Author Q & A
Steve Daily will publish his latest book, The White Estate Fraud, on October 18, 2023.
Why did you write this book?
I never planned to write it. This project found me. It became a natural follow-up to my 2020 book, Ellen G. White: A Psychobiography. I met a lady named Nancy Paige on my Facebook thread, and I learned from her and her brother Ted how Arthur White (grandson of Ellen White) had secretly colluded with their grandma, Carrie Johnson, to totally fabricate a book that was designed to destroy the reputation and credibility of D. M. Canright who was the most effective critic of Ellen White and the Seventh Day Adventist Church in Adventist history. When I wrote Psychobiography, many SDAs tried to claim that I was largely echoing many of the criticisms of Canright that had supposedly been discredited by the church. But this book shows that Canright was a great Christian minister who dearly loved the Lord, and was a man of remarkable courage and integrity, and that all the fabrications generated by Adventism through their tragic fraud against him have now been proven to be false. I want to point people to Jesus. I want them to enter into a relationship with God and get to know the God of the Bible. Unfortunately the SDA Church has committed high-handed fraud by following a false prophet and covering for, as well as emulating, her deceptions. This is all carefully documented in my Psychobiography and in this new book.
Why publish this book now?
A lot of people in the SDA Church don’t know about the many things that their denomination has been covering up since the inception of the movement. Many of them don’t even know about the things the denomination has had to admit to. For example, a man named Veltman released a report for the General Conference that took 8 years to investigate. It said that Ellen White took from 23 sources to compile a book she called The Desire of Ages, but was largely plagiarized. Veltman concluded that her work was derived from others and not original. That’s different than what she claimed. She claimed her writings came to her from God. I can imagine that with artificial intelligence and all the technology available today that someone could investigate her books in 8 minutes. I think a lot of Adventists just aren’t aware of Ellen White’s behavior. It wasn’t just a little bit of plagiarism. It was a lot. It’s how she operated. That was how she wrote. She had two primary assistants who became highly troubled by her plagiarism as they became more and more aware of it. Ellen tried to hide it from them. And one of them, Marian Davis, wrote “Ellen’s book” Steps To Christ which was largely plagiarized from other authors. They knew her method of drawing from a lot of books to create her own book. So they used her plagiarized materials to create a new book. They wanted to keep their jobs. Ellen White’s plagiarism is so much more widespread than many people have been led to believe. The SDA headquarters has known this for a long time. The Veltman report came out in 1990. I think a lot of Adventists just aren’t aware. There is so much evidence now that shows that Ellen White’s ministry was not legitimate, as I pointed out in my previous book Ellen White: A Psychobiography. And I want to be clear, I’m not the first to write about this subject. A man named Ron Numbers published a book in 1976. Another author named Walter Rea published one in the early 1980’s. And there have been others in the past few years as well. But, I am the first to publish about this fraud by Arthur White and the White Estate.
What do you want people to know about Ellen White?
She supposedly had 2,000 visions, yet visions are very rare in the Bible. Even when someone in the Bible had more than one vision or dream it typically wasn’t more than a few. Well Ellen White claimed to have all kinds of visions and far too many of them were petty. She once had a squabble with her publisher about the percentage of book royalties she should get. And then the next day she told the man that she had had a vision during the night and she was supposed to get the percentage of money she was wanting. I think most SDAs just don’t know about all this because their church has been hiding it from them. She made a lot of money off her book sales and she was pushing people to buy them. She said that God showed her that these books should be bought by and put in every Adventist home. Ellen claimed to have God as her publicist. She made the equivalent of at least 3 million dollars in our money today during her lifetime from her books alone. But the “visions” were also used to falsely accuse her critics and to literally financially exploit her own followers, telling them to sell their homes and possessions and give the money to “the cause” which Ellen and her husband controlled, and by which they became extremely wealthy. Ellen’s own son, Willie who fully supported her, admitted that the church had been totally deceived with regard to the nature of his mother’s “visions.” I want Adventists to know the truth about the Bible and how SDAs have distorted it based on the “visions” of Ellen White. I want people to know that Ellen White lived a luxurious lifestyle with many homes. Some of them were mansions in that day. She had a host of servants helping her with daily duties. She had people cooking for her, doing cleaning, the washing. All so she could maintain her “gift.” Well, her gift was merely fraud. Many Seventh-day Adventists live in modest homes and do their own housework, yet they’re supposed to believe that Ellen White deserved all those things? I think most Seventh-day Adventists just aren’t aware of these things. A lot of folks of the older generation or those that now follow her teachings could have lived with more joy, but Ellen took their joy. I regret that many people felt they had to live under her bondage and controlling testimonies. I’m very sad about that. There are people who are worried about their salvation because of some of the things Ellen White wrote, and that’s not biblical. Again, I’m very sad because of that. And I’m not trying to rip into the Seventh Day Adventist Church. It has a lot of great things about it. It tries to promote God (although an unhealthy picture of God). It promotes good living. It has schools and retreat centers and youth camps and all the rest. But if something is based on fraud, I would hope that Adventists who learn about this would speak up and say it’s time to disregard the ministry of Ellen White and move forward as a Protestant denomination dedicated to worshiping and following only the God of the Bible. And this latest book shows that her grandson Arthur was just as fraudulent as she was.
How do you think the Seventh Day Adventist Church will respond to your book?
