EGW’s “Spiritual Gifts” Visions:  IMAGINATION or REVELATION?

By Donald Edward Casebolt

March 2025

"Disease and death may have been part of the original creation."  This is the most surprising declaration in a book written by Seventh-day Adventist young earth creationists  (YEC) whose chief objective appears to be to persuade laypersons in the church that these authors can perform quality scientific research while dismissing all empirical, scientific evidence that demonstrates that Noah's flood and Adam's creation had to have occurred many thousands of years before 4004 BC.

Noah's Ark: Saving "all flesh, wherein is the breath of life," or Mass Extinction Event

From about 100 to 1600, all good Christians understood that Noah's Ark was built for the express purpose of saving “all flesh, wherein is the breath of life," from perishing in the flood.  The universal totality of Noah's flood, as opposed to a local flood, had been insisted on by literalist YECs.  For centuries Christians knew that every species that Adam had named still existed because God had a necessary place for each of his unique creations and would certainly not suffer even one of them to become extinct.   However, by about 1650 scholars were becoming aware that more living species existed than could be squeezed into Noah's Ark.  John Wilkins (1614–1672), a bishop at Oxford, protested that learned biologists were exaggerating their numbers, and “that not more than a hundred Beasts nor two hundred types of Birds existed.”  But by 1758 Carl Linnaeus's Systema Naturae listed 4,400 animal species.  Currently millions of species have been catalogued and cramming them all into Noah's Ark has challenged the ingenuity of even the most inveterate literalist.  Even more problematic, biologists uncovered increasing numbers of fossil species.  Now roughly 250,000 extinct species have been identified in the fossil record.   Thus, certain Christian thinkers have felt forced to reimagine the story of Noah's flood as one in which 250,000 species were exterminated rather than saved in the Ark.  It cannot be overly emphasized that to accomplish this, they had to eviscerate the traditional, commonsense interpretation of Genesis and have recourse to extrabiblical speculations.  In short, they had to make the story of Noah's Ark say the opposite of what Christians had taught for over a millennium.  In the story's traditional reading, all terrestrial species had been saved. 

This meant that to be faithful to the biblical account of Noah's flood, "biblical geologists" were required to assign all the extinct species of the geological column to the post-flood era.  Since between Creation in 4004 and Noah’s Flood in 2300 BC, there was insufficient time for any species to go extinct.   However, if they were post-flood, they would be expected to be morphologically close to contemporary species, genera, and families.  In fact, often species much larger and morphologically different were beginning to be found––like T-rex.  Thus, some conjectured that "amalgamated" or uncreated species perished in Noah's flood, since they represented an especially wicked sin.  Furthermore, the Bible does not describe the typical antediluvian as gigantic.  In fact, the Bible presumes a flora and fauna equivalent to our modern species.  Giants, or Nephelim, were

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 1 Leonard Brandt and Arthur Chadwick, Faith, Reason & Earth History: A Paradigm of Earth and Biological Origins by Intelligent Design (Berrien Springs, MI: Andrews University Press, 2016), 476.

 2 David A. Young, The Biblical Flood: A Case Study of the Church's Response to Extrabiblical Evidence (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1995), 58.

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exceptions to the general population.   Even prior to the Christian era commentators had suggested that these giants were the mixed "race" progeny of evil angels who procreated with human females.  It is evident that Ellen G. White was a recipient of a tradition very similar to the speculation found in the book of Jasher.  Thomas Burnet, an Anglican theologian who in 1681 wrote his elegant Sacred Theory of the Earth, trying to harmonize the science of geology with the exegesis of Genesis warned:

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 3  Ellen G. White, Spiritual Gifts, Vol. 3, (Battle Creek, MI: Steam Press of the Seventh-day Adventist Publishers Association, 1864), 64, 75.

 4 David R. Montgomery, The Rocks Don't Lie: A Geologist Investigates Noah's Flood (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2012), 69.  Quoting Burnet.

 5 Montgomery, The Rocks Don't Lie, 36.  Literal days without the sun are not the only difficulty in a strict, literal interpretation.  Since the text states that only seven pairs of unclean species were preserved in the Ark, this would not have been enough prey species for many carnivorous species.  For example, owls, largely carnivorous, must consume ten to fifty percent of their body weight daily. This would amount to 3 voles, 2 chicks or 2 mice a day.  Fourteen prey individuals could not have sustained a typical carnivorous species. (There are around 216 different species of owls in the world).  Of course, a miracle could always be invoked.

