Ellen G. White and Her Critics

To the Reader of this Book

Throughout almost the whole lifetime of the Seventh-day Adventist movement, which sprang out of the interdenominational Advent movement of the early 1840’s, there have been in circulation various charges and accusations against Mrs. E. G. White. As the opening chapter will reveal, she has played a unique and most important role in the life of the church. The charges against her run the gamut from an accusation that she was a designing woman who foisted upon her followers the plagiarized thoughts of others, to the condescendingly pitying contention that she was a self-deluded hysteric who sincerely thought she had visions. EGWC 15.1

The very fact that these charges are in almost constant circulation tends in itself to create a considerable dust, and that dust tends, in turn, to obscure the heavenly road for some of the Advent travelers, and to distort, grotesquely, the movement for those who look on, and whom we wish to have travel with us the upward road. EGWC 15.2

The pages of the church paper through a century have, from time to time, contained vigorous articles in refutation of these attacks upon the character, conduct, and teachings of Mrs. White. It is evident from the record that our spiritual fathers believed that in taking this militant stand in her defense they were defending something central to the whole movement. They did not hesitate on occasion even to bring out special numbers of the Review and Herald that featured a defense of her. ^* EGWC 15.3