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Post Falls SDA Church

Willard Santee

Historical Interview of Carrie Johnson (Adventist History Concerning Elder DM Canright)

The interview you're about to hear was recorded in Michigan in the winter of 1970 while I was attending Andrews University.

It was recorded on a reel-to-reel tape, and over the years some of the coding deteriorated, leaving the tape inaudible in a number of places.

Thus it has been spliced together and re-recorded on cassette.

However, even though the tape is of poor quality, the majority of the interview is still there and of great historical value.

You will hear the voice and personal testimony of Mrs.

Carrie Johnson, who was the private secretary of the late Elder D.M.

In 1889, Canwright published a 413-page book entitled, Seventh-day Adventism Renounced.

It is still in circulation today and is 1 of the most anti-adventist books ever written.

In fact it can be said that all the present-day charges against Ellen White and the Seventh-day Adventist Church have basically come from the ink of D.

By the time Kenwright died in 1919, his book had gone through 14 printings and was widely circulated throughout the United States as well as many parts of the world.

Carrie Johnson, you will hear her eyewitness account of the man few people ever knew.

It is this personal documentation of Elder Dudley M.

Canright that must be taken into account when reading his works.

Joining me in the interview is Pastor Lyle Albrecht, a college classmate and personal friend.

Johnson to come up here and we're going to interview her and talk to her a little bit about some of the things that are not in this book that will be brought out, hopefully by this camp meeting that our press is running presently.

Why don't you just step right in the middle here if you'd do that.

You don't mind separating 2 good pastors.

It's nice to be at the interior part of a family.

That's the most important part, isn't it?

As I recall, she told me that she was dying of leukemia, and I believe it was in the Battle Creek Sanitarium, is that correct?

She was dying of leukemia and she was taking to her grave probably 1 of the greatest insights that this church has ever had pertaining to DM Kenwright.

White has written many testimonies regarding D.

Johnson had within her mind while she lay there on that hospital bed a story that would be of an utmost value to Seventh-day Adventist people such as you and me.

And she told us some interesting things here we don't have time to get into them and how some of our leaders went there and tried to get from her these secrets that she had she let it slip out I think you said that you had something to give and anyway the word got around and before long she had people there trying to get from her that secret that she had cherished so long.

Kenwright was what was embodied in a diary that was in my possession dated 1867.

We'll get into some of the things in that diary in just a moment.

But first, a little more about this secret that she kept secret.

She had made a pledge of loyalty I believe to him, did you not?

Not to him, but to the owner of the college in which I was at the time.

Okay, and you were working as a secretary at this time, right?

And you made a pledge to him that you would not do what?

That I wouldn't tell what I heard or what I saw in the office where he was going to place me as a secretary for an important ex-adventist man.

I had seen him before, but I had never met him.

And when I was introduced to him in this office, and I had made the loyalty pledge that I wouldn't repeat what I had seen or heard.

And he took me in and he introduced me to D.M.

Well, I had seen this man a few weeks before that because I was working in the Battle Creek Sanitarium in the kitchen.

And there was a rather important person that used to come in and often times it was on my duty to pick up his tray and see him in a corner of the kitchen where he would get his meals.

He was provided with a, he could come in and get these meals free.

I didn't know him, neither did the girls that were in the kitchen, but we named him Mr.

And my surprise, of course, was that when I was introduced to Mr.

Kammerich in this office, I knew him formally as Mr.

Could you give them just a little description about what he looked like when you first saw him here in the cafeteria?

Was he a wealthy man, a nice groomed, clean cut man?

I knew to begin with that he was not a man that was on his own support because of the fact that he was coming in with courtesy tickets for his meals.

And he wasn't permitted to eat in the dining room.

He was only permitted to eat in the kitchen.

So you knew then that his source of income was relatively low.

And his appearance, of course, was in the same category.

And at that time, he had an open socket in his head, his left eye was gone and he didn't wear a patch.

Once in a while he'd wear a patch when he's out on the street or in church, but ordinarily he said the patch was too hot and he never was.

But he was a man that at the time that I met him, he had just lost his wife that very night.

And so he was in deep grief and he just constantly cried and it was very difficult for me to take his dictation.

Now this dictation that you took for him this first time had reference to his wife, was it not?

He dictated the obituary, which was the first piece that you had that I had taken.

It might be interesting also to note where his wife spent the last year of her life.

Did he support her financially during this last year?

No, she was living with her brother and sister.

Now, was Can Wright a Seventh-day Adventist at this time of his wife's death?

Okay, so he was not a Seventh-day Adventist, but what was he?

Did he belong to any denomination at this time?

Yes, he was very proud of the title, Pastor Emeritus of the Baptist Berean Church of Grand Rapids.

Now here he had dropped out quite some time before, out of the Adventist church, and yet we find him coming back to the Adventist people for sympathy rather than going to the Baptist.

Sympathy and support and the Battle Creek people, the Battle Creek church did raise funds for him and got him dressed up and clothed for the funeral.

So the Adventist then actually had an open heart toward him, even though at the time he had renounced the faith and he walked out knowingly.

He had many letters from the general conference men in condolence and also money contributions.

Let's go back just for a little bit and see what type of a person Kenwright was at the prime of his early experience in coming in to the Adventist message and show what really took place that brought him to the position that we've just been speaking about.

A man whose wife has to be supported by her brother, a man who physically is not able to take care of himself, he was a sickly man, and also eating from the meal tickets that were given to him through charity here.

And let's go back just for a moment and see what kind of a person Ken Wright was.

1 night he was sitting on a park bench in Chicago just after he had preached a dynamic sermon, I believe it was something about the new earth, the earth made new, but he had packed the auditorium when he was preaching, the balcony was filled, and as a young minister he was in a class, what we would call today a preaching practicum where he was trying to preach and he had a friend up there who was a friend in the balcony DW Revis some of the elder pure people here don't know him too and so DW Revis was up here and what was he supposed to be doing as Canrite spoke?

He was commissioned, I guess you would call it, to listen and criticize Canrite in this large audience.

I understand that there were 1, 300 people in this church in Chicago, where Alexandre, at that time, was preaching.

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Historical Interview of Carrie Johnson (Adventist History Concerning Elder DM Canright)

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