Satanic Origin of White's Visions

By Norman F. Douty. From "Mrs. White's Visions," Another Look at Seventh-day Adventism (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1962) , Chapter 12 (pp. 160–174)

No treatment of Adventism can be deemed comprehensive which omits consideration of the Satanic Origin of Mrs. White's Visions.¹ All of the inspiration attributed to her as a prophetess, is based on this foundation.

If there be a prophet among you, I the LORD will make myself known unto him in a vision, and will speak to him in a dream (Num. 12:6).

Elder G. I. Butler therefore declared that “the exercise of the gift of prophecy can be nothing else than having visions from the Lord.”²

Mr. Butler goes on to point out the vital connection existent between Satanic Origin of Mrs. White's Visions and Adventism. “The blessings to this cause from its connection with the visions, have been many and great.”³ He affirms that the union and strength of Adventism are to be attributed

to the influence of these despised visions more than to anything else but the Word of God. . . . They have exerted a leading influence among us from the start. They have first called attention to every important move we have made in advance. Our publishing work, the health and temperance movement, the College, and the cause of advanced education, the missionary enterprise, and many other important points, have owed their efficiency largely to this influence.⁴

Butler consequently terms the visions “an essential part of the work itself” and adds:

If you give up the visions, you will soon give up the messages, and other truths. . . . nothing is surer than this, that this message and the visions belong together, and stand or fall together. This has been the case from the commencement, and will be to the end. . . . I can easily see how a person who has no faith in the movement we are engaged in, can cast aside the visions, but can see no reason or good sense in one’s doing so who believes the message to be of God.⁵

The same estimate of the close relation between the visions and Adventism is expressed by W. A. Spicer, another president of the General Conference (1922-30). In his book on The Spirit of Prophecy in the Advent Movement, he shows the effect of the Spirit of Prophecy on the Movement’s “spiritual upbuilding” (ch. 8), on its progress as “an organized movement” (ch. 9), on its “development of the publishing work” (ch. 10), on its “building up of a system of Christian education” (ch. 11), on its “health and temperance and medical missionary activity” (ch. 12), and on its “world program” (ch. 13).

In harmony with this statement are the words of F. D. Nichol, who, writing in 1951, said:

No one can read the history of this Advent people without being repeatedly and forcefully impressed with the fact that it has ever been the counsels of Mrs. White, as she spoke by inspiration, that have guided and steadied the movement. . . . The thousands of pages of Mrs. White’s writings clearly establish how great a part she played in creating the policies and directing the course of the Advent movement. . . . we had a frail handmaiden of the Lord in our midst who declared that by visions from God she saw what we should do and how we should plan for the future.⁶

All three of these men might have added that “the Spirit of Prophecy” played a very important part in the formulation of Adventist doctrine. Years before these leaders were writing, Uriah Smith wrote his book on Objections to the Visions Answered, wherein he declared there were only two classes of people who had criticized them, viz., Adventists who refused to accept correction through the visions, and non-Adventists who hate the truth of Adventism. The latter, he said, “attack the visions as the most sure and effectual way of hindering the progress of that truth. In this they acknowledge the efficiency of the visions in advancing this work. They know them to be one of the great elements of its strength and prosperity.”⁷

In view of this vital connection between Satanic Origin of Mrs. White's Visions and Adventism, it is manifestly necessary to discuss them. I shall not deride them. Neither shall I hold up to ridicule those who sincerely believe in them. However, I shall aim to deal impartially with them, as I find the subject presented in the literature of Adventists themselves, including that produced by Mrs. White.

Adventists have strenuously maintained, and this they maintain to this day, that Satanic Origin of Mrs. White's Visions are not to be attributed to the state of either her mind or her body, nor to the influence, either conscious or unconscious, of her associates. In brief, they deny that they are traceable to any natural cause or causes, whether subjective or objective. This means, then, that they attribute them to a supernatural source.

First Vision of Ellen White

The very first vision that Ellen G. Harmon had is a case in point.⁸ James White argues for its supernatural origin in A Word to the “Little Flock” (1847), where he says that “when she received her first vision, Dec. 1844, she and all the band in Portland, Maine (where her parents then resided), had given up the midnight cry, and shut door, as being in the past. It was then that the Lord shew [showed] her in vision, the error into which she and the band in Portland had fallen. She then related her vision to the band, and about sixty confessed their error and acknowledged their 7th month experience to be the work of God” (p. 22).

