DID ELLEN WHITE REALLY CHANGE HER BELIEF?

God’s prophets are never against Him. Even the modern theologians admit that Ellen White clearly rejected the Trinity at least until the early 20th century. She said that our beliefs can only be deepened, but not changed, because all the facts had already been revealed to her personally by God!

  • “The evidence given in our early experience has the same force that it had then. [..] That which was sought for out of the Word in 1844, 1845, and 1846 remains the truth today in every particular.” {Ellen White: 1MR, p. 52, 1906. – Lt 38. 1906} 
  • “The Lord encourages all who seek Him with the whole heart. He gives them His holy Spirit, the manifestation of His presence and favour.” {Ellen White: 9T, p. 230, 1909
  • “Let them be thankful to God for His manifold mercies and be kind to one another. They have one God and one Saviour; and one Spirit—the Spirit of Christ—is to bring unity into their ranks.” {Ellen White: 9T, p. 189.3 1905
  • God (the Father) and Christ alone know what the souls of men have cost.” {Ellen White: ST, January 13, 1909 par. 8} 

If the holy Spirit were a god in the Trinity, it would be strange if he did not have the same knowledge as the Father and the Son have! In the above 1909 statement, Ellen White made an effort to emphasise that the Trinity was not a true teaching, because such a constellation is not possible within the Trinity, because all three would have to be the same, and know everything.

  • “That which has been presented harmonises perfectly with the light which God has been pleased to give me during all the years of my experience. [..]I have had the question asked, “What do you think of this light that these men (pioneers) are presenting? Why, I have been presenting it to you for the last 45 years” {Ellen White 1888, pp. 164.3, 348}
  • “The Lord Jesus Christ, the DIVINE Son of God, existed from eternity, a distinct person, yet one with the Father. He was the surpassing glory of heaven. He was the commander of the heavenly intelligences, and the adoring homage of the angels was received by him as his right. This was no robbery of God (the Father). “The Lord possessed me in the beginning of his way,” he declares, “before his works of old. I was SET UP from everlasting, from the beginning, or ever the earth was. When there were no depths, I was brought forth; when there were no fountains abounding with water. Before the mountains were settled, before the hills was I brought forth; while as yet he had not made the earth, nor the fields, nor the highest part of the dust of the world. When he prepared the heavens, I was there: when he set a compass upon the face of the depth.” {Ellen White, RH, April 5, 1906 par. 7} 
  • “I understood that some were anxious to know if Mrs. White still held the same views that she did years ago when they had heard her speak in the sanitarium grove, in the Tabernacle, and at the camp-meetings held in the suburbs of Battle Creek. I assured them that the message she bears today is the same that she has borne during the sixty years of her public ministry. She has the same service to do for the Master that was laid upon her in her girlhood. She receives lessons from the same Instructor. The directions given her are, “Make known to others what I have revealed to you. Write out the messages that I give you, that the people may have them.” This is what she has endeavored to do.” {Ellen White: RH, July 26, 1906 par. 20} 
  • God has given me light regarding our periodicals. What is it?—He has said that the dead are to speak. How? Their works shall follow them. We are to repeat the words of the pioneers in our work, who knew what it cost to search for the truth as for hidden treasure, and who labored to lay the foundation of our work. They moved forward step by step under the influence of the Spirit of God. One by one these pioneers are passing away. The word given me is, Let that which these men have written in the past be reproduced…” {Ellen White: RH May 25, 1905, par. 2} 

The inspired word is God’s revelation, and reprinting the works of our pioneers means rejecting new teachings that go against the established truths! All their works contained an explicit rejection of the Trinity. EGW received an order from God to print the old books of the pioneers, to prevent the spread of the false teaching of the Trinity. The Adventists of today, by misinterpretation of some Bible verses, get the impression that the Trinity is true. In the same way, Dr. Kellogg, through misinterpretation of some quotes by EGW, took many away from the truth.

  • “Those who seek to remove the old landmarks are not holding fast; they are not remembering how they have received and heard. Those who try to bring in theories that would remove the pillars of our faith concerning the sanctuary or concerning the personality of God or of Christ, are working as blind men. They are seeking to bring in uncertainties and to set the people of God adrift without an anchor” {Ellen White: MR 760, p. 9, 1905
  • “Here, upon the train, we met a man of marked physical and mental powers, just returning from his missionary field in China. […] As we conversed with this gentleman, feelings of profound respect were aroused for the sacrifice he has made, and is still making. [..] But after catechising us upon the trinity, and finding that we were not sound upon the subject of his triune god, he became earnest in denouncing unitarianism, which takes from Christ his divinity, and leaves him but a man. Here, as far as our views were concerned, he was combating a man of straw. We do not deny the divinity of Christ. [..] We believe him to be the Divine person addressed by Jehovah in the words, ” Let us make man.” He was with the Father before the world was. [..] We HAVE NOT as much SYMPATHY with Unitarians that deny the divinity of Christ, as with TRINITARIANS who hold that the Son is the eternal Father, and talk so mistily about the three-one God. Give the Master all that divinity with which the holy Scriptures clothe him.“  {James White: RH, 6. June, 1871, 196, part: Western Tour} {http://docs.adventistarchives.org/docs/RH/RH18710606-V37-25__B.pdf

The entire edition of the RH with that quote was “accidentally” removed from the “EGW Writings” page!

