But the worst is still to come. Here we reach the high-water mark of blasphemy. Mrs. White has the effrontery to write: " It was seen also that while the sin-offering pointed to Christ as a sacrifice, and the high priest represented Christ as Mediator, the scapegoat typified SATAN the author of sin, upon whom the sins of the truly penitent will finally be placed. When the high priest by virtue of the blood of the sin-offering removed the sins from the sanctuary, he placed them upon the scapegoat. When Christ by virtue of His own blood, removes the sins of His people from the heavenly sanctuary at the close of His ministration, He will place them upon SATAN, who, in the execution of the judgment must bear the final penalty. The scapegoat was sent into the land not inhabited, never to come again into the congregation of Israel. So will Satan be forever banished from the presence of God and His people, and he will be blotted from existence in the final destruction of sin and sinners."
There is no half-page in Mrs. White's book that contains such a tissue of false reasoning as the specimen just quoted. Sin in heaven, the work of Atonement incomplete and, horrible above all conception, SATAN brought in as the one who is to bear the final penalty of sin, whilst thrown in at the end is the doctrine of annihilation. Fancy SATAN as Savior-a savior who cannot save himself, a savior to be finally annhilated. Scripture is distorted, and the blessed Lord blasphemed as to His Person and work. Need we go any further?
We may pity her ill health, taking the form of hysteria, catalepsy and neurotic trouble, and in justice to her this should be pointed out. It does not minimize the seriousness of her teachings, nor exalt the discernment of the men, who accept her visions and dreams as light from heaven, but it helps to explain the lack of mental balance in her writings.
Dr. William Russell, at one time a chief physician in the Seventh-Day Sanatorium at Battle Creek, long a Seventh-Day Adventist, wrote in 1869, "that Mrs. White's visions were the result of a diseased organization or condition of the brain or nervous system." Dr. Fairfield, likewise at one time an Adventist, and for years a physician in the same Sanatorium, wrote in 1887 that he had no doubt that her visions were " simply hysterical trances. Age itself had almost cured her.")