Trinity Talk Among EGW Followers and SDA Teachers
Ellen White, Andrews University, and the Three Powers of Heaven
Welcome to Part Six in a series on the doctrine of the Holy Spirit and how it affects the Flat Earth community. If you’re just now jumping in, you can find the previous posts here:
Post #1: Are Flat Earthers Committing the Unpardonable Sin?
Post #2: The Great Disappointment and the Millerite Movement
Post #3: Was Ellen G. White a Prophet or a Free Mason
Post #4: The Visions and Prophecies of Ellen G. White
Post #5: Jupiter, Orion, Aliens, Atonement, and Ellen G. White
Foundational Post: Flat Earth, the Trinity, and Ancient Mysteries | Also available as a Podcast
In the previous installment, we learned that Ellen G. White had visions of other planets inhabited by unfallen, majestic creatures. Learn more: Jupiter, Orion, Aliens, Atonement, and Ellen G. White. This essay will examine the evolution of the doctrine of the Trinity among “prophetess” Ellen G. White (EGW) and the Seventh-day Adventist movement. Due to length, I must wait until the next installment to discuss the implications for the Flat Earth community.
To be clear, simply because EGW is a false prophet does not mean that everything she taught was false. However, she does preach a false gospel of salvation by works and a false doctrine of the atonement (even though shrouded in words that sound Christian).
The Apostle Paul has a stern warning for those preaching another gospel, and Christians would do well to remember these words and hold them dear to their hearts.
This is the very word of God:
But even if we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel to you than what we have preached to you, let him be accursed. As we have said before, so now I say again, if anyone preaches any other gospel to you than what you have received, let him be accursed.
Galatians 1:8-9
I fear Christians have been soft-pedaling the Word of God, failing to warn the world of the dangers of messing with God’s truth and the gospel of salvation. May He ever preserve it in our hearts and help us to claim it with all boldness without shrinking back.
Biblical Doctrine Matters Greatly
In a future post, I will share why doctrine matters greatly to ME. Regardless, biblical doctrine matters to God. Christians are obligated to study to show themselves approved, rightly dividing the word of truth (2 Timothy 2:15). And because of God’s Holy Spirit dwelling in us, we can understand it.
On an interesting side note, EGW admittedly could not rightly divide the word. If she did not have a “vision” or an “angelic message” — she could not understand “biblical” doctrines. No wonder her teachings are not biblical: They are demonically inspired — or invented.
EGW’s lack of biblical understanding is not widely known among Adventists, but Light Bearers to the Remnant, a book once esteemed at Andrews University (SDA) as their official history, tells the tale. Author R. W. Schwarz writes that the SDA doctrinal positions were
. . . hammered out as the result of Bible study, discussion, and prayer. Much of the time, Ellen White testified, she could not understand the texts under discussion and the issues involved. Yet she later remembered that when the brethren who were studying, “came to the point . . . where they said, ‘We can do nothing more’ the Spirit of the Lord would come upon me, I would be taken off in vision, and a clear explanation of the passages we had been studying would be given me, with instruction as to how we were to labor and teach effectively.” Because the participants “knew that when not in vision, I could not understand these matters, . . . they accepted as light direct from heaven the revelations given.” 12
One might ask how EGW could write so eloquently and profusely without a strong understanding of Scripture. The secret is hidden in “The White Lie” by former EGW devotee Walter T. Rea. I mentioned previously that EGW was a charlatan; She was also a copyist (i.e. plagiarist) and the governing body of the SDA knows it full well.
So let’s examine EGW and SDA teachings on the Trinity to see if they are orthodox. “Test all things; hold fast what is good” (1 Thessalonians 5:21).
Trinity Under Review
It’s important to note that not all SDAs hold the same view on the doctrine of the Trinity. Yet, at its inception, the Seventh-day Adventists were openly anti-Trinitarian. I will be sharing quotes from SDA literature available at Andrews University with footnotes.
“Until near the turn of the twentieth century, Seventh-day Adventist literature was almost unanimous in opposing the eternal deity of Jesus and the personhood of the Holy Spirit.” 3
EGW’s husband and another founding member of the SDA were both staunchly anti-Trinitarian, having come out of the Christian Connexion movement.
