Ellen G. White and Her Critics

9. “Duty in View of the Time of Trouble”

FIRST PRINTING

On January 31, 1849, broadside. EGWC 630.3

SECOND PRINTING

In Experience and Views, pages 44-47 (Early Writings, 56-58), with the following deletions: EGWC 630.4

Deletions

(1) “The Lord has shown me that some of his children would fear when they see the price of food rising, and they would buy food and lay it by for the time of trouble. Then in a time of need, I saw them go to their food and look at it, and it had bred worms, and was full of living creatures, and not fit for use.” EGWC 630.5

(2) “Dispose of their houses and lands.” EGWC 630.6

(3) “This seal [“of the living God”] is the Sabbath.” EGWC 630.7

(4) “If any among us are sick, let us not dishonor God by applying to earthly physicians, but apply to the God of Israel. If we follow his directions (James 5:14, 15,) the sick will be healed. God’s promise cannot fail. Have faith in God, and trust wholly in him, that when Christ who is our life shall appear we may appear with him in glory.” EGWC 630.8

Comments on Deletions

(1) The substance of this is found in the immediately preceding sentences. Perhaps deleted to “prevent repetition,” and conserve space. EGWC 630.9

(2) This deletion is part of the following sentence: “I saw it was the will of God that the saints should cut loose from every encumbrance—dispose of their houses and lands before the time of trouble comes, and make a covenant with God by sacrifice.” EGWC 630.10

This seems evidently to be a deletion to avoid repetition, for the preceding sentence states: “Houses and lands would be of no use in the time of trouble.” The same thought is found in currently printed works. EGWC 630.11

(3) No critic will say that Mrs. White abandoned the belief that the Sabbath is the seal of God. That has always been Seventh-day Adventist teaching. See, for example, Mrs. White’s current work, The Great Controversy, 452. No deletion could more clearly reveal that some other motive than a desire to “suppress” allegedly abandoned beliefs must have prompted deletions from Mrs. White’s earliest writings that found a permanent place in her works, via Experience and Views. Whether this deletion, in common with many others, was made to “prevent repetition,” or to conserve space, we know not. We do know that poverty prevented bringing out more than a sixty-four-page book. The removal of a phrase here, a sentence there, or sometimes a paragraph, would serve to simplify the making up of the pages by the printer, and to keep down the total of pages, both of which had a direct relation to cost. ^* EGWC 630.12

(4) This deletion might be explained in one of two ways: It might be viewed as an illustration of how prophets, at times, make an intense and unqualified application of a truth, calling on God’s children to make the supreme display of faith. Christ made a number of breathtaking statements regarding faith. He said to His disciples: “If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place; and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible unto you.” Matthew 17:20. We presume that the disciples were tempted to respond, as did the Jews, in general, regarding His teachings: “This is an hard saying; who can hear it?” John 6:60. The reading of James 5:14, 15, does not reveal any qualifying clause. “Is any sick among you? let him call for the elders of the church.” They were to pray and anoint him. “And the prayer of faith shall save the sick.” By implication, the statement of James is as unqualified as Mrs. White’s statement. And she makes direct reference to James. That explanation of the matter would lead to the conclusion that the deletion was made later because the statement in its brief, blunt form could easily be misunderstood. Mrs. White later wrote at length on the proper relation of faith to medical care, in which she shows the proper balance between faith in God and working together with God in medical treatment. ^† EGWC 631.1

Or Mrs. White’s statement in the deleted passage might be understood in terms of the kind of medical care that was available in those days, a kind of care that certainly did not work together with the laws of the body, which are God’s laws, for the healing of the sick. Strychnine, calomel, and opium were much relied upon by physicians. In those days someone, perhaps a victim of such drugging, paraphrased Scripture thus: “Saul has slain his thousands, but calomel its tens of thousands.” The deletion might then be explained simply as an instance of saving space, certainly not of “suppressing” an abandoned view, for Mrs. White later on made very vigorous statements on the kind of medical service that was being offered. In fact, it is in the light of the drugging, purging, and bleeding administered in those days that we can rightly understand her statement in 1864: “If there was in the land one physician in the place of thousands, a vast amount of premature mortality would be prevented.”—Spiritual Gifts 4a:133. EGWC 631.2