The Gift of Prophecy

From America to “All Parts of the World”

In 1863 the founders of the General Conference identified the mission of Seventh-day Adventists as “the great work of disseminating light upon the commandments of God, the faith of Jesus, and the truths connected with the third angel’s message.” ⁹ Yet most Seventh-day Adventists saw this “great work” as being extremely geographically limited for more than a decade after the founding, until indeed three decades had passed after the Great Disappointment. Only in 1874 did the remnant church send its first missionary abroad. Up to that point, most Adventists had not thought about mission—they had considered it and rejected it as unnecessary. In 1859 Uriah Smith, the editor of the Review and Herald, had noted in its pages that the third angel’s message was not “at present being proclaimed in any country besides our own”—and he had then argued that “this might not perhaps be necessary” on the ingenious grounds that “our own land is composed of people from almost every nation,” so that the apocalyptic prophecies of proclamation to “many peoples, and nations, and tongues, and kings” could be fulfilled within the confines of North America. In 1867 Smith returned to this theme, observing with satisfaction: “In what other land could the proclamation of the truth reach so many ‘peoples, nations and tongues’? People from every civilized part of the globe are here to be found.” ¹⁰ GOP 340.6

However, a small number did hold a wider view of mission, even at that early stage. James White, for instance, struggled to broaden church members’ horizons, but ruefully observed in 1870 that among “those who are ready . . . to help the cause in our own land . . . to help the cause in Europe does not look so clear.” ¹¹ GOP 341.1

Finally, in October 1874 [September 15], J. N. Andrews sailed for Europe, the first Seventh-day Adventist overseas missionary. A few weeks later Stephen Haskell wrote in the Review and Herald: “It once required a great stretch of faith to believe this work would find its way to every nation, kindred, tongue, and people, and lead thousands of persons of different nationalities to embrace the Sabbath of the Lord and kindred truths.” While Haskell acknowledged that church leaders’ initial “ideas of this work were altogether too small at first,” they were, he wrote, now making “broader and more extensive plans.” ¹² GOP 341.2

What had changed the minds of church leaders and church members? It was partly the trenchant advocacy of James White, and partly the pleas for help from small congregations of Seventh-day Adventists in Europe, arising from Adventist literature sent from America and from the efforts of unofficial missionaries. But it was also partly the fruit of Ellen White’s prophetic ministry. GOP 341.3

One of her earliest—and most important—divine revelations had weighty implications for foreign missions. At a meeting in Boston on November 18, 1848, Ellen received a vision. On waking, she instructed her husband, James: “You must begin to print a little paper and send it out to the people. Let it be small at first; but as the people read, they will send you means with which to print, and it will be a success from the first.” This vision is famous among Seventh-day Adventists as the origin of our publishing work. But there was an important addendum to the vision: “From this small beginning it was shown to me to be like streams of light that went clear round the world.” ¹³ Implicit in this revelation, then, was that the seventh-day Sabbathkeepers had a global future. GOP 341.4

Having laid down this first marker, so to speak, for the next 20 years internal matters absorbed Ellen White’s attention and her visions largely dealt with doctrinal and ecclesiological matters. But after the Sabbatarians organized as Seventh-day Adventists, she started to receive divine promptings highlighting the need for the third angel’s message to be disseminated beyond the shores of North America. At first, consonant with the 1848 vision, Ellen White emphasized the potential role of publishing in foreign mission. In December 1871 a testimony on missionary work admonished: “There has been but little of the missionary spirit among Sabbathkeeping Adventists.” There was work for young people, both male and female, she declared: “Young men should be qualifying themselves by becoming familiar with other languages, that God may use them as mediums to communicate His saving truth to those of other nations.” Similarly, “young women” should “devote themselves to God,” fitting “themselves for usefulness by studying and becoming familiar with other languages,” so that they “could devote themselves to the work of translating.” White concluded: “Our publications should be printed in other languages, that foreign nations may be reached.” ¹⁴ GOP 341.5

In 1873 she was shown very clearly that Adventist publications should be printed in various languages and sent overseas. She expressed this strongly in an article published in January 1874, in which she also adumbrated a position she would later frequently reiterate, namely, that the cost of missions is to be no object. But first she expressed, in very moving terms, the potential value of Adventist literature. “I have been shown,” she wrote, “that our publications should be printed in different languages and sent to every civilized country, at any cost” (“uncivilized” countries were left unaddressed, but this would change, later in her ministry). GOP 342.1

