Ellen White Investigation

Ellen White's Heresy:
Are the Word of the Bible Inspired?

By ,

In 1886, Ellen White made a stunning claim: The words of the Bible are not inspired. With that single sentence she overturned everything she and early Adventists had thundered for decades. Why the sudden shift? Because as her plagiarism, revisions, and failed revelations piled up, the only way to preserve her authority was to lower the authority of Scripture itself. What follows is the record of how Seventh-day Adventism sacrificed verbal inspiration to keep a prophet who was unable to live up to it.

Ellen's 1886 Shocker

In 1886, Ellen White wrote that the words of the Bible are not inspired:

The Bible is written by inspired men, but it is not God’s mode of thought and expression. It is that of humanity. God, as a writer, is not represented. It is not the words of the Bible that are inspired, but the men that were inspired. Inspiration acts not on the man's words or his expressions, but on the man himself, who under the influence of the Holy Ghost is imbued with thoughts. But the words and thoughts receive the impress of the individual mind. The divine mind is diffused. The divine mind and will is combined with the human mind and will; thus the utterances of the man are the Word of God.1

Prior to the 1880s - Verbal Inspiration

Prior to the early 1880s, Ellen White and the SDA Church followed the example of William Miller and the Protestant Reformers who taught that the actual words of the Bible were inspired.2 This is known as verbal inspiration. The quotes below demonstrate that Ellen White initially believed and taught the verbal inspiration of the Scriptures. In 1854, she wrote that the writings of the apostles were dictated by the Holy Ghost:

He who is the father of lies, blinds and deceives the world by sending his angels forth to speak for the apostles, and make it appear that they contradict what they wrote when on earth, which was dictated by the Holy Ghost.3

In 1876, she wrote:

The scribes of God wrote as they were dictated by the Holy Spirit, having no control of the work themselves. They penned the literal truth...4

Ellen White's statements were consistent with the beliefs of the early SDA Church. In 1854, J. N. Andrews wrote, "the holy Scriptures come to us with the divine guarantee that every word therein contained was divinely inspired."5

Alberto Timm, Director of the Ellen White Research Center in Brazil, wrote that "early Seventh-day Adventists regarded the Scriptures as infallible and inerrant.... An entire lecture of H. L. Hastings on inspiration appeared in the Review in 1883, referring to the Scriptures as 'the transcript of the Divine Mind.'"6

1880-1911 - Ellen White's Failures Cause SDAs to Rethink Verbal Inspiration

Several events caused SDAs to begin doubting verbal inspiration.

  1. In 1883, A.C. Long published a document showing that Ellen White's earliest writings had been tampered with. Long demonstrated that significant deletions were made to her "inspired" writings when her earliest writings were republished in 1882. How could SDA leaders justify deleting inspired words?
  2. In 1883, when revising the "testimonies" for reprint, it was realized that modifications were needed. Subsequently, the Church passed the following resolution explaining why Ellen White's words would need changing:
    33. Whereas. Many of these testimonies were written under the most unfavorable circumstances, the writer being too heavily pressed with anxiety and labor to devote critical thought to the grammatical perfection of the writings, and they were printed in such haste as to allow these imperfections to pass uncorrected; and–
    Whereas. We believe the light given by God to his servants is by the enlightenment of the mind, thus imparting the thoughts, and not (except in rare cases) the very words in which the ideas should be expressed; therefore–
    Resolved. That in the re-publication of these volumes such verbal changes be made as to remove the above-mentioned imperfections, as far as possible, without in any measure changing the thought;7

  3. In 1887, D.M. Canright began exposing plagiarism and other issues with Ellen White. Dr. Kellogg also raised the issue of plagiarism. It was becoming obvious to some that Ellen White's "words" were coming from other people—people who were non-Adventist and not keeping the Sabbath. It would be a blow to acknowledge that the words of these other non-Adventists were "inspired." After all, Ellen White had written off non-Sabbath-keepers as being "fallen Babylon" and under strong delusion. How could inspired words be coming from the ministers of fallen Babylon?

  4. In 1888, Ellen's flip-flop on the meaning of the law in Galatians chapter 3 caused some SDA leaders to question the inspiration of Mrs. White.

  5. In 1910, W.W. Prescott was called in to assist with a revision to the Great Controversy. Timm explains that "Prescott felt very uneasy about having to suggest revisions to the writings of an inspired prophet" and this episode "became a decisive factor in leading Prescott to the assumption that the Scriptures were verbally inspired but not Ellen White’s writings."8 In 1911, W.C. White added that Mrs. White "never laid claim to verbal inspiration."9

  6. In the early 1900s, the controversy over the word "daily" in Daniel 8 and the Kellogg crisis forced SDA leaders to come to the realization that some of her writings and visions were errant. The "daily" controversy seems to have impacted General Conference President A.G. Daniells particularly hard. When he personally asked the sect's supposed guide about her earlier vision on the subject—a vision that contradicted the Bible—Daniells described Ellen White entering the "twilight zone" and being unable to answer him. At the 1919 closed-door Bible Conference, he admitted that he had adopted "the position that the Testimonies are not verbally inspired."

