The Spirit of Profits:
Ellen White's Pursuit of the Wessels Family Fortune

By Dirk Anderson, 2026

Every Seventh-day Adventist [SDA] has heard that Ellen White cared deeply for souls. That her interest in people was genuine. That her counsel was motivated by nothing more than love. Think again.

For nearly two decades, White worked the Wessels family like a super salesman who had memorized the most lucrative script ever written: “Your money isn’t yours. God wants it. And He told me so.”

White bombarded the Wessels family of South Africa—one of the wealthiest SDA clans in the world—with an unrelenting barrage of visions, warnings, spiritual guilt, prophetic directives, and heartfelt appeals for cash. The letters came in a torrent: pleading letters, scolding letters, dream-letters, vision-letters, guilt-trip letters, and letters insisting that their enormous fortune was not really theirs at all, but God's. And conveniently, God was directing their money towards all of White's favorite projects.

The Wessels family gave generously. Hundreds of thousands of dollars in today's money flowed from their South African estate into SDA institutions across Australia, America, and Africa at Ellen White's direction.

Then the Boer War ended in 1902. The economy cratered. The British policy of destroying farms, livestock, and crops resulted in a shattered agricultural sector, leaving the Boer republics severely impoverished. The Wessels family's fortunes declined sharply. As they faced financial devastation, they no doubt longed for a prophet of God to speak words of encouragement and consolation to their battered souls. After all, isn't that true prophets were supposed to do?

He who prophesies speaks to men for their upbuilding and encouragement and consolation (1 Cor. 14:3 RSV).

However, Ellen White, the prophet who had been writing to them almost continuously since 1890, who had declared that she carried a "tremendous burden" for the family, who had dreamed of them, prayed over them, and invoked heavenly visions on their behalf—stopped writing.

The correspondence record in the Ellen G. White Research Center archives is unambiguous and devastating. Over 120 letters were sent by White to the Wessels family from 1890 to 1908. After 1908, silence. And 1908 is, not coincidentally, right around the time when the family's post-war financial ruin became complete, and when a bitter dispute with the SDA Church over control of a sanitarium they had funded made it clear that the golden goose was not merely cooked, but buried.

The SDA faithful are taught that Ellen White was a selfless, Spirit-guided prophetess whose counsel was impartial and whose motives were not tainted with the love of "filthy lucre." But what do the historical facts tell us?

The Wessels Family: The SDA Sect's Most Important ATM

To understand what Ellen White stood to gain, one must first understand what the Wessels family actually possessed. Pieter Wessels, the patriarch who first contacted the General Conference in 1886 asking for a missionary, was, in the words of a family descendant, a man who "would be considered a millionaire in today's terms." He was sometimes called "the Earl of Lansdowne" owing to his wealth. The family owned multiple ranches in South Africa, and when diamonds were discovered near one of those ranches, the family's fortunes soared further still.¹

When Peter Wessels attended the General Conference session of 1893, he didn't just show up. He brought a checkbook. He personally donated $16,000 to the General Conference—a figure that represents roughly $583,000 in today's dollars. He and a brother then jointly donated an additional $40,000 (equivalent to approximately $1.46 million today) to establish an SDA health mission in Chicago.² At that same session, Peter reported that the British South Africa Company was offering large land grants in Mashonaland (now Zimbabwe) to mission bodies. The Wessels brothers promptly donated £3,000 to the new mission project that would become Solusi Mission—the first SDA mission station established among non-Christian peoples anywhere in the world.³

The family's generosity was, by any reasonable measure, extraordinary. They funded SDA missionaries to come to South Africa to convert other Christians to Seventh-day Adventism. They funded sanitariums, churches, and schools across three continents. And standing at the center of nearly all of it, directing the flow of this fortune like a maestro conducting a very lucrative orchestra, was Ellen G. White.

The Vision-Driven Fundraising Machine

Ellen White's method of extracting donations from the wealthy was not subtle. It followed a reliable pattern: identify the target's assets, invoke a divine vision confirming that God wants those assets, warn the target of spiritual peril if they fail to comply, express personal "deep interest" and maternal concern for their souls, and close with a specific ask. She had used this playbook on others before the Wessels family came along.⁴ With the Wessels, however, she outdid herself.

The thrust behind her appeals was a doctrine that was, in its simplicity, quite brilliant: the wealthy donor does not actually own their wealth. They are merely a "steward" holding "the Lord's money" in trust. Since the money isn't really theirs, refusing to give it to the cause of God is not merely ungenerous—it is theft from the Almighty. Every dollar kept is a dollar robbed from heaven. Every investment in personal property is a spiritual catastrophe. Every gift to one's own children is an act of defiance against God. White hammered this doctrine into the Wessels family for nearly two decades with the relentlessness of an ordained debt collector.

