Believe His Prophets

The Call of Ellen Gould Harmon

It was at such a time of trouble and distress among God’s people that God chose to make His intentions and plans known through a seventeen-year-old maiden named Ellen Gould Harmon. In December of that year she had a strange and unexpected experience. Of that experience while kneeling humbly and quietly in prayer with four sisters in Christ in the home of Mrs. Haines in Portland, Maine, she says, “The power of God came upon me as I had never felt it before.”—Life Sketches of Ellen G. White, 64. BHP 60.1

The infilling of power brought her first vision, in which this girl of seventeen was shown the journey of the Advent people from the disappointment in 1844 to the city of God (Early Writings, 14-20). BHP 60.2

Quickly there followed the bidding that she must go and relate to others what had been revealed to her. Her feelings are pictured as follows: BHP 61.1

“After I came out of this vision I was exceedingly troubled…. I went to the Lord in prayer and begged Him to lay the burden on some one else. It seemed to me that I could not bear it. I lay upon my face a long time, and all the light I could get was, ‘Make known to others what I have revealed to you.’”—Early Writings, 20. BHP 61.2

That girl rose from prayer to take up the burden and to speak for God, doing so faithfully and well for seventy years. From her pen came no less than twenty-five million words, much of which was published in forty-three books and several thousand periodical articles. Naturally there were critics of her life and her work, but their attacks made little or no impression on the great worldwide work that has grown as the result of following her counsel and revelations. BHP 61.3

Francis D. Nichol states: BHP 61.4

“After one hundred years the different Adventist bodies—other than Seventh-day Adventists—that stemmed from the Millerite movement of the early 1840’s total less than 50,000 members, which is no more than the total of Advent believers in 1844. Not long ago we enjoyed a delightful fellowship of a few days with an aged, saintly leader in one of these Adventist bodies. He spoke of the expansion of Seventh-day Adventists, their schools, publishing houses, medical institutions, and then he added: ‘Your men were more farsighted than ours and laid better plans.’ We replied: ‘No, our men were no wiser than yours, but we had a frail handmaiden of the Lord in our midst who declared that by visions from God she saw what we should do and how we should plan for the future.’ No other explanation could, in truth, have been offered for the vitality, distinctiveness, and foresight revealed in connection with the growth of the Seventh-day Adventist movement over the world.”—Ellen G. White and Her Critics, pp. 23, 24. BHP 61.5

This represents our attitude toward the life and work of Ellen G. White today, but it was not so easily seen or accepted back in 1844 and 1845. Then it was merely the word of a teen-age girl, claiming that God was speaking to her through His angel. It should be remembered that the leaders in the Advent Movement had counseled against fanatics and those deluded by so-called visions and dreams. In their Boston Advent Conference of May 29, 1843, they took the following action: “We have no confidence whatever in any visions, dreams, or private revelations.”—The Signs of the Times, June 7, 1843, p. 107. BHP 62.1

You can imagine the astonishment of that little group of women with a seventeen-year-old girl, after their season of prayer, as that girl told them of what she had seen in vision. I wonder how many of you women, if you had been there in that little group, would have said, “Now, Ellen, we are sure that what you say is right, and we accept you and believe you to be a prophet. Surely you are one of God’s great prophets.” Would you have said that? I doubt it. I rather imagine that some of those women questioned a bit even what Sister Ellen herself had said. BHP 62.2