The 1919 Scandal: Cover-Up, Fraud, & Deception w/ Dr. Steve Daily

Hey there. Thank you for being here, especially if this is your first time with us, Adventist or otherwise. Tonight, Dr. Steve Dailyaly is back with me to discuss the 1919 Bible Conference and some of what went down at this uh pivotal first of a kind conference within the Seventh Adventist movement. We will by no means be exhausting the subject. We will be focusing particularly on some of the history leading up to it, why it was taking place, and how Adventist scholarship has once again sought to paint it in a certain light. I’ve said it before and

I’ll continue to say it. The SDA church is notorious for their uncanny way of talking about their history. According to them, um, any sort of bombshell revelation is is always downplayed, rewritten, or it’s portrayed in the most favorable light possible. And should we be surprised, considering they were born out of exactly this, reframing a false prophet, William Miller, as a modern reformer who birthed their own false prophet, Ellen G. White, out of the great disappointment. um that has also been rewritten to be a secret work of God who was using uh unnatural

Uh well um uncommon let’s say means as to any other way that he’s worked in the past uh for those of you who know the history around 1844 which is why it’s no surprise that this same sort of behavior manifests itself down the road in various other instances. So maybe you’ve never been an Adventist, maybe you are an Adventist. Either way, you will leave tonight with a clearer picture of the spirit behind the SDA movement, its deceptive nature, and hopefully be able to better make sense of why there is so much confusion and division amongst Adventists

Regarding the nature of Ellen White’s role in her writings. We just had some people reaching out this past week saying that they engaged with some Seventh Day Adventists and boy did they get a whole spectrum between the various SDAs that they were engaging with when it came to Ellen White. Well, tonight we’ll maybe speak into that a little bit for you. But before we dive into that, if you like what we are doing here, you can support us by becoming a channel member. For the price of about a cup of coffee a month, you can not only help us fulfill our mission, but will gain

Access to our growing library of membersonly content and can come hang out at our membersonly live streams where we work through any questions that you might have and do some more hands-on type discussion. It’s hard to engage with the audience during these Thursday night streams because, well, we just have a lot going on and have to remain focused and on schedule. But if this is something of interest, click that little join button down below the video. Or you can use the link that is also in the description box down below. Or if you don’t see either of those, you can visit

Our channel homepage like you see on screen where you will find the same one twice. I always say it is your support that makes this work possible. We are so grateful for all of you, but especially for our uh all of our members. Answering Adventism really is a team effort. Every week, I mean, every week, I’m not exaggerating when I say this, we receive testimony after testimony of people all over the world that are being reached, leaving the clutches of Adventism, and finding true peace, freedom, and rest in the true Christ and his gospel. his hand

Is 100% on this work and it’s because of the team effort of all of the spiritual warriors in our community that this happens. Those of you that pray financially support and everything in between. I actually want to share one of the recent uh testimonies that we received. I have kept this individual’s identity private as I don’t know if they want their name public. But notice what they write. They say, “I am a former fifth generation 7th Day Adventist. The SDA church has been in my family ever since my greatgrandfather’s family met Ellen White herself in the

1900s. I was born and raised in the church, but part of me never felt safe in the church. Anytime they mentioned the Sunday law and persecution, I felt dead inside. And in 2021, after seeing the Sunday law updates from Dr. Oh, there was a point I considered committing suicide due to my fear reaching its limit. So in 2021, I came to the decision of leaving after almost carrying it out. From 2021 to 2023, I identified as an atheist, thinking it was the solution of my problem. But in 2023, realizing I needed God, I almost made the mistake of returning to the SDA church. But after

Much meditation and prayer, I came across your channel and solidified my decision to leave the church for good. Ever since I left the SDA church, I’ve been happier and my mental health has improved. I now attend a non-denominational church and I feel closer to God. Although I have an animosity towards Ellen White, I don’t feel such animosity towards my former SDA brothers and sisters. In fact, I feel empathy towards them as they don’t know any better. And I pray for them to find the truth in Jesus Christ. Keep up the good work, Miles. Wow. Wow.

I I mean folks, can we take a moment to thank our great God for making

And I’m telling you, we hear stuff like this every week. We’re not laring on the internet. Real people are being reached. I hope you understand this. This is not a game. You know, every week we get that too from Adventists who think this is some sort of joke. No, no. This is spiritual warfare. I’m not being sensational when I say the SDA church and their theology in its purest form is dangerous. It is dangerous. It has real world ramifications. This man almost killed himself. Killed himself over a lie that’s not true. He almost killed himself. Folks,

We’re on the front lines of this particular section of the battlefield. Yeah. SDA bullets whizzing past our heads as they prepare to increase their their artillery. Sorry, getting a little choked up. But no, they can form whatever weapon they want against the true Christ and his gospel. Not going to prosper. They can write their books, their papers, misrepresent us, slander me, claim I’m inspired by Satan, but nope, their weapons are going to backfire because the truth is undefeated. It’s not me they’re coming against. This isn’t my gospel. I’m just the messenger.

So, thank you. I I I share that to say this is a team effort. Thank you. Now, as I mentioned, Dr. Steve Dailyaly is back with me. You may recall the last time he was here to discuss his recent book, The White Estate Fraud, and what a session that was. Steve’s historical knowledge is truly astounding. I love talking with him because of that, and I am beyond excited to have him back. For those that may not know, Dr. Daly is the author of 28 books. 10 of them are directly related to LG White and Adventism. He taught religion, history, and psychology at the

University level with a 24-year tenure in 7th Adventist institutions, including Lomolinda University and La Sierra University. During those years, he was also a campus chaplain and pastor. He has been a licensed psychologist since 1992 with his PhD in psychology. He also holds an MA in history and a doctorate in religion from Claremont School of Theology where his dissertation integrated history and religion related to Ellen White and Adventism. Steve, thank you again for being here and welcome back. Thank you so much, Miles. And let me just say I’m so thrilled at

The work you’re doing, especially with young people. There’s such a tremendous need for that. And you’re filling that need in an awesome way. God’s using you in amazing ways and um I’m thrilled to be on the show and thrilled at the work you’re doing. Well, thank you again. Um that that’s all the mission has always been. God, please just use this in whatever capacity you can. Um we just want to be used here and so we’re grateful for people like you as well who share um the knowledge that you have. It is truly a team effort. So, as you saw the last time you joined me, we like

Primary source documentation around here. So, tonight we’re going to be engaging with a number of them, we are primarily going to be utilizing uh Dr. Michael Campbell’s book 1919 just as a reference point as well as the more recently released Ellen White and the Historians by Donald R. McAdams, which is a treasure trove that we will speak into or that will help speak into tonight’s subject. We’ll look at some of the history leading up to the conference, why Ellen White unexpectedly became the central focus, and the bombshell from the minutes that came to

Light decades later. But before we get into all of that, I think there is something that needs to be laid out for the audience to help better understand what we’re going to be discussing. So my first question for you in Seventh Day Adventism, what do the terms progressive and conservative mean? Well, thanks Miles. That’s a huge question. Of course, um they meant something quite different at the time of the 1919 Bible Conference than they do today. And um you know Adventism has become so pluralistic today that uh that would be a whole different subject for

Me to talk about what progressive means to various Adventists today. But going back to um the 1919 Bible conference and the beginning of the 20th century uh the last half of the 19th century um I I think it’s important to understand that Adventists were not um the same as progressive or modernists in the uh religious world in general and the Protestant world in general. uh you had many quotes progressive liberals that were debunking the Bible, dethizing scripture, taking the work of Boltman, etc. And there really weren’t any Adventists that would fall into that

Category at the time of the 1919 Bible conference. There were certainly some that had a more liberal view of the Bible than some inherency or fundamentalism that was typical of a lot of Adventists. But um you know I think the most important use of this term these terms have to do with Ellen White because that’s the subculture of Adventism. that was the real crux of what was going on is how was Ellen White viewed and how the Bible was viewed uh was always viewed in relation to how Ellen White was viewed. And it’s very important to understand that the 1919

Bible conference was the most important series of meetings ever conducted in the Seventh Adventist Church. It was really the one chance, the one opportunity for uh the progressives, those who recognized that what the church had taught about Ellen White was simply not true. It didn’t stand up to fact facts. It didn’t stand up to the historical sources. And to have the general conference president himself along with the top scholars and uh leaders in the church recognizing this was a one-time only opportunity for the church to really attempt to move into a honest

Direction or at least a more honest direction. Uh because the church had always been involved with dishonesty from its very beginning. Uh, Ellen was involved with dishonesty and so was James. The whole first seven years with the shut door and all the date setting and their deletions and Ellen and James were such powerful figures in Adventism. James was conference president most of the years that after the church was organized until his death um and of course Helen was saying that the general conference was the voice of God uh during that time. uh when James wasn’t GC president then

She changed that God then showed her that it was no longer the voice of God uh conveniently for the whites. But um even after James death in 1881, Ellen White was a very strong powerful political figure. People completely underestimate what a political figure this woman was. And uh leaders were scared of her for good reason. uh she would hang them out to dry and destroy them if they dared to really doubt or question her authority. And so leaders were afraid of her. And uh that included A.G. Daniels. But the difference is that Daniels plotted with Ellen for 10 years

When they were in Australia together to come back and take over the general conference. Ellen felt that she had been betrayed being sent to Australia. She wrote President Olsen, who she had been in favor of, a letter telling him that that it wasn’t God’s will, that he had failed in terms of God’s will in sending her to Australia. And her and Daniels both had a real axe to grind against the General Conference, against the Adventist leadership, and they plotted over this 10-year period to come back and take over the General Conference. And that’s precisely what

They did. When they came back, Ellen gave her big speech to the precession of the general conference. She lined out everything that her and Daniels had put together. Daniels was the handpicked general conference president. And um so Ellen and Daniels uh really benefited each other in tremendous ways. Ellen really needed the support of a GC president like Daniels and Daniels really needed the support of the prophet and those two came through for each other in tremendous ways and uh so Daniels was one of the longest serving GC presidents as a result of that. But

Jan Daniels also knew Ellen White very well. They were close personal friends. He knew the truth about her visions and how the church had completely misrepresented who she was and what her visions were. And um he wasn’t about to stand up and take that position while Ellen was alive. But when she died in 1915, uh Daniels, Prescott, all the leading thinkers in the Adventist church said, you know, we’ve got to do something about this problem. uh we have to address this uh deceptive and very false view of Ellen White that the church has been given. And uh you know they

Selected the 1919 Bible conference to address a whole bunch of issues but really all of these issues were related to Ellen White in one way, shape or form when you study it carefully. And um I wrote my master’s thesis in history on this very subject. I was interested that um you know Michael Campbell uh advertises his book as the untold story of the 1919 conference and uh the move to heaven fundamentalism. But he never even references my master’s thesis in history which was twice as large as his book and specifically dealt with the topic. It was the higher

Criticism fundamentalist debate in 19th century American religion as it impacted Seventh Day Adventism and Leng White. So he doesn’t even reference the book which says a lot about his uh scholarship as a historian when he’s claiming to write the untold story on the subject. But let me just uh quickly quote from page 72 of my thesis uh a paper by Bert Hoviaak who was the GC archavist the great historian and he wrote a great paper called pioneers pantheus and progressives and uh this will shed a lot of light on your question. Uh the pioneers of course

Were the conservatives. These were people who believed Ellen White was inherent. Everything she wrote was straight from God as she claimed. So you can’t really blame them for believing this because this is what Ellen White said again and again and again. I’ve I’ve delineated all these quotes and claims by her which are just completely outrageous. But that’s what these pioneers believed. And these were the leading pioneers, conservatives. George Irwin, Steven Haskell, JN Lboro, RA Underwood, GI Butler, OA Olsen, OA Johnson, Uriah Smith, FC Gilbert, JS

