She Was Called

One of the great truths that helped cause the Protestant Reformation was that God is willing and able to communicate directly with each one of us. He does not speak to us through a pastor or priest or ecclesiastical institution. He speaks directly to each one of us through our reading of the Bible (and the Spirit of Prophecy) and through the prompting of the Holy Spirit that we recognize by their harmony with these inspired writings. Jesus is the only mediator between God and each one of us.

Satan hates any direct communication between God and an individual. He is constantly trying to distract us as humans from listening to God. Satan will try to get us to listen to other humans or our own imaginations rather than to God.

We are each sinful human beings, who hardly know God and are easily distracted by Satan. We have trouble recognizing that Divine voice and developing a strong bond with the God who speaks with us.

Knowing our human weakness, God provides human help. Naaman, the leprous Syrian general, was convinced to trust God and submit to Him, not by his Jewish slave, nor by the prophet Elisha, but by his own traveling assistants. We have no record of them being church-going men, but these men were used by God as His spokesmen to reason with Naaman.

Esther would appear to us today as a queen, an elite politician, and perhaps not one we would expect or even invite to church. But God used her as His voice in this world. God chooses individuals to provide encouragement and guidance to others of us, not in place of talking directly to us, but in addition.

But there are individuals asked by God to do a greater work than merely encourage and persuade. Their service to God becomes a sign post for changes in our world. These people stand out and point people in a clear direction, the right direction. Were it not for them, humanity might easily lose sight of God and lose our way in the world. Their responsibility is not merely to encourage, but to communicate essential information necessary for making critical choices in situations that are filled with confusion by Satan.

One of the first of these great servants of God was Moses. He served to communicate on behalf of God to the leadership of the greatest nation on earth at that time, Egypt. Moses was given messages from God directly for Pharaoh, messages that would not have reached the monarch another way.

God “hired” the nation of Abraham’s descendants to tell the whole world about Him. These Hebrew individuals, like God’s people throughout human history, were to appreciate our Creator, develop a strong relationship with our Deliverer, and spread the good news of our Redeemer. Taking a group of half-educated slaves to do this work required God to provide a good deal of education for them.

God took up the education of the new nation of Israelites, personally. In the first educational communication with His new evangelistic “hires,” God chose to talk directly to each one of them from the top of Mount Sinai. Jesus’ voice thundered the Decalogue out over the congregation. Far more intimidating than when Jesus taught on the hills of Galilee, His voice in the desert was just as much God talking to humankind. But the average Israelite preferred to hear messages through Moses than to hear God directly. These Hebrews negotiated an arrangement that would last until our own time. God would send His most important messages through a human voice. Moses was God’s mouthpiece, His communications director, His public relations agent to humankind.

The work of Moses did not replace direct communication with God. Moses wanted every Israelite to communicate with God (Numbers 11:29). The millions of Hebrews were still to pray to God and listen for His voice. But some of the truths God had for His people to master and provide the entire world needed to be set down, so to speak, in stone, so that people could refer to the same ideas over and over again.

These “writings” became the foundational text of our modern Bible, the first revelation of God to humans written down and handed from generation to generation. These early written books gave the truths of God more accurately than the customary (at the time) story telling that other cultures and religions used to maintain a knowledge of their “truth.”

This pattern continues throughout human history. At moments when God chooses to change the direction of events, God also raises up public prophets. Moses stood in an age when it seemed the whole world had lost sight of God and raised up a body of knowledge we now call the Pentateuch, as a guide to all of humanity in how to recognize and obey God. The work of these men was more than just encouragement. It was their task to provide a public knowledge of a forgotten God and entrust a particular nation with that knowledge.

The major and minor prophets were called and commissioned to provide more knowledge about this same God at a time when the nation of Israel was changing. For centuries, Israel had the opportunity to stand as God’s witnesses in the world. But their tendency was to use the blessing God gave them to benefit themselves only. So God changed the arrangements. Instead of asking His people to demonstrate a working model of heaven while on earth (which they generally did not do), He permitted them to be taken captive and spread throughout the civilized world as individual witnesses for Him. Isaiah through Malachi served as messengers to give guidance through this otherwise confusing change.

