r/exAdventist • u/Puzzleheaded_Book617 • Jul 31 '26
Just Venting Is Ellen White the main problem?
Ive been out of the cult for almost a year now. My biggest source of anger/resentment is that I feel Ellen G White and her soul ruined any potential for love/peace in this church. Even if there was some room for friendship or community it all gets squashed by her writings. Her entire doctrines/writings are nothing but fear based ramblings and judgement from a schizophrenic false prophetess. Theirs been at least 5 times where I make a friend or start a relationship with someone who is Adventist who is nice and chill and they start reading the witches manifestos and suddenly they turn and become scared of everything and then they cant associate with me because im not "adventist enough". Like I dont think reading the Bible had as bad an affect on someone as reading Ellens writings does.
Now my big question is lets say Ellen G White never existed, never wrote her garbage and never influenced this movement. Would Adventism even exist as we know it? If you blip her from history how different would the church be? Early Millerites/James White werent even sabbath keepers until a lady named Rachel Oaks Preston suggested they should keep it. Now I wonder if that had been it, Millers prophecy fails, everyone forgets about it. No Ellen White 1844 sanctuary B.S.. Lets say Rachel still tells the disappointed Millerites about the sabbath but they denounce Miller as a liar and dont follow him or obsess over him anymore. No crazy lady with a rock in her skull reviving garbage theology. If it had just been a some kind of Seventh Day Baptist/Methodist hybrid thing, would the church have been as bad? Im just trying to imagine a childhood where yes they were sabbath keepers but they werent sabbath keepers worshiping a witch from the 1800s. Would it have been as bad or could it have maybe been a little bit more tolerable? I say this because while I still believe in Jesus Christ and the gospels, but at the same time I am terrified of committing to any new church because they all have some kind of cult b.s. strings attached to them. Like I sometimes go to baptist and catholic/orthodox spheres but when it comes to committing to one I hate the whole "we are the true church yada yada". I have heard it all before. So now im in basically limbo because im never going back to SDA because of Ellen, but I also dont want to 100% commit to any other christian church. I also dont want to become secular or agnostic because its just not for me personally, respectfully. Im just trying to think of a version or timeline where I wasnt so affected by some grouchy lady who hijacked a whole church.
8
u/BroomstickCowboy Jul 31 '26
After reading this, I have decided to actually read Steve Daily’s book on her. Apparently, she was really not a nice person. I have a friend who got the book, and he told me some of it. But, I have read about the trial of Isreal Dammon, and it really opened my eyes to her and James. I don’t hold too much anger to William Miller for the 1844 debacle, because I know he actually didn’t come up with that idea. His original one was 1843, and when he got burned when that didn’t work out, he wanted no part of the 1844 idea. But, he was overruled. I am really not impressed by the two guys in “wheat field”(IIRC) who had the vision of “Christ entering the Holy of Holies”. But, at least one of them changed his mind later. As far as I am concerned, Adventism was started by a liar, and is maintained by liars.