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. PERSONAL
CHARACTERISTICS
Chapter 7

2. • Ellen White’s primary emphasis in life,
born out of her own experience and
amplified in her visions, was to obtain
and portray an accurate picture of God’s
character. She saw correctly that the
great religious divisions throughout time
and especially those within Christendom
developed out of an inadequate
understanding of God.

3. SPIRITUAL AWARENESS
• In her early life, she was a victim of
prevailing errors that permeated various
churches within Protestantism. For
example, misunderstanding the character
of God—and thus the plan of salvation—
was at the bottom of her teen-age
confusion “concerning justification and
sanctification.”

4. • Further, because she had been taught
that God’s sovereignty and justice were
Christianity’s central themes, she had
little peace and almost a total
unawareness of a friendly God.

5. • The doctrine of eternal punishment, a
product of Calvinistic thinking that
focused on God’s sovereignty at the
expense of human responsibility,
unloaded a profound anguish on young
Ellen, as it does on anyone who
wonders about a God who would punish
sinners forever.

6. • A clearly focused theology:
• When divine light helped her to read the
Bible without being driven by the
prevailing misconceptions that
dominated contemporary churches, the
truth about God became increasingly
clear.

7. • Her writings soon focused on the main
question in the great controversy
between God and Satan—what is God
really like? Who can be trusted—God or
Satan?

8. • A clear picture of God’s character:
• Along with a focused theology that
captured the main theme of the Bible
came a fresh, captivating picture of God
that charmed her into a deep, dynamic
relationship with her loving and gracious
friendly Lord.

9. • Grand subjects such as righteousness
by faith, the importance of calm,
unimpassioned reason in the Christian’s
response to the gospel, and the
responsibility of a “prepared people” in
completing the gospel commission in the
last days were clearly defined in print
and realized in her own daily need for
pardon and power.

10. Characteristics (know 3)
• Trust when the future was unclear
• Love Her Motivating Principle
• Practical religion, (applied theology)
• Relation between religion and health
• Her understanding of the cause of
suffering and death
• Quick to see her own mistakes
• Tireless soul winner

11. CAMP MEETING APPEALS
• Ellen White’s camp meeting appeals,
from coast to coast, became legendary.
For example, in 1884, at the age of 56,
she spoke at four camp meetings.

12. • Of the Jackson, Michigan, meeting,
Uriah Smith, editor of the church paper,
reported in the Review that on several
occasions between 200 and 350 people
responded to her appeals by going
forward for prayers. “There was deep
feeling and though no excitement or
fanaticism, the manifest movings of the
Spirit of God upon the heart,” Smith
wrote.

13. • Two days after her sixty-eighth birthday,
in 1895, Ellen White was speaking to a
camp meeting audience in Hobart,
Tasmania, finishing one of her sermons
with an altar call (appeal). A large share
of the audience came forward. But she
wasn’t satisfied. She was hunting souls.

14. • She left the platform, and went to the
back seats where five young people sat.
In her quiet way, she invited them to give
their hearts to the Lord. All five did, and
several other young people joined them,
as they went forward in their decision to
make Jesus their Master.

15. • Clear priorities:
• People can be judged by their “wants.”
Ellen White reiterated often her “want
list”: “I want to be like Him. I want to
practice His virtues.” “I want to be
among that number who shall have their
names written in the book, who shall be
delivered. I want the overcomer’s
reward.”

16. • “I want my treasure in heaven.” “I want
to be like Him; I want to be with Him
through the ceaseless ages of
eternity.” “I want to know more and more
of God’s word and of His works.” “I want
to have a home with the blessed, and I
want you to have a home there.”

17. • Abiding trust.
• On February 13, Ellen White tripped in
her hallway. X-rays revealed an
“intracapsular fracture of the left femur at
the junction of the head and the neck,” a
most painful injury, especially without
modern alleviating medication.

18. • When asked about pain, she said: “It is
not so painful as it might be, but I cannot
say that it is comfortable.” Weeks later,
when she was asked again about her
comfort, she replied: “A good day—in
spots.” Her long habit of walking with the
Lord was making all the difference.