Two of the principal founders of the Seventh-day Adventist church, Joseph Bates and James White, like Himes, had been members of the Christian Connection and rejected the doctrine of the Trinity. Joseph Bates wrote of his views, “Respecting the trinity, I concluded that it was an impossibility for me to believe that the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of the Father, was also the Almighty God.” 4
James White wrote: “Here we might mention the Trinity, which does away the personality of God, and of his Son Jesus Christ.” Arthur White, grandson of James White, correctly argued that while James White rejected the doctrine of the Trinity, he did believe in the three great powers in heaven. 5
As a reminder and for clarity:
James White was Ellen G. White’s husband.
Joseph Bates was the astronomer EGW needed to embrace her visions, leading to her seeing majestic beings on watching worlds.
Joshua Himes was the publisher who made famous the Millerite movement that led to the great disappointment.
Merlin D. Burt of Andrews University (SDA), speaks differently about Ellen G. White’s views on the Trinity.
Ellen White played a prophetic role in confirming the eternal deity of Jesus and the idea of a three-person Godhead. In Desire of Ages 6 Ellen White wrote with clarity on the eternal deity of Christ. “[Christ] announced Himself to be the self-existent One” and “In Christ is life, original, unborrowed, underived.” She also said of the Holy Spirit: “Sin could be resisted and overcome only through the mighty agency of the Third Person of the Godhead, who would come with no modified energy, but in the fullness of divine power.”
Shortly after publishing Desire of Ages, another SDA began using Trinitarian language. “A. T. Jones avoided referring to the Godhead as the ‘Trinity.’ Yet in 1899 he wrote a nearly Trinitarian statement, ‘God is one. Jesus Christ is one. The Holy Sprit is one. And these three are one: there is no dissent nor division among them.’” 7
During the first two decades of the twentieth century, the church was divided in its position on the deity of Christ. The idea of Christ as the “eternal” Son appeared in print occasionally. The first person after 1900 to prominently promote the eternal pre-existence of Christ was W. W. Prescott. 8
In the following years, the Seventh-day Adventists struggled to unify around the nature of God, the deity of Christ, and the personhood of the Holy Spirit.
The residual tension regarding the Trinity and eternal deity of Christ is revealed in the differences between the official church hymnal of 1941 and the 1985 Hymnal. There were omissions and changes in the original hymns in the 1941 Church Hymnal that were corrected in 1985. At the same time, certain language that included controversial thought was included. In the 1941 hymnal the familiar hymn, “Holy, Holy, Holy” (number 73) only had three verses. The fourth and last verse, which ends with, “God in three persons, blessed trinity,” was omitted. The verse was restored in the current Seventh-day Adventist Hymnal, published in 1985. Other hymns as well were modified in the 1941 hymn to omit Trinitarian ideas but were restored to their original form or adjusted to include Trinitarian language in 1985. Examples from the 1941 hymnal that preserved controversial language include “Praise Ye the Father”(number 9), which ends with the words “Praise ye the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, Praise the Eternal Three!” Also the first verse of hymn number 366, “Soldiers of Christ, Arise,” includes the phrase, “Through His eternal Son.” 9
A huge puzzle piece that cemented the SDA doctrine and their use of the word “Trinity” came through a fascinating story involving cult-exposer, Walter Martin.
Questions on Doctrine
I highly encourage you to listen to former SDAs, Colleen Tinker and Nikki Stevenson, discuss this topic on Cultish: Is Seventh Day Adventism A Cult? Part One and Part Two. Below is the shortened version.
Before Walter Martin published The Kingdom of The Cults, it was well-known in the Christian community that the SDA movement was a cult. But something changed that. After Walter Martin publicly outed Mormonism and Jehovah’s Witnesses, the SDAs were concerned that they would be next on the chopping block.
Top SDA leaders, wanting to avoid being labelled heretics, hand-selected a few men skilled at making unorthodox doctrine sound orthodox. They then contacted Walter Martin, asking for the opportunity to demonstrate that Seventh-day Adventism was not a cult. After a series of meetings, Walter Martin was convinced by these men and agreed not to label them as a heretical organization. They in turn, agreed to write down the teachings they had discussed in a book called Questions on Doctrine. The book explained Seventh-day Adventism in words that sounded Christian. As a result, Walter Martin did not list the SDA group as a cult in his book The Kingdom of the Cults.
