Following the account of the preparation and publication of The Desire of Ages, we return now to the activities at Sunnyside as the year 1899 dawns. The Sabbaths and Sundays she spent at Maitland took Ellen White away for a few days each week, but the literary activities at her Sunnyside office continued. Marian Davis pressed on with the parables book, and Ellen White turned her attention to the American mails. Several matters of vital importance pressed hard upon her. Foremost among these was the distressing course being pursued in the medical missionary work in America.
Dr. John Harvey Kellogg was taking steps to divest this work of its denominational ties, in the Battle Creek Sanitarium, the medical school, and in the work for the outcasts and socially deprived classes in Chicago. This last mentioned was a fast-burgeoning work that divided his interests and overburdened his body and mind.
Calling for earnest attention were the inroads of pantheistic philosophy insidiously creeping into the teachings of Seventh-day Adventists, threatening the basic theology of the church. A three-week-long General Conference session would open at South Lancaster, Massachusetts, on February 15, and she applied herself to the preparation of messages to sound solemn warnings and to guard the cause.
The pressure of the Newcastle camp meeting, which lasted into January, 1899, deterred her writing. It was not until near the close of the General Conference session that her messages arrived and were read to the delegates by G. A. Irwin, president of the General Conference. Some were read on Wednesday morning, March 1, and others on Sabbath afternoon, March 4. The messages that dealt with the various phases of the medical missionary work were presented first. In the main these were but an amplification of what she had been writing in letters to Dr. Kellogg over a period of a year or two. Some of the letters contained words of commendation for certain phases of his work; some just newsy reports of developments in Australia, particularly in medical missionary lines; some sounded an alarm, some solemn warnings. All were written kindly, carefully, and with understanding. On February 13, 1898, she introduced her message to the doctor, whom she had known since he was a lad and whom she loved as her own son:
It would give me great satisfaction to have a long visit with you. I have much to say to you, and you have much to say to me. Sometimes I have a strong impression that I shall again bear my testimony upon the old field of battle, Battle Creek.--Letter 21, 1898.
Another communication written around the same time opens with the words:
Special light has been given me that you are in danger of losing sight of the work that is to be done for this time. You are erecting barriers between your work and those you are educating, and the church. This must not be....
Do not, I beg of you, instill into the students ideas that will cause them to lose confidence in God's appointed ministers. But this you are certainly doing, whether you are aware of it or not.... Temptations will come to you that to carry forward the medical missionary work you must stand aloof from the church organization or church discipline.--Letter 123, 1898.
You are to remember, my brother, that the Lord has a people on the earth, whom He respects. But your words and the way in which you express them create unbelief in the positions we occupy as a people at the present time. You do not believe the present truth.
You will remember that I wrote you that the banner you should hold firmly was being taken from your hand, and a banner with a different inscription put into it. You remember the warning given you that you were in danger, as was Nebuchadnezzar, of exalting yourself. Other symbols have been given me which lead me to write you now. You are in danger of not holding fast the faith once delivered to the saints, of making shipwreck of your faith. The words were spoken, "A very small leak will sink a ship."--Ibid.
Enamored with the work of a Dr. George D. Dowkontt, who had developed an undenominational Medical Missionary Society in New York City, through the middle 1890s, Dr. Kellogg cherished something of this kind as the ideal for the work he was leading out in, in Battle Creek and Chicago. In progressive steps he worked toward ushering the medical work of Seventh-day Adventists toward a nondenominational status. As Kellogg led out in the establishment of the American Medical Missionary College in 1895 (as explained in chapters 23 and 24 of The Story of Our Health Message), he rather stealthily imposed on this important phase of educational work an undenominational identity. The students who enrolled in this medical college were told by Kellogg:
This is not a sectarian school. Sectarian doctrines are not to be taught in this medical school. It is a school for the purpose of teaching medical science, theoretically and practically, and gospel missionary work. It is not to be either a Seventh-day Adventist or a Methodist or a Baptist, or any other sectarian school, but a Christian medical college--a missionary medical college, to which all Christian men and Christian women who are ready to devote their lives to Christian work will be admitted.--Medical Missionary, October, 1895 (quoted in The Story of Our Health Message, 294, 295).
