This is false because the movement was headed not by EGW but John Miller a Baptist minister. At the time EGW was a Methodist and 17 years old. She was studying the prophecy of the 2300 days in Daniel with Miller along with an estimated 50-100K people from many churches and denominations. The SDA church did not even form until 1863 some 20 years laterRevelation 22:18For I testify unto every man that heareth the words of the prophecy of this book, If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book:
- 1845 Prediction: She reportedly saw that Christ would return in June 1845, but when the date passed, she claimed the vision was misunderstood—later saying it would be September 1845, which also failed.
Another false accusation. This is backward. In June 1851 she explicitly warned against tying the message to time and said people were wrong to make their calculations bend to “this next fall.” The primary source says: “the message must never be hung on time,” and “some were making everything bend to the time of this next fall … I saw that this was wrong.” So the documentary evidence shows her rebuking an autumn 1851 expectation, not predicting it.
- 1851 Prediction: She stated the time was short and Christ would return soon, referencing the fall of 1851 as a possible timeframe. This also did not occur.
The Ellen G. White Letters and Manuscripts: Volume 1
Anotated letters of Ellen G. White 1844-1859
In Present Truth (September 1, 1849), she wrote: “What we have seen and heard of the pestilence is but the beginning … Soon the dead and dying will be all around us.” But the passage continues into broad end-time judgment language: “Then the slain of the Lord will be from one end of the earth to the other.” That makes it read more like an apocalyptic warning than a dated prediction that the then-current cholera wave would keep escalating in the immediate short term.
- Cholera Epidemic (1849): She predicted widespread death from pestilence, saying “the dead and dying will be all around us,” but the epidemic subsided, and peace followed—leading to the removal of this passage in later editions.
This charge is overstated. The statement exists, but the wording is heavily conditional: England was “studying whether” to go to war, “if she should commence war abroad,” and “if England thinks it will pay.” The White Estate argument that the final “when England does declare war” functions in context like “if England does” is interpretive, but the bigger point is still true: this was not phrased as a clean unconditional prediction that England definitely would attack
- Predicting England would declare war on the U.S., which never happened.
That is misleadingly phrased. Ellen White absolutely denounced slavery, and one cited line says some political leaders were “Southern sympathizers” who “would preserve slavery as it is.” That reads as a judgment about their intentions and politics, not a prophecy that the Civil War would end with slavery preserved. Separately, in 1895 she did make a different statement: “Slavery will again be revived in the Southern States; for the spirit of slavery still lives.” That later statement is real and is often defended by Adventists as referring to coercive oppression or labor conditions in the South, but it is not the same claim as “the Civil War will preserve slavery.”
- Claiming slavery would be preserved by the Civil War—contradicted by history.
There is no published Ellen White statement I found where she herself names Jupiter or Saturn as inhabited worlds.
- Describing life on Jupiter and amalgamation of humans and beasts, which conflict with modern science and biblical teaching.