I have been shown that the publications already have been doing a work upon some minds in other countries . . . . I was shown men and women studying with intense interest . . . tracts upon present truth. They would read the evidences so wonderful and new to them and would open their Bibles with a deep and new interest, as subjects of truth that had been dark to them were made plain. . . . As they searched the Scriptures . . . angels were hovering over them and impressing their minds with the truths contained in the publications they had been reading. I saw them holding . . . tracts in one hand, and the Bible in the other, while their cheeks were wet with tears, and bowing before God in earnest, humble prayer, to be guided into all truth—the very thing he was doing for them before they called upon him. And when the truth was received in their hearts, and they saw the harmonious chain of truth, the Bible was to them a new book; they hugged it to their hearts with grateful joy, while their countenances were all aglow with happiness and holy joy. These were not satisfied with merely enjoying the light themselves, and they began to work for others. . . . The way is thus preparing to do a great work in the distribution of tracts and papers in other languages. ¹⁵ GOP 342.2

In the same article she also addressed (for the first but not the last time) the related issues of money and mission: “What is the value of money at this time,” she wrote, “in comparison with the value of souls? Every dollar of our means should be considered as the Lord’s, not ours; and as a precious trust from God to us . . . to be . . . carefully used in the cause of God, in the work of saving men and women.” She reproached her readers: “There has been a slothful neglect, and a criminal unbelief among us as a people which has kept us back from doing the work God has left us to do in letting our light shine forth to those of other nations. There is a fearfulness to venture out and to run risks in this great work, fearing that the expenditure of means would not bring returns.” Mission, she indicated, must not be treated like business, declaring: “Men will invest in patent rights and meet with heavy losses, and it is taken as a matter of course. But in the work and cause of God, men are afraid to venture. Money seems to them to be a dead loss that does not bring immediate returns when invested in the work of saving souls.” White lamented that means were “selfishly retained” and “so sparingly invested in the cause of God.” ¹⁶ GOP 342.3

In January 1875, less than three months after Andrews’ departure, White was shown in unmistakable terms that many more Adventists would go abroad from North America. Taken into vision, White saw the world, covered in “darkness like the pall of death”—and then saw it transformed by, as she exultantly exclaimed, “light, a little light, more light, much light!” After waking, she explained to witnesses that the multiplying pinpricks of light she had seen, which eventually circled the globe, represented the multiplication of Adventist “printing presses in other countries, printing the message in many languages”—and then “it was scattered like the leaves of autumn.” ¹⁷ But the vision showed that it was not just Adventist publications but Adventist publishing houses (and thus Seventh-day Adventists) that would go around the world. GOP 343.1

It is important to stress, indeed, that Ellen White never believed that putting publications in the post to Europe was a substitute for actual people who would witness to Jesus and prophetic truth. Instead, she saw literature as a means to an end: a way to prepare the field for missionaries, who, moreover, could do a work that publications alone couldn’t achieve. In her 1871 testimony White specified: “Much can be done through the medium of the press, but still more can be accomplished if the influence of the labors of the living preacher goes with our publications. Missionaries are needed to go to other nations to preach the truth in a guarded, careful manner.” She looked forward to the prospect of “missionaries volunteering to go to other nations to carry the truth to them,” at which, she wrote, church members in America would “be encouraged and strengthened.” ¹⁸ GOP 343.2

In 1874, in California, Ellen White had received another vision that addressed mission. In it she heard and saw an angelic messenger enjoin an audience of Adventist leaders: “You are entertaining too limited ideas of the work for this time. You are trying to plan the work so that you can embrace it in your arms. You must take broader views. Your light must not be put under a bushel or under a bed, but on a candlestick that it may give light to all that are in the house. Your house is the world.” This was a rebuke to those church leaders who believed that, by preaching to immigrants to the United States, the Seventh-day Adventist Church would be fulfilling its prophetic mission of preaching “to all nations, and kindreds, and tongues, and peoples.” The messenger went on to reprove the view, held by some Adventists, that because Christ’s coming was imminent, there was no time to evangelize the rest of the world. “It may be that you will not at once see the result of your labor, but this should not discourage you Noah preached for one hundred and twenty years to the people before the flood; yet out of the multitudes on the earth at that time only eight were saved.” ¹⁹ GOP 343.3

White’s vision concluded in terms that brooked no misunderstanding. “The . . . binding claims of the fourth commandment must be presented in clear lines. . . . The message will go in power to all parts of the world, to Oregon, to Europe, to Australia, to the islands of the sea, to all nations, tongues, and peoples. . . . Many countries are waiting for the advanced light the Lord has for them.” ²⁰ Such unambiguous statements meant there would be no more open resistance to expansion overseas, albeit private reluctance would linger into the twentieth century. GOP 344.1