While teaching at Monterey Bay Academy, I would often run on the beach for my morning exercise, sometimes as many as six miles a day. One summer, a visitor from Australia spent his vacation at our school. Little did I know the far-reaching results of my asking him to run with me. His name was Dr. Desmond Ford. Des had taught theology at Avondale, an Adventist College in Australia, and was, after his vacation, accepting a position on the religion faculty at Pacific Union College.
Accepting my invitation to run with me, I thought I should not go my usual distance or run as fast as I usually did. I did not want to put too much stress on this older man whom I did not know. However, on the first run, while I was breathing hard, Des kept up a continual conversation asking me penetrating questions about the gospel. The next day I decided to go further and faster—same thing. The third day I realized that Des was in better shape than I.
Some months later, Des detonated a theological time bomb that made reverberations around the Adventist world. At the request of the PUC chapter of the Adventist Forum, Des gave a presentation on the investigative judgment. Dr. Ford showed convincingly that the investigative judgment, the heart of Adventist theology, was in error. This meeting was taped, and soon copies were sent around the world. I don’t recall if I ordered the tape or if someone sent it to me. Nevertheless, I received one and listened to it. Knowing Des to be a sincere man from our running encounter made me take his biblical arguments seriously.
Des was immediately suspended from his teaching position and given six months to prepare materials as to why he should (or should not) be allowed to continue in the Adventist ministry. During this time, Des was given free access to SDA historical sources at Andrews University Seminary. Using a number of secretaries, he prepared about 1,000 pages of material for his infamous Glacier View trial in Colorado. At this gathering, a number of leading pastors and church administrators were in attendance. At the conclusion of the trial, the ministerial credentials of Dr. Ford were pulled. He could no longer teach at PUC or pastor in the SDA church. The material he prepared was only for the official delegates at the trial and was not be to be copied. However, unknown to me, one church administrator40 copied it and gave it to a dentist friend. He copied it and at the SDA camp meeting in Soquel, California, gave me a copy. In this, I now see a continued, providential pattern.
It was now 1980, and I was the pastor of the Watsonville, California, SDA Church. As I had problems with the investigative judgment from college days that had never been addressed, I decided it was time I got to the bottom of this issue once and for all.
I remembered Dr. Harding’s comment, “Dale, you should not be asking questions like that.” Well, the time had come for me not only to ask those questions but to find the answers. Even though there were places where I disagreed with Ellen White, I still considered her a true prophet and explained the difficulties by using other good statements she had made.41 I knew that she clearly taught the investigative judgment, so I was not trying to disprove it, but rather find a way I could support it. The fact that I knew Des Ford and knew he understood the gospel, caused me to give his views serious study. As I went through his thousand-page manuscript, I began to see there were many more problems associated with the investigative judgment than I had ever known.
Carolyn was now working as a Conference “Bible Worker,” giving evangelistic Bible studies to small groups of women within our district of several churches. When she understood I was having problems with the investigative judgment, she warned me to be careful and not cause her to lose her job.
Shortly after reading through Dr. Ford’s manuscript, I was ill for about a week. The first day I was sick, I received a package of tapes from the late Dr. Zane Kime. Was this another divine providence? Dr. Kime was a strong supporter of Ellen White’s health message. The tapes were of a secret meeting held in the basement of the Glendale Seventh-day Adventist church in Southern California. Pastor Walter Rea, whom I had known while pastoring in the Los Angeles area, was a strong supporter of Ellen White and had written several books gathering together her statements on certain subjects. In the course of his studies he happened across some old books on the life of Christ containing wording and ideas very much like certain portions of the writings of Ellen White. This aroused his curiosity, and he acquired the list of books that Ellen White had in her library. As he gathered and studied more of these old books, it became evident that Ellen White and her secretaries had plagiarized—Adventists call it “borrowed”—huge amounts of material. This plagiarism was spread throughout most of her books and was even found in individual “testimonies,” visions and dreams.42 In her writings there are times she quotes what her angel told her. Walter pointed out that even quotes from her angel or statements introduced with her familiar, “I was shown,” were plagiarized. These facts so alarmed Pastor Rea that he made an appointment with the White Estates to meet with him to help him evaluate the material he had discovered. This, too, was to be a secret meeting. It was taped, but no copies were to get out as this was “too sensitive” for the lay Adventist to handle. To this day, I do not know who copied the first tape set, but whoever it was, gave it to Dr. Kime, and he sent me a set, again without my knowledge or request. As I remember, there were about six long cassette tapes.
Therefore, because I was sick that week, I had time to lie on the couch and listen to all of these tapes documenting the plagiarism of Ellen White.
As my students and fellow teachers at Monterey Bay Academy will testify, I was a strong believer in the writings of Ellen White. In my classes, I made many study guides designed to help the students find the truth from her writings. I was, looking back, probably a sore spot with some teachers as I tried to influence students and school policy to line up with her counsel. The school store sold Halva candy bars between meals. Ellen White had said it was a sin to eat between meals, and I expressed my desire that the store not sell these things to the students causing them to sin.
