Ellen White's Lesser-Known Plagiarism

By Dirk Anderson, 2026

Much of Ellen White’s most obvious literary theft is already well known. Scholars and critics like Walter Rea have identified extensive dependence on major nineteenth-century authors such as John Harris, Conybeare and Howson, L. B. Coles, Daniel March, and others. These are cases massive theft—sometimes chapters absorbed into her writings, and in the case of Conybeare and Howson, an entire book.

But plagiarism does not always announce itself in bulk. This page documents briefer but unmistakable borrowings from lesser-known writers. In many cases, the lift consists of a single sentence, or a short paragraph — small enough to evade casual detection, yet specific enough to leave no doubt about the source.

Individually, such examples may appear minor. Collectively, they matter. They demonstrate that Ellen White’s dependence on outside sources was not limited to a handful of well-known authors, nor confined to books in her library. Instead, they reveal a habitual method of stealing the language of others wherever it might be found.

This page is intended as a growing repository. As new sources are identified, additional examples will be added.

Plagiarized Entire Article

From 1905 to 1908, readers of the SDA periodical The Watchman were regularly treated to weekly articles bearing Ellen White’s name—presented, of course, as messages carrying divine authority. On May 1, 1906, one such article appeared under her signature, titled “Religious Liberty.”

There was only one small problem: it wasn’t hers.

The article was lifted wholesale—word for word—from a piece written eleven years earlier by SDA minister George E. Fifield, originally published in the January 17, 1895 issue of American Sentinel (Vol. 10, No. 3).

No attribution. No acknowledgment.

For over a year, this counterfeit “testimony” circulated unchallenged. In fact, on July 20, 1907, A.T. Jones quoted from it as if it had divine authority while teaching Sabbath School at the Battle Creek Sanitarium:

Next I read from the word of the Spirit of Prophecy as published in an article entitled "Religious Liberty," in the Southern Watchman, May 1, 1906...¹

Let that sink in: a plagiarized article—copied from another man—was being proclaimed as “the word of the Spirit of Prophecy.” One can only imagine Fifield’s surprise at discovering his words were now divine.

Eventually, the truth surfaced. Fifield was the real author. The article quietly disappeared from Ellen White’s official corpus and no longer appears among her published works on the White Estate’s website.

No correction. No apology. No explanation.

Below is the article as it appeared in The Watchman:

RELIGIOUS LIBERTY

Mrs. E. G. White

Christ came to set men free. He said, “The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord hath anointed me.... to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound.” Isaiah 61:1. Perfect liberty is found only in Christ. God’s law is called the law of liberty. The inspired word calls that law a hedge. It marks out the unchangeable principles of right between man and God, and between man and man, which must be recognized, else liberty is impossible to intelligent beings. All slavery, physical, moral, and intellectual, comes from breaking that law. Liberty is found only in obedience to it. Still there is a sort of slavery in the futile attempt to keep it in our own strength. But Christ, through the new covenant, writes that law in the heart, so that we not only have power to keep it, but his will becomes ours, and with Christ we delight to do His will, because His law is in our hearts. Here is perfect liberty. The perfectly saved will be perfectly free. Throughout eternity they will do just what they please, because they please to do just what makes liberty and joy possible.

Now, as to the relation of the state to the conscience of man. Christ found men enslaved to kings and to priests. He taught that all men are brothers, sons of one Father, and therefore equal before the law,—equal in civil rights. Rulers were, therefore, only their servants, chosen under God to protect them in the enjoyment of their rights. He freed us from the chains of priestcraft, by teaching the absolute independence of the individual soul in matters religious, and by promising the Spirit of truth to guide each one into all truth.

It is true that all liberty comes through keeping God’s law, but God Himself, who wrote that law in the hearts of men in the beginning, who spoke it amid the thunders of Sinai, that all might hear and obey, who waits through the new covenant to rewrite it in every trusting soul,—God Himself, who did all this, still made man as free to disobey these precepts as to obey them. Why did God allow all this fearful iniquity that man might be made free? To this there can be but one answer. It was because He knew the worthlessness of all forced obedience, and that, therefore, the freedom to sin was absolutely necessary to the possibility of righteousness.