Washburn, and GB Star. These were like the obviously there were many more, but these were like the most notable names. Then you had the progressives um which were much more liberal in their view of Ellen White and much more realistic I might add. Uh, and that was AG. Daniels, WW Prescott, WA Spicer, CL Taylor, CM Sorenson, FM Wilcox, HC Lacy, GB Thompson, DA Parsons, BL House, and most of these people were the most dominant and influential speakers at the 1919 uh Bible conference. And then you had the pantheus. And this is a misnomer of co of course uh Kellogg was not a

Pantheist and none of these other people would have claimed to be pantheists but because these were all people who came to question the visions and authority of Ellen White this was the label that Adventism chose for them and so uh at the head of the list of course was Kellogg but then you had Jones EJ Wagner AF Ballinger um JW W skulls, William Hutchinson, Harry Champnes, Ar Le SS David and LH Chrysler. So th that this is a great paper by Holoak and people who are really interested in this whole subject of conservatives, progressives um what was going on uh prior and at the

1919 conference really need to uh read that and they should really read my master’s thesis because that goes into a lot more detail than um you know what Campbell does and uh Campbell’s books only about 118 pages and my thesis was over 200 pages just on that subject. But um you know the bottom line was that uh even what the people that were labeled as pantheists were not liberals in the sense of Boltman or dethologizing the Bible or any of that kind of thing. So Adventist subculture is really a world unto itself compared to Protestant America. We have to understand that and

There did come a lot of overlap in the creation evolution debates and uh I I go into that in my thesis quite a bit. FD Nickel kind of ca became a star in Adventism by uh arguing for a 6,000 year earth and you know he he had big debates with Maynard Shipley up in San Francisco that were in the newspaper and that was kind of the pre prerequisite or the you know the big debate before the Scopes trial. So Nicl did a pretty good job for himself and he kind of became a superstar in Adventism as the fundamentalist and then he became the super apologist for Ellen White. And I

Have documented in my books how he’s a dishonest apologist. He’s a very smart guy. Uh he knows how to lie. He knows how to deceive. He knows how to misrepresent source documentation while he’s claiming to rely on source documentation. And I demonstrate very clearly how he is guilty of misusing and lying about those documents and leaving out conveniently all the documents that uh make a fool of his argument. But I don’t want to just go on here. You can uh you know add more questions to what we’re talking about here. Well, you you really hit it perfectly there in in really two things

That you said that these terms really do fundamentally have to do with Ellen White. Now, I know that some of these modernists will try and say things like, well, it’s it’s those conservatives that are dogmatic on a Sunday law. They’re the ones that are dogma, but this is kind of getting into what you were saying about, well, those terms have kind of also shifted with the rest of Adventism in the times because everything always has to kind of get with the times and then you get the uh what we call around here the the present truth magic wand. you know, it must be

Nice to always just be able to have this sort of and it’s just like, oh, present truth, it’s fixed um anytime there’s something wrong. And so, I know that those terms have shifted, but you you really hit on the the point. We’re not talking about the political labels here. And in the the context of this discussion, we’re also not even necessar necessarily talking about modernday Adventism as well. We’re talking about a certain period of time where those terms had very specific meanings. and you laid out exactly what those were. But with that said, and you mentioned Michael

Campbell’s book, which we are now going to look at some of those 118 pages, um, I want to talk a little bit about the cultural zeitgeist in 1919 in which the 1919 Bible conference was birthed. Then we’ll get into the specifics I want to focus on. Now, tonight folks, we’re not going to talk about the esqueological aspects of the conference. you know, the the ten horns, the huns, and we’re not going to get into all of that. We’re going to focus in on specifically the bombshell that was revealed in the minutes. But leading up to all of that, Michael Campbell writes this

Quote. During the opening address of the 1919 Bible Conference, the General Conference President, AG Daniels, who you have mentioned, explained why the church leaders needed to have this meeting. He began with some logistical background material that is covered in chapter 3, but pointed to a series of Bible conferences organized by Dr. WB Riley as inspiration for the 1919 meeting. Riley was a rising star in what was known at the time as the prophetic conference movement. The burgeoning uh conservative Christians making up this movement would come to be known as fundamentalists.

Daniels believed that the work that Riley and others were doing was a model for Adventism. At the outset of the 1919 Bible Conference, he stated that he hoped this initial meeting following the model of these prophecy conferences would be the first of a series of annual Bible conferences for Adventists. After all, from his perspective, no meeting like this had ever been held by Adventists before. So, the 1919 Bible Conference was influenced by what was taking place in the Christian world regarding theological liberalism and conservatism, like you mentioned. But you also

Highlighted something very important, Steve, that I I didn’t necessarily think to to cover, but is also very pertinent to this, and that is that Adventism is a world unto itself. The term or phrase that we often use on this platform is it is a shoe box of a universe. It is a whole world that operates within itself completely distinct from everyone else. Now, that doesn’t mean that they’re cut off from society and they don’t go to, you know, secular businesses and these sorts of things. Um, but it is a a welloiled closed system and it often times pulls things that it sees from

Outside. That’s how it was essentially built. It is a system of amalgam theological amalgamation where they’ve just pulled from all these different areas and then it’s all filtered through the Adventist worldview, the great controversy worldview. So, this is no different here. They saw these other people doing this and wanted to take that idea and apply it to Adventism. Adventist leadership saw this as an entering wedge into that world to begin proitizing Adventist distinctives as Michael Campbell also recognizes. But he also writes this quote. Although Adventists who attended

These meetings were excited about the publicity being given to the second advent, it appears that there’s uh that theirs was a one-sided love affair. No Adventist was ever asked to speak at these meetings. And although the extent records acknowledge a wide variety of persons from different faiths, he means denominations as having participated, no mention was ever made of any Adventist participants. So Steve, my question for you, can you think of any reasons why the Adventists weren’t welcomed and embraced by the wider Christian world? Sure. There were there were a ton of reasons

Of course and uh chief amongst them was Ruben Tory was the author of the fundamentals and that was the whole work behind the conferences and and Ruben Tory uh saw Adventist as a complete cult and he had written that Adventists were a complete cult. So uh there was a hostility at the very top towards Adventists that they were uh simply a cult and he happened to be pretty perceptive on that. You know there were others in the leadership that weren’t as stringent or strong but um you know Adventists had done everything they could to alienate other churches. uh the

Great controversy itself writing off all Catholics, all Protestants as apostate Protestants. Adventists were known for being the most combative, condemning church in the 19th century and early 20th century as well. It just so happened that because of World War I, a lot of the Adventist esquetology weirdness happened to coincide with some of the uh fundamentalist uh end of the world weirdness. And so they, you know, were overlapping there in some of their belief that this had to be the end of the world. And they were tying it into all their esquetology and this kind of

Thing. But that did not uh warm these other churches to the Adventist church who had condemned them, who had made exclusive claims to being the remnant, made exclusive claims to having the only true last day prophet. There were all kinds of things that Adventists had done to alienate them from other churches, Protestant and Catholic alike. So, it’s really no surprise that uh you know, especially given the fact that Tori couldn’t stand Adventists. I mean, I don’t know if it was a personal thing with him. I don’t think it was. I think he had just studied Adventists and

Recognized it. They were a cult and um you know, he was a chief spokesperson along these lines. So, you know, Adventists were basically not going to have a place at the table in these meetings. And it’s like Adventists do with so many things. They sneak into Saddleback and then they take the Saddleback stuff and baptize it into Adventism. They’re just like Ellen White. They steal other people’s stuff and then they claim God gave it to them or Ellen White gave it to them or, you know, that that was Ellen White’s thing. she stole from as many sources as she

Possibly can and then claim she got it in visions from God. So this this kind of pattern has been around in Adventism forever. And Adventists used to be much more isolated than they were today. So back at that time, you know, it was a big deal for Adventists to be sneaking out and uh going to these other meetings and come back and complimenting the other meetings and that kind of thing. But um you know there are four things about the 1919 Bible conference that uh Campbell doesn’t even mention which are the four major things as I see it. Um, you know, number one, um, why were these

Meetings needed? They were needed because the church had misrepresented Ellen White and that had affected all their doctrines, all their esquetology, every single thing they brought up there at that conference had a link to Ellen White and these people knew it. Uh, and so they were saying, “How can we teach these subjects and still have this false belief in Ellen White, this false uh belief in her visions?” Um, you know, the the people who were able to talk about this for the first time now that Ellen was dead were were so relieved and so excited that the church might

Actually become honest for once in its lives that um you know it it was a huge conference for that reason. Uh as I said the one chance for Adventism to really try to come clean and really break with its dishonest past. uh the spirit of dishonesty that had been over the movement from its inception. This was an opportunity for the leadership itself to say, “Hey, we’ve been wrong. We’ve been wrong about Ellen White. We need to change our ways. We need to change our definitions. Uh we need to quit making these stupid arguments about Ellen White as Daniels brought up.” And um you know,

That was number one. Uh, number two, how could, and these were transcripts, they weren’t minutes. How could the transcripts from the most important set of meetings that ever took place in the Adventist church be buried? I I mean, this is particularly ironic when you consider that the White Estate had just been established and the whole purpose of the White Estate was to preserve documents uh that had to do with Ellen White. The White Estate should have been presenting these documents to anyone who wanted to see them, but they had nothing to do with it. They didn’t even hold the

Documents. They were buried in the G GC archives purposely with the intent that no one would even uh be able to find them or use them or reference them. I mean, this is the most dishonest kind of it’s just so typical of the way Adventists operate that you take a conference that provided so much hope and then you bury it in the archives and not allow anyone to see it or even know about it to such an extreme degree that this material actually becomes lost. I mean, think about that. the most important transcripts ever recorded of any advent series of meetings ever not

Only gets hidden but it becomes completely forgotten and lost. I mean, this is just outrageous that Adventists can claim to be a serious church with serious history and serious documents when they do this kind of thing. And then it doesn’t appear again until 1974 when Donald Yoast is accidentally uh informed about them and and runs across them in the archives. And then what happens? They’re withheld from the Adventist Church. uh they’re secretly talked about and Arthur White takes control of them then at that time. Now the white estate wants them and he

Conceals them and doesn’t allow anyone to reference them or have them or study them and it’s only because they’re leaked in 1979 to Spectrum which was actually a legitimate publication at that time. Roy Branson’s a great guy. Uh I can’t speak for the clowns running Spectrum and at today because they’ve completely compromised themselves and become a joke. But uh Spectrum was a great publication at that time. They leaked the 1919 Bible conference transcripts and that really was what accelerated the whole line of things we’ve seen happen. you know, obviously, uh, numbers was at

Least aware of them and, uh, so we have numbers. McAdams didn’t let his stuff become public for a long time for political reasons, I guess. But, uh, but, you know, you have numbers, you have Ford, you have uh, Rey, you have this whole long line of people on the internet and uh, Ratzliff, etc., myself, so many others. And now, you know, Case Bolt has come out with his two books, which are damning, totally damning to Adventists for an Adventist to write this stuff. It’s funny to me that uh it takes a nurse practitioner who’s retired to write better history than any

Adventist historian who’s out there today. It’s Case Bolt’s two books. I’ll talk about them more later, but um you know, he’s written some stuff that is really really important and I I’m currently writing a book review that’s appearing on my uh thread every day portions of it and I’m going to have the whole thing published as a appendix in this next book. But um you know, it’s just crazy to see how dishonest Adventists are. And Arthur White is the chief liar practitioner of deceit, dishonesty, cover up, uh, lies, mischief against Canrite as I document in the wider state

