Episode 2
· 35:23
Welcome to the next episode of the Ellen White series. If you haven't heard the first one yet, definitely go back and listen to that one because it lays a good foundation on the Adventist Church origins. And it will eventually segue into what we're going to talk about today. So what we really want to cover is Ellen White and specifically her first vision. So this is now the time period where Ellen White first starts to emerge in the Adventist Church.
Nick:And before we talk about her first vision, I thought I could share some Adventist lore with you about Ellen White and her origin story. But one of the stories that always gets told is that when Ellen White was in elementary school, so I think this was like, she was like nine years old or something. She went outside and this other school girl threw a rock at her face and injured her pretty badly, broke her nose, and eventually landed Ellen in a coma. She ended up being in a coma for like a month or near a month when she was that young.
Orlando:No, I think you're pretty spot on. Yeah, she was in a coma for about three weeks. And after she got out of it, I mean, was still in a very fragile state of health. And I think it's interesting to note that during that time, she was really wrestling with some very deep existential questions like, am I going to be saved? So you've got a 12 year old who is recovering from this traumatic injury and they don't even have assurance of salvation.
Orlando:So imagine you're trying to heal and then on top of that, you're also wrestling with, Does God love me? Am I good enough? Am I going to make it into the kingdom? Those are some very heavy questions to be wrestling with at that age or really for any age.
Nick:At some point, she goes to church and her and her family, they were Methodists. So they were attending a local Methodist church. And none other than our boy, William Miller, was preaching that day. So at this point, Ellen White or, I guess, back then, Ellen Harmon's family was exposed to William Miller and his teachings. And they were actually eventually kicked out of the Methodist Church by the Methodists because of her association or her family's association with William Miller's teachings.
Nick:So all of this, like, early on Ellen White stuff, it's really all leading up to what happened when she turned 17 because this is really the the main point of what caused her to be a leading spiritual figure within the Adventist church. So at the time when Ellen White turned 17, this is when her first vision took place. And growing up as a Seventh day Adventist, we're all taught this vision. So we're not strangers to what she saw when she was 17. Right?
Nick:So in her book, Early Writings, she recounts her first vision. And I do wanna read a little bit of it. I'm not gonna read the whole thing. So if you wanna go to early writings, think it starts on page 13. The subheading says my first vision.
Nick:So you can read the whole thing for yourself. That's the source material, so don't take our word for it. You can read it directly from the source. But let me just read a portion of it, kind of the main point, which is this the straight and narrow path, or at least in my experience growing up in the church, that's the focal point that they would always focus on was this this picture that she painted about the straight and narrow path. So it goes a little like this.
Nick:While I was praying at the family altar, the Holy Ghost fell upon me, and I seemed to be rising higher and higher, far above the dark world. I turned to look for the advent people in the world, could not find them, when a voice said to me, look again and look a little higher. At this, I raised my eyes and saw a straight and narrow path cast up high above the world. On this path, the advent people were traveling to the city, which was at the further end of the path. They had a bright light set up behind them at the beginning of the path, which an angel told me was the midnight cry.
Nick:This light shone all along the path and gave light for their feet so that they might not stumble. If they kept their eyes fixed on Jesus, who was just before them leading them to the city, they were safe. But soon some grew weary and said the city was a great way off, and they expected to have entered it before. Then Jesus would encourage them by raising His glorious right arm and from his arm came a light, which waved over the avid band, and they shouted, Hallelujah. Others rashly denied the light behind them and said that it was not God that led them out this far.
Nick:The light behind them went out, leaving their feet in perfect darkness, and they stumbled and lost sight of the mark and of Jesus and fell off the path down into the dark and wicked world below. Soon, we heard the voice of God like many waters, which gave us the day and the hour of Jesus's coming. Oops. The living saints, 144,000 in number knew and understood the voice while the wicked thought it was thunder and an earthquake. So I'm not gonna read any more of it.
