(2 of 2)
Belief in White as divinely inspired, a tenet for Adventists since her death in 1915, is now under scrutiny. In Prophetess of Health: A Study of Ellen G. White (Harper & Row), University of Wisconsin Historian Ronald L. Numbers contends that many of White's supposedly unique revelations simply reflected contemporary views, and may sometimes have been plagiarized from the writings of 19th century health reformers and diet faddists. Numbers, 34, formerly taught at two Adventist colleges and is the son of a minister and grandson of a president of the sect.
Temporal Foods. Among those whose writings influenced White, says Numbers, was Presbyterian Evangelist Sylvester Graham, a temperance lecturer and noted vegetarian who promoted the wheat flour used in "Graham Crackers." Like White, Graham preached that each person was born with a given amount of "vital force" and by intemperate sexuality could prematurely exhaust his or her capital. Women, he believed, had less to begin with.
Another colorful figure in the book is John Kellogg, the most prominent Adventist of his time, a famous physician who for many years ran the first Adventist hospital and medical college, in Battle Creek, Mich. Searching for palatable vegetarian foods, Kellogg invented both peanut butter and corn flakes. Though official Adventist historians say the records are ambiguous, Numbers states that Kellogg offered his church the patent rights to wheat flakes and corn flakes, which would have made it fabulously wealthy. But White rejected the idea as tying up too much time and talent in manufacturing mere temporal foods. Kellogg finally had to leave the church after he questioned the infallibility of White's visions.
Adventist leaders consider Numbers' book an important challenge to the faith. In June their North American president, Neal C. Wilson, sent his pastors a letter warning against those who question whether White was "a channel of God's supernatural revelation of Himself to his people." The church then provided its ministers with a 23-page booklet of rebuttal against Numbers' book. The booklet reminds Adventists of Ellen White's prediction that "the very last deception of Satan will be to make of none effect the testimony of the Spirit of God." It goes on to suggest that "the enemy of souls will use such a book to accomplish this very work."