Next comment: someone on a website tried to criticize Ellen G White for plagiarism. Yeah, because she did. Anyway, let’s continue reading. But on the Adventists.org website, it says that Paul cited from pagan philosopher in Acts 17:28. Is that true? So it is true that Paul did quote a pagan philosopher at Acts 17:28. William Fagin believes Ellen G White did not plagiarize more than John Wesley, 19th century preachers or the apostles. He thinks that all these people did the same thing. First of all it is false to use preachers who did not give us the inspired words of God. He used examples like John Wesley and 19th century preachers. Because they were using so many quotes in their preaching, Ellen G White who is approximately on that time period, it was natural for her to do the same thing too. That’s the argument. But the thing is this: they believe that Ellen G White, what she gave were direct prophecies from God, direct prophecies, inspired words of God. So they use a poor example of using preachers who did not give us the inspired words of God. If they were, then that would be a problem. It is the fact that preachers would borrow from each other for their sermons and teachings. Isn’t that normal? Yeah, even I do. A lot of these teachings I teach, it’s not some kind of new cultic teaching. A lot of it was borrowed from other bible believers that I have learned from. So that’s just a fact but if we’re talking about the inspired words of God, this is something directly from God, then you found out that those inspired words of God we’re already told by some secular human and that should be something to worry about, shouldn’t it?
It is true Paul and maybe some others quoted pagan philosophers and others for the inspired words of God. So if you look at your Bible, you’ll most likely see the writers using quotes from pagan philosophers or secular people for the inspired words of God. First of all, what must be understood is this: the Lord is gonna use somebody’s quotes to support his teachings. That’s just normal. Paul was preaching about pagan philosophers so if he just keeps quoting them scripture verses, pagan philosophers are not gonna believe it but if Paul used their own philosopher for a quote to support his teaching, that would be more believable. It is natural that people, when they write papers or give some kind of teaching, if they’re gonna use people’s quotes, they use that as a supporting source. Not for plagiarism but to make their words more legitimate, more valid. So when the Lord uses that for his words, there’s nothing wrong with that but there is a stark difference with simply using others’ quotes to support the teachings, with using others quotes to make up the majority of your teaching. You see that that’s the difference. Ellen G White’s teachings, when she borrows quotes, it’s not the same like the Apostles or the other writers for the inspired words of God. They’ll use a quote to support the teachings, which is natural. We would use other people’s quotes to make our teachings more valid, more legitimate but there is a big difference with her when you use a quote to support the teaching but making your teachings the majority of the quotes, that’s plagiarism. Now we’re going to look at several examples right here but one example is Joseph Smith.
Joseph Smith – would seventh-day adventists consider him to be a prophet? No, they would not consider Joseph Smith the Mormon to be the Prophet. Would they excuse him as a prophet when he plagiarized 13 chapters of Isaiah. He plagiarized as if it was his own prophecy in his book of 2nd Nephi. Should seventh-day adventists excuse Muhammad as a prophet when he plagiarized 27 verses of the Bible for the Quran? No, they wouldn’t do that either. So why would they do it for Ellen G White all of a sudden? It’s because they want to cling on to her. That’s biased thinking, that’s selecting what prophet that they want. It is a fact Ellen G White heavily made-up her book with others’ quotes and when you do that, that does not show God’s awesome revelatory power. Oh, this is a miracle revelation, something directly from God. No, when you got some secular person already saying the majority of that before, that’s troubling. This is actually ironically admitted by Fagal. Though such claims were new to many twenty years ago, the pastor who popularized them was not the first to have made them. Just a few years before in the 1970s, an Adventist historian had written a book examining Mrs White’s involvement in health concerns. He concluded, among other things, that her health councils were not new or unique. She had drawn them from others he said, despite her claims to having received them in vision.
Over the years, various people inside and outside the church have set forth similar claims. The most influential of Ellen White’s critics was probably Dudley M Canwrite, a prominent minister and evangelist in our early years. After withdrawing from the ministry four times in doubt…He was with the seventh-day Adventists. He was going back and forth showing this guy was really familiar and he was trying to cling on to it. If you leave one time why would you come back again unless you believed in seventh-day Adventism? So these people who exposed Ellen G White are legitimate people. This is something to not take for invalid. After withdrawing from the ministry four times and down in discouragement and coming back each time, Canwrite finally left the ministry and the church in 1887. In 1889, he published a book against seventh-day adventists teaching and in 1919, the year of his own death and 4 years after hers, his book against Mrs White was published.