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Messenger of the Lord

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No Evidence of Deception

No evidence exists that Ellen White (or anyone else) later tried to deceive her contemporaries into believing that she had not, after December l844, taught the shut-door notion of the Turner-Hale group. For her contemporaries, it would have been a monstrous folly! Those early Adventists had learned through experience that they could trust Ellen White. If they had observed duplicity in “coverups,” how could those same people trust her in the years to come when challenges arose that defied human wisdom? Those who had lived with her during the 1840s knew by experience how straightforward, how reliable, and timely her vision-messages were—from the beginning. To tamper with those vision-messages would have destroyed the unity of the small group of Sabbatarian Adventists. That group would not have survived long enough to be organized, any more than the early Christian church would have survived if founders had “covered up” the “fact” that Jesus was still in the grave. MOL 508.4

Charge: Ellen White and her closest colleagues demonstrated their extreme shut-door notions from 1844 to 1852 by working only for Shut-door Millerites. (As we saw earlier, the Millerites were divided into Open-door and Shut-door Millerites.) MOL 508.5

Response: Soon after her first vision, Ellen Harmon was instructed by the Lord to make her visions known. But to whom? The general population had already rejected the Millerite message, the general Christian world had scorned the premillennial emphasis of the Millerite message, the Open-door Millerites had repudiated the October 22 date and its significance—and only the Shut-door Millerites believed that something happened on that date. In fact, the Shut-door Millerites were the most nearly right people in the world! So she started where common sense and the Spirit of God led her. Further, many in “the little flock,” which early Sabbatarian Adventists called themselves, 54 still held to the extreme shut-door positions and Ellen continued to lead them into unfolding truth. MOL 508.6

No evidence exists that this approach to Shut-door Millerites caused a single person anywhere to be denied salvation. Why didn’t more Shut-door Millerites follow her fresh insight into the significance of 1844? Only God knows. But again to role-play, for Shut-door Millerites to follow the vision-messages of Ellen Harmon would mean to believe probation had not closed for the world on October 22, 1844. Further, it would mean that those who followed Ellen Harmon’s leading would (1) understand why Christ went into the Most Holy Place, and (2) link the seventh-day Sabbath with the sanctuary message. All this may have been too much commitment for many Shut-door Millerites. MOL 508.7

The additional reason why early Sabbatarian Adventists (barely one hundred by 1850) did not immediately launch aggressive evangelistic programs (as they began to do in the early 1850s) was that it took time for widely scattered early believers to establish their message. That early Adventists were able to formulate within a few short years a coherent theological message that would be “present truth” for everyone, Millerite or not, calls for admiration as well as amazement. MOL 509.1

God did not ask them to launch out before He had made them ready. Without question, Ellen White’s vision-messages and tenacity of spirit became the leading force in melding this small group into a world movement—all done within an amazingly short period of time. MOL 509.2