July 24, 2024
Ellen White’s Elmshaven and My Dental Hygiene Students:
Every so often I taught for this group what amounted to a readings course of EGW’s “Ministry of Healing,” a book put together by Team Ellen which has good things in it even though its literary quality is very uneven. The overwhelming majority of them were non-SDA women.
We had no quizzes, midterms or final exams. Instead, I asked them each week to choose one sentence in the assigned reading that they found especially helpful or unhelpful and write a couple of pages explaining why.
Things typically went well with an anticipated range of responses until we reached the section on “The Home” when virtually all of them wrote the same thing.“I just love what she says about neither the husband nor the wife losing his or her individuality in the other’s.” “I totally hate what she says about us having to have simple, functional and modest homes. After going to school this long, I want a very attractive home!”
After I had read these papers and returned them, I put a photograph of Elmshaven on the screen and said nothing. The room was silent for what felt to me like an uncomfortably long time. Then they turned to each other and whispered, “She’s right! We should all have simple, functional and modest homes just like hers!”
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"The Legacy of Ellen White" is the cover story and theme of the most recent (July 2024) issue of the "Pacific Union Recorder."
It is a huge step in the right direction! This is the monthly magazine that helps keep the many SDAs in California, Nevada, Utah, Arizona and Hawai'i in touch with each other.
This issue ncludes no likeness of her sitting alone before an empty desk, quill in hand and gazing upward. Instead, it presents four images. On the cover, she is pictured sitting on her rocking chair in her study, something written in her hands, beside a desk that almost seems cluttered.
Three photographs are inside One of them is of Elmshaven, the property and more-than-comfortable home near St. Helena, California where she spent the last years of her life.
Both of the other two are close-up photographs of either a few of the 1,500 books in her library or ones very much like them.
These images convey something that SDAs often overlook. This is that she read books and extensively used them in her writings. That she did this is to her credit. That she did not acknowledge doing this most definitely is not.
We SDAs today are not responsible for what she did but we are responsible for what we do with what she did. This issue of the "Recorder" fulfills this responsibility admirably.
It includes an article about a recent book that Warren Trenchard wrote which summarizes and assesses Fred Veltman's massive study of Ellen White's extensive but unacknowledged use of literary sources in selected chapters in her book "Desire of Ages" about the life of Jesus. This is a hugely positive contribution.
This issue includes as well an article about Ellen White that Bradford C. Newton wrote. He is the President of the Pacific Union Conference. .He handles the issue of whether God inspired her writings in precisely the best way Far from making some case for this being so, he invites his readers to read her books, especially the ones on the life and teachings of Jesus, and decide for themselves.
August 10, 2024 [?]
Even More Quickly: We can never know with certainty whether something we read is divinely inspired. The best we can do is to treat it "as if" it is or "as if" it isn't.
Figuring out how the material was composed does not determine which way to treat it. The text's results in our lives is the deciding factor. We should treat it "as if" it is divinely inspired to the degree that it helps us to be healthier people. "Ye shall know them by their fruits."
Every SDA should know how how EGW's books were produced so that he or she is not upset when eventually finding out. This kind of stress always makes us less healthy.
More importantly, though, any passage's ability to benefit us depends upon our correct understanding of it textually and contextually. But its benefits or lack of them is the criterion.
Exclusively judging any idea according to how it came to us is the "genetic fallacy." Truth is truth no matter how it comes to us and so is error. I'll return to this project after I've completed at least one other. Even, then, though, I'll be doing other things too.
August 12, 2024
Although I haven’t seen it, I have been told that Steve Daily has depicted me as defending Ellen White and asked how I would like to respond. This is my written reply:
Steve, whom I consider a friend, says that EGW is the greatest fraud who ever lived. {Steve Daily corrected me on this. He didnt say that she was the "greatest fraud "but the "most successful plagiarrist."]
I don't believe that she was a fraud. However, many people do not understand that a whole team of people put together her books and that they used many literary sources. She was open about having "bookmakers." She was not open about the literary sources they used
She denied it.
Team Ellen’s use of literary sources did not amount to plagiarism, in the technical sense of the term, because they blended the sources they used into written material that was distinctively hers.
What to think about her denials is a perplexing question.
