Chapter One—An Unusual People

Anyone acquainted with Seventh-day Adventists will agree that they are somewhat unusual people. It is not that they do strange, freakish, unusual things. They do not. They are quiet, circumspect, law-abiding people, as their neighbors will readily agree. In fact, neighbors generally go further than this and say that Adventists do much good work for the needy and are generally on hand to help when calamity and disaster strike.WBEGW 7.1

Yet, up and down the street and everywhere, people say Adventists are unusual. A little questioning reveals that this unusual quality is the result of certain beliefs they hold. For example, they do not go to church on Sunday; instead, they keep the seventh day of the week, and so go to church on Saturday morning. Again, they believe that the end of the world is near, though they do not set a date for that awesome event. They believe that when men die they go to the grave, there to lie sleeping until the great resurrection day.WBEGW 7.2

And so we might go on listing the distinctive and thus unusual beliefs of Adventists. Perhaps of all their beliefs none is more significant than this: They believe that at the very beginning of their history and for seventy years thereafter—that is, until 1915—God gave to them prophetic guidance through a woman named Ellen G. White. In other words, they believe, in the language of Scripture, that she possessed the gift of “the spirit of prophecy.”WBEGW 7.3

No matter where you turn back through the pages of Seventh-day Adventist church history, you repeatedly come face to face with the name of Mrs. White. No other name is so frequently found and no other’s words are so frequently quoted. It is no exaggeration to say that her words, her counsels, are the mortar that holds together the bricks of the now-substantial and rapidly growing edifice known as Seventh-day Adventism. That mortar is found at the laying of the very cornerstone of the movement. We doubt that anyone who is even halfway familiar with Adventist history will seriously question this statement, no matter what might be his personal appraisal of Mrs. White.WBEGW 8.1

Hence anyone who is thinking seriously of joining the Seventh-day Adventist Church—and there is a rapidly increasing number who are thus thinking—will wish to look carefully into the Adventist claim made regarding Mrs. White. If the claim is true, and we sincerely believe it is, that impressive fact should make him quicken his desire to join.WBEGW 8.2