The Desire of Wages

Chapter 5 - What She Saw Before

by Dirk Anderson

“Then I was carried down to the time when Jesus was to take upon himself man’s nature.” So begins Ellen White’s first account of the life of Christ, published in 1858 in the first volume of Spiritual Gifts. It reads like a vision report, because that is what it claimed to be. In those few short chapters she wrote “I saw” eighteen times, “I was shown” twice, and “I beheld” once.¹

Forty years later she published The Desire of Ages, more than eight hundred pages on the same subject. Search it for “I saw,” and the only hits are Jesus speaking to Nathanael: “when thou wast under the fig tree, I saw thee.” The prophet who once wrote as an eyewitness had disappeared from her own life of Christ. If the visions were the source, why did the book that claims to tell what she was shown never once say she was shown it?

This chapter compares what White wrote before with what she published in 1898. Two things stand out. First, very little of The Desire of Ages came from her earlier books. Second, where the earlier “revealed” accounts were wrong, they were quietly fixed, and nobody told the readers.

A Shrinking/Growing Jesus?

The SDA sect leaves no doubt about where the 1858 account came from. The White Estate's foreword to the modern facsimile edition identifies it as "the first printed report of the great controversy vision given Ellen White in Lovett's Grove, Ohio, on Sunday, March 14, 1858." The story is told with all the dramatic trimmings: a funeral in a schoolhouse, a vision lasting two hours, a stroke of paralysis on the journey home to Michigan, and the prophet, as soon as she was able, recording what she had seen—first a page, then several pages a day—until the little book was published that September.² The chapters describing Christ's life are therefore presented to SDAs as the written record of what White saw in that Ohio vision. Remember that claim. The sect is not merely saying she wrote a religious account of Jesus. It is telling its members that she saw these things in vision.

The 1858 account is remarkably brief, covering Christ's birth, ministry, betrayal, trial, death, resurrection, and ascension in about fifty pages. Dr. Fred Veltman, the General Conference's own researcher, examined it closely. His conclusion was that after the familiar introductory phrases "I was shown" and "I saw," the narrative "is almost a paraphrase of the biblical text." He added that it contains nowhere near the amount of detail and commentary found in White's later books about Jesus' life.³

Think about that. The account specifically promoted as the record of a two-hour vision contains little more than a retelling of the Bible. But the later book, The Desire of Ages, is filled with elaborate descriptions of conversations, emotions, motives, reactions, and private thoughts—details that are nowhere in the biblical record. And in the fifteen chapters Veltman examined, he found "no mention of 'vision' as a source."⁴ The pattern is difficult to miss: as the visions disappeared from the narrative, the details multiplied. This is the exact opposite of what one would expect from a prophet. And, as we will see in Part Two, those additional details multiplied alongside the growth of her library.

In 1864, in the same Spiritual Gift series, White described a remarkable physical transformation in Jesus Himself. Before leaving heaven, she wrote, Christ "was taller than any of the angels." But when He began His earthly ministry, "he was but little taller than the common size of men then living upon the earth." Then, at His ascension, she supposedly witnessed something extraordinary: "I beheld with admiration and wonder, that he possessed the same exalted stature that he had before he came into the world."⁵

There you have it: Jesus shrank when He came to earth and grew back to His original heavenly height when He returned. Apparently, the incarnation involved more than taking on human nature. It involved a height reduction! The eternal Son of God, who created the universe, entered the world several sizes smaller than He had been in heaven, only to regain His former dimensions at the ascension. And this was not a metaphor, a theological reflection, or some passing speculation. White presented it as something she had actually seen in vision.

Now here is the problem. You will search The Desire of Ages in vain for this remarkable revelation. The book devotes 800 hundred pages to the life of Christ, offering a far richer account than the 1858 version. Yet the extraordinary shrinking-and-regrowing Jesus has vanished. No explanation. No correction. No indication that the earlier vision was mistaken. Just silence. The prophet who once claimed to have watched Jesus change height apparently decided that this was one detail her readers could do without.

