Ellen G. White — Messenger to the Remnant

Chapter 2—Early Attitudes Toward The Gift

A few months after the passing of the time of the expected advent in 1844, we find an unassuming girl of seventeen years, in the vicinity of Portland, Maine, relating to groups of Adventists here and there prophetic views of the experiences of the advent band, the journey before them, and the final rewards of the faithful. How were Ellen Harmon’s claims to divine enlightenment received? How did the people respond? We turn to the records of the time for the answer “I told the view to our little band in Portland, who then fully believed it to be of God.”—Ellen White, Second Advent Review and Sabbath Herald Extra, July 21, 1851. (Reprinted in Early Writings, 20.) EGWMR 31.1

James White gives the number in Portland who accepted the vision as “about sixty.” (A Word to the Little Flock, 1847, 22.) Thus we find the fellow believers of Ellen Harmon’s acquaintance receiving the revelations as from God. “I shall never doubt again,” exclaimed Elder John Pearson when he saw Ellen Harmon in vision. At first he could not believe the visions as they were related in Portland. (Life Sketches of Ellen G. White, 71.) But the reaction from workers of her acquaintance in the advent cause was not at all uniform. Some readily accepted, others questioned, and still others rejected and opposed. One worker, early in 1847, wrote thus to James White concerning his reaction: EGWMR 31.2

“I cannot endorse Sister Ellen’s visions as being of divine inspiration, as you and she think them to be; yet I do not suspect the least shade of dishonesty in either of you in this matter.... I think that what she and you regard as visions from the Lord, are only religious reveries, in which her imagination runs without control upon themes in which she is most deeply interested.... I do not by any means think her visions are like some from the devil.”—A Word to the Little Flock, 22. EGWMR 31.3