Fraud. And he was the one who tried to hide these transcripts so no one would have access to them. I mean, this is a church that’s really a mess. Um, I I thought at least when I wrote The White Estate Fraud that, you know, academics and stuff would concede that Arthur White was a joke. But they don’t even want to talk about the book because they know they can’t refute what’s in there. And they know Arthur White has no business being referenced in anything to do with Adventist history. And yet, he’s seen as the chief biographer of Ellen White. I mean, you’re talking about one

Messed up subculture here. Yeah. And that’s not even including the fact that he’s the essentially the source behind Ellen White being the most translated author in the whole world. Well, folks, it’s not the it’s not the most you’re not the most translated author in the world when it’s unsolicited publication. when you’re turning on your own printing press unsolicited and mass printing something out. You know, Steve, it’s no different than when, you know, a politician writes a book and then their own super PAC buys a million copies and, oh, I’m a New York

Times best-selling author. Well, yeah, because you gamed the system. No duh. You’re you’re most of those publications that you’re printing out are sitting in a closet somewhere gathering a bunch of dust while you claim that she’s the most translated woman ever. And they use this to try and say you should be reading Ellen White. You’ve never heard of Ellen White. Well, yeah, I’ve never heard of Ellen White because the books were unsolicited. But I’m always flabbergasted. I I’m always when I read this in his book, I’m thinking, dude, which I get it. He’s a historian, so I’m

Trying to be fair with this. I don’t know him from Adam. He He might be a perfectly nice guy. I’ve listened to I’m talking about Campbell here. I’ve listened to a decent amount of him um on the Adventist History podcast. So, I don’t think he’s a malicious guy or anything like that, but I’m thinking to myself, you know, there’s sort of this idea there of the the Adventist victim complex. Like, well, why weren’t they invited? You know, they were all about the second coming, too. Well, gee, I wonder why. You preach damnation on everyone else except your small little group. You have

An alleged prophetist that’s saying, “Our prayers are an abomination. Our churches are rejected by God. The ministers are influenced by Satan to breathe on people a deceiving influence. They’re Babylon. The wrath of God is stirred against them. You’re protesting outside of their churches, causing a disturbance on Sunday, saying the wrath of God’s going to be poured. I mean, you had people like Charles Fitch, you know, these Millerite types preaching damnation on all these people. I wonder why they didn’t want you at their conferences. Yeah. Right. you know,

Their whole thing is supposed to be they’re distinct and separate from all these Babylonian Christians that God’s rejected and is angry with. They’re the apple of his eye. They’re the remnant. So, it’s like obviously Christians aren’t going to be recept they’re not going to be receptive to that. But Dr. Campbell even mentions this again where he writes this quote, “Some Seventh Day Adventists during the time just before and during World War I 1914 to 1918 were flirting with fundamentalism, including its somewhat rigid views of biblical inspiration.

The war heightened esqueological expectations as Adventists saw it in the fulfillment of Bible prophecy. At the same time, they were envious of the success of their conservative conservative Protestant Christians who garnered increasingly large crowds as they called the attention of the public to the soon return of Jesus. Adventist leaders attended these gatherings and reported on them with enthusiasm in church periodicals. They noted minor theological differences, but they downplayed these and emphasized instead similarities and the significance of

These events for Christian history. Close quote. So, Adventist leadership was essentially jealous of the apostates that God had rejected because apparently they were drawing crowds and growing, but the Adventists weren’t invited to partake. The Adventists only had some minor theological differences, though. Yeah, we also see Campbell use a common phrase that we see lots of Adventist scholarship use, such as Jud Lake. He does so in his book Ellen White Under Fire. Um, the idea that Christians, unlike Adventists, have this real rigid view of of inspiration. And I know not all

Christians agree with the same sort of idea of inspiration, but that’s sort of the narrative that that’s positive. Well, you only arrive at problems with Ellen White if you hold to that real rigid view of inspiration. But if you don’t hold to that, well, all that stuff just disappears. It’s only predicated upon having this real rigid view, aka you believe God can effectively communicate. Um, that he’s not a schizophrenic. Um, that he’s able to just convey what he needs to convey. You know, he spoke reality into existence. You’d think that he’d be able

To communicate what he needs to through the the vessel that he’s chosen. But she just keeps getting it wrong, and it’s always God’s fault. So somehow your inspiration view is supposed to alleviate that communicative issue that God possesses. We’re going to explore this more in a moment. But my question for you, Steve, as someone who was an Adventist educator and historian for multiple decades, does Adventist theology only have some minor theological differences when it comes to beliefs such as the second coming and the end times? Of course not.

Um they’re major major differences and it goes right back to the root. You know like like Jesus said uh a bad tree can’t produce good fruit and uh Adventists had bad roots from the very beginning which have always produced bad fruits theologically, esologically their views of Ellen White etc etc. But you can’t get much worse than starting out with uh not only the shut door condemning the entire world but um you know re continuing to set all these new dates even between 1844 and 1851 and that wasn’t even good enough for Ellen. She went way after that and did specific

Date setting many times after 1851. But that seven-year period was where she was obsessed with all of this. And of course that that’s completely antithetical to healthy esquetology, a healthy understanding of scripture. To say nothing of the Adventist remnant claim- which is 100% ridiculous. U when a person understands what the remnant is in scripture and these other churches weren’t claiming to be the remnant the way Adventists were. That was a huge difference. uh the condemnation of other churches, the Sunday laws, uh the Sabbath as the seal of God. These are

All major major things that Adventists were tied to in terms of their very identity that were, you know, major things. We’re not talking about minor things here. We’re talking about major things that separated them from other Christians and their beliefs about the second coming and esquetology. and this kind of thing. And I’m not saying evangelicals don’t have some weird stuff in their esquetology, too. But um you know, the bottom line is that Adventists have been guilty of just the most extreme stupidity in their esquetology. And what what’s really sad is that Ellen

White can be used to argue for almost anything. Take inherency. She has all these quotes on verbal inspiration and inherency uh from her writings and then she has other quotes that deny verbal inspiration. It’s it’s just the way Ellen is. She copied from all these different sources over many many different years. She wasn’t an integrative thinker. She didn’t even remember the stuff she’d copied from different authors and published. And um so she becomes the source of people who believe in inherency and verbal inspiration. And of course she applies

That same stuff to her own writings with all these quotes making the most absolute claims for herself. Then you can have quotes like the 1901 general conference where she backs off all this stuff and says something very different. This is just typical Ellen White. She is the most successful serial plagiarist in history. I will stand by that comment. Ellen White is the most successful serial plagiarist in all of human history. And uh and she’s not a good plagiarist. She doesn’t have any integrative thought train in her plagiarisms. She takes stuff that are

100% opposite from each other. The general conference is the voice of God on earth. No, it isn’t. Don’t pay any attention to the general conference. God said so. You know, it’s just this goes on and on and on with Ellen White for people that really are aware of what she wrote. And um she wasn’t even aware herself of what she wrote. I mean, she she didn’t even keep track of the stuff that she’d plagiarized and that had been published under her name. So, you know, for Adventists to try to hold on to this woman in any serious way is like people who try to hold on to Bernie Matto as a

Serious investor today. I mean, they’re they’re just completely out to lunch. And you know, what’s been discredited and exposed as fraud is just that. and and to try to argue that she’s still a true prophet for Adventists is really tragic and sad. Yeah, Steve, you mentioned something there that well, you mentioned case bolt. I have uh Father Miller’s daughter here and notice what the publishers’s note says on the back. says the crisis in Adventist esquetology is due to its reliance on Millerism’s faulty methodology and falsified prophetic predictions.

Ellen White taught that Father Miller’s sole authority with scripture and a concordance and that his interpretations were literal common sense and most importantly that God had originated his date setting conclusions by repeated angelic guidance. And you mentioned there that well you use the phrase an integrative thinker and I use that term sometimes as well. And in real simple terms it is the inability to understand or internally critique your own beliefs. Is something I believe over here consistent or inconsistent with what I believe over here? Because you can’t have all of your

Beliefs in a vacuum. Especially theology. Theology is a system. You know, what you believe about the Trinity affects things that you believe about christologology and worship and all sorts of other things. Ellen White didn’t have that ability. She took from all these various people from all across the board. And that’s why you’ll find all sorts of contradictions because she’ll pull from one person who had one system of theology who was an integrative thinker that maybe said orthodox things and then she’ll pull from some other person over here who their system is totally

Different than this other person over here and there’s a whole spectrum in between. But she didn’t possess the ability to be able to examine if what she was pulling from one place contradicted what she was pulling from some other place. on top of what they themselves were developing in their own worldview. And this really gets to the heart of the matter, which is that all of SDA theology is filtered through the great controversy theme. Something no one outside of Adventism has. So, when we’re discussing why weren’t Adventists invited to this sort of thing, well,

It’s pretty clear outside of all of the anathemas that you’re preaching on, you know, everyone outside of your little flock, because at the time it’s the little flock. Um, well, I guess by 1919 it’s not, but never, you get my point. Um, when you’re preaching anathemas on everyone but your little sect, you also have the issue of being birthed out of erroneous date setting, which the Bible strictly forbids, as well as the great controversy theme on top of all of that, which is being developed and formulated. And by 1919, that’s already going. This isn’t, you

Know, this isn’t during the seven-year period here. So when we’re talking about the great controversy theme at that point the foundation for that is laid the filtering of the theology has already gone through all of that and so you know to to to position it like oh it’s just minor theological differences no these are drastic ones it isn’t like say you know Lutheran and Presbyterians who disagree on minors but fundamentally possess the same world view the same gospel the same god um that’s not what’s going on in Adventism, yet they that’s not how they paint history, though. And

That that bothers me. It bothers me that at least in my experience and and my studies and my reading, it’s always painted in the most favorable light possible. I mean, there’s just some things it’s like, there’s not a favorable light here, folks. You just need to own up to the error. And they’ve had so many opportunities to own up to things. And it’s like, it’s almost as if it’s like God is giving them opportunity after opportunity after opportunity. And every time they take the most shady, the most suspect, the most compromised path, but that’s not what you would hear from

Any of these primary sources ever. You would hear that it, oh, it was just it’s always been this, you know, kind of rose garden path that even though 1844 seemed like it was a fraud, nope. That’s how God was testing his people. And we trusted and we believed and you know, button up your t-shirt and shine and polish your shoes and the temperance doctrines and everything’s perfect and hunky dory. No, it’s not. It’s not. If you have an objective mind, it is not. The Adventists uh um were a persecuted victim minority group. You know, that’s how you’re going to hear it. No one

Wanted to be their friends. They had to sit in the corner and eat their lunch alone because everyone picked on them, etc. Um yet they were actually a nuisance that condemned everyone but themselves. But all of this is happening around the turn of the 20th century in the early 1900s which eventually leads to the death of Ellen White which you mentioned in 1915 which really was a catalyst for what would become the 1919 conference unbeknownsted to the leadership in terms of what would actually transpire. like you mentioned, it really was all about

Um you know these esqueological points and some of the interpretations in Daniel etc. But it ended up being a bombshell that they did not anticipate which we will get to uh in a little bit. But Michael Campbell speaking about this. He writes, “In many ways, Adventists after her death continued to function as if they still had a living prophet. Articles were reprinted or gleaned from her unpublished writings as if she were still alive. One final book manuscript appeared about Old Testament history, Prophets and Kings, whose last two chapters of which

Were pieced together from previously unpublished articles and manuscripts. This completed the five volume conflict of the ages series spanning the cosmic controversy or great controversy between Christ and Satan from the birth of sin until its final eradication at the last judgment. It would not be until the 1919 Bible conference that Adventist thought leaders seriously wrestled with what it meant to no longer have a living prophetic voice. There were significant ramifications for how the denomination would view her writings. As a consequence, the reality

