of October 22, 1844, for the event (barring any serious complications, of course).

It was a great drama, that Millerite movement, with charges by each group of players swinging wildly to one side of the stage or the other, each claiming to have God on their side. One would have had to pay good money to see such a show anywhere else at any other time. But in America it was free. It featured personalities, persons, occupations, sermons, diatribes, invectives, recriminations, attacks, and counter attacks-indeed a real holy war, all in the name of God. Reading of those days, one wonders if the real issue was not the same one it always seems to be in religion: Who is going to control the concessions in the here and in the hereafter?

It didn't take long for one group to buy up the franchise. What the Catholics and Protestants had been fighting about for centuries in Europe a group of leftovers from the Millerite movement decided to market in America. They had no thought initially of a worldwide movement. But if the product sold, the world would become their oyster and heaven would become their ghetto. They were to become the Adventists; the Seventh Day would be their banner and the Second Advent would be their song-both ideas the used products of the Millerite movement.

There was really nothing new in the banner or the song. The Hebrews of old had held to the seventh day throughout the Old Testament. New Testament Christians had given some attention and lip service to the Second Coming since the days of Christ. But the names and dates and places would be changed to protect the guilty. In the minds of Ellen G. White (the Advent movement's psychic leader) and her supporters, there emerged the practice of interpreting the Scriptures (past, present, and future) in terms of Adventist concepts and beliefs-not a new idea but one that would fit the times of the nineteenth century. The ancient Hebrews had promoted the idea that they were the keepers of the oracles of God (and there are those who still believe they are). The Catholics in the New Testament times, and after, worked to perfect that Jewish idea to make Catholicism the custodian of all truth, even if they had to chain part of it to the wall. Now in the middle of the nineteenth century it was the Adventists' turn.

In order for any group or organization to pull off the idea that they have been given the concessions to the hereafter, that they are indeed the ones God has chosen to sell the indulgences for this life and the utopia to come, they must always tackle the job of rearranging or reassigning the facts of history and rewriting the Canon (the Bible of the «true believer») so that both will be in harmony with their preconceived ideas, misconceptions, and prejudices-at the same time claiming that the Holy Book is the final word of authority. Quite a task for anyone in any age. No wonder the idea has never really caught on in the religious world for too long a time, although those who have tried deserve A for effort.

With no thought of failure, the Adventists assigned this awesome task to the person they liked to call the «weakest of the weak,» Ellen Gould Harmon. Ellen was born a twin at Gorham, Maine, November 26, 1827, to Robert and Eunice Harmon, practicing members of the Methodist Episcopal Church, and she would marry James White on August 30, 1846, three months short of her nineteenth birthday.

There were no advance signs that she was to become the hometown girl who made good. She did not begin with fame or fortune. Her chances of catching the brass ring seemed slim until misfortune smiled on her. When she was nine, an accident happened that, according to her, «was to affect my whole life.»¹² Like the apostle Paul with his eye trouble, Ellen, throughout the rest of her life, as we are often reminded, was the product of her physical misfortune. She had fainting and dizzy spells; her nervous system made her prostrate; at times she gave in to despair or despondence.

After a blow to the head from a stone thrown by a schoolmate, she gave up her schooling and, as Adventists enjoy telling it, never gained an education beyond the third grade.¹³ What should be noted is that she did not gain a formal education beyond that grade. All of us learn or are educated as long as we wish to be and are aware, and there is little proof that Ellen was not aware.

Here was a ready-made opportunity. Religious history gives ample evidence that the «true believer» is much more likely to accept the dictums of the simpleminded if these dictums can somehow be given a heavenly setting. Especially in Western Christianity, religious belief generally centers on a few main themes: All men are created (not necessarily equal, a rather new political idea); all men are sinners (and women too, another rather new political idea), whatever that may mean. Depending on the system's definition of sin, life is a boat trip through a sea mined with explosives called temptation-usually defined as women (or men, as the case may be), wine, and song. And as the curtain falls, man has to die.

Well, that's it, except the excitement and action come when different ones (be they groups or individuals, organizations, or roving bands) start drawing up the game plan and fretting about the details. For example, who did the creating, how much time did it take, who was there making notes, and how truthful is the record of the event? Who tagged all of us with sin? Was it God, or that snake in the grass that came in when Adam was down on the south forty? Or do we get it from our ancestors of past eons? Or is the Devil, like Santa Claus, our dad?

The matter of sin has always fascinated theologians and non-theologians alike. For this reading, theologians are those who practice defining or playing God. Naturally the one who makes up the list for others has a jump on the game. Throughout history, most mystics, divines, or theologians have had a crack at making up the list of sins. One of the safest ways to do this is to leave off the list the things you personally enjoy. This has been done by most all who make up lists.

And last, the group or organization must tackle that final question: At death where do we go-and when (before, during, or after)? No one yet has come up with a satisfying answer to this one. Since it's much harder to get back here once you leave than to get here in the first place, not too many have come back to give an annual report of the other side. This fact alone gives large latitude to one of fertile mind, imagination, and ability to describe the horror or the glory of the hereafter (for a price). It is safe to say that the fear of the trip we have not yet taken is a powerful weapon in the hands of those who, by some means, have made the trip and come back to sell us the way.

Ellen was to be equal to the task. She was eventually to leave for the believer (through the Adventist concepts) information, instruction, admonition, and counsel on all the foregoing matters. From a shaky start with «amalgamation of man and beast» in one of her early books,¹⁴ she straightened things out later with her reading of Paradise Lost.¹⁵ Her extra-canonical visions of the dialogue, battle, and ouster of Satan and his angels gave vividness and form to John Milton's great poem that even the Bible writers lacked. Some of her early friends noticed the similarity and brought it to her attention, but she dismissed the question with the same ease that she did most criticism. Her grandson, who was to inherit the duties of the keeper-of-the-keys, gave much the same explanation over a period of forty years-with one interesting deviation in his 1945 supplement to volume four of her book The Spirit of Prophecy:

Mrs. White ever sought to avoid being influenced by others. Shortly after the Great Controversy vision of March 14, 1858, at meetings in Battle Creek held over a weekend, she told the high points of what had been shown her in that vision. Elder T. N. Andrews, who at the time was in Battle Creek, was much interested. After one of the meetings he told her some of the things she had said were much like a book he had read. Then he asked if she had read Paradise Lost. She replied in the negative. He told her that he thought she would be interested in reading it.

Ellen White forgot about the conversation, but a few days later Elder Andrews came to the home with a copy of Paradise Lost and offered it to her. She was busily engaged in writing the Great Controversy vision as it had been shown her. She took the book, hardly knowing just what to do with it. She did not open it, but took it to the kitchen and out it up on a high shelf, determined that if there was anything in that book like what God had shown her in vision, she would not read it until after she had written out what the Lord had revealed to her. It is apparent that she did later read at least portions of Paradise Lost, for there IS one phrase quoted in Education.¹⁶

The deviation referred to is the last sentence in the quotation from her grandson-the admission that she had indeed read John Milton's work. The question that seems to remain is whether she read it before or after her «vision» of the same controversy. Why she put the book up on a «high shelf» has remained puzzling to many. Perhaps the higher the better-because of temptation. Who knows? One writer who has studied the problem of Mrs. White and Milton's Paradise Lost may give some answers:

Of unusual significance is the correlation found in a number of instances where both authors depict with some detail an experience which is not found in the Bible. Among such events are the following:

1. The scene in Heaven before and during the rebellion with the loyal angels trying to win the disaffected ones back to allegiance to God.

2. The warnings issued to Eve to stay by her husband's side; her subsequent straying.

3. The elaborate setting for the actual temptation with Satan's arguments analyzed point by point.

4. The detailed picture of the immediate results of sin on Adam and Eve and on the animal and vegetable world about them.

5. The explanation of the basic reason for Adam's fall: uxoriousness.

6. The angel's chronicling of future events to Adam.

7. The feelings of both Adam and Eve as they left the garden.

These likenesses in the narrative on points where the Scriptures are silent intensify the question: Why are these two authors, living two hundred years apart, so much in agreement on major facts?¹⁷

Other studies in the same area have asked, and failed to answer, the question of why both authors, some two hundred years apart, came up with these same non-biblical accounts, although the later writer claimed she knew nothing of the work of the former.

One by one, Ellen White began to accentuate in her writings (which she claimed came from «visions») each and every point of Protestant and Catholic theological controversy. Starting with the beginning of all beginnings and proceeding through to the end of all ends, she gave a new and often startlingly inaccurate picture of the great controversy as it is portrayed in the Bible.

Although believers of all faiths have been somewhat hazy about the great controversy, she gave it with such assurance that some bought her version of it. Her pictures of events, her I-saws, were to be so indelibly imprinted on the minds of a few that the future pattern of Adventism was set for generations. At the same time, her account also closed the door that had been opened for Adventism to make a markedly different contribution to the world concept of religion.¹⁸ And the door remains closed to this day, because the church of the advent cannot get past the interpretations of the Canon according to Sister Ellen. No pattern of thought, no emergence of value, no interpretation of Scripture is allowed officially in Adventism until or unless it has first been examined, tested and tried-and then dyed in the cloth of Ellen White.

The same could be said of the Mormons with their Joseph Smith, the Christian Scientists with their Mary Baker Eddy, the Jehovah's Witnesses with their John F. Rutherford, the Lutherans with their Martin Luther, and others with their patron saints. Each church sees the world around, and the future beyond, through the eyes of its saints. If there is a world around them to live in, or one to shun, it must conform to the way it is experienced by their saint. If there is a heaven to win or a hell to shun, its definition and direction and even its occupants must be determined by the saint of the system and by that saint's interpretation of the Canon as demonstrated in that saint's writings-which in turn are kept up to date by reinterpretation by later saints of the same or similar stripe or system.

It is difficult, if not impossible, for present-day Adventists to look at themselves and their saint, Ellen White, in historical perspective. A 1979 article dealing with this view sent shock waves through the church when it appeared in Spectrum, the independent journal published by the Association of Adventist Forums. The writer, Jonathan Butler, associate professor of church history at Loma Linda University, did a brilliant piece portraying Ellen White as a product of her times: «Mrs. Whités. . . predictions of the future appeared as projections on a screen which only enlarged, dramatized and intensified the scenes of her contemporary world.»¹⁹ His conclusions were that she was a product of her times just as we all are, that it was her world that came to an end with the changing events of history that were not always fulfilled as she had seen.

This was hard medicine for Adventists to swallow, inasmuch as they had been taught to think of Ellen and her writings in isolation, as if she had come straight down from heaven and remained isolated from all events while on earth. It was only natural that they should think thus, for they had been hearing for years that «Mrs. White ever sought to avoid being influenced by others.»²⁰ This theme, which had never applied to any human being before, became the Adventist path into the unreal.

Not very often, if ever, is one dealing with pure truth, either small or large, in religion. One is dealing with truth as filtered, expanded, diminished, bounded, or defined by the I-saws of all the Ellens of Christendom-with a lot of help from the divines. What does emerge from all the froth is that the map for this life and the one to come, if indeed it does come, is drawn by the clan-and thus becomes the Clan Plan. Heaven becomes the main gate to isolation, where all the bad as we conceive of it (which in humanity's case means other people) is snuffed out, and only us good guys go marching through. Thus we make our own ghetto.

The succeeding chapters seek to show the Adventist ghetto and how it grew-not too much unlike the ghettos of other faiths, but with some interesting and devious twists.

The development of the Adventist ghetto began almost at once after the Millerite movement reached its peak in 1844 and started its descent. With the help of Ellen White and her «visions,» God was allowed to do some of the carpenter work on the walls. Ellen was «shown» that the door of mercy was shut for all those who had not accepted the 1844 message; so the world and most of those in it were left outside the door. Linden gives a very adequate picture of the events in his book The Last Trump.²¹

Exclusiveness, which starts early in any religious plan, took off at once. It's akin to the attitude «Lord, bless me and my wife, my son John and his wife, us four and no more.» The shut door view was never really accepted by William Miller himself but circulated among some of the rejects. It lasted officially until after 1850, when the door was opened a little crack for the young of the faithful members to slip through, and later for the spouses of those who believed.

It is surprising what a little leaven will do to a whole lump. Even today Adventists speak of the non-members as «outsiders,» «brothers-in-law or sisters-in-law of the church,» or slipping once in a while, «the unsaved.» In fact, in the Adventist concept, both earlier and later, just about everybody was and is unsaved. The first reason for this, the «shut door,» was soon dropped because those who missed the boat of 1844 began to die off. Afterward, the unsaved, even down to our time, became all those who didn't accept Christ. All Christians knew that, but to make it a little different, and perhaps to add charm, the Adventist view came to mean anyone who worshiped on Sunday (Catholic or Protestant); anyone who smoked, chewed, drank, wenched, went to shows, or wore or ate anything that Adventists didn't-in general, anyone who was not officially part of their show. In fact, the Adventist view probably was not much different from other views that went before; it just combined everything into one list to make it easier to find the persons the church wanted to reject and to keep that door shut a little longer.

Even those around Ellen had trouble keeping her from drawing things too tight with her visions. James, her editor husband, had to make it clear that there might be a crack in the door that Ellen did not have control of. In 1851 he felt impelled to publish in the Review and Herald a lengthy editorial (with reference to «those who have had any of the gifts of the Spirit») that included these words:

Those on whom Heaven bestows the greatest blessings are in most danger of being «exalted,» and of falling, therefore, they need to be exhorted to be humble, and watched over carefully. But how often have such been looked upon as almost infallible, and they themselves have been apt to drink in the extremely dangerous idea that all their impressions were the direct promptings of the Spirit of the Lord [italics added].²²

The same editorial was reprinted in full in the editorial pages in 1853. Then in an 1855 editorial, James White referred to those previously published statements to the same effect and added: «No writer of the Review has ever referred to them [the visions] as authority on any point. The Review for five years has not published one of them.»²³ With this statement, the battle was joined. James was to lose out.

It takes a dexterous mind to work its way through two problems at the same time. Often such a mind comes up with worthless answers, but it's lots of fun. In theology it's downright enjoyable. To learn to say nothing well is the first rule. The second rule is to say it in such a way that no one can question your philosophical conclusions (if you arrive at any). It's like learning a little bit about everything, so that soon you know everything about nothing. In most libraries, the religion department is under the subject heading of philosophy-and that is what it is, the defining and redefining of terms and ideas that have defied defining for centuries.

Ellen and her helpers were masters at reworking past ideas. After the great disappointment of October 22, 1844, and the futile setting of a few more times and dates, and after consigning most of the world to hell for' not believing what the Millerites/Adventists themselves were wrong about and didn't understand, the group still had that problem of the shut door of mercy. As «time continued a little longer,» in the words of Ellen, the problem became more pressing. If they opened the door theologically, they would be admitting they had been wrong. If they kept it shut, and the good Lord didn't come to get them out of the dilemma, they would all die off and it wouldn't make any difference whether the door was open or shut.

With the skill of a surgeon, Ellen and her group cut their way through without opening the door at all, but at the same time acting as if they were really doing so. This balancing act was done by accepting what turned into the «main pillar» of the Advent faith, the theory of the sanctuary. This theory, which became the major doctrine of the church, was first emphasized by O. R. L. Crosier, who afterward repudiated it.²⁴ What the theory does is open the door here on earth but then close it in the courts above. In the words of that once popular song, «Nice work if you can get it, and you can get it if you try.» The Adventists did try harder than most. (In fact they are still trying, and that is what has caused the big ado about the separate though related concerns expressed by Paxton, Brinsmead, and Ford).²⁵

To make the very long story short, here is what took place after the disappointment when Christ did not come in 1844. Walking through the cornfield with his thoughts one day, a former Millerite said it came to his mind that the date the Millerites had accepted was correct but the event was hazy. It was not this earth that was cut off from mercy and about to receive justice, but the other way around. It was in heaven that justice was being decided (and mercy was still available here on earth). This process required a lot of heavenly bookkeeping, looking through the records, further recording of deeds done and not done, and compiling of vast amounts of figures that would take some time to total -thus the idea of probation. In addition, there was even room for the things we didn't do or think of. Ellen was supposed to have written that «we shall individually be held responsible for doing one jot less than we have ability to do.... We shall be judged according to what we ought to have done, but did not accomplish because we did not use our powers to glorify God.... For all the knowledge and ability that we might have gained and did not, there will be an eternal loss.»²⁶

It was like a call to the colors. No matter that some have suggested that the poor man in the cornfield might have seen a scarecrow instead of a vision. No coach could have inspired his team with a better speech. With a «let's win one for the gipper,» the players ran onto the field- and have been running ever since, having devised one of the most elaborate systems of salvation by works that the world has ever seen since the fall of Jerusalem in A.D. 70.

Having accepted that justice was being settled in heaven since 1844, the Adventists never did relish the idea of mercy and grace being too available on earth. In the 1970s and 1980s when the Australians (Paxton, Brinsmead, and Ford) spoke their minds, the cheap shot at them was that they were peddling «cheap grace.» This just goes to show that those who grumbled had not accepted the Gospel view that grace is even cheaper than that – it's free.

When these men went public, the system banned them like the bomb. When they went to tapes to advance their views, the leaders said that whoever listened had «tape worms.» Thereupon the leaders closed their meeting by announcing that their own talks were on tapes and were available for a small fee at the door. (It is well known that churches sell more tapes than most, but it's the competition that hurts. Somebody is always trying to muscle in on that heavenly franchise.)

In the late 1970s and 1980s, Desmond Ford, a most gifted speaker, was knocking so hard at that door of mercy that his voice was beginning to be heard around the world. There is nothing administrators like less than challenges and loud noises. Above all, they don't like to be told about theology, a subject that is as foreign to them as the Greek some of they barely passed and have never used. But that door that Ellen and her helpers had shut in 1844 had to be kept shut. So, like the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, they all boarded their modern horses and headed for the Sanctuary Review Committee meeting at Glacier View Ranch in Colorado August 10, 1980.

The security there would have made the CIA proud and the presidential convention would look like a Boy Scout gathering. It was a truly international group of about 115, the majority fitting the «executive» category and thus beholden to the church in one way or another. Some of the administrators, who (to say it kindly) were not theologically oriented, tried to lean on that dosed door-and even suggested some form of oath of loyalty to founder Ellen and her concepts. If the meeting proved anything at all it was that shooting a man from a distance these days would be a whole lot cheaper than hanging him in public. It proved also that justice (as defined by the leaders), not mercy, was still the theme of the church. In the end, after a lot of finger-play and charades, Ford was sacked.²⁷

The outcome had never really been in doubt. So it was no surprise when the «good old» Review trumpeted: «Overview of a historic meeting: the Sanctuary Review Committee, characterized by unity and controlled by the Holy Spirit, finds strong support for the church's historic position.»²⁸ Those hinges on that closed door had gotten mighty rusty since 1844 and Ellen's foray into theology. Although friends and foes alike had been trying desperately for decades to open up the door a little, the elders were smart enough to see what perhaps others (such as theologians) did not see: that is, if that shut door is ever opened, the Adventist heaven and ghetto is desecrated by being made available to all, regardless of race, creed, or color, and the Adventist church and system will have lost forever its heavenly franchise.

Events had to be shaped that way, for part of the Adventist theology is that the redeemed (meaning them, the faithful Adventists, of course) will some day, during the golden age of the millennium, sit on those pearly white thrones in the Far Beyond and help to judge the wicked. There all the juicy morsels of others' acts and sins will be finally revealed to them. That thought alone has helped many faithful go on to the end. To think of knowing all about everybody who didn't make it, and why. And when it's all finished, they will give God a vote of confidence and thanks that things have turned out the way they felt they should from the beginning.²⁹

Another very important reason in the Adventist mind for keeping that door closed either here or in heaven is evangelism. How could they ever cope with the idea that others with dissimilar habits, customs, and mores are just as saved as they are? What would it do to the idea Adventists have that all the other churches of the world are the whores and harlots that the book of Revelation speaks of? This idea had come direct from the prophet. She had seen torture chambers in the basements of Catholic churches, where all men that finally worshiped on Sunday were to have a «mark of the beast,» and where Adventists, as the Waldenses and Hussites of old, were to be hunted like dogs in the mountain fastnesses, to be dispossessed and finally killed by the sword.³⁰

Fear has no peer as a substitute for motivation to action. With fear the lame can scale the highest wall, the blind can see enough to get out of the way, and the mute can have instant fluency. Love, the motivation encouraged by the Scriptures, had its best (and some think last) demonstration on the Cross-and that was a long time ago. Besides, love has to be learned. Fear, with its twin sister Guilt, always lurks in the shadows of the mind and is readily available if someone touches the right button. And theologians, divines, and spiritual administrators are experts at touching the right buttons.

To the 1844 leftovers, the idea was not new that justice had to be purchased by the penitent and mercy was free. But the idea was given emphasis by the pen of Ellen White, in whose mind shadows darker than most lay close to the surface. In her Testimonies for the Church she tells of her early experience.³¹

It cannot be disregarded that at nine years of age she was struck with a stone, and the blow was so severe that her later impression was that she nearly died. She was disfigured for life. She said she lay «in a stupor,' for three weeks. When she began to recover and saw how disfigured she was, she wanted to die. She became melancholy and avoided company. She said, «My nervous system was prostrated.» She was terribly frightened and lonely, and often she was terrified by the thought that she might be «eternally lost.» She thought that «the fate of a Condemned sinner» would be hers, and she feared that she would lose her reason.

So here is a teenager who from the age of thirteen to seventeen was feeble, sickly, unschooled, impressionable, and abnormally religious and excitable at the time she first attended William Miller's 1840 lectures predicting the end of the world in 1843–44. During this time she herself felt that she was shut out from heaven. Indeed, because of her experience in life, she was shut out, and thus out, from those around her. With time, her attitudes were modified and she came to feel somewhat more accepted. But her writings, even throughout the books she published in the 1870s and 1880s, show clearly a person who looked with great apprehensiveness on much that was the real life around her. She lived in a frightening world and longed for the time when all she was afraid of would finally end.³²

This isolation she was able to provide for herself. Her shut door, though, is still closed in the minds of Adventists today. With each new world or local crisis, each new custom that is unacceptable, and all changing mores, the Adventist shuts his door a little tighter, sleeps with his bags packed, and longs for that final act of justice that will give him and his Clan, only, the assurance of mercy they so much need.³³

William S. Sadler-widely known Chicago physician and surgeon of his time, writer, personal friend of Ellen White, son-in-law of John Harvey Kellogg-wrote:

Every now and then some one arises who attempts to make other people believe in the things which they see or hear in their own minds. Self-styled «prophets» arise to convince us of the reality of their visions. Odd geniuses appear who tell us of the voices they hear, and if they seem fairly sane and socially conventional in every way, they are sometimes able to build up vast followings, to create cults and establish churches; whereas, if they are too bold in their imaginings, if they see a little too far or hear a little too much, they are promptly seized and quickly lodged safe within the confines of an Insane asylum.³⁴

This psychic haven is a safe region, not subject to challenge by logic, argument, evidence, or reality. And in spite of being denied all these nutrients of rational behavior and persuasion, men will still believe in the unbelievable. The ideas of the shut door, the investigative judgment, the denial of the biblical doctrine of divine grace and mercy freely available to all since the Cross were all taken by the Adventists and made conditional-on the basis of concepts rejected by most (even the originators) but endorsed and promoted by Ellen White.

And this brings us now to the last door that was closed in 1844 by Ellen and the leftover Millerites-the Gospel, the Good News of salvation. The Adventist sins are never really forgiven. They are carried on the books of heaven until payday, the Judgment-Day. No system that thrives and perpetuates itself on such a scandal can bring happiness to the human mind or experience.

The constant reviews by the church system, the daily inspections demanded by the mind, and the judgmental investigations of life, the comparisons with the lives of others to see if one measures up-these sap the strength and courage. By the time the «true believer» has done his daily spiritual calisthenics and checked over his list of dós and don'ts he is depleted. His concept of life is that God flays him over every hill, down every dale, through every forest, until, exhausted, he drops dead. In each case, if his dues are paid up, the Lord bends over and says, «Well done, thou good and faithful servant."'³⁵

In such a system, the patron saint becomes the substitute for the Saviour. Heaven and the here-and-now are viewed through the eyes of that nineteenth-century saint. Works become the way to win or keep the concessions granted by the privileged, and life becomes a «holy» competition with other believers. No man likes to compete in an area in which he doesn't excel; so each one stakes out a claim that he can work best. It might be diet with one, clothing with another, monasticism for the extreme. Whatever the task, life becomes a vast effort to outdo the competition by climbing that greased pole first. If one can only «endure to the end» and outlast or outsmart the competition, justice says that his place is assured in the hereafter, even if it was hell living in the here and now.

Thus it has always been and always will be when the Ellens of the earth convince followers that by heavenly bookkeeping God will save or even satisfy the human soul or desire for justice. Whenever theologians or believers try playing semantical games with doctrines, they always end up losing the Saviour and the Gospel here and make a mystic mess of the hereafter. How little did young Ellen and her small band of true believers realize when they shut the door in 1844, that in trying to save face because of the disappointment experienced they were really taking away the Lord from tens of thousands and closing a door of love and mercy forever for many others. Such has been the experience of all who have tried to become, under whatever title, the keeper of the keys of salvation-that Gospel of Good News.

The success and genius of any religious movement is to tell the members what they want to hear and make sure they don't hear what you don't want them to hear. Nothing affords such opportunities in this field as the press. Gutenberg didn't have the foggiest idea of what doors he was opening when he invented the printing press. Since the Dark Ages, when truth was chained to the wall of the library so that no one could take it out of the vault (even with a library card), mankind had to receive and accept what was handed out by the church fathers. Of course that was a little better than when the fathers enforced knowledge with a blowgun or an axe handle, but still it was a form of control.

The art of printing was to develop to the place where the object was not to control the body with weapons but to control the mind with print. Freethinkers have always gotten into trouble. In the time of Moses, if anyone started a fire on his own to enjoy a cup of hot herb tea on Sabbath, he was stoned, and not in the modern sense of the word either. If he wandered around in the local swapmeet on Sabbath in the days of Nehemiah, he might run the risk of having his beard pulled or his toupee disrupted. Even in the New Testament times, if Ananias kept out a few shekels from the tithe to pay the rent, he was told by the local divine to drop dead&mash;which he did.³⁶

So comes printing. The press was much better in its approach; no messes to clean up, no bodies to bury. Just follow the twin rules: Tell the people what you want them to hear; don't let them hear what you don't want them to hear. The first rule is not too difficult, but the second still takes some form of control. If people can't read, they can't be reached by reading; if they can read, they might be reached by the wrong reading. How churches solve this problem is to assign it to God. That's an old idea too. God has often been given credit for things he didn't do; and since the beginning of time the devil has been exonerated for things he did do. (Read Adam and the Apple in the Genesis story of Creation.)

The Adventists were not the first to put things all together, but they were more successful than some. The market they started with was small and scattered, but with the help of Ellen it was to grow and consolidate James White was a teacher of sorts and knew the power of the press- especially the power of the controlled press and how much better it was to let God control it. Just convince the readers that God was writing what they were reading (thus giving it authority) and God was not in what they were told not to read. Not a bad idea for a group of beginners. It worked then, and it has been working ever since-until recent times when a few people had the nerve to get off the train and go around back to see what was moving the thing.³⁷

So much for the system. Now how to put it all together. Who was to do the writing for God? Certainly not James. His foray into writing was to include only four books, all of them largely copied from someone else. Ellen, who had only a third-grade education, had not yet written anything of note. Not a very marketable combination at a time when education was just beginning to catch on. Another time and place perhaps. But gradually came the brilliant experiment that made it all work, the capsheaf of genius. Why not steal it all, in the name of God.

After all, it had been done before-or so the modern defenders of the Adventist faith were to propound some one hundred thirty years later. It came to be said that St. Luke copied from St. Mark and that Paul was sneaking material from the Greeks without even letting them know. John the Revelator was stealing from ancient pagans for his ideas, and Jude did a test run from some early pseudepigraphical works. Even Moses, instead of lifting the Ten Commandments from God, is said to have taken them from Hammurabi, an ancient lawgiver, or even others before his time.³⁸

In Ellen's day it was a natural. Before her time there had been Emanuel Swedenborg, who had visions for the king and royal family around 1740. He founded a church and saw a lot of things others didn't see, some of which came to pass. The leader of the Shakers in America, Ann Lee, like Ellen, had no education but wrote «testimonies» to the members. Also like Mrs. White, she required «a peculiar kind of dress,» and «opposed war and the use of pork.» In 1792 Joanna Southcott, a domestic servant, of poor parents and little education, announced herself a prophetess and said that her trances told her that Christ was to have a speedy advent.³⁹

Joseph Smith of Mormon fame had just passed off the scene in 1844. That was a great disappointment to both him and his followers, as he was shot. His trip was short. He was born in 1805 and he died in 1844, the year Mrs. White began to have her revelations. He was poor and unknown until he began to have «visions» and «revelations» and to see and talk with angels. He taught the Second Advent, and his followers were to become the Latter-Day Saints (other churches were heathen or gentiles). Like the Adventists, the LDS Church rewrote the Bible through their prophet and had new revelations-even though some recent research seems to confirm that the material was stolen.⁴⁰

The list doesn't end. Mary Baker Eddy, of Christian Science fame, was also around most of Ellen's life. Although they differed in their thinking, the disciples of both believed that their prophet was inspired of God and their writings should be used to interpret the Bible. The remarkable Charles T. Russell, of Watchtower and Jehovah's Witness connection, also lived during the time of Ellen. His followers believe they are the only true church and all others are «Babylon.» Adventists would subscribe to the last part but regard themselves as composing the only true church.⁴¹

Ellen was to start taking others' material slowly. In the early 1840s two men who had been impressed with the Millerite movement were Hazen Foss and William E. Foy. In September 1844 Foss was supposed to have received a vision that the advent people, with their trials and persecutions, were on their way to the City of God. He was told that if he refused to give the message to others it would be given to the weakest of the Lord's children. Foy also had been in touch with the future and had been telling about it in print and at public meetings since sometime in January 1842. Ellen had listened to Foy speak in Beethoven Hall in her home city, Portland, Maine, when she was a girl.⁴² Since she was related to Foss by marriage, there is no reason to believe that she could not have read or heard about his visions as well as Foy's.

The setting now was perfect for both Ellen and God. The two men had refused to go on the stump with the visions, and one had been told that God would then give it to the weakest of the weak. So who could be weaker than Ellen? In early 1842, not yet fifteen years old, she was having lots of trouble emotionally and physically, by her own account. She was still having problems in 1844. Her emotional and physical turmoil could be compounded by the disappointment of the Miller drive toward eternity. With some misgivings because of her age and lack of experience, she took the torch from the fallen hands of both Foy and Foss and launched forth in her first vision.⁴³ It was almost a carbon copy of the visions that Foy and Foss acknowledged God had given them, and it was so true to the original that it guaranteed the future success of one of the most remarkable cases of literary «borrowing» the world has ever seen.

One Webster dictionary edition defines a plagiarist as follows:

One that purloins the writings of another and puts them off as his own.... The appropriation or imitation of the language, ideas, and thoughts of another author, and representation of them as onés own original work.... The act of purloining another man's literary works or introducing passages from another man's writings and putting them off as onés own; literary thief.

