Ellen G. White and Her Critics

Deletions to Avoid Repetition

b. The longer an author writes on related themes the more likely he is to repeat certain ideas. This is inevitable. That Mrs. White did so is no strange thing. EGWC 283.4

And how would a prophet or anyone else remove repetitions? By deletions! Now listen to Mrs. White’s own explanation for her earliest deletions in the text of a vision, her first vision. We quote her words prefacing this vision as it appeared in the Review and Herald Extra, July 21, 1851: EGWC 283.5

“Here I will give the view that was first published in 1846. In this view I saw only a very few of the events of the future. More recent views have been more full. I shall therefore leave out a portion and prevent repetition.” EGWC 283.6

It was the very fact that the substance of all the teachings in deleted passages, or in visions not reprinted, is found in some variant form in current works that largely explains why no complete text of her earliest writings has been available through the years. Critics have insisted that we dare not publish them, that such publication would wreck the faith of younger ministers and shake the church to pieces. But these extravagant claims are no longer heard. All the issues of Present Truth, and A Word to the “Little Flock,” that were supposed to have been suppressed, have been reproduced in facsimile, plus other early works. Thousands of copies have been sold to ministers and laity. And nothing explosive has happened! Why should it? What the church read in these reproduced writings of Mrs. White was simply a variant of what they had been reading for long years in her current books! EGWC 283.7