Messenger of the Lord

Response to Physicians’ Questions in 1906

For the most part, this interesting charge is contrary to fact; the rest of the charge is a misunderstanding. On March 30, 1906, during a troubled period in Battle Creek, the forces of Dr. J. H. Kellogg and A. T. Jones were arrayed against church leadership and, by association, against Ellen White. Mrs. White wrote a letter addressed “To Those Who Are Perplexed Regarding the Testimonies Relating to the Medical Missionary Work.” The letter was specifically addressed to Drs. J. H. Kellogg, David Paulson, and W. S. Sadler, Elders A. T. Jones, G. C. Tenney, and Taylor, Judge Jesse Arthur, and about a dozen others. She wrote: “I was directed by the Lord to request them and any others who have perplexities and grievous things in their minds regarding the testimonies that I have borne, to specify what their objections and criticisms are. The Lord will help me to answer those objections, and to make plain that which seems to be intricate.” ⁴¹ MOL 482.5

The questions that arrived were, for the most part, sincere. ⁴² Many of them were caused by a faulty understanding of inspiration, expecting more from Ellen White than of Bible writers. ⁴³ MOL 482.6

How did Mrs. White and her staff respond? Between April and October, 1906, she wrote more than thirty letters dealing with the questions that had been sent her. In addition to these letters, four articles were published in the church paper relating to these questions. ⁴⁴ MOL 482.7

Accompanying the charge that she reneged on her “promise” to “answer these objections,” was the citing of another vision she had on May 25, 1906, in which she was “directed by a messenger from heaven not to take up the burden of picking up and answering all the sayings and doubts that are being put into many minds.” ⁴⁵ Some have assumed that Ellen White used this vision as an excuse for not fulfilling her previous commitment. MOL 482.8

The facts show that three-fourths of the letters written between April and October, 1906, were written after the vision of May 25. Ellen White and her assistants responded to those questions that could be answered with objective information; she did not promise that she would answer all the questions. She answered some, her assistants others. In responding to Dr. Charles Stewart, W. C. White wrote: “But that portion of the document addressed to her, which takes the form of an attack upon her integrity and her work, she will refer to her brethren to answer, because for many years she has been instructed that it is not any part of her legitimate work to answer the numerous and violent attacks which have been made upon her by her critics and the enemies of her work.” ⁴⁶ MOL 483.1

Further, some questions can never be answered well enough to convince everybody. Some questions were “frivolous,” some were “straw men.” Ellen White appealed to the “elders of the Battle Creek church” to look beyond the human aspects of her writings to the message, to the content, not the container. ⁴⁷ MOL 483.2

She wrote: “In response to the enemy’s work on human minds, I am to sow the good seed.... But those who are picking at straws had better be educating mind and heart to take hold of the grand and soul-saving truths that God has given through the humble messenger, in the place of becoming channels through whom Satan can communicate doubt and questioning. To allow images of straw to be created as something to attack, is one of the most unprofitable things that one can engage in. It is possible for one to educate himself to become Satan’s agent in passing along his suggestions. As fast as one is cleared away, another will be proffered.... I have written something on the meaning of the words, ‘I,’ ‘we,’ and ‘us,’ in the Testimonies. This point is, as it were a man of straw, set up in the imagination of some who have been sowing tares.” ⁴⁸ MOL 483.3