Ellen White: Woman of Vision

Chapter 3—Step By Step

The first seed that was to grow into the worldwide Seventh-day Adventist publishing work was planted in January 1846. It came about in rather an unpremeditated manner. Soon after her eighteenth birthday Ellen had learned that Enoch Jacobs, of Cincinnati, Ohio, one of the believers who had been disappointed in 1844, had been wavering in his confidence in the fulfillment of prophecy. She wrote to him from Portland on December 20, 1845, recounting the highlights of her first vision. Although she stated that the letter was not written for publication, Jacobs printed it in the Day-Star issue of January 24, 1846. WV 39.1

Through the next few years it was republished in various forms until it was carried into her first little book, Christian Experience and Views, published in 1851, and from there into Early Writings. WV 39.2

Sometime later when Ellen was visiting in the home of Otis Nichols in Dorchester, near Boston, she discovered that the editor of The Day-Star had published her letter, including her statement that it was not written for publication. Seeing this, on February 15, 1846, she wrote a second letter to Jacobs stating that had she known he was going to publish her first letter she would have written more fully of what God had revealed to her. “As the readers of The Day-Star have seen a part of what God has revealed to me, ... I humbly request you to publish this also in your paper” (The Day-Star, March 14, 1846). She presented the vision given to her at Exeter, Maine, “one year ago this month.” This was the vision in which she was shown the heavenly sanctuary and the transfer of the ministry of Christ from the holy place to the “Holy of Holies.” WV 39.3