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Ellen G. White in Europe 1885-1887

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Need of All Missionaries

In the appeal Mrs. White wrote to the leaders in Battle Creek at this time, she took a broad view of the situation and saw beyond the need for money the more urgent need for good young men. EGWE 248.3

“From time to time.” she wrote. “I have felt urged by the Spirit of the Lord to bear a testimony to our brethren in regard to the necessity of procuring the very best talent to work in our various institutions.” The men must be “trained men, men whom God can teach.... They must be thinking men, men who bear God's impress, and who are steadily progressing in holiness.... If they are growing men ... they will, like the sun, pursue an undeviating course, and they will grow in vision and in favor with God” (Letter 63, 1886; Selected Messages 2:190). EGWE 248.4

She appealed for excellence in every line. “Our institutions are doing a great and final work for the world,“ she wrote, “and should have in their employ the very best talent to be obtained anywhere” (Letter 63, 1886). EGWE 248.5

Not only ministers were needed but most able businessmen: EGWE 249.1

“I was shown the great deficiency there is in keeping the accounts in the various departments of the cause. Bookkeeping is and ever will be an important part of our work, and those who have become intelligent in it are greatly needed in all our institutions.... This branch of the work has been neglected shamefully, and altogether too long. It is a shame to allow work of such magnitude to be done in a defective, bungling manner. God wants as perfect work as it is possible for human beings to do.... Bookkeeping is a subject that needs to be studied in order that it may be done with correctness and dispatch and without worry and taxation.”—Ibid. EGWE 249.2

It is not surprising that the General Conference session voted to send one of their best accountants, A. H. Mason, to Basel just at this juncture to audit the books, set up a new and better system of record keeping, and train bookkeepers to carry on when he left. EGWE 249.3