Not To Be Counted As Dead Facts: A Philosophy of Seventh-day Adventist History

This paper will explore a philosophy of Seventh-day Adventist history. Do Seventh-day Adventists have a history? What do Adventists remember, and what do they forget? What stories do they tell each other, and why? Far too often, Seventh-day Adventists are fond of quoting Ellen G. White’s 1915 statement, “We have nothing to fear for the future, except as we shall forget the way the Lord has led us, and His teaching in our past history” without necessarily taking thought for the presuppositions and implications involved in the statement. What do we use to substantiate this past history? More broadly, this paper seeks to stimulate discussion on how Seventh-day Adventists should approach their past history and not be bound with the ways it has been discussed before. If Seventh-day Adventists merely rely on our shared knowledge, on the selected stories passed down to each subsequent generation, then we are substituting heritage for history, leaning on the denomination\u27s collective memory rather than investigating for ourselves as to what our past is