 6 White, Spiritual Gifts, Vol. 3, i–v of preface:  The "great facts of faith . . . have been opened to me in vision."  She claimed to be able to observe nuances such as Adam's facial expression and the hue of his skin (p, 34).  "His complexion was neither white, nor sallow, but ruddy, glowing with the rich tint of health."

 7 White, Spiritual Gifts, Vol. 3, 9.

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apropos because at Pentecost there was "no account of dreams or visions on that day," nor had the 1780 Dark Day yet occurred. 

Reading her attacks on disguised infidelity, it is clear that she had acquainted herself with recent Christian attempts to reconcile the Mosaic record with the burgeoning empirical evidence that life had existed on earth for much longer than bishop Ussher's six thousand years.  She alluded to the harmonizing "gap" hypothesis espoused by William Buckland (1784–1856).  This was the belief that a long period of time occurred between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2.  The two verses referred to a pre-Adam creation and an Adam & Eve creation.  She also refuted a second hypothesis that six eons of time rather than six literal days were intended.  She concluded that infidel geology can prove nothing without the Mosaic record. She considered that even a modest 10,000 year-old earth was far too long.  Ellen G. White stood in the tradition of those who insisted that scripture must determine geological facts and not the reverse.  Such unwavering "scriptural geologists" unreservedly condemned geology as an "infidel science" prior to Ellen G. White's endorsement of this view.   During Ellen G. White's lifetime, in 1837, George Fairholme, wrote a book whose title, New and Conclusive Physical Demonstrations Both of the Fact and Period of the Mosaic Deluge, illustrated his absolute support for a "literal" interpretation of Noah's Flood.  It illustrates the sharp conflict between hyper-literalists and harmonizers.  In Ellen G. White's estimation, any departure from a strict literal account of Noah's flood was demonic.  She argued that infidel geologists' "limited ideas of the size of man, animals and trees before the Flood" caused them to reach the erroneous conclusion that life on earth was present for “tens of thousands of years.”

She showed herself generally conversant with the geological findings that led geologists to attempt to harmonize Genesis with geology.  Unfortunately, a significant number of popular reports she relied on were unreliable—most obviously the reports of gigantic trees, animals, and men "many times larger" than current species.  By 1864 when Ellen G. White penned her attack on infidel Christian geologists, like the mature Buckland, "scriptural geologists" had been trying for some time to harmonize increasing amounts of extrabiblical, geological observations with the biblical account of Noah's flood.  But between about 1664 and 1864 many of the observations they initially claimed as scientific evidence proving the universality of Noah's flood, turned out to demonstrate the opposite.   For example, glacier erratics, glacier moraines, and other glacier features were initially claimed to be diluvial features.  Hugh tsunamis purportedly had swept over continents.  Marine species found atop mountains proved that Noah's flood overtopped Mount Everest.  Arctic-adapted mammoths and mastodonts were claimed to prove that they had inhabited an Edenic, eternal spring whose climate abruptly changed with Noah's flood.  For at least two centuries Genesis had been conflated with geological speculations which turned out to be false.   But not before "scriptural geologists" became inextricably wedded to certain geological proofs that were claimed to substantiate a very recent, universal, Noah's flood.  After geological evidence was proven to be incompatible with a recent, universal flood, some commentators altered their interpretation of the scriptural account.  Others, like authorities Ellen G. White favored, insisted that empirical evidence incompatible with Noah's flood should be rejected a priori.

For centuries Christians interpreting Genesis literally had insisted that the earth was flat, that the earth did not move, and that the sun orbited the earth.  Just so, they considered that Adam

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 8 White, Spiritual Gifts, Vol. 3, 25.  She herself did claim to have had dreams and visions and to be alive after 1780.  She also claimed numerous, miraculous faith-healings which she identified in her Spiritual Gifts.

 9 Young, The Biblical Flood, 103.

 10 According to White even the modest “tens of thousands” of years for the age of life on earth far exceeded her preferred age of “about 6,000 years.”

