Dear Brother ___________,

Thank you for contacting the Ellen G. White Estate. I am not aware of any place in her writings where Mrs. White discusses this matter. The Latin word "vicarious" appears nowhere in her published writings, and I think she would need to cite that in order to make the point. She just doesn't deal with it. In one of her earliest visions, recorded in a Broadside and in A Word to the "Little Flock," she wrote:

I saw all that "would not receive the mark of the Beast, and of his Image, in their foreheads or in their hands," could not buy or sell. I saw that the number (666) of the Image Beast was made up; and that it was the beast that changed the Sabbath, and the Image Beast had followed on after, and kept the Pope's, and not God's Sabbath. And all we were required to do, was to give up God's Sabbath, and keep the Pope's, and then we should have the mark of the Beast, and of his Image. {Broadside3, April 7, 1847 par. 5}

The number in parenthesis here, 666, is thought to have been inserted by James White as part of his editing of the publication. The connection of the Image Beast to the Pope is clear in this paragraph, but there is no "unpacking" of 666.

I hope this may help. Thank you for writing, and God bless!

William Fagal
Associate Director
Ellen G. White Estate
12501 Old Columbia Pike
Silver Spring, MD 20904-6600 U.S.A.
Phone: 301 680-6550
FAX: 301 680-6559
E-mail: [email protected]
Web: www.WhiteEstate.org