Ellen G. White and Her Critics

A Groundless Assumption

Though Loughborough does not state that she said anything about a specific number of moons belonging to a specific planet, it is contended that Mrs. White herself says so in a passage quoted earlier in this chapter. That passage is a portion of a vision first recorded on a broadside in 1849 (later in Early Writings, 39, 40). EGWC 99.1

Assuming, for the moment, that she is here describing the 1846 Topsham vision on astronomy, what does that prove! If the reader will turn back to the quotation, he will find that it contains these relevant lines: EGWC 99.2

“The Lord has given me a view of other worlds. Wings were given me, and an angel attended me from the city to a place that was bright and glorious.... Then I was taken to a world which had seven moons. There I saw good old Enoch, who had been translated.” EGWC 99.3

The vision gives no clue as to which of the “other worlds” she is here speaking of. But note how the critic attempts to make her words support his charge. As a kind of convincing climax to his argument about her faulty moon-mathematics in the 1846 Topsham vision, he declares: EGWC 99.4

“Mrs. White herself, relating this vision, described Saturn as having only seven moons, the number then assigned to that planet by astronomers. Here are her own words in Early Writings, 32 [1882 ed. Page 40, new ed.]: ‘Then I was taken to a world which had seven moons.’” (Italics his.) EGWC 99.5