The Pocket Ellen G. White Dictionary

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V

vacillate — vouchsafed

vacillate

To alternate or waver between different opinions or actions. Ellen G. White described Solomon’s son, Rehoboam, as having received from his mother, an Ammonite, “the stamp of a vacillating character” (PK 88).

vapid

Offering nothing stimulating or of interest (DA 208).

vegetarianism

Ellen G. White was a great meat eater who, during the course of her lifetime, gradually converted to a vegetarian diet. During the 1860s, she largely gave up meat eating but continued to occasionally eat meat while she traveled. During the 1890s, she completely quit eating meat over concerns about animal cruelty. A vegetarian diet, she contended, was God’s original diet for humanity in the Garden of Eden. She also warned that meat eating had a tendency to inflame the “lower propensities” of human nature (Ed 203).

vehement

Strong feelings; forceful; or showing passion (DA 254).

vice

A term used by Ellen G. White to describe sinful *habbits. The word is used 671 times in her published writings; twenty-nine of those usages are directly associated with “secret vice”—an expression that describes masturbation. Within “the republican vision” of antebellum America, this term was generally “a designation for self-serving, corrupt, conspiratorial, luxurious, or venial practices that undercut freedom and destroyed social wellbeing” (Mark A. Noll, America’s God: From Jonathan Edwards to Abraham Lincoln [New York: Oxford University Press, 2002], 568).

vicissitudes

A change of circumstances or fortune, usually in an unfortunate way (PP 471, 601, 649; Ed 164).

Victorian

A term used to describe the *Protestant middle- class culture of the latter part of the nineteenth century, largely during the reign of Great Britain’s Queen Victoria (1837—1901). The term expresses society’s formal reverence for its religious heritage with a deep concern for morality, respectability, and order. Victorians placed great value on both rationality and sentiment. The era was characterized by the desire for order in society, including its technology, as it was a time period noted for its use of statistics, standardization, professionalism, specialization, and tremendous industrial expansion. It was an age of print—a medium well suited to the emphasis upon permanence. Lastly, Victorians were often characterized by their emotion and romantic sentiments.

vigilant

Keeping careful watch for potential danger or difficul .

Vigilant Missionary Society

A society founded in 1869 for the promulgation of Adventist literature and missionary work.

virtue

A term used 1,865 times in Ellen G. White’s published writings to describe the three virtues of *faith, hope, and love (1 Corinthians 13:13) or the fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22, 23). In a strict classical sense, Niccolo Machiavelli, in The Prince, styled virtu as manly valor displayed in defending the commonwealth; but the term later was generalized to mean disinterested service for the common good. By the early nineteenth century, the word took on a stronger female, private, and domestic sense that emphasized sexual purity. In antebellum times, most Americans had adapted the term to include a religious meaning in which “the health of a republic required the exercise of virtue by its citizens.” Thus, they “defined virtue in biblical terms as life guided by God’s will and cultivated in personal and domestic devotion” (Mark A. Noll, America’s God: From Jonathan Edwards to Abraham Lincoln [New York: Oxford University Press, 2002], 90). Such a broad term masked many subtle meanings, especially spiritual nuances that included the idea that virtue must be taught and enforced. Ellen G. White used the term to emphasize a principle- based life (AH 334). Within the *Victorian context, “female virtue” indicated the principles of modesty (2T 560). In theological terms, Ellen G. White described the need “to appropriate” the “virtue of the atoning sacrifice” of Jesus Christ (PP 277). Similarly, all “healing virtue” comes from Christ (DA 471), who is the source of all true virtue (DA 92). When this same virtue enters souls, it convicts them of sin. Ellen G. White wrote, “It is the glory of God to give His virtue to His children” (AA 530).

visions and dreams

Form of *special revelation through the prophetic gift. During her lifetime, it is believed that Ellen G. White had somewhere between several hundred to as many as two thousand visions and dreams. She frequently received dramatic visions in her early prophetic ministry that began with the repetition of the word *glory three times. Her visions and dreams were highly visual and were frequently described in terms of *light and darkness.

visual art

Ellen G. White appreciated and encouraged various forms of visual art that illustrated the biblical narrative, including prophetic charts and diagrams. In later life, she affirm the creative use of papier-mâché depictions of the beasts in Daniel and Revelation for evangelistic meetings. At the same time, particularly during her travels through Europe (1885—1887), she noted how humans admired the achievements of great artists, but their artwork paled in comparison to the majesty and grandeur of God’s actual creation.

vital

A popular reference to the vitalist theory, which had ancient roots in Egyptian and Greek philosophy, that living things inherently have a vital force, or energy, to them. A popular manifestation of this perspective was the theory of *animal magnetism. From the worldview of Ellen G. White, it was essential to not lessen one’s “vital force,” so believers were to live the most healthful lives possible (3T 138). She noted that “whatever hinders the circulation of the electric current in the nervous system, thus weakening the vital powers . . . makes it more difficult to arouse the moral nature” (Ed 209). She stated that “vital godliness is a principle to be cultivated” (3T 188). In the illustration about the vine and the branches, she described a personal relationship with Jesus Christ as a “vital connection”

vivifying

The idea of bringing to life and enlivening. Ellen G. White referred to the “vivifying power” of God (YRP 45).

vouchsafed

A term that in the nineteenth century indicated some kind of protection, especially when granted in a gracious or at times condescending manner. Thus, Ellen G. White emphasizes God’s gracious character when she refers to the promises in the book of Colossians that “set forth the glorious privileges vouchsafed to the children of God” (SL 85).