"Sometimes Truth makes Love hurt"

"You are seeking to kill Me, a man who has told you the truth" Jn 8:40

Go To Start: WWW.BIBLE.CA

Edited and Re-formatted 7-2-09 by Kerry Wynne

Walter Rea, the author of the block-buster anti-Ellen G. White book, The White Lie (1982-1983), found himself in an unusual situation where he could monitor the developing financial corruption of the Seventh-day Adventist Church's Davenport Scandal. Then, in an amazing set of circumstances, he found himself in possession of a copy of Dr. Donald Davenport's divorce decree. Dr. Davenport's estranged wife happened to attend the SDA Church Dr. Rea was pastoring at the time, and, seeking his guidance in the matter, she showed him the decree. This legal document provided, among other things, a list of Dr. Davenport's many creditors, which included an astonishing number of Church entities, leaders, and other privileged Adventists, including more than one General Conference president and six union conference presidents. The Church and the Church's leaders who invested with Dr. Davenport lost something like 77 million dollars-- a huge sum of money in the late 1970's and early 1980's-- in this Ponzi scandal.

The Wall Street Journal called him "one of the kings of the nation's postal landlords. . . . Dr. Davenport, the Long Beach Post Office collector, claims neither rich yield nor tax benefits motivated him. It's the bidding that appeals to him, he says. 'I love to get in just barely under the next guy." ¹

That may have been so, but when his empire collapsed in 1982, millions were missing in the 69-70 million dollar fraud and neither Davenport nor his wife would tell the court where they had spent or sent their part of the millions. Also, the real landlord of those post offices turned out to be the Seventh-day Adventist Church with several hundred of its leaders and divines helping the Doctor launder his actions and money through the church's laundry.²

It is an incredible story, even for a people who had just been caught with its prophet lying about her gifts and her material.³ It ranks in size with the Catholic Church financial scandal and perhaps would have received greater attention if both stories had not broken in the news at about the same time. The Doctor and his partner, the church, fleeced banks, insurance companies, financial institutions, the Internal Revenue Service and the elderly poor of the church out of millions; yet no one involved in the crime was fined, no one went to jail and no one of significance was fired from his job, even though the theft of a loaf of bread or a stolen bike can and does bring a fine or prison sentence.

The Doctor still drives his Mercedes 380SL and the church still talks about holiness, while its divines implicated in the caper still retain their same positions, still maintain their innocence and still continue to exercise authority and control over the purse strings of its members.

The detailing of Davenport's activities is bizarre enough in itself, but compared to the undercover moves of the divines of the Adventist Church, they pale into insignificance. To understand them fully and to see the enormity of the deceit practiced and the fraud participated in by the church and its leaders and clergy, one must realize the claims of those clerics and their church.

First it must be noted that these leaders were responsible for keeping before the membership the shortness of earth's time and history. Every world event, great or small, was noted by them as a sign of the end. This could often take a monthly or yearly apocalyptic view. Yet these same leaders were investing their personal money as well as the church's in Post Office leases that could and often did run to twenty and even thirty years in length, with no possibility of cancellation. Did these men really believe what they preached to others that each day, week, month or year might bring the end of all things?

These leaders were foremost in preaching the poverty of Christ, at least for others. When the bankruptcy creditor list was released it was revealed that many of those men had invested for themselves or for their church, not thousands or tens of thousands, but even hundreds of thousands and millions. Where did these men of the vow of poverty for themselves and their church get this kind of money? Were they using church funds or their own personal use and then repaying it after they collected the interest on those funds? Were federal taxes paid on their personal amounts or did they wash their money, along with the church's so that no tax was paid? None of these questions have ever been answered publically.

The church and its leaders teach that its clergy should have no conflict of interest while in service to its people. Yet the evidence will and does show that most of the investors speculating with the church's money had personal amounts invested with that same man who was either a partner for the church or a vendor with it. Often the clerics would receive "finder's fees" for merely transferring the church's money from one account of the church to another of Davenport's, both of which they either controlled by their vote or actions; or, as evidence showed at the court hearing, they used joint accounts with the Doctor for these transactions.

For years the church has opposed speculation by its members. It has talked against investment in the stock market, while investing and losing millions in it. It has preached that all surplus funds, both personal and collective, should be used to "finish the work" of the church, not be put at risk for individual profit. Yet time and evidence has shown that Davenport and the way he had the divines did his business was one of the greatest risks that the church could have taken. Many of its leaders knew this, but, like players in musical chairs, believed they could get out before the collapse came, which some actually did.

There is no doubt that crimes were committed, serious crimes for which severe penalties could be assessed. Judge Finney, one of the members of a committee appointed to study the afterglow of the Davenport matter, stated that if some of the culprits in the Davenport scandal had appeared in his court they would and could have ended up with prison sentences.⁴ How then could such events come to pass in a church whose members believe that their leaders should and do represent Christ and whose characters they believe, when perfected in God's sight, will bring the end of all earthly time? Were these simple holy men, innocently lead to their embarrassment by a cunning con man, as some would have the public believe, or were these leaders and divines part of a vast crime of great magnitude?

The detail of facts is not pleasant but as I stated in The White Lie these facts are presented here for all those that would rather believe a bitter truth about their church than a sweet lie. A crime was committed by all those leaders and individuals who were involved with, or knew of, the Davenport matter. To involve one's self in fraud, conflict of interest, manipulation or cover up is a crime. Even the failure to report a crime is a crime in many instances. The fact that the Davenport matter was and continues to be hid from public or private view shows clearly that those involved in or with knowledge of events recognized they were involved in a crime, else why should they hide the facts of their knowledge or involvement?

Finally, it is glaringly clear that the hypocrisy of the Davenport debacle equals the hypocrisy of the Ellen G. White lie. Adventists teach that they above all others fashion their lives and actions by the writings and counsels of their prophet, Ellen G. White, yet the Davenport fiasco went against all the counsel she ever gave whether that counsel was "inspired" or not. With respect to other areas of her advice, the world could plainly see that the leaders of her church only give lip service to her writings for themselves, while seeking to enforce it upon their membership. Discipline, the key and essence of the writings of Ellen White, was completely lacking for the leaders in the Davenport matter."

Some might be tempted to reason that enough has been written and explained about the church's involvement with Dr. Davenport and that the sooner the whole matter dies out the better for all concerned including the church and those leaders who would like to cover their trail. Those who reason thus overlook several things:

1. Nothing has really changed in Adventism except the cosmetics of the system. Most of those same men are in the same positions, doing the same things as they had done before.

2. There is no evidence that real change will come. The crimes committed by the clergy of the church were moral and spiritual crimes and as yet there have been no sincere confessions of those crimes. After all, in spiritual matters the church itself teaches that the leopard cannot change its spots or the Ethiopian his skin; no more can those who are accustomed to do evil change.⁵ All the facts show that those divines had been accustomed to doing evil for a very long time.

3. Some of the names that were made public and received minor embarrassment were only functionaries, while some of the big names and fish got away. It would have been better for all to be brought to the bar of justice in some court of law where the innocent could have been cleared and the guilty punished.

4. Many voices were raised for years against the practices of the church and its divines. These individuals should at least be recognized for the honest heroic part they played and how they suffered for their honesty.

5. Finally, people both inside and outside of Adventism should be given at least the opportunity to rethink their involvement emotionally, theologically, and financially in a system where those same men connected with Davenport still make the church's decisions in these other areas of involvement.

In an article entitled "Bad Business: The Davenport Fiasco," Tom Dybdahl, writing for Spectrum, does a fine job of reconstructing the backdrop that led to the Davenport connections and the Adventist church. He said:

It made a good story in the Journal but Donald was far more interested in building post offices than just for collecting stamps or saving time. It was very clear to those involved with the Doctor that his purpose was to make money first for himself, and, if any was left over, for others and the church. Secondly, he had set up his program to avoid taxes, and was suggesting shelters, and said so in a letter to his clients in 1968:

Several times in the letter he tells his investors what a wonderful fellow he is and why he is doing all this for them:

No wonder with the ability to write letters like that, one of the attorneys said after reading it that "that fellow Davenport comes across as a hell of a guy!"

But he wasn't fooling everybody. By the time 1978 rolled around he had improved his technique, but the game was the same, only more sophisticated eyes were reading his mail. He wrote Attorney Jerry Wiley at the USC Law Center the following:

In his letter he was soliciting funds, though he denied it, but he does lay down the policy whereby he again can make the people rich by "unusual opportunity" for one year and it paid very excellent returns. But Wiley was asking questions and in his return letter of January 6, 1978 he lays them out:

Davenport's response was a classic. It said:

The rest of the short letter was full of chattiness which said either nothing or everything to those who read it. Wiley was more concerned for the church than he was concerned legally. He was a church elder, member of the Loma Linda board, chairman of several church boards, and he knew from these experiences trouble lay ahead. The Spectrum Journal reported:

Neal Wilson's hearing did not seem to improve after he was elevated to the office of General Conference President. Jerry Wiley wrote again to him on March 18, 1980 the following:

Still, without hearing from Wilson, another letter was sent in May of that year.

On another matter, the Tennessee Conference appears to be getting extraordinarily poor legal advice in terms of the responsibility of trust organizations and trustees for the investment of funds. This issue undoubtedly arises out of the Davenport matter. If there is any way in which I can be of service on either of these items, please do not hesitate to call on me. ¹⁵

Almost as if it were deliberate, the only thing that came from headquarters and Wilson was silence. Still Jerry tried one more time by calling, but the General Conference was non-attentive. Perhaps they still remembered the letter Wiley had sent to President Harold Calkins of the Southern California Conference in 1976, where he said as strong as he could:

It is hard, now that events have taken their course, not to believe that Wilson did not want to take any action in the Davenport matter and did not until events, which were partly of his own making, overtook him.

