Patriarchs and Profits

Chapter 20 - The Verdict

by Dirk Anderson

Ellen White claimed that Patriarchs and Prophets was "not the product of any human mind," but "the voice of God speaking to His people."¹ She repeatedly insisted that the light contained in the book had been given to her by God.² Her publishers told readers its value lay in revealing unusual insights that the Bible itself does not record. The White Estate later explained the book's expansion was the result of "many repeated visions" and "many revelations."

Claims of supernatural revelation demand an investigation. Ordinary explanations must first be evaluated to determine if they can account for the claims put forward by the book's author and publishers. The first twenty-one chapters were examined — one fourth of the book.³ Again and again, the supposedly revealed material proved traceable to ordinary nineteenth-century books available to Ellen White.

A supernatural explanation is warranted only when a natural one fails. This book has demonstrated repeatedly that the supposedly revealed material is traceable to ordinary nineteenth-century books available to Ellen White — nearly off of which sat on the shelves of her own library.

Where Scripture is silent, a nineteenth-century commentator ventures an explanation, often introducing it with words like perhaps, some think, or it is probable. White removes the uncertainty and presents the same idea as revealed history. She not only adopts their conclusions, she adopts their arguments, their methods of interpretation, their historical mistakes, their philological judgments, their moral lessons, their imaginary scenes, and their structural frameworks.

Whether one calls it copying, borrowing, literary dependence, or plagiarism, the bottom line is that it is fraud perpetuated on a grand scale.

The White Estate says the twenty-six years between Spiritual Gifts (1864) and Patriarchs and Prophets (1890) were filled with repeated visions that revealed new details. However, many of those new details appear in the books of other authors during the time when she was adding new books to her library.⁴ That single fact is extraordinarily difficult to explain if the source was heaven.

Finally, and most damning of all: she used spiritual and psychological manipulation on the very members of her sect who sold the book door to door. They believed they were carrying a revelation from God. They did not know they were selling the words of the very writers White branded Apostate Protestantism⁵ — Protestant commentators and devotional writers whose words now appeared between SDA covers and were marketed as light from heaven.

Consider the irony. She took the words of Protestant writers, built them into a book, and sold the book back to Protestant households. The money from those sales then funded a movement dedicated to converting those same households away from Protestantism.

She did not merely borrow from her opponents. She used their words as a Trojan Horse to transport SDA doctrines into their homes.

Ellen White once wrote: “My commission embraces the work of a prophet, but it does not end there.”⁶ She was right about one thing: it did not end there. No ordinary prophet of God created a publishing empire, stole the writings of their opponents, sold the product back to them under the guise that it contained unusual insights, and ultimately profited from the whole venture.