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had named all the species and that Noah's ark had been built with the express and sole intent to save seven (or two) pairs of each of these species.  Any other view was treated as rank heresy, as Galileo learned.   In their wildest imaginings, for centuries, no Christian exegete ever proposed that numberless species perished in Noah's flood.   Nor did they suggest that whole menageries of various species existed other than those preserved in the Ark.  Of course, as long as Bible readers only lived around the Mediterranean, it seemed reasonable that Noah could have preserved all known species.  However, as empirical evidence accumulated indicating that distant continents like Australia and South America existed with thousands of additional endemic species (current and fossil!), churchmen had exponentially greater difficulties in fitting them into the ark and even getting them there.  It became extremely difficult to fit all the living species into the Ark, but as tens of thousands of extinct species came to be known, it was impossible.  Previously Christians understood Genesis to prove that God had saved a sample of all species in the Ark.  Now they were forced to start proposing the opposite.  There were mass extinctions in the geological record.  Thus, it was becoming increasingly obvious that many fossil species existed that never made it into the Ark.  Churchmen had to propose multiple, extrabiblical hypotheses to account for the conundrum. This violates the SDA principal of Sola Scriptura.

 Ellen G. White's hypothesis was that "uncreated" species, the product of amalgamation, went extinct outside the Ark.  Now it is well known to even the staunchest YECs that over ninety-nine percent of species that ever lived are now extinct.

SDAs have held a fundamentalist view of Genesis for several reasons.  First, they had their origins in a "literalist" reading of the entire Bible, even symbolic, apocalyptic texts such as Daniel and the Apocalypse.  Second, the margins of their Bibles included Ussher's chronology dating the Creation at 4004 BC.  Indeed, one of William Miller's key proofs for predicting the Second Coming for "about 1843" was known as the Millennial Sabbath teaching which held that the earth's history would conclude after exactly six thousand years.  He dated creation to 4157 BC.  Miller  altered Ussher's 4004 BC date for creation by 153 years to obtain the desired 1843.   Third, the doctrine of the Seventh-day Sabbath inclined Ellen G. White to insist upon a very literal reading of Genesis.  Fundamentalist inerrantists could be found in other denominations,  but SDAs had an additional constraint that made them particularly resistant to anything other than "scriptural geology."  This was the fact that SDAs came to believe that Ellen White "saw" events prior to 4004 BC in heaven, Creation in 4004 BC, and Noah's flood in 2350 BC to a fine degree of specific detail, and she was adamant that:

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 11 The hypothesis of amalgamation was contained in a medieval book of Jasher from which Ellen G. White appeared to borrow about ten extrabiblical "facts" concerning the life of Enoch and Noah.

12  Montgomery, The Rocks Don't Lie, 79.  See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extinction.

 13 White, Spiritual Gifts, Vol. 3, 91.  Thus, she strongly implies that Genesis can provide a comprehensive chronology and that the creation occurred on a date approximately sometime between Ussher's 4004 BC and Miller's 4157 BC.

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Tall, Majestic trees "many times larger" than trees now are!

One of the erroneous concepts that Ellen G. White adopted from popular geology reports was that virtually all previously unknown, extinct species were giants.  This fit in with her preconception that antediluvial species were larger and more long-lived simply because they came into existence closer to a 4004 BC Creation.  Then there was a secular decline in size and animal-vitality due to the biological effects of sin. She asserted this most insistently and repeatedly regarding trees.  She wrote multiple passages emphasizing this in the broader context of how antediluvian ecology, geography, and hydrology differed from the present day.  But, in general she believed antediluvian flora, fauna, and humans were bigger, stronger, and more vital than those living after the flood.

In her opening description of creation, she wrote:

When God had formed the earth, there were mountains, hills, and plains, and interspersed among them were rivers and bodies of water.  The earth was not one extensive plain, but the monotony of the scenery was broken by hills and mountains, not high and ragged as they now are, but regular and beautiful in shape. The bare, high rocks were never seen upon them, but lay beneath the surface, answering as bones to the earth.  The waters were regularly dispersed.  The hills, mountains, and very beautiful plains, were adorned with plants and flowers, and tall, majestic trees of every description, which were many times larger, and much more beautiful, than trees now are [emphasis added].

  In chapter 6, "Crime Before the Flood," in which appears the notorious "amalgamation" assertion, she again repeats her claim that the trees were "vastly larger" than current specimens. 

 In chapter 8, "After the Flood," she reiterates her assertion about the immense size of the antediluvian trees.

Ellen White claimed that "trees more majestic than any that now exist," dominated the Edenic ecosystem.    However, this cannot be true.  The present-day Sequoia sempervirens are taller and more majestic than any fossil tree ever discovered.  These trees can easily reach heights of 300 feet.  Among the redwoods, a tree named Hyperion dwarfs them all. The tree was discovered in 2006 and is 379.7 feet tall.  If Ellen G. White's assertion that antediluvial trees were "many time larger" than contemporary trees were accurate, it would mean that they would have had to been at least four or five times larger—in short, 2,000 feet or one-third of a mile tall

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 14 White, Spiritual Gifts, Vol. 3, 33.