The transition from a nation asked to present the knowledge of God to a voluntary association of people, a church, preserving a knowledge of the true God was completed during the apostolic ministry. Jesus personally and through His disciples provided guidance in this evolution of church administration.

So God has provided a human agent to given instruction about the direction of His work on earth at each major change. “For the Lord God shall not make a word, no but he show his private to his servants (the) prophets. (For the Lord God shall not do anything, unless first he tell his secret, or his private, plans to his servants, the prophets.)” Amos 3:7, Wycliffe Bible. “When the Lord God decides to do something, he will first tell his servants, the prophets” (Easy-to-Read English Bible).

Most recently, there was a great change once again in the world. Out of the great Reformation Protestantism took the lead in the educated world. Repeatedly, Protestant individuals discovered great scientific truths and offered intellectual breakthroughs. Western culture was largely dominated by the influence of these people that loved and feared God. But humanity rarely continues in the direction of truth indefinitely.

A great crisis came. The once predominately Christian western culture rejected the God that was leading them out of darkness. In rejecting the soon coming of Christ preached in the early 1800s, society rejected Jesus Himself. They would continue to use His name but reject a real relationship with Him. Not all would reject, and many would continue to prosper in the glow of God’s leading in the past. But the educational and intellectual development of society would now come from those that in many cases rejected God openly.

In this once again confusing environment, God sent a prophet to do the customary prophetical work of personal encouragement and reproof. Hundreds of “testimonies” were offered to various of her contemporaries. But the work of Ellen White was more than just encouragement and reproof. She wrote on education, health, church administration, parenting, character development, and other important issues. Her work was truly to provide a clear sense of direction in a world of confusion.

In doing this, she did not introduce any truth that was new. She spoke and wrote the great truths revealed by God over millennia. But she brought fresh emphasis and clarity to these old subjects. She pointed us toward God. The ministry of Ellen Gould (Harmon) White was never to stand between us and God but to assist us in finding God for ourselves.

How did God choose this frail woman out of the seventeen million Americans in 1844? And why did He choose an American rather than someone from another continent and country?

God did not call to work for Him one of the graduates of the universities of the day. Ellen Harmon was not a student or graduate of Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard, or William and Mary. She did not grow up in a rich home, or have connections with the rich and powerful. She was not praised for her literary or musical talent. Ellen was remarkable for something else. She was a faithful student of God.

At the age of nine, the studious future prophet suffered a broken nose and a concussion when a schoolmate threw a stone at her. The doctors of the time could do nothing to help her or improve her looks. This accident would end her education in books and begin her education as a person who was a social outcast. Children did not want to play with her because she looked strange. For Ellen’s sensitive and sympathetic personality, social rejection was unusually traumatic. In her frustration and emotional agony, she turned to God to help her.

“This misfortune, which for a time seemed so bitter and was so hard to bear, has proved to be a blessing in disguise. The cruel blow which blighted the joys of earth, was the means of turning my eyes to heaven. I might never have known Jesus, had not the sorrow that clouded my early years led me to seek comfort in Him.

“I have read of a little bird that while his cage is full of light never sings the songs his master would teach him. He will listen and learn a snatch of this, a trill of that, but never a separate and entire melody. But the master covers his cage, and then, in the dark, he listens to the one song he is to sing. He tries and tries again to sing that song, until it is learned, and he breaks forth in perfect melody; and then the cage is uncovered, and ever after he can sing it in the light. Thus God deals with His creatures. He has a song to teach us, and when we have learned it amid the deep shadows of affliction, we can sing it ever afterward. . . .

