Ellen G. White and Her Critics

Mrs. White Focuses on Satan as Evil Power

One cannot read far in Mrs. White’s writings before becoming aware that she views the whole drama of our world from its earliest days onward as a great struggle between God and the devil. ^* Mrs. White pictures Satan as stalking over the earth, bent on disorder and devastation, even as the Bible pictures him. It is true that she did not specifically refer to Satan in the amalgamation statements in Spiritual Gifts. However, in an unpublished statement, she makes a reference to amalgamation—the only other reference thus far discovered in all her writings—which discloses her views as to the cause of certain of the changes that took place in our world after Adam and Eve fell. The statement reads: EGWC 320.1

“Not one noxious plant was placed in the Lord’s great garden, but after Adam and Eve sinned, poisonous herbs sprang up. In the parable of the sower the question was asked the Master, ‘Didst not thou sow good seed in thy field? how then hath it tares?’ The Master answered, ‘An enemy hath done this.’ All tares are sown by the evil one. Every noxious herb is of his sowing, and by his ingenious methods of amalgamation he has corrupted the earth with tares.”—MS. 65, 1899. EGWC 320.2

This statement, viewed in the setting of the whole tenor of Mrs. White’s writings which attribute to Satan the active responsibility for all evil in our world, fully warrants us in concluding that she attributed to Satan the “confused species” of animals. Hence she would most certainly describe these “species” as a manifestation of sin, even as she could properly speak of the appearance of insensate but “noxious, poisonous herbs” as an exhibit of the activity of the “evil one.” Thus her amalgamation statement regarding “sin” is consistent with all that Scripture has revealed of earth’s early days, in terms of the interpretation we have given to the key phrase, “amalgamation of man and beast.” EGWC 320.3

We have; therefore; left for consideration only the charge implicit in the fact that the amalgamation statements were not incorporated by Mrs. White in her later works, now current. EGWC 320.4