15  White, Spiritual Gifts, Vol. 3, 61

 16 White, Spiritual Gifts, Vol. 3, 79.

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How might Ellen G. White have observed that antediluvian trees were "many times larger than any trees which we now see?"  At the time she wrote this, she had not been to Australia and seen the tallest and largest trees there.  Neither had she seen the tallest trees along the Californian coast.  Nor, for that matter had she been an eyewitness to the largest, tallest trees on any continent.  During the observations she made during her visions, did she include some sort of measuring device that would calibrate how many centimeters in diameter or length the antediluvian trees were?  Like one sees routinely in geological photographs?  How did she reach the conclusion that antediluvian trees were "many times larger than any trees which we now see?"  It was commonly received wisdom that many newly discovered fossils originated from gigantic, extinct species.

Ellen G. White's dependence on scriptural geologists

It is now well known that Ellen G. White paraphrased considerable amounts of material from various Protestant historians and devotional writers.  She commenced borrowing from various extrabiblical sources in describing her initial visions by paraphrasing passages from the Pseudepigrapha.  She also borrowed many of her eschatological interpretations from William Miller.  She was persuaded by contemporary medical writers that masturbation caused pandemics of insanity and numerous diseases affecting every system of the human body.  Indeed, she asserts that she “saw” that secret vice caused scrofula, consumption, and TB.  This is before Koch discovered that an infectious organism was the cause of TB.  What has not been appreciated is that she wrote under the influence of scriptural geologists.  In the 1850s many, conservative gentleman scientists who combined their vocations as clergymen with their avocations as geologists, like William Buckland, reluctantly conceded that Noah's flood could not explain the topography of the earth, the biogeography of species, or the obvious extinction of thousands of species.  Christian scientists had, for centuries, interpreted the Bible to say that all the species in Noah's day had been saved in the Ark.  Further, that all these species had continued reproducing identical species because God would not permit any of his species to go extinct.  When some Christian scientists realized that empirical, geological fieldwork made such conclusions untenable, they were attacked by scriptural geologists who insisted that Noah's flood explained the entire geological column.  In reading Ellen G. White's polemic against the "new" geology, it is obvious that she had read about the controversy and was repeating the "facts" and arguments of traditionalist commentators who insisted that the new interpretations of both geology and scriptural history were damnable heresy.

Giants: Adam was twice as tall as men today

For many centuries most persons were unaware that fossils were the remains of organic life.  But between 1600 to 1700, the numbers of fossils collected were increasing exponentially. 

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 17 Donald E. Casebolt, "'It Was Not Taught Me by Man': Ellen White's Visions and 2 Esdras," Spectrum, 2018,  66–73.

 18 Donald E. Casebolt, Father Miller’s Daughter (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2022).

 19 Ibid., 275.  See also Ronald L. Numbers, Prophetess of Health: A Study of Ellen G. White (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2008), 207–212.

 20 For example, how is that extinct fossil kangaroos were only found in Australia and fossil sloths only in the Americas?  How did the arctic reindeer survive its roundtrip journey to and from the Ark?

 

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Additionally, evidence accumulated demonstrating that fossils were ancient lifeforms and not inanimate crystals or minerals.  Naturally, the largest and most exotic species made the greatest popular impression.  Given the tradition that the flood had destroyed giants and given the general conception that as a result of sin both mankind and nature were becoming punier and degenerate, the misconception grew that, in general, fossil species were gigantic.  Giant bones were discovered in both Asia and North America.  "All across Europe large fossils were publicly displayed as the remains of the giants mentioned in scripture."  A "six-inch-tall, two-and-a quarter-pound tooth and a seventeen-foot-long thighbone convinced Cotton Mather . . . that giants really did drown in the Flood."  Johann Scheuchzer, who had completed a doctorate in medicine in 1694 at Utrecht, recovered in 1725 a huge skeleton that he considered proved not only "that a world of sinners drowned but that they were giants, just like the Bible implied when it said 'there were giants in the earth in those days' Genesis 6:4)."  He gave it the scientific name Homo diluvia testis et theoskopos (man who testifies to the Flood and a divine messenger).  Cotton Mather reported that giant bones had also been discovered in South America.  He breathlessly reported:

Ellen G. White absorbed the inaccurate idea that the fossils buried by Noah's flood consisted of animals, plants, trees, and men all many times larger than current species of animals plants, trees, and men.  She did not say that gigantic animals, plants, trees, and men would be found in the future.  She said that they had been, past tense, already found.  This resulted in her asserting that trees "many times larger" than present trees existed.   It also resulted in her asserting that antediluvian men, like Adam, were twice as tall as present specimens. She wrote concerning Adam that :  “He was more than twice as tall as men now living upon the earth. . . . Eve was not quite as tall as Adam.” However, this is not true.  The oldest Neanderthals and Cro-Magnon men are certainly not twice as tall as current humans.  There is no archaeological or prehistoric evidence that humans, twice as large as current specimens, have been found.

