The Abiding Gift of Prophecy

Evidence for Evaluating Claims

Miss Ellen Harmon, whose first vision we have related, and who later became Mrs. Ellen G. White, completed her life span twenty years ago (1915), at the age of eighty-eight. The rich fruitage of her life has been manifest. Her name is inseparably linked with the great last-day gospel movement that is world embracing in scope. The products of her pen are found in many lands and languages. The principles she enunciated are still made the subject of most earnest study by ministers, educators, physicians, and Christian laymen. All these facts will be brought forth as evidence in evaluating her claim to have received these teachings and these principles in the restored prophetic gift from the God of heaven. AGP 265.4

But before weighing these claims in the light of what we now see, we should consider the evidences upon which her claims had to be evaluated by those to whom they were first made known. What led the group of about sixty in Portland, Maine, to whom AGP 265.5

she related her first vision, to receive it as a divine communication? Were the circumstances such as to justify them in their conclusion? AGP 266.1