Chapter 6—Confidence Based on Experience
As far back as I can remember Ellen White seemed almost like a member of the Cottrell family. My great-grandfather, Roswell Fenner Cottrell, was a Seventh Day Baptist minister in western New York at the time he accepted the Advent message on October 19, 1851. A short time later he became a Seventh-day Adventist minister, and served the church in this capacity until his death in 1892. Over the years, in their home about thirty miles east of Niagara Falls, near Ridgeway on the old Ridge Route, he and his wife, Catherine, entertained every ordained Adventist minister. Among their guests from time to time were James and Ellen White, who often followed the Ridge Route on their travels back and forth between New England and Michigan subsequent to the move from Rochester to Battle Creek in 1855.WEWMM 55.1
Sister White’s often presence in the Cottrell home established the Bible principles and way of life she fostered by precept and example, as the ideal to which the home was dedicated and toward which its members aspired. This included all aspects of faith and doctrine, Christian experience, healthful living, relationships with other people, and one’s attitude toward the church and its leaders. In 1871 Roswell’s son James Uriah (for Uriah Smith) married Lucy Taylor, and for the next forty years her life and her ideals were molded by this same personal influence. It was in large measure through her, my grandmother, that I became acquainted with Ellen White as God’s messenger to the remnant church and that these principles were instilled into my young mind. For twenty years my boyhood home was also her home.WEWMM 55.2
In the shelter of an Adventist home throughout childhood and youth I accepted all of this almost automatically. It was, by my time, a family tradition. But when I was about 17 I began to think things through critically for myself. I read all of Sister White’s published writings, appreciating especially The Desire of Ages, Steps to Christ, The Great Controversy, Christ’s Object Lessons, and Education. Their perspective of life, duty, and destiny became mine. I recognized the Bible as primary and studied it with care, and she always seemed to apply its principles, directly and clearly, to life’s contemporary problems.WEWMM 56.1
As I encountered, other philosophies of life, both inside and outside of the church, I thought through the basis of my personal faith, and the authority of the Bible and the writings of Ellen White in relationship to it. My reasoning—in brief—went something like this: There is a personal God; personal experience had convinced me of that. He didn’t always go about things the way I thought I would if I were in His place, but I learned to adjust my thinking to His way of doing things. Obviously there was no point in expecting Him to conform to my ways of thinking and doing. There is a personal God, and the Bible must be His inspired Guidebook, and acceptance of the Bible logically calls for acceptance of the writings of Ellen White also. Over a period of three or four years I went through this process of reasoning several times, checking it out for flaws, and every time the result proved to be the same.WEWMM 56.2
One of the major factors in my thinking about Sister White was the logical, common-sense appeal of the principles she enunciated. Furthermore, every time I tried them out they always worked, and I observed that the lives of other people I knew personally reflected the same result. This was true, for example, of her counsel with respect to healthful living, and to life with its responsibilities and opportunities. Those who adopted these principles, even if they were in poor health or had a warped outlook on life, were able to live at least reasonably healthy and happy lives. In my now more than sixty years I have not spent a day in a hospital. I am convinced that this is a direct result of a conscientious endeavor to live by these principles.WEWMM 56.3
So many statements Sister White made on various aspects of healthful living, as long as a century or more ago and often in conflict with then-accepted scientific concepts, have since been corroborated by research, thus indicating the wisdom of patience with respect to the few that have not yet been so validated. This is not to imply that her statements need scientific confirmation in order to be credible, or that they become more so as a result. It is simply to affirm that she was far in advance of her day and that modern research has at no point proved her to have been in error.WEWMM 57.1
In the years prior to the organization of the General Conference in 1863 Grandfather Roswell was among those who opposed the idea of organization, fearful that organization reflected the spirit of Babylon and that it would have dire results. But a personal testimony from Sister White transformed him into a loyal advocate of the idea. This experience influenced my personal response to the authority of Ellen White as God’s appointed messenger to the Church, and my own attitude toward the Church.WEWMM 57.2
As Sister White counsels, I have always looked to the Scriptures as of supreme authority. Corollary to this belief I concluded that it was my first and highest duty to read and to understand the Bible. In my quest to learn how to listen attentively to the inspired writers I discovered that the seemingly simple process of ascertaining precisely what they do say is not always quite as simple as it might at first have appeared to be. 1 discovered, also, that Ellen White’s concept of inspiration tallies precisely with the observed facts, and that the principles of Bible study explicit and implicit in her writings comport with sound, recognized methods of Bible research.WEWMM 57.3
The process of editing the SDA Bible Commentary, all the way from Genesis 1:1 to Revelation 22:20, provided a unique opportunity for a detailed comparison of her writings with those of the Bible. Our guiding editorial principle was to deal fairly with the Bible text—to affirm neither more nor less than the Bible itself says. Before us, verse by verse, was the text of the Bible in the original languages, and at each step of the way we asked, What did the Holy Spirit and the inspired writer intend to say? Also open before us was Ellen White’s comment on each passage.WEWMM 57.4