Bones of men and animals found that prove “much larger men and beasts once lived upon the earth”

Ellen G. White claimed that bones of men and animals had been found, "showing that much larger men and beasts once lived upon the earth [emphasis added].  I was shown that very large,

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 21 Montgomery, The Rocks Don't Lie, 85.

22 Martin J. S. Rudwick, Earth's Deep History: How It Was Discovered and Why It Matters (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2014), 50.  The Pleistocene Megafauna was the name given to the collection of large animals at the top of the geological column associated with the last Ice Age.  Hence, many of the species were indeed giants.

 23 White, Spiritual Gifts, Vol. 3, 34.

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powerful animals existed before the flood which do not now exist.  Instruments of warfare are sometimes found; also petrified wood."  First, there was no need of direct revelation to reveal to Ellen G. White that "very large powerful animals existed before the flood."  There were abundant physical specimens publicly displayed.  Second, the bones of much larger men have never been found proving that “much larger men” once lived upon the earth. But for White, everything antediluvian was giant: men, beasts, and trees. But here I would also like to point out that Ellen G. White's assertion about "instruments of warfare" and "also petrified wood" is abrupt and disjointed.  Implicitly, she is claiming that antediluvian weapons of warfare had been found.  This is not the case.  However, unsubstantiated, urban legends periodically surfaced.  Certainly, petrified wood was discovered.  However, Ellen G. White's mention of this fact gives no idea as to what she considered significant about this fact.  Certainly, the mere existence of petrified wood does nothing to support either her global thesis or any subsection of it.

Mist only; never rained prior to Noah's Flood

According to Ellen G. White, at the Creation, "[w]hen God had formed the earth, there were mountains, hills, and plains, and interspersed among them were rivers and bodies of water."   Now if there were mountains and hills, water would have had to drain downhill or defy the law of gravity.   Thus, presumably, the rivers had to drain water downhill to the oceans, which presumably contained species adapted to salt-water.  Furthermore, if "bodies of water" were interspersed among mountains, hills, and plains, they had to drain downhill also.

White also claims that prior to the flood, it had never rained.  This legend has an extrabiblical history.   Genesis 2:4–7 is the origin of this legend.  However, if one reads these verses, it is clear that they are referring to a pre-creation state, before God has created plants or herbs, before God has created mankind.  It says: 

There is no suggestion that rain did not fill the drainage system and rivers mentioned in Genesis, particularly the Tigris and Euphrates.  Her own later description of Noah's flood also contradicts her account.   She states:  "The boundaries of rivers broke away and the waters rushed to the valleys."  This obviously describes water in rivers overtopping their banks; and water rushing down the inclines of valleys from hills and mountains like the Tigris and Euphrates.  Furthermore, to posit an atmosphere that did not produce rain and snow, one would have to deny the existence of physical laws.  One would have to deny that energy from the sun would cause water to evaporate; to deny that the heated moist air would rise; to deny that the Coriolis effect would not cause prevailing winds to distribute this moist air; to deny that when the moist air

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 24 White, Spiritual Gifts, Vol. 3, 92.

 25 Rudwick, Earth's Deep History, 87.

26 White, Spiritual Gifts, Vol. 3, 8.

27 White, Spiritual Gifts, Vol. 3, 9.

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currents encountered hills and mountains it would precipitate out in the form of rain and snow when it encountered colder temperatures higher in the atmosphere.

Furthermore, whereas Genesis literally says that there were no plants existent when the mists rose, as described by White, White claims that the mist rose at night "reviving vegetation and causing it to flourish." White’s claim that prior to Noah’s flood it never rained is also contradicted by the fact that geologists have discovered fossilized rain drops in geological layers over a billion years old.  Even if flood geologists of a young earth persuasion dispute the radiometric calculations the 2.7-billion-year date is based on, the fossilized raindrops occur in what they themselves would say are from strata that were laid down prior to Noah’s flood.

