Throughout the churches of Australia the newly introduced Week of Prayer was an inspirational experience, and made an excellent prelude to the fifth session of the Australian Conference, which opened on January 6, 1893.
Meetings of the session were at first held in the tent pitched for use during the Melbourne Week of Prayer, but this was not a satisfactory arrangement for the session, so the work was moved to a rented hall.
Ellen White spoke Sabbath afternoon, and although she was weary and exhausted, she could write later, "I never spoke with greater ease and freedom from infirmity. The hearers said my voice was clear and musical, and the congregation could ... but know that the Spirit and power of God was upon me."--Letter 23a, 1893. As her writing allowed time, she attended meetings addressing the conference almost every day. Wednesday she spoke on the publishing work; and Friday she spoke on tithing, a subject not too well understood by all in the colonies. She declared the session itself to be "by far the best that has ever been held in this country," and she wrote:
All listened to me respectfully a year ago, but this year my message means far more to them.--Ibid.
The main items of business taken up at the session dealt with advancing the cause through the personal ministry of the church members in missionary work, the developing of the literature ministry, and the newly started school. The committee on the permanent location of the school reported that study would be given to a climate that would be appropriate for students coming from Polynesia.
Messages to the 1893 General Conference
During the ten-day session of the Australian Conference Ellen White's mind was much on North America and the forthcoming General Conference session, to be held in Battle Creek from February 17 to March 7. Preceding this would be a three-week institute, which would be attended by most of the delegates to the session and scores of ministers, colporteur leaders, Bible instructors, and laymen. The two gatherings, each three weeks long, were so closely related that a separation can hardly be made. The General Conference Bulletin for 1893 carried full reports of both in its 524 double-column pages.
The president of the General Conference, O. A. Olsen, was in frequent correspondence with W. C. White, who represented the General Conference as the superintendent of District Number 7, which comprised all of Australasia. On November 1, 1892, Olsen wrote to him concerning some proposals being made by certain key workers in the field that called for dismantling certain phases of organization of the church. His letter stated:
Now about the matter, or rather, question, of organization.... I have had some fears that this question might come up and take a shape in the coming General Conference that much precious time would be wasted in discussing something that was not practical.... I received a letter from Elder Holser after he had been with Dr. [E. J.] Waggoner on that tour in Scandinavia that gave me some uneasiness. Others, too, have written and spoken in a way that has given me the idea that this matter was being discussed at some considerable length in some places. But I think that the question can be kept within proper limits.--O. A. Olsen to WCW, November 1, 1892.
At issue was a greater centralization of the work and the elimination of some familiar features. This would involve turning from "plans of working that the Lord has seen fit to bless."
W. C. White shared his letter with his mother, as was fully
expected by Olsen. On December 19 she wrote a fifteen-page communication titled "Organization." The entire communication dealt with the organization of the Seventh-day Adventist Church. On its first page, Ellen White reminded church leaders that she knew the history well from firsthand contact:
It is nearly forty years since organization was introduced among us as a people. I was one of the number who had an experience in establishing it from the first. I know the difficulties that had to be met, the evils which it was designed to correct, and I have watched its influence in connection with the growth of the cause. At an early stage in the work, God gave us special light upon this point, and this light, together with the lessons that experience has taught us, should be carefully considered.
From the first, our work was aggressive. Our numbers were few, and mostly from the poorer class. Our views were almost unknown to the world. We had no houses of worship, [and] but few publications and very limited facilities for carrying forward our work. The sheep were scattered in the highways and byways, in cities, in towns, in forests. The commandments of God and the faith of Jesus was our message.
She then wrote of the inception of the various enterprises that were developed within the church, the educational work, and the establishment of health institutions, "both for the health and instruction of our own people and as a means of blessing and enlightenment to others." She asked,
What is the secret of our prosperity? We have moved under the orders of the Captain of our salvation. God has blessed our united efforts. The truth has spread and flourished. Institutions have multiplied. The mustard seed has grown to a great tree. The system of organization proved a grand success.
She decried situations in which the machinery had become too complicated and conference sessions at times "burdened down with propositions and resolutions that were not at all essential." This, she pointed out, was an argument against, not organization, but the perversion of it.
