Ellen G. White and Her Critics

Chapter 17—Did Mrs. White Suppress Some of Her Writings?

Charge: This charge may be divided into eight parts: EGWC 267.1

1. That the belief in the “shut door” and the belief in Bates’s “seven-years” period were interlocked, and that the abandonment of one necessitated the abandonment of the other. EGWC 267.2

2. That “a few months before this seven years ended, Elder White and his wife became convinced that this [seven year] theory had to be given up.” Therefore they promptly set out in the summer of 1851 to suppress earlier publications that taught the shut door and the seven-year theory. EGWC 267.3

3. That they suppressed A Word to the “Little Flock” and Present Truth and started a new paper called The Advent Review and Sabbath Herald. EGWC 267.4

4. a. That they published, “in August, 1851,” a sixty-four-page pamphlet, Experience and Views, which, though drawn almost wholly from A Word to the “Little Flock” and Present Truth, makes no mention of them. EGWC 267.5

b. That certain passages that teach the shut door were deleted from the visions as reprinted in Experience and Views. EGWC 267.6

5. That Mrs. White’s work Experience and Views was allowed to go out of print to conceal abandoned shut-door teachings. EGWC 267.7

6. That when Mrs. White’s Early Writings was published in 1882, a further attempt was made to conceal the earliest publications: EGWC 267.8

a. In a statement by George I. Butler. EGWC 267.9

b. In the wording of the preface. EGWC 267.10

7. That Uriah Smith, long the editor of the Review and Herald, made damaging admissions which support the charge that these earliest publications were suppressed. EGWC 267.11

8. That when the particular deletions made in Mrs. White’s earliest writings are examined, they provide proof positive that she wished to suppress abandoned teachings, very particularly her teachings on the shut-door and seven-year theory. EGWC 267.12