But a funny thing happened…
SDA pastors started teaching out of the book Questions on Doctrine, and as a result, were kicked out of the SDA organization. Plus, the SDAs took the book out of print and reneged on other promises to Martin. Wounded pastors began sending letters to Walter Martin explaining what happened. And he reached back out to the leaders in the movement asking for understanding. They essentially gave him the run around, dodging pertinent questions.
Tinker and Stevenson concluded that the SDA leaders lied to Walter Martin and duped him.
However, one thing did come out of the ordeal. The SDAs formally adopted the term Trinity.
Does the SDA Trinity Differ from the Orthodox Trinity?
You might be surprised that my purpose in discussing Ellen White and the Trinity has little to do with the SDA doctrine on the Trinity, though it is a significant topic. My reason for this discussion involves exposing an entity in the Flat Earth community that praises Ellen G. White as a prophet akin to Christ and denies the personhood of the Holy Spirit. You’ll have to WAIT until the next post in this series for that information.
Let’s return to examining the SDA/EGW Trinity.
Rick Barker, former SDA and graduate of Andrews University (SDA), writes:
Discussing the Seventh-day Adventist doctrine of the Trinity is a challenging endeavor. Plenty of Adventist laypeople and pastors believe in an orthodox view of the Trinity. The language of the Fundamental Belief allows [this]. But this also serves as an excellent introduction into what is necessary to unpack Adventist doctrinal statements. While the doctrinal statement allows for an orthodox view of the Trinity, it is missing key elements that would require that view. It is carefully formulated in a manner that allows for a range of views on the doctrine of the Godhead, some of which could be considered blatantly anti-Trinitarian. 10
Here is the SDA’s Fundamental Belief concerning the nature of God.
Fundamental Belief #2: There is one God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, a unity of three co-eternal Persons. God is immortal, all-powerful, all-knowing, above all, and ever present. He is infinite and beyond human comprehension, yet known through His self-revelation. He is forever worthy of worship, adoration, and service by the whole creation.
As mentioned, this statement does leave room for an orthodox view of the Trinity. Yet, Jerry Moon, chair of the Church History Department at Andrews University Theological Seminary (SDA) maintains that the EGW and SDA Trinity are not the same as the orthodox Trinity.
He writes of his research into claims that Ellen G. White changed from anti-Trinitarian to Trinitarian later in her life:
This research has shown that:
(1) Ellen White agreed with some aspects, but not with every aspect of the antitrinitarian views of other early Adventists.
(2) Ellen White’s view did change—she was raised trinitarian, came to doubt some aspects of the trinitarianism she was raised on, and eventually came to a different trinitarian view from the traditional one.
(3) There is a basic harmony between Ellen White’s earliest statements and her latest ones. Even on internal evidence, there is no reason to question the validity of her later, more trinitarian writings. They are completely consistent with the trajectory of her developing understanding of the Godhead, and there is every evidence that they represent her own thought. In her earliest writings she differed from some aspects of traditional trinitarianism and in her latest writings she still strongly opposed some aspects of the traditional doctrine of the Trinity.
(4) It appears, therefore, that the trinitarian teaching of Ellen White’s later writings is not the same doctrine that the early Adventists rejected. Rather, her writings describe two contrasting forms of trinitarian belief, one of which she always opposed [the Orthodox view], and another that she eventually endorsed [the SDA view]. 11
Upon further digging, the EGW and SDA Trinity motif aligns more with Co-Founder James White’s anti-Trinitarian God which he called “the three great powers in heaven.”
Ellen G. White writes:
There are three living persons of the heavenly trio; in the name of these three great powers—the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit—those who receive Christ by living faith are baptized, and these powers will cooperate with the obedient subjects of heaven in their efforts to live the new life in Christ. 12
She also writes, “We are to co-operate with the three highest powers in heaven—the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit; and these powers will work through us, making us workers together with God.”