Harsh as it seems, the definition would characterize Ellen at age seventeen as a thief-and one who remained so the rest of her life, with enormous help and encouragement from others. That seems to be a very hard judgment. Many of the present apologists for Ellen White have tried to extricate her from the situation by proposing that perhaps God has a different standard for prophets.⁴⁴ Others seem satisfied with the thought that «everyone was doing it.» It seems to have escaped them that with that kind of logic the sky would be the limit in human conduct.

Others would believe that «she just didn't know.» But certainly a lot of those around her over the years did know and were troubled. Uriah Smith, an early and longtime editor of the Review, knew. In 1864 the following appeared unsigned on the editorial page:

Plagiarism

This is a word that is used to signify «literary theft,» or taking the productions of another and passing them off as one s own.

In the World's Crisis of Aug. 23, 1864, we find a niece of poetry duly headed, «For the World's Crisis," and signed «Luthera B. Weaver.» What was our surprise, therefore, to find in this piece our familiar hymn,

«Long upon the mountain weary

Have the scattered flock been torn.»

This piece was written by Annie R. Smith, and was first published in the Review, vol. ii, no. 8, Dec. 9, 1851, and has been in our hymn book ever since the first edition thereafter issued. But worst of all the piece is mutilated, the second and most significant verse being suppressed; namely,

«Now the light of truth they're seeking, In its onward track pursue; All the Ten Commandments keeping, They are holy, just and true. On the words of life they're feeding, Precious to their taste so sweet, All their Master's precepts heeding, Bowing humbly at his feet.»

But perhaps this would clearly have revealed its origin, as scarcely any class of people at the present day, except Seventh-Day Adventists, have anything to say about All the commandments of God, &c. We are perfectly willing that pieces from the Review, or any of our books should be published to any extent, and all we ask is, that simple justice be done us, by due credit being given!⁴⁵

Smith's editorial honesty had a lasting effect on the paper. In 1922, when Francis M. Wilcox was editor, the Review had two brief articles on the subject of stealing. One of them, unsigned, was on an editorial page under the title «Are You a Plagiarist? If So, Please Do Not Write for the Review.»⁴⁶ The other short article, entitled «Spiritual Plagiarism,» by J. B. Gallion, was even a bit more specific:

Plagiarism is the act by one author or writer of using the productions of another without giving him credit. For example, if you were to write an article in which you inserted, «The Psalm of Life» or any part of it, and permit it to pass under your name, as your own production, not giving credit to the poet Longfellow, you would be guilty of the crime of plagiarism. «Well,» you say, «everybody knows that Longfellow wrote 'The Psalm of Life.' » A great many do, it is true, but many do not. Those who are ignorant of the fact might easily be deceived; but whether they know or not, does not lessen your guilt. You have taken what is not yours, and therefore are guilty of literary theft. There are but a few, perhaps, who fall under the ban of plagiarism in the literary world!⁴⁷

In line with the Review's «honest and open» policies that seem to encourage the readers to practice honesty through the years, there were also those who tried to get Ellen to practice that same policy. A June article in the Review as late as 1980 stated that once Ellen was told how wrong it was to do what she was doing, she told one and all that, from that time on, credit should be given to whomever it was due. A reader wrote the Review asking for the date of that remarkable conversation and admission. Here is the reply that the rest of the reading public never had a chance to see:

You ask the date when Ellen White gave instruction that the authors of quoted material should be included in footnotes in her writings. The date for this was around 1909. You ask also in what later works this instruction was carried out. The only book that this instruction applied to was The Great Controversy which was then republished with these footnotes in 1911?⁴⁸

There you have it. In 1909, the date given above, Ellen was then eighty-two years old, six years from the grave. In over seventy years of stealing ideas, words, and phrases, never once did she make any specific confession. The publishers made only a vague general statement concerning revision of The Great Controversy-and that only after the book had become a point of great controversy itself.

The final fallback for prophets and seers, when discovery comes too close, is that God made them do it, that they see and say things that others have said, and that they are able to see and say them in exactly the same words as others because God gave it to them first. They just didn't get around to letting anyone know until they were discovered.

Robert W. Olson, the present head of the White Estate, takes such a view in his paper of September 12, 1978, headed, «Wyliés Language Used to Describe What She Had Already Seen Herself May 15, 1887.» The paper is given over to a comparison of Ellen's diary written in Switzerland in 1887 with a quotation from James A. Wyliés The History of Protestantism, 1876. It goes like this:⁴⁹

The idea that Ellen saw everything first from God in the words of whomever she was copying was not new with Olson. In 1889 at Healdsburg, California, some of the White defenders debated the members of the local ministerial group. After showing scores of comparisons from writers that Ellen had used for her material, the Healdsburg ministers said:

Elder Healey would have the Committee believe that she is not a reading woman. And also asked them to believe that the historical facts and even the quotations are given her in vision without depending on the ordinary sources of information. Observe that Wylie gives due credit when he quotes the papal bull and that Mrs. White does not. It certainly is noteworthy, to say the least, that Wylie, an uninspired writer, should be more honest in this particular than Mrs. White, who claims that all historic facts and even the quotations are given her in vision. Probably an instance of defective vision.⁵⁰

Here were ministers, presumably believers in inspiration and visions, who were unwilling to accept the idea that God had bypassed human means to reach people through Ellen.

What most people do, when things in their so-called religious fervor get as tangled up as Ellen and her writings did, is to blame God. Adam did this when the devil put one over on Eve. The Adventist White Estate tried this when they came up with the idea that Christ himself was cribbing a little when he gave us the Golden Rule in Matthew 7:12. Supposedly he really got it from Rabbi Hillel, who had had the idea a generation earlier.⁵¹ Of course it may be technically all right for God to steal, inasmuch as everything is supposed to be his in the first place, but it does seem like bad training for the rest of us.

There are two reasons why Ellen lifted others' material, we are now told in the 1979 paper from the White Estate. The first reason is that she couldn't write very well. That is rather a new line for Adventists, inasmuch as they have been quoting her words, sentences, and paragraphs word for word for over a century in their written and verbal battles-always declaring how beautiful her writing is. The second reason is that God left out of the Canon a great deal of material necessary to make the whole thing intelligent.⁵² With a lot of help from her staff, however, Ellen's visions were worked out, and by the twentieth century a good deal more had been added to the Canon than even God knew about. It was always the claim that she never added anything extra to the Canon. But when the White Estate people added up all the words she wrote, they came up with an estimated 25,000,000 words. Those who specialize in such things say that, even being liberal with the periods and other marks of punctuation, them's a lot of canons to be shooting at people!

In the same 1979 article from the White Estate we are told that Ellen was probably often unconscious of what she was doing.⁵³ She must have been unconscious a great deal of the time, in that case, because the Glendale Committee members who met in January 1980 to examine the charge that she had copied from a great many more around her than others had known about, or at least had admitted, did say that the amount was more than they had suspected and that it was alarming!⁵⁴ The last group that had come close to seeing and saying the same thing was the 1919 Bible Conference. It was put out of business for its effort, and its damaging report was «lost» until recent years when someone at the vault stumbled onto the record of the meetings. (Spectrum, with its independent status, published this record in 1979 without the formality of permission.⁵⁵ )

The January 1980 Glendale Committee-likewise phased out of existence as quickly as possible-had a lot of high-level discussion as to which would be the proper word to use-"borrowing,» «plagiarizing,» or «paraphrasing.» It was never suggested or breathed to a soul (not even in the men's room during breaks) that Ellen might have stolen the material.⁵⁶ But if one dictionary's definition of borrow is acceptable («to take or obtain something with the promise to return it or its equivalent»), then neither she nor her helpers ever felt that they were «borrowing» anything.

Not only has it been denied that she ever took anything (until more recent evidence began to mount that she did) but it has always been said that God did it. In 1867 Ellen said:

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.⁵⁷

In 1876 she was to say:

In ancient times God spoke to men by the mouth of prophets and apostles. In these days He speaks to them by the Testimonies of His Spirit.⁵⁸

Placing herself and her writings on an increasingly elevated level, she said in 1882:

If you lessen the confidence of God's people in the testimonies He has sent them, you are rebelling against God as certainly as were Korah, Dathan, and Abiram.⁵⁹

These claims had grown, with the passing of time, until she was able to outdo herself (1882):

When I went to Colorado I was so burdened for you that, in my weakness, I wrote many pages to be read at your camp meeting. Weak and trembling, I arose at three óclock in the morning to write you. God was speaking through clay. You might say that this communication was only a letter. Yes, it was a letter, but prompted by the Spirit of God, to bring before your minds things that had been shown me. In these letters which I write, in the testimonies I bear, I am presenting to you that which the Lord has presented to me. I do not write one article in the paper, expressing merely my own ideas. They are what God has opened before me in vision-the precious rays of light shining from the throne.⁶⁰

Then she went on to ask:

What voice will you acknowledge as the voice of God? What power has the Lord in reserve to correct your errors and show you your course as it is? ... If you refuse to believe until every shadow of uncertainty and every possibility of doubt is removed, you will never believe. The doubt that demands perfect knowledge will never yield to faith. Faith rests upon evidence, not demonstration. The Lord requires us to obey the voice of duty, when there are other voices all around us urging us to pursue an opposite course. It requires earnest attention from us to distinguish the voice which speaks from God.⁶¹

One problem here was that Daniel March in his book Night Scenes in the Bible years before had written:

We must not defer our obedience till every shadow of uncertainty and every possibility of mistake is removed. The doubt that demands perfect know[edge will never yield to faith, for faith rests upon probability, not demonstration.... We must obey the voice of duty when there are many other voices crying against it, and it requires earnest heed to distinguish the one which speaks for God.⁶²

The I was showns got to be a habit, for the expression was to crop up over and over.

I was shown that one great cause of the existing deplorable state of things is that parents do not feel under obligation to bring up their children to conform to physical law. Mothers love their children with an idolatrous love and indulge their appetite when they know that it will injure their health and thereby bring upon them disease and unhappiness....

They have sinned against Heaven and against their children, and God will hold them accountable.

The managers and teachers of schools...⁶³

If one is not given to guilt and wants to spend a little time looking around in the works of others, he may find the same thing without the «I was shown» in the works of an earlier writer Ellen had read or admired:

Parents are also under obligation to teach and oblige their children to conform to physical law for their own sakes.... How strange and unaccountable that mothers should love their children so tenderly as to indulge them in what they have occasion to know may injure their constitutions and impair their happiness for life. May many children be delivered from such mothers, and from such cruel kindness»

The managers and teachers of schools...⁶⁴

Such practices may be one of the reasons that the White Estate was to issue the interesting statement in their tape of 1980, that some of her I was shown statements were cognizant.⁶⁵ Now therés a word for you. It may mean that one reason most, if not all, of the I-was-shown statements in the early writings of Ellen had to be changed was that Ellen's helpers became cognizant of the problem.

Concerning «helpers,» William S. Sadler was to write later that investigation showed that most mystics and magicians of modern times had taken the «precaution to have surrounded themselves with well trained and reliable confederates.»⁶⁶ We will meet some of Ellen's reliable confederates later.

What Sadler didn't know about those helpers, however, was that they even helped Ellen «borrow» her visions. In one of the remarkable illustrations in deception of «borrowing,» Ellen was to write an article in the Review and Herald of April 4, 1899, which was later to show up in her Testimonies to the Church. It was to say:

At the Queensland camp meeting in 1898, instruction was given me for our Bible Workers. In the visions of the night, ministers and workers seemed to be in a meeting where Bible lessons were being given. We said, «We have the Great Teacher with us today,» and we listened with interest to His words. He said: «There is a great... »⁶⁷

The incredible thing about the article is that the bulk of the material was taken from the book, The Great Teacher, authored by John Harris in 1836. Thus, she is in essence putting the words of John Harris in the mouth of God as her own vision. Not really. The words she copied were actually written in the introduction to Harris' book, by Herman Humphrey, who as President of Amherst College was writing the introduction for his friend Harris.⁶⁸

Modern Adventists were treated to a glimpse of this fiasco in the denomination's paper, the Review and Herald, but nowhere was it admitted that Harris had also been enormously helpful to Ellen in her writing of Desire of Ages, Acts of the Apostles, Fundamentals of Christian Education, Counsels to Teachers, as well as other of her works.⁶⁹ No amount of posturing in the Review could explain satisfactorily how Harris and his Great Teacher got to be God, the Great Teacher, through Ellen White. And this transition took place more than once by Ellen's pen.⁷⁰

The world will «little note nor long remember» (to use a phrase by a famous President) what Ellen wrote in the 1850s and 1860s. With the «amalgamation of man and beast,» the Tower of Babel built before the Flood, and incorrect current ideas of the formation of coal and the causes of earthquakes, volcanoes, and fiery issues-to say that much of the writing did not catch on would be no overstatement. There is no evidence that the work that contained it all, Spiritual Gifts (volumes one and two), became a best seller.⁷¹

It is appropriate to point out, in defense of Gifts, that the Adventist organization had not yet perfected its system of printing presses, colporteurs, conference Book and Bible houses, church propaganda organs, and a horde of paid workers such as are now used to catechize the church and the world. Inasmuch as there were only about 3,000 Adventists at the time (many of them who couldn't or didn't read), Spiritual Gifts seems to have done as well as could be expected.

Some other ventures in printing were even less successful. Much controversy developed over the printing of some of Ellen's early ideas in the small pamphlet called A Word to the «Little Flock» (published by James White in 1847) in support of her views about the «shut door» and contradictions on vision matters.⁷² In later printings, both A Word and another paper called Present Truth (issued between July 1849 and November 1850) were to go through some stages of revision that would cause misgivings in the years to come.⁷³

It is only fair to hasten to explain that all this rearranging of history and theology was new to Ellen. Since God did not give her much material to work with, that might help explain some of the mix-up. In fact, it would seem at times that even God got mixed up, for she was to let others know that God had shown her that «His hand was over and hid a mistake in some of the figures» of an 1843 error.⁷⁴ Likewise she had been shown 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.»⁷⁵ Even the angels got caught up in the whole thing in the view of June 27, 1850: «My accompanying angel said, 'Time is almost finished....' then I saw that the seven last plagues were soon to be poured out.»⁷⁶ So that no one would get the impression that these were rather general statements and should be taken lightly or philosophically, it was added that «time is almost finished, and what we have been years learning, they will have to learn in a few months.»⁷⁷

All this background of hauling and filling has led the Adventists to an interesting parley of prophecy and Ellen's often extreme pronouncements. This kind of pronouncement, which has come to be called «conditional prophecy,» is detailed in the Seventh-day Adventist Commentary.⁷⁸ A loose translation of its reasoning goes something like this:

God, who can see the end from the beginning, may not be able to see all the end from the beginning. With this myopic condition, God has to cover his bets if he goes on record at any time, because much of this area is a gamble. If events should take a sudden turn for the worse and not conform to the record, or the interpretation of the record, it is the circumstances that have made a mistake, not God. Thus, with such a coin as conditional prophecy, all spokesmen for God can be assured that heads they win and tails you lose. But the spokesmen and God are always right in any case.

One of the best examples of that type of reasoning was the statement on some inside information that Ellen received from the angel in 1856:

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.»⁷⁹

This statement, more than most, provided the basis for a great deal of research. One can readily see the enormous interest that would and did develop over who was at that meeting, how old they were at the time, how many were still alive, who had already gone the way of all flesh, and whether some had been placed in the wrong category and might be raised m some special way to fit into another category. These endless discussions made it obvious, by elimination, that in the 1980s one would have to be in the age range of 130 to fit the condition, though some still say that is not impossible with God-a statement one would not want to find fault with, where God weighs in on the other side.

Even with the help of poet John Milton and his Paradise Lost, things did not go smoothly. A careful examination in recent years has revealed very close parallels between the Ellen White writings and the Book of Jasher-a book mentioned in the Bible, but never a part of it. Francis D. Nichol (twentieth-century writer, Review editor, and staunch supporter of Ellen) also admitted that she was indebted to Second Esdras, another ancient writer who was not included in the Canon but was placed on that level by Ellen. Certain of her statements on last-day events use some of the terminology and picture language of Esdras and add color, if not authority, to her descriptions.⁸⁰

But things were changing in the 1850s and 1860s. Despite the help she was receiving from those around her (and from the angels that kept checking in and out), she now acquired a new skill that was to set the tone for the rest of her life. Her third-grade education notwithstanding, she was known to be reading, and subsequent records show that she read and read and read. In the 1970s it came to light that she had been instructed in this art by approximately five hundred books and articles in her library and those libraries that were made available to her. Even further advanced light suggests more material was used than known by even the White Estate staff-and they had been thought to be up on all those things. Also by now she had learned a more liberalized style of copying, which became known from that time to this as borrowing.

Regardless of this type of human help – plus an additional score or more of assistants, book editors, secretaries, and helpers – Ellen White always persisted in saying that it all came from God. Even as early as the second volume of Spiritual Gifts (1860), she said:

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.⁸¹

That astounding statement went far beyond anything that the Bible writers had ever claimed for themselves; and, in fact, it went far beyond anything she had ever claimed before. This call to the colors was contagious. Others took up the cry and have been using it ever since. That others took up the motto that the prophet herself laid down illustrates only that it is always an advantage to be the cheerleader. George A. Irwin (president of the Adventist General Conference 1897–1901) followed her lead by stating in a tract entitled «The Mark of the Beast» (1911) that:

It is from the standpoint of the light that has come through the Spirit of Prophecy [Mrs. Whités writings that the question will be considered, believing as we do that the Spirit of Prophecy Is the only infallible interpreter of Bible principles, since it IS Christ through this agency giving the real meaning of His own words [italics added].⁸²

No one raised up against this assertion at the time. So that shows how far and how fast a small-town girl with the right connections can go. As Ellen herself kept telling everybody, her connections went all the way to the top.

It took a few purges to tidy up things a bit and get order among the boys m the back room who might have had some misgivings about what they had seen and heard, but that was a small matter.⁸³ One of the favorite weapons in the arsenal of a psychic is to call down judgments on the head of the defector, and Ellen came into her own in this area of warfare. Not many of the later members of the church knew that often her «testimonies» were sent to the press or the pulpit before they were hand-delivered to the ones who were being rebuked. This habit of making public what often was based on rumor and gossip, leaving little or no room for the recipient to defend himself, usually made Ellen a winner. Responding to her circulated invitation, for those with perplexities regarding her testimonies to write her about their objections and criticisms, physicians Charles E. Stewart and William S. Sadler both wrote Ellen and expressed their objections to her publicizing practice as nonbiblical and otherwise unsound. But she never took up the challenge and answered them, as she had stated she would, as far as IS known.⁸⁴

Others soon found that it was futile to fight against God, at least in public. Uriah Smith found it thus-and said so on his attempt to survive as an editor of the Adventist Review. By 1883 he knew that the Jig was up. Although he had expressed his reservation about the works of art that Ellen was putting out, he said:

It seems to me that the testimonies, practically, have come into that shape, that it is not of any use to try to defend the enormous claims that are now put forth for them. At least, after the unjust treatment I have received the past year, I feel no burden in that direction.... If all the brethren were willing to investigate this matter candidly and broadly, I believe some consistent common ground for all to stand upon could be found. But some, o the rule or rum spirit? are so dogmatical and stubborn that I suppose that any effort in that direction would only lead to a rupture of the body.⁸⁵

It is interesting to read so many years later that at the 1919 Bible Conference the college religion teachers and the church leaders reached much the same conclusion but hesitated to do anything that might bring a rupture of a much larger body.⁸⁶

Again, to show that by the late 1870s and early 1880s there was very little middle ground in the case of Ellen White, Smith wrote on April 6,

The idea has been studiously instilled into the minds of the people that to question the visions m the least is to become at once a hopeless apostate and rebel; and too many, I am sorry to say, have not strength of character enough to shake off such a conception; hence the moment anything is done to shake them on the visions, they lose faith in everything and go to destruction.⁸⁷

On July 31 of that same year, again Smith gave evidence that he was no match for Ellen:

And my reason is that Sr. W. has herself shut my mouth. In the Special Testimony to the B.C. [Battle Creek] church, quoted in the Sab. Advocate Extra, (both of which I suppose you have seen) she has published me as having rejected not only that testimony, but ALL the testimonies. Now if I say that I haven't rejected them, I thereby show that I have, for I contradict this one. But if I say that I have, that will not do them any good that I can see, but will be saying that which I have not supposed to be true. Her attack upon me seems to be most uncalled for and unjust.... She has forced me without a cause, into a very embarrassing position.⁸⁸

Others were to feel her wrath in her «testimonies,» and her victory was as sure as any ancient or private witch doctor's. But before he went down for the last time, Smith (as others before him had and others for long after him would) tried to salvage his reason and his pride by saying that «I now have to discriminate between 'testimony' end 'vision.»⁸⁹

It had been plain for most to see, even before the Smith run-in, that Ellen was winning. Long before the final curtain was to fall on the Uriah Smith act, it was known that Ellen was both orchestrating the music and leading the band. Others would arise to challenge the correctness of the scores, but she was in charge and would remain so. The claims would grow more outrageous by the decade, and the voices of the extremists would sound more shrill to those, either in OF out of the fold, who did not hold her and her writings to be the final word in just about anything and everything.

The extremists were to lose only one battle in the war for control of peoplés minds. That took place in order to meet the growing criticism of the 1940s and 1950s when prominent evangelical groups came to Washington to examine Adventism for themselves. A cluster of anonymous leaders published a volume called Seventh-day Adventists Answer Questions on Doctrine (commonly known as Questions on Doctrine). The book was designed to convince the visiting friends that Ellen White was not the patron saint of the Seventh-day Adventist Church; that her writings were not on a level with the writings of the Canon; that her inspiration was not as that of the writers of the Canon; and that the church did not hold her as the interpreter of the Scriptures but the other way around. All this was stated very clearly and forcefully in Questions on Doctrine.⁹⁰

It took almost twenty-five years of working, waiting, and infiltrating of positions for the radical right to come roaring back. In 1980 the General Conference in session at Dallas, Texas, rammed through a plank in the church's spiritual platform that told all who could read that Ellen White is indeed the saint of the church and that Ford, Brinsmead, Paxton, or all Australians and Americans, or anyone to come, would have to choose between coming to the church, and indeed coming to the Canon and to God himself, through the writings of that small-town girl from Gorham, Maine-Ellen Gould (Harmon) White.⁹¹

It had taken a long time, but she had made good. The extremists who prevailed on the delegates to adopt the plank were to use it almost at once as a weapon on Ford, the Australian scholar-teacher on trial for his works, his reputation, and (some thought and hoped) even his life.

Ford, like Uriah Smith before him, was to lose, mainly because he wanted to salvage some of Ellen's works and lessen the authority of most of it. Like Smith before him, he wanted to separate, at least in his own thinking, her testimonies from her visions. But his trial judges (and all subsequent Review articles) were to make clear that it was all or none -that the Seventh-day Adventist Church does indeed believe, as George Irwin had indicated in his 1911 tract, that Ellen was canonized as the divine, infallible interpreter of all Adventist doctrine and thought. The die was cast. Or, to put it another way, the Rubicon was crossed. Or the bridges were burned behind them.

In any case, the Seventh-day Adventist Church stood naked and alone before the world-as a cult-believing that salvation is hardly possible and that Scripture is indeed impossible as a guide to Christ and the Gospel except through Ellen. A movement that had begun with extreme views in 1844, closing the door to all others but themselves, again some 140 years later had taken the road of extremism-defying all efforts to open that closed door; slamming it shut again (if possible, forever); declaring once more that they were the saved, the keepers of the keys, the epitome of human perfection. God's people and all others would have to start up the stairs of Ellen's writings on their knees, like Luther's trip of old, if they had any thoughts of reaching heaven.

It may be that history has already concluded that Ellen had some farseeing power, not only in the way others had come to accept. It is just possible that in the early 1870s-when the way was cleared of most vocal opposition, and she began her most significant task of reassigning history and its events to her concepts, and rewriting Scripture to her vision-that she saw the end-results if it all worked. And the record shows that it did work for some. Too well, perhaps. Most who went that far now seem to stand alone with only Ellen as their trophy. Perhaps she would have liked that, inasmuch as she lived in loneliness and often wrote about it and told her followers to anticipate it and prepare for it.

Not available are the minutes of any gatherings or meetings where the formal plans were finalized for producing the written material of the 1870s and 1880s. Perhaps there were no such meetings, no rush to judgment, only a slow evolution. By now Ellen's writings had included many authors who strengthened her account of the past and her view of the events that were to take place in the future. The idea was best expressed in the introduction of the four volumes that sought to do the task:

Preface to Reprinted Edition

Ellen White, through most of her life ministry, gave high priority to the task of keeping the story of the great controversy between Christ and Satan before the church and the world. There was first the very brief, almost resume, account published in the diminutive Spiritual Gifts, volume 1. In its 219 pages it spans the story from «The Fall of Satan» to «The Second Death» -the end of Satan and sin. With Sabbath keeping believers numbering fewer than three thousand, the issuance of this work was a courageous publishing venture. Volume 2 in 1860 presented the Christian experience and views of Ellen White.

This was followed in 1864 by Spiritual Gifts, volumes 3 and 4, filling in the Old Testament history, which, except for three brief chapters, was barely referred to in volume 1.

The four-volume Spirit of Prophecy series, published between 1870 and 1884, provided for the growing church a much more detailed presentation of the great controversy story in a total of 1,696 pages of Ellen G. White text. This in time was replaced by the still further expanded, and to the author most satisfactory, five-volume Conflict of the Ages Series. These give the reader 3,507 pages of text in recounting the great controversy story.⁹²

The key words in this preface are «was replaced by the still further expanded, and to the author most satisfactory, five-volume Conflict of the Ages Series.» Twentieth century Adventists generally had not known that the Conflict Series was an expansion of anything. Although it had been accepted that Ellen had done some preliminary work in the rewriting of history and theology, very few had guessed that the first four books of The Spirit of Prophecy were really a trial run for the job. Obviously if the early books stood the test for its author and her helpers, they would become a firmer and much stronger foundation for any revision of thought that the church would have to be conditioned to accept.

Had that preface statement been given sooner than eighty to ninety years after the event, possibly it would have helped to clarify some of the problems that were beginning to surface in Ellen's copywork. Had all the staff that worked with her, and all those who noticed similarities from materials that were seen in her possession, been aware that she was helping herself to large portions of others' material, the banquet that was served up in the name of God might not have been such a picnic. But Ellen was not putting all the food on the table at once or the guests might have become suspicious.

The statement was also to further the White lie, for in no way could those few pages of the «diminutive» Spiritual Gifts be called full-size pages. When compared with the finished product of the Conflict Series, they were to make only about one-third to one-half the size of the later amplification. What this means, then, is that the last commentary on the Old Testament, given in her final Conflict Series, which added hundreds and hundreds of new ideas and thoughts not included in Scripture, started out as 75 to 90 pages of ideas in the 1858 production. Later these illuminations were to cover over twenty-five million wordsl How this expansion took place is what the rest of this story is all about.

The years of 1860 through the 1880 s were busy years for Ellen and her staff. Perhaps remembering the book given to her by J.N. Andrews, she got Paradise Lost down from that «high shelf» and went to work on her vision of the great controversy-which was to become the theme of not only onebook but the entire four volumes of The Spirit of Prophecy (predecessor of the Conflict of the Ages Series).⁹³

John Milton's Paradise Lost was a great help to her. His ideas of the fight for justice in the courts above, as well as some of his very words, were woven into a fabric so vivid that even today some people have nightmares reading it. Ellen's story expands the Milton poem and takes m not only the war in heaven but the war on earth, from beginning to end. Satan is mostly in charge, dashing here and there in human events, wherever God might allow, and causing a general mess, until he gets his come-uppance in the seven last plagues, the destruction of the earth, and the final curtain call, the lake of fire.

Now this may all sound familiar to some-and it was. Others, including the Canon, had used this theme to a greater or lesser degree But Ellen's readers were to come to think that her portrayals were brighter and clearer and more authentic than all that went before. The Review and other Adventist advertising journals were to herald her writings and «visions» as the greatest thing going.⁹⁴ Thus, lo and behold people began to buy. The early first volume of The Spirit of Prophecy (1870) was to follow the general outline of her previous printing of the small Spiritual Gifts-but with much «expansion.»

It was not only in theology that Ellen saw things others may or may not have seen before. She began to get into health matters at this time. In this subject, again as with Milton's Paradise Lost, that "high shelf« was a help. Some of her contemporaries at this time were writers on the subject of health, like Jackson, Trall, Coles, Shew, Graham, Alcott, and others.⁹⁵ She had more than a casual acquaintance with some, and there was talk of not returning what she had taken-which according to a dictionary would be stealing. To this criticism she replied:

It was at the house of Brother A. Hillard, at Otsego, Michigan, June 6, 1863, that the great subject of Health Reform was opened before me in a vision. I did not visit Dansville till August, 1864, fourteen months after I had the view. I did not read any works upon health until I had written «Spiritual Gifts,» vol. iii and iv, «Appeal to Mothers,» and had sketched out most of my six articles in the six numbers of «How to Live,» and I did not know that such a paper existed as the Laws of Life, published at Dansville, New York. 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.

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 Doctors 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 view, lest it should be said that I had received my light upon the subject of health from physicians and not from the Lord.⁹⁶

Others, as before in the case of Paradise Lost, were to suggest:

The information that came to Mrs. White from the Author of Truth, was bound to be in agreement with such truths as had been discovered by others.⁹⁷

Ellen was to say, as Grandson Arthur would imply nearly a hundred years later, that she got the «truths» first-even though subsequent studies might show that the ideas were the same and that the language expressing them was much the same as others had used first. It might have been the old argument of which came first, the chicken or the egg. Ellen said:

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 [italics added].⁹⁸

Ronald L. Numbers, in Prophetess of Health, does a commendable job of showing that Ellen's «extracted» parts made up much of the whole, and that in some cases the whole was more than the sum of the parts – an equation that is just as hard to believe in religion as it is in mathematics.⁹⁹

It was not just in health matters that conflict arose. Those «testimonies» were coming in for a lot of criticism. In the early days there were those who felt that James White might be influencing his wife in her writings or might express an idea or two himself under her name. There is nothing as magic as a seal to give things weight and authority, and she was the seal. James, on the other hand, felt that others were doing the same with Ellen and might be gaining an edge over him:

She is humble, and must be treated tenderly, or she can do nothing. Elders Butler and Haskell have had an influence over her that I hope to see broken. It has nearly ruined her. These men must not be suffered by our people to do as they have done until all our ministers are fully discouraged. Young men are kept out of the ministry by their narrow blind counsel.¹⁰⁰

John Harvey Kellogg, a protégée of the Whites, had some of these same complaints for years. Too many, he thought, were doing too much under the name of inspiration through Ellen and her writings. Years later when he was interviewed by some of the men of the church he would say:

I want to tell you another thing you do not know about, a testimony I have from Sister White which she has not published and that none of them have published, that these men have frequently cut out large chunks of things that Sister White had written that put things in a light that was not the most favorable...or did not suit their campaigns that way, that they felt at liberty to cut them out and so change the effect and tenor of the whole thing, sending it out over Sister Whités name.¹⁰¹

What in essence he seems to be saying is that some of the boys had obtained a stamp with Ellen's name on it and were stamping some of anything and everything with it. Later in the interview Kellogg was to point to William C. White, son of Ellen, as the culprit in some cases:

Will White got those letters and took a paragraph here, and a paragraph there and a paragraph from the other one and put them together and made up a thing and sent them out with his own name signed to it. It is a «testimony» from Willie. If you look that document over, you will see her name IS not signed to that at all, but Willie has made it up from letters that Sister White had written to those personal friends...

