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Ellen G. White
Prophet?
or Plagiarist!
The White Lie!
By Walter T. Rea
Click to View Order Walter Rea's book: "The White Lie"
Chapter 12: Life Has Its Incidents
The incredible story of how the Great Controversy was copied by White from
others, and then she claimed it to be inspired!
Experience teaches that truth needs redefining every generation or two.
This is not to say that truth changes, but that our perceptions change if
our minds are active and growing. Historians know this. Politicians
understand it. Economists work on the same assumption. And many
common-sense people learn it.
Only administrators in theological systems find this principle hard to
accept. The more conservative the religious body and the people who
subscribe to the creed, the more difficult it is to make the mental
adjustment that is necessary. In the extreme, if the theological
administrators and their people have accepted the delusion that their
truth, their God, their prophet, or their saint are all equal, or are one
and the same, it is next to impossible to effect any change toward
advancing enlightenment.
Again, the four techniques essential to the white-lie brand of super
salesmanship are: (a) to play up anything unusual or mysterious about the
one to be venerated, so that he or she becomes seen as at a supernatural
level; (h) to exalt the acts and utterances to the virtuous and miraculous
level, thus reinforcing the idea of the supernatural connection; (c) to
deny access to information and records of the events and facts of the past;
and (d) to buy time so as to get as far as possible from the point of
living knowledge of the beginnings of the legend.
All four of these methods have been used by the Seventh-day Adventist
Church, and are still being used, in the matter of Ellen White and what has
been published under her name.
First:
Incredible as it may seem to an impartial onlooker, the White Estate would
have us believe that anything Ellen wrote to whomever on whatever, anything
she supervised from whomever on whatever, anything she copied from whomever
on whatever, anything offered for sale under her name-even thoughts, words,
or inclinations suggested (or written) by her followers-must bear, and do
bear, the stamp of God's divine approval. No writer in sacred antiquity
ever claimed as much, and no Canon writer ever had to live up to such
billing.
Second:
Wild horses, we are told, stood still at her command. A heavy Bible was
sustained in the air at her arm's length for long periods of time. By her
direction, water came into wells that otherwise would have been dry. In her
dreams, buildings appeared that never had been and would never become.
Letters came in the nick of time for some important or crucial event,
despite the known problems of the postal system. Often members that she
prayed for arose from their sickbeds -although she herself never really got
well and complained of sickness and fainting spells well into her middle
age. Neither do we hear great mention made of the deaths of two of her
children while still young. Despite her prayers and concern, her husband
lived only to his early sixties. Nevertheless, Ellen White's acts and
utterances have been impressed on the students of the comprehensive
Adventist educational system as certainly some cut above anyone else's-even
though she freely copied from those "anyone else's."
Third:
Few, if any, who have dealt with the White Estate-the official keeper of
the keys of everything that belonged to or is known about Ellen-have ever
come away willing to swear that they were allowed access to all materials
at all times without direction and/or supervision and oath-taking. Managed
news is a part of all church institutions, of course. Adventists are
experts at giving out to the church public and the secular public alike
only those items that put their best foot forward. As an editor at the Los
Angeles Times put it, "Adventists would function better in a country that
does not have freedom of the press."' Even those who do have some success
in obtaining limited access to material must sign a pledge-in exchange for
the privilege of seeing what others are not privy to-that they will not
copy "sensitive" material or release it to others.
Perhaps all this is understandable. The White Estate cannot release all the
material concerning Ellen White's life and writings and yet maintain the
white lie. There is no way that the facts will square with the myths. If
(as was stated in the January 1980 Glendale meeting) every paragraph in The
Great Controversy were to be footnoted to show source material, then every
paragraph would have to be footnoted-what would happen to the legend of
Ellen and the church members at large who have believed the legend all
these years?
What if each of the other four books-Patriarchs and Prophets, Prophets and
Kings, The Acts of the Apostles, and The Desire of Ages (of the big
five)-were also to be included in that indictment? It is fairly certain
that no unbiased, detailed, comprehensive studies of these books can or
will be endorsed by the White Estate, no matter by whom or when the studies
might be done. Whatever findings might be reported by any independent
researcher, the Estate position seems certain to continue to be (a) that
they have known it all along and (b) that it does not make any difference,
because God had a hand in it anyway and because Ellen was inspired to do
whatever she did at his express command.