Well it didn’t try to refute a lot of the things that were in my first book on Ellen White, the Psychobiography. They resorted to mostly false character attacks against me. Their academic response was quite lame. The Psychobiography had 326 extensive endnotes which provided overwhelming source documentation concerning Ellen’s fraud. And not SDA scholars or academics have come close to refuting them or even effectively questioning them. The top SDA leaders have been invited to appear with me on various media programs to discuss these issues and they have all refused. Their strategy seems to be to suppress and deny as best they can, but their denials cannot stand up to the evidence. So I can’t say what their response will be to the new book, but it involves such ridiculous fraud that I wouldn’t be totally surprised if some of them would throw Arthur White under the bus posthumously, because he certainly deserves it. But as far as Ellen is concerned, my guess is that it will be hard for many leaders in that denomination to be able to see her fraud and admit to it because they either have academic degrees relating to Ellen White or positions that they cannot afford to lose. But anyone who does see it and admits it is worth commending. Several church leaders have come to me confidentially and thanked me for writing the book, recognized it is true, but admitted that they can’t afford to say this in public. And I recognize that it takes great courage for any Seventh-day Adventist church leader or official who decides to set her ministry aside and be done with it. I would only have love and grace and understanding and acceptance. I want them to see the truth. I want everyone to seek truth—me, them, everyone. Jesus said the truth will set you free.
Why do you think Ellen White’s ministry continues to live on with many people?
First of all, because most SDAs have no idea how deceptive Ellen White was, and how deceptive the SDA Church has been covering for her. Secondly, I think because it’s fun to think that you have inside information. People like to think they are special. Ellen White convinced Adventists that they alone were the Remnant Church of God, they were the only true law keepers and Sabbath keepers, they alone had the true last-day prophet for the ages, who called herself the Spirit of Prophecy (a blasphemous title). If all the rest of Christians have had the Bible for almost 2,000 years, it’s heady to think that you’ve been given a gift of getting to know inside information about the Bible that only your church denomination has been given. Obviously I think that ministry was based on fraud, but that’s why I think the Seventh Day Adventist Church and other denominations too have added to the Bible in a way that they claim has authority. The problem is that those additions are quite easy to prove false. The CES Letter to the Mormon religion pointed out a lot of things that weren’t refuted by that denomination. That church only made character attacks on the author. He was a very sincere and dedicated Mormon, and they didn’t even try to answer his questions. I think the SDA Church will respond in a similar way to me--not with refuting the material but questioning my character or my background.
What was the response of independent SDA media to your previous book about Ellen White?
The magazine-slash-online outlet called Spectrum published a review of Psychobiography. I know that writer well. I thought that review was more down on my book than it should have been. And I think his critiques weren’t warranted. I wrote Spectrum a response to that review. But they didn’t publish it. In my response I picked apart his review, and I have included it in this new book as an appendix. I know that Adventist Today conducted a one-hour interview with me that was posted on their website, but after some establishment types complained the interview was taken down and they got a new board chair very quickly. I can’t say if the two are linked, but the timing of it was interesting, especially when the chair had just recently been hired. Basically I would say that SDA media want to keep the denomination going in its current form so they can have status to either promote it or critique it. I don’t know that these independent magazines really want to help the SDA Church seek the truth about itself. It would mean a lot of changes would need to be made. But maybe they would. I can’t quite figure some of them out or why they won’t publish more about problems with Ellen White’s ministry. When Ron Numbers wrote his great book, Prophetess of Health, Spectrum severely criticized him. Now that he has passed, they praise him. And again, that’s why I wonder if they’re just wanting to keep the SDA Church going in its current form so they can have a platform to be experts as reporting on a religious denomination.
What theology would need to change if Ellen White’s ministry were dismissed by the SDA Church?
Perfectionism and their sanctuary doctrine, keeping the fourth commandment is necessary for salvation or that it’s the Mark of the Beast. See, the thing is that she wrote so much. You’ve got to remember that Ellen White wrote a lot, and the SDA Church alleges that her writings and teachings have spiritual authority. But most people don’t know that if you add up all the things that Ellen White wrote, it’s something like 10 or 12 times the amount or length of the Bible. That’s a lot of additional things to know, and a lot of it isn’t always the same. For example, sometimes she wrote very contradictory things. The Adventist Church is so pluralistic today, they have no theological cohesion, their strategy seems to be keep everybody who pays tithe no matter what they believe, as long as they don’t make trouble or point out the gross deceptions of the prophet and the church.
Do you think people really want to know these troubling things about Ellen White?
Some do and some don’t. I have had many SDAs thank me for writing what I have written and enlightening them. Others have thanked me confidentially, but admitted that they can’t acknowledge the truth of what I’ve written and keep their jobs or positions. Still others hate anything that is a threat to their hold on power and control over the SDA people. I think the majority of Adventists would want to know the truth, but they have been brain-washed to automatically reject anything that is critical of Ellen White. Many SDA parents are tired of seeing their kids leave the denomination for another church or to go to nothing at all. I’m not saying that Ellen White is the only reason a person would leave the SDA faith. But what I am saying is that if there is an element of untruth in a movement, or if there’s something that doesn’t pass the smell test, young people will be quick to pick up on it. Again, Jesus said the truth will set you free. I would hope that SDA denominational leaders would be more interested in helping their young people discover the truth about God instead of keeping fraud going just to protect their jobs in the denomination. We should all be committed to investigating and judging what is true.