Of living without a prophet loomed large in Adventist minds at this time. Close quote. So Steve, here we see what would become the central focus of the conference. Not uh or well with that not necessarily being what was necessarily slated on the docket to be the focus. Before moving forward though, you are a continuationist that believes that the charismatic sign gifts or all of the gifts are still to be normative for today. The Adventist Church would claim the same thing and only wants the standard of a New Testament prophet, the New Testament prophetic gift used to

Test Ellen White. So, I have a question for you regarding that. Why is the SDA church’s standard inconsistent with the way Ellen White presently functions in the movement despite her being dead for a hundred years? I wrote two books called how you know looking at Ellen White called the prophetic rift one and two and uh they they specifically focused on this whole issue of why Adventists have treated Ellen White as an Old Testament prophet rather than a New Testament post New Testament prophet. And there’s a huge difference between the two things that

Adventists are completely ignorant of. And um it’s just laughable to see the way they relate to Ellen White in in a manner that’s just 100% ignorant of what the New Testament uh define prophecy as being. And of course, there were three levels of prophecy. There was the first Corinthians 14 I would that all of you would prophesy. There was a general gift that any church member was encouraged to have. Then there was a specific gift of prophecy, Romans 12, that um was more advanced than the just the general. The general was really intended to be a very

Positive building up, edifying thing. 1 Corinthians 14:3, it wasn’t to involve any kind of condemnation or rebuke or this kind of thing at all. Um the actual gift uh in Romans 12 which is more sophisticated can at least involve some um judgment or you know it can involve uh rebuking people and that kind of thing but that’s still generally not what the intent of it is. And then you have the office of the prophet in Ephesians 4 and Ellen doesn’t fit with any of these at all. Um, of course, she don’t she didn’t even get visions from God. In my opinion, I I

Think it’s very clear now that she made those up or she got um help from another source that wasn’t uh God. But, um, you know, the bottom line is that Adventists have no understanding of what New Testament, post-New Testament prophecy is. So, they’ve latched on to this Old Testament view of prophecy that’s completely inappropriate with regard to Ellen White. And um it’s no surprise that the church is completely messed up in its understanding of prophecy, its understanding of the gifts, its understanding of the Holy Spirit. uh claiming that the Sabbath is the seal of

God rather than the Holy Spirit is just the beginning of their terrible errors in this regard. But um you know I’m I’m really very thankful that uh I had the opportunity to get out there and and visit a lot of churches, be in the vineyard for several years, see uh the prophetic gift operate in a post-New Testament way that was productive and helpful. See the other gifts operate. Uh, Adventists are these weird people who really don’t believe in the gifts hardly except for just the one, Ellen White, you know, and once she died, it was um, how can we use her to maintain and and

That was the cool thing about the 1919 Bible conference is the leadership was saying, “Hey, we don’t want to use her this way anymore. We don’t want to be guilty of this garbage anymore.” Uh but they lost and the reactionary fundamentalists won and Adventism went into a dark ages like it’s never experienced before between uh 1920 and 1950. I mean that 30-year period was just the absolute dark ages of fundamentalist Adventism regard to how they saw Ellen White, how they pushed her on the church. Um, you know, FD Nickel becomes the god of Adventist

Apologists with his thousands and thousands of apologetic pages written. Um, culminating in Ellen G. Whitener critics, which growing up for me, you know, that’s all I urge. Oh man, every Adventist, every criticism ever made of Ellen White has been completely shredded by FD Nickel. Well, it took a long time for me to actually study Nicholls writings and realize the guy was a complete deceiver, you know, a misuser of source documentation who completely misrepresented some of the most crucial things about Ellen White. And and yet he was clever enough

To persuade people that he was this great honest historian who was relying exclusively on source documentation. So, I have very very little respect for FD Nickel to say the least. I I did listen to Cybold’s uh you know interview with Campbell and it was a softball interview that’s for sure. Um I was just wishing you know I wish I could interview Campbell. He wouldn’t be walking away with these kinds of questions. I’ll tell you that for sure. I know I get all sorts of Adventists that, you know, they add, you know, why don’t you bring any Adventists

On here to represent? Well, sometimes I do. I I do, but they won’t because I I’m not interested in just bringing you on here to pontificate Adventism. That That’s not what this platform is for. It It’s going to be a uh it’s going to be a difficult discussion because I can ask the questions that you’re not prepared for. You know, you mentioned um the the dark ages of of Adventism, and that is exactly correct. And even outside of nickel, you’ve got the ML Andreasen era. Um you know, they try and paint last generation theology, the model man theology, um all this sort of stuff as

This like, well, that’s this fringe, you know, hyperconservative Adventism. Man, MLA Andreas influenced Adventism. Yeah. Far greater than you did, Judy. Yeah. I mean funny. Yeah. At the, you know, at the 1850s when they were deceiving Martin, they tried to tell Martin that Andreas was fringe. And he goes, “Well, why does he have more books in the Adventist bookstores than any other person, you know?” Oh, because we’re so open-minded, we we print the books of those who are fringe. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Yeah. It’s Fringe, the guy that influenced the movement more than

Anyone else through the 1930s and 40s. Yeah. Good one. No. And not just that like this was Andreas and stuff. He He’s just quoting Ellen White. She’s the author. Yeah. Generation theology. Again, it’s the same thing. You can take her on that and you can contradict her in her own writings, but she’s the one Andreas’s quoting. I mean, it’s a joke. Yeah. And even Dr. George uh Knight in his book Search for identity he talks about this and he he talks about the Andreas era and I don’t it’s like how do you not catch this in your own work as a scholar he says the same thing because

Of course he tries to position it as like well you know we had this period where there was this you know kind of fringe thing that kind of took over and I think his history is a little bit more accurate or or at least forthright than some of these other historical works but he doesn’t even catch the fact that he says says this, but then when he cites Andreas’s, well, he he cites a variety of Andreas’s books. Andreas’s citing Ellen White, George Knight, precise, he’s getting this from Ellen White. He didn’t er He didn’t just come up with this idea like,

Hey, I have a hypothesis that in order for God to vindicate his character against the accusations of Satan, right? It’s not the accusation of Satan is not just that you try your best to keep the law. It’s that you can’t keep the law. He didn’t originate that. Ellen White did. This is coming from the great controversy theme, which is something around here that we constantly are holding their uh their feet to the fire on because that’s what’s defining all this. Herb Douglas showed the hand. I don’t know if you’ve seen the December 2000 Ministry magazine where his writeup

Is, what is the great controversy theme? And in four pages, he gives just a silver platter. Here it is. We’re not trying to beat around the bush. We’re not trying to act like, “No, that’s not what we believe.” No, no, no. Where did you get this idea that you just, you know, totally concocted in your own head, even though you probably read this in uh Spirit of Prophecy Volume 4? Um because clearly you have. No, no, no, no, no, no. He’s not doing any of that. He’s straight up all of SDA thought and theology comes through this. It’s supposed to be the theological God

Particle, the theory of everything, the antidote to doctrinal division from all those confused Babylonian Protestants out there. No, no, no. But we’re the remnant. We’re the apple of God’s eye. We’ve got all this figured out. Well, okay. Ellen White says in page uh page 605 of the great controversy, the condition that Jesus Christ was in is the condition you have to be found in. When the time of trouble begins or you’re not going to make it through because Satan during that time, it’s going to be the greatest persecution that’s ever faced the earth specifically

On Seventh Day Adventist. And if there’s any foothold that he can find within you, he’s going to find it. He couldn’t find anything. She uses her favorite analogy of Jesus in the wilderness to say there was nothing that could be found in him that the devil could essentially pull and tempt at. There was no sin found in him. This is the condition you must be found in. ML Andreas did not invent that, folks. They can claim that this is some fringe whatever thing that they want, but no, this is SDA systematic theology. And when they point to people like Steven

Boore and any sort of modern-day individual that holds to this system of theology and understands the system, they can paint them as, well, that’s those fringe conservatives. No, that’s a person who actually is probably an integrative thinker and understands this is necessary for this whole sort of framework to work. But very clearly the SDA church just like in the 20th century still utilizes Ellen White as if she were still alive. I asked you the question, what’s the conundrum for the SDA position when they use the they want to claim that if you’re going to test the the prophetic

Standard of Ellen White, you have to use the New Testament gift of prophecy, but at the same time, she doesn’t function like a local prophet. She functions like a canonical prophet. She died and yet she still functions the same way she did as if she were living. Her writings are well, we’re going to get into some of that here in a moment. We’ve looked at a plethora of quotes that Michael Campbell is referring to where Ellen White herself said that she would function this way. For example, this is in Selected Messages book three, page 76. There’s more quotes than just this, by

The way, folks, because selected messages is a compilation of various topics where they essentially pull all the quotes together for you on said topic. This is just one of them with the heading messages to be of greater force after prophet’s death. It reads, “Physically,” this is Ellen White, “I have always been as a broken vessel, and yet in my old age, the Lord continues to move upon me by his Holy Spirit to write the most important books that have ever come before the churches and the world.” The Lord is evidencing what he can do through weak vessels. The life that he

Spares, I will use to his glory. And when he may see fit to let me rest, his messages shall be of even more vital force than when the frail instrumentality through whom they were delivered was living. Close quote. This was not a one-off statement. She wrote over and over and over again that she would function after her death through her writings as if she were still living. So the SDA church is caught in a conundrum. Folks, you have to understand this. I don’t argue with Adventist. Now, Steve, I I’m not a continuationist, but I’m actually willing to admit I could be wrong in

This area. My whole system doesn’t completely foil apart if I’m wrong in this area. I have total unity with those who do and those who do not, etc. And I’m actually probably I I’d be like a cautionary continuationist. Um because I don’t know what God is doing in places that I cannot see because I’m not omnisient. But the SDA church here, you have to understand this. I don’t argue with them. Well, you know, is the prophetic gift still active or not active? SDAs love arguing that SDA apologists because it doesn’t cause them to have to focus on their little niche

Area which is Ellen White. So I just grant to them let’s grant that the prophetic gift is still active. Now let’s test Ellen White. Well all of a sudden ah well uh and they want to say that they only want to use the New Testament standard. You can’t use the Old Testament Deuteronomy 18 for example standard even though the fundamental beliefs book uses that own standard in the chapter on Ellen White. They want to only use the New Testament standard because they’ll claim she wasn’t a canonical prophet. But the conundrum is like I said if she was only a local prophet why does she

Still function like a canonical prophet like Isaiah or John or Peter etc. Now, Michael Campbell notes that the largest portion of the discussions at the conference centered around hermeneutics, which is interpretation method, but you mentioned earlier and highlighted something specifically that’s very important. We’re talking Ellen White hermeneutics because ultimately biblical hermeneutics is going to be informed by Ellen White hermeneutics because that’s always their little fancy way of elevating Ellen White to be equal with scripture by demoting scripture down to

Essentially her level. But he also notes that some of the individuals there saw the interpretation of Bible prophecy as a salvific issue. people’s salvation hinged upon being correct about prophetic interpretation, something that still manifests itself within Adventism today. Never mind that they have a false god and a false gospel. Um, they can supposedly tell you what the horns in Daniel represent. So that means you’re good to go. But he notes something interesting where he writes, “The issues connected to the 1919 Bible conference were directly related to

Adventist identity. even if not every issue warranted the same amount of attention. Once again, the two hermen her hermeneutical schools, progressives and conservatives, became evident as the conference progressed. In reality, they represented two different polarized approaches to scripture. The progressives focused on the context of each statement. They were open to making necessary revisions if they found something that was not necessarily correct, especially when it concerned historical details. The traditionalists emphasized a more literalistic way of interpreting

Inspired writings. They saw such changes as a threat particularly since some of these conservatives embraced verbal inherency according to which inspired writings do not have mistakes even minor ones. So this really set the tone for the conference outside of their esqueological discussions. Ellen White took center stage namely how her writings are to be understood and utilized. What the SDA organization would have us believe today is that 1919 19 sorted out all the erroneous understandings that Ellen White was infallible and that her writings didn’t

Contain any errors. That after 1919 the organization they got their act together and recognized Ellen White’s just a helping hand alongside the Bible. And well, if you want to utilize her, go for it. But if not, no big deal. But Michael Campbell’s book focuses primarily on the fact that 1919 was really just about how Ellen White’s writings are to be understood. The conservatives versus the progressives. So Steve, with that in mind, my question for you, what was the real bombshell of the 1919 Bible Conference that Dr. Campbell seemingly ignores in his book?