During this period, conviction was building among SDA leaders that Ellen White was not verbally inspired. However, many SDA leaders continued to believe in the verbal inspiration of the Bible. Following are a few examples from the sect’s leaders:10

After 1911 - SDA Church Gradually Abandons Verbal Inspiration

In 1944, Mrs. White's 1886 statement that "the words of the Bible are not inspired" was finally published. During subsequent years, some SDA leaders adopted the position that the Bible’s words are not inspired, just the thoughts behind the words (thought inspiration). Meanwhile, other SDA leaders continued to advocate that the words of the Bible were inspired.

Arthur White, grandson of Ellen White, began championing thought inspiration in the 1970s. He wrote, "Ellen G. White’s statements concerning the Bible and her work indicate that the concept of verbal inspiration is without support in either the Bible writers’ or her own word."11 In 1981, another secretary of the Ellen G. White Estate, Roger Coon, began advocating for thought inspiration in a series of articles in the Journal of Adventist Education.12

Finally, in 1988, in their official doctrinal book, the SDA General Conference formally abandoned verbal inspiration of the Bible: "God inspired men—not words."13 Thus, the SDA Church finally caved in to the Ellen White Estate and admitted the words of the Bible are not inspired. They were forced into this position, because if they admitted the words of the Bible are inspired, then it would prove that their prophet, Ellen White, was inferior to the Biblical prophets. Rather than admit Ellen White was a false prophet, the sect decided to abandon the idea of verbal inspiration.

Thought Inspiration Contradicts the Majority of Ellen White's Statements

Throughout her writings, Mrs. White repeatedly contradicts her 1886 thought inspiration statement and states that the words of the Bible are inspired.

Christ dictated words which Moses wrote - "He [Moses] wrote all the words of the Lord in a book, that they might be referred to afterward. In the mount he had written them as Christ Himself dictated them."14

Jeremiah contains God's words - "The prophet Jeremiah, in obedience to the commands of God, dictated the words that the Lord gave him to Baruch, his scribe, who wrote them upon a roll."15

Words of Scripture are inspired -

The actual words of God are recorded in the Bible -

Question: How could "the child Jesus" be taught the "very words" that he gave to Moses if only the thoughts and not the words of Moses were inspired?

Ellen White herself claimed verbal inspiration (at times)

Contradicts the Bible

From the above quotes, it is obvious Mrs. White believed and taught the verbal inspiration of the Bible throughout her career. Her 1886 quote, "it is not the words of the Bible that are inspired," is blatantly contradictory to the majority of her statements on inspiration. It also contradicts the Bible:

The Old Testament contains approximately 23,000 verses. The direct words of God (Yahweh) and angels appear frequently, especially in prophetic books like Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, and in narrative books like Exodus. Scholarly estimates suggest that roughly 30% of the Old Testament consists of direct quotations from God or His messengers (angels).

The New Testament has around 7,957 verses. The words of Jesus take up a substantial portion, particularly in the Gospels and Revelation. About 35% of the New Testament consists of direct quotes from Jesus, God, or angels. Thus, even if one did not believe in verbal inspiration, 30%-35% of the Bible is direct divine speech. When Ellen wrote, "It is not the words of the Bible that are inspired," was she saying these quotations were invented in the minds of men the same way that she invented an angel telling her about the return of Christ during the lifetime of the attendees of an 1856 conference?

The Heretical Doctrine of Seventh-day Adventists

To teach that the words of the Bible are not inspired is heresy. It destroys faith in the Word of God. In the quote at the top of this page, Mrs. White wrote that the "words and thoughts" of the Biblical authors "receive the impress of the individual mind." If that is so, how deep of an impression does the individual's mind make? Is it ten percent human and ninety percent divine? Or is it ninety percent human and ten percent divine? How does one go about figuring out what part of the words are human and what part are inspired? How can we live by Christ's command in Matthew 4:4 to live by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God if we have no idea what those words are? Do we need the Ellen White Estate and the SDA Church to determine for the saints which words are actually inspired and which words have the "human impress"?

The evidence presented here suggests that Seventh-day Adventists abandoned the doctrine of verbal inspiration of the Bible due to the influence of the Ellen G. White Estate. They needed to demolish the idea that the words of the Bible are inspired because it had been convincingly proven that Ellen White's words were not inspired. They needed to lower the Biblical prophets to Ellen White's level of inspiration to maintain their theory that she was inspired in the same manner as the Biblical prophets. Thus, to maintain the facade of faith in their prophet Ellen White, the SDA Church abandoned the verbal inspiration of the Bible.

Mrs. White wrote:

I am now looking over my diaries and copies of letters written for several years back.... I have the most precious matter to reproduce and place before the people in testimony form. ... [the people] may see that there is one straight chain of truth, without one heretical sentence, in that which I have written.29

Not a single heretical sentence? You decide.

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