Ellen G. White claims that the trees many times larger than now exist were "thrown together and covered with stones and earth by the commotions of the flood."  She asserts that this was the mechanism whereby coal beds were formed, and that "this coal has produced oil."  Coal does not produce oil.  These two types of hydrocarbons have different sources and different mechanisms of formation.  But the greater problem is Ellen G. White's further development of her thought.  Purportedly, spontaneously, and for no apparent reason, "God causes large quantities of coal and oil to ignite and burn."  She does not say when this spontaneous combustion occurs.  Immediately after Noah's flood, continuously ever since 2350 BC, or only since the end times defined as being after 1798?  In any case, she asserts that this makes limestone burn and melts iron ore, as if the coal, oil, limestone, and iron ore were all contiguous.  In some vague fashion this mixture unites with water and then intense reactions "causes earthquakes, volcanoes and fiery issues."   This entire description has no relationship to the actual formation of coal, oil, earthquakes, or volcanoes.  However, in the epoch in which coal, oil, and volcanoes were just being understood, scientists of the 1700s did speculate that underground combustions of coal seams might explain the eruptions of volcanoes.  Ellen G. White absorbed these misconceptions from her surroundings.  Her statements do not originate from timeless, direct revelations but from fallible human speculations.

Ellen G. White asserts that mountains of volcanic origin did not exist in antediluvian times.  For centuries, mountains were viewed as ugly, dangerous, and treacherous obstacles.  Therefore, they did not fit with an Edenic geography in the popular imagination, an  imagination which Ellen

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 28 “Primeval Precipitation” in Scientific American Magazine Vol. 306 No. 5 (June 2012), p. 26.  See https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-fossilized-rain-reveals-earth/#:~:text=Some%202.7%20billion%20years%20ago,that%20ash%20hardened%20into%20rock.

 29 For actual process of coal formation, see https://energyeducation.ca/encyclopedia/Coal_formation.  For petroleum formation, see https://energyeducation.ca/encyclopedia/Oil_formation.

 30 White, Spiritual Gifts, Vol. 3, 79–80.

 31 Rudwick, Earth's Deep History, 92.

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G. White shared.   Theologian geologists calculated that mountains must not have been as high as at present and they must have been smoother.   That way the flood waters could more easily cover them.  They had also done physics experiments and calculations and found that a mass of water covering the highest mountains in the Himalayan mountains was impossible without invoking a miracle.   Mountains were seen as "hideous blemishes upon the Earth's fair skin and as "cancerous growths of diluvial and post-diluvial age, . . . striking evidence of nature's degeneracy."  In accord with this popular concept, according to  White, Mountains were seen as "hideous blemishes upon the Earth's fair skin and as "cancerous growths of diluvial and post-diluvial age, . . . striking evidence of nature's degeneracy."…."  However, she also follows the biblical narrative in locating the resting place of the ark on Mt. Ararat.  There was a "cluster of mountains . . . but a little distance apart, and the ark moved about and rested upon one, then another of these mountains…."  But, Mount Ararat is a snow-capped and dormant compound volcano in the extreme east of Turkey. It consists of two major volcanic cones: Greater Ararat and Little Ararat. Greater Ararat is the highest peak in Turkey and the Armenian Highland with an elevation of 16,854 ft; Little Ararat's elevation is 12,782 ft.  The mountain has been called by the name Ararat (in the West) since the Middle Ages, as it began to be identified with "mountains of Ararat" described in the Bible as the resting place of Noah's Ark.  In their detailed study and summary of the Quaternary volcanism of Anatolia, Yilmaz et al. recognized four phases to the construction of Mount Ararat.  "Overall, radiometric ages obtained from the volcanic rocks erupted by Mount Ararat range from 1.5 to 0.02 Ma."  In short, a volcanic Mt. Ararat had to exist prior to Noah's flood since the Ark landed on it, and the Edenic Tigris and Euphrates watershed had to go downhill from it.  Further, Mount Ararat has a long, sequential history of multiple eruptions that formed it.  Furthermore, volcanoes have a world-wide distribution and occur at all periods in the geological column.  Therefore, it is impossible to assign them solely to epochs after Noah's flood.  Volcanoes are also found on other planets in our own solar system.  Io, a moon of  Jupiter, is "studded with active volcanoes." Venus has 85,000 volcanoes.  Mars has volcanoes. Volcanoes on our planet are caused by friction from plate tectonics operating over time scales in the millions of years. Earthquakes and volcanoes occur almost always on plate boundaries where they collide, are ripped apart, or slide past each other. Rather than our earth being an inchoate mass of water originally, (God’s spirit hovering over the face of the watery deep), we now know that the planets in our solar system were formed from a gaseous nebula with the rocky planets, (as distinguished from the outer gaseous ones), growing from planetesimals violently crashing into each other, trapping the heat of

 Montgomery, The Rocks Don't Lie, 77.