L. E. Froom, a prominent Adventist of our day, comments thus:

It is to be particularly noted that Ellen’s first revelation could not be accounted for as in any wise springing subjectively from her personal beliefs or that of any of her friends or associates in Portland. Rather, it was their complete opposite. She and they, like the Millerite leaders, had previously come to feel that the Midnight Cry movement must have been a tragic mistake. The very fact that Jesus had not come was taken as evidence that their time calculation of the 2300 years, as ending on October 22, had been in error. But in the vision the Midnight Cry was declared instead to be a brilliant light, like the penetrating beam from a giant searchlight — an abiding truth which was to illuminate the path of the advent people all the way to the city of God. This was accepted. And the fact that it served to change her own personal belief, as well as that of others, is strong evidence that it did not spring from her own consciousness.⁹

If James White and L. E. Froom are correct in saying that the contents of Mrs. White’s first vision were not derived from herself or her associates, then they must, indeed, have been derived from a supernatural source.

According to Mr. White’s account, Ellen G. Harmon and the other Adventists in Portland had given up “the midnight cry and shut door” sometime between Oct. 22 and December of 1844. The reference is to the parable of the ten virgins (Matt. 25:1-13). The going forth of the virgins to meet the bridegroom (v. 1) was said to represent the general announcement by the Millerites of Christ’s return, down to the spring of 1844 — the close of the Jewish year 1843, during which He was expected to come. The tarrying of the bridegroom, which occasioned the slumber and sleep of the virgins (v. 5), was believed to signify the period immediately following the disappointment of the spring, which issued in a condition of spiritual stupor among the Adventists. The cry at midnight, “Behold, the bridegroom cometh,” was thought to have its fulfillment in the proclamation, begun the following July, that Christ was to appear on Oct. 22. The shutting of the door, which was to occur when the bridegroom had come and the wise virgins had gone in with him to the marriage, was held to denote the closing of the opportunity of salvation to all sinners, when Christ had returned.¹⁰

Listen to Mrs. White herself on this subject. In Great Controversy she says:

After the passing of the time when the Saviour was expected, they still believed His coming to be near; they held that they had reached an important crisis, and that the work of Christ as man’s intercessor before God, had ceased. It appeared to them to be taught in the Bible, that man’s probation would close a short time before the actual coming of the Lord in the clouds of heaven. This seemed evident from those scriptures which point to a time when men will seek, knock, and cry at the door of mercy, and it will not be opened. And it was a question with them whether the date to which they had looked for the coming of Christ might not rather mark the beginning of this period which was to immediately precede his coming. Having given the warning of the Judgment near, they felt that their work for the world was done, and they lost their burden of soul for the salvation of sinners, while the bold and blasphemous scoffing of the ungodly seemed to them another evidence that the Spirit of God had been withdrawn from the rejectors of his mercy. All this confirmed them in the belief that probation had ended, or, as they then expressed it, ‘the door of mercy was shut’ (p. 429).

In this connection, we should recollect Mrs. White’s words to Eli Curtis in 1847: “The Lord has shown me in vision, that Jesus rose up, and shut the door, and entered the Holy of Holies, at the 7th month, 1844.”¹¹

When, therefore, Mr. White says that the group in Portland gave up “the midnight cry and shut door,” he means that it no longer believed that the proclamation that had been made about Christ’s return had been a fulfillment of the parable, nor that the door of salvation had been closed on Oct. 22. Mr. Nichol expresses this clearly: “The ‘band in Portland’ . . . had decided that nothing happened, in fulfillment of prophecy, on Oct. 22, 1844. In other words, that the midnight cry and the shutting of the door were not ‘in the past,’ but were events still to take place. Hence their ‘7th month experience’ [referring to Oct. 22 in the Jewish calendar] had not been of God.”¹²

Furthermore, Mr. White tells us that Ellen Harmon’s vision showed the Portland band its “error” in giving up “the midnight cry and shut door.” After she had related her vision, about sixty confessed their “error” and “acknowledged their 7th month experience to be the work of God.” Consequently, their proclamation about Oct. 22 was again considered valid and the door of salvation was again thought to be closed. Thus Ellen Harmon’s vision showed the Portland band that there was no more hope for sinners. F. D. Nichol says: “James White declares that Mrs. White’s vision caused them to confess their ‘error’ in the timing of these two events.”¹³

