Ellen G. White and Her Critics

What Mrs. White Stressed in Old Edition

In the light of all these quotations it is easy to see how a writer, by focusing at one time on one aspect of Babylon, and at a later time on another aspect, could be considered contradictory. Yet no contradiction really would exist. Mrs. White wrote The Great Controversy in the 1880’s, when our Seventh-day Adventist writers were still much in controversy with other religious bodies as to the meaning of Babylon. The need was not to prove that Rome was involved, but that Protestantism was, and that very particularly Protestantism was intended in Revelation 14:8. Undoubtedly Mrs. White in her writing at that time focused on that point. The result is revealed in the wording of the old edition, first published in 1888. EGWC 331.5

But the years rolled on, the older days of controversy ended, particularly with other Adventist groups, and the passage in The Great Controversy became susceptible of misunderstanding. The misunderstanding was not due to any new theological view adopted by Seventh-day Adventists, which would be embarrassed by the passage. Let us mark that well! No; the misunderstanding was due to an apparent contradiction resident in the passage itself, the kind of apparent contradiction that we have found resident in the various quotations given in this chapter. In other words, Mrs. White, after quoting Revelation 14:8, immediately proceeds for two pages to discuss Babylon largely in terms of Rome, only to follow with the statement that “Babylon,” in Revelation 14:8, “cannot refer to the Romish Church.” The revision in the new edition, first published in 1911, simply sought to remove the apparent contradiction within the passage itself, by making the disputed line in the passage read: “It cannot refer to the Roman Church alone.” EGWC 332.1