Fourth:
Buying time is perhaps one of the happiest helpers of the white lie. If
only some patience can be exercised by the lay members, to give the
supersalesmen the opportunity to buy time, with age the white lie can, and
often does, become a reality. After all, myths and legends are not instant
creations. Time just covers up the facts. Because the facts of Ellen and
her writings were never accurately portrayed to the church and the world,
time has helped to cover that deception. Those who tried at various periods
to help their church come to terms with the truth would be driven from "The
Clan," or would shake the dust from their feet and depart. Thus the white
lie has grown until it has become a matter of faith; fact has long since
been lost sight of. The advice of one onlooker ~s to the point:
Let it be.... Don't appeal your dismissal as pastor of the Seventh-day
Adventist Church. .. By all means continue your research, but do it in the
a Is of academia. Don t use as your instrument of destruction the church on
which the majority of the members rely for continuance of their faith The
dictionary defines faith as "belief without evidence," and most of the
church members are willing to accept it as such. What a pity that most
religious institutions cannot also accept this definition and feel they
must insist their dogma is the true dogma and based on true evidence! The
inherent capacity to separate faith and true knowledge so they won't
interfere with each other is a knack that some people have that others lack
It has little to do with intelligence, and we see those with low IQ's who
atheists and some of our best brains as devout Catholics.... are Religious
faith is usually harmless to society as a whole if kept contained within
the religious frame, and it can be beneficial to many at a personal level.
But the ability to compartmentalize the mind is always a danger, and it is
not restricted to religious areas. 2
Those who must believe the unbelievable, who must claim to see the
unseeable, and who must spend their lives clutching at the unobtainable
will always try to give their "vision" of the unreal to others by applying
authority and force. One of the divines expresses it well:
Recently many rumors have been coming to me as well as to your fellow
elders.... If my memory serves me well, I do not believe you have attended
any of my eleven o'clock services since September during which time I have
addressed myself to all the controversial subjects that appear to be
surfacing in our denomination. The most dangerous result I see from the
many divergent discussions in the church today, has to do with what I call
the Cheap Gospel.". . We must trust in the finished work of Christ; but of
equal importance we must, with Christ's help, be ready to obey This means
being willing to give up on ourselves and submit to the authority of
Christ's body -the Church. I know this is difficult to do when you are
doing so well with your practice and financial investments. 3
Clearly this supersalesmam of the system would like to share a member's
success and financial investments and would like to restrict the obvious
freedom of spirit of that member-in short, to control him.
Such attitudes are not limited to those who believe m a system of salvation
by works. The product of such a system is religious supersalesmen who
believe that their conscience should by the guide for the communicants, and
they seek this godless control in the name of God. When it is clearly
understood that what supersalesmen of the psychic are selling is really
their own value system, or their own vision of what others ought or ought
not to do, then, and only then, will some of the white lies be harder to
sell.
Meanwhile, until the supersalesmen are unmasked, perhaps the best advice on
how to deal with them and their "truth" was given by Robert J. Ringer:
Ignore all neurotic remarks and actions of normal people and all remarks
and actions of neurotic people. In cases where a neurotic person persists,
notwithstanding your lack of attention, take swift and positive action to
eliminate him from your life altogether.
You have no obligation to deal with irrational people...
Talking, arguing and/or begging don't work with irrational people.
Attempting to persuade them through logical argument will only wear you
out. Dealing with an irrational person is a can't win situation. If he's
adept at mind games, you often will find yourself boxed into being "damned
if you do and damned if you don't." Always go out of your way to avoid
can't win situations. When someone surrounds you on all sides with
irrational points, don't stand for it. Exit through the top, if necessary,
but get out. When every side you turn to leads to trouble, you're in a
can't-win situation. 9
In the matter of Ellen White's super salesmanship (in relation to both the
church and the public), it is becoming evident that she too wanted to
encourage, if not demand, that others accept her value structure and
lifestyle. In order to obtain this end, she came to believe and to teach
others that what she said and wrote was necessary to do, because God wanted
it that way. Others around her who shared those views (and indeed even gave
her some of them) were willing to let the faithful believe that what she
said and wrote were directly the ideas and ways given her by God. This
stance gave her every utterance the authority it needed in order to be
believed-despite mounting evidence (and the witness of some others) to the
contrary. Those who lived by faith, and likewise by evidence to support
that faith, began to discover that the white lie was inconsistent with the
evidence. And when they made known that discover for their honest pains
they were expelled and discredited by character assassination.
For those who have the courage to place evidence and faith side b side and
see if they are in harmony, the following items may provide exercise to
thoughtful examination of some of the white lies that have been used to
maintain the legend of Ellen and her writings as mostly God-given,
God-directed, and God-inspired.
