Ellen G. White and Her Critics

The Key Question Answered

It is evident that Mrs. White had a Scriptural precedent for making changes and deletions. We come, thus, to the key question: Were the changes that she made in her writings consistent with the procedure of Bible prophets, or did she follow an evil course in an endeavor to destroy the evidence that she had formerly believed certain views? EGWC 279.4

Remember, it is charged that her motive in deletions was specifically to hide a discarded belief in the shut-door and the seven-year theory, and that the change of belief came in the summer of 1851. Following are facts, which, we think, provide a clear answer to this key question: EGWC 279.5

a. The Review and Herald continued to present the shut-door theory beyond the summer of 1851, certainly beyond the time when Mrs. White made the deletions from her first vision, which deletions constitute the key exhibit in the charge. If she and her husband were scheming in unison, why should she suppress her abandoned view ahead of him? In the Extra of the The Review and Herald, July 21, 1851, is found her first printing of the first vision with the deletions in question. But that same issue contains a report by James White on a tour he made in New York State. He speaks of meeting, among others, an Elder Jesse Thompson, and adds: EGWC 280.1

“Bro. Thompson was intimately acquainted with Bro. Miller, and traveled much with him. But when our work for the world closed in 1844, instead of setting himself to work, as some did, to try to re-arouse the churches to the subject of the Advent, he remained silent, until he heard the message of the third angel.”—Page 3. EGWC 280.2

“When our work for the world closed in 1844.” Upon finding language like this in the years before 1851 critics declare in unison: This is shut-door doctrine, clear and explicit. But James White is supposed to have abandoned, suddenly, all shut-door belief right at this time, and that is given as the reason why certain deletions were made in Mrs. White’s earliest visions. Yet the documentary evidence reveals that in the same issue of the Review that prints for the first time her earliest visions with deletions, James White used language that is identical with his shut-door language of earlier years. Hence, taking the very premises of these critics we must conclude that whatever her motive for the deletion, that motive was not a desire to conceal allegedly abandoned views on the shut door. EGWC 280.3

b. James and Ellen White are pictured as having done such a thorough job of eliminating all traces of evidence that they once held the shut-door view that they did away with certain early publications. But when they brought out Experience and Views in 1851, they left in statements that appear to teach the shut door as definitely as any of the deleted passages. It is this fact that caused critics in the 1860’s, when Experience and Views had gone out of print, to charge that we feared to reprint it because it contained discarded views. But this little book was reprinted in 1882 as a section of Early Writings, a work still current. More on this point at the close of the chapter. EGWC 280.4

Surely all this adds up to only one possible conclusion: The deletions made in certain early visions cannot be explained as illustrations of an evil endeavor to hide an abandoned view. EGWC 281.1

c. It is alleged that a program of suppression was carried on, not simply to hide a formerly held belief in the shut-door, but also to hide a belief in the seven-year theory. But the only two passages in Mrs. White’s writings that critics have even attempted to interpret as supporting that theory are passages that have appeared undeleted to the present day. Yet she was supposed to have given up the theory in 1851—though the evidence reveals that she never held it—and to have taken most sweeping steps to do away with the evidence of her former belief. EGWC 281.2

d. There are other deletions besides those that appear to deal with the shut door. But we are unable to find much reference to them in the charges of critics, except the blanket charge that a prophet should never withdraw anything once uttered. The reason they make no particular case out of most of these other deletions is that they can discover no semblance of sinister motive for the eliminations. In the absence of evidence for such motive the reasonable conclusion is that she must have had an honorable reason for what she did. But this reasonable conclusion is fatal to the charge before us. Once we have proved that there is nothing necessarily wicked in making a deletion, we place upon the critics the heavy responsibility of proving that a certain few deletions were made with evil intent. EGWC 281.3