It was not just Jerry Wiley who was trying to get Neal Wilson's attention in the Davenport matter. Men high up in his own office were knocking at his door without much success. Elder Kenneth Emmerson, treasurer of the General Conference, had been fighting a losing battle with Robert Pierson, former President of the General Conference, who, it turned out, was a friend and creditor of Davenport. In a footnote of Spectrum Vol. 12, it was reported:

In a paper entitled "A Tale of Three Presidents, An Adventist Tragedy", by a Jack Eartherall, written in June of 1982, President V. Norskov Olsen is given a section where his friendly relationship with Dr. Davenport is given airing. It would seem from the facts that Olsen received special treatment as well as special interest while serving in the interest of both the Medical School and Dr. Davenport. According to the reports of the court prepared by the bankruptcy court, Davenport owes Olsen $45, 000 in principal and a disputed amount of interest. What he seems to have gotten for that investment was shown in a letter from Davenport to Elder Burt Pooley, treasurer of the Montana Conference, in which he said:

Emmerson, the treasurer of the General Conference, had received a letter from me on February 16, 1979, just prior to his letter to Loma Linda and Elder Blacker. In it I said:

We may never know if my letter to Emmerson affected his thinking and his letter to Elder Blacker of Loma Linda, but we do know that the letter I wrote affected his thinking because he wrote to my president, Harold Calkins, on April 10 of that year and sent Jerry Wiley and me a copy. To Harold Calkins, he said:

This part of the Emmerson letter holds a lot of fascination for me because of the reference to the Paradise Spa. Elder Blacker of that same Loma Linda and I had had a run-in about that business before the letter from Emmerson. On my vacation in Tennessee a year or two before, I had mentioned the Spa in a sermon in one of the churches. In the audience was a retired General Conference under-treasurer, and at the mention of the spa he had spoken out rather loudly "that's not true, brother," and I said that it was true and continued with the sermon. Upon returning to my home in California, Elder Blacker, then the President of the Pacific Union, sent for me and showed me a letter he had received from that retired treasurer. It said that he thought I was dangerous and should be stopped from saying things about the spa. I had taken several laymen with me and Elder Blacker proceeded to apologize for the spa. It was true, he admitted, that women, wine and song had been rumored to be connected with it, but that President Pierson had asked that the saloon be closed on Saturday, the Adventist Sabbath, which he somehow felt was a step forward. That spa had been giving the church a lot of trouble for some time-- some thought that it was tantamount to an Adventist brothel and that the reason the church did not give it away or shut it down was that it might put some of our girls out of work. Davenport even got into the act when he wrote:

Blacker and I had clashed on other things. One was the information I received that he and some of his cronies from the Union had just happened to buy an orange grove which just happened to be next to the land that just happened to be given free to the State of California where the new Veterans Hospital stands in Loma Linda. It just happened that the group or committee that gave that land to the State that just happened to be next to Blacker's land included Elder Blacker. All of this was recorded in the San Bernardino Recorders Office. When I asked for an explanation, I was assured that it just happened that way and not much money was made in the conflict of interest deal. It was therefore no wonder to me that slacker of Loma Linda did not or could not understand Emmerson's concern about the Davenport conflict of interest problem.

The rest of Emmerson's letter reveals how little attention the General Conference and Wilson was paying to him or how far gone the system was in matters of morality as Emmerson conceived of it or both:

Once again in the letter he said that he appreciated very much the position I had taken concerning Dr. Davenport, but at the end said, "It is the operating committees and boards that will have to take the actions needed to disassociate themselves from their relationships with Dr. Davenport and his program." ²³ It was an interesting letter in the light of what was to continue and especially a later letter that Emmerson signed along with Wilson and Bradford. It was issued a few months after his letter about me, dated August 10, 1979 and was sent to Union Conference presidents and treasurers, General Conference department heads and chief financial officers of the North American Division. It started by saying:

The real question is why would Emmerson write to Calkins in the early part of the year stating that he was against Davenport involvement on any church level, that all should stay out of it or get out of it and then a few months later sign along with Wilson and Bradford a letter toning down this position. Was the first letter to Calkins and me only a C.Y.A. letter (as attorneys say "Cover Your Ass Letter") in case things went wrong in the future? Or was he pressured, because of position, by others in the General Conference to go along with a softer approach, which was actually the approach taken later when the whole matter came to a head?

1. Noel Epstein, "Buying Post Offices is Profitable Ploy, Many Investors Find," The Wall Street Journal (February 15, 1968), Eastern Edition, p. 1.

2. Art Wong and James Nickles, "After the Fall: An Adventist's Bankrupt Empire," The Sunday Sun, San Bernardino, California, (4 articles May 30, 31, June 1, 2, 1982).

3. Richard N. Ostling, "The Church of Liberal Borrowings," Time Magazine, (August 2, 1982) p. 49; Kenneth A. Briggs, "7th-Day Adventists Face Change and Dissent," New York Times, (November 6, 1982) p. 1.

4. Adventist Forum, Pleasant Hills Church, Pleasant Hills, California, 1984.

5. Jeremiah 13:23.

6. Tom Dybdahl, "Bad Business: The Davenport Fiasco," Spectrum, Vol. 12, No. 1, (September, 1981) p. 51.

7. Donald J. Davenport to Dear Friends, September 19, 1968, p. 1.

8. Ibid., pp. 2-4.

9. Ibid., pp. 3-5.

10. Donald J. Davenport to Attorney Jerry Wiley, January 4, 1978.

11. Wiley to Davenport, January 6, 1978.

12. Davenport to Dr Raymond Moore, (cc to Jerry Wiley) January' 6, 1978.

13. Tom Dybdahl, "Bad Business: The Davenport Fiasco," Spectrum, Vol.12, No. 1, (September, 1981) p. 53.

14. Attorney Wiley to Neal Wilson, March 18, 1980.

15. Wiley To Wilson, May 16, 1980.

16. Wiley to Harold Calkins, October 12, 1976.

17. Tom Dybdahl, "Bad Business: The Davenport Fiasco," Spectrum, Vol. 12, no. 1, (September, 1981) p. 53.

18. Jack Eartherail, "A Tale of Three Presidents, An Adventist Tragedy," (June, 1982).

19. Walter Rea to Kenneth H. Emmerson, February 16, 1979, p. 1

20. Emmerson to Harold Calkins, April 10, 1979.

21. Davenport to Robert H. Pierson, April 18, 1977.

22. Emmerson to Harold Calkins, April 10, 1979, p. 1

23. Ibid., p. 2.

24. General Conference letter from Neal Wilson, C.E. Bradford, Kenneth H. Emmerson, M.E. Kemmerer to Union Conference Presidents and Treasurers, General Conference Institutions Heads and Chief Financial Officers, North American Division, August 10, 1979.

It was very clear to me by the time of Emmerson's letter in 1979 to my President, Elder Harold Calkins, that neither he nor Wilson nor the General Conference committees would do anything effective to stop events in the Davenport matter. The reason was that I had discovered direct evidence of corruption in the church. It was on such a large scale that it was hard for me to comprehend it.

At the first of the year of 1976 I had been appointed pastor of the Long Beach church, although it would be more accurate to say I had been exiled by Elder Calkins to that position. My name had been put in nomination in the constituency of 1975 for three positions, President, Treasurer and Secretary of the Conference. The nominating [publicly to accept it. ¹ After talking with the Union President, Cree Sandefur, and his treasurer, Robert Cone, I came to the conclusion that they did not want me to accept the position and were not willing to give me their support. It wasn't until the following year and after the move to Long Beach that I learned the reason why.

After the nomination, and public refusal by me, of the position of treasurer of the Conference, Harold Calkins decided that I needed a move. As was his custom he tried to shift me from the center of political activity in the metropolitan area, but I kept refusing the calls he offered. Calkins, a very insecure leader, had managed to rid himself of most of the strong men in the conference he felt threatened by. He was trying to make sure I was the last to go. My name had appeared along with his in almost every election, and this he felt should be changed. Lonq Beach was open, a church that had once been a strong center but was on the decline and had been for many years. So I was exiled to the border of the conference where he felt I would have less influence in Conference affairs. What he did not anticipate was that Long Beach, the former home of Dr. Davenport and Elder Cree Sandefur, was to be the beginning of the end for me and also the opening of Pandora's Box of fraud, deceit cover-up, corruption and crime for the church.

I had only been pastor a few months when there came to my attention a copy of the divorce proceedings of one of Long Beach's most illustrious members, Donald Davenport. It was the property settlement between Donald Davenport and his former wife, a lady I had met, admired and worked with in youth work in the Conference. The agreement, dated May, 1972, was a petition for dissolution of their marriage in the Superior Court of the County of Los Angeles, case number D795614.²

What became clear to me after reading the evidence contained in the settlement was the way Dr. Davenport had understated his assets and liabilities, especially his liabilities. As a member of the Conference committee, I knew that Dr. Davenport had a great many dealings with the Conference, but the evidence of some of his many participations with the church was lacking in the divorce settlement. Yet in the agreement it was stated:

After seeking expert legal counsel I informed Betty Davenport that I felt she and her children had additional benefits coming their way and that, if she wanted, legal counsel could be obtained that would help her redress the inequity. She felt she could not do this because her name was contained on some of Dr. Davenport's properties and he might create problems for her in the future in that direction if she re-filed for redress. However, the divorce record and settlement of the Davenports was not the important item that shocked me. It was the long list of names of people and conferences of the church that were involved with the Doctor that blew my mind. It showed a web of conspirators from one end of the country to the other who were consistently and systematically emptying the coffers of the church into their own pockets through the Davenport program. It showed men in groups of small committees in select places and positions who were not only voting the church's money out, but were sometimes in those same committees voting themselves in financially by their connection with that church. This, any school boy or girl would know, was a conflict of interest, and thus a crime.

The list also made it clear why Cree Sandefur, the Union President, did not want me as a reformer in the business of the church. He was really in business with Dr. Davenport. In fact, the list was a virtual list of who's who in Adventism. But revealing enough, it did not include any blacks, Hispanics or downtrodden whites. It catered to the upper financial group of the church, the elite, the group that already enjoyed more of the privileges of the church than most. Here is the list.

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⁴

Of course the list changed. Some got in at the first and then were able to exit. Others were encouraged to come along with greater accounts of money and interestingly enough received greater rewards, always, it seemed at the expense of the church. When the list is compared with a later list of people and institutions it makes a better picture, but not necessarily a healthier one.

⁵

There are those in the Adventist church that will always feel that the next moves I took were both unwise and unnecessary, but they make much of the text in Matthew 18 under other circumstances when it does not involve them or their church. The words are these:

I felt that I personally, as well as the whole church, had been wronged greatly in both deed and fact by the head elder of the church, whose name stood at the top of the list as a priest, because of his great conflict of interest in the Davenport matter. His influence was not on the side of right and he should be instructed as such. So I wrote on June 14, 1977 the following letter to him and to him alone:

You may keep the list, if you wish. It seems to me to be a sad commentary on our times and our leadership in the Church. ⁷

At the same time I sent Elder Cree Sandefur, who at the time was Union President of the Pacific Union, where Davenport seemed to have gotten his start, a short note.

I did not choose the words to either man lightly. The Davenport list showed that men in high office in the church helped to put others of their friends in high office. It was true, as Elder Rasmussen had told me in the Academy, that you ride to success on the shoulders of your superiors. It came to me clearer then ever before that it was not God running the church, as I had been told over and over again, but the Piersons and the Sandefurs that put men where they were so they could be helped to do what they wished. It was the Piersons and Sandefurs that got away, free from the slander and shame. Sandefur was Pastor in Long Beach where Davenport was a member and got his start in the church with Cree's help. Sandefur went to Hawaii and Davenport was there. Sandefur went to the east and Davenport was never far away. Sandefur opened doors by his involvement thus encouraging others to enter those open doors. Yet when the house of cards came down, Cree was out with his money as well as out with his "fast" retirement. Davenport himself made it very clear in one of his letters how much help Cree had been to him:

I wonder since seeing Davenport's letter if Cree did invest again with his friend and if so why he is not listed among those that were left holding the bag. After all, Davenport owed him a lot, at least enough to give him inside information as to when to get out. It was Cree Sandefur that helped to move all the investments that were in the local conferences, where the local laymen and preachers could see them and ask questions, to the Union where they could not see or complain. It was perhaps one of the best moves Cree made for Davenport while President of the Pacific Union, but it did leave the Union holding the bag for that $1,528,094 of loans plus the accrued interest of $120,449.