Slow evolution regarding Ellen's reading skills:
a. Secular news media, reporting the Adventist reply to criticism, quote
information that 3.5 million members have accepted the 25 million words of
Ellen's pen as inspired. 5 Many a clergyman would be reluctant to take an
oath that his church membership list represents precise accuracy. The
statement that Ellen has written 25 million words is inaccurate. How were
these figures arrived at? Are they the figment of someone's imagination? Do
they, in fact, include all the copied material (not her words) and all the
paragraphs and uncounted pages identically duplicated in the several
subject matter compilations?
b. Every Adventist has read or heard that Ellen was a poor reader, in part
because she had finished only three grades of education. This i made
possible a claim to divine leading of a person in literary ignorance. 6
Later, these limitations were used to create untruths. Education never need
be formal in order for persons to be creative and educated.
c. Later, under pressure, it was discovered that Ellen could read, but that
she read very little, the least of that reading being in theology. 7 This
same argument was used to prove that she was not influenced by others as
she lived and wrote. 8
d. The progression of this theme was that Ellen could read but that she
didn't read in theological matters-until it was discovered that she had. 9
Spectrum readers now know that she was reading widely all the time and was
using the published works of other religious writers and those writing in
other areas. 10
e. Although at one time it was argued that God helped Ellen to improve her
skills (and her beautiful language was the result of that divine help), new
evidence indicates that the improvement was the result of improved help
from well informed staff members and associates, and better selection of
authors. 11
f. Now that proof is available that Ellen did read, read well, and read
widely, and that she had some of that reading matter in front of her when
she wrote, the new line is that she had a photographic memory. 12 "We are
not denying Rev. Rea's evidence," said Robert Olson, secretary of the Ellen
G. White Estate in Washington, D.C. "I'm satisfied she had some works
before her as she wrote. However," Olson added, "the church believes that
White possessed a photographic memory and unconsciously used the words of
other writers.' 3 Olson does not specify who is "the church" that may
believe as he seems to believe.
g. The idea that Ellen did not know what she was doing when she failed to
credit authors she read-but stopped when told what she was doing-has been
dealt with in earlier chapters. A casual review of authors used by her
would show that they gave credit, but that she never gave credit, even when
paraphrasing what they were often quoting
h. Perhaps one of the hardest charges to meet and refute is that Ellen
wrote what she had seen first in vision, and that she used the words,
thoughts, and arrangement of others only because they said what she wanted
to say and did not have the ability to say. This argument, while admitting
that she did copy, whenever and wherever necessary according to her
desires, in fact contradicts most of the arguments that have gone before.
It does run into difficulty, however, when one comes to the book Life
Incidents.
One of the unwritten stories in Adventist history is the influence that
James White had in forming the ideas and sentences that came out under
Ellen's name and pen. Although not noted as a literary writer or as a
theologian, James did produce four published books. Two of these were Life
Incidents in Connection with the Great Advent Movement, as Illustrated by
the Three Angels of Revelation XIV, published in 1868, and in 1875 Sketches
of the Christian Life and Public Labors of William Miller: Gathered from
his Memoirs by the Late Sylvester Bliss, and from Other Sources. Both books
were almost totally copied from others. The-one on William Miller was
taken from Sylvester Bliss (who in 1853 had written Memoirs of William
Miller). The theology of Life Incidents was copied substantially from Uriah
Smith and J. N. Andrews. 14 Neither of these books was ever printed again
under the name of James White as far as is known.
But they were indeed reprinted under another name, that of Ellen G. White,
his wife, a few years after his death in 1881-but under the title The Great
Controversy (1884). And this production was sold to the believers and the
world as the work of Ellen and the angels. Although it had been doctored
and padded with other material in the usual manner, clearly it was material
that had been published earlier under the name of James. What the people
were not told was that the heart of this new revelation had been printed
sixteen years before, and that the theme and thesis had been over literally
and liberally into Ellen's new Great Controversy.
One reason is now clear why much of the information in the 1884 edition of
The Great Controversy could not have been included in the earlier works of
Ellen on the same subject (Spiritual Gifts, published 1858-64). James had
not yet gotten around to copying it from J. N Andrews; so it was not
available to Ellen at the time. The 1888 and 1911 editions of The Great
Controversy went back to James White's compilation of doctrines and events
and picked up even more of his findings and ideas. But never once was it
suggested that the heart of Adventist doctrine-such as the three angels'
worldwide message that the church had applied exclusively to the
Adventists, the shut door that left everyone else out in the cold, the 2300
days, the seventy weeks, the sanctuary doctrine, the United States in
prophecy, the "mark of the beast," the image to that beast-had all come out
earlier in James White's Life Incidents.
So striking was the copying done under the name of Ellen-and so sensitive
is the information that the heart of Adventist theology and eschatology
came, not from the visions of or revelations to Ellen, but from the pen of
James sixteen years before Ellen wrote them out- that time should be spent
examining the evidence in Life Incidents.