This meticulous comparison of the Bible and Ellen White’s writings led to certain interesting and significant conclusions. Foremost among these was that when understood in terms of the intentions of the respective inspired writers, the two are in perfect harmony. Repeatedly we found Sister White making a statement about a particular passage of Scripture that reflected either an accurate knowledge of the Hebrew or the Greek text, or the writings of Biblical scholars on the subject, or the direct inspiration of the Holy Spirit. The fact that she knew no Hebrew or Greek ruled out the first possibility, and that she rarely consulted scholarly works on the Bible from which she might have obtained such information, similarly ruled out the second. We could come to no other conclusion than that before our eyes was conclusive proof that she had been guided by the same Spirit that inspired the Bible writers.WEWMM 58.1
At countless hundreds of minor points where her statements might accidentally have been in conflict with the Bible we were impressed by the accuracy with which all that she wrote conforms to the Bible. The team of Bible scholars who wrote the manuscripts we were editing reflected a wide range of ability to deal with the Bible text. Some reflected the intent of the Bible writers accurately and consistently; a few failed, again and again, to grasp the true import of passages of Scripture. But we found the contributors, almost without exception, prone to making minor misstatements of fact now and then—in impressive contrast with Ellen White’s almost perfect accuracy. Here was a person who had been denied a formal education beyond the third grade, far surpassing the best brains of the Church! What more impressive evidence could we ask for, in confirmation of the fact that a divine hand had protected her against the minor accidental errors to which most writers are prone? We were able to count her misstatements on the fingers of one hand.WEWMM 58.2
Those who have studied both the Bible and the writings of Ellen White with more than ordinary care are aware that, at times, she applies Bible statements in a way different from that intended by the original writers, and in so doing may appear to err in her comment on Scripture. Some have pointed to this as evidence that she was not an inspired spokesman for God, and at first glance this accusation may appear to have a semblance of validity. But on our way through the Commentary we discovered that New Testament writers, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, often do the same thing. They frequently apply Old Testament statements out of context, in a new setting, to teach a new truth—just as Ellen White does. Therefore to reject Ellen White as a credible witness to divine truth on this account would be to reject the New Testament as well.WEWMM 59.1
As a matter of fact, every challenge to Sister White’s credibility as an inspired writer can be brought, often with even more telling force, against the Bible writers themselves. To present such charges as a pretext for rejecting her as an inspired writer is, in most instances, the result of an artificial, arbitrary concept of what inspiration is and how it operates. Those who do so assume for the Bible certain a priori standards to which even the Bible writers themselves do not conform, and then reject Ellen White because she does not always measure up to these arbitrary criteria. When the same criteria are applied to the writings of Ellen White as to the Bible, it soon becomes evident that the two stand or fall together. This impressed the Commentary editors with the fact that the only safe way to define inspiration and to describe its operation is to approach the matter inductively and objectively—to learn from the inspired writings themselves what they say about the fact of inspiration, and to observe their demonstration of it in what they wrote.WEWMM 59.2
Preparing the Commentary for publication also impressed the editors with the variety of ways in which later inspired writers often quote from, allude to, or build on the work of earlier inspired writers. This was particularly apparent in the use New Testament writers make of the Old Testament, and that Sister White makes of the entire Bible. Her use and theirs proved to be identical. This fact is important to an accurate understanding of both the New Testament and Ellen White.WEWMM 59.3
There are three principal ways in which later inspired writers—including Ellen White—make use of, or build on, the statements of earlier inspired writers: (1) by way of direct quotation from, or reference to, a former passage in its original historical and literary context, in the same sense in which it was originally used; (2) by borrowing the words or phraseology of a former inspired statement for use in a new context, without implying that the earlier writer intended what he wrote to be understood thus, and (3) by using the words, the phraseology, and/or the ideas of a former passage to set forth a new, different truth than that intended by the former writer, as determined by his own context.WEWMM 60.1
This is not the place for an extended discussion of these and other hermeneutical principles inherent in the canonical writings and in those of Ellen White. But it cannot be emphasized too strongly that recognition of this principle is essential in order to harmonize the New Testament with the Old, and Ellen White with the Bible, at all points. To reject this principle is, in effect, to deny that either the Bible or her writings are inspired.WEWMM 60.2
The Bible speaks to all of the world; the writings of Ellen White were addressed primarily to the remnant church. Herein lies the only significant difference between them. The person who listens to both with an open mind will hear the same Voice speaking through both, with equal authority. Human elements can be pointed out in both, but to the person who chooses to listen attentively to the voice of the Holy Spirit speaking to the Church today God’s message comes, clearly and distinctly, through all of the human static, attested by a plain “thus saith the Lord” and pointing out the way in which God would have His people walk today.WEWMM 60.3
We shall do well to respond, as did Samuel, “Speak, Lord; for thy servant heareth” (1 Samuel 3:9).WEWMM 60.4
Takoma Park, Maryland
January 1973