Now Williés name is signed to it and not hers; yet that thing is being carried all over Europe and all over the world and read in public as a testimony from the Lord. And that is what I told you is the gigantic fraud that IS being perpetrated, and the ministry of the denomination and the whole machinery of the denomination have set themselves to work to perpetrate impositions and frauds upon people. If the truth were known it would bring the whole denomination into ignominy and contempt.¹⁰²

Years afterward it would be argued that the good doctor's statements were made after he had broken with the Whites and the church, and that therefore these were not reliable comments. It would be suggested that he had ulterior motives and should not be considered a qualified witness, although it is acknowledged that he had held honors along with those still in power, that he had been privileged to sit in high councils, and that he had personally been very close to Ellen. Criticism of Kellogg might be valid if he alone had seen and said what he did. But he was not alone.

William S. Sadler, another well-known physician and personal friend of the White family, had also been having second thoughts about the methods used and the excuses offered in the name of Ellen and inspiration. In April 1906 he was to recall to her some of the problems that he had seen over the years in her writings and conduct. This letter was written while he was still very much a true believer and supporter of Ellen and in response to her own invitation to ask questions. He, too, as others, had heard the voice of Ellen. But like Isaac before him, he had found that the hands were the hands of another-Will Whités. Sadler's statements make it clear that a good deal of license had been taken for twenty years or more:

Another matter: that is, Williés influence over the Testimonies. I came into the truth about 20 years ago, and just before I was baptized by Elder Wm. Covert, (about 18 years ago) I thoroughly made up my mind concerning the Testimonies. In short, I accepted them; but from that day to this, especially the last ten years, and more especially since your return to this country from Australia, 1, have been hearing it constantly, from leaders, ministers, from those sometimes high in Conference authority, that Willie influenced you in the production of your Testimonies; or, as they would often designate it, the «letters» you send out.

This talk made little or no impression on me. I resolutely refused to believe it, year after year. I have been given a copy of the communication written by you under date of July 19th, 1905, addressed to Brethren I. H. Evans and J. S. Washburn, and I have since then not known what to do or say concerning this matter. I refer to the following quotation:

"After seeing the representation, I awoke, and I fully expected that the matter would take place as it had been presented to me. When Elder Haskell was telling me of the perplexity that they were in to carry forward the Southern work, I said, 'Have faith in Cod; you will carry from this meeting the five thousand dollars needed for the purchase of the church!'»

«I wrote a few lines to Elder Daniel's suggesting this be done, but Willie did not see that the matter could be carried through thus, because Elder Daniel's and others were at that time very much discouraged in regard to the condition of things in Battle Creek. So I told him that he need not deliver the note. But I could not rest. I was disturbed, and could not find peace of mind.»

Please won't you help me to understand this? It is the most serious of all the difficulties I have encountered in my experience concerning the testimonies.¹⁰³

Had Sadler known what others have come to know – that in addition to Williés hand being in the pie, Ellen and her helpers were involved also in some highly creative book writing from the materials of others – he surely would have been more disturbed. Others were to raise similar issues in later years; but their questions, as Sadler's, were never answered to anyonés knowledge or satisfaction.

By the 1870s and 1880s, some were making distinctions in their thinking between a «testimony» (that is, as a private letter from the prophet) and that material which was being copied and adapted from other writers and placed in books as her own. Ellen did not accept this separation. She wrote to the Battle Creek church in 1882:

You are rebelling against God as certainly as were Korah, Dathan, and Abiram You have their history. You know how stubborn they were in their own opinions. They decided that their judgment was better than that of Moses...

When I went to Colorado I was so burdened for you that, in my weakness ...I arose at three óclock in the morning to write to you. God was speaking through clay. You might say that this communication was only a letter. Yes, it was a letter, but prompted by the Spirit of God, to bring before your minds things that had been shown me. In these letters which I write, in the testimonies I bear, I am presenting to you that which the Lord has presented to me. I do not write one article in the paper, expressing merely my own ideas. They are what God has opened before me in vision-the precious rays of light shining from the throne.¹⁰⁴

The transition was now complete. Ellen had arrived. She had reached her position of authority, and it was not to be questioned. Her letters, be they private or soon to be public, her copying from others, her talks on whatever subject, in fact, just about anything that might come off that «high shelf» would now be considered from God and blessed by his Spirit.

No claimant in religion has ever asked the people for such a blank check with an uncertified signature. But this claimant did. And to this day most Adventists have never questioned her endorsement nor her ability to fulfill her claim. Not only are the «testimonies» considered inspired (including that which was copied, even portions up to a hundred percent) but any writings that she was known to have approved, or touched, or been even near while she was alive are considered to have some special significance or «inspiration.» Even that which she didn't include when she copied is deemed significant. It has been suggested that-like Gutzon Borglum (the sculptor of the Mount Rushmore faces) who from the valley below supervised all the rock throwing-Ellen was considered to be directing by some heavenly radar all the material that came out under her name, whether she ever saw it or would recognize it as hers.¹⁰⁵

With such an endorsement as had never been given to any mortal before, Ellen was now ready to reshape the events of the past and, by her visionary interpretations of the Bible, likewise the events of the future. Already she had started on this idea of the great controversy in her first pocket-size edition in 1858 of Spiritual gifts. But that small work was crudely composed. And it had some competition-for the same year Hastings had published a volume with the identical title.¹⁰⁶ Ellen's 219-page volume did not show much promise and, unlike the later book The Great Controversy, was never heralded as widely in the way of truth and light, form and content, prose and style. But it was a beginning and therefore was to be used.

It is not hard even for the blind to see that if continuing revelations, and inspirations, and instructions were to take an obtuse angle and conflict with what had gone before, such a course would raise much more serious questions than those already being raised. If the material copied, if the authors used, if the new visions or instructions were to clash in any major way with the old, this would be hard to explain. Some inconsistency would take place, but the method used was (like the shell game) to keep the eyes occupied while the hands shifted the objects around so fast that the beginnings were forgotten. And that's what happened. Few readers today know that Spiritual Gifts is the forerunner of the four-volume set of The Spirit of Prophecy, and even fewer know that the five-volume set of the Conflict of the Ages Series traces its origin back to its four-volume predecessors.

The importance of this progression can't be overlooked, for what God said in 1858 he had to repeat in 1870, and even later in 1890, and so on. Now with God being God, that would be no problem for him; but with Ellen and her team, it wasn't that easy. Each new author copied had to mesh with the others who had gone before. Each new enlightenment or vision had to dovetail with all that had been put on record previously. Inconsistency had to be caught and either eliminated or clarified if anything slipped through-often again and again over a period of sixty years or more. There would be those, however, who would notice the change in style and the evolution of structure:

The first printed visions were characterized by a naive style, and the subject matter reflected what one would expect in a young mystic among the disappointed Millerites. Gradually the prophet developed into a different type of messenger, however, and the Conflict Series mark the production of the mature EGW. In fact the evolution is so great that It IS somewhat surprising to know that the same person wrote the two kinds of books. Even the different stages in the same series show striking improvements in style and contents. In the final editions the reader may peruse whole chapters without observing anything reminding him of visions. How this remarkable development came about in an intriguing assignment for the serious historian?¹⁰⁷

What was remarkable in the development was the cosmetic skill with which Ellen's team rearranged events so that criticism (as it would come) did not undermine the total project in its beginnings. By the time the number of dissents built up to a crescendo in the 1890s and beyond, the power of the legend of Ellen's invincibility (while she said she carried God's shield) helped her to win every battle, destroy all opposition, dismiss any dissenter from her employment (or for that matter the employment of the church), and banish, in the name of God and religion, some of the strongest characters in the medical and theological history of the church. No wonder that in 1980, at the Glacier View (Colorado) meeting about Desmond Ford's views, one of the princes of the church would write:

The time has come to be critical of our own method. We as Seventh-day Adventists have felt secure in that we have got the revealed truth; and no matter what others may say against us, we have God on our side and the prophet, Ellen G. White. Now we are discovering that much of what she wrote in Desire of Ages and Great Controversy was copied from others. How do we really know what we claim to know? We are thus forced to ask questions on matters of interpretation....

It is a historical fact that most of the bright lights that have left our church have left because of the authority assigned to the writings of Ellen White.¹⁰⁸

What that prince may not have known when he wrote that article is that not only The Desire of Ages and The Great Controversy were drawn largely from other writers, but the beginning of beginnings, Spiritual Gifts, and then volume one of The Spirit of Prophecy, the forerunner of Patriarchs and prophets (of the Conflict Series too) were also drawn from other writers. In that middle version of the series, Milton's Paradise Lost was given a greater part. From the two or three pages in Spiritual Gifts, Milton's theme was expanded to over thirty-seven pages and was to crop up, sometimes identically, in other of her writings. Now, however, new authors were found to fill in the gaps to make it all readable.¹⁰⁹

The brethren were not shy about heralding the virtues of the first volume of The Spirit of Prophecy.¹¹⁰ Even the name of the series suggests that it had the special approval of God and should be in the homes of all believers. Although the new volume was an improvement over the old Spiritual Gifts (another book with a title suggesting divine sanction), it did not turn the trick that was expected of it. Not until the later edition came out under the special title of Patriarchs and Prophets did the amplified material begin to hit its stride. It was to be the cornerstone of the five-volume Conflict of the Ages set that Adventists would use to establish most interpretation and translation and evaluation of the Scriptures. Used in all Seventh-day Adventist schools and colleges as authoritative on Old Testament matters, Patriarchs and Prophets has been accepted by Adventists as the final word. No deviation from this norm is accepted in matters of ideas concerning Creation, geology, theology, or Christology.

There were a few bad moments with the book, however. In the early writing, Ellen had Jacob and his night of wrestling in one version. In the later portrayal, however, the picture is almost the opposite in its details. Note her differing views in the italicized portions in the examples which follow:

Such discrepancies have caused concern among Adventist clergy from time to time, but not many helpful answers have come forth. In reply to a letter of 1943, Arthur White wrote for the White Estate:

Your second question relates to what you feel is a discrepancy in the account of Jacob's wrestling with the angel as recorded in «Patriarchs and Prophets,» and the earlier books «Spiritual Gifts» and «Spirit of Prophecy.» You ask for the official explanation of our denomination on this matter. I am in no position to speak for the denomination. The General Conference has not given study to this question which you raise, and there is no official pronouncement available. I have in my mind what seems to me to be a satisfactory explanation. After I have talked it over with some others here, I shall write to you again, but when I do so I shall be writing for Arthur White and not for the denomination.

In brief, I might ask for an explanation of the type of inspiration which permits some conflict in the accounts in connection with the ministry of Christ as recorded by the different gospel writers.¹¹³

Always careful to connect whatever problems that occurred in the writings of Ellen with problems that might occur with Scripture writers, the early apologists for Ellen began to sound as if God does not have to be truthful or accurate. To that tendency they have added a new twist. He just had to be God, and they would tell all who he was when it was necessary to do so. That argument was to carry over into the 1980s.

Still, one can't fault that final edition too much. With the help of John Milton, David March, Alfred Edersheim, Frederic W. Farrar, Friedrich W. Krummacher, and an ever-growing staff of researchers, finalist Ellen (and God) did produce a body of work that was to stand as the Adventist cornerstone for over a hundred years. That «high shelf» that was meant to be the protection of the prophet from temptation had also produced a profit of ideas.

Chapter 5 Selected Exhibits

Sample Comparison Exhibits

Appendix Chapter 5 Exhibit

If Patriarchs and Prophets was the cornerstone of Adventist theology The Desire of Ages was the keystone in the arch of Adventist thinking and Christological views. In the preface of volume two (1877) of its forerunner, The Spirit of Prophecy, it was said:

When the Publishers issued the first volume of this work, they felt that it supplied a want long realized by the Christian world, in illuminating a subject which is of great interest to the Christian mind, the relation of the son of God to the Father, and his position in Heaven, together with the fall of man and the Mediatorship of Christ between him and his Creator.

In this second volume the author continues with renewed interest the subject of the mission of Christ, as manifested by his Miracles and Teachings. The reader will find that this book furnishes invaluable aid in studying the lessons of Christ set forth in the Gospels.

The author, as a religious writer and speaker, has labored for the public during more than twenty Years. Being aided in the study of the Scriptures, and her work as a religious teacher, by the special enlightenment of the Spirit of God, she is peculiarly qualified to present the facts of the Life and Ministry of Christ, in connection with the divine plan of human redemption, and to practically apply the lessons of Jesus to the simple duties of life [italics added].

One of the most pleasing features of this book is the plain and simple language with which the author clothes thoughts that glow with truth and beauty.¹¹⁴

A lot of trouble and embarrassment would have been avoided in years to come if a few others than the «Spirit of God» had gotten some credit. Although the Scriptures do make it plain that every good and perfect gift comes from God, some of Ellen's gifts of writing were found to have come through quite a few human sources. In the late 1970s Robert W. Olson, for the White Estate (which is always pushed to keep its readers and the church members up to date on such things), issued a rather late concession that Ellen had indeed been peeking at the work of other authors when she wrote The Desire of Ages:

Ellen Whités indebtedness to other authors has long been acknowledged by Seventh-day Adventists....

The exact extent of Ellen Whités borrowings in The Great Controversy is not known....

Studies by Raymond Cottrell and Walter Specht have shown that Ellen White borrowed about 2.6 percent of her words in The Desire Of Ages from William Hannás Life of Christ .... However, W. C. White and Marian Davis both mention other books on Christ's life which Ellen White used. It is also evident that she borrowed from some works not named by W. C. White or Miss Davis, such as John Harris's The Great Teacher....

Ellen Whités literary borrowing was not limited to the three books discussed above....

Ellen White can hardly be called a «copyist» since she almost invariably rewrites, rephrases, and improves on the original author when she does use another's material....

Concerning the writing of The Desire of Ages in particular, W. C. White states:

«Previous to her work of writing on the Life of Christ and during the time of her writing to some extent, she read from the works of Hanna, Fleetwood, Farrar, and Geikie. I never knew of her reading Edersheim. She occasionally referred to Andrews."–W. C. White to L. E. Froom, January 8, 1928.

Comparison of The Desire of Ages with the various lives of Christ available in her day show that she drew, more or less [italics supplied] not only from the authors mentioned above by W. C. White, but from March, Harris, and others as well.¹¹⁵

Olson's article, which may be one of the most revealing concessions to date by the White Estate, deserves detailed study. Had it been circulated, or even leaked, to the general public and the church at large (which it hasn't as I write), this book might not have been written. Often only the «insider» gleaning so-called «top secret» information knows where to send for what-if he is privileged to know that such information exists at all.

To write or say that «Ellen Whités indebtedness to other authors has long been acknowledged by Seventh-day Adventists» is only an extension of the white lie. Although it is technically true that, as far back as the 1880s, the church has been righting a rear guard action concerning the use of others' material in the name of God and Ellen, the declarations have always been made with defensiveness and quick justification.

William S. Peterson's article in a Spectrum issue of 1971, for example, was to bring down upon him a chorus of spiritual invectives that, in the language of the truck driver or stevedore, would curl the paint on any container at thirty paces. That Ellen had borrowed just was not so, it was said From that autumn issue until the 1980s the journal has carried continuing charges and counter charges, denials and counter denials that try to refute any suggestion that she would have incorporated anyonés vocabulary or been influenced in any of her writing.¹¹⁶

Not until Neal C. Wilson, president of the General Conference, wrote the eighteen members of the special Glendale Committee set up to review the amount of certain findings about Ellen's «borrowing» were the readers of the Adventist Review to learn that she had used the works of others for «descriptive, biographical, historical, spiritual, and scientific information.»¹¹⁷ As one member of the committee was to point out to Wilson, «That hardly seems to leave much except direct revelation. Is that the issue the panel is to decide?»¹¹⁸ Surely the personnel of the White Estate must have known all along that most of the church has been uniformed about the amount and extent of her «borrowing.»

At least a great many church scholars who have tried to pry loose White Estate historical material that would help in making comparisons with others' writings know they have received very little help and encouragement from those guarding the sacrosanct vault of the Estate. The policy of «selective revelation» (that is, the Estate selects what may be revealed) has had such a hold that only when members of the Clan pass from the scene may the church expect access to information that may reveal the truth. Time and again the men from that office, while riding the national circuit-which they do rather often to help quiet the restless natives-have had to meet the question of why the vault cannot be open to all researchers and information made available to friend and foe alike, and why picking and choosing is always left to the Clan Plan.

Even those who might have had their own key to the vault (so to speak) found It fascinating that the shut door might have a possibility of being opened even a little. Donald R. McAdams, himself a competent researcher on Ellen and her writings, sounded a hopeful note over just such prospects in an article in Spectrum in 1980:

In the March 20, 1980, Adventist Review in an article entitled «This I Believe About Ellen G. White » Neal Wilson informed the church about the Rea [Glendale] Committee. The initial report indicates that «in her writing Ellen White used sources more extensively than we have heretofore been aware of or recognized....» [italics added.]

The statement is a most significant article to appear in the Review in this century. The president of the General Conference is openly and honestly acknowledging the facts about Ellen Whités use of sources and pointing the church toward a definition of inspiration that will be new to most Adventists an threatening to some. A full response to Walter Rea must wait until he as presented his evidence to the church in definitive written form.¹¹⁹

Inevitably McAdams would react as he did, because he is an honest historian who himself spent much time in 1972–73 examining a chapter of The Great Controversy, comparing a chapter of it with half a chapter of historian James A. Wylie, and finding irrefutable evidence of dependence. The interesting and significant part of this story, as he tells It, is that the White Estate would not allow this church historian to release his work or conclusions to the church or the world.¹²⁰

McAdams had another reason to be concerned about what was taking place. He was one of the members of the special Glendale Committee to whom Wilson wrote. He had seen some of the evidence, had heard the January 28–29, 1980, presentation, and had himself stated to his colleagues that the evidence was indeed «startling.»¹²¹ He had even suggested that «if every paragraph in The Great Controversy were footnoted in accordance with proper procedure, almost every paragraph would be footnoted.» It is of interest that those committee members present from the White Estate did not challenge him.¹²²

How could they? They were sitting there with privileged information. Ronald D. Graybill, assistant secretary of the White Estate was present at the meeting. He too had been working in the files and had completed in May 1977 a comparison of Ellen White and her close paraphrasing of another historian, Merle d'Aubigne. As he continued his study, what should appear to his wondering eyes-not d'Aubigne at all, but a popularized version of d'Aubigne prepared by the Reverend Charles Adams for young readers, and this material had been published first, not in The Great Controversy, but in the October 11, 1883, Signs of the Times article entitled «Luther in the Wartburg.»¹²³ The conclusions of this rather simple cloak-and-dagger story were, as McAdams quotes Graybill:

There does not appear to be any objective historical fact in Mrs. Whités account that she could not have gained from the literary sources on which she was drawing, except in one detail: ... The over all impression gained from this study by this researcher is that it sustains McAdams' main point- that the objective and mundane historical narrative was based on the work of historians, not on visions.¹²⁴

So why didn't we say so in the first place? The nearest that we had ever come to that type of acknowledgment was from son Willie White (letter of 4 November 1912):

When writing out the chapters for Great Controversy, she sometimes gave a partial description of an important historical event, and when her copyist who was preparing the manuscripts for the printer, made inquiry regarding time and place, Mother would say that those things are recorded by conscientious historians. Let the dates used by those historians be inserted. At other times in writing out what had been presented to her, Mother found such perfect descriptions of events and presentations of facts and doctrines written out in our denominational books, that she copied the words of these authorities.¹²⁵

Williés statements would be modified in a 1969 statement by his son Arthur: «Mrs. White ever sought to avoid being influenced by others.»¹²⁶

There was another member of the White Estate group who likewise sat quietly through that January 1980 meeting without tipping his hand. He was Robert W. Olson, appointed to head the White Estate on the retirement of Arthur L. White in 1978. Olson, more than perhaps anyone else in the room except W. Richard Lesher (the head of the Adventist Biblical Research Institute) knew where some of the bodies were buried, because some of those bodies were being resurrected faster than the burying services could be performed.

In 1977 and 1978 Olson received a number of letters that were opening new avenues of information on the relationship of Ellen to her book Patriarchs and Prophets. To Olson, the research had taken a nasty turn as it began to get close to The Desire of Ages. When he was asked about the persistent rumor that Ellen had received some rather human help in the preparation of Desire, he didn't seem to recall the letters or materials that he was getting except to express that the report of help was overdrawn and there was no reason to believe that The Desire of Ages was anything but the work of Ellen White.¹²⁷

He knew well that the trail to Ellen's «borrowing» was getting warm, for he had written a remarkable letter concerning it to the Estate staff on November 29, 1978, just two years before the meeting where he was now denying that any problem existed. The letter was a sensitive one and was not for public notice. To ensure fairness, I include the entire letter in the appendix section of this chapter. Portions are given here:

About eight or ten months ago Elder Rea sent me a copy of some of his research which in his opinion showed that Ellen White was highly dependent upon Edersheim for some of the things she had written in Desire of Ages, as well as for the very organization of the book itself, and the use of many chapter titles.

I wrote to Elder Rea at the time and asked him not to move forward with any plans for publishing his findings until I had a chance to talk to him personally at the Southern California Conference Camp Meeting to be held late in July 1978. To this suggestion Elder Rea readily agreed. When I attended the camp meeting near Palmdale, California, last July, I spent several hours talking with Elder Rea and obtained his consent to withhold the advertising of his work on any kind of a broad scale until we had had opportunity ourselves to look at it first.... Elder Rea has agreed to give us What ever time we need before he takes any further steps on his own....

Through Jim Nix at Loma Linda and Ed Turner at Andrews University, I have learned of someone in the Loma Linda area who is making comparisons between the Desire of Ages, and Hannás book on «The Life of Christ.» Jim Nix told me that he saw Hannás book and that it is heavily underlined m both red and blue and that this is supposed to be the very copy of the book which was used in the White Estate office when Mrs. White was preparing her book The Desire of Ages. Jim Nix has Xeroxed a copy of this book and sent it to us, so we have it here in our office.... [Italics added.]

Ed also told me about a professional man, a dentist as I recall, who lived m the Victorville area....This professional man recently had access to Hannás «Life of Christ,» and after reading it, told Ed that it practically «blew his mind» to see the close resemblance that he discovered between Hanna and Ellen White.¹²⁸

The solution suggested by this man of God, sworn to disseminate truth and light, was as follows:

The only alternative [of four outlined] which seems sensible to me is the last one. It will cost the White Estate nothing for Jim's [Cox] time, and I do believe that we can stay close enough to him so that the conclusions he arrives at would be essentially the same as the conclusions we would come to were we doing the work ourselves. We could ask Jim to make a report every two or three weeks to a committee.¹²⁹

Later it was explained at the Glendale Committee meeting that the letter was only a poor selection of words and their meaning could be misconstrued.¹³⁰ There was no misconstruing Arthur Whités words, however, when he wrote at the same time on the same subject to the same group:

Keep in mind that the training in the universities to accept and believe only that which can be proved to the satisfaction of the researcher can easily lead to a skeptical approach which does not take into account that there may be disturbing features in inspired writings, resulting in the need of faith as made clear by Ellen White as she discussed investigations of the Bible and her writings...

«All who look for hooks to hang their doubts upon will find them....»

«Distrust of God is the natural outgrowth of the unrenewed heart....»

«Satan has ability to suggest doubts and devise objections to the pointed testimony that God sends.

From The Great Controversy, p. 527; Testimonies, vol. 5, p. 675.¹³¹

One can close his eyes and hear that door clanging shut again still tighter, while the lost riders of fear and guilt go charging through the sky. It did not sound like an open-door policy when he continued:

If participated in by Andrews University-are the scholars trained in methods of research by universities known to have demolished faith in the Bible and its dependability of Biblical accounts, capable of passing proper judgment in areas where absolute honesty in the acceptance of records and faith based on evidence are important factors? In making decisions when multiple choices are before the researcher will faith in Ellen Whités inspiration fail?¹³²

It would be difficult to conclude from these two confidential missives that the people of the Adventist Church are encouraged to know all the truth about Ellen-including her skill in using others' material minus credit lines for her own works.

One further bit of information needs to be added to the picture to make it complete. Robert Olson was sitting through the meetings of the Glendale Committee with an ancient but haunting document virtually on his lap. It had been «discovered» only a few weeks before in the hall of the Estate offices by Desmond Ford in his search for truth. It was so revealing that had Olson read it or used it in the meeting the session might have been shortened by half a day or more. It came from the pen of W. W. Prescott (an earlier long-time leader and former General Conference vice president of the Adventist Church) who turned over some rocks himself. The letter was dated April 6 1915 and was written to Ellen's son Willie with whom Prescott from the contents of the letter had worked long end hard:

It seems to me that a large responsibility rests upon those of us who know that there are serious errors in our authorized books and yet make no special effort to correct them. The people and our average ministers trust us to furnish them with reliable statements and they use our books as sufficient authority in their sermons but we let them go on year after year asserting things which we know to be untrue. I cannot feel that this is right. It seems to me that we are betraying our trust and deceiving the ministers and people. It appears to me that there is much more anxiety to prevent a possible shock to some trustful people than to correct error.

Your letter indicates a desire on your part to help me but I fear that it is a little late. The experience of the last six or eight years and especially the things concerning which I talked with you have had their effect on me in several ways. I have had some hard shocks to get over and after giving the best of my life to this movement I have little peace and satisfaction in connection with it and I am driven to the conclusion that the only thing for me to do IS to do quietly what I can do conscientiously and leave the others to go on without me. Of course this [is] far from a happy ending to my life-work but this seems to be the best adjustment that I am able to make. The way your mother's writings have been handled and the false impression concerning them which is still fostered among the people have brought great perplexity and trial to me. It seems to me that what amounts to deception through probably not intentional has been practiced in making some of her books and that no serious effort has been made to disabuse the minds of the people of what was known to be their wrong view concerning her writings. But it is no use to go into these matters. I have talked with you for years about them but it brings no change. I think however that we are drifting toward a crisis which will come sooner or later and perhaps sooner. A very strong feeling of reaction has already set in.¹³³

Evidence related later shows why Prescott was even more concerned than his letter indicates. He himself with the blessing of other officers had helped write some of the very books he was complaining about. How could he in good conscience (we have no evidence that he was not a man of good conscience) let the church go on believing that what he and others had helped to write in the name of devotional material was now to be received as the final authoritative voice of God and to become the basis of Adventist worldwide Christology (itself a subject that was of special interest to Prescott).

It is now evident-from the information that the White Estate possesses and from materials being leaked from other sources-that the church is in trouble in the matter of Ellen and her shoplifting. Too much is being identified from the places where she had shopped. As McAdams wrote in his Spectrum article:

About the time the White Estate was responding to the evidence that Ellen White had borrowed extensively from the Protestant historians m the preparation of The Great Controversy, another researcher was bringing to their attention evidence that she also borrowed from secular authors for other books in the Conflict of the Ages series especially Prophets and Kings and The Desire of Ages. Walter Rea pastor of the Long Beach California Church asserted on the basis of inconclusive evidence presented m several unpublished papers that the major source for Prophets and Kings was Bible History: Old Testament by Alfred Edersheim originally published in seven volumes between 1876 and 1877 and that Edersheim's The Life and Times of Jesus, the Messiah, first published in 1883 was a major source for The Desire of ages....

Now the growing awareness in Adventist circles of Walter Reás research and the studies of The Great Controversy called for another response in the Review.

Judging from the samples used by Arthur White to illustrate Ellen Whités relationship with Hanna in articles 4, 6 and 7 he must have already had available to him the very thorough and careful study by Walter Specht. Desiring to know the truth about Ellen Whités sources for The Desire of Ages and not wishing to be caught unprepared by the research of Walter Rea or someone else, the White Estate commissioned two eminent Adventist scholars to study thoroughly the relationship of The Desire of Ages to William Hannás The Life of Our Lord. Raymond F. Cottrell longtime book editor at the Review and Herald Publishing Association took the first 45 chapters; and Walter F. Specht professor of New Testament at Loma Linda University took chapters 46 to 86.¹³⁴

With the assigning of Cottrell and Specht to the task of Ellen's The Desire of Ages, the church was throwing the heavies into the breach. It was thoroughly understood in high places that if the flood tide of facts and information washed away the foundation of The Desire of Ages, then the keystone in Saint Ellen's arch would be seriously jeopardized and the white lie exposed. Not everywhere was this understood but many leaders were well aware and very apprehensive.

It was a calculated risk, therefore, when the Adventists summoned two of their finest from retirement back to the war. The credentials of the two were impeccable. Cottrell, a third-generation Adventist, had served the church in various high-level capacities, including that of book editor at the Review and Herald, most of his life. Specht had been known as a scholar, department chairman, and dean at some of the church's finest institutions. Both men would be expected to bring to the task not only their lifetime of experience but their integrity as well.

The report issued at the end of six months of study was a shocker- not so much for what it said as for what it revealed by what it did not emphasize. The very fact that such high-level input was used showed that the church as a whole had not known about the white lie and that the leaders were determined to see that the church received only information that was acceptable to those leaders.

Both men would take the high road in the report. Specht, while conceding that Hanna had been used by Ellen throughout both the early edition of The Spirit of Prophecy (volumes two and three) and the later edition of The Desire of Ages, concluded that he still liked Ellen's paraphrasing of Hanna better than Hannás own work.¹³⁵ Although he had found that the copying from Hanna had begun at the beginning and ended at the ending, he felt that the matter was not as serious as some had made it.

Cottrell, less cautious, calculated that 2.6 percent of Hanna had been taken by Ellen.¹³⁶ To obtain these incredible figures, he showed the kind of «creative bookkeeping» he had used.

Attention was given to the possibility that Ellen White may have relied to some extent on Hanna for the passages of Scripture she quotes, and/or for the order in which she sometimes introduces them. Two considerations, however, preclude the possibility of any firm conclusion with respect to any relatedness in the Scriptures quoted....

Furthermore, White and Hanna both used the King James Version of the Bible...probably m editions with marginal references.... Also, both probably used the same concordance. . . to locate related Bible passages. Thus even if neither writer ever saw what the other wrote, they would both be likely to refer to other passages of Scripture in approximately the same order Beyond this, two persons equally familiar with the Bible would find much the same related passages of Scripture coming to mind, and introduce them in approximately the order suggested by the Gospel narrative....

To me. . . these facts. . .suggest that any similarity between the passages of Scripture cited, or the order in which they occur, is at least largely, if not entirely coincidental and completely useless for determining whether, or to what extent, Ellen White made use of Hanna...

Only where both writers use identical or unusual words in such a sequence could literary relatedness be established beyond a doubt[italics added].¹³⁷

Cottrell had fallen into the trap from which Francis D. Nichol had never extricated himself-using the study to prove that Ellen had not directly «quoted» from others as much as had been said. He seemed to overlook the fact that paraphrasing is the most subtle and potentially deceptive form of copying. Even McAdams said in his Spectrum article:

Indeed, there are some closely paraphrased paragraphs and other paragraphs where, although Ellen Whités words are different, It is clear she is following the ideas presented by Hanna [Italics added].¹³⁸

After endeavoring to diminish the influence of other authors on the writing of The Desire of Ages, Cottrell did concede:

Nevertheless, there are numerous instances of clear literary correlation which prove conclusively that Ellen White made use of some of the words, phrases, ideas and thought sequence.¹³⁹

In answer to his statement that «in no instance did either Dr. Specht or I find even one sentence in DA identical with LC, or even substantially so,»¹⁴⁰ I suggest that the reader see the exhibit section for this chapter.¹⁴¹ Better yet, one should obtain a copy of Hanna from a library and enlighten himself in person.

