Ellen White, Prophet
Today at church we watched a video on Comparative Religion, by Charles Kimball. It was on a DVD from the Great Courses, which is now Wondrium. We meet in Adult Forum before the main service for education and discussion. Kind of like Sunday school for adults, but that’s not what the Unitarian Universalist Church calls it.
His lecture today explored the difference between prophets, shamans, and other religious leaders in the varying religions around the world.
My thoughts turned toward the prophet of my youth, Ellen G. White, and the books she wrote predicting some of the events taking place in the world today. Some of her predictions were prescient, and pertinent to the loss of democracy in our country today. The historic separation of church and state has been breached, and Catholicism has taken over, with the help of Protestants, just as she predicted. When she wrote it, nobody believed it was possible.
The Supreme Court is now majority Catholic, the Speaker of the House is Catholic, and so is the President, Joseph Biden. I remember when half the country trembled with fear when John F. Kennedy ran for President back in 1960.
I went and read some of the book she wrote, “The Great Controversy”, and found paragraph after paragraph that exactly parallels the events of today in the USA.
“The time was when Protestants placed a high value upon the liberty of conscience which had been so dearly purchased. They taught their children to abhor popery and held that to seek harmony with Rome would be disloyalty to God. But how widely different are the sentiments now expressed! (1.)
“Many urge that it is unjust to judge the (Catholic) church of today by the abominations and absurdities that marked her reign during the centuries of ignorance and darkness. They excuse her horrible cruelty as the result of the barbarism of the times and plead that the influence of modern civilization has changed her sentiments. (2.)
“Let the restraints now imposed by secular governments be removed and Rome be reinstated in her former power, and there would speedily be a revival of her tyranny and persecution. (3.)
"The Constitution of the United States guarantees liberty of conscience. Nothing is dearer or more fundamental. Pope Pius IX, in his Encyclical Letter of August 15, 1854, said: `The absurd and erroneous doctrines or ravings in defense of liberty of conscience are a most pestilential error—a pest, of all others, most to be dreaded in a state.' The same pope, in his Encyclical Letter of December 8, 1864, anathematized `those who assert the liberty of conscience and of religious worship, (4.)
"The pacific tone of Rome in the United States does not imply a change of heart. She is tolerant where she is helpless. Says Bishop O'Connor: 'Religious liberty is merely endured until the opposite can be carried into effect without peril to the Catholic world.'. (5.)
“The Roman Church now presents a fair front to the world, covering with apologies her record of horrible cruelties. She has clothed herself in Christlike garments; but she is unchanged. Every principle of the papacy that existed in past ages exists today. The doctrines devised in the darkest ages are still held. Let none deceive themselves. The papacy that Protestants are now so ready to honor is the same that ruled the world in the days of the Reformation, when men of God stood up, at the peril of their lives, to expose her iniquity. She possesses the same pride and arrogant assumption that lorded it over kings and princes, and claimed the prerogatives of God. Her spirit is no less cruel and despotic now than when she crushed out human liberty and slew the saints of the Most High. (6.)
“A large class, even of those who look upon Romanism with no favor, apprehend little danger from her power and influence. Many urge that the intellectual and moral darkness prevailing during the Middle Ages favored the spread of her dogmas, superstitions, and oppression, and that the greater intelligence of modern times, the general diffusion of knowledge, and the increasing liberality in matters of religion forbid a revival of intolerance and tyranny. The very thought that such a state of things will exist in this enlightened age is ridiculed. (7.)
Here I am heartened by Ellen White’s defense of “increasing liberality” and “the greater intelligence of modern times” Understand that she wrote these words in the last half of the nineteenth century, almost one hundred and fifty years ago. I don’t consider her a prophet, but she hit this one on the head.