Here it should be recalled that the four small volumes of Ellen's Spiritual
Gifts (1858-64) were amplified to the four volumes of Ellen's The Spirit
of Prophecy (1870-84) and then expanded to Ellen's The Great Controversy
(1888 ea.) of the five-volume Conflict of the Ages Series. Inasmuch as the
earlier eight volumes are now again available in facsimile editions, anyone
can examine all the books and note the progressive copy work through the
years. Meanwhile, during those same years, the legend grew and grew and was
"sold" and accepted that God had given Ellen exclusive and firsthand
knowledge of his plans for the future events of the church and the world.
Comparison shows that words, sentences, quotations, thoughts, ideas,
structures, paragraphs, and even total pages were taken from James White's
book to Ellen's book under a new title-with no blush of shame, no mention
of her husband, no thanks to Uriah Smith and J. N. Andrews, for the hard
work and theological insights of anyone.
Unfortunately for James, he did not have the personal advantage of angels
checking in and out on schedule with the firsthand information Ellen
purported to have. Without any intermediary, he had to get his material
from human sources. But he was equal to the task. Much of his material in
Life Incidents was taken primarily from J. N. Andrews, whose book published
in 1860, interestingly enough, was entitled The Three Messages of
Revelation XIV, 6-12, and particularly The Third Angel's Message and The
Two-Horned Beast. James, unlike his wife Ellen, did not even bother to
paraphrase-he just took the material from Andrews wholesale into his work.
Nothing has been released from the White Estate as to how Andrews or Uriah
Smith felt about all this "taking" in the name of God. Perhaps the fact
that they were brothers-in-law, both assisting in the editorial work of
the Review, both personal friends of the Whites-and thus able to sit around
the same table to finalize their views-might have softened the pain of
Ellen's copy work. One might be tempted to think that Ellen set the pattern
and James may not have given much thought to doing the same thing. Of
course, there was in fact no excuse for anyone not to give
thought-especially in view of the statement published in an 1864 issue of
the Review under the heading "Plagiarism":
This is a word that is used to signify "literary theft," or taking the
productions or another and passing them off as one s own.... We are
perfectly willing that pieces from the Review, or any of our books should
be published to any extent, and all we ask is, that simple justice be done
us, by due credit being given. 15
Examination reveals that the 1860 book of J. N. Andrews was an exact replay
of his own 1851-55 articles in the Review. Thus James and Ellen had
available for their perusal and use after 1855 the content and form of
Andrew's work for incorporation in their own work: Spiritual Gifts
(1858-64); Life Incidents (1868); The Spirit of Prophecy (1870-84);
Sketches of. . . William Miller (1875); The Great Controversy (1888).
This information may or may not disturb those who now say that the group of
pioneers sat around the table and worked out in conjunction with Ellen
their ideas and theology. But it does indeed disturb those who were taught
that such ideas and theology originated with greater authority and mystique
than the common ideas of human endeavor seem to command.
References and Notes
l. John Dart, taped conversation with Irene Cole. Dart, who is religious
editor of the Los Angeles Times, wrote the article "Plagiarism Found in
Prophet Books," 23 October 1980, p. l.
2. Richard P. Hines, "Knowledge and Faith Can't Be Mixed," letters to the
editor (Long Beach, CA: Press-Telegram), 11 November 1980.
3. SDA [Florida] minister toJohn LeBaron, December 1980.
4. Robert J Ringer, Loo~ing Outfor #1 (New York: Fawcett Crest Book Co.,
5. Hines, in Long Beach Press-Telegram, 25 November 1980. Dart, in. Los
Angeles Times, 23 October 1980.
6. Ellen G. White, Lfe Sketches (Mountain View: PPPA, 1915), pp. ~ 3-19.
7. Arthur L. White, in Supplement to facsimile reprint of The Spirit of
Prophecy, vol. 4, pp. 535-36.
8. The Ellen G. White Estate does not concede that Ellen White was
influenced by what she read or by those around her.
9. [Healdsburg] Pastor's Union, "Is Mrs. E. G. White a Plagiarist?"
[Healdsburg, CA] Enterprise, 20 March 1889.
10. Donald R. McAdams and Douglas Hackleman in their articles in Spectrum
10, no.4, pp.27-41 and 9-15.
11. See Appendix, Comparison Exhibits for chapters five to nine.
12. Chicago Tribune, 23 November 1980.
13. Ibid.
14. James White, Lfe Incidents in Connection with the Great Advent Movement
Battle Creek: Steam Press of the SDA Publishing Association, 1868). See
early Reviews from 1851-1856 for Articles by J. N. Andrews and Uriah
Smith.
15. [Uriah Smith, ed.], "Plagiarism," Review 24 (6 September 1864)
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