Exhibits Relating to the Writing of The Desire of Ages

Exhibit 38—Sunday, 12, 1889, 188g, Ottawa, Kansas, Ellen White to Her Family

Dear Children of the household: ... I had been, during the forty-five years of experience, shown the lives, the character and history of the patriarchs, and prophets, who had come to the people with a message from God, and Satan would start some evil report, or get up some difference of opinion or turn the interest in some other channel, that the people should be deprived of the good the Lord had to bestow them.... ERWDA 23.1

I could but have a vivid picture in my mind from day to day of the way reformers were treated, how slight difference of opinion seemed to create a frenzy of feeling. Thus it was in the betrayal, trial, and crucifixion of Jesus—all this had passed before me point by point ERWDA 23.2

—Letter 14, 1889, p. 3.