Ellen G. White — Messenger to the Remnant

Through Periods of Suffering

Much writing was done during periods of great physical suffering. Soon after she reached Australia, in the early nineties, she was ill for nearly a year with rheumatic fever. At times she could sleep but very little, yet she pushed forward with her writing. We get a picture of this in two statements penned in 1892: EGWMR 110.3

“With the writings that shall go in this mail I have, since leaving America, written twenty-hundred pages of letter paper. I could not have done all this writing if the Lord had not strengthened and blessed me in large measure. Never once has that right hand failed me. My arm and shoulder have been full of suffering, hard to bear, but the hand has been able to hold the pen and trace words that have come to me from the Spirit of the Lord.”—Letter 2d, 1892. EGWMR 110.4

“You will excuse the poor writing, for I am obliged to change my position about every hour to be able to be made any way comfortable to write at all. I send in this mail sixty pages of letter paper written by my own hand. First my hair-cloth chair is bolstered up with pillows, then they have a frame, a box batted with pillows which I rest my limbs upon and a rubber pillow under them. My table is drawn up close to me, and I thus write with my paper on a cardboard in my lap. Yesterday I was enabled to sit two hours thus arranged.... Then I must change position. She [her nurse] then gets me on the spring bed and bolsters me up with pillows. I may be able to sit some over one hour and thus it is a change, but I am thankful I can write at all.”—Letter 16c, 1892. (Italics mine.) EGWMR 110.5

Of course, her hand grew weary and her eyes heavy, but it was not the weariness of incessant labor that burdened her heart. Her great concern was that she might present aright the great truths opened to her mind. Thus she cried out: EGWMR 110.6

“I know not how to speak or trace with pen the large subjects of the atoning sacrifice. I know not how to present subjects in the living power in which they stand before me. I tremble for fear, lest I shall belittle the great plan of salvation by cheap words.”—Letter 40, 1892. EGWMR 110.7

“Now I must leave this subject so imperfectly presented, that I fear you will misinterpret that which I feel so anxious to make plain. O that God would quicken the understanding, for I am but a poor writer, and cannot with pen or voice express the great and deep mysteries of God. O pray for yourselves, pray for me.”—Letter 67, 1894. EGWMR 110.8