The Gift of Prophecy (The Role of Ellen White in God’s Remnant Church)

Predicting the future

With few exceptions, predicting the future was only a small part of the work of biblical prophets. We find the same to be true of the life and work of Ellen White; her work consisted primarily in counseling and guiding the church. However, she was given a number of prophecies, particularly in regard to end-time events. GP 71.3

One of the most interesting of her prophecies is found in Testimonies, volume 5. In 1885 she wrote, “When Protestantism shall stretch her hand across the gulf to grasp the hand of the Roman power, when she shall reach over the abyss to clasp hands with spiritualism, when under the influence of this threefold union, our country shall repudiate every principle of its Constitution as a Protestant and republican government, and shall make provision for the propagation of papal falsehoods and delusions, then we may know that the time has come for the marvelous working of Satan and that the end is near” (5T 451). GP 71.4

In 1885 the ecumenical movement as we know it today was a long way off in the future. At that time, not only were Protestants quarreling among themselves in regard to “sheep stealing” in the mission fields, but most of them were violently opposed to the Roman Catholic Church as well—as some still are today in Northern Ireland. GP 71.5

The idea of an ecumenical movement was conceived at the 1910 World Missionary Conference in Edinburgh. However, because of the First and Second World Wars, almost another forty years passed before the ecumenical baby was born. In 1948, 351 delegates from 147 Protestant churches gathered in Amsterdam, Holland, to organize the World Council of Churches. Since then, the ecumenical movement has grown. Today, about 340 churches with almost 600 million members belong to the World Council of Churches, which is headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland. GP 72.1

During the first twelve years after 1948, only Protestant churches belonged to the World Council of Churches. Then in 1961, the Orthodox churches began to join, and by 1964, practically all the Orthodox churches were members of that organization. However, the largest Christian church— the Roman Catholic Church, with more than one billion members—still has not joined the World Council of Churches as a member. What then about Ellen White’s prediction that “Protestantism shall stretch her hand across the gulf to grasp the hand of the Roman power”? GP 72.2

On March 29, 1994, forty leading evangelical Protestants and Roman Catholics—people such as Pat Robertson and John Cardinal O’Connor— signed a document titled “Evangelicals and Catholics Together: The Christian Mission in the Third Millennium.” ⁸ Headlines emblazoned upon newspapers across America stated, “Christians Herald New Era” and “Catholics Embrace Evangelicals—Conservatives of Both Faiths Agreed to Accept Each Other as Christians.” GP 72.3

In 1995 a book appeared with the title: Evangelicals and Catholics Together: Toward a Common Mission . In it the authors claim that “European Catholics and Protestants [have] . . . concluded that the condemnations of the Reformation were based on misconceptions, were aimed at extreme positions on the other side, and no longer apply to today’s situations.” ⁹ One wonders what Martin Luther and the thousands who gave their lives for the principles of the Reformation would say to that. But Ellen White’s prediction, which must have seemed far-fetched at the time, should have led us to expect just such a development. GP 72.4