Although the text of the report as a whole was not given wide circulation; the 2.6 percent figure was quoted and repeated everywhere. Adventists grabbed onto it like a drowning man would clutch a life jacket and head for shore shouting he was saved. In reality, the study was so limited in scope that some of the most serious matters remain to be dealt with. For example:

a. The church as a whole has indeed not known the extent of the white lie-and «the brethren» are not anxious to have the members know.

b. At least as early as the 1870s, and as late as the early 1900s, Ellen and her helpers were deeply and widely involved in drawing material from the writings of others.

c. If even Cottrell's percentage (however accurate it might be) were to be extended to the ever-growing list of authors identified as having been used by Ellen and her helpers, the church and their prophet would be seen to be in enormous trouble and something would seam unraveling.

d. Ellen's use of Hanna, and other sources as well, was not «selected revelation,» with God's permission, to fill in a scene here and there to help a fading prophet's memory, but was a running commentary and paraphrase of each passage or chapter selected-often with pauses for a personal homily, but likewise often expanding that homily to be strikingly similar to the devotional material of the author copied.¹⁴²

e. Perhaps the most damaging evidence emerging is that whatever help Ellen had, human or divine, she had uncanny ability to go back and pick up new material each time the return was made. Sometimes the thoughts, words, and sentences that had been taken from one author in the early stages (1870–84) were deleted in the later product (The Desire of Ages). Sometimes an amplification of the same author's material was substituted. But sometimes (especially when the early copying had been extensive) material would be drawn from other sources or other authors in such a way that the color of the new threads did not clash with the ultimate pattern of the fabric being woven through the years. Clearly, the human planners knew well the maps they were using for all the trips of all those years.¹⁴³

However, by nature and practice an honest scholar, Cottrell later allowed his integrity to overcome his Adventist heritage and prejudice. His silence was broken on September 19, 1981, when the Los Angeles Times, in an article by John Dart, religious editor, quoted from an upcoming missive by Cottrell:

The combination of Ford's and Reás research and treatment of the two men by church administrators presents a crisis «with the very real threat of schism in the church we love,' according to a leading Adventist biblical scholar, Raymond F. Cottrell. Cottrell, book editor for more than 30 years for the Adventist Review, blamed church administrators for the «Ford-Rea crisis» in an article for an upcoming issue of the independent journal Spectrum, published by the reform-minded Adventist Forums.

Ford and Rea «are both friends of the church, not enemies, despite the fact that, in both cases, the wisdom of some of their tactics may be open to question,» Cottrell wrote. To future historians, Cottrell continued, «the Ford-Rea crisis will appear as the logical, perhaps inevitable, climax to nearly a century of burying the issues to which they have recently called attention, under the denominational rug.»¹⁴⁴

Cottrell's preliminary draft itself («Our Present Crisis: Reaction to a Decade of Obscurantism») was even more specific and devastating for Its finger pointing, as it went on to say:

The only new elements are Ford's extended application of the apotelesmatic principle, which everyone in the church follows to some extent, and Reás demonstration of the extent of Ellen Whités literary dependence. There is documentary evidence of the fact that our Bible scholars were well aware of all the exegetical problems our traditional interpretation of Daniel and Hebrews conjures up, at least twenty-five years ago, and also of Ellen Whités literary dependence. But repeated, positively motivated attempts during the intervening years (ninety and seventy-five years respectively)' often by competent Bible scholars whose loyalty to the church cannot be questioned, the church has consistently, officially, and more or less effectively buried, and in some instances the people who presumed to ask the questions, as well.¹⁴⁵

And finally he laid the blame on specific administrators:

The decade 1969 to 1979 provides the immediate historical background of our present dilemma. Prior to this decade our Bible scholars were quietly at work on these problems, individually and in scholarly circles, fully aware of the fact that the church was approaching a crisis concerning which it was at best but dimly aware. In my personal tales, accumulated over the years, ~s extensive contemporary documentation of what was being done, and of official General Conference measures to stifle this scholarly investigation. This record of well-intentioned obfuscation is vital to an understanding of our present dilemma because it was this more than any other single factor that led Ford and Rea, and especially Ford, to «go public» with their questions. Their present course of action is a response to obfuscation, not a gratuitous attempt to embarrass the church. The church itself is basically responsible for the crisis, not Ford or Rea!

Most of the following incidents during the decade 1969 to 1979 can be documented from my personal files. For the few items not covered in my personal files documentary evidence is available elsewhere, and/or other persons can verify the facts.

It was Robert H. Pierson's announced policy as president of the General Conference that administrators, and not Bible scholars or theologians, were to make theological decisions for the church. Over these years he reiterated this policy to individuals and to General Conference committees, and implemented it in his appointment of non-scholars (particularly Willis Hackett and Gordon Hyde) to ride herd on the Adventist scholarly community, to govern the Biblical Research Committee and the Geoscience Advisory Committee, and in his restructuring of these committees in a way designed to assure effective administrative control over them.¹⁴⁶

Cottrell was only one of the many runners with more bad news for the church in its crisis. Fred Veltman, according to the Adventist Review in the fall of 1980, was the man upon whose shoulders the mantle of truth was to rest. Because of the disturbance of the Rea study, reported the Review:

After careful examination of the data, it [the January 28–29, 1980, Glendale Committee] concluded that Ellen Whités use of sources had been more extensive than we had realized and recommended that a scholar framed m literary analysis undertake a thoroughgoing study of The Desire of Ages. This suggestion was adopted by the General -Conference. Already Dr. Fred Veltman, a New Testament scholar on the faculty of Pacific Union College, is engaged full time in the project, which is expected to take about two years.¹⁴⁷

After surveying the material on the Ellen G. White controversy available to him, Veltman had written a detailed critique for the Presidents Executive Advisory Committee in Washington. In that report he quoted that same Raymond Cottrell as saying:

Walter Reás evidence and his conclusions will be and are most damaging to the faith of our membership in EGW.

To say that «I saw» and similar expressions refer to cognizance and not to heavenly origins of the content of the visions is asking people to disbelieve what they have been taught all their lives. The obvious reading of the expression in its context would have you understand a heavenly source for the vision. This explanation forces the people to conclude that EGW's integrity cannot be assumed.¹⁴⁸

Edward Heppenstall, a long-time Adventist theologian, is likewise quoted by Veltman:

Walter's material will have a shattering effect upon the church membership Many of the answers now being offered are not really satisfying to those who have looked at the data.¹⁴⁹

Even Desmond Ford, the Australian theologian, gives a devastating summary as reported in Veltman's words:

Des does not believe that EGW intended to deceive. At the same time he cannot agree to the positions being taken or already held in the church that EGW writings are an extension of the canon, are authoritative for church doctrine, and are inerrant.

Des views Walter Rea as being reluctant to publish and desiring to go with the brethren if they will only take the issue and the evidence seriously.¹⁵⁰

Veltman himself concludes:

The answers which the church spokesman give as Walter raises the questions are for the most part not a equate. In addition, the credibility of the church leaders drops with each new release. The church is continually taken by surprise and on the defensive. And each point the church admits is a «score» for Walter. The church should be on the front lines doing the study and informing the church when the data has been carefully evaluated. What IS so hard to understand is why the church is unwilling to work with Walter when he is willing to work with the church.

Walter is dedicated to get to the bottom of the problem and to let the church know. He does not want another generation to go through his personal agony of disillusionment. This for Walter is a non-negotiable and it is hard to fault him on his conviction in view of the evidence and the history of this problem in the church.

The question over the «I was showns» is probably the hardest one to answer.¹⁵¹

The leaders of the church indeed found it hard to face reality, but it was obvious that something must be done, and done quickly. So, as always, the tired old men from PREXAD (the President's Executive Advisory Committee) and the White Estate, turned to the source they so often deny their members-the law. It seemed to be their last hope of quelling the storm which would not go away and for which they were unprepared.

The September 17, 1981 Review, heralded that their Catholic lawyer had declared that. Ellen White was not legally a plagiarist according to the lawyer's definition, and therefore her works did not constitute copyright infringement.¹⁵² This report-clearly not coming to grips with the moral, spiritual, or theological implications at the heart of the matter-drew very little comfort and brought few sighs of relief from knowledgeable readers.

To add to all the confusion, Arthur Delafield, another tired but willing warrior, was called back to the fray. Delafield, who had been a circuit rider for the White Estate for over twenty-five years, wrote a reply to a letter from a lay member in Australia. In addition to raising questions, this layman had stated a conviction:

I must admit to feeling, at times, somewhat angered and disillusioned. Not with Walter Rea but with the «system.» The question is not how to silence or to discredit Waiter Rea (or Forum, or anybody else for that matter), but whether what he says is true. I can live with the truth about Ellen White, but 1 would find it difficult to be enthusiastic about belonging to, let alone supporting and promoting, an organization which relied on falsehoods or intimidation in order to survive.¹⁵³

Delarleld's reply was a thriller. In typical pontifical style he declared:

Your letter of May 27 addressed to the president of the General Conference has arrived in this office. Elder Wilson certainly wishes to be remembered to you with warm brotherly feelings. His Administrative Assistant, Arthur Patzer, has asked that I respond since I have spent 25 years in the Ellen G. White Estate offices as one of the secretaries and now made a life-time trustee of the White Estate board....

Walter [Rea] has spent more time looking for parallels in the writings of Ellen White with non-inspired sources than anyone outside of the White Estate. He has placed these parallels side by side and the weight of evidence would seem to indicate that Ellen White was almost a creature of her times – a plagiarizer with enormous capacity for incorporating the writings of others in her own written messages and getting credit for it herself.

I say that the foregoing would seem to be what Walter Rea has proven. The careful researcher, however ... is greatly distressed by Walter Reás «evidence.» I say this not because there is so much, but because he thinks there is so much of it and he is wrong. Dreadfully wrong. He has grossly exaggerated the situation.¹⁵⁴

Finally, his punch line came on page five:

I highly respect many of our Seventh-day Adventist theologians. I have sat at their feet and been taught by them. I admire and respect them highly. I would like to remind you, however, that you can search the Bible from Genesis to Revelation and you will not find a single text marking out theologians as having the gift of the Holy Spirit. The Scriptures indicate, however, that prophets have a gift of the holy Spirit. Ellen White had that gift and she was canonical insofar as doctrinal interpretation authority is concerned [italics added].¹⁵⁵

Inasmuch as Delafield, now retired, was writing his reply on official General Conference stationery and invoking the name of the head divine of the church, Neal C. Wilson, as his authority for writing, it would seem that «the church» had finally unofficially rejected their controversial stand taken some twenty-four years before, when under some controversy and duress a «representative group of Seventh-day Adventist leaders, Bible teachers and editors» had declared through the official Adventist press:

We would note...

1. That we do not regard the writings of Ellen G White as an addition to the sacred canon of Scripture.

2. That we do not think of them as of universal application, as is the Bible, but particularly for the Seventh-day Adventist Church.

3. That we do not regard them in the same sense as the Holy Scriptures, which stand alone and unique as the standard by which all other writings must be judged.

Seventh-day Adventists uniformly believe that the canon of Scripture closed with the book of Revelation. We hold that all other writings and teachings, from whatever source, are to be judged by, and are subject to, the Bible, which Is the spring and norm of the Christian faith. We test the writings of Ellen G. White by the Bible, but in no sense to do we test the Bible by her writings....

We have never considered Ellen G. White to be in the same category as the writers of the canon of scripture [emphasis added].¹⁵⁶

Despite the best efforts of the 1957 «representative group» who had published the foregoing statements in Questions on Doctrine, now, in the old warrior's 1981 letter the blueprint of the past's extreme and paranoid views had finally come clear. Adventists, through tired old men, were telling the world that despite all the double-talk of the past and the deceptions of the present, they do indeed cast their lot with Ellen as their final authority, their first among equals. Through him, they, In effect, are proud to tell the world they represent a sect and are not about to become associated with non-members of their cult or any of the rest of the Christian community!

Truth has a way of eluding a «true believer» when the church spokesmen seem to be willing to overlook most of the information, most of its friendly critics, and all of the evidence In their endeavor to hide from reality.

Even another statement that surfaced from no less than W. C. White, Ellen's son, did not change the view that all she said must have come from God. In 1905 he was supposed to have said:

Some of the most precious chapters of Desire of Ages are made up of matter first written in letters to men laboring under trying circumstances, for the purpose of cheering and instructing them regarding their work. Some of these beautiful lessons about Christian experience illustrated m the life of our Saviour, were first written in letters to my brother Edson, when he was struggling with many difficulties in his work in Mississippi. Some were written first to Elder Corliss, when he was holding a discussion with a wily Campbellite in Sydney. Note: Sister White wrote on original copy of this manuscript In her own handwriting the following words: I have read this. It is correct.»¹⁵⁷

But is was no use. There would always be those who would say if Ellen touched it, or saw it, or was even aware of it – it had to come from God and was all inspired! Even that statement of oft-quoted by the Adventists that some librarian from the hallowed halls of the Library of Congress had designated The Desire of Ages one of the ten most impressive books on the life of Christ was found to have been muttered by some Adventist preacher on the way to work. But knowing this would not shake loose the true believer. Of such things are the white lies of this life made.

Selected Exhibits

Sample Comparison Exhibits

Note: Numerals in [ ] indicate page numbers.

Appendix Chapter 6 Exhibit

The groundwork for the Adventist reinterpretation of ancient history and doctrine was laid in Patriarchs and Prophets (1890), which thus became the cornerstone of Adventist theology and geology. Then The Desire of Ages (1898) was to become the keystone in the arch of Adventist New Testament Christology. Then the greatest shell game of now-you-see-it-now-you-don’t was played with another book, The Acts of the Apostles (1911), the by-product of Sketches from the Life of Paul (1883) and earlier The Spirit of Prophecy (volume three, 1878), was to stand as a monument to the Adventist folly of the white lie.

Many Adventists have heard somewhat about the conflict over Sketches from the Life of Paul. It had been published in 1883 and was represented to the church and public as the greatest source of inspired information on the life of Paul since the Book of Acts was recorded by St. Luke. The preface set the tone:

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. She has not suffered herself to be drawn aside to discuss theories, or to indulge in speculation. No extraneous matter is introduced. Consequently much that is contained in other books, which is interesting to the curious, and has a certain value, but which is after all little more than theory, finds no place in this work.¹⁵⁸

Clearly, this fast trip through Paul’s sixty or so filled years was going to miss the shoals of human speculation that had stranded other writers before Ellen. In later years it was to be argued that she did not write the preface of her books and often not the introductions – which may be, but if so that destroys the argument that she was always in control and always supervised the finished product. Either Ellen endorsed that statement or she did not; but whatever the case, the statement is helpful in examining what happened after publication.

The book ran into trouble almost at once from both within and without the church. Francis D. Nichol, Ellen’s later apologist, does his best to quiet any past ill rumors and to forestall any new criticism of the prophet.¹⁵⁹ To give him the credit he deserves, perhaps he was trying to save something that could not be saved. He had trouble with his task almost from the first. Some scholars consider the defense inadequate and inaccurate.¹⁶⁰ Indeed, some have suggested that Arthur White’s name should have been included as collaborator. Nichol’s Ellen G. White and Her Critics was written to continue the flight from reality with the legend of Saint Ellen by rearranging the facts so as to deny that Ellen was always anything but ethical in her manner of writing. One observer has said that

Nichol did not release all the vital documents in his possession. He knew of the devastating evidence in Mrs. White’s letter to Bates in 1847 [concerning the closed door], but he said nothing about it.¹⁶¹

If this information is true, then what objectivity could Nichols bring to the ideas he advanced as to Sketches from the Life of Paul? Whether there was a threatened lawsuit or not, the book was withdrawn, each side of the debate giving different reasons for the demise. It was not available again until a facsimile reproduction was published ninety-one years afterward.

The big flap over the little book can be told simply. The method of writing followed the pattern already set, and there is no question that the material was Filched from other sources. There were complaints that Sketches sounded a good deal like The Life and Epistles of St. Paul by W. J. Conybeare and J. S. Howson. Although the similarities were denied at the time, a later examination showed the criticism to have basis. Percentage comparison was used to try to minimize the fact of dependence.

A study done by H. O. Olson¹⁶² in the early 1940s was the basis for the material in Nichol’s book defending Ellen. Olson produced pages and pages of comparisons, but reported only direct quotes or similar words. The truth is that Ellen had used the other author’s material from beginning to end with little let-up. More recent comparisons indicate that paraphrasing of Conybeare and Howson’s book is evident in structure, words, paragraphs, and even pages of material – almost without giving God a chance, in many cases, to get a word in edgewise.¹⁶³ Even Ellen’s local color and vocabulary are limited in some chapters.

Despite the hanky-panky in making the book, the known criticism, the ninety-year lapse, the facsimile reprint was done without change or confession in 1974. The Trustees of the White Estate were still hailing the merits of the book in the new preface of the facsimile edition as though no lesson had been learned in the past hundred years:

One reader early noted that in its thirty-two chapters there were “many points not mentioned in the New Testament’’ – more than 750 of them. George I. Butler, president of the General Conference, after reading the book, wrote feelingly in the Review and Herald:

There are passages in it which touched our hearts most deeply, and brought the tears to our eyes. We finished its pages with an increased admiration for the character and life of this devoted apostle, and with a clear sense of the power of the religion of our Lord and Saviour to help and ennoble weak, fallen humanity. – Review and Herald, July 24, 1883.¹⁶⁴

For a church that had always told the public that nothing should be added to the Canon, give or take a few thoughts, 750 new additions would be impressive for one book by Ellen.

H. O. Olson’s earlier admission of her copy work was understandable. But as one of the insiders, he had further inside information that Nichol did not use in his book. Olson had also done a study on another author that Ellen and her group found helpful – but, as always, had not acknowledged. The paper was given the top heavy title of “Comparisons of ‘The Life and Works of Paul’ by Farrar and ‘Sketches from the Life of Paul’ by Mrs. E. G. White, To Ascertain If the Latter is Dependent on the Former.” The study showed real promise. The comparisons were circulated to the church field on request, with the first page usually missing. That page said:

No careful reading and comparison of “The Life and Works of Paul” by Farrar and “Sketches from the Life of Paul,” by Mrs. E. G. White, as in the case of the latter and “Life and Epistles of the Apostle Paul” by Conybeare and Howson, has been made; but a day was spent in an endeavor to ascertain if any part of Mrs. White’s book is based on Farrar’s book. I especially compared the sections of “Sketches from the Life of Paul” which had no quotations from the “Life and Epistles of the Apostle Paul.”¹⁶⁵

Regardless of all the lessons of the past, and as if to follow a pattern not to see, Olson continued to restrict himself, as did others who came after. No one seemed to want to recognize the stolen goods in Ellen’s pawnshop, for future researchers seem to have echoed Olson when he said on the first page of his paper:

In the chapter in Volume I of Farrar’s work dealing with the work in Corinth, I found two passages from which possibly three and five words, respectively, had been quoted, and in the section in Volume II, treating on Nero, I found four passages with a total of one hundred and five words that were the same as the words found in the corresponding section in Mrs. White’s book. [Italics added.]¹⁶⁶

Time and again, those included in the church’s Clan Plan, rushed to judgment to save Ellen – blinding themselves to paraphrase or loose usage in here adaptations of others’ material. Thus they contributed to keeping alive the white lie.

There were those of her contemporaries, however, who saw what was going on when Ellen and her group were burning the midnight oil far into the morning hours.¹⁶⁷ Arthur G. Daniells (General Conference president of the Seventh-day Adventist Church 1901–22), when called on to explain those northern lights that often lit up others’ material, gave some justification of the problem at the 1919 Bible Conference at which efforts were made to come to grips with Ellen’s writings. Like so many of the clan members who still wanted to work for the system, he took the high road in his explanation:

Yes; and now take that “Life of Paul,” – I suppose you all know' about it and knew what claims were put up against her, charges made of plagiarism, even by the authors of the book, Conybeare and Howson, and were liable to make the denomination trouble because there was so much of their book put into “The Life of Paul” without any credit or quotation marks. Some people of strict logic might fly the track on that ground, but I am not built that way. I found it out, and I read it with Brother Palmer when he found it, and we got Conybeare and Howson, and we got Wylie’s “History of the Reformation,” and we read word for word,page after page, and no quotations, no credit, and really I did not know the difference until I began to compare them. I supposed it was Sister White’s own work. The poor sister said, “Why, I didn’t know about quotations and credits. My secretary should have looked after that, and the publishing house should have looked after it.” [Italics added.]¹⁶⁸

Ellen must have learned her lesson well from Eve, who laid on the serpent all the blame for her fall. It is hard to believe, as late as 1883, in her plan or rewriting history and theology from other authors, that Ellen did not know the moral or ethical difference in such delicate areas – when, according to her, God was at her side all the time when she was doing what she was doing. If, as Ellen claimed, God was giving her continuing peekaboo information about the dirty linen of the church members, surely he must have had inside information on the niceties of giving credit when taking others’ material.

Most of Ellen’s later books and material came after she had been informed as to the problem with Sketches from the Life of Paul and after the aforementioned confession of ignorance. It is astounding that never, not even once, did she or her helpers or her church give a smidgen of credit to anyone until the 1888 edition of The Great Controversy. Even then, it was done in an offhand way so that it had to be improved in the 1911 edition.

Daniells did not like what he saw. But being a good politician, he had learned to say nothing well. In 1919 he honestly expressed the following conviction:

There I saw the manifestation of the human in these writings. Of course I could have said this, and I did say it, that I wished a different course had been taken in the compilation of the books. If proper care had been exercised, it would have saved a lot of people from being thrown off the track. [Italics added.]¹⁶⁹

But proper care was not exercised. In fact, the claims for Ellen and her writings became even more widespread and extreme, and people to this day are still being “thrown off the track.”

But it was more than Sketches from the Life of Paul that Daniells was having trouble with. In the same 1919 Bible Conference he was to tell those present (most of whom revealed tortured minds over the view of Ellen’s infallibility and plagiarism) that he had seen other problems in other books:

In Australia I saw “The Desire of Ages” being made up, and I saw the re-writing of chapters, some of them written over and over and over again. I saw that, and when I talked with Sister Davis about it, I tell you I had to square up this thing and begin to settle things about the spirit of prophecy. If these false positions had never been taken, the thing would be much plainer than it is today. What was charged as plagiarism would all have been simplified, and I believe men would have been saved to the cause if from the start we had understood this thing as it should have been. With those, false views held, we face difficulties in straightening up. We will not meet those difficulties by resorting to a false claim. [Italics added.]¹⁷⁰

Daniells was not talking about “verbal inspiration,” as some would have people believe. He knew, as others before him had known, how some of those around Ellen had been using editorial privilege and taking license to incorporate some of their own thoughts. Ellen was not in control all the way. He had seen her drop the reins and have less control as time went on. He relates his concern:

I visited her once over this matter of the “daily,” and I took along with me that old chart. . .and laid it on her lap, and I took “Early Writings” and read it to her, and then I told her of the controversy. I spent a long time with her. It was one of her days when she was feeling cheery and rested, and so I explained it to her quite fully. I said. “Now here you say that you were shown that the view of the ‘daily’ that the brethren held was correct. Now,” I said, “there are two parts here in this ‘daily’ that you quote. One is this period of time, the 2300 years, and the other is what the ‘daily’ itself was.”

I went over that with her, and every time, as quick as I could come to that time, she would say, “Why, I know what was shown me, that that period of days was fixed, and that there would be no definite time after that. The brethren were right when they reached that 1844 date.”

Then I would leave that, and I would go on about this “daily.” “Why,” she said, “Brother Daniells, I do not know what that ‘daily’ is, whether it is paganism or Christ’s ministry. That was not the thing that was shown me.” And she would go into that twilight zone right away.¹⁷¹

There are those who believe that Daniells got himself in hot water by trying to slow the legend of Ellen and that he was removed from office by the true believers in 1922 in part because of the rumors of his lack of faith in Ellen and her writings.¹⁷² This may or may not be a correct interpretation of events. Nevertheless, one by one, those who knew Ellen best, and were the closest to her in the real world, were often disciplined when they could not follow her writings into the unreal world, where her fiction was regarded as fact and her fantasy as truth. Ellen did not demand that all see what she saw, but it was necessary that they believe that she saw what she said she saw.

But the immensely important part of the finger playing was that no one should come to see where she saw what she said she saw. The real trick was to convince one and all that the merchandise she was selling was mostly new and firsthand. With Ellen’s help, the church sold this white lie to themselves and all others who would buy – and has continued to sell down to today. With new material being released at an alarming rate, showing that the merchandise was and is substantially secondhand or even thirdhand, Ellen is in the position of being in a large degree a compiler of others’ material rather than an author or an entrepreneur of new or divine goods.

In the light of the 1919 Bible Conference material, which was released only in recent years – not in good faith by the White Estate, but by private parties – it would be foolhardy to argue as some do that no one knew what was going on in the Ellen closet of writings; for if they had known, they would have told others about it.

Actually, there were people who did tell. But those who did, have not been rewarded for their efforts: Stewart, Sadler, the Kelloggs, Ballinger, Canright, Colcord, Smith, and Daniells, among them. Later Ellen’s assistants – Fannie Bolton, niece Mary Clough, and even her staunchest and longest editorial worker, Marian Davis – would be revealed as concerned and nervous over their involvements in Ellen’s copy work. Still later we would learn that the concerns of Lacy, Prescott, and others were also ignored and their questions left to puzzle and tempt the inquiring minds of today.

One by one, each was brought into line by a “rebuke,” a “testimony,” counsel, confrontation, and their witness minimized.¹⁷³ As Uriah Smith had found out before them, it did not pay to rummage around too much in Ellen’s pawnshop and look at the labels on her merchandise to see if they were firsthand or second. Some who did were silenced, shifted from place to place, or rejected as unfit for God or his work. Ellen and her “true believers,” the keepers of the keys, having invented the closed door idea in 1844, were determined to keep it closed to all but those who would swear that they believed that Ellen and Ellen alone had seen what she had seen, and no one, but no one, had ever seen before. She would affirm that she had neither seen nor read Milton’s Paradise Lost.¹⁷⁴

I know the light I received came from God, it was not taught me by man.¹⁷⁵

I did not read any works upon health until I had written Spiritual Gifts.¹⁷⁶

My views were written independent of books or the opinions of others.¹⁷⁷

Never did Ellen bring herself to acknowledge human influences in her writings. Never were those who saw things differently allowed their admission of what they knew or saw – the basis of all change for the better. The legend had to be maintained that God and Ellen were so close that nothing could ever come in between. And Ellen White helped to foster and maintain that legend. Those who voiced concern about what they saw were considered “soft” on Ellen and dealt with accordingly. The list of those who received word of God’s displeasure through Ellen’s pen is long.¹⁷⁸

Even today, effort is being made to keep teachers and leaders of local churches, by oath, from expressing reservation concerning Ellen and her writings. An example of that type of oath sent out to church members October 3, 1980, follows:

This letter was recommended by the board of elders of the Aurora church to be sent each member. Please read carefully.

Dear Members:

The Aurora church is a member of the sisterhood of churches of the Colorado Conference of Seventh-day Adventists. It was organized to preach the gospel and uphold the teachings of the Seventh-day Adventist church. The church is warned in Scripture to «take heed” concerning individuals or teachings that might come in that would disrupt the unity or draw members away from the beliefs of the church.

The Seventh-day Adventist church does not have a creed, but it does have a statement of beliefs that have been adopted as the basis for their existence. The statement of beliefs was reaffirmed at the recent General Conference [1980]. More recently, the leaders and scholars adopted a consensus statement which gave strong support to the official church position on teachings regarding the sanctuary and the prophetic ministry of Ellen G. White.

To preserve unity and to maintain order, the Aurora church must ask that those in positions of leadership and teaching ministry subscribe to the fundamental beliefs of Seventh-day Adventists. If a teacher or leader cannot conscientiously do this at this time, we ask that they voluntarily resign from their office. We ask this in a spirit of love, believing that this would be the Christian response on the part of a person finding themselves out of harmony with church teachings.

We recognize that God has given certain gifts to individuals and we are trying to make use of these gifts to God’s glory. We hope that each or our leaders and teachers will acknowledge their loyalty to the church and its teachings and would continue in their duties.

17. The Gift of Prophecy. One of the gifts of the Holy Spirit is prophecy. This gift is an identifying mark of the remnant church and was manifested in the ministry of Ellen G. White. As the Lord’s messenger, her writings are a continuing and authoritative source of truth and provide for the church comfort, guidance, instruction, and correction. They also make clear that the Bible is the standard by which all teaching and experience must be tested. [Italics added.]¹⁷⁹

This letter perhaps more than any other single document, shows how necessary it has been and continues to be that the church use force and pressure to maintain Ellen’s position in the church. It also makes clear that the Adventist heaven is an Ellen G. White heaven and that those going will have to buy their ticket from the church’s holy concessions sold at Ellen’s pawnshop.

Yet never once, even in the interest of fairness or honesty, was anyone credited with input concerning the writings the church now promotes as “the spirit of prophecy.” The mechanics were sometimes mentioned, but outside influence was always denied.¹⁸⁰ The only statement of any substance that the church has ever pointed to was the one that was put in the introduction of the revised edition of The Great Controversy in 1888 and later in the 1911 edition. John Harvey Kellogg seemed to have the real answer for that act when he said:

They went right on selling it, but they changed the preface in the next edition [1888] so as to give a little bit of the loophole to crawl out of, giving a little bit of a hint in it, in a very mild and rather in a hidden way that the author had also profited by information obtained from various sources as well as from divine inspiration. That is my recollection. I remember I saw the correction and I didn’t like it. I said, “That is only a crawl out, that is simply something put in so that the ordinary reader won’t discover it at all but will see the larger statements there of special inspiration; so they will be fooled by that thing.¹⁸¹

As the story unfolds year after year, and decade after decade, more and more church leaders, personal friends, assistants, and others caught on to the fencing game Ellen and her group were playing, but when they stepped forward to witness for what they saw, or ask questions about what they did not understand, they were shot down.