Accordingly, they no longer considered “the midnight-cry and shut door” to be yet future, but already past. Yet Mr. Nichol would have us think that Mrs. White never believed that there was no more salvation for sinners.¹⁴ He does admit that “in the years immediately following 1844, they restricted His [Christ’s] service to the household of faith, which was ‘still within the reach of mercy and salvation’” — Review and Herald, Dec. 1850, p. 14.”¹⁵ “The household of faith” denotes those who had been in the 1844 movement — no others. He also acknowledges that James White had not abandoned “the shut-door view in the summer of 1851” and that “Review and Herald continued to present the shut-door theory beyond the summer of 1851” (ibid., pp. 268, 280). In fact, he thinks the periodical probably did not drop the theory entirely until about the middle of 1852.¹⁶ A. W. Spalding, in Captains of the Host,¹⁷ concurs: “Joseph Bates, James White and Ellen Harmon were, at the beginning, believers in the shut door. . . . These three maintained the doctrine longer than most, until increasing light caused them to abandon it in 1852” (p. 149). It is certain that the Adventists’ publications of 1849-52 present this view.¹⁸

Now the contents of Mrs. White’s vision harmonize with Mr. White’s statement concerning it in A Word to the “Little Flock.” It is a vision of the Advent people travelling on a straight and narrow path high above the dark world:

On this path the Advent people were travelling to the City which was at the farther end of the path. They had a bright light set up behind them at the first end of the path, which an angel told me was the Midnight Cry. This light shone all along the path and gave light for their feet so they might not stumble. And if they kept their eyes fixed on Jesus, who was just before them, leading them to the City, they were safe. But soon some grew weary, and they said the City was a great way off, and they expected to have entered it before. Then Jesus would encourage them by raising his glorious right arm, and from his arm came a glorious light which waved over the Advent band, and they shouted Hallelujah!

Others rashly denied the light behind them, and said that it was not God that had led them out so far. The light behind them went out leaving their feet in perfect darkness, and they stumbled, and got their eyes off the mark and lost sight of Jesus, and fell off the path down in the dark and wicked world below. It was just as impossible for them to get on the path again and go to the city, as all the wicked world which God had rejected.¹⁹

The message is plain. All the wicked world had been rejected by God; and those Millerites who, when Christ did not come as predicted, irrevocably judged that God had not authored the message about His return on Oct. 22 — they too were rejected; and worst of all, both the world and the recanting Millerites were in such a desperate condition that salvation was impossible to them. They could not get up onto the path leading to the celestial city.

This idea is set forth in two other places in the 24-page booklet which contains the vision. First, Mr. White presents an article on “The Seven Last Plagues” (pp. 1-4), in which he says: “From the ascension to the shutting of the door, Oct. 1844, Jesus stood with wide-spread arms of love and mercy; ready to receive and plead the cause of every sinner who would come to God by Him” — which clearly implies that after Oct. 1844, Christ did no more pleading for sinners.²⁰

Secondly, Joseph Bates wrote some “Remarks,” published on page 21, wherein he says that he believes Mrs. White’s work was “given to comfort and strengthen His [God’s] ‘scattered,’ ‘torn,’ and ‘pealed’ [peeled] people, since the closing up of our work for the world in October, 1844.” (Similarly, in the Review and Herald, Vol. II, p. 13, Mr. Bates wrote: “We understand that He was a Mediator for all the world . . . from the day of Pentecost, A.D. 31, until . . . the fall of 1844. . . . At this point of time, then, the door was shut against the Sardis Church [Protestant bodies] and the wicked world.” Note that these last words are the same as those used by Ellen G. Harmon in her account of the vision.)

In the light of these statements, made by the other two founders of Adventism, the only fair construction to be put upon Mrs. White’s words is that all non-Adventists had been rejected of God forever.

There is another item in the booklet (A Word to the “Little Flock”) that is pertinent to our subject. I refer to Mrs. White’s sanction of Mr. Crosier’s article which had appeared on Feb. 7, 1846, in the Day-Star Extra. A letter of hers, written to Eli Curtis on Apr. 21, 1847, is reproduced in the booklet, in which she stated that she had had a vision from the Lord, more than a year before, showing that Crosier should prepare this article. Therefore, she said: “I feel fully authorized by the Lord to recommend that Extra, to every saint” (p. 12). But, Mr. Crosier himself, seven years after its appearance, declared that he had written his article “for the express purpose of explaining and proving the doctrines of the ‘shut door.’” This declaration was made in the columns of The Harbinger early in 1853, and was commented on, but not challenged by, James White in an editorial note on page 176 of Review and Herald for Mar. 17 of that year.²¹ The reason White did not challenge Crosier’s assertion is evident from the very contents of the article, for, as we have already seen, it maintained that Christ’s priestly ministry in the first apartment of the heavenly sanctuary had to do with the forgiveness of sins while His ministry in the second had to do with blotting them out. It is, therefore, obvious that the position taken in the article was that the era for pardon ended on Oct. 22, 1844 when Christ passed from the holy place to the holy of holies.

