A Gift of Light

Chapter 2—“The Weakest of the Weak“: God’s Third Choice

Prior to her marriage to James White, Ellen Gould Harmon lived for some eight months in the home of Otis Nichols, an Adventist lithographer, in Dorchester (now part of Boston), Massachusetts. Nichols’ home served as her home away from home while she bore her testimony in the area. Three men (Sargent, Robbins, and French) dismissed her trancelike vision state as merely the product of hypnosis induced by her fiancé, James White. They said she could have no visions unless James was present. In 1845, in company with her sister Sarah (and during the absence of James White), Ellen was in the Nichols home when Sargent and Robbins dropped by. Mr. Nichols invited them in so that they could meet Ellen Harmon. Since they had not previously met her, they would now be able to judge for themselves the nature and source of her experience. They suddenly remembered a pressing appointment in Boston, but suggested that a confrontation take place the following Sunday in Boston at the home of a certain believer where Millerites customarily worshiped week by week. Nichols promised to bring Miss Harmon for the showdown. AGOL 22.1

Saturday night Ellen had a vision, and she told Nichols that instead of going six miles north to Boston, they must go seven miles south to Randolph. Nichols protested. Ellen’s credibility and his own were on the line. She remained firm, and said the angel had told her that they would understand the reason for the change when they got to the home of a family named Thayer. Upon arrival, they discovered Sargent and Robbins already there; they had gone south in an effort to evade meeting Miss Harmon, whom they expected would go to Boston that day. Now there was no escape, and a confrontation did take place. AGOL 22.2

Shortly after 1:00 p.m. Ellen Harmon was taken into vision and remained in that condition until about 5:00 p.m. It was the longest of her nearly 2,000 prophetic dreams and visions. AGOL 23.1

Although she did not breathe during this period, Ellen was nevertheless supernaturally enabled to speak, which she did rather loudly. Sargent and Robbins, incredibly, tried to drown out her voice by singing and praying aloud, but their voices soon became hoarse, and they lapsed into silence. AGOL 23.2

During the vision Ellen hefted aloft on her left hand the Thayers’ “heavy, large quarto family Bible.” With the Bible high above her head she turned the pages with her free hand and pointed to texts that exposed the fallacies of Sargent’s and Robbins’ doctrines. Nichols himself stood on a chair to see whether she was quoting correctly the texts to which she allegedly pointed. They were indeed the right texts! ²¹ AGOL 23.3

How did Ellen perform such amazing feats? Just who was she, and what was her role? AGOL 23.4

Ellen G. White had a formal education that consisted of less than three full years of elementary school. Yet when she died she left behind 25 million written words and 100,000 printed and handwritten pages. In 1997 her most translated book, Steps to Christ, was available in more than 140 languages. AGOL 23.5

Concerning translations, radio personality and syndicated columnist Paul Harvey, in his noontime ABC radiobroadcast of September 27, 1997, reported: AGOL 23.6

“Women have been honored on American postage stamps for more than 100 years, starting with one woman who was not an American, Queen Isabella, in 1893. Since then, 86 women have been honored, ranging from Martha Washington to Marilyn Monroe. Also many women authors like Louisa May Alcott, Emily Dickinson, Willa Cather, and Rachel Carson. AGOL 23.7

“But I can name an American woman author who has never been honored thus, though her writings have been translated into 148 languages. More than Marx or Tolstoy, more than Agatha Christie, more than William Shakespeare. Only now is the world coming to appreciate her recommended prescription for optimum spiritual and physical health: Ellen White. AGOL 24.1

“Ellen White! AGOL 24.2

“You don’t know her? AGOL 24.3

“Get to know her.” AGOL 24.4

On the basis of research in the Library of Congress, I have been able to identify literature’s 10 most translated authors (as of 1983). Mrs. White is the fourth most translated author in the entire history of literature, its most translated woman writer, and the most translated american author of either sex. AGOL 24.5

Cofounder (with her husband, James White, and retired sea captain Joseph Bates) of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, she was born near the village of Gorham, Maine, on November 26, 1827. She and her twin sister, Elizabeth, were the seventh and eighth children of farmer Robert Harmon and his wife, Eunice. AGOL 24.6

In Ellen’s early childhood the Harmon family moved 12 miles east to the city of Portland, where her father turned to hat-making. Ellen was “a cheerful, buoyant, active child.” ²² At the age of 9, while in the third grade of the Brackett Street public school, she was injured by a stone thrown by an angry classmate. Her nose was broken, disfiguring her for life, and she also probably suffered a concussion. For three weeks she lay in a coma. AGOL 24.7

After the accident she could not breathe through her nose, and her health remained poor. She became so nervous that she was unable to hold her hand sufficiently steady to write. As a result, her formal schooling was spasmodic and intermittent. Her last brief attempt at education was at age 12, but her health began to fail again. Some thought she would not live through her teens. Physicians offered little hope of recovery. AGOL 24.8

