The Truth About The White Lie

The ways God has dealt with His people are scorned:

Freethinkers have always gotten into trouble. In the time of Moses, if anyone started a fire on his own to enjoy a cup of hot herb tea on Sabbath, he was stoned, and not in the modern sense of the word either. If he wandered around in the local swap meet on Sabbath in the days of Nehemiah he might run the risk of having his beard pulled or his toupee disrupted. Even in the New Testament times, if Ananias kept out a few shekels from the tithe to pay the rent, he was told by the local divine to drop dead—which he did. ⁸

Nevertheless, in spite of the book’s emotion-laden attacks on Ellen White, on the Seventh-day Adventist Church, and on Christian beliefs in general, it does provide an opportunity to illuminate some interesting corners of Seventh-day Adventist history. Because the Seventh-day Adventist Church is growing so rapidly, there are always many new members who may not be well acquainted with Ellen White’s life. They will appreciate having positive answers to some of the questions raised by the book. Then too, since the volume has received attention in the popular press in the United States, our fellow Christians in other denominations deserve a calm and candid evaluation of the book. TAWL 2.1

Those who know Ellen White from wide reading in her works will generally not need more than a taste of the bitterness of The White Lie to realize how foreign it is to the spirit of Christ which so permeates Mrs. White’s writings. And yet they too may profit from further background information concerning her life and work. TAWL 2.2

It is not our purpose here to defend present-day church leaders, even though many have been maligned in the book. As for defending Ellen White, we suggest that her own writings offer the best defense. But we take this occasion to discuss the more important issues raised by The White Lie, and report the fruits of research in many fields which bear on those issues. TAWL 2.3