SEVENTH DAY ADVENTIST HISTORY; (ADVENTIST HERITAGE) Credits to Adventist University of the Philippines Theology Students Reports, From the Class of Pastor Cadao From August - December 2018. - Report 1 (R1) - Report 23 (R23)

1. The Messenger of the Lord
As Others Knew Her (EGW)

2. Did Ellen White practice what she preached?
Others knew her as a well-rounded,
exceptional Christian leader. Though
subject to human weaknesses, she was
respected as one who practiced the
forward-looking, all-embracing, ever-
expanding insights that were constantly
being revealed to her. (MOL 80.2)

3. Frugality
•She learned how to endure
and triumph over financial
hardships. Her prudent
habits are well known.(MOL 80.3)

4. • The Whites began housekeeping in poverty.
• In 1848 they left the Howland family, in Topsham,
Maine, where they had lived in the upstairs rooms,
to attend a conference of Sabbath keeping
Adventists in Rocky Hill, Connecticut,….
How did they plan to pay their way?
 James had earned ten dollars for cutting wood;
o half was spent on preparing the young family of
three for the trip, and
o the other half was for transportation to Boston and
the Otis Nichols home.

5. • Although they had not said a word
about their financial circumstances,
Mrs. Mary Nichols gave them five
dollars. After they bought their train
tickets to Middletown, Connecticut,
they had 50 cents to spare. They had
to face similar economic challenges
many times in the years that
followed. (MOL 80.4)

6. Generosity
• Ellen White was frugal because
she wanted to contribute as much
as she could to hard-pressed
people as well as to the growing
needs of the young Seventh-day
Adventist Church. (MOL 81.9)

7. • Sharing” seems to have been her
middle name. Her sharing of her
home with co-workers and traveling
ministers, many times not knowing
how many would appear at meal
time, reveals a prevailing generous
spirit.

8. After inspiring and challenging others
to build churches, publishing houses,
health facilities, and schools, she would
lead the way with substantial
donations, often loans from others that
she managed to repay—with interest.

9. In 1888 at an Oakland, California,
gathering, she may have raised
astonished eyebrows when she
noted that she and her husband, out
of frugal savings and wise
investments, had contributed
$30,000 “in the cause of God.” (MOL 81.10)

10. Commitment to Duty
• Many noble virtues characterized
Ellen White’s remarkable life, but
commitment to duty seems to tower
over all others. Wherever we look in
her long life, commitment to her
divine assignment carried the highest
priority. (MOL 83.7)

11. • When only 22, with a young child, she wrote
this letter on February 10, 1850: “We should
have written you before but we have no
certain abiding place, but have traveled in
rain, snow, and blow with the child from place
to place. I could not get time to answer any
letters and it took all James’s time to write for
the paper and get out the hymn book. We do
not have many idle moments.” (MOL 83.7)

12. Strenuous Schedules
Her taxing schedules were arduous even
for strong men. We have already noted
her exhausting travel arrangements under
terrible weather conditions. In those early
years, Ellen and James White would stay
up past midnight, reading proof sheets
and folding papers, then face each new
day’s unending duties. (MOL 84.8)

13. • For an example of her church duties that
lapped over Ellen White like shingles on a roof,
we can point to June 23, 1854. Now seven
months pregnant, she and James returned to
their Rochester home from a busy seven-week
journey through Ohio, Michigan, and
Wisconsin. The trip included many speaking
appointments, counseling with evangelists
regarding better methods, traveling nights by
train, and a train wreck that involved a
premonition to change cars (their first car was
“much broken”). (MOL 84.9 – 85.1)

14. Back-to-Back Camp Meetings
Camp meetings seemed to be pressed
together, almost seamlessly, for James and
Ellen White. For instance, the Kansas camp
meeting, late May, 1876, where Ellen was to
meet James. She was coming from the west
coast, all the while busy writing the first
volume on the life of Christ.

15. Her train, instead of arriving on Friday after
six days of endurance, was delayed. She
arrived on the campgrounds early Sabbath
morning, after a twenty-mile, farm-wagon
trip over rough roads. James wrote in
the Signs of the Times: “Weary, of course,
short of sleep, and trembling with nervous
headache, she takes the speaker’s stand at
half past ten and is wonderfully sustained in
her effort.” (MOL 85.6)

16. Mindful of Personal Example
• While in Europe (1885) someone
gave a gold watch to Ellen White.
However, it became a topic for
conversation; so, rather than be
misunderstood or become a
stumbling block, she sold it. (MOL 86.10)

17. Courage and Perseverance
• God can give messages to a person but prophets
must have courage and perseverance to fulfill their
assignments. Think of this 17-year-old girl, frail and
emaciated, poor and gravely ill, but faced with a
divine call to speak for God. The idea appeared
preposterous to most of her adult contemporaries!
In the years to come, she fulfilled well the role of a
mother and wife, yet, above all else, she threw
herself into the path of duty, often far in advance of
even her closest friends. No wonder she wrote:

18. • “I coveted death as a release from
the responsibilities that were
crowding upon me.” Only a person
with courage and perseverance could
have plunged into such a life
assignment—and succeeded. (MOL 87.1)

19. Courage When Standing Alone
• In 1881 James White was in rapid
decline. More than four strokes had
left him physically and emotionally
weak, and overwork depleted what
strength he had left.

20. Mrs. White wrote on January 6 that she
was perplexed as to how to help her
husband: “Father has been in such a state
of mind I feared he would lose his reason.
But he is concluding to lay off the
burdens of office matters and go to
writing. I hope he will do so.... I am at
times in such perplexity and distress of
mind I covet retirement or death, but
then I gather courage again.” (MOL 88.6)

21. Tact
• Mary and John Loughborough were close friends of
the Whites, both families fully committed to the
Adventist assignment. Both had lost a child in the
early 1860s. The two young mothers often
exchanged thoughts and feelings. In June 1861,
Mary (in her twenties) had written Ellen (now 33),
asking her opinion regarding the latest fashion—
wearing hoops. After sharing her counsel, Ellen
used the opportunity to say something not easy to
say: “Dear Mary, let your influence tell for God. You
must take a position to exert an influence over
others to bring them up in spirituality.... (MOL 89.7)

22. Kindness
• Many were the occasions when Ellen
White showed her deep interest in young
people. For example, she met a new
Adventist family at the Oregon camp
meeting in late June, 1878. Their teenage
daughter, Edith Donaldson, was eager for
a Christian education at Battle Creek
College.

23. Mrs. White promptly suggested that
Edith return with her to California
and then on to Michigan. In a letter
to her husband James, she
manifested her kind heart. Describing
Edith as a “girl of rare promise,” she
wrote: “I want her to board at our
house and receive all the attention
she needs.” (MOL 90.12-91.1)