Nick:I just kinda wanted to read the main point of it. And like I said, if you wanna read the rest of it, by all means, go for it. But I decided it was really interesting that it said, which gave us a day and hour of Jesus coming. I remembered growing up and hearing the whole straight and narrow path. Right?
Nick:And how those that kept their eyes focused on Jesus would be able to figure out how to get through that path. Right? And if you took your eyes of Jesus, there you would fall off into the darkness. So I was familiar with that, but I never remembered them emphasizing the the voice told us the day and the hour of Jesus coming. It almost seems like they would quickly gloss over that part of the quote.
Nick:But do you remember them highlighting that at all, Orlando, when when you first heard of this?
Orlando:No, I I don't ever I don't remember ever hearing this particular phrase. Yeah, I think it could definitely have been glossed over. But, yeah, I think it's something of significance because, I mean, Ellen White is describing the voice of God iterating to the, quote unquote, the saints that are still on Earth, hey, this is the the day and the hour of my coming. And then after that, you have the Holy Spirit filling them. Right?
Orlando:So at this point, Jesus hasn't even come back yet.
Nick:And remember, we read in the previous chapters of like I said, if you haven't listened to it, give it a listen. Matthew 25:13 said, watch therefore for only Ellen White. Wait a second. That's not what it says. It says, watch therefore for you know neither the day nor the hour in which the son of man is coming.
Nick:So nobody knows the day nor the hour. But in this vision, Ellen White is claiming that she and and the advent band as she called them, that was revealed to them in vision. But when we originally came across this quote, we're like, okay. What do we do with this? Right?
Nick:How much emphasis or attention do we wanna pay to this? So we started digging a little bit, and we were talking about how the more we dug, the worse it got. Because what we discovered was this vision, or should I say, this version of the vision was the only one that we had been exposed to. So all along, we're thinking, okay, this is this is the typical recounting of what happened or what she saw. Turns out, this is like a couple iterations after the vision was originally published.
Nick:A couple of iterations after some revisions were made, a couple iterations after some redactions were made. And this is what we really wanna look into during this episode. So, apparently, when Ellen White first got this vision in the mid ish eighteen hundreds, she was 17 years old. Right?
Orlando:December 1844 to be exact.
Nick:She was 17 years old. And a year after she received this vision, I believe is 1846 or so, she sent a letter with the vision written out to the Daystar, which was a Millerite publication, a Millerite paper. So up until this point, right, a year after her vision was had, it was it had not been published anywhere. So you couldn't read about it.
Nick:It was not readily circulating up until this point.
Orlando:She was talking to people about it, but it just hadn't been published in a newspaper.
Nick:Exactly.
Orlando:The thing to do back then.
Nick:Exactly. That's the the original tweet. Was good old newspapers, right? So she sent the letter to the day star.
Nick:And that was when it was originally published. But then James White, who Ellen Harmon eventually becoming Ellen White married, right? Ellen White's husband eventually reprinted this vision in a pamphlet. Now this was like one of the first publications ever made by the Seventh day Adventist Church, Or, you know, Millerite Seventh day Adventist. It was it was starting to transition up until this point.
Nick:But the pamphlet was called a word to the little flock. And I have it right here. Because believe it or not, this thing was published in like 1849 or '47. And in 2023 I bought it on Amazon. So because of course because of course we did because of course it's on Amazon.
Nick:But you can get this online at the White Estate's website for free. There's like a you know the PDF copy. You don't have to pay the $10 or whatever I paid for it online, but I wanted to see the source here because the original vision that was published in the Daystar is not the quote that I read to you a little bit ago. The original vision was then edited slightly and published here in this booklet or pamphlet.
Nick:Now the main differences between what we find here and what we find in a Daystar, that Millerite paper, was James White edited some of of her writings for, like, grammatical errors, punctuation errors. And I know that people like to get on a soapbox about this. Right? And this is a battle that they choose to die on. Right?