An easy solution is either to say that whatever she did was right because she did it or to say she was a fraud through and through. As always, what Aristotle called the "Golden Mean, which is the midpoint between opposite extremes, is the most difficult to formulate and to sustain. Yet, this is the one that makes most sense to me.
As people have often heard me say, we are not responsible for what Team Ellen did; however, we are responsible for what we do with what they did.
Our first obligation is to be clear with each other and with others that Ellen White the author of books was not a person but a team and that this team used literary which she denied.
Our second obligation is to pinpoint where Team Ellen used literary sources without acknowledging it and give credit even at this late date where credit is due.
It is my impression from something that Michael Campbell wrote here on Facebook that the 1,500 books that were in her library when she died have been digitalized. If so, it will be much easier to locate at least some of the sources that "Team Ellen" used.
Generous people have already volunteered financially to support this research and to put its results on the Internet. But we need someone with the right scholarly skills to lead out.
August 24, 2024
I prefer not to thought of as defending Ellen White no matter what. I have repeatedly said that Team Ellen should have referenced their sources and that we should do so now. This will take some money. Can I count on you for small contribution of $1,000.00?
Ellen White helped me win, when I was twelve years old and living with my family in Kailua, Hawaii, a suit, dress shirt with French cuffs, cuff links, tie, belt, socks and shoes from Liberty House in Honolulu for writing the best essay in my age group on how young people should dress.
I did it by reading in my father’s study what she [Team Ellen] had written about how Christians should dress and keeping it in mind when I wrote my essay. I used what was then the best Index to her writings. attractive than any Index since, it was three volumes in red leather covers.
This is one reason why it is difficult for me to angry at her.
August 25, 2024
We should assess what we read according to the merits of what the texts says and not according to how it got there.
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We should assess what we read according to the merits of what the texts says and not according to how it got there.
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Again: My only interest in the issue of sources is to give credit where credit is due. We can put on the Internet all the sources we now know about and add to it as people discover new instances. I don't think we need to do more research ourselves. Just invite people to send to us what they find as they do so. If knowing how these books ever makes it impossible for me to benefit from reading them, I hope I stop reading them and get on with rest of my life.
Again: My only interest in the issue of sources is to give credit where credit is due. We can put on the Internet all the sources we now know about and add to it as people discover new instances. I don't think we need to do more research ourselves. Just invite people to send to us what they find as they do so. If knowing how these books ever makes it impossible for me to benefit from reading them, I hope I stop reading them and get on with rest of my life.
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As I see it, what is on the page is what ultimately matters. Anything one can do to help one understand what is one the page certainly should be done. But if I make it a practice to believe X because and only because A said that it is true and not believe the X because and only because A said it is false, I am setting myself up for much trouble and pain.
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Yes! I so admire people like you who can improve their views without totally melting down or scorning what they previously believed or trashing those who taught them it. The Christian life is a journey and there is no reason to be upset if it takes an unexpectected turn. Actually, we should expect the unexpected!
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Some people who are no longer fundamentalsts about Team Ellen are still fundamentalists about the Bible.
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I prefer not to thought of as defending Ellen White no matter what. I have repeatedly said that Team Ellen should have referenced their sources and that we should do so now. This will take some money. Can I count on you for small contribution of $1,000.00?
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Thank you! My thinking is that learning as much as we can from from the sources you have might in mind is always interesting and often important in helping us to understand what we are reading. In the end, though, our understanding and assessment of what the text says should deremine which of many things we do with it. I think I am saying what we already do.
For instance, trial and error have convinced most Christians that they should not play with poisonous snakeseven though a text in the New Testament strongly suggests that they safely can sYes! We should read the Bible the same way. We should do whatever research we can to help us understand the text. But, in the end, our best understanding of what the text says, and whether it makes sense in light of everything else Scripture says, andwith everything else we know, should decde how we relate to it. Thank you for your excellent questions. They show that you are thinking!
August 26, 2024
Thank you! My thinking is that learning as much as we can from from the sources you have might in mind is always interesting and often important in helping us to understand what we are reading. In the end, though, our understanding and assessment of what the text says should deremine which of many things we do with it. I think I am saying what we already do.