Kellogg's veering away from the church and what it stood for, accompanied by an attitude of increasing criticism of the ministry, placing the ministerial work as secondary to the medical missionary work, brought agony to Ellen White. "The medical missionary work," she wrote Kellogg, "is not to supersede the ministry of the Word." She continued:
I have listened to your words in jots and tittles to demerit the ministers and their work; it was not to your credit to do this. It was against the Lord's organized plans, and if all had been done to please your ideas, we should have strange things developed; but God has held in check some things, that they should not become a specialty.... You have become exalted; you have come to think that the message God has given for this time is not essential.--Letter 249, 1899.
Work for the Outcasts
Dr. Kellogg was reaching out to bring aid to the deprived, the drunkards, the prostitutes and outcasts in Chicago. This work, at its inception, brought commendation from Ellen White, but as it grew disproportionately, cautions and restraints were called for. Alarmed, she wrote to him on December 14, 1898:
Constant work is to be done for the outcasts, but this work is not to be made all-absorbing. This class you have always with you. All the means must not be bound up in this work, for the highways have not yet received the message. There is work in the Lord's vineyard which must be done. No one should now visit our churches, and claim from them means to sustain the work of rescuing outcasts. The means to sustain that work should come ... from those not of our faith.
Let the churches take up their appointed work of presenting truth from the oracles of God in the highways. As in the days of Christ, we are to minister to all classes. But to make the work of seeking for the outcasts all and in all, while there are large vineyards open to culture and yet untouched, is beginning at the wrong end. The means now given by the churches is needed to establish the work in new fields. The glad tidings are to be proclaimed to every nation, tongue, and people.--Letter 138, 1898.
Through the year 1898 she penned seventeen letters to Dr. Kellogg, aggregating some 113 pages; many were messages of caution. On December 18, 1898, she warned:
You are in positive danger. You are placing too many duties upon yourself and those connected with you. Unless you give yourself time for prayer and for study of the Scriptures, you will be in danger of accommodating the Scriptures to your own ideas. Take heed that in the work you are doing, you do not misapply your powers, giving all you have to a work which is not a whole, but only a part of the work to be done. Keep the part you are doing in symmetrical proportion with the other lines of the work.--Letter 126, 1898.
Her last letter to him in 1898 was a most earnest appeal, dated December 29.
Brother John Kellogg, my mother heart goes out toward you with weeping, for by symbols I am warned that you are in danger. Satan is making masterly efforts to cause your feet to slide; but God's eye is upon you. Fight these last battles manfully. Stand equipped with the whole armor of righteousness. By faith I lay you, in earnest prayer, at the feet of Jesus. You are safe only in that position. Never for a moment suppose that you are in no danger. You are God's property. You are to consider that you are under God's supervision. Your strength is in learning of Jesus Christ, His meekness, His lowliness of heart.--Letter 132, 1898.
One of her letters contained a strong appeal to Dr. Kellogg for financial help with which to build the much-needed Sydney Sanitarium. She urged that the Battle Creek Sanitarium, now in a prosperous time financially, should give aid to the medical work in Australia. Dr. Kellogg responded to the appeal, but not in the way Ellen White intended or expected. By the terms of the new charter for the Sanitarium designed by Dr. Kellogg in 1897, none of the profits of the institution could be used outside of the State of Michigan. Pressed by Ellen White, the doctor informed her that within a short time he would see that the work in Australia would receive $5,000. This he would raise himself. It was easier to respond to the appeal for money than to the appeals for changes in the course he was following in an unbalanced medical missionary work, in disparaging the ministry, and in steps being taken to make the medical work undenominational.
The Burden of Heart Not Lifted
Her messages to the General Conference penned during the early weeks of 1899 did not lift from her heart her concern for Kellogg. Through the year 1899 she wrote another twenty-six letters to him, averaging nine pages each. Not all were sent at the time of writing, for she could see that her messages of counsel were not accomplishing what they should and she wrestled to find a way to save the doctor from shipwreck. When she could, she wrote and spoke with commendation and encouragement. It was so as she related to workers in Australia the manner in which God especially blesses the work of consecrated physicians:
I have seen Dr. Kellogg fall on his knees in an agony of distress when an operation was to be performed which meant life or death. One false movement of the instrument would cost the patient's life. Once, in a critical operation, I saw a hand laid upon his hand. That hand moved his hand, and the patient's life was saved....
The medical work has been represented as the right hand of the body of truth. This hand is to be constantly active, constantly at work; and God will strengthen it. But it is to remain a hand; it is not to be made the body. I desire that this point shall be understood.--UCR, July 21, 1899.
