Ellen G. White and Her Critics

An Important Question

But right here an important question arises. We have found repeatedly in former chapters that critics like to make the sweeping charge that Mrs. White’s teachings simply reflected the current thinking, whether the thinking was inside the church or out. They cannot tolerate the thought that she might have had an original idea, much less that the idea came from Heaven. But they well know that the views of the health reformers of the mid-nineteenth century were not generally held. Most medical practitioners ridiculed them. EGWC 393.2

We ask: Why did Mrs. White’s writings on health fail to reflect the generally held views of the time, that were supported by virtually all medical men? Why, instead, did she turn so definitely against them, and give at least a measure of support to ideas that had no standing? This is a singular situation, indeed, and is quite contrary to what we should expect her to be doing if she was a fraud and was dependent for her views upon the ideas current at the time. If she was a cunning deceiver, seeking to build a reputation for herself, or if she was simply a harmlessly ecstatic soul, would she not be more likely to throw in her lot with well-established medical views rather than with new ones, seeing she could do so and still hold on to her distinctive theology? But the evidence shows that she did not. EGWC 393.3

We think that this remarkable fact will make the reader skeptical of the charge that Mrs. White simply borrowed her health teachings from others. EGWC 393.4