Yeah. I mean, I already mentioned what I considered were the four greatest implications of 1919 that he ignored all four of them. Of course, he ignores that uh you know, this was uh the turning point for Adventism and what they decided uh really destroyed the church. The the opportunity there was for the church to actually become honest for the first time in its history. And u it it miserably failed in that regard because of the conservatives that were there who lied. Uh they all agreed to confidentiality but these guys immediately went out attacked Daniels

Attacked Prescott attacked the leadership got rid of them at the next uh general conference and that was it. Um you know the next 30 years are just absolute hell uh as far as any kind of honesty, any kind of uh healthy understanding of prophecy, the Bible. uh Ellen White. Um you know, it’s just and and I don’t know if you’re looking for something very specific there. I know Daniels, of course, made his uh pronouncement about uh not using these proofs to claim Ellen White as a true prophet and all that kind of thing. That’s gotten a lot of attention uh from

The 1919 transcripts. But maybe if you tell me what you’re thinking of, I’ll I’ll be able to comment on the specific thing that you’re thinking. That is exactly it. It’s it’s really that the Adventist leadership evidences in those transcripts that they knew that Ellen White is not who people in the organization believed her to be, but did not disclose this information to the organization, which ultimately with hindsight is able to tell us they knew back then, we’re talking over a hundred years ago at this point that Ellen White is not who is put forth. And the reason

I asked this, Steve, I’ll let you chime in on all of that. Um, but I want to look at a couple things here as to support my claim because Adventists are going to tell you he’s lying. He doesn’t know what he’s talking about. You know, these sort of claims I’ve heard water under the bridge amount of times. Um, but the idea that 1919 was all about settling this the dispute around Ellen White’s writings simply being a helping hand, that’s a facade because if this were true, that that’s actually what it was all about and it settled all these issues of, you know, those those people

That abuse Ellen White, they I hear this all the time. You don’t know how to read Ellen White properly. Um, you’re you’re abusing her. You’re quoting from, you know, a manuscript. It’s not the conflict of the ages series. She’s not the infallible interpreter. If this were true, that that’s all that the conference was about, like Michael Campbell tries to portray it as, then why, 52 years later in the July 3rd, 1971 issue of the Review and Herald, the church’s own paper, do we find statements like this? Protestants have always claimed that the Bible is its own interpreter. Perhaps

It’s better to say the spirit of prophecy. We use the term here as synonymously with the gift of prophecy. Now, Steve, we were just talking about this earlier. The gift of prophecy is what they’re trying to equate with Ellen White’s gifting, quote unquote. They continue though, or testimony of Jesus. So, the spirit of prophecy or testimony of Jesus is its own interpreter. The Bible is an infallible guide, but it needs to be infallibly interpreted to avoid confusion and division. close quote. If all the 1919 Bible conference was about was settling this

Abuse of Ellen White’s writing by these fundamentalist, you know, hyperconservative Adventists, if all of that was quelched and solved at 1919, they wouldn’t have five years later uh five years later in the second quarter of the 1976 Sabbath school quarterly said this. how advantaged the Seventh Day Adventist Church is to have a modern inspired interpreter of both the Old and New Testaments. Surely there is every logical reason to give the inspired interpretation top priority. Close quote. you wouldn’t have had the statement of confidence in her writings put out by

The GC who Ellen said, like you mentioned earlier, Steve, at one point is also infallible when in session, which states this, this is on their own website, folks. This was from 2018, almost literally 100 years after 1919. quote, “On the centennial of her death, we rejoice that her writings, Ellen Whites, have been made available around the globe in many languages and in a variety of printed and electronic formats. We reaffirm our conviction that her writings are divinely inspired, truly Christ centered, and Bible-based. Rather than replacing the Bible, they uplift

The normative character of scripture and correct inaccurate interpretations of it derived from tradition, human reason, personal experience, and modern culture. Close quote. You wouldn’t have the Adventist belief fundamental beliefs book citing Uriah Smith which is actually from the review and herald who claim that her writings are the pilot that’s needed to properly understand the Bible because the Bible teaches that in the end times there’s going to come perilous times on the voyage and God has sent a pilot to help navigate the voyage to use the book that

God’s given the Bible to accurately interpret it for you to make it safely a shore through these perilous times. A quote that is used in the chapter dedicated to fundamental belief number 18 in their own exposition. So the bombshell of 1919 that I am specifically referring to is the fact that the SDA church leadership knew knows I’m not saying every single person today, but in 1919 they knew that Ellen White was not what people believed her to be. Yet they did not disclose this information to those people, let them remain in the belief that they

Were in and has continued to do so and it still makes itself seen in the statements past 1919. Your thoughts on that? Yeah, that was the first of the four points I made that uh Campbell never covered. And you know, that’s that’s what made it the most important series of meetings ever held in the 7th Day Adventist Church. And obviously, if the interpretation you’re referring to that they spout out was true, they wouldn’t have buried the minutes. They wouldn’t have been ashamed of what was said at that conference. They wouldn’t have tried to hide it. they wouldn’t

Have uh buried it so deep that it became forgotten and completely lost. Um Arthur White wouldn’t have tried to hide it and suppress it from the church in 74 when it was rediscovered. Uh there’s there’s just a clear pattern of dishonesty and cover up here. And Adventists um you know, you just have to come to expect them to be dishonest. I hate to say it, but you know, I I don’t look at Campbell as trying to be dishonest. I look at him as being innocuous. Uh there I read both his books and I listened to his interview with Cybold and I learned basically nothing from him. Uh and yet

He missed out on all the most important points uh that those two books should have covered in my opinion. and uh and he didn’t even reference a work like mine that went into much more detail than he did on this stuff. But uh I I contrast him with Casebolt for a couple reasons. Number one, uh the 1919 conference dealt with so many things that had relationship to Ellen White that Casebolt specifically addresses in the uh his two books on Millerism. And I’ll say this that Millerism was something that I did not focus on to a great degree when I wrote my

Psychobiography or the white estate fraud because I knew that Miller and his top leadership rejected any belief in modern-day prophets. So I was uh you know taking from that that obviously they weren’t going to take Ellen White seriously which is true. But what Casebolt really contributes is how much Ellen it was invested in in Miller and his methods, but more importantly how she gained prominence in the Portland Maine uh segment of Millerism that parted company as far as modern prophets were concerned. And they gave Ellen a significant status and highlevel

Position for 14 months before the great disappointment where they were taking her vision seriously, her date setting seriously. Um, you know, she had 14 months of false prophecies there that Adventists have never paid any attention to. And, uh, you know, we owe Case a debt of gratitude for uncovering that stuff. And uh I you know I felt that he didn’t come close to covering uh the shouting Methodist uh influence and and Israel Damon’s influence. And I went into both of those in quite a bit of detail. But if you take what I say about Israel Damon and the shouting

Methodists and couple it with what Casebolt says about Millerism, then you really do get a great picture of uh now Ellen White was a false prophet from the age of 12 right on once she was converted and and she was converted into uh shouting Methodism. She wasn’t converted initially into Millerism like case both states but he he does have historical errors and stuff but he’s not even a historian so I I can cut in some slack. I’m so impressed with the historical research he did do that uh I’m I’m much more positive about his two books than any criticisms I have to

Offer. But I also do offer the criticisms in the book review of of his two books that I’m writing. But you know my my general feeling is that Casebolt really makes a great contribution. And the one thing I really disagree with is he really excuses all Ellen White’s immorality and lies and false prophecies as resulting from her brain quotes brain damage uh which he believes caused confabulation. And I I totally take issue with that and uh give my reasons for why I don’t believe that’s a valid argument at all. But um you know if you just go by the

Historical documentation that he does in his especially his second book that’s an extremely valuable book and I’m sure Adventists are not going to be happy with it if if they read what he’s written there. It’s very damning uh to Ellen White and and her involvement in Millerism. Yeah. Um, well, there’s a lot that I could say there. Um, I can’t recommend this book, folks, enough. Father Miller’s daughter in terms of understanding what Ellen White really inherited that I hear from Adventists now constantly, Steve. It it just we just looked at a video, folks, on Monday. They were

Utilizing Miller’s principles of interpretation. Um, and so it’s interesting, you know, I didn’t I don’t know a ton about Donald Casebolt. I know about his history a little bit within the SDA church, but I didn’t know anything about is he a historian, etc. Um, it’s interesting that you mentioned there the shouting Methodist. Um, that’s something a lot of people have been asking us recently to do more stuff on. We have an article on the website if you’re interested in that folks. You can type in shouting methodists. You could probably just type in shouting in the

Search bar up top, just answering adventism.com, and you can find a lot of information that I’ve compiled and put there with hyperlinks to all the primary source documentation. But Steve, maybe that’s a third thing that we could have you back to talk about um is Ellen White’s upbringing around the uh the shouting Methodist because um my goodness, the the the the rings and the barking like dogs and just oh it’s like the most excesses of fringe at the earliest possible age which just beggets more of the most fringe, you know, hyper fanatic type behaviors elsewhere. Um,

But really the point on on that question being, you know, the idea that that Michael Campbell at least tries to present in his book, which again is supposed to be this sort of staple work on on 1919. Um, the idea that’s presented that, you know, 1919 corrected the idea of that those hyperconservatives that Ellen White isn’t infallible and that her writings are not on par with the Bible. It it’s just not truthful. And again, I’m not trying to say whether he’s a malicious person or not. It’s it’s not a judgment on his character. It’s just it’s always

A painting of things in a specific light to make it seem a specific way, leaving out fundamental foundational. You talking about fundamentalism, ironically, man. Talk about the fundamentals of what the 1919 Bible conference was. We’re about to listen to a clip here though of him on this specific thing. Steve, um, this is from Peter Dixon’s SDA Q&A from about a year ago, if you will. So, shout out to Peter. He is a friend of the show. But Steve, in light of what you just shared regarding, you know, these four points that you’ve put forward, I will

Be curious to hear your thoughts on something he said regarding, well, some of these things. It’s about a 4 and a half minute clip here and then I will have a question for you. Uh the 1919 Bible conference was this pivotal turning point I argue first major discussion of how to interpret Ellen White’s writings after her death. And what really becomes clear is that there’s a hermeneutical divide within Adventism between those who are more progressive versus more who are traditionalist. And I say progressive versus traditionalist in a in a very specific historical

Setting because uh all sides in 1919 within Adventism clearly identified with the rising fundamentalist movement. But what was significant is the application of this whole issue of inherency. How will people interpret inspired writings with regard and and their authority? the authority of Ellen White’s writings in relationship to the Bible, how to properly interpret them. And there will be some uh who are, I argue, are the innovators, right? That that are being very heavily influenced by fundamentalism. These are the traditionalists, the so-called