Fannie Bolton, one of Ellen’s editorial assistants was one case. She was employed for her recognized talent. But several times, conscience-stricken over what she saw and was being asked to do, she went to persons of substance to tell her story and try to get some answers to what she felt was not appropriate. One such person to whom she went was Merritt G. Kellogg, and he wrote about the experience:

Said Fanny, “Dr. Kellogg, I am in great distress of mind. I come to you for advice for I do not know what to do. I have told Elder Starr [Geo. B.] what I am going to tell you, but he gives me no satisfactory advice.” “You know,” said Fanny, “that I am writing all the time for Sister White. Most of what I write is published in the Review and Herald as having come from the pen of Sister White, and is sent out as having been written by Sister White under inspiration of God. I want to tell you that I am greatly distressed over this matter for I feel that I am acting a deceptive part. The people are being deceived about the inspiration of what I write. I feel that it is a great wrong that anything which I write should go out as under Sister White’s name as an article specially inspired of God. What I write should go out over my own signature, then credit would be given where credit belongs.” I gave Miss Bolton the best advice I could, and then soon after asked Sister White to explain the situation to me. I told her just what Fanny had told me. Mrs. White asked me if Fanny told me what I had repeated to her, and my affirming that she did she said, “Elder Starr says she came to him with the same thing.” “Now,” said Sister White with some warmth, “Fanny Bolton shall never write another line for me. She can hurt me as no other person can.” A few days later Miss Bolton was sent back to America. From that day to this my eyes have been open. M. G. Kellogg.¹⁸²

The White Estate likes to tell that there is proof available that indicates that Fannie was emotionally unstable. Why wouldn’t she be, considering the influences and pressures on her? Some of them show up later in her “confession.” Under Ellen’s system of employer-employee relationship, one was not fired outright without God being active on the labor board. Elder Starr tells how such separations came about:

I then retired to my room and earnestly prayed over the matter, asking for further light from the Lord, and direction as to how to reach the real root of the difficulty. On leaving my room I passed Sister White’s doorway, and door being ajar, she saw me and called me into her room, saying, “I am in trouble, Brother Starr, and would like to talk with you.”

I asked her what was the nature of her trouble, and she replied, “My writings, Fanny Bolton” – just four words. I then asked her what the trouble was with Fanny Bolton and her writings. She said, “I want to tell you of a vision I had about 2:00 o’clock this morning. I was as wide awake as am now, and there appeared a chariot of gold ana horses of silver above me, and Jesus, in royal majesty, was seated in the chariot. I was greatly impressed with the glory of this vision, and asked my attending angel not to permit the vision to pass away until I had awakened up the entire family. He said, ‘Do not call the family. They do not see what you see. Listen for a message.’ Then there came the words rolling down over the clouds from the chariot from the lips of Jesus, ‘Fanny Bolton is your adversary! Fanny Bolton is your adversary!’ repeated three times. Now,” said Sister White, “I had this same vision about seven years ago, when my niece, Mary Clough, was on my writings. [She said,] ‘Aunt Ellen gives me the writings in the rough and I put the polish on, but get no recognition for it. It all goes out signed Ellen G. White:”¹⁸³

No modern striker had less of a chance with God doing the negotiating on that labor board. (Evidently, these were such high-level negotiations that they couldn’t even be entrusted to one of the subordinate angels.) In any case, in those days it was the same as now: when the umpire says you’re out – yoúre out!

One of the interesting asides of this affair seems to be that of Mary Clough, Ellen’s niece. She had often been praised for her work when she was with Ellen. It was recorded by Ellen of her:

Mary is a good help. I appreciate her....¹⁸⁴ She does well with my copy....¹⁸⁵ I prize Mary more and more everyday....¹⁸⁶ Mary is hard after me. She gets so enthusiastic over some subjects, she brings in the manuscript after she has copied it, to read to me. She showed me today quite a heavy pile of manuscripts she had prepared. She viewed it quite proudly....¹⁸⁷

But like Fannie, Mary too had fallen from grace and been sacked – again by God. It just goes to show that, (even in those days) when you’re hot you’re hot, but when you’ve cooled down (that is, you’ve seen too much of what Ellen was seeing and where she was seeing it), you’re out.

Even with all the observations about Ellen’s copying coming in to Washington, D.C., on the hotline, the official position was, and is, that even if it were found that Ellen had copied everything from Conybeare and Howson, she had not been influenced by what she reconstructed in her own words with God’s help. As late as 1959, in a series of articles, grandson Arthur was still renewing the pledge for Grandmother:

As the years advanced, the charge shifted to that of Mrs. White’s being influenced in the messages she bore. Some suggested that the messages reflected the opinions and views of her associates. It would not be strange, they said, if some of Mrs. White’s messages reflected the opinions of others, inasmuch as she was surrounded by strong leaders. Some who received messages of reproof asked in their hearts or openly, “Who has been talking with Sister White?”¹⁸⁸

It is hard to believe that grandson Arthur did not know who was “talking with Sister White.” As the keeper of the keys of the vault, he must have known what evidence was available to help give the answer. But he went on to tell why he dare not:

If the messages borne by Ellen G. White had their origin in surrounding minds or influences; if the messages on organization can be traced to the ideas of James White or George I. Butler; if the counsels on health had their origin in the minds of Drs. Jackson, Trail or Kellogg; if the instruction on education was based upon ideas of G. H. Bell or W. W. Prescott; if the high standards upheld in the Ellen G. White articles and books were inspired by the strong men of the cause – then the Spirit of Prophecy counsels can mean no more to us than some very good ideas and helpful advice!¹⁸⁹

How true. It is interesting to speculate on why Arthur chose the names that he did, for the Adventist grapevine had been buzzing for some time with names of contributors to Ellen’s writings, including the names he gave. H. Camden Lacey had written:

And why do we not more generally speak of Him [the Holy Spirit] in that way, as does our Authorized translation, and the Early Writings of Sr. White, until she came under the influence of her husband and other of the pioneers?¹⁹⁰

Again, it must be remembered that leaders in the church knew that Lacey had inside information concerning the forming of some of the books; and in his letters to Leroy E. Froom, he had written in 1945:

But he [W. W. Prescott] insisted on his interpretation, Sr. Marian Davis seemed to fall for it, and lo and behold, when the “Desire of Ages” came out, there appeared that identical teaching on pages 24 and 25, which, I think, can be looked for in vain in any of Sr. White’s published works prior to that time!¹⁹¹

There are those who would question the accuracy of Lacey’s memory on such matters, but in the end his memory must stand up against the memory of Grandson Arthur, or any other member of the White Estate. They were not there when the event took place. Even though Arthur was not trained in modern psychology nor prepared as a deep theologian, he did know that he had been given the task of guarding those concessions of his grandmother’s and he had no desire to lose that heavenly franchise, for himself or his church. He was not alone in his protection of that heavenly image. In the second part of his articles, he quotes Grandmother Ellen as saying:

I have not been in the habit of reading any doctrinal articles in the paper, that my mind should not have any understanding of anyone’s ideas and views, and that not a mold of any man’s theories should have any connection with that which I write.¹⁹²

A reasonable person with average intelligence and a modest education can see that something has to give. An independent comparison of Sketches from the Life of Paul with the authors that Ellen White used would give enough evidence for even her staunchest supporters to conclude that things equal to the same thing are equal to each other, including theology.¹⁹³ But Arthur is not a mathematician. So without that discipline’s restriction he could write:

These statements made by Mrs. White herself and those close to her are forthright, positive, and unequivocal, and should forever remove any questions as to whether or not the E. G. White writings may have been influenced by her secretaries. Mrs. White was not influenced by those about her nor were her writings tampered with. Her messages were not based on the ideas of those close to her, nor upon information others may have given her.¹⁹⁴

Those incredible statements should have removed forever all questions – but they didn’t. More were to come and in faster sequence. The position of the Adventist Church changed in the 1970s. To save itself from the effects of the mounting evidence that Ellen did indeed copy, did indeed cover up that fact, and did indeed have others influencing her, the church now said, in effect – so what? Copying was nothing new. Like Ellen after them, most of the Bible writers also copied others and were influenced by others. It is clear from that line of reasoning that the church and grandson Arthur had established in their thinking that Ellen had long ago become first among equals.

The audience to which Arthur was appealing in the Review was a captive audience. They were not aware, when they read about Sketches from, the Life of Paul, that previous to Sketches Ellen had already drawn freely from other authors in her earlier version of the life of Paul (volume three of The Spirit, of Prophecy).¹⁹⁵ In the preface of the reprint of 1974, the wary might have stumbled across a little jewel of a statement hidden there, but not too many were wary in the 1870s, inasmuch as that acknowledgment was to come ninety-one years after the fact.

A high degree of scholarship is not needed to detect Ellen’s formula for using other authors in the forerunner of Sketches from the Life of Paul. A degree of something else is demanded, though, to understand how – after hobnobbing, so to speak, with writers such as Conybeare and Howson, Farrar, March, Harris, McDuff, and who knows how many others – she could maintain with a straight face that she was not influenced by them, when their padding was sticking out all over. Whether or not she was influenced is now secondary, the primary matter being that the church and all its members were certainly influenced by those she copied from (and were misled as to the facts of the matter). And the church at large continues to be thus influenced through the ideas, words, sentences, paragraphs, and even pages of the material that is not as it has been represented.

Even H. O. Olson, who had the task of deflecting criticism coming from those who knew how Ellen had gathered from others for her Life of Paul, admitted:

Even though one can find considerable paralleling in the two books, it is evident that their objectives are not the same.¹⁹⁶

Who said their objectives were supposed to be the same? Somehow the housekeepers of the White Estate had “misplaced” that front page of Olson’s research on part of the book, and didn’t surface publicly until the January 1980 Glendale Committee met to study comparisons with sources – and an Olson of another generation informed the group that his uncle was the one who did the earlier study.¹⁹⁷ Whatever shortcomings that study had, it was the study used by Nichol in his defense of Ellen, a book that had started the church down the winding road of percentages.

On the missing front page that few had ever heard of, much less seen, H. O. Olson had said:

No careful reading and comparison of “The Life and Work of Paul” by Farrar and “Sketches from the Life of Paul,” by Mrs. E. G. White, as in the case of the latter and “Life and Epistles of the Apostle Paul,” by Conybeare and Howson, has been made; but a day was spent in an endeavor to ascertain if any part of Mrs. White’s book is based on Farrar’s book.¹⁹⁸

Perhaps if H. O. Olson had not been so frank and open, his paper would have had wider circulation. He conceded the limitations of his study. As many would do from his day to the present, he was looking for words and direct quotations – not paraphrasing or thought adaptation. That paper, which might have been done on a leisurely Sunday afternoon, for fun and games, was taken as a solid defense in the wall of the white lie that would fence out challenges for another forty years.

The sequel of the story, however, is more remarkable than its beginning. With the temporary demise of Sketches from the Life of Paul and the expansion of The Spirit of Prophecy series to the larger Conflict Series, it was necessary to resurrect Paul from his burial in Sketches. Ellen herself expressed this desire in 1903 when she wrote:

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.¹⁹⁹

She was now in her seventies and Nature had begun to bank the coals of the fires of her life. In fact, by the time The Acts of the Apostles appeared in 1911, she was about eight-four.²⁰⁰

It may have been a new edition that was born, but the padding was the same. By now, however, Ellen had been promoted to a supervisory capacity and was only acting as God’s overseer. The Estate makes an interesting admission in Life Sketches of Ellen G. White:

By the close of 1910 Mrs. White had given full consideration to all the problems connected with the reset edition of “Great Controversy.” That task having been completed, she found time to supervise the revision of “Sketches from the Life of Paul,” and add several chapters on the life work and the writings of the apostles of the early Christian church. This matter was published in 1911, under the title, “The Acts of the Apostles.”²⁰¹

There really wasn’t much to oversee. In some cases the original material was rearranged, a few more authors were added, and some of the more obvious copying was toned down with more Bible texts.

But a new dimension had been added. The experts were called in to do a cosmetic job on the old figures. Thus it would be difficult thereafter to link The Acts of the Apostles with its forerunner, Sketches from the Life of Paul or its predecessor, volume three of The Spirit of Prophecy. Careful study and comparison of the three books in the order of their production shows a great deal of imagination and creative evolution – all of it capable of being done by man, not God. Volume three of The Spirit of Prophecy showed little original theology. Sketches from the Life of Paul added material from more authors but had no more originality – and no acknowledgment of increased dependence on other writers.²⁰²

The final edition of The Acts of the Apostles was an interweaving of materials by a “consortium” of conspirators. Bible texts were substituted for some of the matter previously copied. Obvious details of paraphrasing were diluted and limited. But a new master entered the arena of inspiration. To the life of Paul had been added the life of Peter. This outside the family of Conybeare and Howson, Farrar, March, and McDuff introduced additional chapters that showed help from John Harris, who in 1836 had published a series of five essays in a book entitled The Great Teacher, which had great promise and sold well.²⁰³

The Great Teacher was unlike anything Ellen and her group had used before. Most of the former writers had followed rather closely the Scripture narrative. This had helped the Estate in arguing against criticism of Ellen’s copying. The line was that even if some similarities did seep through from the authors used, those similarities were only coincidence, inasmuch as both the material copied and the person copying were following the Bible narrative, and perhaps the same marginal references, and perhaps the same Bible dictionary, and perhaps, perhaps, perhaps.²⁰⁴

But this Harris was no perhaps! A comparison of the introduction of The Great Teacher with volume six of Testimonies for the Church is shown:

Harris and The Great Teacher had appeared in Ellen’s works before, but, as in other cases, without credit or recognition. Material from his book had been found very useful in the rewriting of The Desire of Ages in 1898. Scores and scores of times Harris and his essays leave their mark on The Acts and The Desire and Ellen and her church. Some of the sweet sayings that ring the Adventist bell were chiming for Harris, not Ellen. Without such statements from Harris as

He designed the church to he his own peculium; it is the only fortress which he holds in a revolted world; and he intended, therefore, that no authority should be known in it, no laws acknowledged, but his own.²⁰⁷

The introductions of The Acts and The Desire would have been as flat as they were in their respective forerunners, where such introductions were missing altogether – which showed what God could do with a little help.

But the use of Harris and The Great Teacher did not stop with just the introductions of these two books of Ellen. Later, Fundamentals of Christian Education, Counsels to Teachers, and Education would feature Ellen all the way – and few people would know that Harris was really the show-stopper.²⁰⁸ If the statements of Harris were abstracted from any of the five books and placed in another location of another book, the continuity of the thoughts would not be disrupted in any case. The statements have no relevance or value in their context or setting except as they are given some sort of value by the reader. Inasmuch as they do not follow' any Bible narrative or set order, they can be used as they are often used – anywhere, at anytime, by anybody, to say anything to establish any point.

It has been suggested that W. W. Prescott, the educational genius of Adventism,²⁰⁹ had a great interest in Ellen and her material and writing. Harris is much more his style of reading and thinking than it is Ellen’s, for Harris is unlike anyone else on her extensive list.²¹⁰ In later years the White Estate made an interesting admission as to Prescott’s involvement in the production of The Desire of Ages. A paper released by Robert Olson and later articles by Arthur White in the Review stated that Prescott did have something to do with the “correction” of grammar in The Desire of Ages.²¹¹ Those statements plus the Lacey letter, fairly well link Harris and Prescott with the chain of events.

One further note of interest is that when Professor Prescott’s college textbook, The Doctrine of Christ, is compared with Harris and his material (copied from the first few chapters of The Desire of Ages), all three show remarkable similarity, with Harris coming out a fast first, Ellen a distinct second, and Prescott’s textbook a slow third, but still in the running.²¹² Such a close finish might explain why the professor was so concerned that the material lifted from Harris and handed to the “fences” of the church was to show up later in Ellen’s pawnshop and sold as God’s merchandise.²¹³

To anyone standing off at a distance, it is obvious that the “borrowing” was all done with mirrors – but not focused to reflect Harris, or March, or Conybeare and Howson – or even to reflect God. The final work was hung in the Adventist hall of fame to reflect Ellen’s work and authority as given to the Adventist church by its leaders and theologians. The final five books of the Conflict Series were to stand as Ellen’s (and thus God’s) and Adventism’s lasting and authoritative contribution to geology, theology, Christology, and eschatology. Adventists believe and teach, whether officially or unofficially, that Ellen’s “inspiration” (or genius) and the ability to reassign the facts of history and to predict the events of the future, is of unquestionable authority. The 1980 General Conference of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, the defrocking of Desmond Ford in Colorado later that summer, the steady denial of the facts of present-day research of Ellen White’s copy program throughout her lifetime, the insistence that what fault may be found with her life and method can be equaled in the experiences of Bible writers – all indicate that she is the final, infallible interpreter of all Adventist faith and practice.

However, there have been cracks in the Adventist mirror. The strong stand of the Adventist administration has not caught on in the world at large. It has not even been accepted by the church at large. Ellenology is an American phenomenon. Most of the body of believers in Adventism are outside the United States and have not had her writings in total or do not care to use them, or at least interpret them somewhat different from the way the American adherent does. Even those true believers who leave the shores of America tend to adapt themselves to a non- Ellen influence in the affairs of the church and their personal lifestyle, only to change back again when they return to Ellen land. Often the sign of this shift is the wedding ring, forbidden by Ellen’s instruction in the United States for both clergy and members alike. Ellen had made the absence of a ring the mark Adventism in America when she wrote:

Some have had a burden in regard to the wearing of a marriage ring, feeling that the wives of our ministers should conform to this custom. All this is unnecessary. Let the minister’s wives have the golden link which binds their souls to Jesus Christ, a pure and holy character, the true love and meekness and godliness that are the fruit borne upon the Christian tree, and their influence will be secure anywhere. The fact that a disregard of the custom occasions remark, is no good reason for adopting it. Americans can make their position understood by plainly stating that the custom is not regarded as obligatory in our country. We need not wear the sign, for we are not untrue to our marriage vow, and the wearing of the ring would he no evidence that we were true. I feel deeply over this leavening process which seems to be going on among us, in the conformity to custom and fashion. Not one penny should be spent for a circlet of gold to testify that we are married.²¹⁴

The discussion of this prohibition has caused more heat than light in the deliberating bodies of the church for decades, with God losing out if he was the author, for most of the churches have loosened the ban to permit the band to be worn. Otherwise much of the talent of the church would be outside the pale of grace and the use of the church. It is still difficult for the church pastors and evangelists to baptize members with the ring on, and often a piece of tape is used to hide the fact. It would appear that there are even ways to circumvent Ellen and her God.

Confession, the beginning of beginnings, is an unnatural act – an admission of guilt, of wrongdoing, and of human design out of harmony with man’s ethics or God’s moral laws. When confession comes from the mind, it is helpful for external purposes. When it comes from the heart, or soul, it is helpful for inner purposes. Whatever the case, it can have either short-term or lasting effect, depending on the circumstances. It is always wasted, however, when it is too late and when it is forced or extracted long after there is widespread knowledge of the facts that cause the need for confession. Such seems to be the case in the matter of Arthur White and his January 18, 1981, paper, “The Prescott Letter to W. C. White.”

True to the methodology of the White Estate staff, Arthur seeks in his paper to belittle, or subtly smear, Prescott, mainly because of Prescott’s letter to W. C. White, his connections with Grandmother Ellen, and the acknowledged help that he gave her writings. The charge of pantheistic leanings is made against Prescott the same as it was against Waggoner and Kellogg. Perhaps because of lack of proof, Arthur does not spell out the details of his charges but uses such expressions as “a hint in this,” “later statements seem to imply this,” “seemed confused,” “with only a half-hearted dedication,” and the “results were only modestly successful.”²¹⁵

It is in his apology for what the White Estate, with him as its head, did not do to correct misconceptions about Ellen’s writings that Arthur White lets down his guard and opens the door enough so that a little light comes through. As though fearful that those who know, or may hear about, might gain true insights, he says:

These facts are such that a biased mind or unscrupulous or highly critical researcher can seriously misconstrue and misuse. What follows is written with the hope, and prayer, and the earnest request that the information be employed fairly ana judiciously.

And why presented reluctantly? Because good men of unquestioned integrity were involved; trusted, dedicated men in high positions of church leadership, men who deserve to be remembered with honor and admiration, and most of all, because what took place was done inadvertently and unwittingly. We are not discussing a cover-up, but rather an accident in which some were badly hurt. [Italics added].²¹⁶

Then comes the confession:

But it was not until three or four years ago, when the minutes of the meetings of the Bible and history teachers in 1919 were uncovered and made public, that I was aware of the 1919 meeting.²¹⁷

And again, further on:

Now it is true that the intensive work in a study of the relationship between portions of certain E. G. White books and the writings of commentators and historians has disclosed a wider use. by Ellen White of other writings, than either the White Estate or present church leaders were aware of. The staff down through the years has been much too small and too busy in meeting the demands upon it to give time to probing for answers to questions now being asked.²¹⁸

Where had poor Arthur been all these years when those “probing” questions were being asked over and over again?

His paper could suggest that, if he was indeed unaware of the probing of the 1919 Bible Conference (which some consider to have been one of the most important and revealing meetings of Adventism) and unaware of Ellen’s extensive copy work in the making of her books, then perhaps he might be ignorant of a lot more facts concerning Grandmother Ellen.

Despite these inconsistencies and problems of ethics, it cannot be denied that Ellen had made it to the top, and made it big, with her writings. In the Adventist system, she had redesigned the past, glossed over the present, and added exotic colors to the future. That future, as detailed in Adventist eschatology, is found in Ellen’s book The Great Controversy – itself the greatest controversy of all her writings.

Appendix Chapter 7 Exhibit

Chapter 7/Selected Exhibits

The tale Ellen told when she produced The Great Controversy was not unique. If the idea of a controversy between the biblical Satan and the historical Christ has a familiar ring to it, it’s because the idea was ringing long before Ellen’s time. Thus, those in Adventist circles who persist in representing her contribution as new and different when she restructured history to blend with her theology of the future are perpetuating a white lie. They make her version of the knock-down-drag-out fight the determinant in every act and aspect of man’s dealings with his fellow man, be it political, economic, geographic, or religious. According to the story, if the good guys win, God takes the round; and if the bad guys gain a round, it goes to Satan by default.

The only trouble with this theory is that winning depends on who is refereeing the rounds. Sometimes God gets the credit, and sometimes vice versa. God usually comes out right; and if he doesn’t, time is added to the round to give him a better chance to even things up in the future. One of the favorite texts for those who keep score this way is Romans 8:28: “We know that all things work together for good to them that love God.” To give solace and a loophole for those who lose in the struggle, the last half of the text provides an “out” for the theologians – “to them who are the called according to his purpose.”²¹⁹

Ellen provided the answer to “them who are the called” in her version of the controversy by naming her group of believers as those who fit that slot and shut the door for all others – just as she had done some forty years before in the 1844 idea of the shut door. The great controversy of Ellen’s view has some hope for those who escape the mark of some beast and who change from the unbelieving whores and harlots of John the Revelator’s book to become the “true believers” of Ellen’s faith and clan. All of this was no newer in its approach or method than other versions before, but it was much stronger and more definitive in its language and scope.

From the beginning of Adventism (and the 1844 movement), the deciding factor of heaven and home, in Ellen’s beginnings or endings of events, does not seem to be Christ, the Gospel, or the Good News, but the legalistic manipulation of the past, present, and future according to her heavenly bookkeeping.²²⁰

Others before her had dealt with the great controversy in general terms, but no one had ever come out with her conclusions, either general or specific. In Milton’s Paradise Lost the fight had been described in terms of good and evil, black and white, all or none, Christ and Satan. His writing had been such an acceptable job that it had stood for a couple of hundred years before Ellen began to read his story. There are indications that she liked the color and style of his rendition of the struggle in the universe.²²¹ He had done such a good job, in fact, that his works were advertised, on the back of the early publications of Adventist literature, as worth reading.²²² Despite that advertising and the later discoveries that Milton had influenced Ellen, Arthur wrote in 1946:

I am not aware of any statement from the pen of Ellen White in regard to Milton. After the Great Controversy vision was given to Sister White, Brother T. N. Andrews inquired as to whether she had ever read “Paradise Lost.” When she told him she had not, he brought a copy to her home. This she did not open, but placed it high on a shelf determining not to read it until after she had written what had been revealed to her?²²³

This was as high as that shelf ever got, for by the time of the 1969 facsimile reprint edition of The Spirit of Prophecy (volume four) someone must have told Arthur that she had taken Milton’s book down from the shelf and used it. The only question was – was it used before or after? His statement was that it was after:

It is apparent that she did later read at least portions of Paradise Lost, for there is one phrase quoted in Education.²²⁴

Almost without exception, those authors Ellen chose to copy supported the same theme – that man was good before he became bad; that he has a desire to be good but is still bad; that when he is good, he is very, very good, and when he is bad he is horrid – with the victory coming some place, somewhere, sometime, for the good, and the curtain falling on the bad. Again, this theme was not new with Ellen or even with those she copied. After all, most, if not all, from who she copied were teachers, preachers, divines, supersalesmen, and they were giving their loose paraphrases of the biblical story told from Genesis to Revelation. But it took Ellen and her early advent fervor to give the investigative thrust, the Adventist twist to things. It was this one-and-only, this “unique” contribution to the world of theology that became the Adventist “last hurrah” – and their own great controversy, in more ways than one.²²⁵

From the beginning, those around Ellen saw similarities that disturbed them, in what Ellen was writing and what they themselves were reading from others. It was not just J. N. Andrews and his concern with the twin faces of The Great Controversy and Paradise Lost. It was also John Harvey Kellogg and his reading of the early chapters of her works. In his recorded interview with two men of his church he said:

When the “Great Controversy” came out and the chapters of the history of the Waldenses, my attention was called to it by somebody right away. I could not help but know about it because there was the little book, Wylie’s “History of the Waldenses” right there on the Review and Herald book counter; and here was the “Great Controversy” coming out with extracts from it that were scarcely disguised, some of them. There was a disguise because words were changed; it would not have been so proper to use quotation marks because words were changed in the paragraph so they were not exact quotations but at the same time borrowed.²²⁶

The whole interview shows that the good doctor was greatly disturbed over what he and others knew to be a deception practiced on the people by Ellen, her son Will, and her editors.

The chapter on William Miller (“An American Reformer”) in The Great Controversy (and previously as chapter thirteen in The Spirit of Prophecy, volume four, 1884), was lifted, in many cases word-for-word, from a little book James had printed in 1875 as Sketches of the Christian Life and Public Labors of William Miller. (James had acknowledged, both on his title page and by quotation marks in the text, that he had used Sylvester Bliss’s memoirs of William Miller [1853] and “other sources.”)²²⁷ Hence, Ellen’s version was not “selective revelation.” It was not retail merchandise. It was wholesale stealing that went as fenced material incorporated in The Great Controversy.²²⁸

By this time Uriah Smith, having been joined to the group, got in on the fun. His material on the sanctuary (published first as Review articles between 1851 and 1855, and then in book form in 1877) provided material for chapter twenty-three, “What Is the Sanctuary?” in The Great Controversy.²²⁹ His word-by-word descriptions of the Old Testament texts and events were taken over – again not retail, but wholesale – into the picture of the struggle for victory on this earth as written by Ellen and her helpers.

One of the other early discoverers and explorers was likewise drafted for the expedition – – J. N. Andrews, also a knowledgeable writer. His writings – including the “Prophecy of Daniel,” the “Four Kingdoms,” the “Sanctuary,” and the “Twenty-three Hundred Days,” published from 1860 to 1863 – were put in the hold as cargo. People of the Adventist Church have been quoting for decades, as Ellen’s infallible words, his material on the three angels’ messages.²³⁰

Various historians were to accompany these adventurers – almost always without their knowledge. Ellen, we are told in later years, like to read to her family from Merle d’Aubigne,²³¹ one of her true believers in the great controversy theory; and so he was brought on board (again, as far as we know, without consultation to see if he wanted to take the trip). Later, one of his historical kinsmen, Wylie, was to be added to the passenger list for an occasional meal at the captain’s table.²³²

It was a motley crew that made that trip. It was the First time that they all had ever sailed under the same white flag. No wonder they ran into heavy seas of criticism almost from the beginning. The cynicism expressed in the local newspaper by the Healdsburg, California, ministerial association was typical. In debate with local Adventists they said:

We desire in this article to compare a few extracts from the following books: “History of the Sabbath” ([J. N.] Andrews); “Life of Win. Miller” ([James] White); “History of the Waldenses” (Wylie); “The Sanctuary” ([Uriah] Smith), and “History of the Reformation” (D’Aubigne), with corresponding extracts from Mrs. White’s “Great Controversy,” Vol. IV [The Spirit of Prophecy ], in order to see if Mrs. White has “introduced passages from another man’s writings and put them off as her own.” If she has done this, then, according to Webster, Mrs. White is a plagiarist, a literary thief.²³³

As this was a ministerial union, they must have had some degree of inspiration when they ventured into the realm of prediction and stated:

We do not claim that the following comparison is by any means complete, time and space have only permitted a partial examination; we doubt not that further search would reveal much more of the same character.²³⁴

And so it has. Donald R. McAdams does an admirable job of identifying many of those who have followed up the work of the Healdsburg ministers without knowing that others had gone before or what had previously been discovered.²³⁵ What does emerge is that, like it or not, believe it or not, the divines of Healdsburg were correct in 1889, as far as Ellen and her crew were concerned with the “Great Controversy” trip.

It was obvious from the first, before the ship set sail, that The Great Controversy was not seaworthy. Theirs was the only one-way passage most of the voyagers had ever known. With injunctions against reading other than Adventist Church literature, and the publishers pouring out much of her material, how could they know? Review advertising even in 1876 made claims bordering on the fantastic and showed their desire to keep the faithful in line. The following was a forerunner of much more powerful persuasion to come:

We are prepared to speak of this volume, now just issued, as the most remarkable volume that has ever issued from this Office. It covers that portion of the great controversy between Christ and Satan, which is included in the life and mission, teachings and miracles, of Christ here upon the earth.²³⁶

Leaks were springing up all over Ellen’s production vessel, however. The material from the 1919 Bible Conference (first published in 1980) makes it clear that teachers, administrators, ministers, and educators were concerned about the proper teaching of inspiration.²³⁷ Their concepts of how God does what he does were being seriously confused by what they knew they had helped Ellen write, but what had come to be promoted as inspiration from God alone, without credit to any member aboard Ellen’s ship.

Under the mounting pressure, two of the faithful were dispatched, probably at night when most of the work seems to have been done, to help repair the leaks. Here is how Dores E. Robinson tells his part in the adventure:

I think that Brother Crisler and myself spent nearly six months in the study of Great Controversy. ... As Bible and history teachers, you know how hard it is to write history and how even the best historians err. In the revision of Great Controversy we went to the library and compared these points that were raised, one by one; there were really over a hundred questions that had been raised. We went carefully into these in the libraries at Stanford and Berkeley. [Italics added.]²³⁸

The story told by the White Estate concerning corrections made was that only spelling and grammar were in question. It would hardly seem worth the trip to the library, let alone spending six months there, to correct spelling and grammatical mistakes. What is clear is that how Ellen and her helpers were going to get out of this world into the next one were much greater than spelling and would need more than a McGuffey’s reader to lead the way. It was the spelling out of those details that was getting Ellen and The Great Controversy into trouble.

As Kellogg explains in his interview, they tried to extricate themselves from the dilemma by their literary means:

Now, then, they went on and sold that whole edition, at least 1500 copies of that thing that they had on hand....

They went right on selling it, but they changed the preface in the next edition to give a little bit of the loophole to crawl out of, giving a little bit of a hint in it, in a very mild and rather in a hidden way, that the author had also profited by information obtained from various sources as well as from divine inspiration.²³⁹

Then he went on to really let the cat out of the bag on more than The Great Controversy. The truthfulness and accuracy of his memory must be placed alongside the fact that, almost more than any other living witness at the time, he had known and worked with Ellen closer than any but her own immediate family:

That is my recollection. I remember I saw the correction and I did not like it. I said, “That is only a crawl out, that is simply something put in so that the ordinary reader won’t discover it at all, but will see the larger statements there of special inspiration; so they will be fooled by that thing.” Then there came out other books. A number of books are not free from it. It was not simply that one book. Your explanation did not help other books even “Desire of Ages” and “How to Live.” I don’t think you ever knew about “How to Live” with reference to things that were borrowed from Cole’s [book].²⁴⁰

To which George W. Amadon, the loyal defender of Ellen, replied: “I know a large share of it was borrowed.”²⁴¹ What did he mean “borrowed”? Maybe he meant that it was all taken – lock, stock, and borrow!