But why? If God showed White that Jesus was taller than the angels, then reduced Him to nearly ordinary human height during His earthly ministry, and finally restored His original stature at the ascension, why would that information be discarded? Didn't Jesus reveal it to her so that she could reveal it to the people? Why suppress it? Don't people have a right to know about Christ's supposed height adjustements?

This is the absurdity the SDA sect cannot escape. If the earlier series faithfully records what God showed White, then the shrinking and regrowing Jesus belongs in the story of Christ—regardless if it makes her look foolish. If it was removed because it was merely her overactive imagination at work, then readers need to know that the rest of what she saw in vision is equally suspect.

The problem is not that White left out an interesting anecdote. The problem is that she presented an extraordinary claim as divine revelation, only to think better of it later and quietly drop it. A prophet who can watch Jesus shrink and grow in vision, but cannot explain why this astonishing revelation disappears from her own account of His life, leaves readers with an unavoidable question: were these really visions of Jesus, or were they stories that kept growing and changing like Pinocchio’s nose?

One Sentence in Ten

In 1877 and 1878 White expanded the story into the second and third volumes of The Spirit of Prophecy, about eight hundred pages in all. Surely, then, those volumes were the foundation of The Desire of Ages?

The publishers made the same kind of promise for these volumes. The preface to the 1877 volume assured readers that the author was “aided in the study of the Scriptures, and in her work as a religious teacher, by the special enlightenment of the Spirit of God,” and so she was “peculiarly qualified to present the facts of the Life and Ministry of Christ.”⁶ The facts, presented by special enlightenment of the Spirit of God. Keep that word in mind as we look at what became of some of those facts.

We compared every sentence of The Desire of Ages with the 1858, 1864, 1877 and 1878 books, after setting aside the Bible quotations. The result: only about one sentence in ten of The Desire of Ages (at most one in seven) can be traced to White’s own earlier books on the life of Christ.⁷ Some chapters lean heavily on the old text. The chapter on the triumphal entry, “Thy King Cometh,” comes from it more than half the time. Others owe it nothing at all. The very first chapter, “God with Us,” has virtually nothing from any earlier White book on Christ. In Chapter 4 we saw why: it was compiled from articles Maggie Hare had prepared.

Marian Davis knew the old text was not enough. In August 1897 she wrote to W. C. White:

Considering that the very cream has been taken from a large part of the old book, and has been put into everybody’s hands, it seems a pity that this new work should have nothing fresh for many of its most important chapters. . . . Again, the chapters as they stand in the old book need a thorough revision and rearrangement for the new. You know what criticisms that will excite. If we can add fresh matter it will help the case.⁸

The old “revealed” book had already been sold. The SDA people would be torched if they bought an extremely expensive new book, expecting new revelations, only to find that it was a rehash of the old book. A new book needed “fresh matter” to sell, and to head off criticism. Some of that fresh matter came from White’s later letters and articles, some came through the European edition, and some came from her assistants. But nine sentences in ten had to come from somewhere other than the earlier books, and the rest of this book will show where a great deal of it came from.

First, though, look at what happened to the parts of the old “revealed” account that were wrong.

Crowned Twice

Three Gospels describe the crown of thorns, and all three agree on who put it on Jesus: Pilate’s soldiers (Matthew 27:29; Mark 15:17; John 19:2). Luke says only that Herod’s men “set him at nought, and mocked him, and arrayed him in a gorgeous robe” (Luke 23:11). No thorns.

White’s 1878 account disagreed. At Herod’s court, she wrote, “At the suggestion of Herod, a crown was now plaited from a vine bearing sharp thorns, and this was placed upon the sacred brow of Jesus.”⁹ So in her version Jesus was crowned twice, once by Herod and again by Pilate’s soldiers. The Bible knows nothing of it. As we will see in Chapter 7, the idea did not come from heaven. It came from a popular novel.

By the 1890s her staff knew it was a problem. In December 1895 Marian Davis explained how they had handled it:

Sister White says that Christ was twice crowned with thorns, but as the Bible mentions only the second crowning, it was thought best to omit the first, or rather to give the second instead of the first. . . . there are very serious objections to publishing it as it is. It will make no end of trouble, dispute, and criticism.¹⁰

“Sister White says.” Not “Sister White was mistaken.” The prophet’s account stood, but it would cause “trouble, dispute, and criticism,” so the assistants replaced it with the Bible’s account. In The Desire of Ages Herod’s men give Jesus only the robe, and the crown of thorns appears where the Gospels put it.¹¹ No footnote. No correction. No explanation to the readers who had bought the 1878 book and believed it to be the "special enlightenment of the Spirit of God."

