Sophia7 - Posted on Tuesday, June 24, 2008:
Whatever Ellen meant by the amalgamation statement (and I don't buy the White Estate's spin on it), she made some other clearly racist statements:
Sin rests upon us as a church because we have not made greater effort for the salvation of souls among the colored people. It will always be a difficult matter to deal with the prejudices of the white people in the South and do missionary work for the colored race. But the way this matter has been treated by some is an offense to God. We need not expect that all will be accomplished in the South that God would do until in our missionary efforts we place this question on the ground of principle, and let those who accept the truth be educated to be Bible Christians, working according to Christ's order. You have no license from God to exclude the colored people from your places of worship. Treat them as Christ's property, which they are, just as much as yourselves. They should hold membership in the church with the white brethren. Every effort should be made to wipe out the terrible wrong which has been done them. At the same time we must not carry things to extremes and run into fanaticism on this question. Some would think it right to throw down every partition wall and intermarry with the colored people, but this is not the right thing to teach or to practice. {SW 15.2}
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There are able colored ministers who have embraced the truth. Some of these feel unwilling to devote themselves to work for their own race; they wish to preach to the white people. These men are making a great mistake. They should seek most earnestly to save their own race, and they will not by any means be excluded from the gatherings of the white people. {SW 15.4}
She also said that slavery would be revived in the South after the Civil War. This is one of the things that led me to no longer believe that she was a true prophet because she made predictions that were not fulfilled. I highlighted in red the statement below that was originally omitted from publication in The Southern Work.
MR No. 153 ‑ Statement Concerning Slavery
[ON NOVEMBER 20, 1895, AT AN INTERVIEW WITH LEADING WORKERS IN AUSTRALIA, ELLEN WHITE ANSWERED CERTAIN QUESTIONS PLACED BEFORE HER. THE REPORT OF THIS INTERVIEW WAS PUBLISHED BY HER SON, J. E. WHITE, ABOUT 1900, IN THE SOUTHERN WORK. IN THIS DOCUMENT FOR RATHER GENERAL DISTRIBUTION HE WISELY OMITTED A SENTENCE CONCERNING THE REVIVAL OF SLAVERY. THIS STATEMENT IS ALL IN PRINT EXCEPT THE ONE SENTENCE IN ITALICS, UPON WHICH RELEASE IS SOUGHT.‑‑ALW.]
Ellen G. White Statement Concerning Slavery {2MR 299.1}
Question: "Should not those in the Southern field work on Sunday?" {2MR 299.2}
E. G. White Answer: If they do this, there is danger that as soon as the opposing element can get the slightest opportunity, they will stir up one another to persecute those who do this, and to pick off those whom they hate. At present, Sundaykeeping is not the test. The time will come when men will not only forbid Sunday work, but they will try to force men to labor on the Sabbath. And men will be asked to renounce the Sabbath and to subscribe to Sunday observance or forfeit their freedom and their lives. But the time for this has not yet come, for the truth must be presented more fully before the people as a witness. What I have said about this should not be understood as referring to the action of old Sabbathkeepers who understand the truth. They must move as the Lord shall direct them, but let them consider that they can do the best missionary work on Sunday. {2MR 299.3}
Slavery will again be revived in the Southern States; for the spirit of slavery still lives. Therefore it will not do for those who labor among the colored people to preach the truth as boldly and openly as they would be free to do in other places. Even Christ clothed His lessons in figures and parables to avoid the opposition of the Pharisees. When the colored people feel that they have the word of God in regard to the Sabbath question, and the sanction of those who have brought them the truth, some who are impulsive will take the opportunity to defy the Sunday laws, and by a presumptuous defiance of their oppressors they will bring to themselves much sorrow. Very faithfully the colored people must be instructed to be like Christ, to patiently suffer wrongs, that they may help their fellow men to see the light of truth. {2MR 299.4}
A terrible condition of things is certainly opening before us. According to the light which is given me in regard to the Southern field, the work there must be done as wisely and carefully as possible, and it must be done in the manner in which Christ would work. The people will soon find out what you believe about Sunday and the Sabbath, for they will ask questions. Then you can tell them, but not in such a manner as to attract attention to your work. You need not cut short your work by yourself laboring on Sunday. It would be better to take that day to instruct others in regard to the love of Jesus and true conversion.‑‑Ms 22a, 1895, p. 4. ("Words of Caution Regarding Sunday Labor," Nov. 20, 1895.)