As I write this there is a movement to restrict books in the schools, ban books in the library, and constrain teachers from teaching the facts of history, or discussing racial injustice in this country. For forty years schools have been “dumbed down” and ignorance is considered preferable to “pointy headed intellectualism.” About a third of the population is no longer capable of discerning who is telling the truth - drop-out paid propagandists on TV, or scientists who have devoted their lives to researching the facts.
Not only are the propagandists eliding the truth, they are straight up lying about things that should be common knowledge. I believe that is intentional - some people feel it is OK to lie to reach a “good” end.
Following are some excerpts from a column by Thom Hartmann, written on August 26, 2022.
“…Republicans on the Supreme Court who were often led… by Antonin Scalia.
“Arguably the most powerful man on the Supreme Court — thus, one of the most powerful men in America during the years since the Reagan Revolution — Scalia turned history on its head when he visited an Orthodox Jewish synagogue in New York and claimed straight-up that the Founders intended Christianity to play a big role in government.
“Scalia, apparently reflecting the perspective of all six Republicans currently on the Court, then went so far as to suggest that the reason Hitler was able to initiate the Holocaust was because of Nazi separation of church and state (which, by the way, did not happen: it was the opposite). (8.)
“There’s no shortage of photos of Catholic Bishops giving the Nazi salute. The annual April 20th celebration, declared by Pope Pius XII, of Hitler’s birthday. The belt buckles of the German army, which declared “Gott Mit Uns” (“God is with us”). The pictures of the 1933 investiture of Bishop Ludwig Müller, the official Bishop of the 1000-Years-Of-Peace Nazi Reich.
“That last video should have been the most problematic for Justice Scalia, because Hitler had done exactly what Scalia was recommending: he merged church and state. (9.)
Not only did Hitler merge religion and the Third Reich, he used the religious bigots of the countries he conquered to help him kill the Jews, whom they all called “Christ killers”. Most of the “death” camps were in Poland, including Auschwitz, Treblinka, and Sobibor. Many of the camp guards were Ukrainian.
Another disturbing fact is after WWII was over, and the Allied forces were looking to capture the worst of the Nazi war criminals, the Vatican set up a “Rat Line” to sneak Nazis to Argentina, where the sympathetic government there gave them new identities and hid them from the rest of the world.
“Which brings up one of the main reasons — almost always overlooked by modern-day commentators, both left and right — why the Founders and Framers were so careful to separate church and state: They didn’t want religion to be corrupted by government.
“Many of the Founders were people of faith, and even the Deists like Franklin, Washington, and Jefferson were deeply touched by what Franklin called “The Mystery.” And they’d seen how badly religious bodies became corrupted when churches acquired power through affiliation with or participation in government. (10.)
“We are teaching the world the great truth, that Governments do better without kings and nobles than with them. The merit will be doubled by the other lesson: the Religion flourishes in greater purity without, than with the aid of Government.”
“I have no doubt that every new example will succeed, as every past one has done, in showing that religion and Government will both exist in greater purity the less they are mixed together.” (11.)
“That all of this — the merging of church and state, 16th century laws against abortion, forced school prayer, taxpayer subsidies for religious schools — has now been put into law with the Dobbs and other recent Supreme Court decisions, is no less shocking than that it was first publicly announced by Scalia in the nation’s oldest Orthodox synagogue.
“And it is damaging faith and religion every bit as much as it is government.
“In some distant place, Adolf Hitler and Bishop Müller must be smiling at the six Republicans on the Court’s growing conflation of church and state in America. It's exactly what they worked so hard to achieve in Germany in the 1930s, and what helped make their horrors possible.
“And our nation’s Founders, if they’re watching, must have tears in their eyes. (12.)
“Florida Republican Senator Marco Rubio finally made public his position on what should happen when a 10-year-old girl is raped and impregnated by a relative. His message, in summary: Tough luck. (13.)
Rubio often talks about faith and wrote about his religious convictions in his 2012 book, “An American Son: A Memoir.” His parents baptized him Catholic and he is now a practicing Catholic — after exploring the Mormon and Southern Baptist faiths. (14.)
