I am doing some remodeling in an old farmhouse. The original ceiling is the lath and plaster. The previous owner then covered it by gluing ceiling tiles directly to the ceiling. My initial intent was to cover the ceiling tiles with a new layer of "blue board" and have it replastered. However my plasterer indicated that this would add too much weight (the ceiling would consist of lath/plaster, ceiling tile, blue board, thin coat plaster). I started pulling off the ceiling tiles, but the thousands of glue blotches are darn near impossible to scarp off. I tried a heat gun which seems to work somewhat (it results in about 3 to 4 minutes per glue blotch). At this rate, it will take many days of scraping. Does anyone have any suggestions? I would like to stay with a simple country / shaker appearance.

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After you get the glue off what are you going to do next, replaster or blue board then replaster? Reason I ask is if you do the latter why not just cover the glue? Get a hammer and flat chisel and hammer off the high spots of glue then cover over.
One option would be gut the ceilings down to the framing. This is a messy job but it also gives you an opportunity to run new wiring, plumbing, heating/ac ducts/pipes and even insulate.

Skiberger, Thanks for the advice. My hope was to basically keep the ceiling as is (old plaster) and just skim coat that areas that needed to be touched up. However with the number of glue blotches , you are right I'll basically have to skim the entire ceiling. I'll try your suggestion of chisling the glue. What I have seen so far is that the glue is tough enough that the chisel does not cut it off as much as ride up over the glue!
Yes we also thought of tearing down the entire ceiling. Actually this is my preference but after seeing the mess from doing this to portions of the walls my wife was hoping to have a "cleaner" option!!