Released October 23, 1963. {2MR 300.1}
Here is more from The Southern Work about the alleged coming crisis in the South:
There is a terrible crisis just before us, through which all must pass, and especially will it come and be felt in Battle Creek. My mind has been much troubled over the positions which some of our brethren are liable to take in regard to the work to be done among the colored people in the Southern States. There is one point that I wish to lay before those who work in the Southern field. Among the colored people they will have to labor in different lines from those followed in the North. They cannot go to the South and present the real facts in reference to Sundaykeeping being the mark of the beast, and encourage the colored people to work on Sunday; for the same spirit that held the colored people in slavery is not dead, but alive today, and ready to spring into activity. The same spirit of oppression is still cherished in the minds of many of the white people of the South, and will reveal itself in cruel deeds, which are the manifestation of their religious zeal. Some will oppose in every possible way any action which has a tendency to uplift the colored race and teach them to be self-supporting. {SW 67.2}
Here is another statement that she made, regarding slavemasters and the seven last plagues, which she wrote six years before the Emancipation Proclamation:
All heaven beholds with indignation human beings, the workmanship of God, reduced by their fellow men to the lowest depths of degradation and placed on a level with the brute creation. Professed followers of that dear Saviour whose compassion was ever moved at the sight of human woe, heartily engage in this enormous and grievous sin, and deal in slaves and souls of men. Human agony is carried from place to place and bought and sold. Angels have recorded it all; it is written in the book. The tears of the pious bondmen and bondwomen, of fathers, mothers, and children, brothers and sisters, are all bottled up in heaven. God will restrain His anger but little longer. His wrath burns against this nation and especially against the religious bodies that have sanctioned this terrible traffic and have themselves engaged in it. Such injustice, such oppression, such sufferings, are looked upon with heartless indifference by many professed followers of the meek and lowly Jesus. And many of them can themselves inflict, with hateful satisfaction, all this indescribable agony; and yet they dare to worship God. It is solemn mockery; Satan exults over it and reproaches Jesus and His angels with such inconsistency, saying, with hellish triumph, "Such are Christ's followers!" {EW 275.1}
These professed Christians read of the sufferings of the martyrs, and tears course down their cheeks. They wonder that men could ever become so hardened as to practice such cruelty toward their fellow men. Yet those who think and speak thus are at the same time holding human beings in slavery. And this is not all; they sever the ties of nature and cruelly oppress their fellow men. They can inflict most inhuman torture with the same relentless cruelty manifested by papists and heathen toward Christ's followers. Said the angel, "It will be more tolerable for the heathen and for papists in the day of the execution of God's judgment than for such men." The cries of the oppressed have reached unto heaven, and angels stand amazed at the untold, agonizing sufferings which man, formed in the image of his Maker, causes his fellow man. Said the angel, "The names of the oppressors are written in blood, crossed with stripes, and flooded with agonizing, burning tears of suffering. God's anger will not cease until He has caused this land of light to drink the dregs of the cup of His fury, until He has rewarded unto Babylon double. Reward her even as she rewarded you, double unto her double according to her works; in the cup which she hath filled, fill to her double." {EW 275.2}
I saw that the slave master [SEE APPENDIX.] will have to answer for the soul of his slave whom he has kept in ignorance; and the sins of the slave will be visited upon the master. God cannot take to heaven the slave who has been kept in ignorance and degradation, knowing nothing of God or the Bible, fearing nothing but his master's lash, and holding a lower position than the brutes. But He does the best thing for him that a compassionate God can do. He permits him to be as if he had not been,while the master must endure the seven last plagues and then come up in the second resurrection and suffer the second, most awful death. Then the justice of God will be satisfied.
And here is the White Estate's explanation from the appendix to Early Writings:
PAGE 276: SLAVES AND MASTER.--ACCORDING TO REVELATION 6:15, 16 THERE WILL BE SLAVERY AT THE SECOND ADVENT OF CHRIST. HERE WE FIND THE WORDS "EVERY BONDMAN, AND EVERY FREE MAN." THE STATEMENT BY ELLEN WHITE UNDER DISCUSSION INDICATES THAT SHE WAS SHOWN IN VISION THE SLAVE AND THE SLAVE MASTER AT THE SECOND ADVENT OF CHRIST. IN THIS SHE IS IN PERFECT ACCORD WITH THE BIBLE. BOTH JOHN AND MRS. WHITE WERE SHOWN CONDITIONS THAT WOULD EXIST AT THE SECOND COMING OF OUR LORD. WHILE IT IS TRUE THAT NEGRO SLAVES IN THE UNITED STATES WERE FREED BY THE EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION, WHICH WENT INTO EFFECT SIX YEARS AFTER STATEMENT UNDER DISCUSSION WAS PENNED, THE MESSAGE IS NOT MADE INVALID, FOR EVEN TODAY THERE ARE MILLIONS OF MEN AND WOMEN IN ACTUAL OR VIRTUAL SLAVERY IN DIFFERENT PARTS OF THE WORLD. IT IS NOT POSSIBLE TO PASS JUDGMENT ON A PROPHECY OF THE FUTURE UNTIL WE HAVE REACHED THE TIME FOR THE FULFILLMENT OF THAT PROPHECY. {EW 304.3}
The context of her statements on slavery—in this statement and in her prediction that slavery would be reinstituted in the South—does not support the explanation of the White Estate. She thought that Jesus would come soon, while the slave masters were still alive. She was clearly referring to the enslavement of blacks in the South at that time (the part about slave masters enduring the seven last plagues was written before the Civil War), which she later thought would be reinstituted after the Civil War. For that reason, she told people not to labor openly or boldly among the blacks in the South, because they would soon be oppressed once again and be faced with the choice of disobeying their masters if they followed their convictions on the Sabbath.
Also, the part about God not being able to take to heaven a slave who had been kept in ignorance and degradation has always bothered me.
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