Shortest Testimony
The shortest testimony Ellen White ever gave was a telegram received by M. N. Campbell, pastor of the Battle Creek church (Tabernacle), during the 1906-1907 struggle over the ownership of the Tabernacle. The Sanitarium group was determined to secure the property. Most of the church trustees were inclined to support the Sanitarium group’s wishes.MOL 153.1
But the young pastor, equally determined that the property would remain in denominational hands, called together a few of the leading members for special prayer before the last, and most crucial, meeting. Campbell recorded the event:MOL 153.2
“They were all good, faithful men but I don’t know that I ever saw a set of men more scared. Old Brother Amadon, 14George Amadon joined the Review and Herald Publishing Association in 1853 as a young printer. After the Press fire and the move to Washington, D.C., he remained in Battle Creek and served the Battle Creek church as a visiting pastor. SDAE, vol. 10, p. 58. one of the finest Christians that ever lived, moaned, ‘If only Sister White were here, if only Sister White were here.’”MOL 153.3
Everyone knew that Ellen White was in California, but Amadon continued, “Oh, if only Sister White were here.”MOL 153.4
A few minutes later, ten minutes before the opening of the tense meeting, a telegram arrived for Campbell. It contained this message: “Philippians 1:27, 28. (Signed) Ellen G. White.”MOL 153.5
That text and her intended message braced the men for what had to be done. Campbell wrote: “That settled the question. That was a communication from Sister White that we needed right at that moment. God knew we were holding that meeting, and that we had a group of scared men, and that we needed help from Him, and so He gave us the message that came straight to us in the nick of time. It sounded pretty good to us.” 15Bio., vol. 6, pp. 126-129.MOL 153.6
At times, Ellen White would plead with individuals prior to a serious and life-changing decision, warning them of their own impending crisis. Her concern for her long-time friend, D. M. Canright, while he was going through his final defection, is one example of many.MOL 153.7
Canright had asked that his name be dropped from the church books in Otsego, Michigan—a request that was granted on February 17, 1887. 16The church clerk, in that church business meeting, summarized Canright’s public statement wherein he stated “that he had come to a point where he no longer believed that the Ten Commandments were binding upon Christians and had given up the law, the Sabbath, the messages, the sanctuary, our position upon [the] United States in prophecy, the testimonies, health reform, the ordinances of humility. He also said that he did not believe the Papacy had changed the Sabbath. And though he did not directly state it, his language intimated that he would probably keep Sunday. He thinks that Seventh-day Adventists are too narrow in their ideas.” Cited in Carrie Johnson, I Was Canright’s Secretary (Washington, D.C.: Review and Herald Publishing Association, 1971), p. 82.MOL 153.8
Although in Europe, Ellen White was not surprised at these sad developments. In vision she had seen Canright going through “rough waters.” She pleaded with him to “Wait, and God will help you. Be patient, and the clear light will appear. If you yield to impressions you will lose your soul....” This letter was later printed in Testimonies for the Church 5:571-573, with “Brother M” referring to Canright. But Canright did not wait, and Mrs. White’s prediction that his “sun will surely set in obscurity” was tragically fulfilled. 17Spiritual Gifts 2:168, 169.MOL 153.9
In 1900 Daniel H. Kress, an Adventist physician, was appointed to head up the medical work in Australia. He zealously advocated dispensing with all animal products. But in his frequent travels at the turn of the century he found it difficult to get suitable foods for a balanced diet. As a result, he developed pernicious anemia at the age of forty. When Ellen White saw him in vision, he was at death’s door.MOL 153.10
In her usual straightforward manner she instructed him to “make changes, and at once. Put into your diet something you have left out.... Get eggs of healthy fowls. Use these eggs cooked or raw. Drop them uncooked into the best unfermented wine [grape juice] you can find. This will supply that which is necessary to your system.” 18D. H. Kress, M.D., “The Testimonies and a Balanced Diet,” in George K. Abbott, M.D., The Witness of Science to the Testimonies of the Spirit of Prophecy (revised edition) (Mountain View, CA: Pacific Press Publishing Association, 1948), pp. 138-141. Portions of Ellen White’s letter to Dr. Kress are found in Counsels on Diet and Foods, 202-207.MOL 153.11
Her counsel, prompted by the vision regarding Kress’s dire physical condition, was exactly what the ill physician needed. He fully recovered, and lived fifty-two years longer in a life of medical service and administration. 19SDAE, vol. 10, p. 886. For a sample of scores of similar occasions wherein Ellen White, in the most timely manner and because of the facts given to her in vision, intervened to counsel, reprove, encourage someone, note the following: (1) A minister in the young San Francisco church was saved from an embarrassing, potentially disastrous, church investigation on Sunday, January 28, 1872, because of a letter he received from Ellen White on Saturday evening.—Loughborough, GSAM, pp. 387, 388, cited in Bio., vol. 2, pp. 363, 364. (2) W. W. Prescott, president of Battle Creek College, had become a forceful advocate of Anna Phillips, a self-proclaimed “prophet.” One of his purposes for traveling to Walla Walla College in early 1894 was to read one of Anna Phillips’s testimonies. Elder Haskell was also at Walla Walla and reported to Ellen White: “Your testimony came just in season to save some trouble at College Place. I have heard of something of the kind before when your letters or testimony would come just at the time when a meeting was in progress and it just reached the people in time to save trouble, but [I] never experienced it before.... Brother Prescott was going to read the testimony of Anna Phillips, although we had had some talk over the matter. But the day just in season your letter came and then he of course had opportunity to read it. This settled the question with him. He said, ‘Then that is all there is to it. Now I will take some of the same medicine that I have given other people.’ ... But God in His providence had that testimony come on the very train it should have come and it reached me just in season.” Letter from S. N. Haskell to Ellen White, March 9, 1894, cited in Glen Baker, “Anna Phillips—Not Another Prophet,” Adventist Review, Feb. 20, 1986, p. 9. (3) The famous Waukon-trip dash across the “frozen” Mississippi in December 1857 was prompted by a vision wherein Ellen White saw the early Adventist leaders from New England in need of immediate spiritual counsel. Against all recommendations, the White party pushed through the snowstorms and the breathtaking experience on the river, suffering frostbite and little food—only to find that their old friends, including the Andrewses, Loughboroughs, and Stevenses, were “sorry that we had come.” But the Spirit of God prevailed.—Bio., vol. 1, pp. 345-349; Maxwell, Tell It to the World, pp. 139-141; Spalding, Origin and History, vol. 1, pp. 279-289. See also p. 202.MOL 153.12