The 1851 Time

On pages 26-27, in introducing the expectation that Christ would come in the fall of 1851, suggested by Joseph Bates in his 1850 pamphlet on the “Typical and Antitypical Sanctuary,” Prophetess of Health seeks to link the Whites with its support. Then as if to implicate them in the time movement and its failure, it is stated, “Surely the Whites, who had sacrificed so much, could not be blamed for His delay. In Ellen’s mind the responsibility rested squarely on the shoulders of those Millerites... who failed to endorse the seventh day Sabbath and visions like her own.” The footnote No. 49, page 218, states that “The meager evidence available suggests that Ellen privately accepted Bates’ view, but gave it up no later than June, 1851.”CBPH 36.14

It appears that F. E. Belden, bitter and unreliable, is credited late in his life with making this assumption. What evidence may have been produced by Belden in his letter to Colcord in October, 1929, is not known to us since we have been unable to obtain a copy from the Ballenger-Mote collection in Riverside, California. Belden was not born until several years after the event and maintaining the attitudes which he did as a hostile critic in 1929, serious question may well be raised about his witness.CBPH 37.1

Prophetess of Health need not have leaned on the frail evidence provided by F. E. Belden’s recollections because there is documentary evidence from 1851 bearing on this subject. Bates projected his views in 1850. If James and Ellen White had received them, certainly the Review would have carried articles on the expected advent so near at hand. This was the one event to which all Adventists looked. Ellen White’s correspondence certainly would contain supporting evidence. But the facts are that James White in August, 1851, makes his first reference to this time setting, declaring that “It has been our humble view for the past year that the proclamation of the time was no part of our present work... and we have felt it our duty to let the brethren know that we have no part in the present movement on time” (The Review and Herald, August 19, 1851, 2:13).CBPH 37.2

A month earlier James White had included in the Review and Herald Extra Ellen White’s stricture on time setting based on the vision of June 21, 1851, in which she declared:CBPH 37.3

I saw that some were getting a false excitement arising from preaching time.... I saw that some were making everything bend to the time of this next fall—that is, making their calculations in reference to that time. I saw that this was wrong.—The Review and Herald Extra, July 21, 1851. See Early Writings, 75.CBPH 37.4

White in his article published in August lists six reasons why he had been unable to accept the 1851 time.CBPH 37.5

Bates, on the basis of Ellen White’s message had dropped it in June. Reporting a conference in Oswego, New York, in September, White informed the believers that:CBPH 37.6

The subject of the seven years time was not mentioned. In fact, we know of no one in this State [New York] or in the West, who teaches it. Some may suppose from our remarks in No. 2 [August 19, 1851], that the seven years time is held by quite a large portion of the brethren; but it is not so. The view has been mostly confined to the State of Vermont, and we learn by Brother Holt that most of the brethren there have given it up.—The Review and Herald, September 16, 1851, 2:32.CBPH 37.7

Only by pure assumption can either James or Ellen White be implicated in the 1851 time setting. Ellen White’s “time is almost finished” statement of 1850, and other like statements, must be read in the light of the fact that as she wrote in 1883, “The angels of God in their messages to men represent time as very short. Thus it has always been presented to me.” (Selected Messages 1:67) She cites Paul in 1 Corinthians 7:29, “the time is short,” and Romans 13:2, “the night is far spent, the day is at hand.” John is introduced with his testimony, “the time is at hand,” Revelation 1:3. But this offered no basis for focusing on a particular time on what James White declared to “rest on inference.” For a fuller discussion of the 1851 time see Ellen G. White and Her Critics, pp 253-266, and Ellen G. White Messenger to the Remnant, pp. 41-43.CBPH 37.8