Nick:This is the hill that they choose to die on. Like, oh, look at all the editing that took place. And it's like, come on. I mean, she didn't really finish her formal education, and he edited punctuation and grammatical errors. I think we can we can say that this is this is typical of what even happens with book editors and publishers today.
Nick:Right? Like, why would we have a problem with that? However, when we look at the differences in content between what it was published back then and what I read to you earlier, that's when it really gets juicy. So I want to quickly cover a couple of them because that's not what I want to spend the most time in. What we want to spend the most time on is the final point about these redactions that we'll get to.
Nick:So back to what I was reading about the straight and narrow path, right? Is that point where she's talking about how those that took their eyes of Jesus, they fell into the wicked world below, Into darkness. Now that is not what the original quote says. The original quote, it goes on. It says, The light behind them went out, leaving their feet in perfect darkness, and they stumbled and got their eyes off the mark and lost sight of Jesus and fell off the path down in the dark and wicked world below.
Nick:So that's the last thing we heard, right? So this is part of the redaction here. It was just as impossible for them to get on the path again and go to the city, as all the wicked world which God had rejected. And this is where we're going to get into some shut door theology stuff. Let's skip this for now, because that's what we want to spend most of the time talking on.
Nick:But anyways, like I mentioned, after she saw this in her vision, the scene changes to heaven. She's recounting this story in which they're like walking through this forest or through this wood in heaven on the way to Mount Zion, as she describes it. And as they're walking through the woods, there's this group of people wearing robes, but their robes looked a little different than everybody else's. Earlier, she had recounted how people in heaven, they're wearing these white robes. But this group through the woods, the hems of the robes had this red coloring to it.
Nick:Right? And let me read what what she says here. So she says, as we were traveling along, we met a company who was also gazing at the glories of the place. I noticed red as a border on their garments. Their crowns were brilliant.
Nick:Their robes were pure white. As we greeted them, I asked Jesus who they were. He said they were martyrs that had been slain for Him. So this is another instance of up until this point we've heard this before. So up until this point we have been familiar with this quote, right?
Nick:Ellen White saw this group of people in heaven that had a red border around their robes, and Jesus explains that this differentiation is this is a group of people who were martyrs. That's kind of the end of the quote that we're familiar with. The next section continues like this. With them was an innumerable company of little ones. They had a hem of red on their garments also.
Nick:Mountain Zion was just before us, and on the mount sat a glorious temple, and about it were seven other mountains on which grew roses and lilies. And I saw the little ones climb or if they chose, use their little wings and fly to the top of the mountains. So this was so weird to me when we first read this, and we're like, why have we never heard this before? Because it sounds very Greco Roman and innumerable amount of little ones that have a
Orlando:bunch of cupids flying around.
Nick:I'm just imagining like a bunch of cupids with little tiny wings flying all over the place in heaven. And I'm like, wow, this is this is new. I've I've never heard this one before. I just wanted to mention that it was interesting that this is one of the redacted passages that do not show up in later revisions of the account of her first vision.
Nick:And the last thing I wanted to talk about or mention before we got into the shut door is that in this vision, when she's in heaven, Jesus takes her into the heavenly sanctuary. And she describes it like this. I saw there a glorious ark. So this is the ark of the covenant that she's referring to. Overlaid with pure gold, and it had a glorious border resembling Jesus' crowns.
Nick:And on it, there were two bright angels. Their wings were spread over the ark as they sat on each end with their faces turned toward each other and looking downward. In the ark, beneath where the angel's wings were spread was a golden pot of manna, of a yellowish cast, and I saw a rod, which Jesus said was Aaron's. I saw it bud and blossom and bear fruit. This part I had never heard before.
Nick:And I saw two long golden rods on which hung silver wires and on the wires most glorious grapes. One cluster was more than a man here could carry. And I saw Jesus step up and take of the manna, almonds, grapes, pomegranates, and bear them down to the city and place them on the supper table. I stepped up to see how much was taken away, and there was just as much left. So what's interesting about all this is that Hebrews 9:1-5 it describes the contents of the Ark of the Covenant.
