She was something of a “co-founder” (William Miller was the “main dude”)
Yes, a LOT of books!!!
“Many false prophets are gone out into the world.” [1 John 4:1].
Nothing, of course. This is MUCH too wacky to attract or warrant the attention of the Magesterium of the Catholic Church!
William Miller did not found, co-found or ever join the SDA Church
Ellen White was one of the many co-founders. She was considered by the church then and now to have the Gift of Prophecy, so while never holding an “official” church office, she did have an extremely large influence over the doctrinal development and organization of the SDA Church.
EGW wrote thousands and thousands (actually her secretary wrote much of it) of pages of counsel on subjects ranging from finances to health, devotional materials to supposed direct revelations from Heaven. Many of her books are online at the EGW Estate. Her most popular book series is the “Conflict Series”, and contains 5 books that span the breadth of history and the future.
I have read much of her writings and have a pretty decent knowledge of her contributions to the SDA Church.
Well, William Miller sure helped in the process of forming the SDA Church. He calculated to the day, when the second coming of the Lord would be. His calculations failed and then he determined his calculations were a bit off so he corrected the date. Jesus again didn’t come in 1845, causing the Great Dissappointment of 1845 if I recall. He faded away but certain others claimed he was still right, but that was the day Jesus took His heavenly throne, or somn like that. Ellen White and some others held to this belief. They didn’t start with Saturday worship I don’t believe, until someone had a vision and shared it with Ellen. The vision revealed the atrocity of Sunday worship.
Apparently there is controversy over whether her visions were actually seizures. She was hit in the head by a stone as a child almost ending her life supposedly. Some claim that all of her actions during visions closely resembled siezures that would have been the result of the head injury
William Miller did set the original dates and finally ended up setting the date of October 22, 1844 as his final day. When this failed, William Miller basically faded into history. The forerunners of the SDA Church claimed a vision on which they were told that the date was correct, however that the event was wrong. ie. that instead of Christ coming to earth on Oct. 22nd 1844 that he instead moved from the Holy to the Holy of Holies in heaven to begin the final phase of atonement for the sins of mankind.
A seventh-day Baptist woman first shared the Sabbath message with Joseph Bates, a leader among the remaining Adventist’s and one of the founders of the SDA Church. The Sabbath message was later clarified in vision to EGW.
This is true, however, I personally feel that one would be hard pressed to attribute her charisma, leadership, and many of her visions to seizures. I for one think they are of satanic origin, but I do certainly believe that something supernatural happened in her life.
Very true, some accounts are that as much as 80% of her more famous books are plagerized from other authors. Still, she did write thousands and thousands of pages outside these books. Sadly, many Adventist’s will never take the time to look at many of the peculiarities in her life. She was in many ways… a walking contradiction… LOL
Hi Monte,