Ellen G. White and Her Critics

The Essence of the Charge

The charge is that “Mrs. White simply saw what her companions at the time generally believed and talked about.” Hence she was a fraud because she pretended to be presenting a revelation, when, in reality, what she “revealed” was common knowledge, obtainable from conversations with Bates himself or from any textbook on astronomy. And of course she must have perpetrated this hoax “to win Elder Bates.” EGWC 95.2

Now, we agree that the evidence warrants the conclusion that the vision evidently played a deciding part in persuading Bates that Mrs. White was a true prophet of God and not a fraud. But other documentary evidence also warrants the conclusion that Bates was excessively cautious about accepting her claims. In 1847 he tells of his having taken a very long time deciding. When she was in vision, at different times, he declares, “I listened to every word, and watched every move to detect deception, or mesmeric influence.” (See Bates’s statement in Broadside, A Vision, Topsham, Me., April 7, 1847. Reprinted in A Word to the “Little Flock,” p. 21.) EGWC 95.3

The documentary evidence also calls for the conclusion that Mrs. White “had never studied or otherwise received knowledge” in the field of astronomy. The critic does not seem to challenge the statement attributed to Mrs. White regarding her ignorance of astronomy except as that ignorance might have been removed by “conversations.” He says, speaking of Bates: EGWC 95.4

“He asked her if she had ever studied astronomy, and she replied by saying that she did not remember ever having looked in a book on astronomy. That settled it with him. But she could easily have learned all this from his own previous conversations.” EGWC 96.1

We are expected to conclude, therefore, that the skeptical Bates was amazed, overjoyed, and overwhelmingly convinced for all time regarding her claims, chiefly because she recited back to him in vision a bit of arithmetic—“four moons,” “seven moons,” “six moons”—which “she could easily have learned ... from his own previous conversations.” We do not believe Bates was that credulous, or that our readers are either! EGWC 96.2