Nick:We hear similar things that we just heard in this vision. Right? About the tabernacle, about the Ark of the Covenant, about how in that golden pot, there was manna, there was Aaron's rod. And then verse four says, and the tablets of the covenant. So these tablets show up nowhere in this story of Ellen White's first vision when she sees an ark of the covenant in heaven.
Nick:And many people might say, well, I think it was 1848 when the Adventist Church or the Millerite movement first heard the Sabbath message and they interpreted, the fourth commandment, the Sabbath being Saturday. And that's when when they really started to push for that particular doctrine, right, on the Sabbath. And it was as a result of another vision that Ellen White had. And it was another vision where she was again taken into the heavenly sanctuary, again showed the Ark of the Covenant. But this time, conveniently, the 10 commandments are there inside the ark of the covenant.
Nick:And the fourth commandment, which is the Sabbath commitment, was like shining and prominent amongst the others. Almost like, oh, this vision is what I'm gonna use to to make a point on the Sabbath. A lot of people argue this away and just say like, oh, it's like she wasn't focused on that in the earlier vision. But of course, they were there. You know, it's not like the contents changed.
Nick:And then or they'll say, hey, in 1848, or whenever this was like a year later, she published it and said, oh, now I'm looking at the Ark of the Covenant, and it has the 10 Commandments in it. So it's okay. Now we're we're fitting in with what scripture says in the in the bible's description of the ark of the covenant. Okay. But if that were true, why did she have to speak in such detail about some random silver wired cluster of grapes that she saw in the Ark of the Covenant.
Nick:And she explained it with such detail talking about the grapes, the size of the grapes, how it was too heavy for a normal human to carry, and how Jesus took some of the to the supper table in heaven. And then when she looked back, it was like none of the grapes were taken. It's like the infinite grape glitch in this cluster of grapes in the Ark of the Covenant. So it's almost like, how can we say that in the future vision it was clarified when she had spent such amount of time using these descriptive literary devices to describe a different Ark of the Covenant. Right.
Nick:But anyway, so the point of this is to say that this is a group of redactions, that it was not just a revision of her vision where they updated some grammatical things here and there, where they updated some punctuation here and there. But there were things that she supposedly saw in this vision that was given to her by God that were completely removed from later publishing. They were completely redacted. The last thing that was redacted when I was talking about the wicked world, which God had rejected. So, Orlando, can you tell us a little bit more about that?
Orlando:Yeah. So let's, let's get into the origin of the shut door. So William Miller was the individual that really originated the idea of the shut door. And he was inspired by the parable found in Matthew 25 regarding the 10 virgins. Right?
Orlando:There were five wise virgins, there were five foolish virgins, and the five wise virgins, they, because they had oil, they were allowed to enter into the marriage ceremony, right, because the bridegroom had just arrived. And so by the time that the five foolish virgins come back and have their oil, they knock on the door and say, hey, let us in. And I guess the host of the wedding said, Hey, sorry, depart from here. We don't know you. So in other words, the door had closed on those five foolish virgins.
Orlando:And so William Miller appropriated that parable to try to make sense of where the Millerite movement was at. And so I think it's important to note the shut door theology that is found in Ellen White's first vision. Because she reflected on her first vision about forty years later. Here she is writing. The year is 1883, so it's about forty years later after the fact, and she says, For a time after the disappointment in 1844, I did hold in common with the Advent body that the door of mercy was then closed forever to the world.
Orlando:This position was taken before my first vision was given me. It was the light given me of God that corrected our error and enabled us to see the true position. And so, you know, how do we make sense of this? Well, I think it's interesting to note that the Ellen White estate had to grapple with this. The Ellen White estate are essentially a group of trustees that have been entrusted with the care of Ellen White's writings, right?