Now I was faced with facts which seemed to point to the conclusion that Ellen White not only copied from others what she said she received from God but did so even when she denied it. When others saw similarities in her writings, she seemed to act surprised. There were times, however, that she admitted to borrowing a little of the wording of others, but only to help her relate what God had shown her in vision.
I had memorized many “gems,” as we called them, from the writings of Ellen White. I was dumbfounded to find that some of her most beautiful statements expressing the truth in such beautiful and picturesque language that I had memorized, were taken from other authors.
That week was a “sick” week for me. However, I was not yet ready to give up the Adventist faith.
There was yet a third secret meeting I had to come to grips with.43 Dr. Raymond Cottrell, a careful Hebrew scholar, loyal Adventist, and known by his friends to be a man of high integrity, had been one of the editors of the SDA Bible Commentary. After his retirement, he revealed in an Adventist Forum meeting in San Diego that the SDA church had long known about the problems associated with their sanctuary theology. He disclosed that in the 1950s, the president of the general conference, R. R. Figuhr, had formed a top-secret committee comprised of the best minds in Adventism and had given them the assignment to work on this problem “until it was solved.” The committee met over a five-year period, could not solve the problems, disbanded, and left no minutes. He also carefully laid out the Biblical problems associated with the Adventist sanctuary theology. In essence, Dr. Cottrell showed that either Adventists have to take Daniel 8:14 out of its context or they make Christ into the wicked little horn mentioned in its context—a serious dilemma indeed.
These facts were difficult for me to process. First, the integrity of the investigative judgment was called in ques- tion. I had never been able to find the investigative judgment in Scripture, and now that I had studied Des Ford’s manuscript, I knew there were no answers. This theology was built on shifting sand, so those in the 1844 “disappointment” would not have to admit error, as did William Miller and the other “open door Adventists.” I knew the far-reaching results of giving up this tenet of faith. The octopus of the investigative judgment had its tentacles entwined in and around and under every aspect of Adventist theology. Daniel 8:14, the key text of the investigative judgment and SDA Sanctuary theology was, to quote Ellen White, “the central pillar of Adventism.” Ellen G. White and the investigative judgment stood or fell together.
Second, regardless of what one felt about the investigative judgment, the work of Walter Rae had called into question the integrity of the writings of Ellen G. White. I loved the writings of Ellen White—at least for the most part. I always thought she received her teachings from God, as she stated over and over again. To find out that she copied from others, what she claimed to have received from God was a bitter pill for me to swallow.
Third, Raymond Cottrell’s tape of the five-year, secret committee on the problems in the book of Daniel,44 called into question the integrity of Adventist leadership. These things were never told to me in my master of divinity work at Andrews University. I had always thought that the discovery of truth was the heartbeat of Adventism. To find that it contained error, which was known and covered up, was devastating. This evidence hit me like a triple whammy. The central pillar of Adventism was crumbling and ready to fall. The plagiarizing and subsequent denial of its founding prophet undermined this other “source of truth.” The fact that Adventist leadership knew all this and tried to cover it up called into question the integrity of Adventist leadership and, subsequently, the whole Adventist movement.
I loved Adventism. It was my life, my heritage, my culture, my past, and my future. Was I brainwashed? Was I not thinking clearly? Was I wrong in looking at the evidence? Was some malevolent force deceiving me? Having read the writings of Ellen White, the tapes began to play. Over and over again, she had said that those who leave Adventism would end up becoming deceived by Satan and lose their own souls. But I had the evidence that undermined the whole structure and the integrity of those statements. “Where, Lord, do I go from here?”
I recalled Dr. Harding’s cold, penetrating stare. He, too, must have known these things and must have decided to be on the side of those who wanted to bury the problems, thus his statement to me; “Dale, you should not be asking questions like that!” had new insight.
NEXT WEEK: “ADVENTIST UNDERGROUND”
Endnotes
40. On the front page of my copy was the hand written name of Earl Amundsen, the person who ordained me into the ministry.
41. Ellen White has many more self-contradictions than most realize. By picking and choosing in her writings one can make her say almost anything. As Walter Rea said, “Ellen White has a wax nose one can point in any direction.” I find that Adventists are still using this method to confront her obvious errors. When confronted with a specific statement of Ellen White, most Adventists will immediately say, “in such and such a place she says this…” It is almost like saying that one truthful statement completely erases a false statement.
42. Ellen White wrote numerous letters or “testimonies” to correct the errors of individual Adventists. These were then published leaving out the names of the person addressed. There are nine volumes of Testimonies for the Church.
43. This is detailed in Ratzlaff, Cultic Doctrine, pages 198–201.
44. See Ford, Daniel 8:14, p. A-107–116
Truth Led Me Out. Copyright © 2008 by Dale Ratzlaff. Second printing 2015, E-mail version 2020. All Scripture quotations—except where otherwise noted—are from The New American Standard Bible, © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1975, 1979, 1994 by the Lockman Foundation, used by permission. Texts credited to Clear Word are from The Clear Word, copyright © 1994, 2000, 2003, 2004 by Review and Herald Publishing Association. All rights reserved. Life Assurance Ministries, Inc.
- The Sabbath: From Ritual to Reality - December 19, 2024
- Wise Men Still Seek Him - December 12, 2024
- The Gospel is Good News! - December 5, 2024