 The cluster of peaks around Ararat, doubtless the highest Moses was acquainted with, was only half the height of Everest.

 Lynden J. Rogers, "Responses by Christian Scholars to Extra-biblical Data on the Flood from 1500 to 1860," in The Biblical Flood: Context and History of Adventist Understanding, Second Edition, Lynden J. Rogers, ed., (Cooranbong, New South Wales, Australia, 2020), 72.

 White, Spiritual Gifts, Vol. 3, 34.

 White, Spiritual Gifts, Vol. 3, 77.

 "Without volcanic activity, life as we know it would not exist on our planet."   This quote taken from the Amazon review of the textbook:  Volcanoes: Global Perspectives by John P. Lockwood and Richard W. Hazlett.

 Quaternary is the current and most recent of the three periods of the Cenozoic Era in the geologic time scale of the International Commission on Stratigraphy. It follows the Neogene Period and spans from 2.588 ± 0.005 million years ago to the present.

 Y. Yilmaz, Y. Güner, and F.  Saroğlu, "Geology of the quaternary volcanic centres of the east Anatolia," Journal of Volcanology and Geothermal Research. 85 (1998): 173–210.

 Rudwick, Earth's Deep History, 291.

 

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formation, later released by volcanic explosions.  Our asteroid belt contains the remnants of these materials.  One of which smashed into our earth 65 million years ago at the Yucatan peninsula, leading to the extinction of the dinosaurs.  Visible evidence of the natural violence inherent in our world’s creation can be seen in the craters and lava flows on the moon.  Humanity used to think that both lightning bolts and volcanoes were caused directly by the hand of God.  It is now known that both phenomena are regulated by laws of physics.

EGW’s Sources of Information

White was cognizant of popular ideas concerning geology and the difficulty of reconciling the findings of geology with the traditional understanding of the flood.  One of those common ideas was that giants of many species had been found.  Most significantly, there "were many claims that human bones had been dug up along with those of his [Cuvier's] extinct animals.  He systematically eliminated all of them."  Nonetheless, such false conceptions were widely circulated and long-lived.  George Cuvier lived 23 August 1769 – 13 May 1832.  He was the famous French expert in comparative anatomy who established extinction as a scientific fact.  His lifetime overlapped only about five years with Ellen G. White's.  Thus, most likely she never fully comprehended the significance of the scientific fact of extinction.  And even though he had debunked the reality of giant human bones being contemporary with extinct animals, presumably those who perished during Noah's flood, this scientific advance either never filtered down to her, or she never accepted it.  Given her intense preoccupation with the end of the world, one would not expect that she was up to date with the latest geological findings.  Furthermore, Cuvier had endorsed the idea of the historical reality of Noah's Flood.  His emphasis on catastrophes was congenial to Ellen G. White even if she could not be expected to appreciate all the nuances of his thought.  During Ellen G. White's formative years, she and her like-minded "scriptural geologists" could point to "secular" scientists who still appeared to believe Noah's flood was universal.

Another source, either directly or indirectly, was very likely the medieval book of Jasher.  It had broached the hypothesis that amalgamation of species was the especially horrendous sin which provoked the Lord to destroy the earth with Noah's flood.  It was a sin that involved "all men and all animals."  The Jasher quotation below comes from a parallel that has its echo in Ellen G. White:

However, the greatest difficulty that Ellen G. White had along with other traditionalists is that they had to reconcile the centuries long teaching that Noah's ark saved every species without

 41 See Solar System: Volcano Worlds in Nova video, season 51, episode 11.

 42 Rudwick, Earth's Deep History, 114.

 43 Unknown, The Book of Jasher (New York: M. M. Noah & A. S, Gould, 1840), chapter IV:18.

 

