Chapter Four—Streams of Light Around the World

Let us look, now, at an array of evidences of early, far-visioned planning and counseling by Mrs. White that increasingly caused her to stand out alone amid a poverty-stricken little company. That post-Millerite group gave pitiful evidence of a lack of any over-all plan, or of any means for carrying out such a plan if they had had it. We, today, witness a highly integrated, efficient, sacrificially financed Advent Movement, the plans and objectives of which are well-defined and vigorously pursued. But we must remember that this was not always so. There was a day of small things, of feeble, faltering beginnings, yes, of gropings in the dark by a little company, whose ideas and plans matched as poorly as the patches on their clothes. Indeed, there seemed to be often as many different ideas as there were persons in the small meetings held in the early years. The record is clear on this.WBEGW 30.1

Turn back with us to November, 1848, and join the handful of Sabbathkeeping Adventists at a meeting held in the house of Otis Nichols in Dorchester, Massachusetts. James White was there, and so was Joseph Bates. Mrs. White was taken off in vision. When she came out of vision she said to her husband:WBEGW 30.2

“‘I have a message for you. You must begin to print a little paper and send it out to the people. Let it be small at first; but as the people read, they will send you means with which to print, and it will be a success from the first. From this small beginning it was shown to me to be like streams of light that went clear round the world’.”—Ellen G. White, Life Sketches of Ellen G. White, 125.WBEGW 31.1