“Women and girls across America are living in terror because the US Supreme Court has decided that religion — and witch-burning 15th century religious authorities — should have a significant say in the governance of our 21st century nation.
“With the trigger laws going into affect this week, fully a third of American women no longer have the right to an abortion; Republican legislators in multiple states are discussing ways to keep women from leaving those states or to track and prosecute them if they go out-of-state.
“This didn’t come out of nowhere: it’s the result of a project several of the Court’s old-timers — particularly Scalia, Thomas, and Alito — have been working on for decades. Scalia, back in the day, was the most open about their whole letting-religion-control-American-law agenda. (15.)
I still remember when I was a young lad, hearing my mother talk about the two hospitals in Merced, California - the Merced County hospital, and Our Lady of Mercy hospital, the Catholic one. All her children were born in the County hospital, and she said most women stayed away from the Catholic one because women were not worth as much as the baby, and they would let her die to save the child.
I have no data to back that up, but that was the general belief at that time.
Somehow the Catholic Church has used the scientific discovery of conception to make their historical opposition to abortion even more Draconian than before. Historically the life started at “quickening.” That was because nobody knew that the woman was anything more than a seed bed. The story was that the man “plowed the furrow and planted the seed” and then if the woman was “fertile” a child would grow in her, and if she was “barren” no child would grow.
It was not until 1875, when a scientist named Oscar Hertwig discovered that sperm from the man joined with the egg from the woman to start the process - conception. (16.)
Way back in the dim past, there are legends of civilizations where women were equal to men, but since about 1100 B.C. it seems all societies have been patriarchal, probably due to physical strength and testosterone fueled aggression. The Biblical record only tells the lineage of the males and skips over the females. Once again, the males plant the seed, she is just the repository - the garden as it were.
St Paul had a female companion named Thecla, but you wouldn’t know it if you only read the New Testament books approved by the Catholic Church in 393 A.D.
Muslims hide women under an ugly black cover. Jewish women must meet in a separate room in the synagogue, and many, if not most Christian churches don’t allow women to speak in church.
I was told years ago by a teacher at Walla Walla College that when Ellen White wanted to speak in the Battle Creek Adventist church, they got around the prohibition by ending the official worship service, singing the benediction, then coming back inside to hear her words.
The attempt by the Republican Catholic conservatives to prevent women from ending a pregnancy they don’t want, or might be dangerous to their health, will lead to more lawlessness than alcohol Prohibition by far. Thousands of people will be criminalized, and thousands of families will be torn asunder, and more thousands of women will die.
This country will be torn apart in pieces unless we can save democracy somehow. By far the majority of people in the country believe it should be up to the woman and her doctor to decide whether to end the pregnancy or not.
I don’t believe a fertilized ovum is more important than a live, breathing woman. If a Planned Parenthood clinic were on fire, and a person only had time to rescue either a half dozen Petri dishes containing fertilized eggs ready for implantation, or a live baby in a bassinet crying in pain, only a psychopath would emerge with the Petri dishes while the baby burned alive.
I fear we are going back to the dark ages, not the Apocalypse, as Ellen White predicted. But she got the rest right.
NOTES
- The Great Controversy, Ellen G. White, p. 563
2. Ibid. p. 563
3. Ibid. p. 563
4. Ibid. p. 564, 565
5. Ibid. p. 571
6. Ibid. p. 571
7. Ibid. p. 572
8. The Hartmann Report, August 26, 2022 (Emphasis is original)
9. Ibid. Hartmann
10. Ibid. Hartmann
11. James Madison, in a July 10, 1822 letter to Edward Livingston
12. OpCit. Hartmann
13. Ibid. Hartmann
14. Religion News Service, 5 Faith Facts about Marco Rubio, Feb.1, 2016
15. Op Cit. Hartmann
16. The Seeds of Life, Edward Dolnick, p. 261
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