Ellen G. White and Her Critics

Mrs. White’s Reply to Criticisms

In 1883 Mrs. White wrote an extended answer to various criticisms of her work, including the charge that she had taught, in the early post-1844 years, that there was no more salvation for sinners, and that she later removed from her published works some of these statements to conceal the fact that she had formerly taught this un-Scriptural doctrine. She quotes a passage from her first vision, as a sample of the later deleted passages in debate, and offers a forthright statement as to what that passage was intended to teach at the time it was written, and what Mrs. White was now teaching, in 1883. Here is the passage from the first vision, as printed in the broadside, To the Little Remnant Scattered Abroad: ^* EGWC 204.2

“It was just as impossible for them [those that gave up their faith in the ‘44 movement] to get on the path again and go to the city, as all the wicked world which God had rejected. They fell all the way along the path one after another.” EGWC 204.3

Then follows her comment: EGWC 204.4

“It is claimed that these expressions prove the shut door doctrine, and that this is the reason of their omission, in later editions. But in fact they teach only that which has been and is still held by us as a people, as I shall show. EGWC 204.5

“For a time after the disappointment in 1844, I did hold in common with the Advent body, that the door of mercy was then forever closed to the world. This position was taken before my first vision was given me. It was the light given me of God that corrected our error, and enabled us to see the true position. EGWC 204.6

“I am still a believer in the shut door theory, but not in the sense in which we at first employed the term or in which it is employed by my opponents. EGWC 204.7

“There was a shut door in Noah’s day. There was at that time a withdrawal of the Spirit of God from the sinful race that perished in the waters of the flood. God, Himself, gave the shut door message to Noah: EGWC 205.1

“My Spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh: yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years. EGWC 205.2

“There was a shut door in the days of Abraham. Mercy ceased to plead with the inhabitants of Sodom, and all but Lot with his wife and two daughters, were consumed by the fire sent down from heaven. EGWC 205.3

“There was a shut door in Christ’s day. The Son of God declared to the unbelieving Jews of that generation, ‘Your house is left unto you desolate.’ EGWC 205.4

“Looking down the stream of time to the last days, the same infinite power proclaimed through John: EGWC 205.5

“These things saith he that is holy, he that is true, he that hath the key of David, he that openeth and no man shutteth; and shutteth, and no man openeth. EGWC 205.6

“I was shown in vision, and I still believe, that there was a shut door in 1844. All who saw the light of the first and second angel’s messages and rejected that light, were left in darkness. And those who accepted it and received the Holy Spirit which attended the proclamation of the message from heaven, and who afterward renounced their faith and pronounced their experience a delusion, thereby rejected the Spirit of God, and it no longer pleaded with them. EGWC 205.7

“Those who did not see the light, had not the guilt of its rejection. It was only the class who had despised the light from heaven that the Spirit of God could not reach. And this class included, as I have stated, both those who refused to accept the message when it was presented to them, and also those who, having received it, afterward renounced their faith. These might have a form of godliness, and profess to be followers of Christ, but having no living connection with God, they would be taken captive by the delusions of Satan. These two classes are brought to view in the vision,—those who declared the light which they had followed, a delusion, and the wicked of the world who, having rejected the light, had been rejected of God. No reference is made to those who had not seen the light, and therefore were not guilty of its rejection. EGWC 205.8

“In order to prove that I believed and taught the shut door doctrine, Mr. ------ [a critic of the 1880’s] gives a quotation from the Review of June 11, 1861, signed by nine of our prominent members. The quotation reads as follows: EGWC 205.9

“Our views of the work before us were then mostly vague and indefinite, some still retaining the idea adopted by the body of Advent believers in 1844 with Wm. Miller at their head, that our work for “the world” was finished and that the message was confined to those of the original Advent faith. So firmly was this believed, that one of our number was nearly refused the message, the individual presenting it having doubts of the possibility of his salvation because he was not in “the ‘44 move.” EGWC 205.10

“To this I need only to add, that in the same meeting in which it was urged that the message could not be given to this brother [J. H. Waggoner], a testimony was given me through vision to encourage him to hope in God and to give his heart fully to Jesus, which he did then and there.”—MS. 4, 1883; also quoted in Appendix F, p. 586. EGWC 206.1