Ellen G. White and Her Critics

Her Public Ministry Begins

Then began, almost immediately, a public ministry of preaching, counseling, and writing, that was to continue for seventy years in rather steadily increasing volume, or until almost the time of her death, in 1915. Her first speaking appointment away from Portland, was in Poland, Maine, thirty miles from her home. Of this she wrote: EGWC 31.5

“For three months my throat and lungs had been so diseased that I could talk but little, and that in a low and husky tone. On this occasion I stood up in meeting and commenced to speak in a whisper. I continued thus for about five minutes, when the soreness and obstruction left me, my voice became clear and strong, and I spoke with perfect ease and freedom for nearly two hours. When my message was ended, my voice was gone until I again stood before the people, when the same singular restoration was repeated. I felt a constant assurance that I was doing the will of God, and saw marked results attending my efforts.”—Life Sketches of Ellen G. White, 72, 73. EGWC 31.6

The first years of her public ministry were, in some respects, the hardest of all. Not only was she young and frail and unaccustomed to public life, but she had behind her no well-knit church organization to give to her either financial or moral support. She began to preach in the days immediately following the great disappointment of the Advent believers. The once-large united company, who had been joyfully looking for their Lord to return, had created no church organization during the brief years of their anticipation, and in their disappointment naturally tended to fall apart into diverse groups, perplexed, bewildered, and sometimes contentious. When they met together in different places it was generally in homes, though sometimes in rented halls. Nor was there any paid ministry to care for these different companies of believers. EGWC 31.7

Under such conditions it was inevitable that discordant theological views would develop and bring division. And, as noted, such companies were subjected, at times, to incursions by that strange, unstable kind of person, the fanatic, who is like a fly in the ointment. It does not take many such persons to bring even the best religion into bad odor, to say nothing of bringing distress and confusion to simplehearted, trusting people. EGWC 32.1

We need this sketch of the kind of world into which Ellen Harmon moved in order to evaluate correctly her character and her work. Picture a young woman, seventeen, frail, timid, poor, starting out under the tremendous conviction that she must preach to these Advent companies what God had given to her by special revelation. No wonder that she wrote: “I coveted death as a release from the responsibilities that were crowding upon me.” From the time she started her public life in 1845, she found herself confronted with problems that would have taxed the resourcefulness and resoluteness of a seasoned minister. EGWC 32.2