Ellen G. White and Her Critics

Mrs. White’s Relevant Statements

Thus it is evident that if the free will of man is so vitally related to the second coming of Christ, both as regards the unbeliever and the professed children of God, any prediction concerning it would have to be tempered and qualified by that fact. Now listen to the words of Mrs. White in the decades following the 1856 vision. In 1868 she wrote: EGWC 108.5

“The long night of gloom is trying, but the morning is deferred in mercy, because if the Master should come, so many would be found unready. God’s unwillingness to have his people perish, has been the reason of so long delay.”—Testimonies for the Church 2:194. EGWC 108.6

In 1896 she wrote: EGWC 109.1

“If those who claimed to have a living experience in the things of God had done their appointed work as the Lord ordained, the whole world would have been warned ere this, and the Lord Jesus would have come in power and great glory.”—The Review and Herald, October 6, 1896, p. 629. EGWC 109.2

In a sermon preached on Sabbath, March 28, 1903, at the General Conference, she declared: EGWC 109.3

“I know that if the people of God had preserved a living connection with Him, if they had obeyed His Word, they would to-day be in the heavenly Canaan.”—The General Conference Bulletin, 35th Session, March 30, 1903, p. 9. EGWC 109.4

In the last volume of her Testimonies, published in the year 1909, she penned these solemn lines: EGWC 109.5

“If every watchman on the walls of Zion had given the trumpet a certain sound, the world might ere this have heard the message of warning. But the work is years behind. While men have slept, Satan has stolen a march upon us.”—Page 29. EGWC 109.6