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The Reason Why
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Why I Believe Ellen White was not
inspired of God
Table of Contents
Introduction
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The book, just begun, will give a primer-like overview of
why I believe any real examination of Ellen White's claims and writings will inevitably
end in a verdict of unfounded and uninspired.
Below you will find:
 | a table of contents |
Which will tell what point each
chapter will attempt to make.
| my line of argument |
Telling you how these points come
together to make their case.
From the one plus the other you will know more or less
what to expect from the book. The one question will be: Can the points thus staked
out be established?
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Table
of Contents
Introduction:
Expectations: Inspired versus Uninspired
Chapter 1:
Evidences of inspiration offered by her defenders add up
to several dozen.
Chapter 2:
Evidences of non-inspiration offered by her critics add
up to several thousand.
Chapter 3:
Evidences of her inspiration do not survive examination.
Chapter 4:
Evidences of her non-inspiration do survive examination.
Chapter 5:
The case by Ellen White's critics is strong. Yet, on
almost any charge they make, if you examine things for yourself you see that the reality
goes against her even stronger.
Example A: The Copying Charge
Example B: Some Archive Charges
Chapter 6:
Her critics have scored so many points it's hard to
believe they've left much yet to turn up. In fact, the points they've scored is just
the beginning.
Conclusion:
Ellen White was not the messenger of God that she
claimed.
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My Line of Argument
Suppose I'm given 80,000 pages of writings. Suppose I'm told that these pages
were written by divine inspiration. Do I accept the claim, or do I reject
it? And on what grounds?
First of all, even before I've read a line of
these writings, I note one thing. I know what I would expect from inspired writings,
and I know what I would expect from writings that merely claim inspiration. These
expectations follow from my starting assumption, which is this. If God were to raise
up a prophet, He would do the job right. That means that writings inspired
of God would meet a superhuman standard of truth and reliability. Since Ellen White
in scores of ways states or implies that her writings meet this standard, and since most
of her followers have historically accepted this standard as one that inspired writings do
meet, I will take it as a reasonable starting point.
(For those who do not accept this as reasonable, a
follow-up volume is planned. The working title is Dumbing Down God to Save Ellen
White.)
So then. If God does something, He does it
right. He neither desires, nor is He forced, to do it in the way that humans have to
do things: half-baked, filled with corner-cutting, and so on.
If you accept this starting point, then you would
expect something like the following. These are charts that summarize what we would
normally expect from 80,000 pages that were written by divine inspi- raton, versus what we
would expect from 80,000 pages that were not.
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80,000 Inspired Pages
Evidences of Inspiration -- number: hundreds
God does not
ask us to believe anything without giving us sufficient evidence.
And a writer having inspiration could hardly write without leaving, at almost every
turn, evidences of that inspiration.
Evidences of
Inspiration -- quality: good
Since the
inspiration is real, the evidences of it are no less real. The evidences can
therefore be tested with confidence. Under examination they do not break down.
Evidences of
Non-inspiration -- number: few
Some apparent
errors, some apparent contradictions. But these are rare. "Have the
critics, after searching the thousands of pages of [Ellen White's] writings, nothing more
impressive than this to bring against her!" --FDN.
Evidences of
Non-inspiration -- quality: poor
Since apparent
flaws and errors are not real, and exist only in the flawed sight of the critics, they do
not survive examination.
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80,000 Uninspired Pages
Evidences of Inspiration -- number: few
Since the
writings aren't inspired, these evidences are the rare occasional thing that merely looks
like it required inspiration. "Have the defenders, after searching the
thousands of pages of her writings, found nothing more impressive than this?"
Evidences of
Inspiration -- quality: poor
"Evidences"
that aren't genuine do not survive examination.
Evidences of
Non-inspiration -- number: many
No writer
lacking divine assistance could write this many pages on this many topics, over this many
decades, without making gaffes and errors.
Evidences of
Non-inspiration -- quality: good
Gaffes and
errors pointed out by critics are genuine gaffes and genuine errors. Charges by
critics should in general survive examination.
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These charts can be condensed and placed side-by-side:
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80,000 Inspired Pages
Evidences of Inspiration --
number: high
quality: high
[ many
genuine ]
Evidences of
Non-inspiration --
number: low
quality: low
[ none
genuine ]
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80,000 Uninspired Pages
Evidences of Inspiration --
number: low
quality: low
[ none
genuine ]
Evidences of
Non-inspiration --
number: high
quality: high
[ many
genuine ]
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The columns differ like night and day. This
means it shouldn't be difficult to know whether a body of writings were inspired.
That's because the more closely you examine them, the more you find them gravitating
toward the one column and away from the other.
And the writings of Ellen White?
Look at the chapter headings in my Table of
Contents. If those six state- ments are true -- and the chapters will
establish beyond a reasonale doubt that they are -- then look at which column
fits Ellen White like a glove.
Her defenders have gone through 80,000 pages
looking for proofs of divine inspiration and have come up with a handful (chaper 1).
This is the Uninspired Column exactly. And of these handful, not one stands
the test of examination (chapter 3). Again, the Uninspired Column exactly.
Her critics by contrast have had a field day
(chapter 2). And what they've found is just the beginning: there are whole mountains
yet to be placed in the scales against her claims to inspiration (chapters 5 and 6).
As for attempts to prove that what the critics see are due to flaws in their own eyesight
and not due to any real flaws in the Ellen White writings -- those are failures
(chapter 4), which means that the evidence offered by critics against the inspiration
theory, unlike the evidence offered by apologists for the inspiration theory, is real.
All of which brings us to the single
great major overriding reason why I believe Ellen White was uninspired, and why I elected
to put the title of my book in the singular instead of in the plural. She is exactly
what I would expect from an uninspired writer. She is exactly not what I
would expect from an inspired writer.
Even for those
who defend Ellen White by watering down the concept of divine inspiration -- would it not be singular indeed if a genuine prophet so perfectly
matched a fake? Why would a writer who was inspired, even one who was
half-semi-quasi-inspired, so exactly resemble an uninspired?
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