For instance, trial and error have convinced most Christians that they should not play with poisonous snakeseven though a text in the New Testament strongly suggests that they safely can sYes! We should read the Bible the same way. We should do whatever research we can to help us understand the text. But, in the end, our best understanding of what the text says, and whether it makes sense in light of everything else Scripture says, andwith everything else we know, should decde how we relate to it. Thank you for your excellent questions. They show that you are thinking!
August 26, 2024
Ellen White’s impact on my life has been shaped by two experiences I had when I was a young.
I posted something about the first on August 24. It taught me that those who read her [Team Ellen's] wriings with common sense will find many good things.
The second one happened in a Bible class during my high school senior year at P.U.C. Prep in Angwin, California. A guest speaker told us about a miracle that had occurred in her life in order to persuade us that she was a true prophet of God.
It didn’t work for me. I believed that the story probably did not happen the way speaker told it. What;s more, God probably had more valuable things to so. Much more importantly, though, I suddenly remembered from my own acquaintance with her writings that we are supposed to base our beliefs on the weight of Biblical evidence and not on miracles.
That recollecion was so vivid that it has reminded me all of my life that what Ellen White says is no more or less true whether she reports that someome told her, she read it, it occurred to her or God revealed it to her. The inherit merit of what she says in light of our informed and wise reading of Scripture is the decisive consideration.
I, therefore, don't know why some people keep telling miracle stories about her. They are irrelvant at best and misleading at worst.
August 27, 2024
“God wants all to have common sense,
“God wants all to have common sense,
and he wants us to reason from common sense.
Circumstances alter conditions.
Circumstances change the relation of things."
Team Ellen
August 28, 2024
[If God has performed a miracle for you] Be thankful and continue with your life. Don't make yourself the center of attention. Remember that everytime someone tells a story about God performing a miracle for them, someone who is having a difficult time will wonder why God didn't do the same him or her. Keep in mind that God performs so few miracles that many children starve to death every night. Miracles are rare.
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[If God has performed a miracle for you] Be thankful and continue with your life. Don't make yourself the center of attention. Remember that everytime someone tells a story about God performing a miracle for them, someone who is having a difficult time will wonder why God didn't do the same him or her. Keep in mind that God performs so few miracles that many children starve to death every night. Miracles are rare.
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Here is the story Arthur White told us in our Bible class when I was a senior at P.U.C. Prep. The one who tells it is W. C. White. He was Ellen's son and Arthur's father:
[This was in the 1963-1964 school year, I doubted that it was accuate. I was certain that it was not relevant. This is because Ellen White herself eventually became convinced that we should not base our beliefs on miracles but on the weight of Biblical evidence. I knew that when I was 18 years old. I still know it even though I am almost 78 years old],
[This was in the 1963-1964 school year, I doubted that it was accuate. I was certain that it was not relevant. This is because Ellen White herself eventually became convinced that we should not base our beliefs on miracles but on the weight of Biblical evidence. I knew that when I was 18 years old. I still know it even though I am almost 78 years old],
"At one time there was a group of young people boarding with Mother in her Healdsburg home, some helping her in her work, and some were students and teachers in the school. A peculiar temptation came to one of the teachers. She had taken a nicely woven hair net of Mother's and put it in her trunk. Mother made diligent inquiry about this net. She searched the house for it, and said, "It must be found. It could not go away by itself." One day she was passing through a room to reach another and a voice said to her, "Lift the lid of that trunk." It was a thing so different from her ordinary life, to look into another person's trunk. But the voice said to her again, "Lift the lid of that trunk." She did so and there saw the missing net. Instead of telling what she had seen, she made inquiry again about the net, and said, "I am sure you will find it." She pressed the matter so hard that the one who had taken the net felt that she must get rid of, and so she destroyed it. She felt that she could not return it after what had been said about it.
One day as Mother was sitting at the fireplace, a picture appeared before her eyes of that young lady holding the net over a lamp and burning it. When Mother saw that there was a determined purpose not to confess the transgression, she told the young lady what she had seen, and she confessed it all. She said, "I do not know why I took it. I do not know why I did not bring it back when you first spoke of it." She was a young woman of beautiful character except one thing. All her life long she had been indulged and trained to selfishness. Evidently the Lord gave her that experience to reveal that trait. After this she made a decided reformation, lived a new life. The Lord meant that to save her from more serious things."