The Harmons worshiped at the Pine Street Methodist Church, where Robert served as a deacon. In March 1840 the family heard an itinerant speaker named William Miller lecture on the prophecies of Daniel and Revelation. He related his conviction that Christ would return sometime between 1843 and 1844. Ellen gave her heart to Jesus, and on June 26, 1842, she was baptized by immersion in nearby Casco Bay. The same day she was received into the Methodist Church. AGOL 24.9

Miller, a Baptist farmer turned lay preacher, had begun an intensive study of biblical prophecies following his conversion in 1816. His interpretation of certain time prophecies (especially Daniel 8:14) led him to believe that Jesus Christ would return to this earth somewhere between 1843 and 1844. He began preaching his views in 1831, and by the early 1840s he attracted increasingly large audiences from New England to the Mississippi. AGOL 25.1

Because the Harmon family had identified themselves with the Millerite movement, the Methodist Church disfellowshipped them in September of 1843. As an earnest young Christian, Ellen worked for the conversion of her youthful associates. When her health would permit, she assisted her father in making hats, while her sister Sarah knitted stockings. They eagerly provided funds to aid the spread of the Millerite views on the Second Advent. Young Ellen knew self-denial and privation firsthand. AGOL 25.2

With other Millerites, Ellen and her family were deeply affected by the Great Disappointment following October 22, 1844, when Jesus did not return according to the expectations of Miller and his followers. With her fellow “Adventists,” Ellen earnestly sought God for light and guidance during the ensuing weeks. AGOL 25.3

Two months later, on an unknown day in December 1844, Ellen was kneeling in prayer with four other women in the home of a Mrs. Haines, a family friend, in south Portland. Suddenly the Holy Spirit rested upon her, and she was taken off in vision in a manner reminiscent of the holy prophets of Scripture. She was 17 years old, in ill health, and weighed about 80 pounds. AGOL 25.4

Ellen knew about the prior visions of William Foy and Hazen Foss mentioned in the previous chapter. She realized that Foy was no longer active and that Foss had refused the assignment offered him. With great reluctance she accepted her responsibility, but not without misgivings. Thus she became God’s third choice, “the weakest of the weak.” AGOL 25.5

On a trip to Orrington, Maine, in early 1945 to bear her testimony, Ellen met a Millerite preacher six years her senior, James S. White. Their work occasionally brought them together, and an attachment developed that ripened into marriage on August 30, 1846. AGOL 26.1

Shortly after their marriage James and Ellen White read a copy of a 48-page pamphlet written by retired sea captain Joseph Bates. He had written about “perpetual” sanctity of the seventh-day (Saturday) Sabbath for New Testament Christians. Later they met Bates personally. Interestingly, the initial reaction of Mrs. White and Captain Bates toward each other was negative. She thought Bates stressed the fourth (Sabbath) commandment entirely too much, and he questioned the authenticity of her prophetic gift. In the end both changed their minds. AGOL 26.2

The Whites began to keep the Sabbath entirely on the basis of arguments adduced from Scripture. Seven months later Ellen had a vision (on April 3, 1847) in which God showed her the binding claims of His law today. (It is important to note that Adventist doctrine does not have its origin in the visions of Ellen White. The visions either confirmed if conclusions from intensive Bible study were headed in the right direction or corrected if they were not. Never did they initiate doctrine.) AGOL 26.3

During their first years of marriage the Whites generally lived in poverty and often in distress. There was as yet no church organization with financial support for its clergy. Thus James White had to divide his time between travel and preaching on the one hand and earning a livelihood from forestry work, railroad construction, or hayfield harvest on the other. AGOL 26.4

James White published his wife’s first book, a modest volume of 64 pages, in 1851. A supplement followed in 1854. James began publishing the Advent Review and Sabbath Herald, known today simply as the Adventist Review, in 1850. A periodical for teenagers, the Youth’s Instructor, followed in 1852. AGOL 26.5

From 1852 to 1855 a modest house in Rochester, New York, provided not only room for the newly acquired printing press but also living accommodation for the Whites and the publishing staff. AGOL 27.1

Those days required great financial sacrifice. Hiram Edson, a pioneer Adventist minister, sold a farm and lent a substantial portion to the Whites to cover the cost of that first handpress. His wife sold some of her silverware (a wedding gift) and donated the proceeds to publish a special issue of the Day-Dawn. It carried the first exposition of the Adventist views on the high priesthood of Jesus in the heavenly sanctuary. ²³ AGOL 27.2

The Whites shared the self-denial. James brought home 10 old chairs (no two alike), and Ellen provided the seating from drilling. Because butter and potatoes cost too much, the Whites substituted sauce and turnips. Their first meals in the publishing house-cum-parsonage were taken on a fireboard placed on two empty flour barrels. Said Ellen, “We are willing to endure privations if the work of God can be advanced.” AGOL 27.3

