In 1866 J. N. Loughborough writes of a conversation he listened to a year earlier when James White and H. E. Carver were discussing the shut door doctrine. Loughborough states:SDD 12.1

Bro. Smith: Many brethren who have learned that I was with Bro. White in Marion, Iowa, in July, 1865, have questioned me concerning a certain conversation at the house of H. E. Carver. In response to their inquiries I would say: I have read the statement of H. E. Carver concerning a conversation between himself and Bro. White, in July, 1865, concerning the shut door and the visions of Sister White, in which he says Bro. White made the following statement: “‘Brother Carver, I will make an admission to you I would not make to a sharp opponent. Considering her youthfulness at the time, and her faith in the shut-door doctrine, and her association with those of the same faith, it should not be considered singular if these things should give a coloring to the vision not warranted by what she really saw.’ I do not say these are the exact words, but the substance of what he said.”

And I hereby certify that I was present at the same time, and listened with intense interest to the same conversation, and think I recollect quite distinctly what was said on that point.

Words were said somewhat similar to what is quoted, but what was said before and after those words, gives them quite a different bearing from what he gives them.

The question came up, that evening, whether Sister White believed in the doctrine of the shut door after the time passed in 1844. Said Bro. White, in response to this question, “Bro. Carver, I will make an admission to you, which, of course, I would not make in public to a sharp opponent. She did believe it. And so, as you know, did nearly all the Advent people. In her visions, she had views of an open as well as a shut door; and she did not at first distinctly understand what this open door meant. Many brethren opposed her views, because she told them there was an open door.”

After speaking of the vision in which mention is made of the shut door, given at Exeter, Maine, which vision, at this point, was the topic of conversation, Bro. White said, “Considering her youthfulness, and her belief in the shut door, and the views of the Advent people, it would not have been considered very strange, if her vision had received a coloring, in writing it out.” I did not understand Bro. White, for a moment, to convey the idea that her views colored the vision, but that they did not; and that, for this reason: we had, in the same vision, what she saw about the open door, notwithstanding her vision of the open door was contrary to the faith of the Advent people at that time, and contrary to her own faith, before she had this vision.

Still further, Bro. White went on to show that it was the visions that led them out of the extreme view of the shut door. Immediately after this vision, they labored for some who had made no profession before 1844, which was directly contrary to the practice of those who held the extreme view on the shut door. This vision was repeated again, as he showed, at Oswego, N. Y., just before it was published in Saratoga; but instead of leading them to cease to labor for the unconverted, it led them to labor for those who are now Bro. and Sr. Patch of Minnesota.

And I will here state, that, so far as I can learn from those who were living where this vision was given, instead of its leading them to the extreme shut-door view, it had the opposite effect, to lead those who received it, out of it. J. N. Loughborough.—The Review and Herald, September 25, 1866, pp. 133-134.

Chapter 16—February, 1845

Chapter 18—April 29-May 1, 1845