Ellen G. White in Europe 1885-1887

Scenes “Presented Before Me”

A larger hall was secured, a basement in a public building with seats for a hundred people, and Sunday night Ellen White spoke again, and on succeeding evenings as the crowds grew, some had to stand. The Spirit of the Lord came upon her, and she took a deep mysterious interest in this particular crowd of people. We understand better when we learned that— EGWE 97.6

“There were some in the audience who seemed deeply interested, persons of talent whose countenances I remembered, for they had been presented before me.”—Ibid., 183. (Italics supplied.) EGWE 97.7

This expression, “presented before me,” was used frequently by the Lord's messenger to represent God's disclosure of people and events revealed to her in certain visions. Not infrequently she would observe these persons in peculiar situations needing special help. These disclosures might happen years before she saw them with her physical eyes. She wrote about this phenomenon: EGWE 98.1

“At times I am carried far ahead into the future and shown what is to take place. Then again I am shown things as they have occurred in the past. After I come out of vision I do not at once remember all that I have seen, and the matter is not so clear before me until I write, then the scene rises before me as was presented in vision, and I can write with freedom. Sometimes the things which I have seen are hid from me after I come out of vision, and I cannot call them to mind until I am brought before a company where that vision applies, then the things which I have seen come to my mind with force. I am just as dependent upon the Spirit of the Lord in relating or writing a vision, as in having the vision. It is impossible for me to call up things which have been shown me unless the Lord brings them before me at the time that He is pleased to have me relate or write them.”—Spiritual Gifts 2:292, 293. EGWE 98.2

With these persons directly before her, it is little wonder that in the night meetings in Copenhagen. Ellen White spoke so earnestly! It seemed that she knew the people and spoke to them as a friend seeking to hold them back from some catastrophe. “I felt the peril of souls,” she confessed, “that some would decide from that time to obey the truth, or would refuse the cross, and reject the offers of mercy.”—Historical Sketches of the Foreign Missions of the Seventh-day Adventists, 183, 184. EGWE 98.3