The question of the day is this, “Was Jesus a sinner?” Now, if you’re a Christian, I’m sure you’re wondering why such a thing would even need to be asked, which is why today we’re going to look at how the Seventh Day Adventist Church’s prophetess, Ellen G. White, said that Jesus was a sinner.
First, it’s important to remember that in their statement of confidence in her writings, the Seventh Day Adventist Church States,
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. We commit ourselves to study the writings of Ellen G. White prayerfully and with hearts willing to follow the counsels and instructions we find there.
Ellen G. White clarified that her writings were not her own opinion. She writes this in Selected Messages,
“The Holy Spirit traced these truths upon my heart and mind as indelibly as the law was traced by the finger of God upon the tables of stone, which are now in the ark, to be brought forth in that great day when sentence will be pronounced against every evil, seducing science produced by the father of lies.”[1]
She is pretty clear in the Testimonies to the Church, her stance on turning away from her writings,
If you seek to turn aside the counsel of God to suit yourselves, if you lessen the confidence of God’s people in the testimonies He has sent them, you are rebelling against God as certainly as were Korah, Dathan, and Abiram.[2]
To go against her writings was to go against the spirit of God, and as she states in one of her manuscripts,
The Holy Ghost is the author of the Scriptures and of the Spirit of Prophecy.[3]
These are just a few examples of Ellen G. White’s view about her writings, but this is why the SDA Church takes the position it does.
We want to look specifically into her writings on health reform. She plainly stated that they were light from God, and those who reject them reject God. Part of this health message entails a call to vegetarianism, preferably veganism. She also claimed that this practice is supposedly necessary to be fitted for translation to heaven, and only those who follow suit are genuinely waiting for the return of Christ.
In order to be fitted for translation, the people of God must know themselves. They must understand in regard to their own physical frames that they may be able with the psalmist to exclaim: “I will praise Thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.” They should ever have the appetite in subjection to the moral and intellectual organs. The body should be servant to the mind, and not the mind to the body.[4]
With that in mind, notice what she writes in one of her compilation books, Healthful Living, where she says,
Meat eating deranges the system, beclouds the intellect, and blunts the moral sensibilities.—Testimonies for the Church 2:64.[5]
Such a diet contaminates the blood and stimulates the lower passions. It prevents vigor of thought and enfeebles the perceptions, so that God and the truth are not understood.—Unpublished Testimonies, January 11, 1897.[6]
So, according to the Adventist-inspired pen, meat-eating supposedly beclouds the mind, contaminates a person’s blood, stimulates the lower passions, and enfeebles one’s mind from being able to understand God and the truth.
This thought process wasn’t a one-off occurrence either. In her book Medical Ministry, on page 310, she warned those living in cities to flee to rural areas. She states that raising vegetables and small fruits should be done in place of eating meat. Why? Because it corrupts the lifeblood of an individual… (Emphasis added)
Parents can secure small homes in the country, with land for cultivation where they can have orchards and where they can raise vegetables and small fruits to take the place of flesh-meat, which is so corrupting to the lifeblood coursing through the veins. On such places the children will not be surrounded with the corrupting influences of city life. God will help His people to find such homes outside of the cities.—Manuscript 133, 1902.[7]
This is rather interesting considering that in her book Evangelism, she also had this to say about meat eating and it supposedly corrupting the blood. Notice what she says: (Emphasis added)
God has written His law upon every nerve and muscle, every fiber and function of the human body. The indulgence of unnatural appetite, whether for tea, coffee, tobacco, or liquor, is intemperance, and is at war with the laws of life and health. By using these forbidden articles a condition of things is created in the system which the Creator never designed. This indulgence in any of the members of the human family is sin… The eating of food that does not make good blood is working against the laws of our physical organism, and is a violation of the law of God. The cause produces the effect. Suffering, disease, and death are the sure penalty of indulgence.—Letter 123, 1899.[8]
Here, she tells us that eating any food that doesn’t make good blood not only goes against the laws of our physical system but is actually a violation of God’s law because the law of God is written on every nerve, muscle, and fiber of our being.
So, since she claimed eating meat corrupts one’s blood and anything that does so is a violation of the law of God, it would logically follow that eating meat is, therefore, a sin.
Again, this was not a one-off claim. In Councils on Diet and Foods, she states:
When men take any course which needlessly expends their vitality or beclouds their intellect, they sin against God; they do not glorify Him in their body and spirit, which are His.[9]
This was a regular claim from her, but before stating such things as coming from God himself, Mrs White should have consulted God’s word more closely. Here is what the Word of God says:
The Day of Unleavened Bread arrived, when the Passover had to be sacrificed. Jesus sent Peter and John with this task: “Go and prepare for us to eat the Passover meal.” (Lk 22:7–8)
Whoops! Jesus not only partook of the Passover Lamb but commanded that his disciples do so. The irony is that Jesus is the true fulfillment of the Passover Lamb, which we are told in Exodus was to be spotless and without blemish. So, since Jesus consumed the typological Passover Lamb, which would have been a sin based on Ellen White’s previous statements, he couldn’t have been the antitypical sinless Passover Lamb.