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exception.  If this traditional conception of Noah’s flood was accurate, all the various species, genera, and families would be represented in unbroken vertical lines in the geological column from the Cambrian, Ordovician, Silurian, Devonian, Carboniferous, Permian, Triassic, Jurassic, Cretaceous, Paleocene, Eocene, Oligocene, Miocene, Pliocene, Pleistocene, to the Holocene. Whereas historical geology knows of six major extinction events during which very large percentages of then existing species and genera went extinct.  The two most extensive were the Permian (252 Million years before present) and the upper Cretaceous (66 mya).  They caused the extinction of  90% and 70% of species respectively  Yet for YECs, Noah's flood was forced to serve as  the single greatest mass extinction ever.  This completely reversed the conception of Noah's flood that had existed for centuries.  Ironically, Genesis literalists are in the position of having to insist that Noah's flood was responsible for virtually the thousands of extinct species of the entire geological column, or at least the Mesozoic.  (Ironically, the two largest non-SDA Creation Science groups contradict each other as to where Noah’s flood occurs in the geological column).  Seventh-day Adventists who believe Ellen G. White "saw" and understood all the details of Noah's flood and its aftermath must simultaneously confess that all the extrabiblical detail that she offers must be true even when it contradicts many empirically established facts. 

Trees many times larger than present did not exist in Noah's time.  Bones of humans larger than present day humans have not been exhumed.   Various fossil species larger than some contemporaneous species have been excavated.   However, it is not true that at the genera or family level, fossil species are generally larger than contemporaneous ones.  On the other hand, entire genera, families, orders, classes and even phyla have gone extinct.   Rivers, like the Euphrates and Tigris, rain, and jagged mountains, like Mount Ararat, did exist in 2350 BC.  Ellen G. White's description of volcanoes, coal deposits, and oil deposits is no more realistic than her belief that masturbation caused an epidemic of insanity.  Finally, although there is not space enough here to demonstrate it, Ellen G. White's assertion that there were no swamps or deserts in antediluvian times can also be disconfirmed.  There are thousands of species, both contemporary and extinct, highly modified and adapted to both swampy and desert conditions.  Moreover, distinct endemic species of cactus-like plants exist in completely different desert ecosystems on multiple different continents. 

Just as an accumulation of astronomical observations toppled the geocentric view of the solar system and replaced it with a heliocentric system, burgeoning biological and geological investigations should topple preconceived, traditional interpretations of Noah's flood.  However, for over a century Christian geologists who shared traditional interpretations of Noah's flood struggled mightily to conform numerous discoveries from geology, archaeology, and biology to the “so-called literal” Genesis narrative.  In so doing they were attempting to put new wine in old wine skins.  As a result, intellectual contortions and scientific misconceptions flourished, especially among the unschooled public.  There is an uncanny resemblance between many of the fumbling, initial attempts of scientists to wed Genesis and geology and Ellen G. White's apologetic attempts to do the same.   SDA apologists for decades asserted that Ellen G. White's visions did not teach the shut door.  Finally, in 1982, Robert W. Olson, Secretary of the Ellen G. White Estate, conceded that she misinterpreted her own first visions and only arrived at an accurate conception of the shut door years later.   It seems clear that she must have also misinterpreted her visions

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44  See https://m.egwwritings.org/en/book/711/info.   In commenting on his document #7 Olson says: Ellen G. White "at first misinterpreted [her first vision] to mean that her work for the world was done."   Then "as the years passed," she realized that this was incorrect.  He immediately mitigates this admission by stating that the fact that the "seventeen-year-old Ellen should misinterpret one of her visions should elicit no surprise…."   Yet since she did

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concerning Noah's flood.  Her dreams and visions were clearly influenced, if not determined by writers in her intellectual milieu.  How else might one explain that she asserted multiple times that antediluvian trees were many times taller than contemporary trees when we know for a certainty that this was not the case?  Or that the antediluvian patriarchs, like Adam, were twice as tall as men are today?  That the Tigris and Euphrates rivers were not fed by rain and snow falling on the mountains of Ararat?

Both the Catholic church and the Protestant reformers considered the Copernican revolution and Galileo's championing of it to be rank heresy and an existential threat to the Christian faith.  Young-earth creationists are following in their footsteps regarding a recent, universal Noah's flood.   They would do well to heed Galileo when he said:

This is especially applicable to the SDA church's reliance on Ellen G. White to interpret the Genesis flood.  A strict, biblical account teaches that every species was saved by divine providence in the Ark; that there were no such things as amalgamated beasts; and that all evidence of extinct species must be assigned chronologically to post-flood strata.   Species were assumed to be fixed.  It was only after geology discovered that many, extinct species occurred throughout the geological column, that such extrabiblical findings were incorporated into interpretations of Genesis via a process of eisegesis. 

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misinterpret her vision, and not only misinterpret it but widely promulgate this misinterpretation, it is no wonder that, virtually unanimously, we find her prophetic misinterpretations widely seconded by members of her Little Flock community.

 45 Montgomery, The Rocks Don't Lie, 47.

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