past. Life Sketches, 196.
Our heavenly Father has a thousand ways to provide for us, of which we know nothing. Those
who accept the one principle of making service and honor of God supreme will find perplexities
vanish and a plain path before their feet. The Desire of Ages, 330.
Every human being, created in the image of God, is endowed with a power akin to that of the
Creator--individuality, power to think and to do. The men in whom this power is developed are the
men who bear responsibilities, who are leaders in enterprise, and who influence character. It is the
work of education to develop this power, to train the youth to be thinkers, and not mere reflectors of
other men's thought....Higher than the highest human thought can reach is God's ideal for His
children. Godliness--godlikeness--is the goal to be reached. Education, 17, 18.
There are literally hundreds if not thousands of such inspiring thoughts and devotional gems in White's
100,000 pages of writings. In my view, a person is judged by his or her impact on others' thinking and by
the fact whether the person has made a difference in people's lives in this world, and in the world to come in
the Christian context. Jesus says, "Ye shall know them by their fruits." Mt. 7: 16. On this basis, White's life
and thought stand in good comparison with those of Christian giants down through the centuries.
At the end of an exhaustive investigation into different sources, the most unfriendly critics of Ellen White
not excluded, and having personally read almost all of Ellen White's writings, Dr. Walter Martin, the
Christian specialist on Christian orthodoxy and cults, concluded: "...The writer (Walter Martin) believes that
Mrs. White was truly a regenerate Christian woman who loved the Lord Jesus Christ and dedicated herself
unstintingly to the task of bearing witness for Him as she felt led. It should be clearly understaood that some
tenets of Christian theology as historically understood and the interpretations of Mrs. White do not agree;
indeed, they are at loggerheads. Nevertheless, Ellen G. White was true to the cardinal doctrines of the
Christian faith regarding the salvation of the soul and the believer's life in Christ. We must disagree with
Mrs. White's interpretation of the sanctuary, the investigative judgment, the scapegoat; we challenge her
stress upon the Sabbath, health reform, the unconscious state of the dead, and the final destruction of the
wicked, etc. But no one can dispute the fact that her writings conform to the basic principles of the historic
gospel, for they most certainly do." 15
Previous discussions, in my opinion, should prompt one to consider a balanced assessment of Ellen
White's writings and of herself as one of the architects and founders of Seventh-day Adventist Church. Her
life and work, if fairly and properly adjudged as done by Dr. Martin and others, should pose no obstacle to
Seventh-day Adventists' being included as evangelicals in their truest sense.
II.
creation after six days and blessed the seventh day and made it holy. "Thus the heavens and the earth were
completed in all their vast array. By the seventh day God had finished the work He had been doing; so on the
seventh day He rested from all His work. And God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it
He rested from all the work of creating that He had done. Gen.2: 1-3.
The importance of the Sabbath is repeatedly brought to the people's attention in the Old Testament times
with death punishment for the profaner of Sabbath and blessings for its keepers. Num. 5: 32-36, Isa. 56: 6-8;
58:13-14. Its reenforcement can be seen in the miraculous provision of manna according to the Sabbath
timetable. Exo.16. It was intended to be a holy day for worshipping God, for rest from mundane work, for
remembering and contemplating God's creation and for practicing love and caring for God's created order,
both people and animals. It is embodied as the fourth commandment of God's moral law. Exo. 20: 8-11 and
Deut.5:12-15.
No one knows for sure how the weekly 7-day cycle has come about, other than the fact the Israelites were
one of the first if not the first to use it. The Egyptians named the days of the week according to the planets