Father Miller's Daughter: Ellen Harmon White

by Donald Edward Casebolt

Publisher:

Wipf and Stock

, 2022

The crisis in Adventist eschatology is due to its reliance on Millerism's faulty methodology and falsified prophetic predictions. Ellen White taught that Father Miller's sole authority was Scripture and a concordance; that his interpretations were literal commonsense; and most importantly, that God had originated his date-setting conclusions by repeated angelic guidance. She announced that Miller was typological of John the Baptist; that Miller was a forerunner to Christ's Second Advent as the Baptist was to his First. This book will document that these three misconceptions are falsified by primary sources from roughly 1835 to 1851. Miller was highly dependent on disconfirmed, centuries-old, historicist speculations; his interpretations were allegorical and arbitrary not literal; his falsified proofs obviously not of angelic origin. For example, Miller initially predicted the Parousia and fall of the Ottoman Empire for 1839. White also endorsed Snow, Joseph Turner, and Crozier, whom, she said, God had given "true light." Post-Disappointment, these men continued using Miller's allegorical-typological-historicist methods, and Ellen Harmon "was taught" by these men. About two centuries after "The Midnight Cry" and the "end-times" signs of 1755, 1780, and 1833, the SDA church's tenacious reliance on Millerite proofs makes its eschatology increasingly implausible.

Praise for Father Miller's Daughter

“Casebolt shows that William Miller and some of his successors employed an allegorical-typological-historicist method. This led, long ago, to historically falsifiable results. He goes on to suggest how, in his opinion, some Adventists continue to rely—sometimes unwittingly—on this now-discredited method. . . . However one views Casebolt’s findings, there is much to learn from them.”

—Lawrence T. Geraty, La Sierra University



“With carefully documented research, Casebolt’s magnum opus unlocks the story of William Miller’s dependence on an allegorical-typological-historicist group of commentators—not solely on a Bible and a concordance—and then how Ellen White appropriated Miller’s disconfirmed, prophetic interpretations. Nearly two hundred years after 1844, this book reveals the magnitude of how history was ignored and embellished, and how at times, plain Bible texts were imaginatively used to create novel dogmas.”

—Scott A. LeMert, retired pastor

Product Details

• Title: Father Miller's Daughter: Ellen Harmon White
• Author: Donald Edward Casebolt
• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Print Publication Date: 2022
• Logos Release Date: 2022
• Language: English
• Resources: 1
• Format: Digital › Ebook
• ISBNs: 9781666798005, 9781666797992, 9781666797985, 1666798002, 1666797995, 1666797987
• Resource ID: LLS:9781666798005
• Resource Type: Monograph
• Metadata Last Updated: 2022-10-11T20:42:21Z

About the Author

Donald Edward Casebolt, who attended Seventh-day Adventist schools, including an MDiv Program at Andrews University, studied Semitic languages and Protestant theology one year at Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen, Germany, and spent two years in a doctoral program at the University of Chicago’s Oriental Institute. He published three articles in Spectrum relating to Ellen White’s authority and interpretation of Scripture. He is a retired nurse practitioner.