In 1855 the Whites and their modest publishing venture moved to more spacious quarters at Battle Creek, Michigan. With the incorporation of the printing establishment in 1861 (the first legal organization of Seventh-day Adventists), Battle Creek became the Adventists’ headquarters. The organization of the General Conference followed in 1863. The Western Health Reform Institute was established three years later. (It would later be renamed Battle Creek Sanitarium under the aegis of its world-famous medical superintendent and cornflakes inventor, Dr. John Harvey Kellogg.) The opening of Battle Creek College (now Andrews University, relocated at Berrien Springs, Michigan) took place in 1874. And the erection of the 3,000-seat “Dime Tabernacle” (the largest church sanctuary in Michigan at the time and so named because Adventists were encouraged to contribute dimes toward the cost of construction) followed in 1879. (The tabernacle burned to the ground in 1922 and was replaced by a smaller edifice.) AGOL 27.4

While at Battle Creek, the Whites journeyed 35 miles southwest to Parkville on Sabbath, January 12, 1861, for the dedication of a meetinghouse of Sabbathkeeping Adventists, where Ellen White was the featured speaker. Concluding her message, she sat down and almost immediately was taken off in vision. AGOL 28.1

Present in the congregation was a certain Dr. Brown. A local spiritualist physician, Dr. Brown (like the “electric physicians” and “magnetic healers” that Ellen White would later warn against) used hypnotism as an aid to healing. He had previously boasted to local Adventists that Mrs. White’s visions were nothing more than hypnotic trances. If she ever had one in his presence, he could bring her out of it in one minute. Someone now reminded him of his claim and asked him to make good on it. AGOL 28.2

J. N. Loughborough, an eyewitness, gave this vivid account of the confrontation: AGOL 28.3

“The doctor came forward, but before he had half completed his examination, he turned deathly pale, and shook like an aspen leaf. Elder White said, ‘Will the doctor report her condition?’ He replied, ‘She does not breathe,’ and rapidly made his way to the door. Those at the door who knew of his boasting said, ‘Go back, and do as you said you would do; bring that woman out of the vision.’ In great agitation he grasped the knob of the door, but was not permitted to open it until inquiry was made by those near the door, ‘Doctor, what is it?’ He replied, ‘God only knows; let me out of this house.’” ²⁴ AGOL 28.4

Of perhaps even greater interest is the content of the remarkable vision. Mrs. White saw events yet future in connection with the impending Civil War. At that time the prevailing opinion in the North was that (1) there would simply be no civil war; (2) in the unlikely event that war came, however, it would not last long; and (3) the North would most assuredly win. AGOL 28.5

South Carolina had seceded from the Union about three weeks earlier. Then three additional states had followed suit—one each day—on Wednesday through Friday immediately before the Saturday of this vision. The firing on Fort Sumter, which would ignite the war, was still three months distant. When newly inaugurated President Lincoln would call for an army, he would seek only 75,000 volunteers to serve for a three-month period. AGOL 28.6

Mrs. White’s vision contradicted the prevailing “conventional wisdom” in several respects: (1) she flatly declared that there would be war; (2) a large number of states would secede (11 finally did); (3) large armies would face each other in savage hand-to-hand combat; (4) the carnage would be unbelievably widespread; and (5) great suffering would extend to men “wasting away” in prisons and to many families who would lose “husbands, sons, or brothers.” Upon coming out of vision, Mrs. White somberly surveyed the faces of those before her. She said, “There are those in this house who will lose sons in that war.” ²⁵ AGOL 29.1

Some 22 years later eyewitness Loughborough sought out the lay elder of the Parkville church who had presided over the services that Sabbath. He asked the elder about the accuracy of the prediction that some families present would lose sons in the war. The elder immediately identified five specific instances, and, upon reflection, expressed the conviction that there may well have been an additional five cases. ²⁶ AGOL 29.2

Mrs. White later saw in vision a variety of reasons the war dragged on so long (one such: God would not permit victory for the North until slavery replaced preservation of the Union as the key issue). ²⁷ She also was shown the widespread extent to which generals and high-ranking officers employed spirit mediums to obtain tactical advice on how to conduct the war. ²⁸ AGOL 29.3

During the Battle Creek years five-foot-two-inch Mrs. White, with her brown hair and gray eyes, became a well-known figure on its streets. Cheerful, unselfish, and somewhat of an extrovert, Mrs. White earned a reputation as a sensible buyer, a hospitable host, a forceful public speaker, and a careful homemaker. Over the years she gave birth to four sons. Henry, born in 1847, died at age 16 from pneumonia. John Herbert, born in 1860, lived only a few months before he died from erysipelas. James Edson, born in 1849, and William C., born in 1854, both lived to old age. AGOL 29.4