Her message to him written April 17 was one of encouragement. In this she declared:
On no account should you be entangled and woven up in any work that will endanger your influence with Seventh-day Adventists, for the Lord has appointed you to fill a place of His appointment, to stand before the medical profession, not to be molded, but to mold human minds.... He has a work for you to do, not separated from Seventh-day Adventists, but in unity and harmony with them, to be a great blessing to your brethren in giving to them that knowledge which God has given you.--Letter 73, 1899.
But at this time Kellogg was not prone to receive messages of caution and reproof. He took offense at the cautions Ellen White sounded and declared that she had turned against him. He threatened to resign from his work and all connection with Seventh-day Adventists. This almost stunned her. On August 15 she wrote in her diary:
I lose my courage and my strength and cannot call to mind the very things I ought to say and the many things I ought to write. I have a letter--two, yes, three--written for Dr. Kellogg, but I am so afraid of being misunderstood that I dare not send them. I feel intensely, and want to help his mind in many things, but how can I do it? My words are misapplied and misunderstood, and sometimes appear to be so misunderstood by humans that they do more harm than good. This has been the case with Dr. Kellogg.--Manuscript 189, 1899.
The next day she wrote in her diary:
The mail went this morning. There are the letters to Dr. Kellogg, uncopied, unsent. Perhaps it is well. I do not think we see things alike, and he feels sure his work has been under the leading of the Lord. I see his dangers, which he does not see. The Lord has presented his case before me, and the result must, I fear, come upon him.
He is carrying the responsibilities he has been accumulating for years. If he falls under the load he has piled upon himself, he will leave the impression it is because he was left without the cooperation of those who ought to have helped him. May the Lord have compassion upon Dr. Kellogg is my prayer. May the Lord help him to see he is accumulating too many responsibilities in the medical missionary work.--Ibid.
Some months after this, in a letter to George Irwin, Ellen White pointed out the critical nature of Dr. Kellogg's case, and spoke of the terrible crisis that must be met:
He is writing Dr. Caro letters which declare he is going to give up and separate from Seventh-day Adventists. This is the result of his getting himself overloaded and so crowded with financial embarrassments he does not know what to say or to do to extricate himself. I am so sorry that things are as they are--but Satan has played his cards well, and the game is falling into Satan's hands unless something can be done to save Dr. Kellogg.--Letter 170, 1900.
To see the man who had been used so mightily by God and by whose side she had stood through the years veer away from the message and lose sight of the real objectives of medical missionary work tore Ellen White's soul. Nonetheless, she continued to labor and pray and to communicate through letters. As the materials were assembled for Testimonies, volume 6, a section of nearly one hundred pages was devoted to medical missionary work and the balance that should be maintained in carrying forward its many features. The later compilation Welfare Ministry also carries a section on working for the unfortunate, appropriately titled "The Outcasts."
At the 1899 General Conference Session
The first of the E. G. White messages read before the 1899 General Conference session on March 1 carried the title "The Work for This Time," and opened with the words:
We are standing on the threshold of great and solemn events. Prophecies are fulfilling. The last great conflict will be short, but terrible. Old controversies will be revived. New controversies will arise. The last warnings must be given to the world. There is a special power in the presentation of the truth at the present time; but how long will it continue? Only a little while. If ever there was a crisis, it is now.
The message pointed out that with the advance of the work in its many features, dangers would arise that must be guarded against, and "as new enterprises are entered upon, there is a tendency to make some one line all-absorbing; that which should have the first place becomes a secondary consideration." Then she addressed herself to the work for the social outcasts:
Of late a great interest has been aroused for the poor and outcast classes; a great work has been entered upon for the uplifting of the fallen and degraded. This in itself is a good work.... This will have its place in connection with the proclamation of the third angel's message and the reception of Bible truth. But there is danger of loading down everyone with this class of work, because of the intensity with which it is carried on. There is danger of leading men to center their energies in this line, when God has called them to another work.--The General Conference Bulletin, 1899, 128.
Meeting the Inroads of Pantheism
Only as God had revealed it to her could Ellen White have known that pantheistic teachings would be presented at the General Conference session. She was led to write and send in advance an article to be read entitled "The True Relation of God and Nature." At the Tuesday-morning meeting, February 21, as the health message was being discussed at the session, Dr. Kellogg declared that he would be glad to hear from Dr. E. J. Waggoner and W. W. Prescott "on this question of healthful living," for both had been giving interesting and helpful talks at the Sanitarium. As Waggoner spoke, he did so in the framework of pantheistic philosophy, which carried apparent support of at least a part of the audience. Some days later the mail brought Ellen White's message, which was read to the session on Sabbath afternoon, March 4.
