The Great Visions of Ellen G. White

Improbable Candidate for Prophet

Surely heaven’s candidate was the most improbable in the entire history of prophets. Adventism’s first historian, J. N. Loughborough, was probably the first to characterize her in print as the “weakest of the weak”—but he claims that this title did not originate with him. It was supplied by the angel who came to Hazen Foss in the latter’s third vision in 1844, in which the hapless Foss was released from any further prophetic commission. ⁶ GVEGW 16.7

Ellen Harmon had been a near-total invalid for the previous eight years because of a tragic rock-throwing incident. The accident had left her physically disfigured, her central nervous system shattered, and her formal education permanently terminated in the third (or, possibly, fourth) grade of elementary school. Hers was virtually a medical “basket case.” GVEGW 17.1

One physician observed that her right lung was “decayed,” her left lung was “considerably diseased,” and her heart action impaired. His diagnosis: “dropsical consumption” (a form of tuberculosis); his prognosis: at best her life expectancy was very short, at worst she was “liable to drop away at any time.” GVEGW 17.2

In order to breathe at night Ellen had to be propped up into a near-sitting position, and frequent coughing spasms and lung hemorrhages had almost totally sapped her physical strength. ⁷ GVEGW 17.3

Certainly “weakest of the weak” was an apt description of God’s third choice ⁸ for the office of prophet in the first half of the decade of the 1840s! GVEGW 17.4

In 1840 Ellen White had been converted to the doctrine of Christ’s imminent return under the preaching of William Miller himself; thus, on October 23, 1844, she, along with some 50,000 other followers of Miller, became one of the “Disappointed.” GVEGW 17.5

Within the next several years the discouraged (who did not remain in their earlier church affiliation) would sort themselves out into as many as four categories: (1) those who—whether from personal embarrassment, frustration, anger at God, or perhaps even misguided revenge—would give up all religious experience; (2) a lunatic fringe who veered off into tangents of successive date-settings, as well as other fanatical aberrations and excesses; (3) Sundaykeeping “Adventists” who continued to observe the first day of the week and to believe the Advent near, principally the Advent Christian Church; and (4) a very small group (initially only a few dozen) who would begin to coalesce around the leadership of James and Ellen White and Joseph Bates, accept the Saturday Sabbath of the Seventh Day Baptists, and (in 1860-1863) form the Seventh-day Adventist denomination. GVEGW 17.6

Doubtless none of those five women on that historic December day in 1844 grasped the reality that Ellen Harmon was actually witnessing the first of hundreds of divine visions and prophetic dreams, over a period of 70 years. Relating those visions and enunciating their import would result in a torrent of some 25 million words that, by 1992, would be published in 137 languages around the globe! GVEGW 18.1

(Even in death Ellen White would attain to a certain literary distinction, for today she is (1) one of the most translated authors in the entire history of literature, (2) the most translated woman writer, and (3) the most-translated American writer of either sex!) ⁹ GVEGW 18.2