It was in this setting she penned the unforgettable words:
In reviewing our past history, having traveled over every step of advance to our present standing, I can say, "Praise God!" As I see what the Lord has wrought, I am filled with astonishment and with confidence in Christ our Leader. We have nothing to fear for the future, except as we shall forget the way the Lord has led us, and His teaching in our past history.--Letter 32, 1892.
President Olsen chose to present this message at the very opening of the institute, bringing it before the assembly of some three hundred workers and visitors on Sunday afternoon, January 29. As Olsen presented Ellen White's letter to the workers gathered at the institute, he broached the question of an administrative organization that would serve between the local conference, missions, and organizations, and the General Conference, thus planting the seeds for the union conference plan that was adopted in 1901. "What can be the objection," he asked, "to organizing district conferences? ... It would seem that the problem of unity of effort in many distant fields, such as Australasia, South America, et cetera, could not be solved so well in any other way as to provide such fields with district conferences."--The General Conference Bulletin, 1893, 24, 25.
Some months later Ellen White referred to this subject. She wrote:
Elder Waggoner has entertained ideas, and without waiting to bring his ideas before a council of brethren, has agitated strange theories. He has brought before some of the people ideas in regard to organization that ought never to have had expression.
I supposed that the question of organization was settled forever with those who believed the testimonies given through Sister White. Now if they believed the testimonies, why do they work contrary to them? Why should not my brethren be prudent enough to place these matters before me, or at least to enquire if I had any light upon these subjects?
Why is it that these things start up at this time when we have canvassed the matter in our previous history, and God has spoken upon these subjects? Should not that be enough? Why not keep steadily at work in the lines that God has given us? Why not walk in the clear light He has revealed in place of tearing to pieces that which God has built up?--Letter 37, 1894.
Ellen G. White's Message to the Delegates
Four days after penning the message to church leaders quoted above, she wrote a message to be delivered to the delegates at the session. It read:
Dear Brethren of the General Conference,
I am rejoiced to report to you the goodness, the mercy, and the blessing of the Lord bestowed upon me. I am still compassed with infirmities, but I am improving. The Great Restorer is working in my behalf, and I praise His holy name.
After writing briefly of her prolonged illness and her relation to it, she declared:
Since the first few weeks of my affliction, I have had no doubts in regard to my duty in coming to this distant field; and more than this, my confidence in my heavenly Father's plan in my affliction has been greatly increased....
I have since leaving America written twenty hundred pages of letter paper. I could not have done all this writing if the Lord had not strengthened and blessed me in large measure. Never once has that right hand failed me. My arm and shoulder have been full of suffering, hard to bear, but the hand has been able to hold the pen and trace words that have come to me from the Spirit of the Lord.
The Use of Another's Language
As her heart overflowed with the sense of the goodness of God to her and to His church, she chose to express her feelings in phrases from God's Word and also in the wording of a book she had recently read, The Great Teacher, by John Harris, published in 1836. Such a procedure was not uncommon in her work. She found the language choice and the truth well expressed. [In his introduction to the volume from which Ellen White drew some expressions, harris wrote: "Suppose, for example, an inspired prophet were now to appear in the Church, to add a supplement to the canonical books--what a babel of opinions would he find existing on almost every theological subject! And how highly probable it is that his ministry would consist, or seem to consist, in a mere selection and ratification of such of these opinions as accorded with the mind of God. Absolute originality would seem to be almost impossible. The inventive mind of man has already bodied forth speculative opinions in almost every conceivable form, forestalling and robbing the future of its fair proportion of novelties and leaving little more, even to a divine messenger, than the office of taking some of these opinions and impressing them with the seal of heaven."--John harris, The Great Teacher, pp. XXXIII, XXXIV.] Speaking of God's tender care for His church, Ellen White wrote:
I have had a most precious experience, and I testify to my fellow laborers in the cause of God, "The Lord is good, and greatly to be praised." I testify to my brethren and sisters that the church of Christ, enfeebled and defective as it may be, is the only object on earth on which He bestows His supreme regard. While He extends to all the world His invitation to come to Him and be saved, He commissions His angels to render divine help to every soul that cometh to Him in repentance and contrition, and He comes personally by His Holy Spirit into the midst of His church....
Consider, my brethren and sisters, that the Lord has a people, a chosen people, His church, to be His own, His own fortress, which He holds in a sin-stricken, revolted world; and He intended that no authority should be known in it, no laws be acknowledged by it, but His own.