Right in 1858, wrong in 1878, right again in 1898. Which one was the revelation? The 1878 version belonged to the same two-volume life of Christ whose preface promised “the facts of the Life and Ministry of Christ,” facts her publishers said she was “peculiarly qualified” to present by “the special enlightenment” she received. Twenty years later her own staff realized it was problematic and tossed it out.

Three Falls, Then Two

The Gospels never say that Jesus fell under the cross. They say only that Simon of Cyrene was compelled to carry it (Mark 15:21). White’s accounts fell differently each time she told the story.

Three falls is exactly the number in the Roman Catholic Stations of the Cross. And remember what the 1858 book is, according to the White Estate: the written report of the Lovett’s Grove vision. In 1858 the vision matched Catholic doctrine.

By 1878 it had become two falls, plus a moment when Jesus was thought to be dead.

By 1898 the near-death was gone. And Simon went from a secret believer to a man who had never been connected with Jesus. These three scenes cannot possibly all be true. At least one of them is false. Did the falsehood come through her vision?

The Rooster That Crowed Three Times

Jesus told Peter, “before the cock crow twice, thou shalt deny me thrice” (Mark 14:30). Mark records two crowings. Matthew, Luke and John mention one. No Gospel has three.

White’s 1878 account had three. After the first denial, “immediately the cock crew.” Then again. Then, after the third denial, “immediately the cock crew the third time.”¹⁶ In The Desire of Ages the third crowing is gone, and the scene follows Mark’s two.¹⁷ Again, no notice to the reader that the falsehood had been removed.

Moving the Comma

Some changes went the other way. Instead of correcting White to match the Bible, the 1898 book quietly corrected the Bible to match SDA doctrine, and hid that it was doing so.

SDAs teach that the dead sleep until the resurrection, so Jesus’ promise to the thief, “Verily I say unto thee, To day shalt thou be with me in paradise” (Luke 23:43), is an awkward text for them. In 1878 White’s book moved the comma and admitted it in a bracket:

Verily I say unto thee today, [By placing the comma after the word today, instead of after the word thee, as in the common versions, the true meaning of the text is more apparent.] shalt thou be with me in Paradise.¹⁸

In 1898 the bracket was gone. The Desire of Ages simply prints, “Verily I say unto thee today, Thou shalt be with Me in paradise,” as if that were what the Bible says.¹⁹ The 1878 reader was at least told that the text had been changed. The 1898 reader was not.

“What They Will Accept”

In Chapter 2 we saw the rule White’s staff followed in preparing her life of Christ: “Better to give the readers what they will accept . . . than to excite criticism and questioning that will lead them to discredit the whole.” Now we can see that rule at work. A double crowning, a third cock-crow, a Jesus pronounced dead on the road to Calvary: the “revealed” details that would invite criticism were dropped or softened. A doctrinal change to Scripture that would invite criticism was kept, but its confession was removed.

The SDA sect cannot have it both ways. Either the 1858 book was the record of a two-hour vision and the 1877–78 volumes presented “the facts” under “the special enlightenment of the Spirit of God,” in which case the “inspired” Desire of Ages contradicts the visions; or those earlier books were simply White’s own imperfect retelling, in which case the claims printed in their prefaces were false. Either way, someone was not telling SDAs the truth.

Real revelation does not need to be corrected by the prophet’s secretaries. It does not shrink and grow and shrink again. And it does not need to hide its corrections from the people who paid for the earlier version. But a product does. When a product has defects, the manufacturer fixes them in the next model and says nothing, because the next model has to sell.

That leaves the big question this chapter has raised. If only one sentence in ten came from White’s earlier books, and the visions had fallen silent, where did the rest of The Desire of Ages come from? In Part Two we open the books on White’s shelves and find out. We begin with a witness the SDA sect itself hired: Dr. Fred Veltman.