Ellen G. White and Her Critics

How Paul’s Prediction Was Fulfilled

There is general agreement among Bible commentators that Paul’s prediction refers, first of all, to the Gnostic heresy, which even in his day was beginning to trouble the church. Listen to the words of a scholarly commentary concerning Gnostic teaching: EGWC 373.3

“Marriage and begetting children were wrong, because the condition of marriage was looked upon as an institution of the Demiurge;^* and because, in this way, souls pure and innocent in a former state were imprisoned in impure bodies, and, by union with corrupt matter, became sinful and wretched.... Manichaeus held that wine sprang from the blood and gall of the devil. Perhaps the food here designated is only meat (comp. Romans 14:2, 21). The command probably arose from the Gnostic fancy, that the materials which nourished the body were not the work of the Most High God, but of the Demiurgus.”—Lange’s Bible Commentary, Notes on 1 Timothy 4:3. EGWC 373.4

There is also quite general unanimity among commentators that Paul’s prediction finds its larger fulfillment in the Papacy. EGWC 373.5

We need not tarry to consider what Mrs. White is supposed to have said in a letter to a “Brother and Sister V,” for the office of the E. G. White Publications has no record of any such letter. Indeed, the key number given by the critic is not the correct one for letters from Mrs. White. EGWC 373.6