  • “The Word of the Lord has guided our steps since the passing of the time in 1844. We have searched the Scriptures; we have built solidly; and we have not had to tear up our foundations and put in new timbers.” {Ellen White: 1MR, p. 54, 1907, Letter 24, 1907, p. 3. (To Elder A. G. Daniells, February 4, 1907)} 

Here we could see clearly that the old foundations, which include the rejection of the Trinity, have never been removed! Ellen White died in 1915. Even a few years after her death, the teaching of the Trinity was still extremely controversial. It is known that the founders of the Trinity at that time, in her last years of life, in personal contact with her, achieved little less than nothing, if those conversations were conducted at all. In any case, Ellen White never wrote that she was with these people, such as with prof. Prescott, defined a theological point in his direction. 

Proponents of the Trinity quote some controversial words, but apparently, none of them dared to go directly to Ellen White and ask her what she meant by that or whether she actually wrote it. Did she defend the church from the Trinity? When the Pacific Press published a book on the Trinity by the non-Adventist author Samuel T. Spear in 1892 as part of the printing service, she strongly opposed the printing of other people’s books in our printing. It is the book of another church, then printed for material reasons, i.e. taken as proof of our belief at the time. This explains the reason for God’s deep punishment:

  • “Not with standing the condition of things at the publishing house, a suggestion had been made to bring still more of our work to the Review office, still more power into Battle Creek. This greatly alarmed me, and when the fire came, I breathed easier than I had for a long time….Again and again the Lord had shown me that for EVERY DOLLAR that was accumulated by unjust means, there would be ten times as much lost.“ {Ellen White: MS 20, 1903, April 3, par. 7}
  • Before the fire came which swept away the Review and Herald factory, I was in distress for many days…. It was then that I saw the representation of danger, a sword of fire turning this way and that way…The next news was that the Review and Herald building had been consumed by fire, but that not one life had been lost. In this the Lord spoke mercy with judgment. The mercy of God was mingled with judgment to spare the lives of the workers.“ {Ellen White: MS 20 1903,  April 3, par. 6} 
  • “God desired that every move should be in accordance with Bible principles. There was to be no sharp dealing, and God has been displeased. For the last twenty years God has been sending reproofs and warnings regarding this. The very worst thing that could now be done would be for the Review and Herald office to be once more built up in Battle Creek. The way has been opened for it (printing house) to break its association there, association with worldly men, which ought to be broken. Unjustifiable commercial business has been carried on, because the money that it brought in was needed…Pernicious matter has been published right in our office, and if some part of the work had to be delayed, it was the work on the books containing the light of truth. This was greatly displeasing to the Lord. The apprentices were being educated in the false doctrines contained in the matter brought in. And the Review and Herald presses were sending these false doctrines out to the world.“ {Ellen White: MS 20, 1903, April 3, par. 8}

When Dr. Kellogg accepted the doctrine of the Trinity he was in open disagreement with the church and soon after was expelled from it, with countless of his followers. His exclusion was led by Ellen White! The attacks on Ellen White’s old visions, which clearly deny the Trinity and say that Jesus is the literal Son of the Father, are argued by saying that “she did not understand that Jesus was a Divine Being until she accepted the Trinity as the “truth”. In the quote below we can see the complete opposite, and we can recognise that in 1879 she clearly wrote that Jesus was a Divine, not a created. The position of the Son below the Father excludes the possibility of a Trinity! Rejecting the Trinity and believing in a heavenly hierarchy does not mean rejecting the truth that Jesus is a Divine Being!

  • This fact the [fallen] angels would obscure, that Christ was the only begotten Son of God, and they came to consider that they were not to consult Christ.” {Ellen White: TDG, 128.2 1910!} 
  • “Fallen men, in one sense, could not be companions for Christ, for they could not enter into sympathy with His Divine nature, and hold communion with the world’s Redeemer.” {Ellen White: ST, December 11, 1879 par. 3} 
  • “As Jehovah, THE SUPREME Ruler, God could not personally communicate with sinful men, but He so loved the world that He sent Jesus to our world as a revelation of Himself.” {Ellen White: 9MR, p. 122, 1903

This Text is part of the book First Commandment OR Trinity? – Encyclopedia of Evidences of the Old Trampled Truths of All Areas