Ellen G. White and Her Critics

Passage Proves Too Much

This passage proves more than those who quote it wish it to prove. That is probably why it is quoted so briefly. In none of Mrs. White’s statements in the seven-year period, from 1844 to 1851, when she is allegedly teaching no more salvation for sinners, does she use any more devastating language than in the passage just quoted from Spiritual Gifts. But this passage describes the church in the years preceding 1844. Furthermore, though her language might appear to indicate that the church was beyond the pale of God’s mercy, she explicitly stated that there was hope for the repentant. EGWC 231.2

Note the results that she said would follow if the church received God’s “message.” It “would purge out hypocrites and sinners, and bring the church again into favor with GOD.” Obviously, the word “sinners” is here intended to mean obstinate, willful sinners who refused to accept the “message” that was intended of God to “make a thorough reformation in the church,” and not all the church, even though they all could properly be described as “sinners.” No reasonable person would say that the word “sinners” is here intended to describe all “the members of the churches,” even though she describes them, with apparently no exceptions, as “children of their father, the Devil.” There would be no “church” to bring again “into favor with GOD” if all the “members” are comprehended in that word “sinners,” and are purged out by the preaching of the “message.” EGWC 231.3

This passage provides the clearest, most undebatable proof that the apparently unqualified words of Mrs. White, like those of any other writers, must be understood, oftentimes, as having not an unlimited but a qualified meaning. We found that in her defense of her first vision she declares that the “wicked world” is to be understood as describing the willfully wicked rejecters of light in the world. Now in the passage just considered, the word “sinners,” which is a term as expansive as the “world,” must be qualified to mean the obstinate, willful sinner, unless we are to make nonsense out of the whole passage. Consistency calls for us to agree, also, that the word “world” may similarly be qualified. EGWC 231.4