Ellen G. White and Her Critics

Explaining the Mysterious

However, I do not hope to be able to prove, as one would a proposition in mathematics, that Mrs. White was what Seventh-day Adventists believe she was, a spokesman for God. That cannot be done even for the prophets of the Bible. Indeed, who can prove beyond all cavil and question that there is a personal God? Who can hope by searching to find out the nature of God? In all matters that touch the world beyond, an element of mystery is involved, a mystery that exists because of our finite limitations of understanding. The trusting Christian, if left unchallenged in his faith, is happy to go forward in his life’s program, admitting the element of mystery that transcends him. In fact he finds in this mystery, which does not contradict his reason but simply goes beyond it, the best ground for faith in God—for a God no greater than ourselves would be no God at all. EGWC 18.3

But the Christian has never long been allowed to enjoy that faith unchallenged. There have ever been those who would attempt to destroy the Christian faith at one blow, not by demanding that the believer explain the mystery, but by cynically declaring that there is no mystery to explain, that all that seems mysterious can be explained in terms of natural phenomena operating according to natural law. For example, the skeptic, instead of believing Christ for the very works’ sake, declares that these miraculous works can be explained either as deceptive sleight-of-hand performances or in some other natural way, or simply as legends. EGWC 18.4

When the issue is thus drawn the Christian, whose business it is to witness for God and to win converts to the faith, must either desert the field in defeat, exposed as a superstitious, credulous fraud, or else immediately challenge the skeptic. The latter course is the One that defenders of the faith have consistently followed through the centuries. They have challenged the naturalistic explanation of God and Christ and the work of Bible prophets, and have shown that the skeptics’ explanations do not explain. Thus the defenders of Christianity have cleared the air by the very act of restoring the mystery. They are now ready to call on men to draw near once more to contemplate the mystery, and to give their allegiance to Him who is the only true explanation of that mystery. EGWC 18.5

In harmony with these precedents I have proceeded in my examination of the charges against Mrs. White. Nothing here presented will remove the element of mystery in her visions, but rather the reverse. The logic of her critics’ charges is that she belongs either in the hospital as a pathetic mental case or in jail as a cunning deceiver. They would explain all her visions on a nonsupernatural basis. But the evidence set forth in the following pages will show that the critics’ explanations do not explain. I have sought to clear the air by restoring the mystery, so that the reader may see that Mrs. White rightly belongs on the mountain of God in the company of those who have heard and then made audible the counsels of God to men. EGWC 19.1