Conservatives. Uh but they are the innovators because they’re they’re the ones that are applying inherency to Ellen White’s writings. And it becomes really uh noticeable at the end uh when the Bible and history teachers the formal Bible conference Peter had ended at this point but the Bible and history teachers stick around for some kind of extra training some extra discussions and they invite H Daniels to come back for these roundt discussions and it’s those uh discussions that the 1919 Bible conference is is uh most famous for and they have these very illuminating ing

Discussions of what this means for inherency and the authority of Ellen White’s writings in the church. And if we don’t do a better job, there’s almost a a a sort of a wistfulness if we don’t do something better or we don’t change what we’re doing uh and educate the church that there will be um to the the ideas to the effect that that uh there will be trouble in the future. And so this seems rather ominous. And of course, uh, looking back over the 20th century, we see that they were in fact correct. And I think that’s what made them so, uh, so sensational in a way

When they were first discovered in the 1970s. You know, like a lot of things, the transcripts, uh, were just tossed down in down into the basement of the General Conference. There was no archives. They’re just kind of put away in a box and forgotten. So, I’m I’m really I’m not convinced that that they were deliberately hidden. I think it was forgotten. I think fundamentalism really became an overwhelming almost like a title wave that delued Adventism in the 1920s. Uh frankly, I don’t I’m not convinced that it would have made a difference if they had done uh if they

Had said, you know, hey, let’s publish the transcripts, you know. Um I I really don’t see that. U and and the reason I argue that is that uh Prescott and others did publish excerpts from the transcripts. So, it’s not like all of these were kept secret. portions of it were kept uh and and there’s portions that are missing. So people checked out or made copies and we know that partially because uh some of the material by PG Wilkinson showed up at Andrews in the Center for Adventist Research. So it’s like uh you know people it was disorganized. It’s just

Put in a box. People took portions of it, checked it out. uh and there was clearly some intent by uh several people that were part of the 1919 Bible conference to publish various portions of materials that they that they did present. So um I think it’s just basically a forgotten episode. Uh but in hindsight as people look back over time uh they can see the growing significance because the same issues they don’t go away. There’ll be new people uh and and new topics so to speak, but the underlying issues related to hermeneutics and authority. Um they

Remain uh center or central to to Adventist uh uh subsequent Adventist debates and and so that’s why I think 1919 is very important. And of course, yeah, I mean, I I’ve done lots of interviews with people from the 70s that when those transcripts were published or portions thereof and for example in Spectrum that that caused uh quite a stir, a very strong reaction uh at that point. So uh so the discovery is probably just as important as the actual transcripts. And so there’s a whole another historioggraphy of of how people have understood and interpreted. Uh, but

I I I just take it as more um pragmatic. All right. So, Steve, he claims that the transcripts, they weren’t deliberately hidden. They were just simply stored in a basement off, you know, the GC somewhere, forgotten about. Um, there’s nothing going on out of the ordinary. You know, this thing was only by invite only. Um, it wasn’t like a public thing, you know, that anybody could come up to. What are your thoughts on that? Well, I have a whole bunch of thoughts, but um that’s the first time I heard that clip, but you know, I I think Campbell is really missing the obvious

Here that uh if what he was saying is true, you know, if if this was really a very positive thing and and the church moved in a healthy direction and its understanding of Ellen White, you can’t possibly explain what happened the next 30 years, which was absolute inherency, Andreas and Nickel, the church hitting the dark ages like it’s never had before. Uh Ellen White being prompted up and put up on a pedestal like she never was before after, you know, even when she was alive. Uh it was the most ridiculous um turn of events in terms of what Daniels and Prescott and all these

Leaders hoped would happen. what actually happened for the next 30 years was 100% opposite of what they were hoping for. And and to try to argue that uh the stuff wasn’t hidden, I I think speaks for itself. Uh the people that took over the church, you have to recognize Prescott and these people were defeated foes. They had been attacked badly. They had been defeated. They’d been thrown out of office. So anything they tried to publish was going to be minimized and dismissed by the new power structure that was the most conservative fundamentalist leadership of Adventism

In its history over this next 30-year period. And uh they didn’t want the church members to be aware of what had actually transpired at that meeting. There’s no question about that. That’s why those transcripts were sealed. Whether it was actual archives or not is irrelevant. They were sealed and shut down in a deep dark basement somewhere and no one had access to them. And again, why does uh he not address the obvious question here? The white estate was set up for the very purpose of handling all these kinds of documents, making them available for research, etc. And the

White estate doesn’t even own didn’t even have copies of the transcripts. It’s an out it’s a complete outrage. And uh Willie White could have easily insisted on having those, but he didn’t want that political hot potato in his possession. Um, Willie White was, you know, all over the place. He he was a chameleon in many ways and uh tried to be all things to all people and played politics all the time and and so he didn’t want anything to do with those transcripts. And um, you know, it’s obvious that they did not only get hidden because they weren’t accessible to people, but they

Did become lost. So that shows how hidden they were that no one was even aware that they even existed for so many decades. I mean that’s a damning thing on Adventism that the one attempt to become honest about who Ellen was and you know they were still very careful and cautious about that but um they weren’t talking as bluntly and clearly as we are today certainly but they didn’t know as much either. they didn’t have access to how extensive her plagiarism really was. They didn’t have digital internet stuff. And so, um, you know, the bottom line is that Adventism

I I get asked a lot, uh, you know, when will the demise of Adventism actually come? And I don’t claim to be a prophet or a prognosticator, but I do get accused of trying to destroy Adventism all the time. But that’s not my purpose at all. Uh I don’t want to destroy Adventism. I My concern is to pray for Adventism. I pray for it every day. I have an hour prayer walk. I walk by 17 Adventist institutions and pray for them all that they will wake up and see the light. that somehow, you know, I I I believe that the 1919 opportunity was the real chance and that

The odds that this will happen today are microscopic. But um you know, I’m not out to try to attack Adventism or or destroy Adventism in any way. I believe in the truth. When I was in the church for 35 years, I tried to preach the truth and got in trouble for that a lot. But in the 14 years since I’ve tried to preach the truth and um you know I do believe that time and truth are on the same team and truth and time are on the same team and in God’s timing uh truth will come out and uh I’m very comfortable with God’s timing. Uh when the truth fully comes

Out, it’s not going to look pretty for Adventism and they’re going to have to deal with that themselves. But I’m not here to try to destroy Adventism. Yeah. And Steve, I I hear that charge a lot from Adventists. You can imagine um that I’m attacking the Adventist church. I hate Adventists. And it’s like, folks, if I hated Adventists, I wouldn’t say anything. I’ I’d say, “Well, all right. End up in predition. I don’t care. Sucker. You’re deceived.” Haha. You think this has made me friends? I mean, I it just it doesn’t make sense with the facts. And that really is the

Truth, Steve, that not everyone takes the same approach. Um, you know, I think of the Dale Ratzoffs, the Dez Fords, you know, very cordial individuals. They took a very cordial approach. They were very um they were firm, but they were very calm. They were very cordial, etc. and the institution dragged their names and still drags their names. And so part of my personality is, you know, I think if I was in the days of the the disciples, I may have fallen into the camp of the sons of thunder. Um, and not everyone necessarily um would fall in that same category. But um on top of

That, you have the aspect of of what we’re discussing here on top of all of this that people have tried to be cordial and no matter what approach people take, they’re always labeled as an attacker, a hater, this and that. And so on this platform, we just let the chips fall where they may. That stuff’s not going to work here. I’ve heard it for over 10 years. At this point, again, it is water under the bridge. Um, I’m not saying I like necessarily like, oh yeah, I love being told I’m a tool of Satan. Um, but at this point, I just expect it. But at the same time, I don’t

Hate Adventists. I don’t know any former Adventist that does. And those who I those that I know who are vocal and outspoken about it, whether it’s Proclamation Magazine, um, this platform, you, EJ Len, whoever it may be, they care about Seventh Day Adventists. And that’s why they’re saying something, not because they are a hater or an attacker, but what Michael Campbell said there is is kind of the the gist of of what I’ve been saying that it it’s always about repainting history in the most favorable light as possible, no matter what. It’s never

Owning up. It’s those that are critical that are the problem, not the scholarship that’s done um their due diligence to make sure a certain image of the organization is kept as polished as possible. No, no, no. It’s those critics out there. They’re the problem. Um, but that was an example for the audience about how far he gets into this sort of bombshell area in his book. He doesn’t really touch it. I I remember when I got this book and was like, “Oh man, I’ll be curious to see, you know, as a historian, is he just going to do the historical, you know, representation

Of of of what happened?” Doesn’t touch it. Doesn’t even touch it. He talks about again how the the focus like he said in that clip was well it was hermeneutics. It was a hermeneutics discussion to you know that took place regarding how how to read Ellen White and the conference leaving the organization. Um it it left the organization in a in a tight spot. Oh, right. Right. And and and some transcripts of the conference. They they they were left in a in a basement somewhere. Nothing going on there, though. No, no, no, no, no. Just just a fluke. just a fluke, you know, because

Because the White Estate totally has a has has a great track record leading up to 1919, as you know, Steve, from your books. Never mind the fact that uh it evidences the leadership knew that Ellen White isn’t who she claimed. The numerous number uh the the numerous members in the organization who had a view that was false that they knew, but they’re not going to say anything. No, no, no. None of that was ever shared with them. And and those people were left to continue believing um what the leaders knew to be a lie. Um we’re not going to touch any of that. that didn’t

Happen at the conference. No, no, no. They were just left in a box somewhere down in a basement to just collect dust and who who knows. That would be the bare knuckle honest admission if he just actually owned the elephant in the room. Um, which you’ve alluded to that this elephant is still in the room and you just you didn’t touch the elephant and kind of turned your back to the elephant thinking, well, if I turn my back to the elephant, it’s not in the room. Yeah. Cybold’s interview with uh Campbell was real revealing in that he talked about how

Mvin Maxwell was so such a dear historian to him, like a mentor to him. And I sat under Mvin Maxwell at the seminary too. And every single research paper I wrote, uh, anything that was critical of Ellen, anything that was critical of Adventist history, he had red marks all over it going crazy. I mean, the guy was like the most super apologist Adventist historian I’ve ever seen in my life. Yeah. And and when Campbell said he’s like his mentor, I said, “Well, you don’t have to say anything else, you know.” Yeah. I understand. Well, it’s funny you

Mentioned that, too, because we’re getting ready to transition into Ellen White and the Historians, and it’s like that’s exactly what that book is. It’s like Arthur White was that same way. Oh, man. If somebody told you that Arthur White was their mentor, I mean, that that just tells you right there. Well, right. Now with regards with regards to inspiration and inherency as we saw earlier the common retort of taking issues with Ellen White’s writings is that it’s only if you hold to that real rigid view of inspiration that that’s where all those problems are coming

From. Aka you believe that you know God can communicate effectively. Um, if you understand that Ellen White never claimed her words were inspired, but the thoughts of the individual, that eliminates every single problem and there’s no issues. Or you’ll get the appeal to, well, FD Nickel addressed that. FD Nickel dealt with that. George Knight in his book, Search for Identity. He speaks on this where he writes, quote, “It should be realized that not all Adventist leaders held to the fundamentalist position of inspiration, which we’ve talked about. Some of the

Foremost leaders of the church took a more moderate position.” Ellen White, interestingly enough, belonged to that group. The Bible, she wrote in 1886, is written by inspired men, but it is not God’s mode of thought and expression. It is that of humanity. God as a writer is not represented. The writers of the Bible were God’s penmen, not his pen. It is not the words of the Bible that are inspired, but the men that were inspired. Inspiration acts not on the man’s words or his expressions, but on the man himself, who under the influence of the Holy Ghost is