After writing at some length of the church, its authority, and its resources and facilities, she penned the following, again couching her message in part in the words of Harris:
The Lord Jesus is making experiments on human hearts through the exhibition of His mercy and abundant grace. He is effecting transformations so amazing that Satan, with all his triumphant boasting, with all his confederacy of evil united against God and the laws of His government, stands viewing them as a fortress impregnable to his sophistries and delusions. They are to him an incomprehensible mystery.
The angels of God, seraphim and cherubim, the powers commissioned to cooperate with human agencies, look on with astonishment and joy that fallen men, once children of wrath, are through the training of Christ developing characters after the divine similitude, to be sons and daughters of God, to act an important part in the occupations and pleasures of heaven.--Letter 2d, 1892 (The General Conference Bulletin, 1893, 407-409; see also Testimonies to Ministers and Gospel Workers, 15-19).
"Testimony No. 12"
While Ellen White's message to the session was appreciated, and parts have often been quoted, neither church leaders nor Bulletin editors attached words of special comment. Not so with an eighteen-page document titled "Testimony No. 12," which was read on two occasions to those assembled.
Olsen read the message at the first hour of the Friday-morning institute session, February 3. He designated it as "a testimony received from Sister White for this conference." The notice describes it as "a solemn, searching appeal to the ministry to set about the work of cleansing and purification with terrible earnestness." The response is also noted:
The reading was followed by testimonies from quite a number who confessed failures with brokenness of heart and accepted the testimony as personal to them, and laid hold of the promises in it, as well as the corrections. The Spirit of the Lord brought a spirit of deep earnestness and solemnity into the meeting.--The General Conference Bulletin, 1893, 115.
Ellen White opened her message by relating an incident that had just taken place. One who was attending the Australian Conference session had related to her his perplexity and discouragement in finding in the Review and Herald articles by two leading brethren, A. T. Jones and Uriah Smith, one in disagreement with the other. She described the effect:
He saw in the Review the articles of Brother A. T. Jones in regard to the image of the beast, and then the one from Elder Smith presenting the opposite view. He was perplexed and troubled. He had received much light and comfort in reading articles from Brethren Jones and Waggoner; but here was one of the old laborers, one who had written many of our standard books, and whom we had believed to be taught of God, who seemed to be in conflict with Brother Jones.
What could all this mean? Was Brother Jones in the wrong? Was Brother Smith in error? Which was right? He became confused. When the important laborers in the cause of God take opposite positions in the same paper, whom can we depend on?
Who can we believe has the true position?
She pointed the troubled inquirer to the Bible, and urged that he be not confused by the differences of opinion he had observed. And she admonished church leaders and ministers that "the zeal that leads to this kind of work is not inspired of God." She gave counsel on dealing with such situations:
Dealing with Differences
I have received letters from different points telling the sad, discouraging results of these things. We have opposition enough from our foes, and we shall have conflicts fierce and strong; let us not now cause Satan to glory because of the pitched battles within our own ranks. The unity for which our Saviour prayed should be brought into our practical life.
After devoting several pages urging unity, in the words of the apostle Paul she urged: "I beseech you, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that ye all speak the same thing." She admonished that "this is not a time for brother to cherish prejudice against brother. Put not into our enemies' hands anything that bears the least suggestions of differences among us, even in opinion."
Then she put her finger on what appears to have been the cause behind the situation she was dealing with:
The conference at Minneapolis was the golden opportunity for all present to humble the heart before God and to welcome Jesus as the great Instructor, but the stand taken by some at that meeting proved their ruin. They have never seen clearly since, and they never will, for they persistently cherish the spirit that prevailed there, a wicked, criticizing, denunciatory spirit. Yet since that meeting, abundant light and evidence has been graciously given, that all might understand what is truth.
Those who were then deceived might since have come to the light. They might rejoice in the truth as it is in Jesus, were it not for the pride of their own rebellious hearts. They will be asked in the judgment, "Who required this at your hand, to rise up against the message and the messengers I sent to My people with light, with grace and power? Why have you lifted up your souls against God? Why did you block the way with your perverse spirit? And afterward when evidence was piled upon evidence, why did you not humble your hearts before God, and repent of your rejection of the message of mercy He sent you?" The Lord has not inspired these brethren to resist the truth.
In this communication Ellen White addressed herself to the loss that had come to the cause of God because of the resistance on the part of some at the Minneapolis General Conference session to the presentations of truth made there, and the burden thus placed on the Lord's messengers that tended to divert them from aggressive work in the field.