The Davenport list had also shown that most if not all of the Unions in North America were involved with him in some way and that the committees of these institutions of the church, often with their presidents and officers, were personally members of Davenport's financial club. In its article Spectrum said:

President Pierson's letter back to me was typically ministerial. It said nothing and did not even say it well, but it did reveal a great deal about the man and his thinking:

Pierson's letter sounded like some ancient pagan love song. He had been taken from the sheep fold of Adventism and exalted to the crown, yet he was poor-mouthing the very system he enjoyed. Some preachers whine a lot. They often rule like some ancient Mongolian Prince. They roam the world always at the people's expense. When they touch the ground from their flight they are wined, dined, and pampered by lesser functionaries, all who are hoping some promotion or crumb of favor will fall their way as a reward. From the beginning to the end the structure favors the executive, the administrator, the divine that has made it to the top. Even the retirement plan he spoke of gives him a leg up on his colleagues. One of the great lies of Adventism is that all men are treated equal in the work of the church. The special privileges of houses, gifts, interest free loans, trips and perks are a way of life with Adventist administrators. It is one of the reasons so many want to be one; and for Pierson to poor-mouth the very system he was defending by his action on the Davenport matter was laughable, if not terribly sad.

What was even sadder was the morality that he showed about the whole affair. Much of his reply did not admit anything or explain anything or apologize for any of his actions or those of his colleagues. He either was unable to understand how he and his friends looked to others or did not care. He didn't even leave the matter between "me and the Lord" as he said. I found out later through the bankruptcy court that even before the ink was dry on my letter to him he had sent it to Dr. Davenport and was playing both sides of the street. His letter to me was dated June 23, and Davenport's letter to him was dated June 28. He wrote to Davenport on the same day he sent me my letter:

Poor Don, still doing his best to come across as "a hell of a guy." The letter not only shows up the deceit in Davenport's makeup but Pierson's as well. It also helps to show how the system had gone wrong with stooges and lies and intimidation. One of those stooges that got away was David Neufeld. He was a left over General Conference man that was put to work in the Pacific Union by Cree Sandefur at half price. He was long overdue for retirement but made up for it by singing the praises of Davenport to all that questioned him. He had his own money invested and encouraged other to do so. He was one of the boys that got out with profit, and long after the debacle he still stood four-square for his friends in the mess and said he felt no guilt for what he did as a double agent for Davenport.

Another name mentioned was also an agent for Davenport. He was my head elder, Widen Burkett. We had discussed Dr. Davenport together; and I had assured him that as a committee member of the Conference he was in a slippery position when it came to the voting of 'funds from the conference to Davenport when he himself was singing his praises as an investor. Another item had come up between us that perhaps chaffed him a bit. It so happened on his retirement as a public school teacher that he received a call to go into the ministry in Nevada. The President of that Conference, Elder Striefling, was a Davenport investor, Burkett was a Davenport investor, and Cree Sandefur, who would have to approve the appointment in the Union, was a Davenport supporter. With so many young men coming out of school without calls into the work I felt that is was wrong for Burkett to receive that call the way it was coming and looking and told him so, and asked him how it would seem if all the circumstances should become known. The call did not materialize but I received the impression Widen was not happy with me for my lack of support for his friend, Davenport. With his $185,000, plus interest, I could understand why.

Two other names should be mentioned as those that got away without much embarrassment or shame. One was John Robertson, a former Lonq Beach Pastor and friend of Dr. Davenport. While pastoring in Glendale, he was unable to convince his board at the Vallejo Drive Church that they should invest with him in Davenport. It caused some problems and some of the elders who talked with me felt strongly that John was putting on too much pressure considering his connections. John later worked in Southeastern California and I guess felt no moral problem with encouraging others to follow Davenport. He later wrote a high sounding moral book called THE WHITE TRUTH seeking to refute my book, THE WHITE LIE, even before I had published it. Another former pastor of Long Beach and friend of Davenport and retiree who was re-hired by Sandefur was Elder Duffield. He had taken trips overseas with the Doctor and had encouraged others to invest with him. In a letter to me he said:

So it wasn't just me that was hearing and speaking the things we were hearing. It was getting late for Davenport and he was thrashing around more and more. What did and does come across over and over again is that one could talk to lawyers, doctors, truck drivers, school children, atheists or infidels, and most if not all could tell you that what was going on was wrong, evil and wicked. But neither then nor since has Pierson, Sandefur, Neufeld, Robertson, Burkett, Duffield, Union Presidents or the church as a whole expressed or admitted the gravity of its sins of involvement. Little or no embarrassment has been shown, much less shame. And perhaps even more amazing, the church as a whole still preaches against those terrible Catholics, those dirty Protestants, and the evil world, not seeming to notice that by their lack of concern over their own amoral or immoral conduct or the condoning of it, they have forfeited any right to condemn or preach reform to others.

Evidently Pierson had not given Davenport enough assurance that he would either stop me or fire me for he wrote again a few weeks later:

Someone has suggested to me since seeing the letter that they sound more like the Mafia than Christians, and I agreed. To believe that the head of a church would be in business with such a man and yet not come to me and talk of what was transpiring is hard to understand. Another interesting thought is that if Pierson was sharing his correspondence from me with Davenport he must have been sharing it with another, Neal Wilson. Why not? It had been done before.

In the early 1960's I was contacted by the then President of the General Conference, R. R. Figuhr. The church had been having a lot of troubles with their head divines in the south,and because I had worked there, been on committees and knew the men, he wondered in his letter if I would be willing to write what I felt were some of the problems. My letter would be confidential of course, he assured me, and I would be doing a good service for the church. I wrote him my convictions, naming names, stating places and specifics, how the leaders were, in my opinion, corrupt, greedy men, how they bought and sold property through our hospitals to protect themselves and to save money through the institutions and then would profit by their methods, how they sold cars to the workers and extracted a personal fee for doing so. I was liberal with my information and the names of men who were participating. ¹⁶

Sometime later I met Elder Neal Wilson at the General Conference session, and he informed me that he had read the letter I had been told was confidential by R. R. Figuhr. I knew from my knowledge of the system I was in trouble. Sure enough, sometime later, one of my friends called and told me that my name had been black listed in the south for all time and I could and would not ever get a call to anything, "not even dog catcher." Knowing how the system operates I was not surprised. I have often been accused of seeking higher office. Knowing some of the men in those offices, I have never known if I should take the rumor as praise or insult. If by the time of the Davenport situation I carried any thought of advancement in the church, it surely would have been an empty basket that carried those thoughts; and I have often said that I may be dumb but I was not entirely stupid.

It was clear to me after Pierson's letter, even without having access until later to the Davenport correspondence that the church and its leaders would do nothing to stop their rush to greed and destruction. If anything was to be done, something or someone other than those involved for personal gain would have to do it. It was clear from my background of years in the service of the church that no reform would come even though I had written Pierson. No change would be made and no clean up would take place. Had I known what I know now, that most of the votes and voices that counted were arrayed against me. I doubt that it would have effected my action. I knew without that information that my time was short and that what I did, I would have to do quickly, or even more millions would be funneled into the pockets of Davenport and his helpers. It has never been clear to me whether Davenport corrupted the clergy, or the other way around, but for me it had to stop.

After much soul searching and a great deal of counsel from those I respected and trusted, I decided on several steps. One of those steps was to release the list I had found to John Adam in Tennessee and to Sydney Allen in Riverside, California. These men had been fighting as laymen at least as long as I had and were doing their best to alert the church of what was going on. I knew that they had access to sources of publication that I did not have and that they had the courage to take the project as far as necessary, though none of us knew how far that would be. It didn't take long for us to find out.

The pressure was building, and Davenport could not ignore it much longer. On April 19, 1979, Davenport sued John Adam and his employer, A. G. Edwards & Sons, Inc., charging that Adam had interfered with his business and defamed his character. He asked for $1 million actual damages and $3 million punitive damages. He followed that up on May 15 with a similar suit against Syndey Allen for $2,550,000. ¹⁷

The lawsuit laid it out better than we had dared believe it would, for it said;

What Dr. Davenport had done in the lawsuit was to reveal all the information necessary to follow his activity from beginning to end and find that the loose ends had always ended in the church with his friends he had cultivated. He also made it clear that without the friendships he would and could not continue his operation. So in essence he was saying that his empire depended on the payoffs he was giving to Adventist preachers in order to milk the church and other institutions to keep going. The suit did one other thing. It produced his own blueprint on how to bring him down and stop his operation. If one could stop him from bleeding the church and its members, he was through.

With that information the rest was fairly easy. The Government agencies would and could do what the church had failed to do: clean up the act and thus destroy it. I approached the Attorney General's office of the State of California with what information John and others had provided, including fraud, breaking of usury laws, breaking of S.E.C. regulations, and bending of other laws. The I.R.S. office appointed a special agent, Sandra M. Armstrong, to investigate the matter, gave me her card and told me to keep in touch. Those who were aware of these moves guessed correctly that it was only a matter of time before the end could come, and we encouraged all the investors we were able to contact to leave the sinking vessel as soon as they could. I personally talked with many, including such leaders as Elder Heppenstall, Dave Neufeld, Duffield, Burkett and others, including some personal friends of mine as well as Davenports, such as Dr. Wayne Eyer and others. Some did not heed the warning and hence their names appeared on the creditors list when the end came. Those that did get out have ever been grateful.

It was a difficult decision to come to. It was hard to take action that we all knew would embarrass the church. Yet we all knew also that the church was going to be embarrassed anyway and it was harder to stand aside and watch Davenport and the preachers continue to bleed the church and its little people, for it was they that suffered the most. Nothing will erase the conviction that many millions more would have been lost if we had not taken drastic action to stop what was clearly a "scheme," as Emmerson said, to use the church's money to enrich a few at the expense of the many. None of the people that took our advice and got their money out have had anything but praise for what we did for them, and even some of the ones that turned against us after the bankruptcy said they wished they had followed our advice.

1. 1975 Constituency Meeting record, Southern California Conference, Pacific Union Conference.

2. Petition for dissolution of marriage in Superior Court, County of Los Angeles, Case No. D795614, Property .

Settlement Agreement. May 1972

3. Ibid., p. 93.

4. Ibid., List of creditors under Property Settlement

5. United States Bankruptcy Court, Central District of California, Filed March 2, 1982. (2nd ammended mailing list)

6. Matthew 18: 15-17.

7. Walter Rea to Robert Pierson, June 14, 1977.

8. Walter Rea to Cree Sandefur, June 3, 1977.

9. Donald Davenport to Robert Pierson, June 28, 1977.

10. L. L. Butler, "Update on Davenport Loans", back page of Adventist Review, subtitle, "Summary of Davenport Loans, June 30, 1981".