Now the significant fact is that later Mrs. White denied that she had ever had a vision about the door of mercy being shut. Let us consider her own statements.

Denied Having a Vision about the Hopelessness of Sinners

On Aug. 24, 1874, she wrote to J. N. Loughborough, one of the SDA pioneers: “With my brethren and sisters, after the time passed in forty-four, I did believe no more sinners would be converted.”²² In 1883 she confirmed this in her Explanation of Early Statements, by saying: “For a time after the disappointment in 1844, I did hold, in common with the advent body, that the door of mercy was then forever closed to the world.”²³

We have already seen that she, with the Portland band, gave up this view prior to her first vision, and that it was that vision which returned them to it. However, in her letter to Mr. Loughborough, just referred to, she stated: “I never had a vision that no more sinners would be converted.”²⁴ I suppose it would be technically correct to say that the subject of the first vision was the journey of the Advent people, rather than the hopelessness of recanting Millerites and of sinners generally; but it is certain that the latter idea is present.

Changed the Meaning of the Shut Door

In her Explanation of Early Statements, Mrs. White stultifies herself by saying that “all the wicked world which God had rejected” meant only such persons as had steadily resisted the Adventist proclamation from the beginning, together with those who had later renounced it.²⁵ This was the revised shut-door doctrine.

This revised view of “the shut door” was a part of the new interpretation put upon the parable of the ten virgins, sometime after Oct. 22, 1844. The Adventists thenceforth declared that the parable has nothing to do with the second advent. The midnight cry, “Behold, the bridegroom cometh,” was still held to be the proclamation made in the last months preceding Oct. 22, but the marriage which took place within, was said to signify the wedding of Christ and the New Jerusalem in heaven on that date. Accordingly, the shutting of the door was no longer taken to denote the closing of probation for sinners, but was henceforth said to mean the rejection of those who either resisted or renounced Adventism.²⁵

However, such an interpretation of the parable is exegetically impossible, as anyone may see by referring to the account of Christ’s Olivet Discourse (Matt. 24-25). After the declaration that the time of the second advent is unknown (ch. 24:36), there are four sections relating to this truth, each of which stresses the need of watchfulness. The last of these consists of the parable under consideration (ch. 24:37-42; 24:43-44; 24:45-51; 25:1-13). So the denial that this parable relates to Christ’s return is a violation of the whole preceding context. It is likewise a violation of the succeeding context, for Ch. 25:14-30 pertains to the servants’ labor during their Master’s absence and to His settlement with them when He returns; and Ch. 25:31-46 expressly concerns a judgment to occur “when the Son of Man shall come in His glory.”

The verb “to come” (erchomai), which is used in Matt. 16:27 and 23:39 to denote Christ’s return, is used nine times in this discourse (ch. 24:30, 42, 43, 44, 46; 25:10, 19, 27, 31). It occurs in each of the four sections listed above, and therefore in the one comprising this very parable (ch. 25:10; the best Greek texts omit it from v. 6). Furthermore, this verb expresses the same idea as the noun for “coming” (parousia), which occurs four times in Ch. 24 for the second advent (vv. 3, 27, 37, 39).²⁶ Thus the coming of the bridegroom refers to Christ’s return, and not to anything that is supposed to have happened in 1844. The shutting of the door, therefore, is yet future, contingent on that return. If we compare Luke 13:25, the only other place where the Gospels mention shutting the door, it will be seen that the phrase refers to the future.²⁷

Satanic Origin of Mrs. White's Shut Door Vision

Again, Mrs. White, after acknowledging that she, in common with the advent body, had held that the door of mercy had forever closed on Oct. 22, says, in her Explanation of Early Statements: “This position was taken before my first vision was given me. It was the light given me of God that corrected our error, and enabled us to see the true position.”²⁸ According to this statement, made in 1883, almost forty years after the event, the “error” corrected by her first vision was that of believing that the door of mercy had been shut on Oct. 22; but according to Mr. White’s account, published in 1847, within eighteen months of the time, the “error” corrected was that of believing that that door had not been shut then.

