Ellen G. White and Her Critics

False Premise Too Often Employed

Through the century of Seventh-day Adventist history many things have been written and said concerning those few years immediately following 1844 that do not take all the facts into proper account. Interestingly enough, loyal friend and militant critic have often been controlled in their thinking by the same premise; namely, that proof of anything short of perfection on the part of the Seventh-day Adventist pioneers provides clear evidence that the movement they launched is not of God. EGWC 193.1

On this premise some loyal members of the church have sought to square all unfavorable evidence with the favorable. This has been a common, and sometimes pardonable, practice in all ages. A vividly held premise can blind the eye and invalidate the reasoning even of the most conscientious. ^* EGWC 193.2

On this same premise militant critics have sought to square all favorable evidence with the unfavorable. This has also been a common but rarely pardonable practice in all ages. Specifically, critics of Seventh-day Adventism have attempted to marshal the evidence in such a way as to prove that our forebears were the most deluded, exclusive, and hopelessly mistaken lot of people that ever lived. And, therefore, that this Seventh-day Adventist movement is not a fulfillment of prophecy, not of divine origin. ^† EGWC 193.3

The premise, of course, is false, and hence the conclusions built upon it, whether by friend or foe, are at best unwarranted or irrelevant, and at worst, erroneous. The writer of the book of Acts held to no such premise when recording the happenings of the earliest years of the Christian church. He described the apostles as being filled with the Holy Ghost in a most unusual and spectacular display of God’s power in setting them apart as God’s special messengers. But he also records that these Spirit-filled men were dominated for several years with the thought that salvation was only for the Jews. EGWC 193.4

God had to perform miracles to persuade Peter to bring the gospel to a Gentile, Cornelius, who was actually pleading that the gospel be preached unto him. God had to give Peter a vision, then synchronize that miraculously with the coming of the servants from Cornelius, and climax it with the spectacular pouring out of the Holy Ghost upon Cornelius and his household under the apostle’s preaching. Furthermore it took the recital of all these miraculous happenings to persuade the others at Jerusalem that Peter was worthy, not of censure, but of commendation. EGWC 194.1