11. Tom Dybdahl, "Bad Business: The Davenport Fiasco," Spectrum 12, No. 1, (September, 1981) p. 58.

12. Robert Pierson to Walter Rea, June 23, 1977.

13. Donald Davenport to Robert Pierson, June 28, 1977.

14. C. L. Duffield to Walter Rea, February 9, 1978.

15. Donald Davenport TO Robert Pierson, July 25, 1977.

16. Walla Walla Tapes (2) Lecture by Walter Rea, November, 1981.

17. Tom Dybdahl, "Bad Business: The Davenport Fiasco," Specturm 12, No. 1, (September, 1981) p. 53.

18. Donald J. Davenport vs. John Adam and A. G. Edwards & Sons, Inc., No. 79-229107. United States District Court for the Western District of Tennessee, Western Division.

It didn't seem reasonable that anymore could be done with the church to change the course of events that would lead it to shame and reproach but sometimes one can appeal to something other than reason. With that in mind I wrote two more letters in 1979 hoping for some positive action.

As I look back now and reread what I had written, it seems so foolish for me to believe that something moral and spiritual would come of what I had done. The church just did not feel that she needed changing or cleaning. Law and justice are the articles of faith that Adventism peddles and mercy, grace, repentance, forgiveness and restitution are unknown experiences in corporate Adventism. Finally, morality by their definition, not grace and conversion by the Holy Spirit, is the stock and trade of the church, and that still small voice that would have kept those men from the insanity of greed could not be heard and was not recognized if it was. Those same men of special privilege even went so far as to change the rules and policies that workers had operated under for decades, but the changes were made to the advantage of those leaders and the disadvantage of the worker. It was this that prompted my final letter of appeal and I sent it in a strident note:

As in the case of all my attempts to engender dialogue with the church leaders, there was no response. The church does not believe in real true dialogue as I have pointed out in my national article, "Who Profits from the Prophet." ³ What it must have is monologue if there is talk at all. It prefers edicts with strict compliance. And that is exactly what happened in the case of the sustentation or retirement plan. It was changed to suit the leaders and the group in power and it fell heaviest on the poor and needy workers of the field. It was however, perhaps the strongest letter I had sent and in that sense caused some talk and thinking about my "retirement" or "firing".

There is no question but that the letter generated considerable comment among "the brethren" and I began to hear rumors that I was to be fired. This was at least a year and a half before the article appeared in The Los Angeles Times concerning my work on the writings of Ellen G. White, the Adventist Prophet. Because of those rumors I wrote the following letter to Neal Wilson in May of 1980. It was during the trial of our Conference President, Harold Calkins and the Burbank group concerning past disagreements:

There really was nothing in Wilson's reply that gave me any assurance that he was interested in me as a person. Rather he gave the usual party line and sought to cover all the bases at once. He said:

You have to know Wilson and Adventist double-talk to appreciate this paragraph. Wilson had helped to engineer many a deal, and had fired men and blocked their promotions, yet he always worked through his hit men so that he could take the high ground. He even goes on to contradict himself when he says,

Never, since we were students together in college, has Wilson talked to me about much of anything, much less my personal desires and wishes for the church. Even in the E. G. White controversy he had to be dragged, kicking and screaming to the conference table and never once did he discuss Davenport with any of us that were hammering loudly and clearly at his door; His defense was always policy as he interpreted it.

This statement is laughable in the light of several things. First, the amount of money that has been spent for legal fees by Wilson and the Church in the Davenport matter, as well as the E. G. White Prophet matter is a well kept secret but said to be astronomical. Second, all the officers of the church have been insured by the organization and would be protected in case they were ever sued while in office, Third, that "ain't the way the General Conference Risk Management Service saw it when they wrote in 1982:

The speculation is that millions have been spent in the last few years for any and every law suit that the church either needed for its own sake or to protect its money or image in the face of mounting threats. The letter from Risk Management concluded with a plea and warning, and an admonition:

I have often wondered since reading the letter what happened to its author, Charles Frederick, and what kind of flak he received from Wilson for it. Wilson left no doubt in his letter to me that compliance with church leaders and their dictums was the only solution he would accept from any worker:

It seemed to me that this is where Wilson tipped his hand. There had been no meetings for the public that the Conference was not aware of and had not participated in. Wilson himself had called the private meeting in Glendale that year and was only stung because tapes were released telling what was going on. I had circulated no material that both the committee he had chosen and the White Estate had not seen and in some cases encouraged me to send. I had not even written my book The White Lie yet and indeed there is no reason that it ever had to be written if the church had handled the matter as Christians in friendly and intelligent dialogue. I had not openly or privately challenged the church in anything concerning doctrine, or its faith, but had openly and often challenged its business practices as he knew, and Davenport was hanging like a Damocles sword over both of our heads. Yet he refused to discuss the matter with those of us that could have helped. Time was to supply his reason.

None of us could hold back the tide that was flowing against the church and Dr. Davenport. The law suits against John Adam and Sydney Allen were dropped when both men got to Federal Court; and Davenport would have been forced, if he continued the suit, to open his records in both cases, an act he simply could not do and survive. Already, Adam had discovered that several of the properties for which the conference claimed first mortgages happened not to be owned by the Doctor. ¹¹ On July 22, 1981, he filed for bankruptcy under Chapter 11 of the Federal Bankruptcy laws.

The headlines in The Los Angeles Times of July 25, 1981 said, "Massive Church Fund Loss Feared." ¹² The Sacramento Bee of August 29, under a byline of "Credit Squeeze" said, "Adventists Face a Troubled Future.' ¹³ The news media across the nation had much to say and write about the Adventist scandal. One of the strongest was Davenport's own home town paper, The Long Beach Telegram of August 2. Among other things they said:

One of the best jobs of reporting most of the facts in the Davenport case was done by The Sunday Sun, San Bernardino, California. In a series of four articles they covered some of the workings of the church with Davenport using charts and graphs. Some of their conclusions were:

* Adventist laymen and spiritual leaders for years invested millions with Davenport in the form of loans repaid at interest rates two to three times the prevailing rate.

* Adventist organizations also loaned Davenport millions, and for years were regularly repaid. But property records show Davenport seemed to repay loans with funds from other loans.

* Many of Davenport's transactions with Adventist entities and church officials seemed to violate the church's own investment and conflict-of-interest guidelines.

* Some Adventist investments officers made personal deals with Davenport at substantially higher interest rates - up to 80 percent - than their church entities received.

* Some church loans to Davenport were unsecured, and other loans were secured by third and fourth trust deeds and trust deeds for property valued at considerable less than the loan. . . .

* At a time when Davenport was deeply in debt - failing to repay many loans - he and his second wife, Patricia, made personal bank withdrawals of $1. 8 million. . . .

* The Sun found that for at least the past two decades, millions from Adventist trust funds were invested with Davenport in the form of loans. In addition, church officials have reported that five church entities, which they didn't identify, loaned approximately $800,000 to Davenport from tithe funds intended for the church ministry. . . .

* The Sun found 13 key church officials - conference presidents, trust directors, treasurers and others - who had personal business dealings with Davenport while their church entities were making loans to the developer. ¹⁵

What the Sun also reported confirmed my suspicions that the church would have lost millions more if they had not been stopped. They spelled out in detail why that would have been so:

In a January 1981 letter, Davenport stated: "The church is too dumb to take recognition of the fact that I have channeled between $10 million and $20 million into their coffers with never a cent lost . . ."

Six months later, Davenport was near bankruptcy and turning to the Adventist church for a bailout.

On the morning of June 23, a Davenport office memorandum shows he spoke to Wayne Massengill of Keene, Texas, and Portland, Ore., who was then a Southwest trust director for the church, a personal investor with Davenport, and a former church trust director in the Northwest.

Davenport asked Massengill for help in raising $5 million from the church to keep other denominational funds invested with him from being lost or greatly decreased in pay-off value. Minutes later, Davenport spoke with James Hopps of Boring, Ore., legal counsel for the church's Northwest Conference, according to another memo.

Hopps, a year earlier, had renewed a $82,000 loan to Davenport repayable at 80% interest. In March 1981, Davenport - seeking admission into the exclusive Hillcrest Country Club in Los Angeles - had written to Hopps for a letter of recommendation that would describe Davenport's 35 years of church work. In June 1981 Davenport explained he would be forced to file for bankruptcy unless various church conferences loaned him the $5 million. He offered to sign over his properties to the church.

Hopps said he'd put together a plan, Davenport's memo of the call shows. Three weeks later, Davenport still was piecing together a bail-out plan.

On July 17 he wrote Ellaworth S. Reile of Lincoln, Neb., president of the Mid-American Union Conference. Reile had $15,000 in loans to Davenport and had been his partner in three business ventures. Davenport told Reile he would take a General Conference or a union conference representative into his office to assure repayment of the loan he needed to stave off the banks and bankruptcy proceedings. Hinting at the repercussions for the church if he went bankrupt, Davenport wrote of the bailout: "This would totally stop what I think would be a tremendous run on the church, as well as (stop a) cutting off of trust funds and, worst of all, even tithing, which none of us wants to see."

Apparently the church rejected the bailout package. ¹⁶

Perhaps the church officials that I had contacted did not know at the time that they received my letters that time was short as far as Davenport was concerned, but certainly Davenport knew it, and when his letters to Pierson and others are read in the light of that knowledge he does not seem "such a hell of a guy." In fact, the reading of his assets from the court- records makes astonishing reading for a man and wife that must have known they were about to become poor. The list is long and intriguing in view of the fact that the examiner said he could not locate any of the jewelry listed.

Books and records in the custody of the Trustee indicate substantial pieces of jewelry were owned by Donald J. and Patricia A. Davenport at July 21, 1981. However, an inventory of such jewelry and a valuation of the several pieces have not been made inasmuch as the location of the jewelry is unknown.

This schedule includes information listed from records available from an insurance brokerage firm, Sutro Insurance Agency, which underwrote the property coverage for the subject jewelry.

Comments:

location of the aforementioned furs is unknown. ¹⁷

Why the list is so intriguing is that the church the Doctor represented on so many committees and bank accounts has been fighting a rear guard action for over a hundred years over its members even wearing a small plain wedding band. It was obvious that the Doctor and his wife, Patty, did not put much stock in the statement from their church prophet that "Not one penny should be spent for a circlet of gold to testify that we are married." ¹⁸

While the list of the assets of the Adventist Divines were not listed in the court records, they were not doing so bad either. John Adam had done a very good job of sleuthing and had come up with several items concerning the leaders.

1. That at least six of the Union Presidents had some connection financially with Dr. Davenport.

2. That always they received more interest than the church they represented.

3. That at times, that interest ran from 50 to 80% depending upon the deal involved.

4. That several of the presidents were actually business partners with Davenport and enjoyed some tax benefits.

5. That Davenport was able to put some of his own men in positions in the Conference where the wills and trusts could be more easily accessible to him.