Edson published several books, including the denomination’s first hymnal (which included a number of his own compositions). He built the Morning Star, a Mississippi River steamboat, which he sailed down the Mississippi to Vicksburg. There it did yeoman service as a floating auditorium and classroom where illiterate Blacks received their first reading lessons. It also provided space for a printshop and living quarters. AGOL 30.1

William C. White became an ordained minister of his church. Following the death of his father in 1881, he became the confidant and traveling companion of his mother, now 53 years old. AGOL 30.2

After her husband’s death Mrs. White spent two years in Europe (1885-1887) and nine years in Australia and New Zealand (1891-1900). She helped establish and develop new medical, educational, and publishing enterprises. As a result of her counsel, the work of the rapidly growing denomination was placed on a firm footing. (When the General Conference was organized in 1863, the church had 3,500 adult baptized members. By 1890 the figure stood at 29,700. In 1900 it had risen to more than 75,000, and by 1909 it reached the 100,000-member mark.) AGOL 30.3

For the last 15 years of her life Ellen White lived on a modest estate near St. Helena, California, some 60 miles north of San Francisco. She named her estate “Elmshaven.” Here she completed her last nine book manuscripts (Education, The Ministry of Healing, Testimonies for the Church, volumes 7-9, The Acts of the Apostles, Counsels to Parents and Teachers, a revision of Gospel Workers, and Prophets and Kings). It was one of her most prolific literary periods. AGOL 30.4

During the Elmshaven years she oversaw the expansion of the church’s healing ministry through the development of sanitariums, which today have evolved into primary acute-care community hospitals located at Paradise Valley (near San Diego), Glendale, and Loma Linda, California. At the latter location she led out in the additional establishment of the Adventists’ medical school. First known as the College of Medical Evangelists, it was the forerunner of today’s Loma Linda University, a premier Adventist educational institution. AGOL 30.5

Ellen White’s last known “open vision,” with its attendant impressive physical phenomena, came at Portland, Oregon, in June 1884. However, prophetic dreams at night continued to communicate special messages from the Lord until near the time of her death on July 16, 1915. AGOL 31.1

In both the “open visions” of the day and the prophetic dreams of the night she saw the same angel standing by her side. He served as a divine validation of the authenticity of her experience. Sometimes she saw events or happenings—past, present, or future. Sometimes she simply received information or instruction. At other times she was given parables. AGOL 31.2

To communicate the message, Mrs. White, like the Bible prophets before her, had three options: She could quote the divine messenger; she might use the writings of another author (the Bible writers often resorted to this method); ²⁹ or she might phrase the message of God in words of her own composition. AGOL 31.3

Although Ellen White’s formal education was limited to less than three years, it would be incorrect to infer that she was not a knowledgeable or well-informed person. Education comes not alone from the formal classroom setting. The sources of Mrs. White’s education included (1) books—she had some 1,400 titles in her personal and office libraries; (2) travel on three continents; (3) rubbing shoulders with well-educated, knowledgeable persons (which many of her fellow church leaders were); and (4) approximately 2,000 separate “conversations” with heavenly beings in vision. AGOL 31.4

Perhaps Ellen White’s three best-known books are Steps to Christ (1892), a small manual on how to become a Christian and maintain the experience; The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan (1888); and The Desire of Ages (1898), an incomparable biography of our Lord. The Desire of Ages serves as the anchor of the trilogy dealing with Christ and His teachings (the others are Thoughts From the Mount of Blessing, an exposition on Christ’s sermon on the mount, and Christ’s Object Lessons, an interpretation of the major parables of Jesus). AGOL 31.5

Edith Deen’s Great Women of the Christian Faith contains full biographical studies of 47 spiritual leaders in Christianity and concise sketches of 76 others. Mrs. Deen made these observations in her major treatment of Ellen G. White: AGOL 32.1

“Not only did she foretell the future, but she also gave wise counsel in the present. Certainly she was a spokesman for God. Like the prophets of old, her life was marked by humility, simplicity, austerity, divine learning, and devotion. And like them, she turned to God for healing and help. So firm did her faith become that she accomplished the miraculous for Adventists.... AGOL 32.2

“[In all of her writings, which] have reached a circulation running into millions, ... she represents the Bible as the Book of all books, the supreme guide for the whole human family. AGOL 32.3

“Although the Seventh-day Adventist movement has developed still more since her death in 1915, she lived to enjoy much of its progress. Before her death, membership had grown to 140,000, the clergy had increased to 2,500, there were forty publishing houses scattered around the world, eighty medical institutions, and Adventist missions on every continent. All this began seventy years earlier on nothing but faith, which Ellen White kept in constant exercise.” ³⁰ AGOL 32.4