19. LAST VISION

20. • Ellen White had her last vision on March
3, 1915. Summarizing the vision, she
said to her son W. C. White: “There are
books that are of vital importance that
are not looked at by our young people.
They are neglected because they are
not so interesting to them as some
lighter reading. . .

21. • . We should select for them books that will
encourage them to sincerity of life, and lead
them to the opening of the Word. . . . I do not
expect to live long. My work is nearly done.
Tell our young people that I want my words
to encourage them in that manner of life that
will be most attractive to the heavenly
intelligences, and that their influence upon
others may be most ennobling.

22. • A few days before her death, a friend
noted her cheeriness. Her reply: “I am
glad that you find me thus. I have not
had many mournful days. . . . The Lord
has arranged and led in all these things
for me, and I am trusting in Him. He
knows when it will all end.”
• The visitor said, “Yes, it will soon end
and we shall meet you in the kingdom

23. of God, and we will ‘talk it all over there
together,’ as you wrote in one of your
last letters.”
• To which she replied, “Oh, yes, it seems
almost too good to be true, but it is true!”
• Her last words to her son and Sara, her
nurse were: “I know in whom I have
believed.”

24. MENTAL CAPABILITIES
• Although not a formally educated
woman, Ellen White utilized every
opportunity to increase her bank of
information and insights.

25. • She was never able again to attend
school, yet her innate quest for
knowledge led her to amass a personal
and office library that, by the time of her
death, totaled more than 800 volumes.
When she lived in Battle Creek, she
freely used the Review and Herald
Publishing Company’s library.

26. KNEW DISCOURAGEMENT
• Her physical weaknesses, her heart
condition and respiratory problems,
made her susceptible to
discouragement. And being a
messenger for the Lord, striking out
ahead of her contemporaries on the
battlefield of the cosmic conflict, also
invited Satan’s constant attacks.

27. • How did she relate to this black shadow
that so many people from the beginning
of time have experienced? Her counsels
to others who are discouraged, even in
depression, come bathed in her own
personal trials.

28. • The day came when “their provisions
were gone.” James walked three miles
and back in the rain to his employer for
either his wages or needed supplies.

29. • When he returned with a bag of
provisions, Ellen recalled: “As he
entered the house very weary my heart
sank within me. My first feelings were
that God had forsaken us. I said to my
husband, ‘Have we come to this? Has
the Lord left us?’ I could not restrain my
tears, and wept aloud for hours until I
fainted.”

30. • Discouragement seemed to overwhelm
her, and she became very ill. Recalling
the event, she wrote: “I felt no desire to
recover. I had no power even to pray,
and no desire to live. Rest, only rest,
was my desire, quiet and rest. As I lay
for two weeks in nervous prostration, I
had hope that no one would beseech the
throne of grace in my behalf.

31. • When the crisis came, it was the
impression that I would die. This was my
thought. But it was not the will of my
heavenly Father. My work was not yet
done.”

32. RESPONDING TO
DISCOURAGEMENT
• How did Ellen White respond to weighty
discouragement? As she had done many
times in the past:
“To walk out by faith against all
appearances was the very thing that the
Lord required me to do.”

33. • One may wonder whether, after long
years of service and trusting God,
Christians grow beyond dark moments
when they see clouds rather than the
sun. Think about Jesus in Gethsemane.
Or the lives of saintly people. What they
learned through the years is how to
battle the devil’s hellish shadows.

34. • In Ellen White’s eighty-seventh year, C. C.
Crisler, one of her secretaries, wrote to
William, her son: “She says she does not wish
to make any great noise about having courage
continually, although she has; and she adds
that the very fact that members of the
household are waked up at times hearing her
repeating the promises of God and claiming
them as her own is proof that she still has
battles of her own to fight against Satan.”

35. A LONELY PATH
• Loneliness, however, not
discouragement, was a frequent
companion, a lonesomeness not often or
necessarily clothed in discouragement.
The nature of her divine assignment
seemed to necessitate that Ellen White
would walk her path alone.

36. • “I do not look to the end for all the
happiness; I get happiness as I go
along. Notwithstanding I have trials and
afflictions, I look away to Jesus. It is in
the strait, hard places that He is right by
our side, and we can commune with
Him, and lay all our burdens upon the
Burden Bearer, and say, ‘Here, Lord, I
cannot carry these burdens any longer.’”