6. That the wheeling and dealing did not stop with some of the leaders with the Davenport matter but spread to the medical field. ¹⁹

That is was illegal and immoral to do what they were doing, both parties knew, for Davenport had written to Jack Price, one of his favorites:

When the Architectural Digest of November, 1981, came out showing one of the many Davenport projects and said among other things:

It was very clear that Donald and Patty, as well as the Adventist Divines were having a great deal of fun with the church's money, even if the poor and needy that give it through the church were not.

1. Walter Rea to General Conference Officers, 1979.

2. Walter Rea to S. D. Bietz, February, 1979.

3. Walter Rea, "Who Profits from the Prophet," Free Inquiry, Vol. 4, no. 4 (Fall, 1984).

4. Walter Rea to Neal Wilson, May 29, 1980.

5. Neal Wilson to Walter Rea, July 2, 1980, p. 1.

6. Ibid., p. 2.

7. Ibid., p. 2.

8. Charles O. Frederick, President, Gencon Risk Management Service for the protection of Denominational Assets, to Presidents and Treasurers, Conferences and Institutions, North American Division, p. 1.

9. Ibid., p. 5.

10. Neal Wilson to Walter Rea, July 2, 1980, pp. 3,4.

11. Tom Dybdahl, "Bad Business: The Davenport Fiasco," Spectrum, Vol. 12, No. 1, (September, 1981) p. 54.

12. Doris A. Byron and John Dart, "Massive Church Fund Loss Feared," Los Angeles Times, July 25, 1981.

13. Marjorie Hyer, The Washington Post, "Credit Squeeze, Adventist Face a Troubled Future," The Sacramento Bee, August 29, 1981.

14. Doreen Carvajal, "Seventh-day Adventist's Empire Collapses," Long Beach Telegram, August 2, 1981.

15. Art Wong and James Nickles, "After the Fall: An Adventist's Bankrupt Empire," The Sunday Sun, San Bernardino, California, May 30, 1982.

16. Art Wong and James Nickles, "What will Church find in Bankruptcy' 5 Wake," The Sun, San Bernardino, California, June 2, 1982.

17. United States Bankruptcy Court, Central District of California, Chapter II Case No. LA 81-09060-BR, SCHEDULE 33, Schedule of Jewelry -List Number 1 and 2, pp 1-8; Schedule of Furs.

18. Ellen G. White, Testimonies to Ministers and Gospel Workers, (Mountain View: PPPA, 1923), p. 181.

19. SDA PRESS RELEASE, Published by The Adventist Layman Council, Collegedale, Tennessee. Vol. 1, no. 8,9; Vol. II, no. 1; Plus others on file with no Vol. or Numbers listed.

20. Donald Davenport to Jack Price, August 22, 1980. (Copied from SDA Press Release, Vol. 1, no. 9).

21. Gerrold A. Turnbull, "Classical Resonance, The Framework of History in a Contemporary Setting," Architectural Digest, November 1981, pp. 142-149.

It has been clear to those who wanted to know that Adventism has and continues to have serious flaws in structure and procedure. It is a closed shop as far as the layman and membership is concerned. It is strictly a party of the clergy, the super salesmen of the psychic, as I have pointed out in The White Lie: ¹ It is a system formed by those salesmen, run by those salesmen and operated and controlled by and for those salesmen. The layman has little or nothing to say or do with its operation. In the eyes of the clergy they have one function and that is to supply the money to run the system.

In 1969, while still a pastor in the church, I had written to Elder Blaker, Pacific Union President, stating some of these concerns and asking for at least a look into some ideas that would make a more open church. I felt then, as I do now, that the church was choking for lack of openness and participation from the bottom up. The letter was one of special pleading:

As with most of my letters, ideas, suggestions and pleadings, the letter and ideas that they represented were ignored in favor of arbitrary control and arrogant supervision. In fact, it was this same approach that caused the other problem that I was involved in, the matter of Ellen G. White and her role in the church. It was with the hope we might have some openness and dialogue that most of us that were doing work in this area continued. But that was a forlorn naive hope that simply could not be if one understands Adventism.

In order to understand the whole of the Davenport problem it is necessary to understand some of the problems of the Ellen G. White controversy. In both areas, the same men control, make decisions, ignore counsel, and sack dissenters. In both cases, if laymen had played any significant part, if the facts had not been kept from them, the results would have been much different. In my case the two problems merged because of my special knowledge in both areas and my desire and efforts to inform the church as a whole in order to effect change. How foolish I was to believe that anyone or anything could change the leaders of Adventism to any position that might threaten their control or position of power.

When Walter Martin wrote The Kingdom of the Cults in the 1960s, his definition of a cult was very gentle. He said:

Martin goes on to list three major cults - Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormons, and Christian Scientists - but leaves out Seventh-day Adventists entirely. In fact, he defends his choice of exclusion by adding to the Appendix a section entitled, "The Puzzle of Seventh-day Adventism." ⁴ In his second chapter, "Scaling the Language Barrier," Martin refers directly and specifically to Seventh-day Adventists, but does not seem to perceive it:

Had Martin's definition been more precise and his observations more astute, surely he would have included Seventh-day Adventists. He seems to sense this error of judgment years later in an interview in the July 1983 Adventist Currents, when he reviews his past contacts with the Adventist and concludes that either he was misled by some of the spokesmen of the church or they really did not have the authority to represent the true picture of the church. ⁶

It is understandable that Martin should fall into the error of misreading the facts about Adventists. Many others have done the same. It is because the inquisitor is often led to deal with the promises of Seventh-day Adventists and not their practices. Martin knew some Adventist ministers as friends; they were not fanatics. He was fooled by the fantasies he was told; he was never shown the facts. The language of the cult as used by Adventists colored his vision; very seldom, if ever, are the practitioners, such as the ministers of the flock, or laymen, allowed to speak for the church. Rather the seminarian, the theologian, the institutional employee, or the retired monastic mind is the spokesman for what is called "Adventist Truth." Because of this forced practice, the true picture of Adventism is seldom seen or known by the non-Adventist. This was the problem for Walter Martin, and he seems to sense it when he says years later that he was lied to by some in the church and double-crossed by most concerning his agreements with the church about the distribution of his book The Truth about Seventh-day Adventists.

This exchange was printed in Adventist Currents:

In contrast, Anthony Hoekema had no difficulties whatsoever in recognizing Adventism for what it was and said so in The Four Major Cults, published in 1963, where he lists Adventism as one of the four. He had no trouble doing so because his Chapter 6, "The Distinctive Traits of the Cult," is neither gentle or evasive, but clear, to the point, and inclusive. His operational definitions are such that anyone can use them to evaluate whatever cult non-cult he wishes. He lists these traits as follows:

He then goes on to apply these five traits to the Seventh-day Adventists. Their extra-scriptural authority is Ellen White, their prophet. Their justification before God is accomplished by works. Christ is interpreted by Ellen White through her writings. No scholar is allowed to advance any idea of importance that does not agree with any statement she has ever made. The Adventists have always taught that they are the exclusive community of the saved and that he or she must be an Adventist to enter the kingdom if he or she has ever had the opportunity to hear the church's message. Finally, the book The Great Controversy, again written by Ellen White, makes Adventism the central figure in closing events. ⁹

Adventists have in the past and at the present denied all five traits or categories, but as always it is the language barrier, or the use the cults make of theological terminology that throws the unaware off. While denying that any of the traits exist in their church, the keepers of the Adventist press, the thought-molders of the ministry, and the public relation experts go right on selling a religion that exhibits all five of them to the membership through the church press and programs.

Like most conservative organizations, there is little freedom of expression or choice for Adventists concerning attitudes or actions that conflict with church thought or tradition. Because of the belief that it is wrong to marry outside the church, there is little influx of ideas from other individuals or groups or other forms of expression of belief. No one teaches in Adventist colleges, academies or grade schools except denominationally trained workers and believers. Even the administration of the colleges handpicks its teachers. Thus free expression and the exchange of opinions are effectively controlled by the system. If the label "church" was stripped from the organization, it could be seen as a tightly controlled political organization using the people's money to control those same people. The recent studies of the political structure of the church would seem to confirm this view. ¹⁰

These observations have been confirmed over the years, but recent events can be cited for evidence that all is not well within the structure. In the early seventies a great deal of information came to the fore concerning the writings of Ellen White, the church's prophet. This information was conveyed to readers of Spectrum, an Adventist journal for scholars in 1980 by Donald McAdams, president of the Texas-based Southwestern Adventist College:

Ronald Numbers, a professor in the church's School of Medicine at Loma Linda, California, kicked off the smoldering controversy over Ellen's reliability and authority with his book Prophetess of Health in 1976. ¹² It caused great consternation among Adventist leaders and was discussed widely by Adventist scholars, and even received some national attention. The church wrote a defense against it and distributed it to its membership. It was not that the material was so new that got Numbers into trouble and later fired. It was not that he proved that others before White had written what she said she had been told by God in visions. It was not even that he had discovered that large parts of her "visions" on health had been lifted from others, often word for word. What did isolate Numbers from the system was the attitude he expressed in his Preface:

That did it! Those thoughts and ideals might be acceptable rules of thought for scholarly research, but Numbers should have known that knowingly or unknowingly he was violating the cardinal rule of Adventist scholarship, which was that one must have a presupposition, a born or cultivated bias, to deal with any of the facts and ideas concerning denominational history. Those presuppositions and biases must be made to color the Adventist scene.

There was another shocker in Ronald Numbers' book besides the lack of presuppositions-- his casting doubt on Ellen White's integrity as well as her credibility. The church is involved in health in a big way, with Ellen White, directed by God, of course, getting the credit. In one of her strongest health "visions" she received the instructions from heaven to abstain from flesh foods of all kinds. So strong was she on this issue that one of the badges of Adventists is vegetarianism. She is quoted in her testimonies as saying:

Yet in spite of the fact that Adventists put vegetarianism on such a high moral and spiritual plain because of Ellen White and her writings, Numbers charges that White ate meat much of her life, a charge the White Estate has acknowledged. Numbers refers to Willie, Ellen White's son, when he says:

Such a double standard led many of the readers of Number's book to wonder why, if as White claimed, God gave her instruction in these matters, didn't she follow His advice, or did she know all along that God had said nothing of

the kind?

