The Story of our Health Message

Earnest Prayer for Healing

Prayer seasons were held in Elder White’s room three times daily, and great spiritual blessings were experienced on these occasions. Many nights, when Elder White was suffering and unable to sleep, he would call to his wife and she would arise from her bed in an adjoining room and pray earnestly for and with him. She says that for ten successive nights “we had the evidence that God heard us pray, and my husband would drop into a quiet sleep.”—The Review and Herald, February 27, 1866. SHM 137.3

These prayer seasons brought them much blessing and peace. But the attending physicians disapproved. They argued that Elder White’s mind had been exercised to the breaking point on religious themes, and that his thoughts should be entirely diverted from the mental exercises that, they maintained, had caused his affliction. SHM 138.1

There was an even more serious source of disagreement in his case. Mrs. White greatly deplored the counsel given by the physicians to the effect that complete physical and mental inaction should be sought. She argued to the contrary: SHM 138.2

“The fact that his illness was the result of overwork, together with the instructions of the Dansville physicians concerning the importance of entire rest, led him, in his feeble state, to shrink from all exertion. Here was one of the most serious obstacles to his recovery. Naturally a man of great activity, both of body and mind, he had been constantly occupied, previous to his illness, in planning and carrying forward important enterprises; and now to sink down in aimless inactivity was to foster disease and to become the prey of despondency.”—Life Sketches of James White and Ellen G. White (1888), 353, 354. SHM 138.3

Mrs. White untiringly and devotedly cared for her husband until she was told that she herself was in danger of a breakdown. For her own good and that of her husband she was urged to leave the institution and let others care for him. This she refused to do. SHM 138.4

At length she became convinced that she must take him away. She feared that he could not be led, in the environment and subject to the influences there, to exercise the faith necessary for his restoration. Day by day she saw with dismay that the courage, hope, and buoyancy of spirit which had formerly sustained him were failing; and she felt that she must take him where his tried and true brethren could associate with him and help him by their prayers, sympathy, and faith. SHM 138.5