Orlando:So to preserve the actual manuscripts and to promote propagation of her writings, whether it be through books or now through digital publications. You can get pretty much all of her books in digital form, like PDF, ebook, for free on the Ellen White Estate website. It's interesting to note that Robert Olson, who worked with the White Estate, he helped to compile what was known as the shut door documents. The subtitle for that is Statements Relating to the Shut Door, the Door of Mercy, and the Salvation of Souls by Ellen White and Other Early Adventists. So Robert Olsen just really tries to find all of these quotes regarding the shut door from Ellen White and other early Adventists from 1844 to 1851.
Orlando:So it just kind of spans the historical time continuum. I think it's interesting that he notes this. Ellen White appears to be saying that she immediately adopted the true position after receiving her first vision. However, such an interpretation of her words does not seem to be in harmony with other documents of the time, especially Otis Nichols's letter to William Miller. And so even an official in the Ellen White estate is saying, hey, she is claiming that once she had the first vision, she dropped the shut door.
Orlando:But according to the documents that the White Estate has, that's just not the case. It took her several years to let go of the shut door.
Nick:And speaking of documents from the White Estate, have all the documents been disseminated? Or, like, are they keeping some of those secret? Because I really do want you to share that story about how we ended up finding one of those original handwritten letters from Ellen White.
Orlando:Yeah, so no one can know for sure. But there were there was a letter written by Ellen White to Joseph Bates in the year, I think it was 1847. And this document, this letter, had not been released to the public until it must have been the early 1980s. An individual by the name of Skip Baker, he was a photographer for the Review and Herald, and he had been talking with a few fellow coworkers about a particular transcript of a letter written by Ellen White. And a book editor by the name of Tom Davis had joined their conversation, and he had insisted that the transcript that they were speaking of was not genuine.
Orlando:And he believed it wasn't genuine because it indicated that Ellen White believed in the shut door for three and a half years after the great disappointment. A few days later, one of the individuals at the White Estate contacted Baker, and he was like, hey. We really need you to to do some photographs for us. You know, can you help us out? Like, we we need this, like, last minute.
Orlando:And so he told Ron Grable, Tell you what, bring me Ellen White's 07/13/1847 letter to Joseph Bates, and I will drop everything and photograph your painting today.
Nick:Man, that guy was was an expert negotiator.
Orlando:Oh, yeah. He sure was. And so Grable asked, well, has that letter been released? And he told him that Arthur White had released a transcript to the scholars back in 1971. And so that was enough for him to be okay with it.
Orlando:Later that day, he arrived at his office with the letter, and then he was able to take a few pictures of the letters.
Nick:Pictures, which we have found and done our best to make it a little bit easier to read.
Orlando:So yeah, we've used AI to try to enhance it as much as you can, as much as we can. There is the electronic transcription. Right? So if you pair that and try to read the the letter, it's not impossible. You can definitely follow.
Orlando:It just takes some, some attention. So toward the middle of the letter, it says, while in Exodour Maine, in meeting with Israel Damon, James and many others, many of them did not believe in a shut door. I suffered much at the commencement of the meeting. Unbelief seemed to be on every hand, but a division had risen in the band on the shut door. I had known nothing of their difference.
Orlando:And so Sister Durbin got up to talk, and I felt very, very sad. At length, my soul seemed to be in agony, and while she was talking, I fell from my chair to the floor. It was then I had a view of Jesus rising from his mediatorial throne and going to the holiest as bridegroom to receive his kingdom. So again, this is a letter from 1883 explaining the meaning of her first vision in the context of the shut door. I am still a believer in the shut door theory, but not in the sense in which we at first employed the term or in which it is employed by my opponents.
Orlando:There was a shut door in Noah's day. There was at that time a withdrawal of the spirit of God from the sinful race that perished in the waters of the flood. God himself gave the shut door message to Noah, quote, my spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he is also flesh, yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years. Genesis 6:3. There was a shut door in the days of Abraham.
Orlando:Mercy ceased to plead with the inhabitants of Sodom, and all but Lot with his wife and two daughters were consumed by the fire sent down from heaven. There was a shut door in Christ's day. The Son of God declared to the unbelieving Jews of that generation, quote, your house is left unto you desolate, unquote. And that is from Matthew 23 verse 38. Looking down the stream of time to the last days, the same infinite power proclaimed through John.
