Basic Principles of Understanding Ellen G. White’s Writings

Attitudes Make a Difference

However, she recognized that there are problems in communication. “Minds of different education and thought receive different impressions of the same words.” Thus, “it is difficult for one mind to give to one of a different temperament, education, and habits of thought by language exactly the same idea as that which is clear and distinct in his own mind. Yet to honest men, right-minded men, he [an author] can ... convey his meaning for all practical purposes.” But if the reader “is not honest and will not want to see and understand the truth, he will turn his words and language ... to suit his own purposes.” ¹ BPUEGW 3.2

Ellen White lamented that some mistreated her writings as they did the Bible: “This is the way my writings are treated by those who wish to misunderstand and pervert them.... In the very same way that they treat the writings in my published articles and in my books, so do skeptics and infidels treat the Bible. They read it according to their desire to pervert, to misapply, to willfully wrest the utterances from their true meaning.” ² BPUEGW 3.3

One problem that Jesus had with the religious leaders of His day was that they misused and abused the Old Testament and thus did not recognize Him as their Messiah. Ellen White noted that these leaders were “unaccustomed to accept God’s word exactly as it reads, or to allow it to be its own interpreter.” The Jewish leaders read the Old Testament “in the light of their maxims and traditions.... They turned with aversion from the truth of God to the traditions of men.” ³ BPUEGW 3.4

One’s attitude in reading the Bible is fundamental to a correct understanding of what the Bible means. This is more important than trained scholarship. The Jewish leaders with their scholarship did not recognize Jesus. On many occasions Ellen White emphasized that “selfishness prevents us from beholding God. The self-seeking spirit judges of God as altogether such a one as itself. Until we have renounced this we cannot understand Him who is love.” ⁴ She gave this promise: “Everyone who diligently and patiently searches the Scriptures that he may educate others, entering upon the work correctly and with an honest heart, laying his preconceived ideas, whatever they may have been, and his hereditary prejudice at the door of investigation, will gain true knowledge.” ⁵ BPUEGW 3.5

In summary, Ellen White provided several suggestions as to how to study for truth: BPUEGW 3.6

• We should invite the Holy Spirit to help us in our study. ⁶

• We must be willing to obey the truth. ⁷

• We must be open-minded, even prepared to surrender previously held opinions. ⁸

• We should expect to discover new truths. ⁹

• We should expect “new” light to harmonize with old truth. ¹⁰

• An interpretation may be wrong if it is accompanied by an unChristlike spirit.

In the context of the 1888 General Conference session, Ellen White wrote to those who were still antagonistic to her and to Elders Jones and Waggoner: “These testimonies of the Spirit of God, the fruits of the Spirit of God, have no weight unless they are stamped with your ideas of the law in Galatians. I am afraid of you and I am afraid of your interpretation of any Scripture which has revealed itself in such an unChristlike spirit as you have manifested and has cost me so much unnecessary labor.... Let your caution be exercised in the line of fear lest you are committing the sin against the Holy Ghost.... I am afraid of any application of Scripture that needs such a spirit and bears such fruit as you have manifested.” ¹¹