Ellen G. White and Seventh-day Adventism: Prophet and Church

Ellen G. White (1827–1915) was the visionary co-founder of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, a Protestant denomination that grew out of the Millerite expectation of Christ's return in 1844 and was formally organised in 1863. Adventists regard her as a messenger of God endowed with the "spirit of prophecy", and her books shaped the church's distinctive teachings on the Saturday Sabbath, the heavenly sanctuary, the state of the dead and health. Today the church she helped to found has more than twenty million baptised members, most of them in Africa, Latin America and Asia.

Ellen Harmon and the Millerite Awakening§

Ellen Gould Harmon was born on 26 November 1827 at Gorham, Maine, one of twins in a devout Methodist family that later moved to Portland. At about the age of nine she was struck in the face by a stone thrown by a schoolmate; the injury left her seriously ill for a long time and ended her formal schooling. As an adolescent she heard William Miller preach that Christ would return around 1843–1844, a message described in Adventist and Restorationist Movements. Her family accepted it and was disfellowshipped by its Methodist congregation in 1843.

The failure of the final date, 22 October 1844, devastated the Millerites. In December 1844, while praying with other women in Portland, the seventeen-year-old Ellen reported her first vision: she saw the Advent believers travelling along a high path toward the city of God, guided by a light behind them that represented the "midnight cry" of 1844. For a small group of believers this vision confirmed that their experience had not been a delusion, even if they had misunderstood what was to happen.

Visions, Writings and the Spirit of Prophecy§

Over seven decades White reported some two thousand visions and prophetic dreams. Early observers described her in vision as unaware of her surroundings and apparently not breathing, phenomena that Adventists cited as evidence of supernatural origin and that some later historians have related to her childhood head injury, a suggestion the church rejects. In 1846 she married James White, a young Adventist preacher; the couple had four sons, two of whom died young, and worked together as writers, publishers and organisers until James's death in 1881.

White became one of the most widely translated American women writers. Her major works include the five-volume "Conflict of the Ages" series, which traces the cosmic struggle between Christ and Satan from the fall of Lucifer to the new earth, and culminates in The Great Controversy (1888, revised 1911); a life of Christ, The Desire of Ages (1898); and the short devotional Steps to Christ (1892), which has appeared in well over a hundred languages. She also wrote extensively on education, diet, family life and church order. Adventists describe her gift as the "spirit of prophecy", a phrase drawn from Revelation 19:10, and see its presence as a mark of the "remnant" church of Revelation 12:17. By the terms of her will her writings are kept by the Ellen G. White Estate.

Founding the Seventh-day Adventist Church§

The post-1844 believers were few, poor and scattered, and many feared that any formal organisation would turn them into the "Babylon" of the established churches. Between 1844 and 1848 a core group agreed on several new convictions. Joseph Bates, a retired sea captain, persuaded the Whites in 1846 that the seventh-day Sabbath of the fourth commandment (Exodus 20:8–11) was still binding. Hiram Edson and others reinterpreted Daniel 8:14: the sanctuary to be cleansed in 1844 was not the earth but the sanctuary in heaven described in Hebrews 8, where Christ had begun a final ministry.

James White began publishing The Present Truth in 1849 and the Review and Herald in 1850, and the movement gradually settled in Battle Creek, Michigan. The name "Seventh-day Adventist" was chosen in 1860, and in May 1863 delegates formed the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists, with about 3,500 members. Ellen White's counsel steadily pushed the church toward structure, education and mission. She herself lived in Australia from 1891 to 1900, where she helped to found what became Avondale College, before retiring to Elmshaven in California, where she died on 16 July 1915.

Health Reform, Battle Creek and the Adventist Health Message§

On 6 June 1863 at Otsego, Michigan, White reported a vision on health. Drawing on and adding religious urgency to the wider American health-reform movement of Sylvester Graham and the water-cure doctors, she taught that the body is the temple of the Holy Spirit and that its care is a religious duty. Adventists were urged to give up tobacco, alcohol, tea and coffee, to avoid pork and other meats declared unclean in Leviticus 11, and ideally to adopt a vegetarian diet, with fresh air, exercise, rest and simple natural remedies.

In 1866 the church opened the Western Health Reform Institute at Battle Creek. Under John Harvey Kellogg, who became its director in 1876, it grew into the famous Battle Creek Sanitarium, a resort-hospital that treated thousands of wealthy patients with diet, hydrotherapy and exercise and gave rise to flaked breakfast cereals. Kellogg's independence and theological speculations, which White judged pantheistic, led to his separation from the church in 1907. The health message nonetheless became central to Adventist identity. The church built hundreds of hospitals and clinics worldwide and founded what became Loma Linda University in California in 1905. Long-term studies of Adventists' health, and the inclusion of Loma Linda among the "Blue Zones" of unusual longevity, have made the denomination a subject of epidemiological as well as historical research.