Imbued with thoughts. But the words receive the impress of the individual mind. The divine mind is diffused. The divine mind and will is combined with the human mind and will. Thus the utterances of the man are the word of God. Close quote. Now those ellipses folks are included by Dr. Knight, not me. But Steve, as you are aware, this is their defense to any sort of criticism regarding Ellen White’s errors and that the words aren’t perfect because it’s only the thoughts of the writer that were inspired. This is what Ellen White herself believed. So, it’s unfair to

Point to errors in the words of her writings when she didn’t claim that the words were inspired. But what’s fascinating about this, well, is a couple of things. One is statements like this quote. The spirits help in choice of appropriate words. That’s the heading. Quote, I am trying to catch the very words and expressions that were made in reference to this matter. And as my pen hesitates a moment, the appropriate words come to my mind. When writing these precious books, if I hesitated, the very word I wanted to express, the idea was given me. Close quote. Again, in the same year,

1907, she claimed, quote, “The goodness of the Lord to me is very great. I praise his name that my mind is clear on Bible subjects. The spirit of God works upon my mind and gives me appropriate words with which to express the truth. I am also greatly strengthened when I stand before large congregations. I will not distrust the Lord, but will hang my helpless soul on Christ. Close quote. So, the words weren’t inspired, but the thoughts, but also she wouldn’t have the right words to write, and the Holy Spirit would give her the words to write. more Ellen White

Double speak. However, what’s also fascinating about all of this is that the statement they love to pee they love to appeal to where she claimed that the words are not inspired but the thoughts which George Knight cited there in his book that quote itself was plagiarized from Calvin Stow’s origin and history of the books of the Bible. In fact, almost all folks, all of Selected Messages, book one, pages 19 to 21 are stolen from that book. Notice Stow’s book from page 19, husband of the the great slavery abolitionist, uh, Harriet Beecher Stowe, who wrote Uncle

Tom’s Cabin. He writes, quote, “It is not the words of the Bible that were inspired. It is not the thoughts of the Bible that were inspired. It is the men who wrote the Bible that were inspired. Inspiration acts not on the man’s words, not on the man’s thoughts, but on the man himself, so that he by his own spontaneity under the impulse of the Holy Ghost conceives certain thoughts and gives utterances to them in certain words. Both the words and the thoughts receiving the peculiar impress of the mind. Then notice the Ellen quote. It is not the words of the Bible that

Are inspired, but the men that were inspired. Inspiration acts not on the man’s words or his expressions, but on the man himself, who under the influence of the Holy Ghost is imbued with thoughts. But the words and thoughts receive the impress of the individual mind. Close quote. You can see the color coordination there of the exact copying of words. So, Steve, my question for you, what are the SDA defenses to all of this and why do they fall short? Yeah, their defenses are just pitiful. Uh, Knight himself there is engaging in the SDA game of, you know, proof

Texting, EGW proof texting, which we’ve already clearly shown. Not only was she plagiarizing from all kinds of other sources, but she was contradicting herself both before and afterwards. She jumps all over the place. She’ll jump from verbal inspiration. Oh no, it’s thought inspiration. Oh no, it’s back to verbal inspiration. You know, Alden Thompson tries to claim she has this growth pattern, which is a total joke. I can show on the gospel and so many subjects that she goes back and forth and it just depends who she’s copying and what she’s trying to prove at the

Time. And um you know it’s just pitiful that people call themselves scholars and and try to proof text Ellen White this way. I this is the reason I put 25 straight quotes of Ellen Abs Ellen’s absolute claims for herself. 25 straight quotes and I’m gonna add the one that you put on there about her future after her death stuff tonight too because that’s worthy of being on there as well. But um you know that’s not a comprehensive list at all. But you read through those 25 quotes and then you know someone tries to tell you that Ellen White didn’t claim absolute

Authority for herself and you just know they’re a liar, you know, and they might quote her 1901 uh famous statement as to offset all these other ones. But that’s the typical Adventist proof texting, taking something they want to prove a point from and agree with and ignoring the vast majority of other stuff she plagiarized and claimed came from God. And she does this on all subjects. Um, I mean, it’s just absolutely inconceivable to me that given all the evidence that’s come forward that people like Alden Thompson and Greyel and, you know, Gil Valentine and people who claim

To be legitimate historians are still on this bandwagon of trying to argue that Ellen White’s a true prophet. I mean, it’s it’s really pitiful. I’m embarrassed for them. Yeah. And and we we’ve alluded to this some and maybe I’ve I’ve directly said it, but it’s like I know SDA scholarship thinks by that by focusing on mode of inspiration that alleviates all of the issues, but it doesn’t that doesn’t solve the that doesn’t solve the problems. And so that’s a a common thing that I’ll point to. We just did a couple weeks ago in a response to Dr. Jed Lake who initiated a

Response to this platform. Steve. Um he was invited to come on here October 2023, but said no. Um I’ve already said all I needed to in in my book Ellen White under fire, but then he was three months later invited to go on to an SDA church affiliated podcast to do a response to me. Oh, so you didn’t say all that you needed to say apparently on the subject. Well, we’ve been covering this issue um with him as well because that’s what he does in the book. He’s like, “Well, it’s this real rigid view of inspiration that’s the problem.” No, that is Adventists claiming to be

Addressing the issue, but you’re really addressing something that’s not the problem. I don’t care what mode of inspiration you’re trying to claim. You’re saying that God is apparently the worst communicator in the world. He can speak things into existence. Ex nahilo, yet he just can’t seem to get history correct when telling Ellen White about the future. You know, I just had a discussion recently with a guest who’s going to be on in in a couple weeks, and he he pointed out, you know, if Ellen White was a true prophet, um God really failed to tell Ellen White

About some of these key things about American demographics, um the shift of American demographics in the future. You know, these things that you don’t think would be that that mind-boggling, especially for the, you know, the creator of the the universe, but you don’t see really any any jump in that. He was pointing out how the idea of spiritualism, well, it’s like that’s like a an idea of that that like fizzled out toward the end of even the 19th century in terms of being like a serious, you know, push or a serious movement. Um, it’s just this whole

Worldview is saturated in a very 19th century mindset and idea. Um, but this idea of of arguing inspiration is just a distraction. It doesn’t deal with the the real issue. The real issue is that according to Adventist theology, God is apparently the worst communicator in the world. He’s omnisient and omnipotent, but he just can’t seem to get his prophets to correctly convey what he wants them to such that they make countless blunders like Ellen did. But it’s never her fault. It’s always God’s fault. Oh, it was God was testing them. You know, I said to not change the

Miller chart and then it changed three times. But God told me both. It’s not supposed to change, but then it is supposed to change. Well, why did it change? Well, God had his hand over a mistake. Ah, gotcha. I think they know the problem but can’t deal with it. So, they continue the sideshow arguments around, you know, types of inspiration. But George Knight even notes that A.G. Daniel’s statement where he said, and you mentioned this earlier, that his view on verbal inspiration changed after seeing Ellen White rewriting multiple manuscripts of

The Desire of Ages. He said that there was no use in talking about verb. This was at the conference. There was no use in trying to talk about verbal inspiration of Mrs. White’s testimonies because nobody who’s ever seen the work uh the work done knows better. Everyone who has seen the work done knows better. I’m really uh not sure how you can understand Paul to be telling Timothy that when the scriptures are God breathed, he meant that they’re thought inspired. But I digress. Now, in this same vein, I want to look at some statements like I mentioned from Donald

McAdams book Ellen White and the Historians, which for those who do not know is a formal publishing of a paper that he wrote in 1974. To give a little bit of the backstory of what this work is, it was published in 2022, but the publisher writes this on the back cover. Here it is at last, Donald R. McAdams paper LG White and the Protestant Historians. The evidence from an unpublished manuscript on John Hus or Yon Hus. This paper written almost 50 years ago presents compelling evidence that Ellen White did not just borrow paragraphs from historians to describe

What she had already seen and vision. The Hus manuscript shows that her history of the Hussite Reformation in great controversy came directly from historian James A. Wy. Ellen White followed his sequence, used his descriptions, copied his words, and repeated his historical errors. And then she gave her literary assistant, Marian Davis, the freedom to cut huge chunks from her manuscript and add significant additional history directly to WY. McAdams found the Hus manuscript tucked away in the files of the LG White estate. Ah, something else was tucked

Away as well. He obtained permission to transcribe it only by promising that he would not publish his work. Instead, he labored unsuccessfully behind the scenes to change the minds of the church leaders. Meanwhile, for a few years, pirated copies of her paper circulated. Close quote. So, he was blessed to be able to access this now. And we’ll look at some important aspect of the uh aspects of this paper to further see how the SDA organization along with the white estate has knowingly lied for decades. Notice what McAdams says in the preface. Quote, “By the late 1970s, it was clear

That church leaders had to respond to the 1919 bombshell.” That’s what he’s referring to here, that the leaders knew that Ellen White was not who she claimed to be. So, they knew that they had to respond to this. The stakes were high. Many influential Adventists were watching, and my paper did not stand alone. There were other challenges to Ellen White’s originality and authority. William S. Peterson in 1970, Ron Grey Bill in 1972, Ronald Numbers in 1976, Walter Ray in 1982, and others. Also in 1979, Spectrum published the report of the 1919 Bible Conference, which

Demonstrated that church leaders in the immediate post Ellen White era were aware that her writings were based on more than visions, but were unwilling to share this knowledge with the church. Close quote. So Steve, my question for you, what does this mean for the commandmentkeeping church and what are the implications of this fact for their movement? Yeah. You know, I think MA Adams uh was in a very difficult position and Arthur White showed his true colors was the way he uh covered up and lied and changed and all the stuff he did to make Adams

Work. Uh it of course we know who Arthur White was now and so nothing’s going to surprise us from Arthur White. The guy’s as dishonest as you can possibly get. But um you know when you talk about commandment keeping that’s such a big issue. Um what commandments are Adventist supposedly keeping? The ten commandments that have become a ministry of condemnation and death according to 2 Corinthians 37 and9. I mean the commandments that the New Testament elevates are the commandments of Jesus. Not the siatic commandments, not the commandments of Moses. Those are

Contrasted with the commandments of Jesus. Uh truth came through Jesus Christ. Um the law of Moses was a law of condemnation. And people who continue to put themselves under that, all they achieve is to be condemned. And that’s what Adventists are doing. They’re condemning themselves through their own spurious claims that they keep the ten commandments or even attempt to keep them. But um obviously the ninth commandment is the biggest problem for Adventists because they’re about the most deceitful bunch you can ever find. Their whole history is just absolutely

Littered with a spirit of dishonesty. from Ellen White to James White to all the leaders that kissed up to them to survive to you know that’s why I applaud Daniels and those who tried to come clean in 1919 even though they failed and the reaction to it made things way worse than it was before which is tragic but um you know you have Margaret Rowan coming in there as a prophet and she she was on to Ellen White she knew Ellen was a con artist and she tried to pull the same stuff off herself and almost succeeded for several years there. But people been avenist didn’t want another

Prophet. That’s the crucial thing. They did not want another prophet. They were very glad Ellen was dead. Now the leadership was planning on using her stuff to manipulate her the same way she manipulated others when she was alive. And that’s precisely what Adventists have done ever since Ellen’s death. They’ve used her stuff, her plagiarized stuff, her deceitfully rot stuff to control and manipulate people. That’s what Adventism is. And um it’s just really sad that uh they can’t face up to reality. I I think a lot of the leaders know good and well what’s

Going on. But you know, again, it’s all about survival. just like McAdams, he wanted to survive, so he had to go along with all the garbage that uh was included in that. And um you know, the more you tell the truth in Adventism, the more they’ll be showing you the door and attacking you. And I think we all know that and we’ve experienced it. And um so to me it’s uh really sad that um you know he mentions Greyel. Yeah, Greybel did write some stuff that was positive, but he also kissed up to the White Estate. He also criticized Numbers. He stayed in numbers

