An Amazing Experience
Davis, understandably, was apparently extremely reluctant to appeal to the leaders of the church to pray for his deliverance, lest he be obliged to reveal these secret sins.GVEGW 114.1
About this time an amazing experience unfolded one Sabbath afternoon at a small red brick chapel in North Fitzroy, a suburb of greater Melbourne. The story was related to me in 1970 by an eyewitness, Herold M. Blunden, who at that time was but a lad of 12. 23Personal interview with Herold M. Blunden, Crystal Springs Manor, Deer Park, California. Unfortunately, the date of this interview was not properly recorded at the time. I have reason to believe it took place in early 1970, four years before his death in 1974 (see obituary, The Review and Herald, October 24, 1974). Blunden himself recorded some of the incidents related in this interview, though without indicating he himself was an eyewitness, in his sermon cited above.GVEGW 114.2
Blunden lived in North Fitzroy and was a member of the little congregation that worshiped in this chapel. 24This structure still stands today, and is regarded as the oldest South Pacific Division Seventh-day Adventist church building still located on its original site. I visited there during a service Sabbath afternoon, October 26, 1985. He was genuinely troubled by the presence in their midst of the “American lady prophet.” As he later remembered:GVEGW 114.3
“My pastor believed in her, my Sabbath school class teacher believed in her, and my parents believed in her. But I couldn’t believe in her just because they did.” 25Blunden interview.GVEGW 114.4
Young Herold was particularly bothered by the facts of Mrs. White’s nationality and gender. “Surely,” he later recalled in our interview, “there were enough Australians around, that God need not pick an American! And surely there were enough men available, that God need not choose a woman!”GVEGW 114.5
But being a somewhat open-minded youth, he decided he would put her to the test—though, at the moment, he hadn’t the slightest idea of how he would test her! An unexpected opportunity, however, soon presented itself.GVEGW 114.6
Mrs. White was scheduled to speak one Sabbath afternoon in the little chapel in North Fitzroy. Herold decided to go early and secure a seat right down in front, on the aisle of the second row of pews, from which vantage point he would be able to see and hear everything. It was in the remarkable providence of God that he did so.GVEGW 114.7
Coming from Sydney by train, Mrs. White was delayed nearly two hours. The chapel was “standing room only,” and the members occupied themselves with singing, praying, the giving of personal testimonies, etc., until she arrived.GVEGW 114.8
Finally she appeared, walking into the chapel on the arm of the young American missionary, Arthur Grosvenor Daniells, president of the Australasian Union Conference (organized just four years earlier). He escorted her to the platform, introduced her, and then retired to one of the two empty seats among the ministers in the center of the rostrum.GVEGW 114.9
Mrs. White carried a sheaf of manuscript in her hand, which she laid upon the pulpit. She adjusted it, adjusted her shawl, looked up at the audience, smiled, and opened her mouth to speak—but nothing came out. She seemed mildly surprised, and scanned her audience from left to right, as if looking for someone in particular.GVEGW 115.1
Then she looked down again, readjusted her manuscript and shawl, looked up, smiled, and opened her mouth to speak—and again no words came forth. This time she began to register concern as well as surprise. She again surveyed her audience, more slowly than at first, looking from one side to the other. But this time she continued to turn her body, the better to view the faces of those seated behind her on the rostrum.GVEGW 115.2
With her back thus to the audience, what she said next could not be heard by worshipers sitting farther back than the first two rows of pews (there being no public address system in those days).GVEGW 115.3
Noticing Nathaniel Davis sitting next to Elder Daniells, she immediately questioned Daniells why Davis was on the same platform with her.GVEGW 115.4
Davis, at six feet five inches, was taller seated than the five-foot-two-inch prophet standing. He rose slowly to his full height, towering above the diminutive prophet. He gave her a most hateful look, turned abruptly upon his heel, and stalked off the platform, down the center aisle, and out of the chapel.GVEGW 115.5
Unperturbed, Mrs. White returned to the pulpit, adjusted her manuscript, adjusted her shawl, looked up at the congregation, smiled, opened her mouth—and this time began speaking. She continued for the next 75 minutes or so.GVEGW 115.6
But young Herold Blunden’s mind was in a whirl. “What did all this mean?” he asked himself repeatedly. He never heard a word of the message that day by the “American lady prophet.”GVEGW 115.7
When the service was concluded, all in the congregation moved to the door to greet their visiting speaker—all except Herold Blunden. He went, instead, to the rostrum to inquire from Elder Daniells as to what this all might mean. This is what he discovered: Nathaniel Davis had a problem with money, women, and spiritualism. Davis had been told to ask his fellow clergy to pray for his deliverance from demonic possession, but apparently thus far he had declined. Therefore, sitting on the rostrum that Sabbath afternoon, he was a living, visible representative of the kingdom of darkness. And, as Ellen White would often affirm, “this work is of God, or it is not. God does nothing in partnership with Satan.... The testimonies are of the Spirit of God, or of the devil.” 26Testimonies for the Church 4:230.GVEGW 115.8
God would not loosen His prophet’s tongue to speak until this representative of the kingdom of darkness had departed!GVEGW 116.1
Young Blunden, intending somehow to test the prophet, had never bargained for this kind of test!GVEGW 116.2