After having made men free to sin, that the internal principle of love might work itself out in outward acts of righteousness unhindered by force,—after having made men thus, has God given to any human authority the right to take away that freedom, and so thwart His plans? He has commanded all men to worship Him and obey His precepts, and this command applies to each individual personally; but has He ever commanded any man or set of men to compel others to worship Him, or to act even outwardly as if they worshiped Him? To ask these questions is to answer them emphatically in the negative.

The civil power is the power of arbitrary force to compel men who will not be righteous, to at least be civil, that men may live together in peace and quietness. The true power of the church is the power of divine love manifest in the flesh, to win men to lead righteous lives. The two powers are entirely separate, and Jesus so taught when He said, “Render to Caesar [the civil power] the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.”

When Peter, as a member of the Christian church, sought to defend the truth by the sword, Jesus, pointing to His Father as the Church’s only source of power, said, “Put up again thy sword into its place; for all they that take the sword [i.e., in religious matters] shall perish with the sword.” The tares are to be allowed to grow with the wheat until the harvest. Then God will send forth His angels to gather out the tares and burn them. No human effort of arbitrary force can be used in rooting them out, lest in the act the wheat shall be rooted also.

Again Jesus said, “My kingdom is not of this world, if my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight.” Every civil law has the power of the sword back of it. If it is right to make law, then it is right to enforce it. In denying to the church the power of the sword, Jesus therefore forbade the church to ask the state for laws enforcing religious beliefs and observances. Paul understood this when he said, “The weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds.”

The early church, strong only in the power of God, triumphed grandly, even over the opposing forces of a false religion, upheld by the state. Only when she allied herself with the state, seeking its aid, did she deny her God, lose her power, and darken the world into a night of a thousand years. The present effort of the church to get the state to enforce the observance of Sunday, and to introduce the teaching of Christianity into state schools, is but a revival of the pagan and papal doctrine of force in religious things, and as such it is antichristian.

And this was not an isolated “mistake.” It was a pattern that was, at times, almost brazen in its execution. The following account, reported by E.S. Ballenger, pulls back the curtain even further:

At the general conference of 1909, held at Washington, D.C., the last conference Mrs. White attended, Elder W. A. Colcord was handed a batch of testimonies supposedly from Mrs. White, to read at a special session of the Religious Liberty Association. In reading it over, previous to the session, he discovered an article that was quite familiar to him, and behold, the whole article was a product of his own pen, which he had sent to Mrs. White two or three years before, yet it was assigned to him to read as a revelation from God.²

Let that scene play out in your mind. An SDA Minister sits down to prepare to read messages that he thinks are coming from God through His appointed messenger. Imagine his surprise to discover that one of the “revelations” is nothing more than his own previously written material, recycled and now bearing divine authority. Not improved. Not modified. His words simply became the “Spirit of Prophecy.”

At this point, the defense of “literary borrowing” begins to collapse under its own weight. This is not inspiration. This is not paraphrasing. This is not even careless citation. This is the systematic appropriation of another man’s work and the presentation of it as a message from God.

Ellen White's Travelogue

While travelling by train, Mrs. White wrote an account of her journey to her twin-sister Elizabeth. Parts of this letter were later printed in the June 17, 1880, Review and Herald.

Conclusion

Taken together, these cases reveal far more than a few unfortunate lapses. They expose a consistent, decades-long pattern: material taken from others—sometimes word-for-word—then republished under Ellen White’s name, often with the full weight of divine authority attached to it.

Books. Articles. Personal correspondence. Public testimonies. Nothing was off limits. The same method appears again and again: borrow, reframe, and present as revelation—without attribution, without transparency, and without correction when discovered.

At some point, the question can no longer be avoided. If these messages were truly from God, why do they so frequently trace back—line by line—to other human sources? And if they were not, then what exactly was being presented to sect members all those years?

Call it what you will—“borrowing,” “compilation,” or “literary dependence.” But when the words of men are repeatedly passed off as the voice of God, there is a simpler, more accurate term: Fraud.