101 Questions on the Sanctuary and on Ellen White

96. Her Ideas Came From God

Both Walter Specht and Raymond Cottrell state that Ellen White got some “ideas” from Hanna. Didn’t she consistently affirm that God was the direct source of all her ideas? QSEW 104.3

Ellen White declared: QSEW 104.4

“In these letters which I write, in the testimonies I bear, I am presenting to you that which the Lord has presented to me. I do not write one article in the paper expressing merely my own ideas. They are what God has opened before me in vision—the precious rays of light shining from the throne. It is true concerning the articles in our papers and in the many volumes of my books.”—Selected Messages 1:29. QSEW 104.5

Ellen White used the word “idea” to mean basic spiritual or theological concepts. Specht and Cottrell have used the word with a less specific meaning in mind. In his study, “Ellen White’s Alleged Literary and Theological Indebtedness to Calvin Stowe,” David Neff gives examples of how Ellen White was indebted to Stowe for his language, but not for his ideas. Note the similarities and the differences between Stowe and Ellen White: QSEW 104.6

C. E. Stowe, Origin and History Of the Books of the Bible, Page 20.	Selected Messages 1:21.
“It is not the words of the Bible that were inspired, it is not the thoughts of the Bible that were inspired; it is the men who wrote the Bible that were inspired. Inspiration was not on the man’s words, not on the man’s thoughts, but on the man himself; that he, by his own spontaneity, under the impulse of the Holy Ghost, conceives certain thoughts.”	“It is not the words of the Bible that are inspired, but the men that were inspired. Inspiration acts not on the man’s words or his expressions but on the man himself, who, under the influence of the Holy Ghost, is imbued with thoughts.”