Another disruption followed on the heels of Ronald Numbers' book that not only questioned the integrity of Ellen White and her ideas but the reliability of her theology. Many of those familiar to Adventist history, such as A. F. Ballenger, W. W. Prescott, L.R. Conradi, and W. W. Fletcher, had in times past raised questions concerning the main pillars of Adventist doctrine, such as the twenty-three hundred days, the heavenly sanctuary, and the pre-Advent judgment. Now it was Desmond Ford's turn. Ford, chairman of the Theology Department of Avondale College in Australia, was exchange professor at Pacific Union College in Angwin, California when he accepted an invitation to speak to the local forum chapter on October 27, 1979. At that meeting he brought to his listeners' attention the inconsistencies of the church's position. Martin and Donald Barnhouse had determined and stated years before that they considered the Adventist judgment just another example of the face-saving double-talk employed by the church, considering that the Millerite movement of 1844 had failed with its date setting to produce the Second Coming of Christ. What the Adventists had invented was the theology that when Christ did not come-- and, as they believed, the door of probation was closed for the world-- that they had misunderstood the whole concept. So now they felt that God had hidden the real truth to test the believers as to their sincerity and that now the judgment was really going on in the heavenly sanctuary above, where no one could see it, thus not being able to prove that the idea was right or wrong. The outcome of the Ford review was never in doubt. He, like Numbers before him, did not bring his suppositions to the committee at Glacier View, where the meeting of his peers took place. They demanded his resignation with a strong statement in defense of Ellen White and the church's position:

It was clear from the meeting that there was to be no honest inquiry into Adventist belief or practice. It was clear that Ford, for all his degrees, including two Ph.D's, was out and that the scholars who had taken part in his review were only allowed to be there to provide support for the decision concerning him that had been made long before the event. It also was a remarkable display of cultic double-talk when the church told the world that Ellen White was a lesser light and Bible was the church's first authority.

Raymond F. Cottrell, formerly associate editor of the Adventist Review, the Adventist in-house organ, protested:

Once again the Adventist church was brought to the door of truth and inquiry by one or more of its scholars, but church leaders chose to keep that door shut. Once again they were confronted with honest men seeking honest answers, but chose to take the popular, dishonest course. As always, the super salesmen of the system were willing to use the language of the cult to deceive the unaware and ignorant. But this time the price was much higher. The learned, the talented, and the moneyed people of the church began to raise questions and to withhold their services and funds. Questions surfaced not only about the integrity of Ellen White but her reliability in doctrinal matters. After all, in over one hundred and forty years, not one major or minor denomination had accepted the Adventist theory of investigative judgment, and many thought that over half of their own theologians did not accept it either.

Two of the biggest explosions for the church were set off in the 1980s by Ronald Graybill and this writer. The latter episode focused worldwide attention on the misuse and abuse of the materials handled by the church. The Graybill affair reviewed for all who wished to see the control exercised by the White Estate - the keepers of the keys in all matters of the Adventist prophet, Ellen White - over the facts and fables handed out since the church's founding.

Ronald Graybill had been a research assistant for thirteen years and was designated an associate secretary of the Ellen G. White Estate. On April 1983, Graybill went before the committee at John Hopkins University for his doctrinal dissertation, "The Power of Prophecy: Ellen G. White and the Women Religious Founders of the Nineteenth Century." He was successful in that defense but it was to be the last of his victories. He had placed a five year embargo on his manuscript, but without his consent a copy of his work was obtained and circulated throughout the church world-wide.

The results were predictable and immediate. The back page of the November 1983 Adventist Review announced to its readers:

Fast on the heels of the article came another in Christianity Today, "Another Scholar Is in Jeopardy over Ellen White." ¹⁹ In the article they theorize:

Douglas Hackleman, editor of the magazine Adventist Currents, which holds the nontraditional view of White, calls the issue of Graybill's procedural violations a "red herring." ""The real problem," Hackleman says, "is that for most Adventists, the dissertation will have the effect of demythologizing Ellen White." Hackleman asserts that a decision by the foundation not to retain Graybill would testify to its tendencies to hide the facts about White. ²⁰

The process of "demythologizing Ellen White" had gotten into high hear in the preceding years, but Graybill's work brought out several points and new material to support these facts: (1) skepticism about Ellen White's prophetic gifts, (2) doubts about her character and integrity, and (3) that Ellen White might have produced visions as they were needed to maintain her authority. The dissertation also suggests that she was somewhat of a witch doctor, calling the wrath of God on all those who refused her instructions or exhortations.

But Graybill's real problem was not, as others before him had said, his lack of presupposition and his candor. It was that as a privileged member of the White Estate, he had used material that had not been released for public scrutiny. Much of what he used had been classified by the White Estate has secret, or sensitive, or embarrassing to persons still living, or, as in the case of national defense, top secret. He had violated the basic rule of the White Estate, and that was to go public with material that Arthur White, the grandson of Ellen White and the real keeper of the keys since his grandmother's death, had forbidden to be seen.

Neal Wilson, General Conference President of the Seventh-day Adventists, tried to make the situation sound spiritual when he reported to the church:

Even the intellectuals in the church tried to save Graybill with praise and special pleadings.

What is easy to over-look is that Graybill first took the material without permission, an act he had criticized in others. Then he put a five-year hold on the manuscript, showing that he either did not want the church to know what he knew or was determined that they shouldn't know. Finally, when he was cornered by circumstances he created himself, he ran for cover to keep his position. Surely these are not the actions of an honorable hero. It would seem that Graybill became less than honest in order to save a dishonest position.

My phone started ringing at 6 A.M. Thursday, October 23, 1980, and, although to a lesser extent, it has not stopped ringing since. The cause of all this activity was an article by John Dart, religion editor of the Los Angeles Times. John had interviewed me several days before concerning the work of Ellen White. After taking pictures and looking over the research, Dart went back to his office. Before publication he called and asked if I considered White a plagiarist, to which I replied that the research would indicate that she was. And that was the way the article came out that Thursday, with banner headlines saying "Plagiarism Found in Prophet Books." ²³

The article was supposed to have been carried on page 17 of the religion section, but instead was on pages 1, 3, and 21. It was later syndicated in more than one thousand newspapers and reported on radio and television around the world. It was not the first time the charge had been made, but the first time the charge and the evidence had been popularized or sensationalized. Dart had been informed that I was the authority at the time on the "copy work" in Ellen White's writings, but it seemed that even he was surprised at the coverage his story was given.

The church had been made aware of the charges in a special meeting in Glendale, California, in that same year. There, after seeing some of the evidence, the committee of eighteen scholars from across the United States had decided by vote that the evidence was alarming - that is, that it was new and significant and should receive additional study - and that the people of the church should be told.²⁴ It was also agreed that scholars should work with me to find out the extent of the copying and that the committee should meet from time to time to compare facts.

The committee acted, however, without the consent or blessing of the high administration and its council, called "PREXAD." Less than two months later it gave its report to the study committee in a letter, which said in part:

In essence, the PREXAD committee nullified the reasons the committee of scholars had been called in the first place and took away the right of the people paying the bills to know. This was a common practice and had been done in past cases of this nature and was used later to keep the membership in ignorance concerning the financial scandal of the Davenport Post Office deals and the kickbacks and payoffs to some of the leading clergy. ²⁶ It really did not surprise those of us who knew some of the members of that group especially its leading adviser and the president of the General Conference, Neal Wilson, for he had written to me, a letter already referred to, saying:

But the rumor was true. One of the members of the president's committee, Elder Bradford, had visited me in Los Angeles months before and had stated that every time he walked down the hall of the General Conference someone came out of a door muttering my name, both in relation to the Davenport affair and the Ellen G. White cover-up. So, I was fired in November 1980, and the church hired as many lawyers as it could afford to protect the names and positions of those who supported the church's pronouncements, whether they were right or wrong. For me it was over, after thirty-six years of ducking and weaving whenever I told a truth that the church did not want revealed. Once again, truth was on the scaffold and wrong was on the throne in Adventism. A few months later my book The White Lie was published and received additional attention from the public press. Said the New York Times:

Also Time Magazine stated:

All over the world, members were discouraged from reading it, and the Adventist Book Stores refused to order it. In Australia, where we lectured in behalf of the local lay groups, the people were told:

At the same time, and often on the same page, the church would advertise a book entitled Omega, written by Lewis Walton:

The main thrust of the Walton book seemed to be that anyone with any "outside" educational learning or an IQ over 85 seemed to be a threat to the church, which leaves one wondering where that puts "Walton and church leadership. My studies and The White Lie laid open for all to see several new problems concerning the Adventist Church. With the Adventists always using the argument that a prophet and its people should be tested and judged by their fruits, why had the Adventists and Mrs. White failed the tests so badly? The Davenport affair should have clearly showed that a portion of the leadership and clergy were dishonest, if not corrupted by bribes and kickbacks. Ellen White had often lied about her visions and the source of her materials or, even worse, could not tell the difference between truth and fiction in her value structure. She had even written to the flock at the very time of her enormous plagiarizing that:

Yet, over 1,200 volumes were found in her library, and the works of those "speculations" were copied by her in the name of God and vision. If respect for human dignity, human rights, difference of opinion, and open discussion of issues is a mark of a viable healthy society, then Adventism has failed the test. Finally, credibility both for Ellen White and her people has been tarnished, perhaps for all time. Even the admission in 1984 that perhaps 50 percent or more of what was written in Great Controversy, the keystone in the Adventist arch of theology, was copied from others ³⁴ was only a half-truth. They referred to only the historical sections copied. If the material that was not historical but theological and devotional was added to her copy program, the rate would be more like 80 to 90 percent. In the fall issue of Free Inquiry, Vern Bullough, Dean of Natural Science at the State University College of New York at Buffalo, gives his ideas about some of the principles of humanist tradition:

In no way could Adventists or Adventism qualify as being concerned with the individual soul or spirit. Any idea, principle, creed, or faith that cannot stand the test of inquiry or discussion should not be said to represent any truth, small or large. How could it? Authoritarian control is not faith or reason; it is simply tyranny over the human mind and spirit.

So who profits from the Adventist prophet? Surely not the world at large, which after more than 140 years of evangelism, propaganda, and promotion has accepted nothing that she wrote or said. Not the other religions of the world, which still have their own profits to care for, their own programs to push. Who profits? The administrators, the fanatics, and the system. The administrators who, without regard for love or human values, drive the people before them like flocks to a sheep dip. The fanatics, who refuse to allow any truth or interpretation of truth to prevail over their own conscience, full of fears and foibles. The system, whose pronouncements remain moral, while its thinking remains amoral and its actions immoral.

No matter what is written or recorded about Ellen White as the Adventist prophet, no matter how many rhetorical games are played with her "inspiration," very few members follow her instruction in much of anything. Her counsel is used as a whipping post for fanatics to tie their fellow members to, the easier to torture them with their judgments. Such a practice also allows administrators to piously posture while they largely ignore her instruction in regard to their own lives. The Davenport debacle, ³⁶ with other examples of mismanagement, shows clearly that Ellen White no longer controls the Adventist membership. The administrators do. But those same administrators, by abuse of their trust and in order to obtain liberty for themselves and license for their friends, have lynched the very woman they profess to adore. Adventism must now either rescue itself from the fanatical course its leadership has steered it toward or forever lose its viability in the community of human beings. Time will tell if resuscitation will come too late.

1. Walter Rea, The White Lie, (Turlock, CA., M & R Publications, 1982).

2. Walter Rea to Elder W. J. Blacker, June 20, 1969.

3. Walter R. Martin, The Kingdom of the Cults, (Bethany Fellowship, Revised Edition, August, 1977) p. 11.

4. Ibid., p. 360.

5. Ibid., p. 18.

6. "Currents Interview: Walter Martin," Adventist Currents, (Mars Hill Publications, Inc., Loma Linda, California) Vol. 1, No. 1. July, 1983, pp. 15-18.