It wasn’t only lamb that Jesus ate. Two chapters later, we are plainly told that he ate broiled fish in Luke 24:41-43, which reminds me that you probably recall another feeding involving Jesus and fish—the feeding of the 5,000 in Matthew 14:13-21. If eating flesh meat defiles the blood and beclouds the mind, two things she said are sinful, then Jesus himself not only violated the law of God by eating meat, but he also did so by causing others to as well. Also, according to verse 21, children were present during this feeding. Jesus himself warned that for anyone who causes a child to stumble, it would be better that a millstone be hung around their neck and they be cast into the depths of the sea. (Matthew 18:5-6)
Jesus DID NOT do a miracle that then beclouded the minds and defiled the blood of thousands of people, including children. Then again, the Adventist Church has a running track record of associating Jesus with defiled blood. You will see this by examining their claim about the Heavenly Sanctuary and how it became defiled. (I’ll be discussing this in greater detail in future articles.)
The reality is that Ellen G. White was not an integrative thinker. She erroneously attributes a number of sins to the Lord Jesus Christ himself. Yet her writings are supposed to come from Him and point people to Him. Now, it’s at this point that some Adventists will be quick to assert that meat-eating wasn’t a sin until the health message was given to Ellen G. White, which she then shared with the world.
There are several problems with this claim, but the most important is that it’s supposedly coming from God, who is all-knowing. Since Jesus Christ is God, it is irrelevant when it was and wasn’t revealed to humans. It was supposedly coming from Jesus, and he knows all things, which would mean that if consuming meat beclouds the mind, defiles the blood, and violates the law of God, he would have already known that information regardless of when it was revealed to Ellen White.
In her comments on Daniel fasting from the king’s meat and wine, she made another blunder in this vein, no pun intended. She stated that meat had never passed the lips of Daniel and his friends, whether in the past or the future. We see this in a statement she made for the Review and Herald in Heavenly Places:
They decided that as flesh meat had not composed their diet in the past, neither should it come into their diet in the future. And as the use of wine had been prohibited to all those who should engage in the service of God, they determined that they would not partake of it.…[10]
Daniel was apparently a vegetarian, which is why you’ll hear lots of Adventists point to this to try and support their health message, yet just like with the Lord Jesus, Daniel was a faithful Torah observant Jew who also partook of the Passover Lamb. Furthermore, fasting from something means abstaining for a season. One would have to have partaken of something before fasting from it, or it wouldn’t be fast. This is precisely why Daniel 10:2-3 says that this fast only lasted three weeks, meaning yet again, Ellen White’s supposed light from Heaven contradicts God’s sacred word. Time and time again, we see that this woman was not only a false prophet but someone who bore the name of God falsely over and over and over and over again, which is a violation of the third commandment. She struggled to logically connect the statements she made over time and the implications of her claim. In this case, she tacitly calls Jesus a sinner.
In numerous ways, she contradicts the Bible, demonstrating that her writings were not coming from God. If you’re an Adventist, it’s time to think long and hard if you want to remain a part of a movement that upholds such an individual. Not only does Adventism uphold her, but it also binds your conscience to do the same.
[1] Ellen Gould White, Selected Messages From the Writings of Ellen G. White, Book 3 (Review and Herald Publishing Association, 1980), 122.
[2] Testimonies for the Church, vol. 5 (Pacific Press Publishing Association, 1855), 66.
[3] Manuscript Releases [Nos. 97–161, 1958–1964], vol. 2 (Ellen G. White Estate, 1993), 189.
[4] Testimonies for the Church, vol. 1 (Pacific Press Publishing Association, 1855), 486–487.
[5] Ellen Gould White, Healthful Living (Medical Missionary Board, 1897), 102.
[6] Ellen Gould White, Healthful Living (Medical Missionary Board, 1897), 102.
[7] Ellen Gould White, Medical Ministry (Pacific Press Publishing Association, 1932), 310.
[8] Ellen Gould White, Evangelism (Review and Herald Publishing Association, 1946), 265–266.
[9] Ellen Gould White, Counsels on Diet and Foods (Review and Herald Publishing Association, 1938), 118.
[10] Ellen Gould White, In Heavenly Places (Review and Herald Publishing Association, 1967), 261.
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