2 More Books on Ellen White

[Gregory Matthews]

The following article presents a book review of two recent books about Ellen White.  The review was written by Dr. Ronald Graybill.

https://atoday.org/book-review-donald-e-casebolt-child-of-the-apocalypse-and-father-millers-daughter/

Quote

[Dr.} 

Ronald Graybill’s early scholarship earned him an invitation to the Ellen G. White Estate to assist Arthur L. White in writing a six-volume biography of his grandmother. During his 13 years at the White Estate, Ron completed his doctorate in American Religious History at Johns Hopkins University, then taught for a decade at La Sierra University. He spent another decade preparing annual community health reports for Loma Linda University Medical Center and leading grassroots community health projects.

[Kevin H]

These are some of what has been pointed out in how Mrs. White described her ministry and did her work. Mrs. White described her job as giving personal testimonies (which she hated to do: and which gave different messages to different situations. following the application of the principle that while God's law is absolute, the applications are not absolute). To call attention to forgotten parts of the Bible (such as the Sabbath, hell fire, the centrality of Revelation 14). Then she had a series of themes/focuses; some of these continued with  different emphasis through out her ministry. These tended to be: Not to be fanatical, but allow a free sharing of ideas. Those in a specific order were to first accept that their Millerite experience was indeed lead by God and not a mistake. Second, the formation of the church. Third was the formation of the publishing work, followed by the educational and medical work. The reorganization of the General Conference. Finally, her ongoing fight against Fundamentalism moved from a side issue to her last great battle (one she sadly lost and died while fighting). These included guidance for things such as how to evangelize cities. And her grand framework and the most fun of her job, but often was overshadowed by her other tasks; was the issues of the Great Controversy. 

She said that her visions gave her a frame work, which we can call the structure of the Great Controversy; which all the other things played a role. Her visions were described as seeing a group of photographs that she was trying to describe. Her framework actually has come out to be as close to infallible as you can get, but the rest are ways she studied, thought, and applied what she was learning. These are her human side. We see in her description of the Great Controversy that she was an outstanding philosopher. She was also a literary genius but her genius made her feel that she was inadequate to reach the standard she shot for. This was one of two reasons why she keep looking for other's that she though used better words than she could produce. (although, when she paraphrased she usually greatly improved their words;  and within the pages she wrote that we do not really find much copying is some of her most outstanding writings; making us wonder what she could have done on her own.)

A second reason for copying was that there were two levels of writing when she started; one carefully footnoted, the other free copying without footnoting. (The R&H belonged to an association of several hundred religious journals who all sent a free copy to the others in their association so that the writers could copy/paraphrase from each other. We talk about Mrs. White's copying, but if we look here we could well find people who copied her in the same way). Feeling a rush to get the message out so that the Lord could come she and James felt that this second way was the quickest. She always wrote in a rush. As the years went by, this second style with the intense copying fell out of favor. By that time Mrs. White was starting to get up in age, made the writing style a habit, and could not remember most of her sources. Monday morning quarterbacking sees that they should have taken the first style and copy as much but well footnoted, and to try to write on her own. But hindsight is better than foresight; and unlike our sports lovers who realize they are dong the Monday morning quarterbacking realize they are Monday morning quarterbacking. We hold our hindsight against her. 

And she was a human. At Andrews we learned about a friend, another young mother like she was, and they would write letters about child raising advice. They stopped these discussions as Mrs. White wrote her friend something like "Forget everything I wrote to you about child rearing, they don't work." Elder Coon did not tell us if any of those letters were printed in compilations of her writings. 

[DickOdenthal]

I am reading Father Miller’s Daughter. Regardless of where you come down on her as an inspired messenger or not the hagiographic portrayal of some of the origins of our teachings do not withstand scrutiny. 

On 10/19/2022 at 7:31 AM, Gregory Matthews said:

 

 

 

[DickOdenthal]

On 11/26/2022 at 10:21 AM, Gregory Matthews said:

The following article presents a book review of two recent books about Ellen White.  The review was written by Dr. Ronald Graybill.

https://atoday.org/book-review-donald-e-casebolt-child-of-the-apocalypse-and-father-millers-daughter/

Reading the Casebolt book. Let’s just say the actual history that is foot noted and sourced is different than the so called careful scholar SDA’s portray William Miller being.