doctrines. He discusses the Ten Commandments, the Sabbath, the 2300-days prophecy, Creation, the age of Earth, and the Flood. Like an Adventist evangelist, Gleason shows how the accuracy of the Nebuchadnezzar prophecies of Daniel 2 demonstrates that the Bible is really from heaven. But he takes the argument one step further: if the Bible is


inspired, honest people must acknowledge that the Bible does not support the “pagan idolatry” of a globular Earth. Gleason’s decisive stroke, added at the very end of the book, is


a quote by White that describes our universe made new, in which she writes, “With undimmed vision they gaze upon the glory of creation—suns and stars and systems, all in their appointed order circling the throne of Deity.”8 Gleason asks, “If anyone can so construe the above quotations


and language spoken, as to place the Trone of God and His Son anywhere else than on this earth when the “restitution of all things” shall have taken place? Advocate it who will, I cannot.”9


Ellen White’s Position White first mentions flat-earth theory in a letter to Marvin Herrick Brown, president of the New York Conference, in 1887. Her attitude was the same as it would be 17 years later: the issue isn’t a priority. “I learn by letters from New York that Bro. Brown has accepted


and is now preaching the flat-world theory. Is it possible that this theory has been brought by Bro. Wilcox from England and that you have accepted it and are teaching it? My brother, our work is to teach the third angel’s message.”10 Milton Charles Wilcox, first editor of Present Truth published in Grimsby, England, seemed not a favorite of Ellen White.11


She


wrote: “It is a weakness of Eld. Wilcox to get hold of hobbies and to stick to some things that he had better let alone. Any kind of a theory or hobby that Satan can lead the minds of men to dwell upon he will draw their attention to so that they shall not be engaged in giving the solemn message for this time.… It is better to pray and humble the soul before God and let the world, round or flat, be just as God has made it.”12 Brown replied from Adams Center, New York, on April 26, 1887, confessing that he not only had some private interest in the flat Earth theory but also had engaged in some conversations on the subject. Aſter addressing a meeting in Melrose, Massachusetts, in


the late summer of 1904, White records in her diary of Sunday, August 28: “An urgent request came to me from a man who desired to discuss with me in regard to the round world, to him a very important matter. My answer was, I have a message to this people in regard to the life they must live in this world,


to prepare them for future life which measures with the life of God. We have nought to do with the question whether this world is round or flat.”13 Could the man she described have been Gleason? By this


time, train travel from Buffalo would have made a visit to Massachusetts convenient. White returns to the matter at least thrice more. In a letter to


her son Willie, dated the following day, she says she told this man that “when Christ gave my commission to do the work He had placed upon me, the flat or round world was not included in the message.”14


On September 12, writing from Omaha under the


heading Non-Essential Subjects to Be Avoided, she mentions the encounter again and complains, “Wherever we go, we shall find men ready with some side issue.”15 On September 4, in a sermon in Middletown, Connecticut,


White shapes it into a lesson on character: “I had one come up to me and want me to give information about a round or flat world. Said I, I have no such burden on my soul at all. I have nothing to say to you or to anybody else about a round or a flat world. What we want is a round character. We have altogether too much of a flat character, and we want now to think of building a character that shall be round and perfect, as our Father which is in heaven is perfect.”16 In none of her replies does she give an inspired answer to whether


Earth is actually round or flat. She simply dismisses it as a question that need not be discussed and which, in fact, may have no definitive answer: “God has not given it to them to solve.”17 Elsewhere in her writings, though, she does appear to affirm


a round earth. Discussing the Sabbath, she declares that “God made His Sabbath for a round world; and when the seventh day comes to us in that round world, controlled by the sun that rules the day, it is the time in all countries and lands to observe the Sabbath.”18


An “Unpopular Truth”? Given Gleason’s appreciation for the fundamentalist hermeneutic that informed Adventist teachings such as prophecy and Creation, he was understandably disappointed that Adventists were unwilling to include flat-earth theory in their end-time message. Te planet’s shape, he was convinced, was a testing truth. Reading his book, one gets the feeling that Gleason is writing


with Ellen White as his primary audience. To the argument that it was not essential, he replies: “True, it may not make any difference to us in regard to its shape, but it will make a difference whether we speak, think, act and teach the truth or a lie.”19 And he reminds Adventists of an oſt-repeated maxim “that an


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