7. Ibid., p. 19.

8. Anthony A. Hoekema, The Four Major Cults, (William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, Grand Rapids, Michigan, November, 1981) pp. 378-385.

9. Ellen G. White, The Great Controversy, (Mountain View: Pacific Press Publishing Association, 1888).

10. James W. Walters, "The need for Structural Change," Spectrum 14, no. 4, (March, 1984) pp. 14-17. SEE ALSO, Raymond F. Cottrell, "The Varieties of Church Structure," Spectrum 14, no. 4, (March, 1984) pp. 40-53.

11. Donald H. McAdams, "Shifting Views of Inspiration: Ellen G. White Studies in the 1970s," Spectrum 10, no. 4, (March 1980) p. 27.

12. Ronald L. Numbers, Prophetess of Health: A study Of Ellen G. White, (Harper & Row Publishers, New York, 1976).

13. Ibid., preface, pp. XI, XII.

14. Ellen G. White, Testimonies for the Church, Vol. 9, (Review and Herald Publishing Association, Washington D. C., 1885-1909), vol. 9, pp. 159-160.

15. Ronald L. Numbers, Prophetess of Health: A study of Ellen G. White, (Harper & Row Publishers, New York, 1976) p. 172.

16. Raymond F. Cottrell, "The Sanctuary Review Committee and its New Consensus," Spectrum 11, no. 2 (November, 1980) pp. 2-26.

17. Ibid., p. 23.

18. Robert W. Olson, "White Estate staffer explains dissertation," Adventist Review, (Review and Herald Publishing Association, Washington, D.C., November 24, 1983) p. 31

19. Randy Frame, "Another Adventist Scholar Is in Jeopardy over Ellen White," Christianity Today, (December 16, 1983).

20. Ibid.

21. Neal C. Wilson, "White Estate Staffer Reassigned," Adventist Review (February 2, 1984) p. 31.

22. "Responses to Graybill's Departure from the White Estate," Spectrum 14, no. 4, (March 1984) pp. 4,5.

23. John Dart, "Plagiarism Found in Prophet Books," Los Angeles Times (October 23, 1980), p. 1.

24. Glendale Committee, "Ellen G. White and Her Sources," tapes, (January 28-29, 1980).

25. Letter from Office of Vice President, General Conference of SDA's, to Walter Blehm, Pacific Union Conference President, and Harold Calkins, Southern California Conference President, March 20, 1980.

26. Art Wong and James Nickles, "After the Fall: An Adventist's bankrupt empire," The Sunday Sun, San Bernardino, California, (4 articles, May 30, 31, June 1, 2, 1982). -

27. Neal C. Wilson, President of General Conference of SDA's to Walter Rea, July 2, 1980.

28. Kenneth A. Briggs, "7th-Day Adventists Face Change and Dissent," New York Times, (November 6, 1982) p. 1.

29. Richard N. Ostling, "The Church of Liberal Borrowings," Time Magazine, (August 2, 1982) p. 49.

30. R. W. Taylor, "Statement on Walter Rea," Australasian Record, (October 12, 1981) p. 13. (Note: An SDA publication for Australian membership).

31. Ibid.

32. Ellen G. White, Testimonies for the Church, 9 vol. (Review and Herald Publishing Association, 1885-1909, Washington, D.C.) vol. 8, p. 307:

33. Ellen G. White, The Ministry of Healing, (Pacific Press Publishing Association, Mountain View, California, 1905), p. 442.

34. Robert W. Olson, "Ellen G. White's use of historical sources in The Great Controversy," Adventist Review, (Review and Herald Publishing Association, Washington, D.C., February 23, 1984), p. 5.

35. Vern Bullough, "A Personal Humanist Manifesto," Free Inquiry, Vol 3, no. 4, pp. 26, 27.

36. Art Wong and James Nickels, "After the Fall: An Adventist's Bankrupt Empire," The Sunday Sun, San Bernardino, California, (4 articles, May 30, 31, June 1, 2, 1982). (Note: Additiona1 information can be found in Spectrum, Vol. 12, no. 1 and no. 3; Vol 3, no. 3 and no. 4).

It was obvious from the beginning, to anyone who had the facts, that both the Davenport investigation and my trial for telling The Los Angeles Times that Mrs. White had copied her works, were a farce and fraud, staged for public consumption only. No justice was intended, no punishment was meant to be fair, and no recognition of facts made any changes or were meant to be seriously considered.

The same system sent some of the same men to both events. By their dual roll these divines, often consumed by human greed and driven by the lust for power, became the pirates of privilege by protecting themselves and their system. What they really did was effectively destroy not only confidence in man but even tarnished God Himself. After all, it is well written in stone over the Los Angeles County Courts building, "he who violates his oath profanes the dignity of faith itself."

The January 23 edition of The Sunday Sun had reported what was suppose to have been President Neal Wilson's finest hour. They listed several things he had said and promised:

1. Wilson reported a recent visit with special FBI agents investigating Davenport's bankrupt investment empire . . . .

2. Wilson said the FBI probe - at the apparent behest of the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Internal Revenue Service and other federal agencies - seems focused on charges of misrepresentation and violations

of usury laws.

3. Of the church's own probe, Wilson reported that about 50 top church officers will be publicly disciplined, perhaps within six weeks. And some officers whose actions were so "reprehensible," will be fired and their ministerial credentials withdrawn.

4. He pledged to "clean up this matter to the best of my ability."

5. On Tuesday, Wilson had issued a statement announcing that about 95 officials would be disciplined. ¹

It was a star performance but was really not to be taken very seriously. That same "reformer" Wilson had been quoted in The Religious News Service of October:

And that is exactly how it turned out in the end. None of the drastic promises came to pass as punishment for the guilty.

It was even more clear what was going to be the end of the matter when Wilson's article appeared in The Adventist Review, the church's official paper:

This was cynicism at its worst. Those officers of the General Conference that were to have the final say were some of the ones that were partners and investors in the Davenport scandal. Why would anyone expect them to vote themselves punishment or expect them to put themselves out of office, as Wilson had threatened to do? But it all sounded so grand and proper when Wilson ended his holy crusade by quoting from John Harris, which had come by way of Ellen White, the church's prophet: "Enfeebled and defective as it may appear, the church is the one object upon which God bestows in a special sense His supreme regard." ⁴ Harris didn't have the Adventist church in mind when he wrote that statement but Wilson and Ellen White did.

About the only ones that were satisfied at the actions of Wilson and the church were those that were covered up by their non-action. Perhaps the attorney said it best when he wrote:

On October 29, 1982 after the names of the committee had been made public, felt impressed that one more letter would not hurt my case and might help the church toward a sane approach to justice and integrity. So I wrote to the members of the investigation committee the following:

But it was all for naught. To this day not one of the members of the committee has expressed any private or public interest in such a contact or any of my suggestions. There is a great deal of posturing in Adventism but very little progression toward honest action. John Adam surely had a point and some insights when he recorded:

Why not? Those same union men involved in the Davenport matter had put Wilson in the position he held to begin with. If there was to be any mass firing, Wilson would have to go with the others if they were to go. So no union man was fired and some were even exalted.

The events surrounding my firing were even more bizarre than the Davenport investigation and overlapped that scandal all the way. No reasonable, knowledgeable person can believe that the matter of E. G. White and her copy work was the main cause of my dismissal after 36 years in the ministry of the church. It was only a convenient "holy cause" to cover up a much more malignant motive and design.

After the January, 1980 meeting in Glendale, the Presidents Advisory Committee had mandated that if any more work was to be done on Ellen G. White and her plagiarizing, it should be done by others. That "others" was Fred Veltman of Pacific Union College, who to this day, four years later, has produced nothing for the public to view. It is doubtful in view of the past record of the church if Fred's full study and comments will ever be public knowledge. I was ordered to disassociate myself completely from the research for the present and the future members. Though I was dissatisfied with this ultimatum, I wrote the Committee:

The letter was written in all sincerity and does establish, I believe, several points:

A. That I was trying to work with and through the church.

B. That I was not defying or fighting the structure as some later claimed.

C. That I still wanted to be a part of the structure and work within it.

D. That my work as a pastor had not suffered, as some were asserting. This

character assassination became more pronounced as my work became better known.

E. It was felt necessary at the time to lay out what my work in the church had been in order to combat

those that were misguidedly criticizing it.

At the same time I was receiving such slurs, the treasurer of the conference had written me:

While I was impressed with Walden's concern at the time, I did not understand the "dubious" remark inasmuch as Wilson had felt it important enough to form a committee to hear it and relevant enough to have a Ph.D. give it further years of study. I know now that "dubious" means any study the church does not want or approve of.

The only other item of importance that happened before my November termination was the letter from the General Conference and Elder Wilson. (See Chapter 3, footnote #10 and Chapter 4, footnote #27. It was an ominous letter, if one knows anything about Wilson. If one rereads it and takes the opposite view to each item he mentions including my not being fired, the picture becomes very clear and also reveals the true Wilson. With that gut feeling that all was not well and the end was near, even before The Los Angeles Times article, I wrote a reply on July 26, 1980, four months before my termination:

Far more important and significant than the letter from Wilson were the events of September 1979. They didn't seem all that important at the time, but perhaps more than any other week, those events were to shape Adventist history of the future and leave their impressions for all time.

We had scheduled a meeting in September 1979 in the Long Beach Church to make public for the first time facts and new materials that proved that Ellen White copied most of her works. In fact information would indicate that she didn't do much of it herself, but others did it in her name often without her knowledge. A panel of ministers with advanced degrees had been selected to answer questions from the audience that might be raised by the research and presentation. The president of the Conference, Harold Calkins, was also invited to give the closing remarks so long as he operated within the time allotted to him. Several attempts were made officially to stop the meeting, and even Bradford, vice president of the General Conference, flew out to add pressure to a "cease-and-desist" order. A meeting was called in the President's office in Glendale in which I was summoned, and at my insistence Jerry Wiley, my attorney friend, and the one who was to chair the coming Long Beach meeting, was also asked to attend. It was only after several hours of bickering and shadow-boxing and a statement by Wiley that the meeting was allowed to end with the conditions that the following Sabbath the show would go on in the Long Beach Church. Jerry promised that as chairman he would certainly not let the meeting get out of hand and that with both Robert Olson of the White Estate and Harold Calkins representing the Conference present, surely they could handle any questions or problems that would arise; Jerry's final observation was that The Los Angeles Times might wonder out loud why an Adventist minister was not allowed to talk about Ellen White in an Adventist church on the Adventist Sabbath if the meeting was canceled.