Home and treated him as a friend and then betrayed him and told everyone how he was the most irresponsible historian in the entire church. And I mean I I don’t have hardly any respect for uh Greybel or Gered or Valentine or even Butler. You know, Butler hasn’t been dishonest with me, but I thought his review of my psychobiography was an outrage, and that’s why I responded to it the way I did. But Bonnie Casey, uh, you know, Alexander Carpenter, I can just go on and on. Lauren Cybold, um, these dishonest gatekeepers in Adventism are the ones most responsible for the

Deception of the church members. And I’m so glad the internet’s available to people today where they can find out for themselves and get around these dishonest gatekeepers who are really the ones who are destroying lives. Yeah. Um well, and when you were on the last time, we talked about Arthur White and his his antics, and you you kind of spoke into that some earlier. Um, but now notice what McAdams writes in the introduction of the book. He says, quote, “The problem for this book is how to present the 1974 HUS paper and at the same time show the

Changes made for the 1977 revision. My solution is to publish the 1974 paper, marking with boldface the passages deleted in the 1977 paper and inserting underlined and within brackets the additions requested by Arthur White. The reader can easily see that the purpose of almost every change was to soften the blow. Comments that raised difficult questions or challenges were deleted. Affirming passages were added and strong words were modified. For example, my assertion that the evidence shows that WY was the source of the historical narrative in great controversy was

Softened to say that WY was the immediate source. Close quote. Now, Steve, if that just isn’t the most SDA thing ever, this is what I was mentioning earlier, folks, about how everything has to be rewritten in the most polished, buttonup presentation that everything’s perfect, it’s great, everything is wonderful. Um, word games. It’s word games. But the book clearly shows what McAdams originally wrote and Arthur White’s additions and revisions to that original paper, which is rather ironic considering that’s basically what Ellen White did to those that she was

Stealing from. So, I guess the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree after all. But Steve, question for you. How does this match up with what you note about Arthur White in your book, The White Estate Fraud? And what does this tell us about the great controversy narrative? Well, I don’t think Arthur White could look any worse than what I present him to be in the White Estate fraud. I mean, he you just talk about a deceiver, a person who hides, who’s secretive, who colludes uh with a woman who’s a total liar and sociopath. And the two of them do everything they can to destroy an

Honest man’s character and feed into the false avenous narrative that can write was the devil and uh deserved to be you know tred and feathered and crucified in every way possible which is what Adventists have done to him. But it was really I was Canr secretary that was the crowning book that destroyed Canrite for Adventists. And Arthur White was the one who ghost wrote that book. And u so nothing can surprise me about Arthur White when you see what he did with Carrie Johnson and what he did to Canrite than what he did with McAdams is small potatoes. I mean, this guy is just

The absolute worst. And for the Adventist Church to continue to honor him, lift him up as Ellen White’s biographer, you know, the the whole thing is just a complete joke. And um I I don’t know how long these people are going to be able to function in their alternative reality, but the internet is definitely catching up with them. And it really uh you know makes me uh take note when someone like Casebolt who’s still an Adventist in my understanding comes out with his two books because he’s just adding to the whole pile on that really makes what Adventists have done

Completely indefensible there. There’s just no no getting around it. And as far as the great controversy narrative, um, you know, how ironic that they’re throwing out billions, a billion of these books and and I know people who’ve received them and they were just thrown onto their driveway, you know, they they didn’t even pay for mail or anything. They they just litter these books into people’s yards or on their driveway and call that witnessing or evangelism. It’s it’s absolutely laughable that the church is spending their tithe payer money this way. And uh you talk about an

Outdated, ridiculous book. You know, if they were going to do something like this, why wouldn’t they do it with Steps to Christ or Desire of Ages, which those books also have their huge problems, but at least they’re not the ridiculous stupidity of great controversy with what it says about Catholics and apostate Protestants. And, you know, Sunday laws, and we know good and well where Ellen White got Sunday laws. She got them from the Blair Bill that was before Congress in 1889. and she was all hyper about this. And so she claimed God showed her

All these visions of what was going to happen, but the bill died and never came forward again. And there’s never been a threat of Sunday laws in the United States since. and and the whole notion that there’s going to be a worldwide Sunday law given what we know about what’s happening in globalism and the stuff in our world today. I mean, I don’t know how out of touch with reality you have to be. It’s like you might as well be on the flat earth society. Adventists throwing these books into people’s yards is really the equivalent of the flat earth society.

That’s what they’re functioning like. uh just people that are 100% out of touch with reality. Yeah. And it’s just so Steve, I don’t know if you know this, but um Ted Wilson has spoken on this before. So the reason that Great Controversy Project 2.0 um well, I guess I shouldn’t say like the main reason, but one of the undergirling things behind it that Ted said this was either at the general conference session or at his annual address. um it would have been two years ago prior to the start of the great controversy project 2.0. He said that it was Ellen White’s

Desire and wish that The Great Controversy of all her works be the one that be distributed the most. So that is playing a role in why that is the the book that is chosen. But also too, I think it gets back into again I talk about this a lot. People don’t like the way that I phrase it, but I think it it makes the point. Seventh Day Adventism is selling a product. It is an organization. It is a one-stop shop, unlike a lot of other things out in the world. I mean, Steve, what religious organization do you know out there that has their own line of canned meat?

Think about saying that about your your church. Yeah, I’m I’m a part of uh you know, the the Free Will Baptist Church. Have you ever had Free Will Baptist tenders? You know, your own meat to be able to live off the grid. Like, that’s a real unique thing when you stop to think about It’s like, yeah, I I grew up in a movement where we have like our own foods. Like I don’t know very many religious organizations out there that are like producing their own like breakfast sausage. So, um, but these sorts of things are all really influenced, if you know like

The history around that stuff, that stuff’s influenced by the great controversy worldview. um the these this paranoia around the end times and we’re going to need this food and you need this certain food to you know be able to get the protein you need cuz if you eat meat you’re not fit for the heavenly diet and like all this stuff is coming from the great controversy worldview. That’s really what the SDA church is selling you. The SDA church, their product as an organization is the great controversy worldview. And every single one of their doctrines, like what are in

The 28 fundamental beliefs book, they’re in a specific order. And each one of those teachings and beliefs is a step down the stairwell eventually down into the darkness of adopting the whole product, which is the worldview. They need you to adopt their worldview. And I always highlight on this platform that this is one of the things that puts Adventism outside of Christianity. It’s not just mere well like Michael Campbell said, you know, they had some minor theological differences. No, you have a completely different worldview. Christians don’t have different

Worldviews. Like a charismatic and a non-carismatic don’t have differing worldviews. Even a Protestant and a Catholic don’t have different worldviews. They diff they disagree on, you know, what they would say some serious theological matters. But it’s not a different worldview. And so great controversy is Ellen White’s supposed pinnacle work. Yet it’s a total fabrication that had nothing to do with supposed visions. The standard defense that SDAs have given from 1919 that Ellen White wasn’t a historian. I don’t know if you’ve heard this recently. This

Has been a new thing that they’ve or maybe it’s not new, but it’s just been something that they’ve really been harping on here recently. She she wasn’t a historian. You can’t hold her accountable for having historical blunders. She wasn’t a historian. So again, God is just apparently unable to correctly communicate history um apparently. But I know that’s the running excuse along with this is only a problem if you hold to that real rigid view of inspiration. But all of that folks is red herrings. They don’t actually deal with the issues. They do

Not deal with the issues. So when you hear Adventist scholarship saying, “Well, they’ve already dealt with all that.” No, they haven’t. They haven’t. They haven’t dealt with Steve’s book. If you went and watched part one of of our discussion here or Steve’s first time that he was here, you saw that we went through Alberto Tim’s paper where he names Steve directly and all it was was a bunch of red herrings ad homonyms and attacking Steve’s character, attacking his demeanor, not dealing with the 3, you know, 50 plus primary source documentations and footnotes. No, no,

No, no, no. Those weren’t touched. It was, well, look at Steve’s how he he he’s clearly just an attacker of of God’s church. That’s the sort of thing that’s going on. It doesn’t actually deal with the issues. Ellen White claimed the words in that book, Great Controversy, are barricaded by a thus saith the Lord. Selected messages, book three, page 122, paragraph 2. The words in great controversy, patriarchs and prophets, desire of ages, barricaded by thus sayeth the Lord. She claimed that her mind was never prejudiced by anyone. And if it were, she wasn’t fit for the

Role as the Lord’s messenger. So, by her own standard and what is now known about how she came up with these books, she also fails to pass the sniff test. Steve, thank you so much for being here. Any final thoughts that you have or where you can let people know um where they can interact with more of your material? Yeah. Uh we certainly invite people to come on to the thread, my Facebook thread. Uh you know is we we get hundreds of comments on a regular basis each day and I make a post each day. Currently, I’m putting up this uh book review that I’m

Doing of Case Bolts, but I’m writing another book in the meantime, and that’s what I normally post a portion from each day with comments before and after. Uh I encourage people to go to my website, which is authorstevedaily.com, and there’s a lot of materials there, all Ellen White’s claims, all kinds of stuff. uh many of my interviews and Stephen Hassan’s interview and just tons of stuff on that website. So, um you know, we have another book coming up soon and uh it’s called Leaving Adventism and getting some good uh responses to that. So, there’s a lot

Going on and um you know, I’m really excited to see Caseull doing what he’s done. Uh, and I waited to write my review till the reviews had been written on it and and he’d responded to them. So, that’s one reason I waited and wrote quite a lengthy review myself. But, um, you know, these are exciting times. Uh, I think God is amazing. Uh, it’s so awesome to be out of the control and dishonesty of Adventism. the last 14 years, our little church has just been uh loving it. Uh enjoying the freedom in Christ and the freedom in the gospel and uh the unity and love that we

Experience. And I I that’s my uh perception for most of the people who leave Adventism who come on my thread is that they’re much happier now, much more fulfilled now and uh excited to know the truth as opposed to the deception that they were exposed to for so many years. Yeah, it’s just so true. I use the analogy here, you know, it’s like being in spiritual jacuzzi. Um it’s just like ah you know basking in the goodness of the gospel and and and Christ and then you know when you get these Adventists that it’s just like man you you guys are shivering in the shadow of the hot tub

Trying to claim no we’re in the hot tub. No, no, no. It’s like man just get out of the shadow. Just get in the hot tub, man. Just come join us. Come become a Christian and and understand the the the true goodness of uh the gospel. That’s exactly been my experience as well, Steve, is just when people leave and when when they experience a a true born again experience, you know, because that gets into the problem of Adventist understanding of the nature of man and that they don’t really understand what it means to be born again. You mentioned as well they have a a heretical

Numatlogy. They don’t understand the Holy Spirit, that the sealing of the Holy Spirit. You know, I had somebody this past week that said, “Well, if the if the Holy Spirit is the seal, then what does that actually tangibly look like in the person’s life? How can you have a barometer for if you know if you have the seal?” Well, I cited to him Ephesians 1 11-14. It explicitly said, they went on this long thing about how the fourth commandment has to be the seal of God. It’s like, no, the only reason you’re not able to see this is because you don’t understand the gospel. Paul says

It right there. When you hear the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and you believe, you’re sealed with the Holy Spirit, that’s talking about regeneration. And when that happens, you know that it happens. And after that happens and you have eyes to see and ears to hear, um, Adventism really just loses all of its uh, potential savor. So again, thank you for being here. Thank you all as well for being here. Again, this work would not be possible without you, the viewers, members, the body of Christ. May the Lord Jesus bless you in the grace and peace won by him in his

Vicarious death on the cross for sinners. Marinatha and amen.