It opened with these words:
Since the fall of man, nature cannot reveal a perfect knowledge of God, 's God.--Ibid., 157.
Excerpts from her address reveal the straightforward way she came to grips with the issues that had been so subtly raised at the church's world headquarters:
Christ came to the world as a personal Saviour. He represented a personal God. He ascended on high as a personal Saviour, and He will come again as He ascended to heaven--a personal Saviour. We need carefully to consider this, for in their human wisdom, the wise men of the world, knowing not God, foolishly deify nature and the laws of nature....
The Father in heaven has a voice and a person which Christ expressed. Those who have a true knowledge of God will not become so infatuated with the laws of matter and the operations of nature as to overlook or to refuse to acknowledge the continual working of God in nature. Deity is the author of nature. The natural world has in itself no inherent power but that which God supplies. How strange, then, that so many make a deity of nature! God furnishes the matter and the properties with which to carry out His plans: Nature is but His agency.--Ibid.
Counsel on Seeking Counsel
As mentioned in an earlier chapter, there was in the late 1890s a deterioration in conditions in the publishing house at Battle Creek. Ellen White's nephew, F. E. Belden, an employee there, reported the situation, which rolled a heavy weight on her soul. When the letter came to her, she read the opening paragraphs and then handed it to W. C. White, asking him to reply. From the visions God had given her she was familiar with the circumstances, but reading of them from the pen of another engendered distress. Because of the uniqueness of the situation we give here a part of what W. C. White wrote of this in a letter to Belden on September 25, 1899:
After Mother had read the first of your letter, she laid it down, saying that she was weary and heartsick of thinking of matters at Battle Creek, and that she must ask me to read the letter and to write to you about it. I am sorry for your sake that she has laid this duty upon me, but for my own sake I am glad, because it gives me an opportunity to express to you some thoughts which I am anxious that both you and Edson [White] should consider.
It is not necessary that you or Edson or any other person shall give particulars regarding the work at Battle Creek in order to get Mother's counsel as to the course that should be pursued, because the matters which transpire there are laid open before her clearly from time to time. Mother is carrying a very heavy burden regarding the work at Battle Creek, and especially at the Review and Herald, and she is writing frequently to the managers and to the officers of the General Conference, laying out principles and calling attention to dangers.
It is not advisable at present for anyone to write to Mother particulars about the lack of harmony, the lack of tenderness, and the lack of missionary spirit in the office of publication and in the church, because it seems to bring upon her a burden which is greater than she can bear.
When the Lord opens these matters to her mind, He gives her strength to bear the load, but when individuals present these things, it seems to almost kill her.
Another reason why it is not best for individuals to lay before Mother the shortcomings of others is the fact that this very action puts them in a position where they cannot so fully appreciate the counsels and reproofs sent as [they can] if they have adopted the plan of carrying their burdens, their complaints, their questions to the Lord, asking Him to send His answer through whatever agency He may choose, then waiting patiently for that answer.
It may come through a message given to Mother; it may come in another way, but I think that ... when we wait patiently upon the Lord, we are in a better position to appreciate the answers which come to our questions, whether they be in special testimony, in the sermons of our ministering brethren, in our study of the Sacred Word, or in our seasons of counsel and prayer with our colaborers in the work.
Believe me, dear Frank, that these suggestions are offered in tenderest love and sympathy. I do appreciate to some extent your burdens of mind, your perplexity, your anxiety regarding the progress of the work, and your feeling of distress and indignation as you see a wrong course followed in the dealings between institutions, and the dealings of the institutions with enterprises and individuals.--14 WCW, p. 127.
School Debts and Ellen White's Gift
The American mails had brought to Ellen White a letter from Battle Creek seeking counsel as to the erection of another building there in the headquarters city. She wrote in her diary of her answer and of the outcome:
The letter was answered. The light given me of God for them was given them distinctly that not a brick should be laid to incur additional debt, and close investigation should be made to ascertain the reason for so heavy a debt already existing.
But the counselors in Battle Creek, notwithstanding, concluded that the testimony coming to them did not mean what it said. The appearance was that they must have more buildings and they did build, following the imagination of their own hearts, and now they are involved in embarrassment.... They went directly contrary to the light God gave them, and the counsel of men was accepted, for it looked so wise to them to make additions that they imagined they must have.