Such a hemorrhage of criticism called for major surgery, and it was given in the 1911 edition of The Great Controversy. Though it has been stated over and over again through the years that the reason that it was necessary for the book to be reset was that the electrotype plates were badly worn. Willie White gives another reason for the change that year:

In the body of the hook, the most noticeable improvement is the introduction of historical references. In the old edition, over seven hundred Biblical references were given, but in only a few instances were there any historical references to the authorities quoted or referred to. In the new edition the reader will find more than four hundred references to eighty-eight authors and authorities [Italics added.]²⁴²

Adventist theologians who take the position that a great deal of stealing went on in the writing of the Canon might want to take note at this point. If one were to compare the four gospels with The Great Controversy, this is how it would work out. Combining the 400 references from other authors and the 700 Bible texts, and using Willie White’s figures, the four writers of the four gospels (copying to the extent that Ellen did) would have had to copy every single verse they wrote! What Don McAdams recorded on the tape of the Glendale Committee meeting about Ellen’s Great Controversy is another way of saying the same thing. He said that if every paragraph in The Great Controversy were footnoted in accordance with accepted practice, giving credit where credit was due, almost every paragraph would be footnoted.²⁴³

Willie White gave other reasons for Robinson and Crisler’s six month stay in the libraries of Stanford and Berkeley:

In a few instances new quotations from historians, preachers, and present day writers have been used in the place of the old, because they are more forceful or because we have been unable to find the old ones. ...

In eight or ten places, time references have been changed because of the lapse of time since the book was first published.

In several places, forms of expression have been changed to avoid giving unnecessary offense. ...

In a few other places where there were statements regarding the papacy which are strongly disputed by Roman Catholics, and which are difficult to prove from accessible histories, the wording in the new edition has been so changed that the statement falls easily within the range of evidence that is readily obtainable.²⁴⁴

It would be rather unfair to blame Willie too much. He was only explaining what others were finding out and the secretaries were complaining about. It takes constant work and effort to keep changing events and circumstances of the past to conform with Ellen’s ongoing activities that were constantly taking the place of firm facts by which her inaccuracies could be judged. But the Review of June 12, 1980, was still to pretend that it was only The Great Controversy that needed change and confession.²⁴⁵

Although it is not our purpose here to deal with the inconsistencies and changes of Ellen’s nocturnal enlightenments, it is worth noting that the cosmetic work done on the later editions of her works were so helpful that others noticed the change. Linden says that

...the Conflict Series mark the production of the mature EGW. In fact the evolution is so great that it is somewhat surprising to know that the same person wrote the two kinds of books. . . . How this remarkable development came about is an intriguing assignment for the serious historian.

The five volumes in the Conflict Series resulted from a complex process, where only some factors are known; other facts may be known, when the rich files in the Ellen G. White Estate are fully available to the researchers.

... Her private library contained hundreds of volumes, and only a fraction of the items have been listed. Moreover, she had a full staff of secretaries and editors at her disposal.²⁴⁶

What Linden hit upon is perhaps one of the most significant and damaging bits of information of any study of Ellen and her writings. Few if any divines in the Adventist clan quote from the early writings of Ellen. Some of it they would like to forget. Some of it is an offense to the intelligence – her “Solemn Appeal to Mothers,” her copying from a doctor his “Cause of Exhausted Vitality” on the sex life of her generation; her changing of the guard when things she “saw” or “predicted” did not come to pass. Such passages are seldom mentioned from the pulpits of the Adventist Church. Most of the “beautiful” quotes come from the later works.²⁴⁷

Naturally. By then Ellen had had fifty years of practice. With the numerous workers in the corps of helpers on whom she could call, with the Adventist Church’s structure, its money, its presses pouring out the propaganda of her invincibility, she was free to incorporate as “God’s” whatever she wished to put in her writings. By the turn of the century, if one should see the change or inconsistencies between the old material and the new, he had to make an extremely hard choice to stay in the church. One must maintain with a straight face a number of things: That God was inconsistent, not Ellen. That God might have changed his mind, not Ellen. That whatever she did, right or wrong, was all right because God had a hand in making her do it. God had improved with age and experience – through Ellen and her continued copying.

What really happened in the church was that God and Ellen came to seem one and the same. What she did, God approved. What she disliked, God condemned. What she wrote, God endorsed. What she left out, God shunned as unimportant. If the Canon had been God’s book up to her time, now Ellen was God’s servant, his voice, his image, his alter ego. Ellen and her writings had become the Adventist God!

If this process should be doubted by some, let them examine carefully the instructions given to the church. Let them look at the number of times she or her works, always standing head and shoulders above the Canon, are quoted as authority in the Review and other Adventist publications. Let them turn to the 1980 history of the church’s General Conference session at which her writings (hence Ellen herself) were raised to a level of equality with Scripture and scriptural writers. Let them listen once again to the tune played out at the 1980 Glacier View meeting, where Desmond Ford was defrocked and barred from employment because his keen mind and courageous conscience held the authority of Scripture to be above the authority of Ellen White.²⁴⁸

No one can seriously doubt that Ellen Gould Harmon White has finally obtained veto power over God in the Adventist Church. To paraphrase the convictions stated by Earl W. Amundson at Glacier View, not only the bright lights, but any lights that shine in the Adventist Church without Ellen’s consent and approval, have been and will be turned off.²⁴⁹

In view of the extensive research done in recent years (including that by McAdams, Graybill, and others) and the acknowledgments of changes made and of authors used – much of which has come to the attention of the church members at large – it seems unnecessary to include in the Appendix a large number of comparison examples for The Great Controversy.

It might be useful, however, to note one of the Adventists dying hope. Adventists like to believe that the last chapters of The Great Controversy were structured in their theological favor, that little or no copying was done in the matter of eschatology. A comparison of some chapters in volume four of The Spirit of Prophecy (the forerunner of The Great Controversy) shows that this is only wishful thinking.²⁵⁰ The later chapters in the enlarged 1911 edition of Controversy show similar patterns.²⁵¹

As painful as the realization is, the Ford controversy and the Ellen White-comparison-controversy have made The Great Controversy somewhat suspect. Further, another ongoing investigation of recent times shows large chunks of historical error.²⁵² Even the circuit riders from the White Estate have conceded that the book can no longer be considered an accurate accounting of the events of nineteenth-century history but must be used evangelistically.²⁵³ All of these facts add up to the conclusion that Ellen’s attempt to rewrite history according to her vision of it did not work. So it should be back to the drawing board for the Adventist theologians.

Chapter 8/Selected Exhibits

The rest of the story is downhill all the way. The last of the big five in the Conflict of the Ages series, published the next year after Ellen’s death at nearly eighty-eight years of age, continued the pattern of seventy years – copying from other writers on the subject.

Once the church and the public were persuaded that Ellen’s reading had vastly improved her ability and memory, anything with her name on it would sell. By the turn of the century the church was selling Ellen far and wide. Gradually God, or the Gospel, or even the Bible account of the Gospel, seemed to lose priority in the pulpit. Emphasis came to be primarily on Ellen’s authority via her quick looks into the future and her realignment of the events of history, regardless of source or degree accuracy. Many of the clergy became less ministers of light and truth than hucksters for Adventist Ellenology and supersalesmen for the church. Clearly God was running second.

Ellen was recognized in the Adventist Commentary as the voice of authority for the educational institutions that the church operates.²⁵⁴ The yearly devotional books sold to the true believers brought a pithy saying from God for each day via Ellen’s pen.²⁵⁵ An array of printed matter flooded the church through “new” and “unpublished” testimonies.²⁵⁶ Additional compilations – requested or suggested by key administrators who wished authority for what they were doing, or what they wanted to do, or what they believed – continued to appear on Adventist publishing lists and flyers, and the members bought them, little suspecting how substantially helpers other than God had made the abundance possible.²⁵⁷

As far back as the early 1950s the White Estate had written that their purpose was to limit production on compilations. But compilations continued to come forth.²⁵⁸ Plans were made for an additional room at the Estate vault to house all the bits and pieces of leftover materials that were incorporated in printed matter issued under Ellen’s name. A humorous rumor had it that Grandson Arthur moved his cot near the door during the renovations to protect God’s material and to make sure the shut door of that vault stayed closed. All in all, the years from Ellen’s death in 1915 to the early 1960s did more to enhance her expanded writings, image, and status as God’s “first among equals” than all her living years of effort. To many, in fact, it has often seemed that more has been written about her, and for her, and by her since her death than during her life. Where would it all end?

During a time of fervor, people tend to get carried away. Events may get a little free or careless – and that is what happened with some of the pieces that were lying around. For example, a Review of 1871 printed a paragraph that was credited to “Selected” – indicating that this little paragraph had been reprinted from a source that was either unknown or unacceptable to name:

The great want of this age is men. Men who are not for sale. Men who are honest, sound from center to circumference, true to the heart’s core – men who will condemn wrong in a friend or foe, in themselves as well as others. Men whose consciences are as steady as the needle to the pole. Men who will stand for the right if the heavens totter and the earth reel.²⁵⁹

A paraphrase of this “selected” sentiment (appearing some thirty years later in the 1903 edition of Ellen’s Education) would become one of the great Adventist gems – memorized, recited, and revered by uncounted thousands of the faithful:

The greatest want of the world is men – men who will not be bought or sold, men who in their inmost souls are true and honest, men who do not fear to call sin by its right name, men whose conscience is as true to duty as the needle to the pole, men who will stand for the right though the heavens fall.²⁶⁰

Other bits and pieces began to show up too in Ellen’s Testimonies for the Church.²⁶¹ Until this discovery, which came after her death (as far as present information indicates), the Testimonies had always been held to be inviolate. They were the virgin of her genius, the sign of her connection with God, her one true claim to her personal, unadulterated seances with heavenly beings. Even Uriah Smith had drawn the line between what he had seen and what he could not be sure of at that time.²⁶² But it could no longer be denied that if someone laid down a leftover piece, Ellen picked it up and used it, for sooner or later it showed up in her pawnshop to be sold as God’s merchandise.

A scholar we have met before, Don McAdams, showed up with a manuscript revealing that Ellen had used the historian Wylie for some remnants in The Great Controversy:

The historical portions of The Great Controversy that I have examined are selective abridgements and adaptation of historians. Ellen White was not just borrowing paragraphs here and there that she ran across in her reading, but in fact following the historians page after page, leaving out much material, but using their sequence, some of their ideas, and often their words. In the examples I have examined I have found no historical fact in her text that is not in their text. The hand-written manuscript on John Huss follows the historian so closely that it does not even seem to have gone through an intermediary stage, but rather from the historian’s printed page to Mrs. White’s manuscript, including historical errors and moral exhortations.²⁶³

By the middle of the 1970s an increasing number of reports were questioning the writings of Ellen and her helpers.²⁶⁴ Even the members of the White Estate got into the act in an obtuse way. Ron Graybill, then an assistant at the Estate offices, completed a study of one of the chapters of The Great Controversy and found that much of it had been included in a Signs of the Times article of October 1883 entitled “Luther in the Wartburg.”²⁶⁵ Graybill had discovered that what Ellen had really done was not copy the historian Merle d’Aubigne, as had been supposed, “but a popularized version of d’Aubigne prepared by the Reverend Charles Adams for youthful readers” – copying the copier in this case.

Even Graybill’s connection with the White Estate could not ease the pain when he wrote:

The overall impression gained from this study by this researcher is that it sustains McAdams’ main point – that the objective and mundane historical narrative was based on the work of historians, not on visions.²⁶⁶

As in the case of McAdams’ work, the Estate would not release the work of Graybill, their own man. It takes more than an undercover man to obtain a copy of this piece of handiwork. But if one were fortunate enough to be among the chosen few to be allowed to view the precious relic from which Graybill drew his conclusion, one would see that Ellen had indeed copied in her own handwriting the words and thoughts of someone copying the words and thoughts of another writer. If this is where the Adventist divines stand when they insist that “everyone” was doing it (so it must be all right), they could be right. But one might ask – Why drag God into it and insist that He sanctioned it?

Because much valuable source material of the White Estate is not readily available to researchers, the intellectual community has not yet been able to come to grips with the serious problem that seems to exist for the meaning of inspiration.

Modern-day explorers William S. Peterson and Ronald L. Numbers had done well revealing the sources of some of the remnants and pieces that had been seen in Ellen’s shop from time to time. But it was their misfortune, for their efforts, to become unwelcome for Adventist institutional employment, like many before them. To stay operable in Adventism, it is not necessary to see what Ellen saw, and certainly it is not necessary to see where she saw what she saw, but it has always been necessary to believe that she saw what she saw. This fact becomes hard to accept by those who, even by default, poke around in the pawnshop where the merchandise was represented to the buyers as God’s merchandise.

At times things got not only creative but hilarious. The former president of the Southern California Conference of Seventh-day Adventists, Harold L. Calkins, flooded the local churches in 1977 with this gem credited to Ellen G. White in the Review of October 7, 1865.

Prayer is the answer to every problem in life. It puts us in tune with divine wisdom which knows how to adjust everything perfectly. So often we do not pray in certain situations, because from our standpoint, the outlook is hopeless. But nothing is impossible with God. Nothing is so entangled that it cannot be remedied; no human relationship is too strained for God to bring about reconciliation and understanding; no habit is so deep rooted that it cannot be overcome; no one is so weak that he cannot be strong. No one is so ill that he cannot be healed. No mind is so dull that it cannot be made brilliant. Whatever we need, if we trust God, he will supply it. If anything is causing worry or anxiety, let us stop rehearsing the difficulty and trust God for healing, love, and power.²⁶⁷

Later, Leslie Hardinge, and Ellen G. White coordinator and secretary of the conference, wrote to the White Estate and asked for verification of the source of the statement. The reply was as follows:

The quotation which you sent in your letter of March 31, and which we are returning herewith, supposedly found in an E. G. White article in the Review of October 7, 1865, is not an E. G. White statement. At least no one in the White Estate has been able to turn up any such statement from her writings. ... We haven’t any idea what the source of this quotation is.²⁶⁸

Not that it would have made any difference if the quotation had been said to have come from Ellen’s pen, for even so the lines could well have been copied from some other writer. But the question raised is: How much of this sort of thing has been done before, in the name of Ellen and inspiration, and finally in the name of God? The props were knocked from under the statement, for without Ellen’s endorsement it lacked the value of authority. To the multitude of true believers, there is little of value without Ellen’s stamp of approval.

In a letter written in 1921 in answer to questions raised by her nephew, Vesta J. Farnsworth loyally defended Ellen and her activity. As is often the case, a defense may by its nature reveal information that actually does the opposite of defend. For example, Mrs. Farnsworth wrote:

In later years when the thought was presented to her [EGW] that the use she had made of the statements of historians was considered an infringement upon the rights and business interests of publishers, she gave instruction that in future editions of her books correction should be made, giving full credit for all quotations.²⁶⁹

Although the bulk of Ellen’s major works had been published by then, after this “thought was presented” in regard to The Great Controversy, no one yet has produced a statement from her that she was willing to give specific credit to specific persons whose works and ideas were incorporated in her materials.

A statement from a letter by Willard A. Colcord gives the setting for the explanation Vesta Farnsworth gave to another question by her nephew:

What I said in my letter to my father about the Australian letter, I think was too indefinite for you to get at the real facts. In the writings on religious liberty topics sent here to the religious liberty department some few years ago from Sister White, the two pages embodied in this, as taken from a communication that I wrote Sister White while I was in Australia, were embodied without any credit, quotes, or anything of the kind; simply adopted as original matter. ... This making use of so much matter written by others, in Sister White’s writings, without quotes or credit, has gotten her and her writings into quite a lot of trouble. One of the chief objects in the late revision of “Great Controversy” was to fix up matters of this kind and one of the chief reasons why “Sketches from the Life of Paul” was never republished was because of serious defects in it on this ground.²⁷⁰

To answer her nephew, Mrs. Farnsworth quoted as follows from in- formation provided by one of those who served as secretary to Ellen White for a time – Clarence C. Crisler:

During the latter years of Sister White’s lifework, there were kept in her office not only files of her letters and manuscripts but also sundry other documents from various sources; and this miscellany was classified and arranged so as to be within easy reach at a moment’s notice. Collectively, this mass of matter was known as “ The Document File.” It was entirely distinct from the File of testimony matter, and was kept separately.

The Document File was arranged according to subjects, and contained much of historical and general interest regarding many phases of our denominational work. ... No effort was made at completeness; the Document File was rather a place where matter that might prove useful was kept in classified form.

In this Document File was a folder labeled “Religious Liberty Department;” into this had been placed, through the years, miscellaneous material on this subject, including some duplicates and copied-out portions of letters and manuscripts from the pen of Sister White.

When, prior to the 1909 General Conference, Mrs. White called for what had been written by her on the subject of Religious Liberty ... in order that she might give consideration to what should be included on this subject in a forthcoming volume of “Testimonies for the Church” (volume nine), she was handed that which was on the regular File of her letters and manuscripts. Later when she was about to leave her California home and office for the Conference, these letters and manuscripts were copied out in part, in order that she might have portions with her; for she had not yet made final decisions as to what had best be published at that time.

In order to make sure that any available material might be within easy reach when far away from the Office, one of her secretaries, before taking the train for the Washington Conference, took from the Document File the folder labeled “Religious Liberty Department”. . . and this was taken to the Conference in addition to the Testimony matter from the letter and manuscript File. This folder, like most of the other folders in the Document File, contained matter from various sources, and it was here that a member of the Religious Liberty Department came across the page referred to as having been “a letter he had sent her some years before.” The page had been written by Elder W. A. Colcord.²⁷¹

What Vesta Farnsworth said about Marian Davis, another of Ellen’s editorial assistants, opens up vistas yet to be explored:

It is stated that Miss Marian Davis was found one day weeping over the plagiarism in Sister White’s books. If this be true, it is one of the many things connected with her work over which she was deeply distressed. Sister Marian Davis was exceedingly faithful and conscientious in her labors, and felt keenly her responsibility in the work entrusted to her in connection with Sister White’s writings. She was frail of body and often low spirited. Many times she besought the prayers and the counsel of her associates and fellow workers. And by the help of God she did a noble work. She loved the work better than her life, ana anything which affected it affected her. She had shared in the decision to leave out quotation marks in the early edition of “Great Controversy” and to the use of the general acknowledgment in the Preface. Then when there came severe criticism for this, she, with Sister White and her associates, felt it very keenly. [Italics added.]²⁷²

Now the real shocker:

The accusation that Sister White covered her writings with her apron when a visitor came in, in order to conceal that fact that she was copying something from a book, is truly absurd. It was no secret that she copied choice passages from books and periodicals. But when she was writing counsels and reproof to older ministers she sometimes desired that it should not be known by younger workers what and to whom she was writing. This often led her to cover her writings when visitors came. [Italics added.]²⁷³

What Mrs. Farnsworth revealed surely was more than she had intended. First she had stated that “in the writing of this letter I have been fortunate in receiving help from reliable sources, and I believe you may consider what I am writing is authentic.”²⁷⁴

If she is reliable, then one must conclude (a) that Marian Davis was found weeping; (b) that she wept over plagiarism in Ellen’s books; (c) that Marian had enormous latitude in doing what she did, presumably often without Ellen’s permission or knowledge; (d) that Ellen did cover her writings with her apron as had been rumored; (e) that “it was no secret that Ellen copied choice passages from books and periodicals.”

In the face of such evidence, what can the White Estate do except shift the discussion of Ellen’s taking others’ material (in the name of God) to the area of value?

Unlike fact or policy, value, of course, is nothing more nor less than one’s own opinion. It is the great gray area of a never-never land that most of us dwell in. It is intangible and subjective. It is a matter, not of the mind or reason, but of feeling, and hope, and desires, and dreams, and ambitions. It is an area not of proof but of conjecture, often called “faith” by the faithless. It is the battleground where the supersalesmen of the psychic operate their magic. To the divine, it may be called “inspiration.” It may serve as a flag to wave people away from the real word they dare not come to grips with. That seldom-used word is authority.

The word authority, like inspiration, is also intangible in the religious world. Authority in that world is also, like beauty, in the eye of the beholder. But unlike inspiration, authority ultimately must be translated into the objective, the concrete world of reality, the here and now, the action. Inspiration need never move from its couch; indeed, it has not moved much throughout the centuries. Inspiration often appears as a dishonest attempt by honest people to define and come to grips with a concept that seems to defy defining. Inspiration warms the body and soothes the mind but need not produce any action. It can stay closeted in the hidden chambers of the soul forever and never be recognized by others. But authority must live in action, whereas inspiration often coddles action. Authority freely given becomes the basis for all self-discipline, whereas inspiration soon wafts away. The divines of Ellen’s persuasion would far better serve themselves and their cause by facing and coming to grips with the question of what authority is given Ellen than by neglecting their ship until it sinks, while they shout at each other in the name of inspiration.

Ellen’s position in Adventist history, in spite of the white lie, is secure. Her inspiration and devotion to her cause cannot be denied, because they live on in the lives of her true believers. But the church has never come to grips with her authority over facts and policies and practices. The Adventist Church members have let the supersalesmen of the psychic usurp Ellen’s authority and turn it into God’s for their own purposes. They are the ones who often blow Ellen’s trumpet in the name of God. If the church is to survive, the divines will have to come out of never-never land and start to guide themselves and others toward a satisfying answer on what Ellen’s authority is.

It was elucidation of that authority, not inspiration, that William S. Sadler was seeking when he wrote to Ellen in 1906. He had always supported Ellen in her decisions and in her writings. But he had begun to have doubts – as had many others who had followed too blindly and too long. He stated some of these problems thus:

Accordingly, I find myself in a quandary, when I seek to understand certain things that you have recently written. I am often at a loss to know how to choose between the following two positions: –

(1) Am I to acknowledge the conditions or accusations which are stated in the Testimony as true, and as conditions which really exist at the present time, even though after prayerful search and careful inquiry I am still unable to recognize that these things do exist? Or,

(2) Is this another instance like the Chicago buildings, in which you presented a thing that does not really exist, but which the Lord is seeking to forestall?²⁷⁵

Sadler saw a dangerous change of attitude (as to Ellen and her writings) coming into the church:

I turned a deaf ear to these things for years, but now, since our attitude on the Testimonies is becoming a test throughout the denomination, I realize that I must go to the bottom of all these things.²⁷⁶

Like others before him, he was concerned with Willie White’s influence over the Testimonies – as he made clear by quoting to Ellen from “the communication written by you under date of July 19th, 1905, to Brethren I. H. Evans and J. S. Washburn”:

I wrote a few lines to Elder Daniells suggesting this be done, but Willie did not see that the matter could be earned through thus, because Elder Daniells and others were at that lime very much discouraged in regard to the condition of things in Battle Creek. So I told him that he need not deliver the note.²⁷⁷

What this good doctor was struggling with seemed to be the same thing that all thinking persons around Ellen had to wrestle with at some time in their experience. Their problem always came down to the same thing: Would the REAL GOD of Ellen G. White PLEASE STAND UP? In his letter to her, Sadler asked this question over and over:

Are the letters you write to the leaders in our work, in answer to letters they write, Testimonies? Must I receive everything you write as from the Lord – just as it is, word for word, – or are there communications you send out, which are your personal letters, – personal communications from Sister White?...

What shall be my attitude toward those who hesitate in accepting a Testimony, or apparently rejecting the Testimonies? Shall 1 leave them alone with God and their Bibles, or shall I publicly denounce them, and make war upon them?...

Concerning Reform Dress and the change of instruction...is your position today any different from that which you took then? ...

A number of years ago, 1 was told that your son made this change in the manuscript. Is this so? Does anyone have authority to in any way change your writings? To what extent and in just what way are the Testimonies edited after they leave your pen, before they are crystallized into type?²⁷⁸

Questions, questions, questions.

But they were never answered. That must have been one of the reasons why this particular medical practitioner – whose record says he was at one time senior attending surgeon to Columbus Hospital and chief surgeon at Bethany Sanitarium and Hospital, former professor at a postgraduate medical school in Chicago, author of a number of books – later wrote the following as to some similar cases he had observed:

Nearly all these victims of trances and nervous catalepsy, sooner or later come to believe themselves to be messengers of God and prophets of Heaven; and no doubt most of them are sincere in their belief. Not understanding the physiology and psychology of their afflictions, they sincerely come to look upon their peculiar mental experiences as something supernatural, while their followers blindly believe anything they teach because of the supposed divine character of those so-called revelations.²⁷⁹

The evidence points to the fact that Sadler was speaking not only from his professional conviction but also from his own personal observation of Ellen over the years and his experience as a one-time believer.

Many, in their time and turn, came to have questions concerning Ellen’s authority. They might be husband, relative, secretary, assistant, editor, writer, educator, associate, or friend. But they came to question her relationship with God when it came to her claim in her writings and her “visions.” It was not that they doubted her pastoral inspiration, or her belief in it. But what they did question was by whose name she did what she did.

That question, which so concerned knowledgeable persons then and which was their (and Ellen’s) greatest controversy during her lifetime, remains the cause of question and controversy in our own day – a whole lifetime since her death in 1915.

No wonder, decades later, Ron Graybill, Associate, in the White Estate, should wonder aloud to the Adventist Forum Board in November of 1981 the same thoughts of Sadler but in different words where he said:

The great bulk of her comments deal only with the divine source of her material and tend to deny the influence of human thought and opinion. And, thus, while we have no problem with the fact that Mrs. White did borrow, we do wonder why she appears to have denied her borrowing.²⁸⁰

But deny it she did. It is only a part of the extended white lie to say that the church has been open and honest about Ellen’s copy work. Neither she nor her husband ever gave evidence that she was in the work of stealing from others. In fact, until forced into admissions in later years, the Whites from James through Willie, the son, and on to Grandson Arthur, all took the hard line about Mother Ellen. James’ best shot was given in his book Life Sketches which was published in 1880, just eight years before the “great confession” in the introduction of Great Controversy in 1888. It is so strong and absolute in its ignorance or cover up, that it should be quoted as a whole:

3. Does unbelief suggest that what she writes in her personal testimonies has been learned from others? We inquire, What time has she had to learn all these facts? and who for a moment can regard her as a Christian woman, if she gives her ear to gossip, then writes it out as a vision from God? And where is the person of superior natural and acquired abilities who could listen to the description of one, two, or three thousand cases, all differing and then write them out without getting them confused, laying the whole work liable to a thousand contradictions? If Mrs. W. has gathered the facts from a human mind in a single case, she has in thousands of cases, and God has not shown her these things which she has written in these personal testimonies.

4. In her published works there are many things set forth which cannot be found in other books, and yet they are so clear and beautiful that the unprejudiced mind grasps them at once as truth If commentators and theological writers generally had seen these gems of thought which strike the mind so forcibly, and had they been brought out in print, all the ministers in the land could have read them. These men gather thoughts from books, and as Mrs. W. has written and spoken a hundred things, as truthful as they are beautiful and harmonious, which cannot be found in the writings of others, they are new to the most intelligent readers and hearers. And if they are not to be found in print, and are not brought out in sermons from the pulpit, where did Mrs. W. find them? From what source has she received the new and rich thoughts which are to be found in her writings and oral addresses? She could not have learned them from books, from the fact that, they do not contain such thoughts. And, certainly, she did not learn them from those ministers who had not thought of them. The case is a clear one. It evidently requires a hundred times the credulity to believe that Mrs. W. has learned these things of others, and has palmed them off as visions from God, than it does to believe that the Spirit of God has revealed them to her [italics added].²⁸¹

Appendix Chapter 9 Exhibit

The last of the big five in the Conflict of the Ages series – Prophets and Kings – was published in 1916, the next year after Ellen’s death at nearly eighty-eight years of age. It continued the pattern that had sold well for seventy years – copying from other writers who had preceded her on the subject.²⁸² This book has not been one of her most popular, however, possibly because it is limited to a period or a subject about which not a great deal had been published to copy from. It contains more Bible texts than any of her other books, and a good many fillers were used to pad the book when the stories ran out.

It might be thought that Ellen’s death would bring the end of the copy work. But that was not to be. Willie White had other plans – and they were spelled out in his request to the Executive Committee of the Adventist General Conference in a letter of October 1921.

For years [she] had stated over and over again that she wished us to gather together from her writings those things that would show our people that the health reform principles were a gift from God to the Seventh-day Adventist people. ...

Several times when mother was speaking to me and to Brethren Crisler and Robinson about the work that we were to do after her death, she referred to this book on the Health Reform movement as one of the most important matters to be given attention. ...

Another work which Sister White wished to have published, and for which material was gathered under her instruction and regarding which she instructed us to go forward as soon as we could after her death, is a choice selection of her sermons preached during her two years of labor in Europe. These she desired to be printed in connection with a brief sketch of her labors in Europe .... It would be a valuable addition to our denominational literature in the French, German, Swedish, and Danish languages.

If this compilation could have been made while mother was able to supervise it, it could have gone out with the same authority as her other writings, but as we were not able to do this in time for mother to supervise it, it will be necessary to put it out upon another basis. [Italics added.]²⁸³

What a pity! With Ellen really gone and not able to “supervise” what had been garnered in for seventy years, it was going to take some engineering to convince the faithful that what was to come down the pike after her demise was still coming from Ellen and still in the name of God.

But today there is hardly one of the faithful who can distinguish between material written and published before Ellen’s death and that which has come after. No one seems to feel that it is necessary to make such a distinction. If Ellen ever touched an idea, or even told others to touch it (including Willie), doing that specific thing must be the will of God, and the material must have been from God – and that, they say, is the end of that. Ellen believed and taught that her material would live and speak as long as time would last. She had reached a level in one lifetime with her believers that none of the Canon writers had ever reached in their time. Furthermore, she had reached parity with the Bible. It was part of her stated belief that such should happen:

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 nave been given to me by the Lord will still have life and will speak to the people.²⁸⁴

For Adventists, the curtain was never going to fall on this nineteenth century woman and her writings. Their shifting interpretation of the “last generation” of Matthew 24; their change of dates for the Second Advent; their closing and opening and closing of doors of mercy; their modification of the sanctuary position – never would there be an end to the changes if the brethren could maintain that things were just as they had always been. The supersalesmen had set the pattern, and their congregations were to buy, and buy, and buy the material of Ellen for all time. New light would be furnished at new intervals whenever occasion called for it. Instruction would be handed down whenever the natives became restless. New goals would be set whenever old ones wore out. New slogans would be invented to replace those that had gone before. Everything would be done in the name of God through Ellen’s pen – even long after evidence was available that Ellen, with a great deal of able help, had filched most of her material from others and was indeed, as one writer said, a literary kleptomaniac:

As Sister White travelled about expounding her hygienic ideas, people often said to her, “You sound just like Dr. Jackson,” so that she was put to some pains to explain that she had never heard of Dr. Jackson’s health magazine, the Laws of Life, which succeeded The Letter Box, until after the revelation of June, 1863, nor had she read any of the other works of Dr. Jackson. This may have been the truth without being the whole truth. Mrs. White undoubtedly knew of how Dr. Jackson had put Elder Himes back on his feet. And in January, 1863, when two of the Whités children caught diphtheria, Elder White most fortunately happened upon a letter of Dr. Jackson’s printed in the Yates County Chronicle, at Penn Yan, New York, giving his methods for treatment of diphtheria, adapted for home use. Impressed, the Whites applied them ana the children recovered. If Mrs. White seems reluctant to acknowledge a debt, we can only reflect that so were Father Graham and Dr. Alcott. And Mrs. White was consistent. She carried the same policy over into her literary labors, which later caused much rancor, and the use of harsh expressions by her critics, such as “literary kleptomania.”²⁸⁵

How was it all done? Not unlike what has been done to the minds and psyches of “true believers” of all times. Who started the Crusades, that ancient rush to madness? Who drew the first blood in the holy wars of the past? Who still glares from the one-eyed tubal monster in the living room, spitting fire and brimstone from all the channels that accept heavenly advertising? The supersalesmen of the psychic, of course. The divines, the clerics, the men of the cloth – the ones that the ignorant, the guilt ridden, and the fearful have sold their souls to. The faithful still tramp the streets ringing doorbells to infect others. They accost strangers on the corners with their stolen wares. Oh, they may or may not know that what they carry to peddle in the name of their saint did not come from God – but it no longer makes any difference. The thing that does make the difference is that they believe it comes from God and that this gives them a holy calling and sets them apart as the righteous.

