Ellen White: Woman of Vision

Correspondence With G. I. Butler

Some of her correspondence buoyed her soul. This was the case in the exchange with G. I. Butler. At the time of the General Conference session of 1888, held in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Butler, who had long served as president of the General Conference, was ill and could not be present. Relieved of his responsibilities at that meeting, he retired in Florida, planted an orange grove, and for more than a decade faithfully cared for his wife, who, soon after moving to Florida, suffered paralysis. Being for some years on the negative side of the issues that had surfaced at Minneapolis in 1888, he felt that Ellen White had written him off. When he received word that at her direction one of the first copies of The Desire of Ages to come from the press was to be sent to him, he was elated and took heart. He wrote to her expressing his gratitude for her thoughtfulness of him. WV 353.1

After five years in retirement he had come to see some things more correctly and had changed his attitude. He wrote a letter of confession in 1893, published in the Review and Herald. In this he stated: WV 353.2

I freely admit that for a period I stood in doubt in regard to the agitation of these subjects [“the doctrines of justification by faith, the necessity of appropriating Christ's righteousness by faith in order to (attain) our salvation”] I have here so freely endorsed. I did not attend the General Conference in Minneapolis, where differences were agitated, being at the time sick in Battle Creek.... My sympathies were not with those leading out in bringing what I now regard as light before the people. WV 353.3

He was glad that he could testify: WV 353.4

I am well satisfied that additional light of great importance has been shining upon these subjects, and fully believe that God has greatly blessed it to the good of those who have accepted it (June 13, 1893). WV 353.5

Thus while Ellen White was helping to pioneer the work in Australia, battling what seemed to be almost insurmountable difficulties, stalwart leaders at the home base of the church functioned as if she were in their presence, and benefited from her pen. WV 353.6