Orlando:These things saith he that is holy, he that is true, he that hath the key of David, he that openeth and no man shutteth and shutteth and no man openeth. That's from Revelation chapter three verse seven. I was shown in vision, and I still believe that there was a shut door in 1844. All who saw the light of the first and second angels' messages and rejected that light were left in darkness. And those who accepted it and received the Holy Spirit, which attended the proclamation of the message from heaven, and who afterward renounced their faith and pronounced their experience of delusion, thereby rejected the spirit of God, and it no longer pleaded with them.
Orlando:Those who did not see the light had not the guilt of its rejection. It was only the class who had despised the light from heaven that the spirit of God could not reach. And this class included, as I have stated, both those who refused to accept the message when it was presented to them, and also those who, having received it, afterward renounced their faith. These might have a form of godliness and profess to be followers of Christ, but having no living connection with God, they would be taken captive by the delusions of Satan. These two classes are brought to view in the vision: those who declared the light which they had followed a delusion, and the wicked of the world who, having rejected the light, had been rejected of God.
Orlando:And that is found in Selected Messages, Book one, pages sixty three and sixty four, from 1883. In this letter in 1883, I think it's interesting that the framework for understanding the shut door has changed. At the beginning of the Millerite movement, the shut door was understood through the parable of Matthew 25, the 10 virgins. And so now there is a different framework to understand the shut door. And now we're running out of time, so we won't be able to get into it in this episode, but we are gonna do a bonus episode to explain the sanctuary framework or the revelation framework for understanding the shut door.
Orlando:Because the Millerite movement started off with the Matthew 25:10 version framework, but now Ellen White, as well as the Seventh day Adventist Church, had shifted at this time to understanding the shut door through the lens of revelation, in particular the lens of the sanctuary. So in another episode, we're going to dive a little bit deeper into that.
Nick:Cool. And then just to summarize as we close, we've talked about how Ellen White is emerging into the scene, into the Millerite movement, which eventually became the Seventh day Adventist Church. And she starts seeing visions. She starts publishing these visions. And then we realize that what we grew up with, what we were taught in the Adventist church about what the vision said was not actually the original version, but it was a revised version.
Nick:And it was not only revised, but there were things that were redacted, completely removed from the letter publications. Right. And the things that were removed were potentially controversial. They weren't just, you know, things that were superfluous and just didn't need to be included. So they deleted it.
Nick:Right. But it was potentially controversial, like Greco Roman imagery. And then she says that she didn't believe things here, but then earlier publications prove her wrong. So really what I what I want to leave us with is what are the implications of these changes? What are the implications of somebody who the Adventist Church claims is not just a co founder of the church, is not just a spiritual leader, but it's actually a prophet.
Nick:Got inspiration envisions directly from God that influenced doctrine, that influenced theology. And that's something that you and I, Orlando, have wrestled with. Can a prophet get things wrong in the context of a vision directly handed to them from God containing incorrect theology? Is it really from God if the theology is incorrect, right? Are they really a prophet if they say things that are contrary to scripture?
Nick:So really, how do we relate to her today? In the 1980s the Seventh day Adventist church adopted in general conference session the statement of the fundamental beliefs of the Seventh day Adventist church. But as they exist today, one of the fundamental beliefs, the fundamental belief on the gift of prophecy, has Ellen White's name on it. So really at some point, the Adventist church started to take this more fundamentalist approach. Then they started adopting these statements of fundamental belief.
Nick:Then they put Ellen White's name on it, and that it's a fundamental belief of the Adventist church to believe in Ellen White. So it's one of those things where what are the implications of all of this today? Right? How does the Adventist Church relate to Ellen White? Do they believe do they overlook these contradictions?
Nick:What do they believe about these redactions? And I think it merits more conversation in future episodes.
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