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    Chapter XI

    A noticeable quality of Ellen White was her confidence in people. The special work to which God called her often gave her a knowledge of the inmost character of men and women who made up the church and constituted its working force. At times secret sins known only to those involved were clearly portrayed to her, and she was called on to be the channel through which messages of reproof and correction were given. Such insights could easily lead to a great impairment, or a total loss, of confidence, and arouse suspicion and bring about rejection. But not so with Ellen White. She saw the individual as a fallible human being fighting the battle of life—with the Holy Spirit prompting to high motives, firm purpose, and a righteous life, and with the great adversary endeavoring to undermine, to discourage, to lead into ill-advised moves, errors, and sometimes gross sins. She saw the messages which exposed and reproved sin, calling for a change of life, as omens of God’s grace and love to save discouraged, wayward, or misled souls.EGWP 13.6

    So Ellen White kept before her mind the potentially victorious experience, with the individual walking the streets in the city of God. She treated those with whom she communicated in the light of their “gaining the victory.” She had insights into the experience of strong men who sometimes yielded under temptation—whether in regard to misleading philosophies, their relationship to their fellow men, or a violation of the moral code—and she saw them as succumbing in the great controversy between Christ and his angels and Satan and his angels. But to the close of her life she could still relate herself to the individuals involved with confidence, and at the same time she could encourage confidence in them on the part of others.EGWP 14.1

    Clarence C. Crisler, her leading secretary and the one who in the last months of Ellen White’s life conducted family worship in her home, stated it well to her son William soon after her eighty-seventh birthday:EGWP 14.2

    Even when exceedingly brain-weary, your mother seems to find great comfort in the promises of the Word, and often catches up a quotation and completes it when we begin quoting some familiar scripture.... I do not find her discouraged ...over the general outlook throughout the harvest field where her brethren are laboring. She seems to have strong faith in God’s power to overrule, and to bring to pass His eternal purpose through the efforts of those whom He has called to act a part in His great work. She rises above petty criticism, above even the past failures of those who have been reproved, and expresses the conviction, born, apparently, of an innate faith in the church of the living God, that her brethren will remain faithful to the cause they have espoused, and that the Lord will continue with them to the end, and grant them complete victory over every device of the enemy.

    Faith in God’s power to sustain her through the many weaknesses attendant on old age; faith in the precious promises of God’s words; faith in her brethren who bear the burden of the work; faith in the final triumph of the third angel’s message, this is the full faith your mother seems to enjoy every day and every hour. This is the faith that fills her heart with joy and peace, even when suffering great physical weakness, and unable to make progress in literary lines. A faith such as this would inspire anyone who could witness it. 1C. C. Crisler to W. C. White, December 23, 1914, published in Life Sketches of Ellen G. White, 436-437 (Mountain View, California: Pacific Press Publishing Association 1959).

    This was Ellen White the person—known to her family, to Seventh-day Adventists, and to the world.EGWP 14.3

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