Recant, no! I stand firm.

WALTER REA | Author of The White Lie

Editor’s Note: In 1982 Walter Rea published The White Lie after Seventh-day Adventist administrators failed to keep their promise to reveal Ellen White’s plagiarism to the church members. Rea had spent several years researching White’s writings and comparing them to sources available at the time she wrote. His findings determined that a significant percentage of White’s material was plagiarized, while some was written by ghostwriters. He met with church leaders and showed them his research, and they promised to devise a plan for informing the church. He made the information public in his book when the church did not keep its promise to expose the truth.

Today rumors abound that Rea has retracted his book and “repented” that he wrote it. This open letter is Walter Rea’s statement, written in 1992 and renewed and notarized in October, 2004, that he retracts nothing. He introduces his notarized document with a statement written September 1, 2004.

Added 11/2024: Walter Rae died on August 30, 2014.

Twenty-five years have come and gone since my meeting with Adventist church administrators during which they examined the material my research revealed—the facts concerning Ellen G. White, the Adventist so-called “Spirit of Prophecy”, that the church had covered up for over one hundred years. Because many of the new membership of the church have not been given the facts and results of that meeting, many have asked me to bring those who are interested up-to-date. In brief, here are outcomes of that meeting:

1. Church leaders and theologians had known for over one hundred years that the books and writings of Ellen White were taken from the works of other authors. This fact was confirmed at the January, 1980, meeting.
2. Because the church leaders did not keep their word as they promised to inform the members of White’s plagiarism, I released the material and was terminated from my church employment for that reason. After two years without pay or medical insurance, I finally received a settlement from the church for a small amount of back pay with some conditions. 
3. Records from that time will show that I was trying to work within the system but did not realize that the system could and would be dishonest.
4. Fred Veltman, a faculty member of Pacific Union College, received the church’s contract to conduct a church-sponsored study of White’s writings to verify or deny my findings. His study took eight years and included only a portion of The Desire of Ages (DA), White’s famous book on the life of Christ. He concluded that in the small percentage of the book he studied, 30-40% of White’s material was plagiarized. Research will show that even Veltman’s study did not reveal the large amounts of source material she used in the rest of her books. Chapter five of DA alone shows dependence on outside sources for up to 80 or 90 percent of its contents. 
5. Then-General Conference president Neal Wilson denied that I was going to be fired but admitted the church’s concern that I was telling others what I had found. The committee that had reviewed the material had said it was startling. I had been led to believe that the purpose of my meeting with them was to verify the facts in order to inform the membership of the truth.
6. I was never allowed to defend my action or have a fair hearing. Further, I was never given a written statement explaining why I was fired.
7. After I was fired, Ron Graybill, associate secretary of the Ellen G. White Estate, spoke in a morning worship service at the General Conference headquarters. He revealed much, much more than I showed the administrators in the Glendale 1980 meeting. His revelations proved once and for all time that my research was correct, and that I was fired for telling the truth about Ellen White. The Adventist leaders, even to this day, do not want the people that pay their bills to know the true facts: Ellen White was human and got her information from other humans. Instead, they want all to believe that God told her where to find and copy those facts and ideas and inspiration from others.
   
   Only the future life will tell us how many men have been marked and destroyed by church leaders because those men could not believe the White lie. If I have made mistakes, they were not in the revealing of facts and materials others also discovered. My two great errors were these: I questioned and went against the divines in a powerful religious system, and I questioned the system and its promoted “truth”. History will show that more people have been destroyed one way or another over these two issues than over any others. It is very hard to teach people that the foundation of any religion is not men or prophets or interpretation of “truth”. Rather, it is living and showing love to one another. 

Walter Rea’s notarized letter

Following is the letter first written in August, 1992, and renewed and notarized on October 20, 2004. This letter confirms that Rea has never retracted his findings regarding Ellen White’s plagiarism but stands by them today.

Dear Friends, 

In the December issue of Spectrum, 1991, which calls itself The Journal of the Association of Adventist Forums, there appeared an article by Jerry A. Gladson entitled “Convert To Scholar: An Odyssey In Humility”. Jerry Gladson is vice president and dean of academic affairs of the Psychological Studies Institute, an interdenominational graduate school of psychology and religion in Atlanta, Georgia. Previously he was professor of religion at Southern Adventist College from which he received his BA. He holds an MA and PhD in Old Testament from Vanderbilt University.

In the article he says, “Neither have we dealt adequately with the questions raised by Walter Rea regarding Ellen White. Although his claims tended to be overstated, the church has gradually come to concede almost all his major points. In 1990, Fred Veltman reported to the church at large his findings in two articles appearing in Ministry Magazine: “The Desire of Ages Project, The Data”(October, 1990, and December, 1990). Careful to point out that he had examined only a small section of The Desire of Ages, thus making it difficult to generalize, Veltman concluded that Ellen White did use sources without giving credit, and that she, at times, even denied doing so. The Desire of Ages, he noted, was dependent on secondary materials. On the whole, an average of about 31 percent of the 15 chapters he examined was in some way indebted to other material. Worse, her history, chronology, and theological interpretation often cited confidently by Adventists were not always reliable.”(Spectrum, volume 21, number 5, December, 1991)

While it is true that the church has tried to conceal information from its members as to what issues have been resolved by the studies of both Fred Veltman and me, the administration has admitted several facts we uncovered. These include:

A. There was massive borrowing on all levels of Mrs.White’s writings. The church had never before either known or admitted such borrowings to the membership or the public. (Glendale Tapes, 1980).