Distinctive Adventist Beliefs§

Seventh-day Adventists share the main convictions of evangelical Protestantism: the Trinity, the divinity of Christ, salvation by grace through faith, adult baptism by immersion and the authority of scripture. Their current statement of Fundamental Beliefs, adopted in 1980 and expanded to twenty-eight articles in 2005, adds several distinctive doctrines:

• The Sabbath, kept from sunset on Friday to sunset on Saturday as a memorial of creation and a sign of loyalty to God in the last days.
• The heavenly sanctuary and the investigative judgment, which holds that since 1844 Christ has been reviewing the records of believers before his return.
• Conditional immortality: the dead sleep unconscious until the resurrection (citing texts such as Ecclesiastes 9:5), and the finally unrepentant are destroyed rather than tormented forever.
• The imminent, visible Second Coming and the proclamation of the three angels' messages of Revelation 14 as the church's mission.
• Stewardship and health, including tithing and the dietary principles described above.

Communion, usually celebrated quarterly with unfermented grape juice, is preceded by a foot-washing ceremony, the "ordinance of humility". Many Adventists, following the church's long tradition of non-combatancy, have served in the military as unarmed medics.

Debates over Ellen White's Authority§

From the nineteenth century critics, including the former Adventist minister Dudley M. Canright, accused White of false prophecy. In the 1970s and 1980s the question became sharper. The historian Ronald Numbers's Prophetess of Health (1976) showed how closely her health teaching followed contemporary reformers. Walter Rea's The White Lie (1982) documented extensive borrowing from other authors in her books, and a church-sponsored study of The Desire of Ages led by Fred Veltman confirmed significant literary dependence while concluding that she shaped her sources to her own purposes. At the same time the Australian theologian Desmond Ford challenged the biblical basis of the investigative judgment; after a conference at Glacier View, Colorado, in 1980, his ministerial credentials were withdrawn.

The church responded by describing inspiration as thought-inspiration rather than verbal dictation, allowing that White, like biblical writers, used sources. Adventists today range from traditionalists who read her counsel closely to progressives who stress the Bible alone, and debates over women's ordination, which the General Conference declined to authorise regionally in 2015, have drawn on her example as a woman who led without being ordained. Offshoots have included the Seventh Day Adventist Reform Movement, born in Germany during the First World War, and the Davidian movement from which the Branch Davidians emerged; their wider context is treated in Studying New Religious Movements. Adventism is often compared with the other American movements of its century, such as Christian Science and the Jehovah's Witnesses.

Frequently asked questions§

Do Seventh-day Adventists consider Ellen White a prophet?§

Yes. The church's Fundamental Beliefs describe her writings as a continuing and authoritative source of truth given through the gift of prophecy, while stating that the Bible is the standard by which all teaching must be tested. Adventists do not add her books to the biblical canon.

Why are many Seventh-day Adventists vegetarian?§

Ellen White taught from 1863 onward that health is a religious duty and recommended a plant-based diet free of alcohol, tobacco and stimulants. Vegetarianism is encouraged rather than required, but abstaining from pork and other unclean meats and from alcohol and tobacco is expected of members.

Are Seventh-day Adventists Christians?§

Adventists understand themselves as Protestant Christians, and they affirm the Trinity and salvation by grace through faith in Christ. Some evangelical writers once classed them as a sect because of their distinctive doctrines, but most Protestant scholars today regard Adventism as an evangelical denomination.

What is the investigative judgment?§

It is the Adventist teaching that in 1844 Christ entered the most holy place of the heavenly sanctuary and began reviewing the lives of those who have professed faith, a judgment that precedes his return. It grew out of the reinterpretation of Daniel 8:14 after the Great Disappointment and remains debated within the church.

Sources and further reading§

• The Great Controversy — Ellen G. White, 1888
• Steps to Christ — Ellen G. White, 1892
• Prophetess of Health: A Study of Ellen G. White — Ronald L. Numbers, 1976
• The White Lie — Walter T. Rea, 1982
• Seeking a Sanctuary: Seventh-day Adventism and the American Dream — Malcolm Bull and Keith Lockhart, 1989
• A Search for Identity: The Development of Seventh-day Adventist Beliefs — George R. Knight, 2000
• Ellen Harmon White: American Prophet — Terrie Dopp Aamodt, Gary Land and Ronald L. Numbers (eds), 2014