About the year 1880 Mrs. White was instructed through the spirit of prophecy to say to her husband, Elder James White, that he should lay off many of the cares and responsibilities he had borne, and let them pass into other and younger hands, while he should “prepare for his last change”—meaning that his earthly race was soon to close. This instruction he began to heed, and none too soon for in the year 1881 his labors ceased, and he fell asleep in Jesus. July 31 he was attacked with malarial fever. August 3 he was removed from his home to the Battle Creek Sanitarium, where he received every care and attention which it was possible to give, but to no avail. He continued to grow worse. From the first of his illness he had a premonition that his “last change” had come. GSAM 449.1