"The light was given me," she wrote to Philip Wessels in 1899, "that the Wessels' money is God's money."⁵ By "God's money," of course, she meant the SDA corporation. Once that framing was established, the corollary was unavoidable: anything less than full surrender of the family fortune to Ellen White's approved causes was disobedience to God himself.

When the family invested in buildings or business ventures rather than donating to the cause, White's response was swift and prophetically devastating. She described visions of their money as "going into a bag full of holes." She warned them they were "in danger of losing your heavenly reward." She informed Mother Wessels that in "bolstering up Philip with money for his business, you and Mother Wessels have not been helping to save his soul, but you have been taking from the treasury of God."⁶ She wrote to Sister Wessels that if she was not "very guarded, she will send the means which belongs to God into the enemy's lines."⁷ She advised that "the Lord will not prosper him [Philip] as he now is"—framing his subsequent business failures as divine punishment for not giving the money to the SDA cause instead.⁸

The audacity of the operation is worth pausing to appreciate. When Philip Wessels lost his investment, White did not conclude that the business environment was difficult or that risk is inherent to enterprise. She concluded that he lost the money because he had not given it to her projects first. "If at that time your means had been invested in the cause of God," she lectured his mother, "Philip could not have entered into business so confidently as he did, and then lost all. The Lord could not bless him."⁹ Heads, God wins. Tails, you should have donated. It was a theologically airtight closed loop.

The Receipts: A Partial Accounting of Wealth Extracted

A full accounting of every dollar the Wessels family transferred at Ellen White's direction may be impossible to reconstruct. But the partial record preserved in her own letters is staggering:

In June 1893, after receiving a £500 donation from Philip Wessels and his mother (worth approximately $103,125 today), White immediately wrote again asking if they could "help us to build a house of worship in Melbourne" and also fund a school building. She candidly noted in the same letter: "It is all that I can do now, for I am carrying quite a burden of debt."¹⁰ One gift secured, another requested in the same breath.

In 1896, White wrote to Mrs. Wessels describing the costs of preparing her Life of Christ manuscript—$3,000 paid to her book-maker, Marian Davis, with another $3,000 needed. The cost of $3,000 in 1896 represents approximately $118,000 today. In the same letter, she asked the Wessels family to loan her £1,000 at the lowest interest rate they could "afford."¹¹

That loan request was repeated in April of the same year, this time for the Avondale school building. White wrote that the work was at a standstill "mainly for lack of funds," and appealed: "Are you able to loan us £1,000, and can you send it direct to us?" She added, with practiced piety: "Would you know how you can best please your Saviour? It is by putting your money to the exchangers, to be used in the Lord's service."¹² She also reported that "the word of the Lord" came to her: "Send to Africa for help. I have entrusted my stewards there with means, and I will move upon their hearts to trade upon My entrusted talents."¹³ The Almighty, it would seem, shared her gift for fundraising.

The Wessels family complied. On October 1, 1896, the cornerstone of the Avondale school building was laid. White recorded: "The Lord had moved upon the hearts of Sister Wessels and her sons to grant my request for a loan of £1,000 at 4½ percent interest."¹⁴ The loan of £1,000 in 1896 equates to roughly $184,000 today.

In February 1897, Peter Wessels sent a £50 gift (approximately $9,875 today). White described receiving it: "It came exactly at the right time. We were at the Health Home, trying to get means to furnish some rooms... and when that money came, we rejoiced, and were glad."¹⁵ That same year, White recorded that "Mother Wessels loaned me £1,000 at 4 per cent interest" and that "Brother Peter Wessels gave a donation of $300."¹⁶

By 1899, she was writing to friends: "I have carried a tremendous burden for Africa. We must save the Wessels family if possible."¹⁷ One notes, with interest, that "saving" the Wessels family and securing their assets for the cause of God were presented as identical projects. Also in 1899, she wrote, "I am constantly writing to the Wessels family."¹⁸ This was no exaggeration. Tracking her correspondence in that year alone reveals letters to Mother Wessels, to Philip Wessels, to John and Sister Wessels, to the children of Sister Wessels, to Harmon Lindsay (who had married into the family's financial circle), and multiple letters referencing the Wessels family in communications to third parties.

The Battle over the Wessels' Money

The battle over where the Wessels money should flow generated considerable friction within the sect. When the Wessels brothers donated large sums to Dr. John Harvey Kellogg in America for actual missions to the poor, White was indignant: "The Wessels family have made large donations of money to Dr. Kellogg, as though he were the one who was to be steward of their means."¹⁹ She actively worked to redirect the family to Australia, writing: "I have written to Sister Wessels to have Andrew come to Australia, and have asked her to accompany him.... I will do my best to have them settle in Australia."²⁰ She hypocritically complained that the money "should have been" kept in Africa—despite having spent years directing it toward her own Australian projects.²¹ Her principle was consistent: Wessels money should go where she directed it, not where anyone else requested it.

