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

Chapter 10—The End-time Prophet and End-time Events

The doctrinal framework of the Seventh-day Adventist Church was largely adopted during a series of weekend gatherings that were generally known as “the Sabbath conferences.” More than a dozen such conferences were held in the years 1848-1850. Ellen White, in describing the beliefs of the approximately thirty-five attendees, wrote that “hardly two agreed. Some were holding serious errors, and each strenuously urged his own views, declaring that they were according to the Scriptures” (LS 110). Yet, invariably, when the weekend was over, there was unity of belief. What happened to bring this unanimity out of such diversity? GP 88.1

First, there was earnest Bible study and prayer. Writing in 1904, more than a half century after the events, Ellen White still had vivid memories of the conferences. “Often we remained together until late at night, and sometimes through the entire night, praying for light and studying the Word” (1SM 206). GP 88.2

But Bible study and prayer alone weren’t enough to convince the participants. In addition, the conferences saw the direct intervention of the Holy Spirit. However, this intervention didn’t come until the participants had gone as far as they could go. “When they came to the point in their study where they said, ‘We can do nothing more,’ the Spirit of the Lord would come upon me, I would be taken off in vision, and a clear explanation of the passages we had been studying would be given me” (1SM 206). GP 88.3

The function of the visions given at the conferences appears to have been to correct those Bible students when they were on the wrong track and to confirm and corroborate when they were on the right track, but never to initiate doctrinal formulation. The visions weren’t given to take the place of faith, initiative, hard work, and Bible study. God didn’t use the Spirit of prophecy to make the people dependent on the visions. GP 89.1

The writings of Ellen White touch on many different topics. One issue to which she returned repeatedly was eschatology—the doctrine of events at the end of time. GP 89.2

Ellen White’s teaching about the end time was built on the historicist method of prophetic interpretation. That is, she understood the four world empires in Daniel 2 and 7 as being Babylon, Media-Persia, Greece, and Rome (Ed 177); the 1,260 “years” of Daniel 7:25 as pointing to the period of papal supremacy from 538 to 1798 (GC 266); the deadly wound mentioned in Revelation 13:3 as referring to Napoleon I’s taking Pope Pius VI prisoner (GC 266); the 2,300 years of Daniel 8:14 as beginning in 457 B.c. and ending in 1844 (GC 328); and that since 1844, human beings have been living in the time of the investigative judgment mentioned in Revelation 14:7 (GC 425). GP 89.3

Ellen White outlined three distinct periods related to the end time: (1) the time of the investigative or pre-Advent judgment, which concludes with the close of probation; (2) the great time of trouble, which follows the close of probation and concludes with the Second Advent; and (3) the millennium, which follows the Second Advent and concludes with the resurrection of the wicked, their final destruction in the lake of fire, and the creation of a new earth. GP 89.4