B. What she wrote was not always accurate; that is, she made mistakes. It cannot be said, therefore, that she was always speaking for God. (Robert Olson, Ron Graybill, Glendale and Longbeach Tapes)

C. Others helped her to gather her material and also to do her writing. (Graybill paper, 1919 Bible Conference)

D. Not all of what she said she saw came from visions. (Don McAdams, Ron Graybill, Robert Olson Papers, White Estate)

E. Not all that came to the church in her writings was inspired. (1919 Bible Conference, Robert Olson, White Estate)

F. Mrs. White ate meat most of her life and did not take much of the advice she claimed came from God. (White Estate papers, Don Graybill study)

G. She was not as uneducated and unread as we have always been told.

The church now admits most of the above issues, whether or not each individual has settled them for himself. The discussion about “inspiration”[the all-embracing word used to define Ellen White’s revelations and her writings in general] will go on as long as people look for ways to maintain views that are no longer logical or tenable.

What has concerned me more than the reaction of the system of Adventism to what has been found regarding Ellen White has been the reaction of so many people to me personally. It is indeed astonishing to find people in Adventism who, while professing to believe and keep the Ten Commandments, violate the one that says, “Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.” It would be impossible to relate all the false and nasty tales and stories that have been told about me by people who have never met me or taken the time to even read the book The White Lie. Even the system keeps on lying. I know of no one with an average I.Q. who believes that the Adventist Review speaks with all knowledge or is “inspired”. 

It is interesting to me that a denomination that has failed to recognize its fellow human beings in the religious world as anything other than the whores and harlots of Revelation and have publicly called them that, would then profess to be hurt when someone points out to them some of their own failings and faults. For several years I have been hearing that I have repented of writing the book The White Lie, yet no one on the planet has ever discussed with me either my “repentance” or my “recanting”. I am proud of what I have accomplished by my research recorded in the book. While we have heard from a few who claim to have been hurt by reading it (and have even claimed they were hurt when they have not read it), we have heard from thousands who have been blessed because of the material that we found and brought to the attention of the church.

No one can change history no matter how or why they try, and that history is that the then-president of the General Conference, Neal Wilson, at my urging asked eighteen scholars of the church to meet with me and review my material on January 28–29, 1980, at the Glendale Adventist Hospital (where we met in a lead-lined room in the radiology department so no one could unofficially record the meeting from outside the room). 

Those scholars were: G. Ralph Thompson, G.C. Chairman; R. W. Olson, White Estate; H. L. Calkins, Conference President; H. E. Douglass, Pacific Press; F. E. J. Harden, G. C. Education; W. G. Johnsson, Andrews University; Harold Lance, Attorney at Law; W. R. Lesher, General Conference; Walter D. Blehm, President, Pacific Union Conference; and D. R. McAdams, College President.

Also included were Jack Provonsha, Loma Linda Minister and Faculty of Religion; W. L. Richards, Bible Department, Pacific Union College; Ottilie Stafford, English Professor; M. C. Torkelson, Administration; L. D. Venden, Loma Linda University Church Minister; J. O. Waller, English Department, Andrews University; Marvyn A. Warren, Oakwood College; and J. J. Wiley, Attorney at Law, USC Law School.

At the end of the meeting these eighteen people made the following recommendations: 1. that we recognize that Ellen White, in her writings, used various sources more extensively than we had previously believed; 2. that, as soon as possible, a plan be developed for thoroughly informing our church administrators concerning the nature and extent of Ellen White’s use of sources;  3. that immediate study be given to a plan for educating the church in easily-grasped steps on the subject of inspiration and Ellen White’s use of sources; 4. that an in-depth study on the writing of The Desire of Ages be implemented; 5. that a person trained in scholarly methodology be asked to work with Elder Rea; and 6. to express their appreciation to Elder Rea for the enormous amount of work he had done.

I rest my case. It was only when the church backed out of its agreement to inform the church at large of Ellen White’s massive “borrowing” that I wrote and published The White Lie in order that all who wished to know the truth could know what the committee had promised they should know. Who lied, they or I? 

Now you know. I love you all.

Sincerely, 
Walter T. Rea

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Walter Rea began his employment with the Seventh-day Adventist Church in 1945 when, at the age of 22, he began holding evangelistic meetings with Ernest Perry in Central California. In 1975 the Southern California Conference constituency voted him treasurer. He declined because he refused to continue the covert practice of reimbursing unauthorized, cross-country, personal administrative trips. In 1980 the church terminated his employment after he revealed the scope of Ellen White’s plagiarism which he made public in The White Lie in 1982. He resides today in Patterson, California. [Published in 2004. Walter Rea died in 2014.]