Ellen G. White and Her Critics

Appendix G: Fanaticism and Sabbathkeeping Adventists

The Sabbathkeeping group, the embryo Seventh-day Adventist Church, as it began to form under the preaching of the earliest pioneers, was remarkably free from fanatical excesses. In instances where fanatical persons did seek to disrupt the work, Mrs. White’s clear testimony against them generally sufficed to break their influence. This fact is so significant, so contrary to legends that critics have nurtured, and places Mrs. White in such a favorable light, that occasionally a critic seeks to obscure the fact by citing certain incidents in connection with the Sabbathkeepers’ meetings. And then he endeavors to heighten the effect of what he has allegedly disclosed by implying that he has revealed something known to few. EGWC 597.2

What are these incidents? Briefly this: There is an instance, or perhaps two or three, where someone spoke in an unknown tongue; then certain instances where ministers and others fell prostrate in connection with special seasons of prayer. Finally, there is an instance of where a minister fell prostrate at a meeting, just as officers of the law sought to arrest him on what proved to be a trumped-up charge of disturbing the peace. The officers, for a time, fell back, unable to lay hands on him. EGWC 597.3

We confess we do not know why there should have been an instance or two of someone’s speaking in an unknown tongue in a meeting of Sabbathkeeping Adventists in the 1840’s. Neither do we know why the Corinthian church should have had members who spoke in strange tongues. But this much we do know: that there was no confusion, no fanatical tumult, that resulted from such an incident. EGWC 597.4

As to the instances of prostration, we need only remark that there is nothing in the record of those instances that warrants the conclusion that any kind of disorder ensued, unless the simple fact of a person’s being prostrated constituted disorder. Why there should have been a few such manifestations at that time we do not know. Neither do we know why the preaching of the great evangelists in the early nineteenth century resulted in the prostration of thousands of people. EGWC 598.1

What sources does the critic give for most of his statements concerning prostration? Some documents we have “suppressed”? No, he quotes the Testimonies for the Church, which are currently in print, and Life Sketches of James and Ellen, G. White. ^* He also cites Spiritual Gilts, volume 2, which was reprinted several years ago in a facsimile edition and offered for general sale. Despite this, writing in 1949, he closes his summary of these instances here mentioned with the declaration: “These experiences are not published in the current literature [of the Seventh-day Adventists].” The only thing hidden in regard to these incidents is this: The critic hides the fact that we have not hidden them. It never occurred to us that there was anything to hide. EGWC 598.2