This day and age, the term “fundamentalism” is usually associated with narrow minded, ignorant Christians who are ultra conservative, ultra dispensational in their eschatology, and reject all tenants of modern science. Fundamentalism has morphed into something more than conservative evangelical theology. Fortunately, this has not always been the case. Around a century ago, evangelical scholars from all
over merged together and wrote something called The Fundamentals. The funny thing is that conservative, reformed, Christian theologians, such as B.B. Warfield, who believed in evolution, contributed to this project. At this point in evangelicalism, there was no rejection of evolution as the process in which God used to create, nor was there a rejection of an old earth. The only creationist voice that rang out with dogmatism on these things were the Seventh-day Adventist, and their prophet, Ellen G. White (1827-1915, photo above).
Seventh-day Adventist are considered a Christian denomination,
with that said, there are certain beliefs that they hold which would mark them
as cultish. For example, they hold to the divine inspiration of scripture, and
consider the scripture a divine authority on doctrine, but not the only
authority. Like other cults, Seventh-day Adventist hold to the writings of some
of their leaders as absolutely authoritative. For the Mormons, it's Joseph Smith, for the Seventh-day Adventist, it's Ellen G. White.
In their Fundamental Beliefs, article 18 is as follows:
18. The Gift of Prophecy:
One of the gifts of the Holy Spirit is prophecy. This gift is an identifying mark of the remnant church and was manifested in the ministry of Ellen. G. White . As the Lord's messenger, her writings are a continuing and authoritative source of truth which provide for the church comfort, guidance, instruction, and correction. They also make clear that the Bible is the standard by which all teaching and experience must be tested. (Joel 2:28, 29; Acts 2:14-21; Heb. 1:1-3; Rev. 12:17; 19:10.)
Ellen White and her family were part of a cult that followed an apocalyptic preacher named William Miller. Miller claimed that Jesus was going to return on October 22, 1844. After this period of “Great Disappointment” (as she referred to it), White began to experience very vivid,religious visions. Many
disillusioned followers of Miller, along with others in her life, began to
believe that God was speaking to her through these visions. Soon after this, the religious sect of Seventh-Day Adventist was born through her teaching, visions, and prophecies.
Five years after Charles Darwin published his On the Origin of Species, White claimed that God had given her a vision of how creation really happened: “I was then carried back to the creation and shown the first week, in which God performed the work of creation in six days and rested on the seventh day, was just like every other week.”[1]White went on to write a book about her visions called Patriarchs and Prophets, in which she recounts her visions about creation, the Fall, and the Flood. As I will soon show, modern Young Earth Creationism can be traced back to White’s visions. It is worth mentioning that Archbishop Usher (1581-1656) added up the years from the Genesis genealogy and came up with a date of 4004 BC as the origin of the earth. There are several problems with this approach, and if the interest is great enough, I can do a separate article on how to interpret the genealogies of Genesis. But for now, I want to get back to the influence of Ellen G. White.
Ellen G. White also taught from her visions that certain "races of men" were an "amalgamation of man and beast". In her famous "solar system' visions, she also claimed that Jupiter had four moons and was inhabited by "a tall, majestic people, so unlike the inhabitants of earth." She also made many false prophecies about the return of Christ (for more, go here: http://www.searchingthescriptures.net/main_
pages/answering_cults/seventh_day_
adventism/analysis_whites_embarrassing_statements.htm).
Up until the publishing of White’s book of visions,geologist, most of whom were Bible-believing, conservative Christians, believed that Noah’s flood was a local event confined just to the Ancient Near East area, whose effects have been erased over time. Many Hebrew scholars consider a local interpretation consistent with the language of the text. The interpretation of the flood as a local event, was up to this point, uncontroversial and accepted by many Christians.
White rejected this based upon her visions and her reading of Genesis without every consulting the Hebrew language or considering the cultural context. She claimed that Noah’s flood was global and that it was the cause of all of the geological layers of the earth. According to White, the Flood reshaped the surface of the earth, and that the fossil record testified to this. This is quite ironic since fossils are stacked in the layers of the earth in an orderly way. It is very hard to conceive how a worldwide, chaotic flood would leave all these fossils so nice and neat. Even the most conservative Christian geologist reject this claim because it was inconsistent with the evidence. Here are the words from White’s own testimony about her visions:
"The entire surface of the earth was changed at the Flood…As the waters began to subside, the hills and mountains were surrounded by a vast turbid sea. Everywhere were strewn the dead bodies of men and beasts. The Lord would not permit these to remain to decompose and pollute the air, therefore He made of the earth a vast burial ground. A violent wind which was caused to blow for the purpose of drying up the waters, moved them with great force, in some instances even carrying away the tops of the mountains and heaping up trees, rocks, and earth above the bodies of the dead…
At this time immense forests were buried. These have since been changed to coal, forming the extensive coal beds that now exist and yielding large quantities of oil.”[2]
Because her writing were considered authoritative, this became the official view of the Seventh-day Adventist. Yet outside of the Adventist circle, Christians paid no attention to her visions of a young earth and flood geology. Many Christians still continued to believe in an old earth, and many were even fine with seeing evolution as God’s way of creating.
This would begin to change with the coming of George McCready Price (1870-1963) and his publication of The New Geology (1923). Price was a self taught geologist with little education outside of high school. As an amateur scientist, Price immersed himself in the writings of White, especially her visions of creation. His book therefore was meant to be “proof” against evolution and an old earth. Basically, it was an exhaustive rehashing of the visions of White. Price argued for a recent creation, which was created in six literal days, along with using Noah’s flood as a reason for the geological column. Price succeeded in getting White’s teachings beyond the thresholds of Adventism.
Yet things were about to pick up in a major way. Price’s book received great notoriety during the Scopes trials, through Williams Jennings Bryan, the man who prosecuted John Scopes. Yet even Bryan, the most famous anti-evolutionist of the early twentieth century, held to an old earth. However, a few decades later, John Whitcomb and Henry Morris would join forces with Price and bring White’s teachings into mainstream evangelicalism. In their book, The Genesis Flood, Whitcomb and Morris convinced millions of Christians to accept White’s teachings from her visions. The arguments from The Genesis Flood are basically Price’s from The New Geology, just without any acknowledgment of Price’s work.
The Genesis Flood was the book that started the movement of Young Earth Creationism. Since then, ministries like AiG and ICR have used these same arguments to claim that the fossil record was made by Noah’s flood and that a so called “vapor canopy” made the pre-flood earth more inhabitable. These
teachings are not based in the Bible, but in the visions of a poor, misguided
prophetess and her amateur geologist disciple. The ideas of YEC which are espoused by AiG and ICR, started in the visions of White, found their way into the writings of Price, and then were made famous by Whitcomb and Morris.
So, why don’t I teach YEC to my kids, or anyone else for that matter? Because not only are its claims biblically unverifiable, but it also stems from the visions of false prophet, and as we shall see in the next series of post, it is scientifically bankrupt.
For more on the history of YEC in America, go here.
[1]Ellen G. White, The Spirit of Prophecy, 4 vols,
1:85
[2]Ellen G. White, Patriarchs and Prophets, pp 107-108.