Clergymen of whatever brand know this formula. For generations they have handed down the torch from others who believed and perfected the idea that their faith, their clan, their interpretation, was the only true one among equals. With that thought safely tucked away in the minds of the true believers, the clergy can now turn to the method of presenting their Clan Plan, their true faith, in the most attractive package.

To a large degree, the success of all clergymen is to convince the congregation that they have the three C’s – they have care, they have the couch (the training), and they have connections with the Almighty.

It may be true for those who give their body to be burned on some dark, heathen shore or those who bestow all their goods to feed the poor²⁸⁶ that some do care. But the ones who do are the few and far between. Observation teaches that many clergymen do not really care. Like the family doctor of old, few give house calls anymore, few still pray with their members about their problems, and few understand the people’s needs, much less how to meet these needs. In today’s world of glamorous religious television, big-name stars in radio evangelism, and the “permissible lie” in advertising, these supersalesmen have a product to sell – and religion pays its hucksters well. What they care for are the same ordinary, everyday needs for themselves that other mortals in any vocation have or want, and filling these needs takes most of their time and talent. In the case of Adventist leaders, the recurring lists of those involved in conflict-of-interest schemes supports this thesis.²⁸⁷

True, the clergy may have the couch or some special training. But training in what? Often the training is-in the art of magic, of mythology, of the unseen and unreal. If they were forced to stand in line at the unemployment window of the world and put up their expertise as a pledge of worth to the public, who would hire them? What line of work would they be qualified for? What could they do to be useful to themselves or to society, aside from their magic? Often these supersalesmen of the psychic are thirtyish before they are finished with their “continuing” education. They face the future with (1) a mountain of debt; (2) a wife (which the profession demands); and (3) two or three kids (optional, but often picked up along the way by mistake). Then they discover that they are locked in for life (often in a position they themselves know they are not suited to) and that they will be in jeopardy if any thoughts of their own come up criss-cross of the system. The tighter the Clan Plan they work under, the less their chance of survival if they try to sell any idea that the system or the Clan does not accept.

So they become the happy warriors of religion. They sell the idea that they have connections that will make them and their friends first in line at the heavenly gates. If anyone can get you into the hereafter at wholesale rate, they can. Tetzel was not the first or the last to sell indulgences, nor did (or do) the Catholics have a monopoly on heavenly concessions. All supersalesmen sell the advantages of their particular name brands. In the cults and sects, it’s the brand of their saint and what is required by that saint to be saved. In the larger and longer established forms of religion, it’s the Clan Plan, mother’s religion, the faith of the fathers, the true light.

All this merchandise can be packaged and sold only by the supersalesmen of the psychic, because from time immemorial people have bought the idea that they, and only they, have the proper connections with the Judge upstairs. The clergy thus are the thought molders of God, the keepers of the keys for Saint Peter, the people’s last great White Hope for the hereafter.

In reality, what they sell is fear. Fear of the here, the now, and the hereafter as well. Happiness can come for a child from a wooden horse on a merry-go-round. It can shine forth from the eyes of the innocent in a marriage vow or be felt in the warm embrace of an aging couple at the setting of the sun. But fear must be manufactured by the divines and made to seem real in the minds of the beholders. Like its twin, guilt, fear must be formed and shaped out of the ignorance of the unknown, the constant straining after the unknowable and unobtainable, the continual selling of the undesirable.

To do a proper job of their selling, all supersalesmen must have a talisman – an object believed to confer on its bearer supernatural powers – a John Bunyan, a Gulliver, a Hans Christian Andersen, a Joseph Smith, a Mary Baker Eddy, an Ellen G. White.

A talisman helps us to see what we want to see – a saint, a fantasyland, something Very Important. In the hands of supersalesmen, the talisman becomes a marionette that they manipulate to control their audience. Shadows become substance and substance becomes shadows. In the hands of the master manipulator, reality begins to fade; the present blurs. Thus the participant trades the reality of today for the fear and hope of tomorrow – while only the supersalesmen knows how the strings are being pulled.

In the end, when the curtain falls on the last act, the participators and the audience are no more fulfilled than at the beginning; they are still driven by fear to a place they can’t describe, for a reward they never obtained. If they are restless, they may drift away, only to be captured by the antics of another marionette show operated from behind by another supersalesman of the psychic.

Organized religion has always destroyed God through its supersalesmen, who have always done it through their saints. Sometimes those saints have not been as visible as Joseph Smith, Mary Baker Eddy, or Ellen White – but they are there nonetheless, whether they speak the language of Father Aquinas, Mother Mary, or Sister Ellen.

In any case, the saints are the marionettes used by the supersalesmen to gain control of the audience. The audience learns to laugh when the puppet laughs and cry when the puppet cries. They learn to see what the puppet sees and to hide from what it does not wish to see. At times the audience and the marionette seem as one, ever moving in an unreal world to an unreal end, where neither the marionette nor audience really discerns the plot of the play or understands or enjoys its movements.

But behind the curtain, manipulating both the marionette and the audience, is some supersalesman of the psychic, you can be sure. The take-home pay is too great to let the show go on without a manager. And who has proved through the centuries to be a better manager of people than the supersalesman with his marionette saint?

Adventism has had its supersalesmen and its marionette, Ellen. First came James White, the author of the white lie. He, more than any other, knew the power of the product he was selling. He encouraged and helped Ellen in her first writings and guided her through many a pitfall. In the year he died, 1881, he wrote to Ellen about the wealth to be found in her writings:

I shall have a picture that will readily sell for $2.00 a copy. ... We must get out certain books. These we shall not complete in California or in Battle Creek, unless we keep away from the Office and its business. . . . Our financial matters stand well, ana there is wealth yet in our pens. In this way we can leave something that will tell when we may be gone. [Italics added.]²⁸⁸

The previous year he had written:

But I must still plead that we take time to get out certain books. We are better qualified to do this than certain ones who are ambitious to flood the market with their books. ...

I prefer to receive nothing back from the Sanitarium and College, and in order to have means, to act our part in point of giving to other enterprises, we should receive liberally on our books. With the increasing demand for our writings, and the new Way of Life picture, there will be an income of several thousand dollars annually, besides the immense amount of good our writings will do.²⁸⁹

How close Gold and God walk together in the world of the white lie.

James organized and expanded her writings to the benefit of the Whites. When he left the scene of action, his place was assumed by son Willie. In subsequent years, the criticism came to be that often Willie was Ellen.²⁹⁰ Then when Willie’s term ended, Arthur was on hand to carry the White legend forward. His hands held the strings that gave expression to his grandmotherly marionette. His influence was a factor in the decision of what “truth” was released and when and to whom. His selective “revelations” of “new material” on “new” subjects throughout the years kept the audience always on the lookout for special light.

No one can successfully challenge the fact that the White boys, from James to Arthur, have set the music, played the tune, and pulled the strings of the Ellen G. White marionette show. Ellen may or may not have done little to restrain her legend, but much evidence indicates that she was swept before its flood by her own supersalesmen.

There were lesser stage managers too. Whoever needed authority on a given subject found it in Ellen and her writings. If J. N. Andrew's or Uriah Smith needed endorsement and acceptance for their theories and ideas, they found a ready market when their merchandise was sold through Ellen.²⁹¹ When Fanny Bolton, niece Mary Clough, and “book maker” Marian Davis, and others sold their wares through the pen of Ellen, no one complained about the “beautiful” passages from such work as Steps to Christ, Thoughts from the Mount of Blessings, and The Desire of Ages, until they didn’t receive their proper credit.

In time the whole show got out of hand – and the words of anybody and everybody now became God’s (not even Ellen’s) and were henceforth inviolable and as though set in stone, or at least concrete. The brightest of the founding fathers, however, knew that Ellen did not get all her knowledge straight from God. They held some of the strings themselves. Hence, neither they nor Ellen feared any deviation from every molehill of that mountain of instruction – because they had a good idea where most of it came from, and in themselves they knew that God was not the author.James White himself very early made that clear in the Review so long ago as to be forgotten by today’s readers:

Every Christian is, therefore, duty bound to take the Bible as a perfect rule of faith and duty He is not at liberty to turn from them to learn his duty through any of the gifts. We say that the very moment he does, he places the gifts in a wrong place, and takes an extremely dangerous position. The Word should be in front, and the eye of the church should be placed upon it, as the rule to walk by, and the fountain of wisdom, from which to learn duty “in all good works.”²⁹²

A few years later he wrote an even stronger statement:

There is a class of persons who are determined to have it that the Review and its conductors make the view of Mrs. White a test of doctrine and Christian fellowship. What has the Review to do with Mrs. White’s views? The sentiments published in its columns are all drawn from the Holy Scriptures. No writer of the Review has ever referred to them (Mrs. White’s views) as authority on any point.²⁹³

The white lie theme may have started out as a solo, but soon it became a duet, then a quartet, and then a chorus. Today one can still hear the great choir. It rose to a crescendo at the 1980 Glacier View meeting appointed to silence Desmond Ford, who believed in mercy, not centuries-long investigation. The Adventist Review still bangs out its cacophony of fears and judgments to all those who may not like the way the strings of the marionette show are pulled. The snappy hum of the presses – cranking out all the minutiae of directions for the faithful, each one stamped with a quote or a paraphrase from Saint Ellen – is part of the beat. And through the administrators, in their efforts to whip up the troops for one more mad dash up some hill of financial endeavor, the rattle of the drums goes on.

But above all the sound and fury rise the chants and babble of hundreds and thousands of “true believers.” By now few of them know accurately or care who was the composer or how the oratorio came to be. By now it is just important, and easier, to believe and promote the idea that the whole show was all planned and run by God, in every infinitesimal detail, via Ellen’s books.

The Adventists have yet to learn, as does many a “true believer,” and unbeliever alike, the fullness of the glorious news that salvation was already extended to all, through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, at the Cross, and is effective upon acceptance. It is not being begged or negotiated somewhere in the courts above while Christ was held outside the door for 1800 years, and the world was closed off from the action or benefits of God’s love by some shut door, whether in 1844 or in 1984.

For any “true believer” who worships his God through a saint of his choice, it is a difficult thought that salvation is free and mercy is always available to all, saint or sinner, regardless of which saint one worships through. The very system of worship-through-saint demands obedience to a set of rules devised by some group of supersalesmen hiding in the shadows behind their puppet – their saint. If the true message of the Canon should catch on, those salesmen would lose their claim to the heavenly franchise they sell through their marionette for the control of their faithful. It would not do well for their system if the “true believer” should discover the real Desire of all the ages, the Patriarch of all the prophets, the Actor of all the Apostles, and the King of all the prophets – Jesus Christ, the Son of God. It would be the end of all the neverending all-consuming great controversies in all their lives for all time.

Much more than one can encompass or digest has been written about Ellen and her «borrowing.» Doubtless more will continue to be written as various ones seek to clear their heads a Id hearts of the long, sorry misconceptions. Doors that have been shut for a hundred years or more are now being painfully opened by a different generation. One can hope that enough feet have been put firmly in the doorway to keep the door from being slammed all the way shut again. Some who have written before the 1970s to protest what was taking place seem to have been opposed so successfully that a generation or two of Adventists have been taught fallaciously.²⁹⁴ Additional material will be forthcoming as the times demand and as the scholars continue to discover what lies under the surface.

Much has been said for many years about the secretiveness of the White Estate and about their extremely stringent policies even for friends of the church who seek the information that leads to knowledge of truth. The inability to have access to source material without smuggling it out naturally intensifies suspicion. But times have changed since 1844. Now the only doors that remain really closed are the ones that lead to the minds of today's communicants, who in blind loyalty go on parroting the «party line,» zealots without regard for accuracy or honesty. These doors are the hardest to open, for they have been closed by those persons whom they felt they had a right to trust – whose minds, in turn, have been closed by fear to think or investigate, lest the curse of the supersalesmen come down upon them. Even worse are those who fear that God, who is ever on trial in such matters, wants the blind to lead the blind through the desert wasteland.

Studies have established certain points that are irrefutable. Even Robert Olson, of the White Estate, has conceded as much, in his letter of September 4, 1980:

Let me assure you ... that we are doing our best to do what we believe needs to be done. The nineteen-page paper you referred to on Ellen Whités use of uninspired sources has been published in the Australian Division Union paper. It has also been translated into German and published for all of our ministers in West Germany. A somewhat modified version of the article was published In the new youth Sabbath School quarterly which is issued currently in Lincoln, Nebraska. We have also made this article available to our conference presidents around the circle and have presented the matter in many of workers' meetings both here and abroad However, we feel that this is simply a preliminary step. The General conference Committee has voted to ask one of our professors from Andrews University to engage in a two-year study in which the writings of Ellen White on the life of Christ are to be investigated in depth, especially on the question of literary borrowing.²⁹⁵

Could this be the same Robert Olson who stood before an audience at Loma Linda less than two years before and said that there was really nothing to all this discussion going on about Ellen and her writings?²⁹⁶ On the other hand, Olson's statement cannot be considered to mean there is a new open-door policy at the White Estate office. A later letter of that year (October 1980) reveals how closed that White Estate vault still is: «Elder does not look at these matters as I think he should.»²⁹⁷ And his words to the in-house group two years earlier were not idle when he said that the one chosen to do the work would

...cost the White Estate nothing for Jim's [Cox] time, and I do believe that we can stay close enough to him so that the conclusions he arrives at would be essentially the same as the conclusions we would come to were we doing the work ourselves. We could ask Jim to make a report every two or three weeks to a committee.²⁹⁸

But the press is stronger than the sword. Olson's sword has been dulled in combat with the press, even if some of that press was only the quick-copy machine. Members in at least some parts of the world have been becoming aware for themselves for the first time of the magnitude of the problem with Ellen's illegitimate use of the work of predecessors and of the fact that some questions have to be answered. Worldwide, many Adventists are no longer willing to accept the unethical answers that their super salesmen have given them.

The ethical problems can be summed up by reviewing the evidence that a good deal of research in recent years has revealed substantial information about Ellen's life and writing.

1. It is now clear that Ellen was not original in her writing; her material was taken from other sources – on all subjects, in all areas, in all books.²⁹⁹

2. It is likewise clear that Ellen was indeed substantially influenced by her surroundings, her associates, and other religious writers from whom she drew (copying, paraphrasing, and the like).³⁰⁰

3. The one disclaimer that had been made known in a general way (that the introductions of the 1888 and 1911 editions of The Great Controversy) does not truthfully deal with the issue. Why would anyone quote from another's published work without intending to cite that person as his authority?

4. It has now been conceded that Ellen had much more help than the church members had been led to believe and that her helpers did indeed have great latitude in selecting and arranging material and in final editing.³⁰¹ Furthermore, in addition to the editorial assistants who are fairly well known – Marian Davis, Clarence C. Crisler, Dores E. Robinson, Mary Steward, Fannie Bolton, Mary H. Crisler, Sarah Peck, Maggie Hare, and H. Camden Lacey – a later release by Willie White calls attention to others less well known about: «From 1860 and onward, some of her manuscripts for publication, and some of her testimonies, were copied by members of her family."³⁰² Then he named such copyists as Lucinda Abbey Hall, Adelia Patten Van Horn, Anna Driscoll Loughborough, Addie Howe Cogshall, Annie Hale Royce, Emma Sturgis Prescott, Mary Clough Watson, and Mrs. J. L. Ings. There may well have been others.

5. Ellen did not have the last word on what was written and did not always have the final say on what was published.³⁰³ Even could it be proved that she was «always in control,» that would not settle the ethical questions.

6. It cannot be maintained either in good scholarship or in good conscience that «verbal inspiration» was the problem with those who saw and understood what was going on. They knew what was going on and did not accept the writings as from God and thus did not condone what was being done.³⁰⁴

7. If and when anyone expressed convictions about these matters, that person was served with a personal condemnatory testimony, or asked to leave, or, even worse, labeled as an enemy of the church and truth.³⁰⁵

8. Not all the early fathers and church workers accepted or believed that everything Ellen wrote was from God and was always inspired. Her authority was not the final authority with them.³⁰⁶

9. Ellen herself well knew what was being done, had a part in it all along, and encouraged others who worked for her to do the same and say nothing about it.³⁰⁷

This last statement (item 9) seems to create the greatest ethical problem for the Adventist Church at the present time. Robert Olson has Judged that one person's approach «is to lead his listeners to believe that Ellen White was dishonest and deceptive.»³⁰⁸ Because of the sensitive nature of this charge, it is necessary to bring knowledgeable witnesses to the stand to testify what they saw or said.

No one now defending Ellen and her acts was living at the time of her activity. Not even Grandson Arthur can be an acceptable witness. His grandmother was past eighty years of age when he was born. Whatever work she had done for the church had been done without Arthur's observation or knowledge. Certainly Ronald D. Graybill and Robert W. Olson (both of the White Estate offices) were not present and therefore must be disqualified as reliable witnesses. Furthermore, all three have built-in biases and conflict of interest. Their positions, reputations, and monetary compensation make them unacceptable in any court of arbitration as firsthand or dependable witnesses. The only advantage they may have that others of our times do not have is their access to material and information that they refuse to divulge.

But there were witnesses who did see and did express themselves They need to have their day in court, if only in incomplete form.

1. John N. Andrews

One of the church founders; studious writer; editor. A contemporary of Ellen Whités, her friend and helper. Some of his ideas and words were included in her printed material as she formulated her theology.

J. N. Andrews, who at the time was in Battle Creek, was much interested.

After one of the meetings he told her some of the things she had said were much like a book he had read. Then he asked if she had read Paradise Lost .... A few days later Elder Andrews came to the home with a copy Paradise Lost and offered it to her.³⁰⁹

2. Uriah Smith

Editor of the Review during Ellen Whités time, a personal friend of the Whites; a writer whose material found its way into Ellen's theology in several of her books.

It seems to me that the testimonies, practically, have come into that shape, that it is not of any use to try to defend the erroneous claims that are now put forth for them. ... If all the brethren were willing to investigate this matter candidly and broadly, I believe some consistent, common ground for all to stand upon, could be found. But some, of the rule or ruin spirit, are so dogmatical and stubborn that I suppose that any effort in that direction would only lead to a rupture of the body.³¹⁰

3. George B. Starr

Evangelist, minister, teacher, administrator. He accompanied Ellen White to Australia and always defended her writings and reputation.

On leaving my room I passed Sister Whités doorway, and the door being ajar, she saw me and called me into her room, saying, «I am in trouble, Brother Starr, and would like to talk with you.» I asked her what was the nature of her trouble, and she replied, «My writings, Fannie Bolton.»³¹¹

4. Fannie Bolton

Editorial assistant to Ellen White in Australia. Often praised for her editorial and writing ability. Discharged by Ellen.

I tried for years to harmonize what seemed to me inconsistency in the work with a worldly literary maxim that requires an author to acknowledge his editors and give credit to all works from which he quotes. In contending that Sr. White was not open about this matter, I supposed myself standing for a principle of ordinary justice and literary honesty, and looked upon myself as a martyr for truth's sake.³¹²

5. Merritt G. Kellogg

Friend of the Whites; half brother of John Harvey Kellogg; probably the first Adventist to reach California and hold evangelistic meetings.

In 1894 [in Australia] Mrs. White told me that in writing the Great Controversy, and preparing it for the press, Marian Davis and Fanny Bolton had charge of it. She further told me that these girls were responsible for certain things which went into that book in the shape which they did.... Mrs. White did not tell me just what wrong was committed by the girls. I suppose the reason why she spoke to me on the subject was because of the tact that Fanny Bolton had come to me.... I told her just what Fanny had told me.... «Now, ' said Sister White with some warmth, «Fanny Bolton shall never write another line for me....» From that day to this my eyes have been open.³¹³

6. John Harvey Kellogg

Surgeon, inventor, health advocate, writer, lecturer, teacher, businessman. Long-time personal friend of the Whites.

I do not believe in her infallibility and never did. I told her eight years ago to her face that some of the things she has sent to me as testimonies were not the truth, that they were not in harmony with the facts, and she herself found it out. I have a letter from her in which she explains how she came to send me some things.... I know people go to Sister White with some plan or scheme they want to carry through under her endorsement of It and stand up and say, «The Lord has spoken,» and I know that is fraud, that that is taking unfair advantage of peoplés minds and of peoplés consciences... and l have no sympathy with that thing, and I toed W. C. White so long ago.³¹⁴

7. Mary Clough

Niece; daughter of Ellen Whités sister Caroline. Although not herself an Adventist, for a time literary assistant, publicity agent, and helper with the White writings. Discharged by Ellen.

[George B. Starr quoting Ellen White] I want to tell you of a vision I had about 2:00 óclock this morning.... There appeared a chariot of gold and horses of silver above me, and Jesus, in royal majesty' was seated in the chariot. I was greatly impressed with the glory of this vision .... Then there came the words rolling down over the clouds from the chariot from the lips of Jesus, «Fannie Bolton is your adversary! ... » I had this same vision about seven years ago, when my niece, Mary Clough, was on my writings.³¹⁵

8. George W. Amadon

Served fifty years in various capacities in the Review and Herald Publishing Association, and in the church, in three cities. Friend of the Whites.

I knew a large share of it ["How to Live"] was borrowed .... [With reference to «Sketches from the Life of Paul"] I said that Sister White never writes the prefaces to her books; I happen to know that others write them; and I said it ad been stated formally in the preface of the book that such things had been taken from other works, that what had been copied verbatim ought to have been in quotation marks, or set in finer type, or in foot-notes or something of the sort the way printers generally do.... She never reads the proof .... Sister White never in the Office sat down and read proofs properly .... You know in the days of the Elder James White] how her writings were handled just as well as I do.³¹⁶

9. Arthur G. Daniels

Minister, administrator; noted as one of the strongest leaders of the Adventist Church; president of the General Conference 1901–22. Close personal friend of the Whites; in Australia.

Now you know something about that little book, «The Life of Paul.» You know the difficulty we got into about that. We could never claim inspiration In the whole thought and makeup of the book, because it has been thrown aside because It was badly put together. Credits were not given to the proper authorities, and some of that crept into «The Great Controversy» – the lack of credits.... Personally that has never shaken my faith, but there are men who have been greatly hurt by it, and I think it is because they claimed too much for these writings.³¹⁷

10. Benjamin L. House

College professor of religion; present at the 1919 Bible Conference.

But such books as «Sketches [from] the Life of Paul,» «Desire of Ages,» and «Great Controversy,» were composed differently, it seems to me, even by her secretaries than the nine volumes of the Testimonies.³¹⁸

11. W. W. Prescott

One of Adventism's great educators; biblical scholar; Review editor; founder of two colleges, president of three. Helped in amending and contributing to Ellen Whités book material.

It seems to me that a large responsibility rests upon those of us who know that there are serious errors in our authorized books and yet make no special effort to correct them. The people and our average ministers trust us to furnish them with reliable statements, and they use our books as sufficient authority in their sermons, but we let them go on year after year asserting things which we know to be untrue.... It seems to me that what amounts to deception, though probably not intentional, has been practiced in making some of her books, and that no serious effort has been made to disabuse the minds of the people.³¹⁹

12. Willard A. Colcord

Minister, editor, religious liberty secretary of the General Conference.

This making use of so much matter written by others, in Sister Whités writings, without quotes or credits, has gotten her and her writings into quite a lot of trouble. One of the chief objects in the late revision of 'Great Controversy» was to fix up matters of this kind; and one of the chief reasons why «Sketches from the Life of Paul» was never republished was because of serious defects in it on this ground.³²⁰

13. H. Camden Lacey

Professor of Bible and biblical languages at five Adventist colleges; minister. Personal friend of the Whites.

Sr. Marian Davis was entrusted with the preparation of «Desire of Ages» and ... she gathered her material from every available source... She was greatly worried about finding material suitable for the first chapter (and other chapters too for that matter) and I did what I could to help her; and I have good reason to believe that she also appealed to Professor Prescott frequently for similar aid, and got it too in far richer and more abundant measure than I could render.³²¹

14. Healdsburg Ministerial Association

A report in the local town paper of their comparison study of five books from which they determined Ellen White had copied; March 20,1889.

Elder Heale would have the Committee believe that she is not a reading woman. And also ask them to believe that the historical facts and even the quotations are given to her in vision without depending on the ordinary sources of information.... Would not any literary critic, Judging from the quotations advanced and a comparison of the passages indicated, conclude that Mrs. White in writing her «Great Controversy,' vol. iv, had before her the open books and from them took both ideas and words?³²²

15. James White

One of the founders and organizers of the Seventh-day Adventist Church. Teacher, editor, businessman, publisher, minister, administrator. Husband of Ellen.

Every Christian is therefore in duty bound to take the Bible as a perfect rule of faith and duty. He should pray fervently to be aided by the Holy Spirit in searching the Scriptures for the whole truth, and for his whole duty. He is not at liberty to turn from them to learn his duty through any of the if's. We say that the very moment he does, he places the gifts in a wrong place and takes an extremely dangerous position. The Word should be in front and the eye of the church should be placed upon it, as the rule to walk by and the fountain of wisdom, from which to learn duty in «all good works.»³²³

16. Ellen Gould White

The copier and compiler of all the vaunted 25 million words put out in her name. The notice given in the Review of 24 June 1858 of her first serious attempt at a book announced that it was «a sketch of her views of the great controversy between Christ and his angels, and the Devil and his angels.»³²⁴ A few weeks later the book was advertised for sale, by «J. W.,» announced as not of «divine origin and authority but as a sketch of Mrs. Whités views.» Of the second volume two years later, she wrote:

Having borne my testimony, and scattered several books containing my visions, in the Eastern, Middle, and Western States, and formed many happy acquaintances, I have felt it my duty to give my friends and to the world a sketch or my Christian experience, visions, and labors in connection with the rise and progress of the third angel's message.

In preparing the following pages, I have labored under great disadvantages as I have had to depend in many instances, on memory, having kept no journal till within a few years. In several instances I have sent the manuscripts to friends who were present when the circumstances related occurred, for their examination before they were put in print. I have taken great care, and have spent much time, in endeavoring to state the simple facts as correctly as possible.

I have, however, been much assisted in arriving at dates by the many letters which I wrote to Bro. S. Howland and family, of Topsham, Me. As they for the period of five years had the care of my Henry, I felt it my duty to write to them often, and give them my experience, my joys' trials, and victories. In many Instances I have copied from these letters [Italics added].³²⁵

Such is the testimony of some of those around the prophet who saw, said they saw, and in most cases were separated after they said it.

Testimony will not be solicited from the long list of those who knew her well but were rejected and ejected from the cause because of what they knew. Among these are Crosier, March, the people in the «Iowa movement, the «Wisconsin fanaticism,» Dudley M. Canright, the Ballengers, Alonzo T. Jones, Louis R. Conradi, George B. Thompson, and scores of others. Their testimony would be strong against Ellen's «ions» and «inspiration,» but they are not allowed to speak because they left, or were driven from, the church because of their knowledge and willingness to share that knowledge. Surely it is true, as one union conference president remarked at Glacier View in 1980, that most of the «bright lights» of the movement have been driven out of the church over the authority of Ellen White.³²⁶

Other testimony could be gathered from such as William S. Peterson, Jonathan M. Butler, Ronald L. Numbers, and the other Adventist scholars of note in modern times who have searched with diligence to discover truth and separate it from fantasy. Their voices are almost always muted by the hysteria of those who do not wish to see or who will not allow others to see. The findings of the Don McAdamses and the Roy Graybills might lend preponderance to the mounting evidence of those who see – but their material and efforts have been impounded by the White Estate under one guise or another in the name of religion. Only when religious freedom can be at last won and academic freedom can be at last exercised within the church will the members be assured that truth is not forever on the scaffold and wrong forever on the throne for Adventism.

This is not to say that all the names listed, plus others not listed, believe that Ellen White was a fraud or that she deliberately, consciously each time she wrote, sought to deceive. It does say, however, that the human nature and the human method of her work were under scrutiny from the beginning and that honest people with honest questions often have not received honest answers.

Those who accept with reasonableness the facts of Ellen's unacknowledged use of the work of others readily recognize the presence of an ethical problem. Those who excuse her for her unacknowledged use of the work of others have interesting, but different, explanations as to the ethical problem. From those who see no ethical problem to concern themselves about has come only flat denial – as though the «2.6 percent» of Cottrell's study (of only limited scope as far as Ellen's overall work) is sufficient excuse.

An attempt must be made to separate, if possible, each attitude and defense, and to lay that defense alongside some yardstick of morality or ethical behavior to see how Ellen and her helpers measure up.

1. To those who do not see, or do not wish to see, that Ellen copied anything (or if she did, it was so minimal as to raise little or no question), Jack W. Provonsha, professor of ethics at Loma Linda University,seems to be speaking in one of his papers:

The issue of Ellen Whités alleged literary dependency has now been fairly well laid out on our collective table. Most informed Adventists now have at least some awareness of her extensive use of quotations, parallels, and paraphrases and the general, formal structural similarities in her writings to books with which she and her editorial assistants are known to have been familiar....

The few who have known of its wide extent have apparently been reluctant to share that information with rank and file church members presumably out of concern lest this weaken Ellen Whités position of authority in the church. This reluctance continues to be expressed as an attempt to minimize the quantity of dependency

This effort is understandable but misplaced It may also prove to be counterproductive in the end. If the issue had been dealt with candidly from the beginning, we might now be spared what is and will continue to be a wrenching experience for many sincere church members.³²⁷

But there will always be those who do not wish to see and will try to convince others that they should not see either. To this class, the words ascribed to an Arabic sage must apply: «He who knows not, and knows not that he knows not, is a fool. Shun him.»

2. Those who do see, but cannot bring themselves to believe that God would allow Ellen to do something that was unethical or wrong, justify what she did by saying that others before her had done what she did; therefore it must be acceptable. Perhaps Robert Brinsmead gives as clear an answer to this type of reasoning as anyone:

It is true that there is evidence of literary borrowing by different biblical authors. But in such cases they used material that was the heritage and common property of the convenantal community. It was not private property, and there was no pretense of originality. With Mrs. White, however, the circumstances were much different. Without acknowledgment she used the literary product of those outside her own religious community, copyrighted it, and demanded royalties both for herself and her children. Right and wrong are to some extent historically conditioned, but we do not have to surmise the literary ethics demanded in Mrs. Whités day. The facts are not ambiguous. She did not conform to acceptable literary practice.³²⁸

To this group, the sage would say, «He who knows, and knows not that he knows, is asleep. Wake him.»

