N.H., the Holy Ghost was breathed upon us, and I was taken off in vision and borne by an angel above this dark world. The angel showed me the afflictions of Sister Hastings.^{4
Ellen White described Elvira Hastings as in a “wretched state of health” on this occasion. According to Leonard Hastings, “my wife had been afflicted with a severe illness for two succeeding winters.” About one year later, in February 1850, Mrs. Hastings died at age 42 of “cramp colic.”
See: Ibid., pp. 110, 112; W. [James White], “Our Tour East,” Advent Review, August 1850, p. 14.} I asked the angel if it was God who had afflicted her. The angel said God suffered it to be so.1EGWLM 156.5

Then the angel pointed to the earth and shewed me a person who was short and thick. I saw Satan pouring upon this person a stream of darkness, as a sunbeam is poured forth from the sun, and as it came upon him he bloated. His head seemed larger than usual, and his face was red and much bloated. While in this state, Satan used this person as an agent to affect and afflict Sister Hastings. I saw that this was the cause of Sister Hastings’ sickness, and that the object of this person was to afflict unto death, so that his iniquity might be covered which might otherwise be exposed.⁵

In a letter to the Hastingses some weeks later on April 21, Ellen White used similar language in a more specific way. She wrote there of some “ministers who had rejected God's truth,” “professed Adventists who had rejected present truth,” as “agents” through whom “Satan was working.” “I saw that some of the agents of the devil were affecting the bodies of those they could not deceive. … Some … were even trying to afflict some of the saints unto death.”

There is a possibility that the particular “agent” referred to here is Jacob Weston, an itinerant Adventist minister living in the same town as Mrs. Hastings (New Ipswich). According to Joseph Bates it was Weston who, under the pseudonym “Barnabas,” had written a series of letters against the Sabbath in the Adventist periodical The Bible Advocate. Jacob Weston subsequently became hostile to Bates over the latter's allegations that he had attempted to defraud C. Stowe of Washington, New Hampshire. In some way, the details of which are not clear, Elvira Hastings was also involved in the Weston-Bates imbroglio and became a target of Weston's ire.

See: Ellen G. White, Lt 5, 1849 (Apr. 21); Joseph Bates to Leonard and Elvira Hastings, Apr. 7, 1848, Merlin D. Burt, “Sabbatarian Adventism From 1844 to 1849,” pp. 335, 336, 350, 351.

1EGWLM 156.6

I saw that Satan had the full control of this person, and that others beside Sister Hastings were affected by him. I saw his garments all covered over with the blood of souls. I saw that this person was a vessel of wrath fitted for destruction, reserved for the seven last plagues, if God can bear with him until that time.1EGWLM 157.1

I saw that the angels from God had hovered about Sister Hastings, and comforted and strengthened her, or life would have departed from her. I saw that it was time for God to work and deliver her. I also saw that if God's servants had united in prayer with strong and living faith with Sister Hastings in her dwelling, the power of the enemy would have been broken before this, and that now his power is completely broken.1EGWLM 157.2

Lt 2, 1849

Lt 4, 1849