Dear ___________,
Thank you for contacting the Ellen G. White Estate. I know of no general statement that Mrs. White made, claiming that parables were all stories from real life. She did make this claim for the story of the Good Samaritan, however. After introducing the occasion for the story, she wrote (COL 379), "Again Christ refused to be drawn into controversy. He answered the question by relating an incident, the memory of which was fresh in the minds of His hearers. 'A certain man,' He said, 'went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among thieves, which stripped him of his raiment, and wounded him, and departed, leaving him half dead.'
"In journeying from Jerusalem
Mrs. White made a similar (but not identical) claim for Jesus' parable of the sower (COL 34):
Beside the sea lay the beautiful plain of Gennesaret, beyond rose the hills, and upon hillside and plain both sowers and reapers were busy, the one casting seed and the other harvesting the early grain. Looking upon the scene, Christ said--
"Behold, the sower went forth to sow; and as he sowed, some seeds fell by the wayside . . . ."
Some of Jesus' parables thus drew on common experiences that many of his hearers had had. In such cases, Jesus was not necessarily telling about a specific sower on a certain day, but about typical experiences in real life, from which He drew lessons.
Some of His parables, though, may not have had either a specific or a typical basis. Was there a real-life father with two sons who experienced the roles of the prodigal and the "dutiful" son? Mrs. White makes no such explicit claim, and I suspect that the story was an illustration rather than a historical narrative. I am certain that this is so in the case of the rich man and Lazarus, for Mrs. White says the picture Jesus drew of the afterlife reflected common belief, not Bible teaching (see COL 263). And Jesus used the story, not to show what transpires after death (as some of our evangelical friends maintain) but to show the danger of failing to heed what Scripture says, even about Him (see Luke 16:31).
So I think there is more than one answer to your question. It depends on which parable is under consideration.
I hope this is helpful. Thank you for writing, and God bless!
William Fagal
Associate Director
Ellen G. White Estate
12501 Old Columbia Pike
Silver Spring, MD 20905-6600 U.S.A.
Phone: 301 680-6550
FAX: 301 680-6559
http://www.WhiteEstate.org