Ellen White had just written of her amazement of what God had wrought in the advancement of the cause, and that we have nothing to fear for the future unless we forget. Yet she sensed the presence of situations that gave her concern:
The Lord designed that the messages of warning and instruction given through the Spirit to His people should go everywhere. But the influence that grew out of the resistance of light and truth at Minneapolis tended to make of no effect the light God had given to His people through the testimonies. Great Controversy ... has not had the circulation that it should have had, because some of those who occupy responsible positions were leavened with the spirit that prevailed at Minneapolis, a spirit that clouded the discernment of the people of God The dullness of some and the opposition of others have confined our strength and means largely among those who know the truth, but do not practice its principles.
Then she penned the following startling words--words that answer in part the question as to why Christ has not yet come:
If every soldier of Christ had done his duty, if every watchman on the walls of Zion had given the trumpet a certain sound, the world might ere this have heard the message of warning. But the work is years behind. What account will be rendered to God for thus retarding the work?
She appealed to the church for sacrifice and dedication: Eternity is to be kept in view; troublous days are ahead.
The appeal closed with the words "Our work is plainly laid down in the Word of God. Christian is to be united to Christian, church to church, the human instrumentality cooperating with the divine, every agency to be subordinate to the Holy Spirit, and all to be combined in giving to the world the good tidings of the grace of God."--Manuscript 1, 1893 (see also Ibid., 1893, 419, 420).
The Wholehearted Response
The message as given in the manuscript was probably read in its entirety at the institute. Perhaps, though, only the latter half, which did not deal with personalities and issues so sharply, was read four weeks later, Monday morning, February 27, during the session. That is indicated by the fact that the General Conference Bulletin for the Monday-meeting recorded only the last half of the message; it is also indicated by the description that was given of the response to the reading. The editors of the Bulletin reported:
Following the reading of this, a most excellent social meeting occurred, a number of brethren responding with hearty confessions and expressions of determination to walk in unity and love and the advancing light. The good Spirit of the Lord came in in marked degree, tears flowed freely, and expressions of joy and thankfulness seemed to well up from every heart.--Ibid., 1893, 421
Such reports of the influence of the testimonies indicate that even with the messenger of God thousands of miles away, her influence was felt in a marked manner. Other reports, in more than five hundred pages of the General Conference Bulletin for 1893, show clearly the pervasive influence of the Spirit of Prophecy in the remnant church.
Relation to Doctrines
One of these pages carries remarks made by S. N. Haskell concerning the relation of the Spirit of Prophecy to the doctrines of the church. In answering a question raised in one of his meetings, he referred to the Scripture argument and then read some extracts from the Spirit of Prophecy throwing light upon the subject.
Alluding to the use of that which had been given to the church by the Spirit of Prophecy, he said he never attempted to establish doctrine from the testimonies.
The testimonies have not been given to establish new doctrine. The doctrine is established by the Word of God, and the Spirit of Prophecy comes in to bring out the light, revealing new beauties in it, and bringing out here and there details which help in the understanding of the Word of God....
[A voice: "Isn't it safe to say that the testimony reveals no new doctrine?"]
Yes. Some of our old brethren know that in the East and New England it is a great place for battles over the testimonies.... I happened to be born in the East, and embraced the truth there, and so have battled in this line a good deal. Nothing pleased me more than to get those who opposed the visions together and have a Bible reading on the testimonies. And before we began we always made this statement: that if they could find any line in the testimonies that pertained to a doctrine that I could not establish from the Bible, I would give up the testimonies. And second, If they could ever find a line in the testimonies giving a prophecy or prediction which should be fulfilled, and which had not been fulfilled, I would give up the testimonies. There I will stand today. So I believe the testimonies.--Ibid., 1893, 233
Thus while Ellen White was helping to pioneer the work in Australasia, battling what seemed to be almost insurmountable difficulties, stalwart leaders at the home base of the church functioned as if she were in their presence, and benefited from her pen.
In January, 1893, longstanding plans for Ellen White to visit New Zealand were coming to fruition. These plans called for visiting the churches and for a camp meeting to be held in Napier in March. A conference session would be held in connection with it. Ellen White, W. C. White, and G. B. Starr and his wife would attend. The tour was expected to take about four months.