In the course of time, as it became obvious that sinners were still being converted, Mrs. White was compelled to disown the “revelation” received in her first vision. This proves that she no longer believed in its divine origin, and so, for the third time, she changed her mind. Immediately after Oct. 22, 1844, she thought the door of mercy was closed. Before her first vision, she came to think it was still open. That vision caused her to return to the view that it had been closed on that date. Later, she concluded that it was still open, after all.

Now if James White, L. E. Froom and Adventists generally are correct in maintaining that this vision is not traceable to natural causes, and is, therefore, of supernatural origin, then, seeing Mrs. White herself tacitly admitted that that supernatural origin was not divine, it necessarily follows that it was Satanic. As a matter of fact, she declared in one of her books that “The testimonies either bear the signet of God or that of Satan.”²⁹ In another she said:

My work . . . bears the stamp of God or the stamp of the enemy. There is no halfway work in the matter. The Testimonies are of the Spirit of God or of the devil.³⁰

Accordingly, Mrs. White and her followers have bitterly resented and vigorously opposed the naturalistic explanation of the visions advanced by D. M. Canright and adopted by many subsequent writers. F. D. Nichol, in his apologetic, devotes no less than four chapters to refuting this view.³¹

In Experience and Views, published in 1851, Mrs. White says in the opening chapter, “My First Vision”: “I was sometimes tempted to doubt my own experience.”³² Sixteen years later, we find her confessing: “In the night I have awakened my husband, saying, ‘I am afraid that I shall become an infidel!’”³³ Does this mental state accord with the possession of the gift of prophecy? It does not. John Owen, in his monumental work on the Holy Spirit, points out that, in the case of persons inspired, the Scriptures show that there was

that light and evidence of Himself . . . as left them liable to no suspicion whether their minds were under His conduct and influence or no. . . . His acting of the minds of the holy men of old . . . gave them infallible assurance that it was Himself alone by whom they were acted. Jer. 23:28. . . . it is impossible but that, in these extraordinary workings, there was such an impression of Himself, His holiness and authority, left on their minds, as did secure them from all fear of delusion.³⁴

We find no Biblical person, who was inspired, ever doubting that his utterances were of God. Accordingly, Mrs. White’s doubts disprove her divine inspiration.

1856 Conference Vision

Another instance in which Mrs. White’s vision was manifestly not of divine origin is the one defended by F. M. Wilcox in Ch. 13 of The Testimony of Jesus (1934) and by F. D. Nichol in Ch. 8 of Ellen G. White and Her Critics (1951). At the conference held in Battle Creek, Michigan, in May 1856,³⁵ Mrs. White, at an early morning meeting, reported a vision which she had just had: “I was shown the company present at the Conference. The angel said: ‘Some food for worms, some subjects of the seven last plagues, some will be alive and remain upon the earth to be translated at the coming of Jesus.’”³⁶

In order to understand this prediction, it is necessary to know that Mrs. White believed, in common with many able expositors, that the seven last plagues (Rev. 15-16) would be poured out on the living wicked immediately before the second advent (Rev. 19:11-16).³⁷ She, therefore, declared here that some of those present at the conference would die before these plagues were poured out (“food for worms”), while the rest would either suffer the plagues or “be translated to heaven at the second coming, without seeing death.”³⁸

A good deal is made of the fulfillment of the first part of the vision. Here is Mrs. White’s account:

Sr. Bonfoey remarked to a sister as we left the meeting-house, ‘I feel impressed that I am one that will soon be food for worms.’ The conference closed Monday. Thursday Sr. B. sat at the table with us apparently well. She then went to the office as usual, to help get off the paper. In about two hours I was sent for. Sr. B. had been suddenly taken very ill. My health had been very poor, yet I hastened to suffering Clara. In a few hours she seemed better. The next morning we had her brought home in a large chair, and she was laid upon her own bed from which she was never to rise. Her symptoms became alarming and we had fears that a tumor, which had troubled her for nearly ten years, had broken inwardly. It was so, and mortification was doing its work. Friday about seven o’clock she fell asleep.³⁹

What about the non-fulfillment of the rest of the vision? Messrs. Wilcox and Nichol (each, successively, editor of Review and Herald) attempt to vindicate Mrs. White on the ground that inspired predictions are conditional. They quote Jer. 18:7-10:

At what instant I shall speak concerning a nation, and concerning a kingdom, to pluck up, and to pull down, and to destroy it; if that nation, against whom I have pronounced, turn from their evil, I will repent of the evil that I thought to do unto them. And at what instant I shall speak concerning a nation, and concerning a kingdom, to build and to plant it; if it do evil in my sight, that it obey not my voice, then I will repent of the good, wherewith I said I would benefit them.