But the events that astonished both the attorney and me were those movements by the church just two days before that meeting in the President's office. Harold Calkins had suggested that I meet with him and Bradford at Loma Linda, the Adventist Medical School. He stated that Bradford was interested in my research and wanted to know more about it. I invited both men to meet at my home, feeling that inasmuch as most of the material that I had been working with was there, they both could better grasp the scope and importance of the project by what they saw. Harold assured me that time and circumstances just would not allow Bradford to make the trip to my place and anyway Bradford had flown all the way from Washington D.C. just to talk and get better acquainted. So the time was set for the next day at Loma Linda.

Late that night I received a long distance call from a friend with connections to the church's headquarters in Washington D.C. They told me that some people knew I was going to be at Loma Linda in the morning and that plans were afoot at the scheduled meeting to fire me without a trial and without chance of appeal; that the local, union, and General Conference would be represented as one at the meeting. To say the least, after what Elder Calkins had stated to me about the meeting, I was astonished and in my ignorance and naively told my caller it just couldn't be so.

After arriving the next day at the medical center, I felt that the better part of wisdom would be to check on the rumor. It was true, some of my friends told me; they knew I was coming, they knew that a meeting was being held and that I was to be sacked without counsel or concern for facts and evidence. To make sure of the facts I had just learned I walked across the campus to the building indicated and asked if Elder Calkins was somewhere to be found. I was told that indeed he was upstairs in a meeting with others and they were waiting for me to come. With my mind racing and numb with the deceit being practiced on me, I told the receptionist that I would not be attending that meeting and to tell Harold Calkins he had lied to me. I whirled around and went to my car and left for Los Angeles where my first call was to the Attorney to inform him of the events. At that moment he became my attorney-at-law and from then to the present all contacts from the church on official matters were and have been channeled through him. The next day before the Glendale meeting in Harold's office, I asked Bradford to raise his right hand and swear that the rumor was not true and he had not been sent on a "strike" mission. Bradford, ever the loyal liar for the establishment, said piously that he did not involve himself in local political matters. Harold, who later was confronted with the overwhelming evidence, like Pilate before him, washed his hands of the matter by stating that yes, he had known of the meeting, but hadn't known its nature.

It is very clear in looking back, that if I had attended that meeting framed in lies and deceit, that I would have been sacked and become only one of the dozens of nameless martyrs that has littered the path of Adventism. If those martyrs ever exhumed a body that the church wanted left in the silence of the graves of the past, the people of the church and the world were not told that those crimes were committed in the name of God and the inspiration of Ellen White.

It is also very clear that those same men and leaders of the church would commit any crime, tell any lie and destroy any person that would attempt to communicate any information that was not acceptable to them, and that they would censor what information the public or church would receive. As Wilson had said in his letter, he did not care what I believed, found or suspected as long as I did not communicate it to others. It was equally clear that the judge and jury had already been out on me and had decided I was guilty and should be hung, as piously and religiously as possible. With the picture clear as to the future, it was easy to set things in motion to do what I knew I must do and which no one had yet been able to do: sensationalize and popularize what scholars and theologians had known for years but had been kept from saying.

When the Dart article was printed in me Los Angeles Times ¹¹ there was nothing said in it that had not been said before in the privacy of Adventist circles. It was not an attack on the church or even an indictment of its past history. The real problem was that the church itself had always censored its members in their reading. As I had written in The White Lie, " The success and genius of any religious movement is to tell the members what they want to hear and make sure they don't hear what you don't want them to hear.¹² What the scholars knew in Adventism and were forced to keep silent about was altogether different than what the Adventist Review always force fed its readers. Even after four years of intensive research and dozens of pronouncements from scholars and the church's own papers, The Review could say:

Yet nothing had been convincingly studied, dialogued, researched or established except what the church was willing to have its members know. Censorship had been a part of Adventism from its beginning and had been argued as necessary and proper in the Glendale meeting of January 1980.¹⁴

The make-up of the committee that sacked me was interesting. Bradford was there from the General Conference and represented that same Wilson that had just a few months before written that I would not be fired. And it was the same Bradford who had written about the Davenport setup that:

That same Bradford, who only a few months before had said that every time he came down the hall of the General Conference someone came out of a door muttering my name; Bradford, who used the "awesome power of the General Conference" to help cover up for his friends and colleagues in the system. There was the Union Conference President, Blehm, whose connections and profits with Davenport were well documented and were later sent to me by some members of the bankruptcy proceeding. There was Harold Calkins, my own president, who had done everything possible to rid the conference of me and any others that had found fault with his handling of monies in the conference and who had helped Davenport establish a line of credit through the Glendale Adventist Hospital. He denied that such a line of credit had been issued until confronted with the evidence and then said that it had been canceled. I asked him how a line of credit could be canceled weeks after it had been issued and after Davenport had used it all over the country. His answer did not give much assurance and perhaps gives some reason for some the financial problems that hospital is having at the present time. That same Harold who was quoted months before by Robert Olson as saying:

Harold, who was later rewarded by Wilson, was sent to England to save the British Empire as the Adventist Union President. Fortunately for Britain he failed and was retired back in the states. Also there, my head elder from Long Beach, Widen Burkett with his vote; Burkett, who was one of Davenports best friends, and had $185,000 invested with him and reported to him each statement that he heard me make concerning his empire. Much of the rest of the Committee was made up of men that were in one way or another beholden to either Calkins or Blehm for their jobs or positions in the work of the Church. I was allowed no counsel and it was clear that only one decision would be made. They were not interested in why the article had appeared or what it said that was helpful or positive. Their attitude from the beginning, with the help of Bradford from the head of the system, was to "give me a fair hearing and hang me" as soon as possible, and they did. Can any reasonable person doubt that Davenport was also present in that room by his influence and control? After all, hadn't he written and seriously asked that I be dismissed for criticizing him and his actions and the actions of all the dishonest super salesmen of the clergy that were his accomplices? There is much more evidence than just speculation that the above was true. The church cut me off with only the policy of severance pay, took away my medical insurance knowing my wife was a diabetic and was uninsurable, and forced us to move from the Los Angeles area if we were to receive the standard moving fees allotted to any worker with our years of experience. We had hoped to reach some kind of settlement for the years of service and had worked in the system long enough that such consideration be given us automatically. The negotiations were going toward this point of view when the church's attorney wrote to us after the publication of The White Lie and the attention it received in the world press:

That letter was a shocker and showed just how much the church and its word really means, for just a few days before that same church attorney had written to us the following:

The letter that the attorney referred to was one that we had requested concerning our standing in the church. Although we had denied no doctrine, had received no discipline in our line of duty, and were still practicing members, and even though the policy of the church was that we should receive church membership wherever we were to go, the churches in our new area would not transfer our membership. One side light in the process was, that though we had been ordained for over thirty five years and were never "defrocked" from that position, we were addressed now as Mr. Rea instead of "Elder" as is the custom in Adventism. Lorenzo Paytee, Secretary of the Southern California Conference, had made it clear in his letter that we were not under some ban:

Another interesting concept surfaced concerning the church's thinking about women. My wife was never mentioned or considered separately from my situation. Her feelings were never considered, her doctrinal views were never sought and her desires concerning her future in the church didn't ever seem to matter to those considering my problem.

It was because of this lack of good faith on the part of the church and its officers that I decided that only one action was possible to gain relief from what I considered an unjust situation. I had asked for a rehearing of my case before the Union Committee, which was my right by policy, and was denied. I had asked for retirement benefits which was my due by policy and had been refused. I had broken no conference or church rules or laws and had been dismissed for what I considered fraudulent and misleading charges. Because of these facts I wrote Elder Walter Blehm, the Union President the following:

I also sent him the additional information.

May 15, 1978

W. D. Blehm

5294 Peacock Lane

Riverside, CA

Dear Elder Blehm:

I have a letter dated May 12, 1978 and I was very happy and willing to cash you out of the current income loan account.

This account is structured so the cash-out dates are on April 10, August 10 and December 10. However, I never stick to that if the party needs their money and I wish to advise you that I will get together the funds and get them to you shortly.

For your information, this account is handled in a very special way and the investments are made in vehicles that are structured so that the payout dates for the interest IS CONVENIENTLY MADE ON April 10 when most people need their money for income tax or August 10 when they need their money for vacations and December 10 when they need their money for Christmas presents, tithes, offerings, year end expenses, etc.

It has been my pleasure having you in our loan account and we will get these funds to you very shortly.

Kindest personal regards.

Cordially yours,

Donald J. Davenport, M.D.

DJD:pk

On December 31, 1977---------, without grace we promise to pay to the order of W. D. Blehm and/or Shirley T.Blehm at 829 N.E. 168^th. Pl., Portland, Oregon 97230 ---Two thousand and no/100 Dollars, For Value received, with interest from date at the rate of 10 per cent annum until paid. Principal and interest payable in Lawful Money of the United States at ten per cent interest per annum on December 31^st., beginning December 31, 1975 and continuing until December 31, 1977; at which time the entire balance of principal and interest then remaining unpaid shall be due and payable, and in case suit is instituted to collect this note or any portion thereof, we promise to pay such additional sum as the Court may adjudge reasonable as Attorney's fees in said suit.

Donald J. Davenport

Patrician A. Davenport

Witness: Sylvia Ramer

---On December 31, 1977----------------------------without grace we promise to pay to the order of S. D. Blehm and/or Shirley T. Blehm at 5294 Peacock Lane, Riverside, California 92505 For Value received, with interest from date at the rate of ten per cent per annum until paid. Principal and interest payable in Lawful Money of the United States at ten per cent interest per annum on December 31^st., beginning December 31, 1976 and continuing until December 31, 1977: at which time the entire balance of principal and interest then remaining unpaid shall be due and payable, and in case suit is instituted to collect this note or any portion thereof, we promise to pay such additional sum as the Court may adjudge reasonable as Attorney's fees in said suit.

Donald J. Davenport

Patricia A. Davenport

Witness

-------8,000.00--------- May 13, 1975

-----On December 31, 1977-----------------------------------------, without grace we promise to pay to the order of W. D. Blehm and/or Shirley L. Blehm, on order at 829 N. E. 168^th Pl., Portland, Oregon 97230, --------------------Eight thousand and no/100-----------------------------Dollars, For Value received, with interest from date at the rate of ten per cent per annum until paid. Principal and interest payable in Lawful Money of the United States at ten per cent interest per annum on December 31^st., beginning December 31, 1975 and continuing UNTIL December 31, 1977: at which time the entire balance of principal and interest then remaining unpaid shall be due and payable, and in case suit is instituted to collect this note or any portion thereof, we promise to pay such additional sum as the Court may adjudge reasonable as Attorney's fees in said suit.

Donald L. Davenport

Patricia A. Davenport

Sylvia Ramer

Witness

Check # 2681

90-2669

1222

Donald J. Davenport, M.D. Long Beach Office

Office Account American City Bank

P.O. Box 7037 213-427-7458 5199 E. Pacific Coast Highway

Long Beach, Calif. 90807 Long Beach, California 90804

Pay-------Nine hundred forty-five and 06/100--------------------Dollars $945.06

Pay to the order of:

W. D. Blehm or Shirley L. Blehm

NOT NEGOTIABLE

Donald J. Davenport, M.D.

Long Beach, Calif.