3. There are those who would argue that ethics are determined by those around us and that «situation ethics» determined Ellen's conduct and therefore what she did is excusable. For those who rationalize thus, it should be pointed out that, with this type of thinking, anything goes that goes with anything. If where one is at the time is the correct place to be, and whatever the crowd is doing at the time is correct and necessary to do, then one does only what others see fit to do. To its extreme, this reasoning says: If others are going to hell, let's follow them there. Such persons must have know better than to argue that unacknowledged copying from other authors was an acceptable practice in Ellen's day. That argument simply is not true. In a great deal of the matter Ellen copied from, authors gave credit when they used materials of others, and some of them did so elaborately and gladly. Ellen never did. The information coming to light reveals that she could not. For its is obvious that if the church, or Ellen, or her helpers, had honestly revealed from whom and how much they were taking from others, God, their pretended authority, would be exposed as very minor, if not nonexistent, in their program.

To today's supporters of this misplaced ethic-by-majority, the sage might say, «He who knows not, and knows that he knows not, is simple. Teach him.»

4. There are those who accept what they see and, like it or not, feel that it should be acknowledged. But they reason that Ellen's conduct is not impugned, inasmuch as God established different standards for prophets. This seems to be the position that Provonsha tends toward. A critic of Provonshás view wrote him thus:

The above observation leads me to what the draft indicates your central thesis to be. I offer a rephrasing of that thesis, and your positive support of it, in a way which I submit approaches a rephrasing which might be acceptable to the critic of the General Conferencés authorized [Glendale] review committeés action, [which] you quote at pages 5 and 6 of the draft. He, and many readers, might well say of the paper that «it takes the position that prophets (and other inspired writers) are so different from the rest of us that they are not bound by traditional concepts of honesty, and they are not dishonest if they copy without giving credit, and even deny their dependency on others, and though 'mere ordinary peoplé would be liars and frauds if they performed the acts in question those folks are not at fault because of their different status.³²⁹

It is not likely that everyone would be able to follow Provonsha into his world of ethical philosophy and come up with his pat answer to the problem. Perhaps, too, Provonsha did not have fully available to his thinking all the facts and ramifications necessary to complete a picture of seventy years of deception, for his paper does not deal with the ethics of those who helped Ellen continue with the white lie throughout her whole life.

5. There are other shades of meaning that come to the minds of numerous persons who individually wrestle with the ethical problem as they become progressively aware of more facts. Perhaps one aspect that needs serious consideration is a term that injurisprudence is called «diminished capacity.»

Ellen's childhood injury and the resulting physical problems are well known and well documented. Beginning with that accident and following through adolescence and middle life, she was subject to physical seizures» that often accompanied what her followers came to call her open visions. At times we are told that she was unconscious of anything around her though at times she retained control of her movements. It is often boasted by the church that she started with a weak untrained mind and an emaciated, disfigured body – the weakest of the weak.» At least five times it is recorded that she was stricken with «paralysis» and that many times she felt that she was about to die; often she was unconscious for extended periods of time.³³⁰ Under these physical conditions especially during her early years, her mind was often in the same condition as her body, at times in the quicksand of despair and at times on the mountaintop of glory.

This mental and physical state was noticed early in Ellen's experience A remarkable testimony has been left on record concerning her condition and her recognition of it, as early as 1865 later published in 1877. Because of the sensitive nature of the information it is best to reproduce several paragraphs of the pages that deal with it.

When giving to a Conference at Pilot Grove in 1865, an account of her visit at Dr. Jackson's Health Institute, she stated that the doctor, upon a medical examination, pronounced her a subject of Hysteria. Now to those who have confidence in Dr. Jackson's skill as a physician, this declaration of his furnishes a clue to her supposed divine inspiration. According to medical authorities hysteria is a real disease, but of a very peculiar type, affecting not only the body, but also the mind; producing phenomena of a very marked though much varied character, the disease acting upon different persons and temperaments, and thus producing varied results.

When Dr. Wm. Russell, then of the Battle Creek Health Institute, wrote to us expressing his doubts as to the divine inspiration of the visions, and asking for the evidence we had on that subject, we cheerfully complied with his request, sent him the published works, and also a brief synopsis of the work we now present to the public. We also called his attention to Dr Jackson's medical opinion in Mrs. Whités case, and solicited his also for publication in the book. To this he replied, July 12th, 1869, that he had made up his mind some time in the past, «that Mrs. Whités visions were the result of diseased organization or condition of the brain or nervous system.» Here then we have the testimony of two medical gentlemen, in whose skill as physicians Mrs. W. and S. D. Adventists generally have confidence, agreeing in their opinion as to her predisposition to a diseased condition of the brain and nervous system.

Bearing these testimonies in mind, let us go back to her first vision and see if we cannot, from the attending circumstances, obtain a reasonable and common sense solution of the phenomena in the case. According to her published works, Mrs. White, at the age of nine years, met with a very serious misfortune in having her nose crushed in by a blow from a stone, producing a permanent disfigurement of the features. Whether this accident was the producing cause of her predisposition to hysteria we do not of course know, but one thing is certain, if it did not originate it, it aggravated, as Dr. Russell describes it, «a diseased organization or condition of the brain and nervous system.» This is proved by the fact that for three weeks after the accident she lay in a state of total unconsciousness, the brain being so much in urea as to cause a cessation of its functions for that time.

Elder White also says of her health at the time of her first vision, in Life Incidents, p. 273: «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 system was such that she could not write, and she was dependent on one sitting near her at the table to even pour her drink from the cup to the saucer.»

Shortly after her recovery she seems to have turned her attention to religious subjects, with which she became deeply impressed, until at the age of twelve she professed conversion and joined the Methodist church. Her religious experience at that early age was of a peculiar type; at times she would be exalted to the very point of ecstasy, and again depressed to the regions of despair. This unfortunate condition of the mind does not seem to have been caused by surrounding outward circumstances, which were all favorable to her profession of religion, but by pleasant or unpleasant dreams and Impressions.

About this time the Advent doctrine was preached in Portland, Maine, where her father's family resided, and including herself became interested in it, so much so that in 1842 she constantly attended Advent meetings, though still a Methodist. The result of the passing by of the time in 1844 was the division of the Advent people into two portions, one portion falling back on the position that the coming of the Lord was near but admitting that the '43 and '44 movements were mistakes, the others claiming that the Lord had led them out thus far and that the past would be fully justified; the latter class finally going off into the shut door error, asserting that the Bridegroom had come, and that the time for the salvation of sinners and nominal Christians and apostate Adventists was past. In Elder Whités Life Incidents, pages 183–191, he gives an interesting account of the shut door history. Mrs. White (at that time Ellen G. Harmon,) was identified with the latter class, who held their meetings at her father's house, showing that she was constantly under the influence of this terrible delusion, the power of which none can properly appreciate but those who witnessed or participated in it. Under these circumstances, and with her diseased organization or condition of the brain and nervous system and predisposition to hysteria, it is no wonder that she had what is called a vision, and that just as might be expected her vision would correspond in the main features with the religious views she entertained, as we have clearly shown in this work.

On this point Eld. White bears another testimony from his Life Incidents, page 272, (published in 1868,) where he says, «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 and more comprehensive.» This is all very natural and reasonable, under the circumstances. As Mrs. Whités health has improved the visions have become less frequent. As the mind and its operations are the result of human organization, so a healthier physical constitution would produce a better and a healthier state of mind; and as Mrs. White has improved in health, her brain and nervous system have taken on a more natural condition, and her trance states have been less frequent; and as she has advanced in matters of general information (her early education being almost totally neglected in consequence of her feeble health,) her visions have become more comprehensive – a very natural consequence – which is one of the best evidences of her visions being an emanation of her own mind.

That the phenomena of Mrs. Whités visions, suspended animation, and miraculous powers, are the result of a disordered physical and mental organization, the following extract from Dr. George B. Wood's [Practice of Medicine,] p. 721 of Vol. 2, which has fallen under my notice, is corroborative, and corresponds with some of Mrs. Whités experience in vision, particularly her rising with a large Bible in her hand, raising it above her need, and pointing to and repeating passages from it. In treating of mental disorders, and explaining the cause and phenomena of trances, he says:

«Ecstasy Is an affection in which, with a loss of consciousness of existing circumstances, and insensibility to impression from without, there is an apparent exaltation of the intellectual or emotional functions, as if the individual were raised into a different nature, or different sphere of existence. The patient appears wrapped up in some engrossing thought or feeling with an expression upon his countenance as of lofty contemplations, or ineffable delight. Voluntary motion is usually suspended, and the patient either lies insensible to external influences, or as in catalepsy, maintains the position in which he may have been attacked. Sometimes, however, the muscles obey the will, and the patient speaks or acts in accordance with his existing impulses. In these cases, the disease borders closely on somnambulsm. The pulse and respiration may be natural, or more or less depressed; the face is usually pale; and the surface of the body is cool. If the pulse is increased in frequency, it is usually more feeble also. The duration of the attack is very uncertain; in some instances not exceeding a few minutes, in others extending to hours or days. Upon recovering from the spell, the patient generally remembers his thoughts and feelings more or less accurately, and sometimes tells of wonderful visions that he has seen of visits to the regions of the blessed, of ravishing harmony and splendor of inexpressible enjoyment of the senses or affections.»³³¹

These astonishing pages reveal some sobering facts that can be verified:

An accurate description of Ellen Whités mental

and physical condition was given in the way that she often stated them.

The analysis of her condition was done by

qualified medical persons who in some cases were acceptable to the Whites.

The observations were made early in her life by

persons who knew her lifestyle and observed her

firsthand.

The story of the shut door, which was kept hidden

for over a hundred years, as revealed (and has now been confirmed by the

White Estate), Ellen White did indeed believe, teach, and even

have a vision that the door was shut for sinners after 1844.

More interesting, perhaps, are the facts that others, some also physicians, had noticed the similarity of her state during her «visions» and had diagnosed her condition similarly. William S. Sadler, friend of the White family, once a true believer and an elder in the church, and later a physician, wrote in 1923:

It is not uncommon for persons in a cataleptic trance to imagine themselves taking trips to other worlds. In fact, the wonderful accounts of their experiences, which they write out after these cataleptic attacks are over, are so unique and marvelous as to serve the basis for founding new sects, cults, and religions. Many strange and unique religious movements have thus been founded and built up. It is an interesting study in psychology to note that these trance mediums always see visions in harmony with their own theological beliefs. For instance, a medium who believed in the natural immortality of the soul, was always led around on her celestial travels by some of her dead and departed friends. One day she changed her religious views – became a «soul sleeper,» and ever after that, when having trances, she was piloted about from world to world on her numerous heavenly trips by the angels, no dead or departed friends ever made their appearance in any of her visions after this change in her belief.³³²

The record of Ellen's visions of other worlds can be verified in Early Writings to see if the information related by Sadler applies to her. He goes on with other interesting observations:

Nearly all these victims of trances and nervous catalepsy, sooner or later come to believe themselves to be messengers of God and prophets of Heaven; and no doubt most of them are sincere in their belief. Not understanding the physiology and psychology of their afflictions, they sincerely come to look upon their peculiar mental experiences as something supernatural while their followers blindly believe anything they teach because of the supposed divine character of these so-called revelations.³³³

Sadler then goes on to corroborate what the doctors of the 1860s and 1870s had detected:

Another most interesting phenomenon I have noticed in connection with trance mediums, who, as previously remarked, are in the majority of cases women, is that these trance or cataleptic phenomena which In some respects are very similar to attacks of major hysteria – only carried out still further – I say, it has been my experience that they usually make their appearance after adolescence has been established, and in no case which have observed, or of which I have known, have these phenomena ever survived the appearance of the menopause. The character of the phenomena associated with these female prophets or trance mediums is always modified by the appearance of the «'change of lif黳³⁴

Again, it is interesting to notice that what the doctor stated is what happened in Ellen's case. She stopped having «open visions» around the time of life that the menopause occurs.³³⁵ It is likewise of interest to note that cessation of her visions coincided with the death of James White, her husband.

A later writer has picked up the physical theme in his doctoral dissertation written in 1932:

There is not the slightest evidence that she at any time in this condition learned a single thing that was not well known before by her associates. While the writer would not go so far as to say that she was «mesmerized» by her husband, he [the writer is fully convinced that the content of her early «visions» was almost entirely determined by the problem he James White] was interested in and devoting his time to, at the time of the manifestation. . . . Later on, after his death, her gracious approval was the object most to be desired among a certain type of Teacher and office holder who used all sorts of methods and devices to secure her support for his enterprises.

When White was using every possible means to bring about organization, his wife «saw» that it was God's plan; when he was brought under suspicion in the operation of the printing plant, she was shown that this was not pleasing to God. When he by pen and voice was urging «systematic benevolence» [regular financial giving to the church] she had a «vision» supporting It. At the time he was engaged in the writing of health pamphlets – she was shown her «great vision» on health reform. This list might be continued with a substitution of favorite leaders, for her husband, until her death.³³⁶

Linden, in 1978, reviewed the observations and theories of psychologists and psychiatrists of the mid-19OOs seeking clues as to the causative factors of visionary phenomena. Both psychological and physical factors were seen as necessary to be taken into consideration.³³⁷ Perhaps the final and most satisfying answers about Ellen White could be given for the white lie if the White Estate would release the details of her medical history from beginning to end.

Another writer has discovered a different type of reasoning for the problem of Ellen's copying without giving credit, as well as her belief in her own «visionary originality.» M. Ronald Deutsch (The New Nuts Among the Berrzes) relates in his chapter entitled «The Battles of Battle Creek» how Charles E. Stewart wrote Mrs. White in reply to her public statement that she «was directed by the Lord» to invite those with «perplexities . . . regarding the testimonies» to «place upon paper» their «objectives and criticisms,» and she would answer them. Friends of Stewart published his lengthy letter (which included copies of additional correspondence from and to others) as a pamphlet in October 1907 – after five months had elapsed without a response from Ellen White. The preface of the pamphlet stated that he had received a properly signed registration receipt but no answer.

Deutsch quotes the following opinion from his book:

I believe she is a victim of auto-hypnotism. She has actually hypnotized herself into believing that these visions are genuine. I don't think she willingly sets out to deceive – shés gotten into the visionary habit – but I do blame those who foist upon the people a scheme which is nothing more or less than a gross fraud.³³⁸

The year 1907 was a long time ago. The matter of Ellen's health problems and the concerns of the doctors of her day might have been forgotten if these questions didn't keep coming up from time to time. As recently as 1981 an article appeared in the Toronto Star of May 23:

A rock that hit the forehead of a founder of the Seventh Day Adventist Church, Ellen Gould White, when she was 9, almost certainly accounts for her visions, which are the basis of the church's doctrine, two doctors say.

The blow caused a form of epilepsy, Dr. Delbert Hodder and Dr. Gregory Holmes of Connecticut said, in an interview. They were in Toronto to describe their findings to the American Academy of Neurology meeting at the Sheraton Centre recently....

Hodder an Adventist, says the report by him and Holmes (who is not an Adventist) might heal the rift in the church.

«They've been looking at it in a theological way,» he said, but his research shows «she can be explained medically.»³³⁹

To many it might seem that the medical argument is the best way to account for the ethical question raised by her deception, although it would not justify those who, obviously knowing of her condition (and thus her weaknesses), continued to help her expand the white lie. Also it would generate some degree of sympathy for Ellen's actions – on the basis of diminished capacity alone. Likewise it would help to explain the many inconsistencies in her «visions» that the church has had to deal with or excuse or cover over through the years.

It may be that the last line of the words of the Arabic sage apply in this view of the ethical problem: «He who knows, and knows that he knows, is wise. Follow him.»

Experience teaches that truth needs redefining every generation or two. This is not to say that truth changes, but that our perceptions change if our minds are active and growing. Historians know this. Politicians understand it. Economists work on the same assumption. And many common-sense people learn it.

Only administrators in theological systems find this principle hard to accept. The more conservative the religious body and the people who subscribe to the creed, the more difficult it is to make the mental adjustment that is necessary. In the extreme, if the theological administrators and their people have accepted the delusion that their truth, their God, their prophet, or their saint are all equal, or are one and the same, it is next to impossible to effect any change toward advancing enlightenment.

Again, the four techniques essential to the white-lie brand of super salesmanship are:

a. to play up anything unusual or mysterious about the one to be venerated, so that he or she becomes seen as at a supernatural level;

b. to exalt the acts and utterances to the virtuous and miraculous level, thus reinforcing the idea of the supernatural connection;

c. to deny access to information and records of the events and facts of the past; and

d. to buy time so as to get as far as possible from the point of living knowledge of the beginnings of the legend.

All four of these methods have been used by the Seventh-day Adventist Church, and are still being used, in the matter of Ellen White and what has been published under her name.

First. Incredible as it may seem to an impartial onlooker, the White Estate would have us believe that anything Ellen wrote to whomever on whatever, anything she supervised from whomever on whatever, anything she copied from whomever on whatever, anything offered for sale under her name-even thoughts, words, or inclinations suggested (or written) by her followers-must bear, and do bear, the stamp of God's divine approval. No writer in sacred antiquity ever claimed as much, and no Canon writer ever had to live up to such billing.

Second. Wild horses, we are told, stood still at her command. A heavy Bible was sustained in the air at her arm's length for long periods of time. By her direction, water came into wells that otherwise would have been dry. In her dreams, buildings appeared that never had been and would never become. Letters came in the nick of time for some important or crucial event, despite the known problems of the postal system. Often members that she prayed for arose from their sickbeds – although she herself never really got well and complained of sickness and fainting spells well into her middle age. Neither do we hear great mention made of the deaths of two of her children while still young. Despite her prayers and concern, her husband lived only to his early sixties. Nevertheless, Ellen Whités acts and utterances have been impressed on the students of the comprehensive Adventist educational system as certainly some cut above anyone elsés – even though she freely copied from those «anyone elsés.»

Third. Few, if any, who have dealt with the White Estate – the official keeper of the keys of everything that belonged to or is known about Ellen – have ever come away willing to swear that they were allowed access to all materials at all times without direction and/or supervision and oath-taking. Managed news is a part of all church institutions, of course. Adventists are experts at giving out to the church public and the secular public alike only those items that put their best foot forward. As an editor at the Los Angeles Times put it, «Adventists would function better in a country that does not have freedom of the press.»³⁴⁰ Even those who do have some success in obtaining limited access to material must sign a pledge – in exchange for the privilege of seeing what others are not privy to – that they will not copy «sensitive» material or release it to others.

Perhaps all this is understandable. The White Estate cannot release all the material concerning Ellen Whités life and writings and yet maintain the white lie. There is no way that the facts will square with the myths. If (as was stated in the January 1980 Glendale meeting) every paragraph in The Great Controversy were to be footnoted to show source material, then every paragraph would have to be footnoted – what would happen to the legend of Ellen and the church members at large who have believed the legend all these years?

What if each of the other four books – Patriarchs and Prophets, Prophets and Kings, The Acts of the Apostles, and The Desire of Ages (of the big five) – were also to be included in that indictment? It is fairly certain that no unbiased, detailed, comprehensive studies of these books can or will be endorsed by the White Estate, no matter by whom or when the studies might be done. Whatever findings might be reported by any independent researcher, the Estate position seems certain to continue to be:

a. that they have known it all along and

b. that it does not make any difference, because God had a hand in it anyway and because Ellen was inspired to do whatever she did at his express command.

Fourth. Buying time is perhaps one of the happiest helpers of the white lie. If only some patience can be exercised by the lay members, to give the supersalesmen the opportunity to buy time, with age the white lie can, and often does, become a reality. After all, myths and legends are not instant creations. Time just covers up the facts. Because the facts of Ellen and her writings were never accurately portrayed to the church and the world, time has helped to cover that deception. Those who tried at various periods to help their church come to terms with the truth would be driven from «The Clan,» or would shake the dust from their feet and depart. Thus the white lie has grown until it has become a matter of faith; fact has long since been lost sight of. The advice of one onlooker is to the point:

Let it be.... Don't appeal your dismissal as pastor of the Seventh-day Adventist Church. ... By all means continue your research, but do it in the halls of academia. Don't use as your instrument of destruction the church on which the majority of the members rely for continuance of their faith.

The dictionary defines faith as «belief without evidence,» and most of the church members are willing to accept it as such. What a pity that most religious institutions cannot also accept this definition and feel they must insist their dogma is the true dogma and based on true evidence!

The inherent capacity to separate faith and true knowledge so they won't interfere with each other is a knack that some people have that others lack. It has little to do with intelligence, and we see those with low IQ's who are atheists and some of our best brains as devout Catholics....

Religious faith is usually harmless to society as a whole if kept contained within the religious frame, and it can be beneficial to many at a personal level. But the ability to compartmentalize the mind is always a danger, and it is not restricted to religious areas.³⁴¹

Those who must believe the unbelievable, who must claim to see the unseeable, and who must spend their lives clutching at the unobtainable will always try to give their «vision» of the unreal to others by applying authority and force. One of the divines expresses it well:

Recently many rumors have been coming to me as well as to your fellow elders.... If my memory serves me well, I do not believe you have attended any of my eleven óclock services since September during which time I have addressed myself to all the controversial subjects that appear to be surfacing in our denomination. The most dangerous result I see from the many divergent discussions in the church today, has to do with what I call the «Cheap Gospel» . . . We must trust in the finished work of Christ; but of equal importance we must, with Christ's help, be ready to obey. This means being willing to give up on ourselves and submit to the authority of Christ's body – the Church. I know this is difficult to do when you are doing so well with your practice and financial investments.³⁴²

Clearly this supersalesmam of the system would like to share a member's success and financial investments and would like to restrict the obvious freedom of spirit of that member – in short, to control him.

Such attitudes are not limited to those who believe in a system of salvation by works. The product of such a system is religious supersalesmen who believe that their conscience should by the guide for the communicants, and they seek this godless control in the name of God. When it is clearly understood that what supersalesmen of the psychic are selling is really their own value system, or their own vision of what others ought or ought not to do, then, and only then, will some of the white lies be harder to sell.

Meanwhile, until the supersalesmen are unmasked, perhaps the best advice on how to deal with them and their «truth» was given by Robert J. Ringer:

Ignore all neurotic remarks and actions of normal people and all remarks and actions of neurotic people. In cases where a neurotic person persists, notwithstanding your lack of attention, take swift and positive action to eliminate him from your life altogether.

You have no obligation to deal with irrational people...

Talking, arguing and/or begging don't work with irrational people. Attempting to persuade them through logical argument will only wear you out. Dealing with an irrational person is a can't win situation. If hés adept at mind games, you often will find yourself boxed into being «damned if you do and damned if you don't.» Always go out of your way to avoid can't win situations. When someone surrounds you on all sides with irrational points, don't stand for it. Exit through the top, if necessary, but get out. When every side you turn to leads to trouble, yoúre in a can't-win situation.³⁴³

In the matter of Ellen Whités super salesmanship (in relation to both the church and the public), it is becoming evident that she too wanted to encourage, if not demand, that others accept her value structure and lifestyle. In order to obtain this end, she came to believe and to teach others that what she said and wrote was necessary to do, because God wanted it that way. Others around her who shared those views (and indeed even gave her some of them) were willing to let the faithful believe that what she said and wrote were directly the ideas and ways given her by God. This stance gave her every utterance the authority it needed in order to be believed – despite mounting evidence (and the witness of some others) to the contrary. Those who lived by faith, and likewise by evidence to support that faith, began to discover that the white lie was inconsistent with the evidence. And when they made known that discover for their honest pains they were expelled and discredited by character assassination.

For those who have the courage to place evidence and faith side by side and see if they are in harmony, the following items may provide exercise to thoughtful examination of some of the white lies that have been used to maintain the legend of Ellen and her writings as mostly God-given, God-directed, and God-inspired.

a. Secular news media, reporting the Adventist reply to criticism, quote information that 3.5 million members have accepted the 25 million words of Ellen's pen as inspired.³⁴⁴ Many a clergyman would be reluctant to take an oath that his church membership list represents precise accuracy. The statement that Ellen has written 25 million words is inaccurate. How were these figures arrived at? Are they the figment of someonés imagination? Do they, in fact, include all the copied material (not her words) and all the paragraphs and uncounted pages identically duplicated in the several subject matter compilations?

b. Every Adventist has read or heard that Ellen was a poor reader, in part because she had finished only three grades of education. This is made possible a claim to divine leading of a person in literary ignorance.³⁴⁵ Later, these limitations were used to create untruths. Education never need be formal in order for persons to be creative and educated.

c. Later, under pressure, it was discovered that Ellen could read, but that she read very little, the least of that reading being in theology.³⁴⁶ This same argument was used to prove that she was not influenced by others as she lived and wrote.³⁴⁷

d. The progression of this theme was that Ellen could read but that she didn't read in theological matters – until it was discovered that she had.³⁴⁸ Spectrum readers now know that she was reading widely all the time and was using the published works of other religious writers and those writing in other areas.³⁴⁹

e. Although at one time it was argued that God helped Ellen to improve her skills (and her beautiful language was the result of that divine help), new evidence indicates that the improvement was the result of improved help from well informed staff members and associates, and better selection of authors.³⁵⁰

f. Now that proof is available that Ellen did read, read well, and read widely, and that she had some of that reading matter in front of her when she wrote, the new line is that she had a photographic memory.³⁵¹ «We are not denying Rev. Reás evidence,» said Robert Olson, secretary of the Ellen G. White Estate in Washington, D.C. Ím satisfied she had some works before her as she wrote. However,» Olson added, «the church believes that White possessed a photographic memory and unconsciously used the words of other writers.»³⁵² Olson does not specify who is «the church» that may believe as he seems to believe.

f. The idea that Ellen did not know what she was doing when she failed to credit authors she read – but stopped when told what she was doing – has been dealt with in earlier chapters. A casual review of authors used by her would show that they gave credit, but that she never gave credit, even when paraphrasing what they were often quoting

h. Perhaps one of the hardest charges to meet and refute is that Ellen wrote what she had seen first in vision, and that she used the words, thoughts, and arrangement of others only because they said what she wanted to say and did not have the ability to say. This argument, while admitting that she did copy, whenever and wherever necessary according to her desires, in fact contradicts most of the arguments that have gone before. It does run into difficulty, however, when one comes to the book Life Incidents.

One of the unwritten stories in Adventist history is the influence that James White had in forming the ideas and sentences that came out under Ellen's name and pen. Although not noted as a literary writer or as a theologian, James did produce four published books. Two of these were Life Incidents in Connection with the Great Advent Movement, as Illustrated by the Three Angels of Revelation XIV, published in 1868, and in 1875 Sketches of the Christian Life and Public Labors of William Miller: Gathered from his Memoirs by the Late Sylvester Bliss, and from Other Sources. Both books were almost totally copied from others. The one on William Miller was taken from Sylvester Bliss (who in 1853 had written Memoirs of William Miller). The theology of Life Incidents was copied substantially from Uriah Smith and J. N. Andrews.³⁵³ Neither of these books was ever printed again under the name of James White as far as is known.

But they were indeed reprinted under another name, that of Ellen G. White, his wife, a few years after his death in 1881 – but under the title The Great Controversy (1884). And this production was sold to the believers and the world as the work of Ellen and the angels. Although it had been doctored and padded with other material in the usual manner, clearly it was material that had been published earlier under the name of James. What the people were not told was that the heart of this new revelation had been printed sixteen years before, and that the theme and thesis had been copied over literally and liberally into Ellen's new Great Controversy.

One reason is now clear why much of the information in the 1884 edition of The Great Controversy could not have been included in the earlier works of Ellen on the same subject (Spiritual Gifts, published 1858–64). James had not yet gotten around to copying it from J. N Andrews; so it was not available to Ellen at the time. The 1888 and 1911 editions of The Great Controversy went back to James Whités compilation of doctrines and events and picked up even more of his findings and ideas. But never once was it suggested that the heart of Adventist doctrine – such as the three angels' worldwide message that the church had applied exclusively to the Adventists, the shut door that left everyone else out in the cold, the 2300 days, the seventy weeks, the sanctuary doctrine, the United States in prophecy, the «mark of the beast,» the image to that beast – had all come out earlier in James Whités Life Incidents.

So striking was the copying done under the name of Ellen – and so sensitive is the information that the heart of Adventist theology and eschatology came, not from the visions of or revelations to Ellen, but from the pen of James sixteen years before Ellen wrote them out – that time should be spent examining the evidence in Life Incidents.

Here it should be recalled that the four small volumes of Ellen's Spiritual Gifts (1858–64) were amplified to the four volumes of Ellen's The Spirit of Prophecy (1870–84) and then expanded to Ellen's The Great Controversy (1888) of the five-volume Conflict of the Ages Series. Inasmuch as the earlier eight volumes are now again available in facsimile editions, anyone can examine all the books and note the progressive copy work through the years. Meanwhile, during those same years, the legend grew and grew and was «sold» and accepted that God had given Ellen exclusive and firsthand knowledge of his plans for the future events of the church and the world.

Comparison shows that words, sentences, quotations, thoughts, ideas, structures, paragraphs, and even total pages were taken from James Whités book to Ellen's book under a new title – with no blush of shame, no mention of her husband, no thanks to Uriah Smith and J. N. Andrews, for the hard work and theological insights of anyone.

Unfortunately for James, he did not have the personal advantage of angels checking in and out on schedule with the firsthand information Ellen purported to have. Without any intermediary, he had to get his material from human sources. But he was equal to the task. Much of his material in Life Incidents was taken primarily from J. N. Andrews, whose book published in 1860, interestingly enough, was entitled The Three Messages of Revelation XIV, 6–12, and particularly The Third Angel's Message and The Two-Horned Beast. James, unlike his wife Ellen, did not even bother to paraphrase – he just took the material from Andrews wholesale into his work.

Nothing has been released from the White Estate as to how Andrews or Uriah Smith felt about all this «taking» in the name of God. Perhaps the fact that they were brothers-in-law, both assisting in the editorial work of the Review, both personal friends of the Whites – and thus able to sit around the same table to finalize their views – might have softened the pain of Ellen's copy work. One might be tempted to think that Ellen set the pattern and James may not have given much thought to doing the same thing. Of course, there was in fact no excuse for anyone not to give thought – especially in view of the statement published in an 1864 issue of the Review under the heading «Plagiarism»:

This is a word that is used to signify «literary theft,» or taking the productions or another and passing them off as onés own....

We are perfectly willing that pieces from the Review, or any of our books should be published to any extent, and all we ask is, that simple justice be done us, by due credit being given.³⁵⁴

Examination reveals that the 1860 book of J. N. Andrews was an exact replay of his own 1851–55 articles in the Review. Thus James and Ellen had available for their perusal and use after 1855 the content and form of Andrew's work for incorporation in their own work: Spiritual Gifts (1858–64); Life Incidents (1868); The Spirit of Prophecy (1870–84); Sketches of. . . William Miller (1875); The Great Controversy (1888).

This information may or may not disturb those who now say that the group of pioneers sat around the table and worked out in conjunction with Ellen their ideas and theology. But it does indeed disturb those who were taught that such ideas and theology originated with greater authority and mystique than the common ideas of human endeavor seem to command.

Appendix Chapter 12 Exhibit