Even when she sensed that her reputation was at stake, White's instinct was not to stop asking, but to deny asking while asking! In a remarkable letter to John and Sister Wessels, she wrote:

I was brought into a position where I could hear words that passed among some of the members of the Wessels family, casting on me the imputation that all I wanted was the money you would bring with you to Australia. I cannot say that I wanted this money, for personally I did not want one penny.

Despite this denial, in the very same letter, she pressed for a donation of a thousand pounds.²²

The Dream That Commanded a Donation

Perhaps the most brazen episode in Ellen White's Wessels correspondence is preserved in her own autobiography. She described it as follows:

One night I fell asleep, and dreamed that I was weeping and praying before the Lord. A hand touched me on the shoulder, and a voice said: "I have means in many families in Africa that is being bound up in worldly enterprises. Send to the Wessels brothers. Tell them the Lord has need of money. It will do them good to help to advance My work here with their entrusted means."²³

Let the reader absorb this. Ellen White had a dream in which a divine Super Salesman appeared—not to warn of a coming judgment or the criticality of adhering to SDA doctrines—but to send a fundraising memo. That's right, the Almighty Creator of the universe, she claimed, personally appeared to her sleeping mind to inform her that the Wessels brothers were hoarding His money and she should tell them to donate it. This is one of the most audacious and financially convenient divine visitations in the history of Christianity. It is astonishingly dissimilar to any prophetic message in the New Testament. Perhaps she had imbibed in a few too many cordials or vinegar before going to bed that evening!

The Prophet Called Out for Her Greed of the Wessells' Fortune

Ellen White was, throughout this period, acutely sensitive to the charge that she was in it for the money. She protested her selflessness at every opportunity. "It is not Sister White who wants your money," she told the Wessels family in 1899.²⁴ She assured them: "I do not write because I expect you to send us money, but because I wish to help you with the counsel and the light that God has given me."²⁵

These protestations are not impossible to evaluate, because the documentary record is available. The same letters in which she denied wanting their money contain explicit requests for their money. The timing of her "deep spiritual interest" in the family correlates with extraordinary precision to the period during which they possessed a large fortune. The moment that fortune was gone, so was the interest.

Even the White Estate's own published introduction to its Testimonies to Southern Africa collection, written to honor White's connection to the family, cannot entirely conceal what the record shows. It describes the Wessels family as having "come into the possession of considerable means" and notes that this family "evoked the deepest interest in the years that followed on the part of Ellen White who was concerned with their spiritual welfare, their personal problems, and the right use of their means for the cause."²⁶ While the White Estate listed "spiritual welfare" as first in the list, it seems White's interest in their spiritual welfare only lasted as long as their fortune lasted.

The Silence That Speaks Volumes

After the Boer War ended in 1902, the South African economy entered a severe depression. The Wessels family's extensive property holdings lost value dramatically. A conflict arose between the family and the SDA Church over the local sanitarium that the Wessels had largely funded; the family wanted greater control to ensure profitability, and when they made legal threats, the church surrendered the sanitarium to them rather than fight.²⁷ The relationship between the family and the SDA corporation was seriously eroded.

So was Ellen White's pretended interest in their souls.

The letters to the Wessels family, which had flowed for eighteen years in a relentless torrent, went dry. The White Estate's own collection notes correspondence spanning from 1890 to 1908—tapers off dramatically in the 1900s, and then ceases.²⁸ No more warnings about their spiritual danger. No more dreams in which God commanded their donations. No more expressions of "deepest interest" in every member of the family. No more worries about them "losing their heavenly reward." The prophet who had been "constantly writing" to them, who had described carrying a "tremendous burden" for their souls, who had invoked the voice of God to redirect their checkbooks—had nothing more to say once the financial well dried up.

If Ellen White's interest in the Wessels family had been genuinely spiritual—if she had truly cared about their eternal welfare, about their personal struggles, about their walk with God—their financial ruin would have intensified her concern, not terminated it. People who are financially devastated need encouragement and consolation far more than prosperous donors do. White offered none. The correspondence simply stopped.²⁹

Peter Wessels the Pedophile

No examination of Ellen White's relationship with the Wessels family would be complete without confronting what she knew about Peter Wessels and what she did—and did not do—about it.

In 1890, the SDA Church granted Peter Wessels a ministerial license. He used it for six years to build his standing in the SDA community, converting other Christians to Seventh-day Adventism, and serving as a religious authority over young women in his pastoral care. In 1896, his ministerial license was abruptly withdrawn.