“It has been my lot to be chastened by affliction, which has had a softening and subduing influence, removing enmity from my heart, and filling it with sympathy and love. My life of bereavement, pain, and suffering has not been without precious revealings of the presence of my Saviour. My eyes have been attracted to the heavens that shine in beauty above us; I have obtained glimpses of the eternal world and of the exceeding great reward. When all has seemed dark, there has been a rift in the clouds, and sunbeams from the throne have dispersed the gloom. God would not have any of us remain pressed down by dumb sorrow, with sore and breaking hearts. He would have us look up to catch the rainbow of promise and reflect light to others.”—The Review and Herald, November 25, 1884.

The work of Ellen White came at the moment that was most needed. It came to assist us in the way we would expect God to assist us. Her writings and influence provide us with a clear direction in our modern, confusing world, leading us to God and the Bible in our Christian experience. Thank God for her work.

Excerpts from an Eyewitness Testimony

Spiritual fruit on biblical criteria.

All we ask is that people shall be reasonable. We are prepared to support by hundreds of living truthful witnesses all that we shall claim, so far as facts are concerned, of the manifestation itself, for this thing has not been done in a corner. For nearly thirty years past these visions have been given with greater or less frequency and have been witnessed by many, oftentimes by unbelievers as well as those believing them. They generally, but not always, occur in the midst of earnest sessions of religious interest while the Spirit of God is specially present, if those can tell who are in attendance. The time Mrs. White is in this condition has varied from fifteen minutes to one hundred and eighty. During this time the heart and pulse continue to beat, the eyes are always wide open, and seem to be gazing at some far-distant object, and are never fixed on any person or thing in the room. They are always directed upward. They exhibit a pleasant expression. There is no ghastly look or any resemblance of fainting. The brightest light may be suddenly brought near her eyes, or feints made as if to thrust something into the eye, and there is never the slightest wink or change of expression on that account; and it is sometimes hours and even days after she comes out of this condition before she recovers her natural sight. She says it seems to her that she comes back into a dark world, yet her eyesight is in no wise injured by her visions.

While she is in vision, her breathing entirely ceases. No breath ever escapes her nostrils or lips when in this condition. This has been proved by many witnesses, among them physicians of skill, and themselves unbelievers in the visions, on some occasions being appointed by a public congregation for the purpose. It has been proved many times by tightly holding the nostrils and mouth with the hand, and by putting a looking glass before them so close that any escape of the moisture of the breath would be detected. In this condition she often speaks words and short sentences, yet not the slightest breath escapes. When she goes into this condition, there is no appearance of swooning or faintness, her face remains its natural color, and the blood circulates as usual. Often she loses her strength temporarily and reclines or sits; but at other times she stands up. She moves her arms gracefully, and often her face is lighted up with radiance as though the glory of heaven rested upon her. She is utterly unconscious of everything going on around her while she is in vision, having no knowledge whatever of what is said and done in her presence. A person may pinch her flesh, and do things which would cause great and sudden pain in her ordinary condition, and she will not notice it by the slightest tremor.

There are none of the disgusting grimaces or contortions which usually attend spiritualist mediums, but calm, dignified, and impressive, her very appearance strikes the beholder with reverence and solemnity. There is nothing fanatical in her appearance. When she comes out of this condition, she speaks and writes from time to time what she has seen while in vision; and the supernatural character of these visions is seen even more clearly in what she thus reveals than in her appearance and condition while in vision, for many things have thus been related which it was impossible for her to know in any other way.

Peculiar circumstances in the lives of individuals, whom she never before had seen in the flesh, and secrets hidden from the nearest acquaintances, have been made known by her when she had no personal knowledge of the parties other than by vision. Often has she been in an audience where she was wholly unacquainted with the individuals composing it, when she would get up and point out person after person whom she never had seen before, in the flesh, and tell them what they had done, and reprove their sins. I might mention many other items of like nature, but space forbids. These things can be proved by any amount of testimony, and we confidently affirm that they are of such a character that they could not be accomplished by deception.” (George I. Butler, The Review and Herald, June 9, 1874).