The Spirit of Prophecy in the Advent Movement

One Remarkable Feature

This was the book a professor in a well-known medical school had read once, but which he wished to keep longer in order to go over it again. “I find things presented here,” he said, “which medical science has only recently established; and I note by the date of the book that it was written some years before these findings were brought out.” SPIAM 87.3

There is this element in these writings,—the author spoke sometimes of things she herself could not have fully understood. We are told in Scripture that sometimes “prophets have inquired and searched diligently” to understand what the Spirit of Christ in them signified as they were moved to write. (See 1 Peter 1:10, 11.) Prophets wrote things beyond their own understanding. SPIAM 87.4

An illustration of this occurs in some writings on health in the early volumes of “Testimonies for the Church.” In 1934 there was quite a wave of discussion in medical circles concerning discoveries relating to the electrical action of the brain and body cells. A London newspaper announced: “Two men at Cambridge University have succeeded in photographing thought by recording and amplifying the electric impulses sent out by the brain.”—Daily Mail, Dec. 3, 1934. SPIAM 88.1

Dr. Adrian, special investigator of the nervous system, was reported to have found that “with a man seated in an armchair, with eyes closed, thinking of nothing in particular, there was a regular discharge of electrical impulses from the brain at the rate of about ten a second. If the subject opens his eyes and concentrates his attention, the impulses jump to about 2,000 a second.” SPIAM 88.2

Speaking of experiments in America during the preceding two years, the New Outlook, of New York (June, 1934), said: “For one thing it was learned that the atom was electrical.” And about the same time Dr. Charles H. Mayo said: “Minute electrical charges are vital to the functioning of the brain.” SPIAM 88.3

But our point in mentioning these reports here is to show that similar things were written in the “Testimonies” on health topics fifty years before. Mrs. White wrote: “Whatever disturbs the circulation of the electric currents in the nervous system, lessens the strength of the vital powers.”—Testimonies for the Church 2:347. SPIAM 88.4

Of one woman in need of counsel it was written: “She wants [lacks] the will to electrify the nerve power so that she may resist indolence.”—Testimonies for the Church 2:428. SPIAM 88.5

In the book “Education,” published in 1903, it was said: “The electric power of the brain, promoted by mental activity, vitalizes the whole system, and is thus an invaluable aid in resisting disease.”—Page 197. SPIAM 88.6

“Electric power of the brain,” said this book in 1903. “Electric impulses from the brain,” said the Cambridge University scientist in 1934. SPIAM 89.1

Readers of the writings of the Spirit of prophecy used to count the language thus used as a figure of speech, a metaphor, that illustrated the facts. But the New York Forum (April, 1934) said of certain new findings in this field of electricity: “It is much more than a metaphor that experiment reveals; it is a fact that our sense of hearing works by changing sound waves beating onto our eardrum into electrical oscillations, and that it is not like a microphone, it is a microphone.... This set of experiments goes to prove that whatever goes on in the brain itself, as distinct from what goes on in the sensory nerves, is of the same electrical nature.” SPIAM 89.2

While this is just a diversion, in passing, to suggest how impossible it was that the human agent, unaided, could have written these things, the root of the whole matter is that the vast mass of material coming from the pen of this servant of God, to build up the great health and medical missionary department of our work, could never have been the work of the writer’s unaided wisdom or judgment. There is a spiritual gift manifested here that makes itself felt in this movement today in all the lands. SPIAM 89.3