A number of Biblical illustrations of this principle are cited by the editors, and Mrs. White is quoted in support of the idea that the time of Christ’s return is contingent on the faithfulness of the Adventists. Had they not been remiss, that event would now be in the past.⁴⁰

According to Wilcox and Nichol, then, we are to conclude that the evil pronounced against the one group (that of being subjected to the seven last plagues) did not come to pass because those comprising it turned from their evil; and that the good promised to the other group (that of translation at Christ’s return, without seeing death) failed to be realized because those comprising it did that which was evil in God’s sight.

If these two groups exchanged positions, what one did would cancel out the other’s deeds. The same two groups that existed when the prophecy was made would still exist, although not composed of the same persons. Accordingly, the prophecy would remain in full force! Thus, the endeavor to account for the failure of Mrs. White’s prediction of 1856 is worthless, and the failure itself demonstrates that the prediction did not emanate from God.

Mrs. White's Visions Not from God

It is needless to pursue further the analysis of individual visions, for the two we have examined sufficiently illustrate their fallacious character. But we should make this general observation before leaving the subject: that inasmuch as they are pervaded by unscriptural doctrines — as, I submit, has been demonstrated in the foregoing chapters — they cannot be derived from the same source as Holy Writ; they cannot be of God. Consequently, Mrs. White was deluded in thinking that they were.

But it has been divinely declared that “every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God” (I John 4:2), and it is urged by Adventists that Mrs. White made this very confession. However, there is more in this text than appears on its surface. For one thing, the confession required is not merely verbal, for we read in the Gospels of evil spirits bearing witness to Christ. It was evident to all men that He was human; but the demons called Him “the Holy One of God” (Mark 1:24), “the Son of God” (ch. 3:11) and “the Son of the Most High God” (ch. 5:7). Thus, they made verbal confession that He, the divine Son, had come in the flesh. So the Apostle’s words must mean something deeper than this.

Just what, then, does this confession involve? I can do no better than quote from Robert Law’s exposition of John’s First Epistle, The Tests of Life — a book of which James Denney said: “no more masterly contribution has for long been made to N. T. exegesis and theology.” Mr. Law writes thus on these words:

The statement, simple as it is, is of exquisite precision.

1. The verb used (erchesthai [come]) implies the pre-existence of Christ.
2. The perfect tense [of that verb] (eleluthota) points to His coming not only as a historical event, but as an abiding fact. The Word has become flesh forever.
3. The noun (sarx [flesh]) indicates the fulness of His participation in human nature, the flesh being the element of this, which is in most obvious contrast with His former state of being (John 1:14). It is out of the question to understand by sarx ‘human nature as having sin lodged in it’ (Haupt).
4. Even the preposition en [in] is of pregnant significance. It is not altogether equivalent to ‘into’ (eis). The Gnostics also believed that Christ came into the flesh. But the assertion is that He has so come into the flesh as to abide therein; the Incarnation is a permanent union of the Divine with human nature.
5. Finally, this union is realized in the self-identity of a Person, Jesus Christ, who is at once Divine and human.⁴¹

It will at once be manifest, that Mrs. White’s doctrine fails to meet the requirement of the third point in Mr. Law’s exegesis of I John 4:2. It fails in two respects. It denies the fulness of Christ’s manhood and it asserts that sin is lodged in it (albeit held in complete subordination to His will). As verse 2 contains the positive, verse 3 contains the negative side of the matter: “and every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God: and this is that spirit of antichrist, whereof ye have heard that it should come; and even now already is it in the world.”

It is imperative to point out that to say Mrs. White was deceived is far from saying that she was a deceiver and, therefore, an evil woman. Our first mother, Eve, was deceived (Gen. 3:13; II Cor. 11:3; I Tim. 2:14), yet she was the one perfect woman this world has seen. As do we not vilify Eve when we say that she was deceived, neither do we vilify her daughter, Mrs. White, when we say that she was. Instead of vilifying her, we commiserate her. It is one thing to meet Satan as a roaring lion and quite another to meet him as a subtle serpent; one thing to meet him in his true colors, and an altogether different thing to meet him when transformed into an angel of light. We cannot avoid the conclusion that Mrs. White was Satanically ensnared and that those who follow her, however sincere and upright, are equally so.