Former SDA Colleen Tinker points out several differences between the EGW/SDA Trinity and the traditional Trinity: 13
The heavenly trio, three great powers, and the three highest powers of heaven, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, do not share the same substance. They are separate entities that are merely “one” in purpose. 14
The Father God in Heaven has a physical form like Christ. EGW writes of her vision of God. 15 “I saw a throne, and on it sat the Father and the Son. I gazed on Jesus’ countenance and admired His lovely person. The Father's person I could not behold, for a cloud of glorious light covered Him. I asked Jesus if His Father had a form like Himself. He said He had, but I could not behold it, for said He, ‘If you should once behold the glory of His person, you would cease to exist.’” 16
EGW’s Jesus gave up His deity while on earth, taking to himself a sinful nature, so He could prove that man could keep God’s law. If he had “godness” on earth, it would prove nothing to humankind or watching worlds. 17
EGW’s Jesus gave up his omnipresence when he became a man. 18
EGW’s heavenly trio do not each share the same attributes as God Almighty. 19
Further, Tinker describes the SDA Trinity that she knew before becoming a Christian like an apple pie divided into three pieces. Each slice was fully apple pie, but might contain different parts, one a seed, another a lump of brown sugar, and another a stray peel. But that is not the God of the Bible. She writes, “The attributes of God ALL must be present in all three Persons. Adventists do not understand the Trinity that way!” 20
Once again, we see the SDA organization using sleight of hand or ambiguity with their terms to sound orthodox when they are not. In its purest form, EGW and the SDAs do not worship the same God as the Christian. Instead, they call men to worship after a God created in Ellen G. White’s image.
We must remember these words:
“If there arises among you a prophet or a dreamer of dreams, and he gives you a sign or a wonder, and the sign or the wonder comes to pass, of which he spoke to you, saying, ‘Let us go after other gods’—which you have not known—‘and let us serve them,’ you shall not listen to the words of that prophet or that dreamer of dreams, for the Lord your God is testing you to know whether you love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul. You shall walk after the Lord your God and fear Him, and keep His commandments and obey His voice; you shall serve Him and hold fast to Him. But that prophet or that dreamer of dreams shall be put to death, because he has spoken in order to turn you away from the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt and redeemed you from the house of bondage, to entice you from the way in which the Lord your God commanded you to walk. So you shall put away the evil from your midst.”
Deuteronomy 13:1-5
With all of EGW and the SDA organization's emphasis on keeping God's commandments, the Fourth being supreme, they ignore the first three commandments, not to mention the Eighth and Ninth. However, if you break one, you are guilty of them all. This is why the doctrine of the Atonement is so critical. What we could not do, Christ did for us and took our penalty upon Himself, the just for the unjust. He didn’t come to show us that we could keep the law perfectly. Christ came to keep the law for us. By no means does that mean we ignore His law. God’s law is very important. We ought to seek to obey it perfectly. Yet, when we fail, we have an Advocate with the Father.
If you have an SDA friend, take the time to make sure they understand the gospel.
It’s time to transition away from the SDA body proper and examine one small but growing group of Ellen White followers (within the SDA umbrella) who have a significant voice in the Flat Earth Community: Earthen Vessels.
I had planned to discuss this now. Sadly, or happily, depending on your bandwidth, it will have to wait until the next post. Substack is notifying me that this essay is “near the email length limit” — oops — now it’s “too long for email” which means it will take a good bit to read. I want readers to be fresh for the next installment.
Next: Earthen Vessels: Biblical Cosmology and Ellen White (available on 11/11/24)
I thank Colleen Tinker for sharing this in her podcast with “Cultish,” which you can access here: https://blog.lifeassuranceministries.org/podcasts-featuring-former-adventist-hosts in the first video. Go to minute 33:41ish.
You can read Light Bearers to the Remnant here: https://documents.adventistarchives.org/books/lbttr1979.pdf page 68-69 [Archived copy on my computer]
Ibid.
Ibid.
This is one of the works where EGW is accused of “copying” or plagiarizing from Alfred Edersheim. Learn more in The White Lie.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid. Also, learn more here: https://blog.lifeassuranceministries.org/2019/03/07/jesus-was-not-exalted-above-lucifer/
Ibid. Also, learn more here: https://blog.lifeassuranceministries.org/2019/03/07/jesus-was-not-exalted-above-lucifer/