The reason emerges from Ellen White's own letter to him (Letter 106a, 1896). Peter Wessels had been sexually abusing women and girls under his ministerial care. The abuse, as White describes it, involved fondling their bodies, degrading them physically, and initiating them into practices of "self-abuse"—the Victorian term for masturbation. He had apparently defended himself on the technicality that he had not committed intercourse. White was having none of it:

It is a Sodomitish sin. It is tainting and polluting in all its tendencies, and an abomination in the sight of a holy God. It is practicing iniquity.... What can the impression be upon those youth whose bodies you degrade by your actions? How can you be a Shepherd of the sheep and lambs, while corrupting their minds, and tainting and polluting their moral sense?³⁰

White's diagnosis of the abuse was accurate and appropriately fierce. Peter Wessels had done exactly what predatory religious authorities do: he exploited the trust placed in him by vulnerable young women. He led his victims—in White's vivid phrase—"to the tree of knowledge of evil practices."

What White wrote next in her letter is appalling. When Peter asked whether he should make a public confession, White told him no. In unmistakable terms:

Do not dishonor the Master by making public the fact that one ministering in the Word could be guilty of such sin as you have committed. It would be a disgrace to the ministry. Do not give publicity to this matter by any means.

And then, in a sentence that should make any reader's blood run cold: "Defile not the lips even by communicating this to your wife, to make her ashamed and bow her head in sorrow."³¹

Ellen White did not instruct him to report his crime to local authorities. She did not instruct him to make restitution to the victims. She did not instruct the church to investigate. She instructed him to keep it secret—for the sake of the ministry's reputation. The victims, whose bodies had been "degraded" and whose moral sense had been "tainted and polluted" by a man they trusted as a shepherd, were owed precisely nothing in Ellen White's framework. Protecting the image of the SDA Corporation was her one and only concern.

White did give a copy of her letter to South African Conference President Asa Robinson—not to prompt an investigation, but, as she explained, to prevent Robinson from requiring a public confession and to "keep the matter as private as possible."³²

Robinson, to his partial credit, found a workaround: he told Peter's mother. Peter then wrote to White complaining that his mother had been informed of his predatory behavior. White wrote back expressing sympathy for Peter's wounded feelings: "I am sorry that you feel injured.... If it has added to your affliction, making matters any worse for you, I am sincerely sorry."³³

This is the complete moral inversion that institutional cover-up produces. The abuser's distress at being exposed becomes her primary concern. The victims are invisible. White expressed sorrow for Peter's "affliction." She expressed no recorded sorrow for the young women he had abused.

Shortly after White found out that Robinson has revealed the abuse to Peter's mother, Robinson was mysteriously removed from his role as president of the South African Conference. He was reassigned to Australia, where he received no official leadership role for years.³⁴ The SDA corporation, following White's explicit instructions, kept the matter quiet and protected its most prominent donor family from scandal. Peter was never held accountable for abusing young women. Even to this day, the SDA corporation does not acknowledge the reason for Peter's dismissal from the ministry.

Astonishingly, three years after losing his ministerial license for sexually abusing young women, "P. J. D. Wessels"—Peter Wessels—was elected to a Conference Executive position by the SDA Church.³⁵ The man Ellen White had called a practitioner of "Sodomitish sin" was restored to denominational authority within three years, his victims still unacknowledged, his crimes still secret, his family still among the sect's most important financial patrons.

It almost seems as if White's greed for the Wessels fortune overrode any concern for justice.

Conclusion

The SDA Corporation presents Ellen White as a Spirit-filled prophet whose every vision was divinely inspired and whose motives were purely spiritual. Adherents are encouraged to believe that her counsel was inspired, that her interest in individuals reflected impartial concern, and that her warnings and appeals arose from love rather than self-interest.

The 124 letters to the Wessels family tell a different story. A less flattering story. A story of a prophet whose “deepest interest” hovered over the family fortune like a bee over pollen.

When the Wessels were wealthy, Ellen White had visions about their money. She dreamed dreams in which God commanded their donations. She wrote to them constantly, scolded them spiritually, warned them of eternal peril, and deployed every theological lever available to ensure the flow of their fortune toward her projects. She invoiced them for building funds. She solicited loans at favorable interest rates. She competed with Dr. Kellogg for their patronage. She declared, with remarkable candor, that she intended to redirect their entire family to Australia—the continent where her own financial needs were greatest. She shielded him from being held publicly accountable for his sexual abuse of young women.

When the Wessels were ruined, Ellen White had nothing more to say to them. Not a word of comfort. Not a testimony. Not a vision of hope for their afflicted circumstances. Eighteen years of constant correspondence ceased. The prophet who had invoked the voice of God to tell them that "the Lord has need of money" discovered, it seems, that the Lord had no further concern for their welfare after their money evaporated.

And through it all, a sexual predator in the family's midst was protected from exposure on Ellen White's explicit instruction—his victims abandoned to silence, his reputation preserved, his family's checkbook kept intact for the cause of God.

That's the true story of Ellen White: The Spirit of Profits.