Was Ellen White a Plagiarist?

ellenYou have read all of the sites that attack her.

But was she really a plagiarist? In this short ebook, David Conklin attempts to answer the critics and explode the myths about her writings.

Conklin uses a new different methodology to evaluate the charges of plagiarism in Sister White’s writings.

Many attempt to accuse Ellen White of plagiarism by only comparing similarities between her writings and the writings she allegedly copied.

However what happens if you do not just look at similarities, but also look at differences?

When you only look at similarities and do not consider differences, according to Conklin, you can overestimate the possibility of  plagiarism.

In this ebook, Conklin has used an approach that emphasizes not just similarities, but also differences.

Download this ebook for free at the following link.

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Unchurched and the Third Angel's Message

800px-Calvary_baptist_church_lex_kyThere is a new word that has begun to arise amongst us.  It is the word “unchurched.”  The word is meant to imply that we should stop trying to preach to the “churched” who presumably already have God, and spend all of our efforts (or at least most of them) on the “unchurched.”   It sounds all right on the surface, but is it really our calling?

First of all, the word “churched” is not a Biblical word.  We have all heard the preachers tell us that just because you are a member of a church does not mean that you are converted.  But then some of these same people will change gears when talking about evangelism and speak about addressing the unchurched.  Simply put, we are told to preach to the world.  Whether Baptist, Methodist, Pentecostal, and yes even Adventist, we cannot assume that someone is in a saved relationship with God simply becuase they are “churched.”  We cannot assume that we have no message to take to someone simply becuase they are “churched.”

But more than that, we Adventists have taking our self identity from the Revelation 14 which we have thought was a message of warning to the entire world.  We are telling everyone to not get caught up with Revelation thirteen’s Sea Beast system.  (Revelation 14:6-12).   We are to warn the entire world which presumably includes “chruched” and “unchurched” of the great deception that will be put on humanity.  If that is our identity, to only look at a segment of the world is to betray our mission.

I have not done a scientific study of many of these mega churches, but from my interaction with members, I find that many of the members have simply moved from other churches in town.  They do reach some “unchurched” members, but they also reach a whole lot of “churched” members.  So in a practical sense, why is it that they grow on the basis of transfers and then want to tell you to only address “unchurched” and some want to even follow the idea.

So in a real sense, the whole idea of “unchurched” is against our mission.  On top of it all, who really follows that idea and refuses to engage in what they call “sheep stealing?”  No one, well maybe those few who have bought into the idea…

Keeping Your Eye on the Big Picture

wholeearthOver the last few weeks a theme has been coming up more and more, at least to me.  That is the idea of Adventists having a vested interest in things getting worse.  Therefore, they overemphasize “bad” things and underemphasize “good” things.  For example, when we find out that the crime rate may have gone down in a particular region, we hear nothing of it, but when we find out that particular storms are on the rise, they find themselves in our sermons and writings.

Interestingly, the last economic crash that began last year had even official Adventist websites and the like predicting that this was the very end, we were told that this was the end of everything.  Let alone the non-official sources that stated with certaintly that this crash was the begining of the very end of time.

And then when things blow over, we hear nothing from these prophets of doom.  I can remember one woman who told me that before Y2K the government was soon going to shut down the borders between the states.  We had to get out now!  Then when such far fetched news turned out to be false, she said nothing, but she did have another prediction about the government that she would tell anyone who would listen.

This kind of thing makes us all have “end of the world” fatigue and just give up on the whole thing.  Our ignorant rantings about what we know not and then our silence when  our illogical and incorrect predictions turn out to be false has created a culture where we either don’t care about the end or we are addicted to the charge of the next big thing.

What is of great interest to me, is how these predictions and prophets often lose track of the Big Picture.  We lose track of the Great Controversy and God’s quest to right all wrongs when we focus on these supposed end time events.   Many lose sight of who predicted what when we bounce from supposed end time events to other ones.  We sometimes end up quoting those who hate while we set aside the books that we say we believe.  To put it more bluntly, some of us end up reading anti-semetic sources who preach about a global economic plan by certain ethnic groups rather than the writings that have been placed in our hands, namely the Bible and the gift of Ellen White.

Perhaps it is time to get the big picture back.  Certainly there are indications that we are nearing the end, but every prediction by some crackpot is not such an indication.  Maybe if we kept the Big Picture we would be less likely to jump from false prediction to false prediction until we end up in an agnostic haze of wondering if the end really will come.