Amalgamation: Ellen G. White Statements
Regarding Conditions at the Time of the Flood
By Francis D. Nichol
(Adapted from his book Ellen G. White and Her Critics, pp. 306-322)
In the summer of 1864 the "Steam Press of the Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association" at Battle Creek, Michigan, published a three-hundred-page Ellen G. White volume entitled "Important Facts of Faith in Connection With the History of Holy Men of Old." This was the third of a four-volume series carrying the general title of Spiritual Gifts.
In this work the narrative of the early history of the world is presented, commencing with "The Creation" and carrying down to the giving of the law to Israel, these matters, as the author states in her Preface, having been opened to her in vision.
In Chapter 6, entitled "Crime Before the Flood," Mrs White in describing the deplorable conditions which led to the catastrophic destruction of the world, speaks of the amalgamation of man and beast. In the next chapter there is another similar reference. Occasionally inquiry is made as to just what Mrs White did write in this connection and what her statements meant, and why they are not found in her later works, now current. Some have linked the amalgamation statements with the memory of ancient myths regarding strange creatures produced by unholy alliance between human beings and beasts, and have asked if the E. G. White statements do not give support to these fables. It is also intimated that they tend toward evolution.
The only passages in Mrs White's writings that are of interest in this connection are found in Spiritual Gifts, volume 3, already mentioned and republished in Spirit of Prophecy, volume 1, in 1870. The first, in chapter 6, "Crime Before the Flood," is this:
But if there was one sin above another which called for the destruction of the race by the flood, it was the base crime of amalgamation of man and beast which defaced the image of God, and caused confusion everywhere. God...