There will be every excuse made for men to follow their strong imagination, and the instruction the Lord--who knows the end from the beginning--gives is cast aside as a mistake.... If men will refuse light they shall have trouble. The yoke of perplexity which they have chosen for their own necks always galls when this is the case. But how much might be saved if those who claim to believe the testimonies [would accept those] the Lord has sent them rather than to cast them aside and crowd forward their own human decision which costs heavily in the end. This is the work that is now being done.--Manuscript 89, 1900.
Ellen White Relates to the Mistake
More than $20,000 was consumed in creating that additional building. Writing of the experience, she showed her tolerance, and the bigheartedness of a mother:
We feel very anxious to do all in our power to lift the heavy debt on our schools. I have proposed to give to the benefit of the schools my book on the parables [Christ's Object Lessons]. They may have the avail of this book in every place for the benefit of the schools to pay the great debt that has been created through not heeding the messages that the Lord has sent.--Ibid.
What she had in mind was laid before the readers of The Review and Herald, May 1, 1900. The General Conference appointed a seven-man committee to foster a well-organized campaign. With the cooperation of thousands of church members, this gift yielded more than $300,000 in debt-paying funds.
Correspondence with G. I. Butler
Some of her correspondence buoyed her soul. This was the case in the exchange with G. I. Butler. At the time of the General Conference session of 1888 held in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Butler, who had long served as president of the General Conference, was ill and could not be present. Relieved of his responsibilities at that meeting, he retired in Florida, planted an orange grove, and for more than a decade faithfully cared for his wife, who, soon after moving to Florida, suffered paralysis. Being for some years on the negative side of the issues that had surfaced at Minneapolis in 1888, he felt that Ellen White had about written him off. When he received word that at her direction one of the first copies of The Desire of Ages to come from the press was to be sent to him, he was elated and took heart. He wrote to her expressing his gratitude for her thoughtfulness of him.
After five years in retirement he had come to see some things more correctly and had changed his attitude. He wrote a letter of confession in 1893, published in the Review and Herald. In this he stated:
I freely admit that for a period I stood in doubt in regard to the agitation of these subjects ["the doctrines of justification by faith, the necessity of appropriating Christ's righteousness by faith in order to (attain) our salvation"] I have here so freely endorsed. I did not attend the General Conference in Minneapolis, where differences were agitated, being at the time sick in Battle Creek.... My sympathies were not with those leading out in bringing what I now regard as light, before the people.
He was glad that he could testify:
I am well satisfied that additional light of great importance has been shining upon these subjects, and fully believe that God has greatly blessed it to the good of those who have accepted it.--June 13, 1893.
Now a letter to Ellen White in late 1898 initiated a fresh correspondence. Ellen White responded to him a few months later, on April 21:
I received your letter a few days since, and read it with interest. Every mail I have designed writing to you, but each time something has come in to crowd me upon other things, and I could not get your letter written. But now I will write you a few lines.
You misapprehend me when you suppose I have lost all hope of you. This has never been the case. I have had a great desire to see you, and to converse and pray with you. I would be pleased to see you take hold of the work again and move forward, drinking in the rich truths which God has given us. I desire to see you stand on vantage ground and realize the blessing of God in your own heart and life.
Then, as if conversing with an old friend--which she was--she continued:
This field is large, and has been represented to me as a new world, a second America, but very different from America in its government. But America is far from being what it once was. I feel sorry when I consider this.
In regard to your situation, be assured that if I had the opportunity, I would grasp your hand with gladness, and call you brother. I think I am unchanged from the simple, humble servant of Jesus Christ you have always known me to be. You and I are getting along in years. But as far as my memory and activity are concerned, I have never in any period of my life done more earnest, hard work in speaking and writing than during the year 1898.
I see so much to do. I cannot see any place where I can let go my hold. Souls are perishing, and I must help them. I speak in the church and out of the church. We drive out into the country places, and speak in the open air, because the prejudice against the truth is so great that the people will not consent to our speaking in the little rough house where they assemble for worship.
Ellen White "chatted" about her experience in Australia for six pages with one she had known for nearly fifty years. She closed with this paragraph:
But I must stop writing. It is now 5:00 A.M., one hour before daylight. I left my bed at one o'clock. I have written this letter to you and two pages to Dr. Kellogg since then. Tell me in your next letter if you can read my writing. I cannot always get my letters copied. If you can read them, I will send some in this way. I would say to you, "Have faith in God. Trust in Him, for He knoweth all things. He is true and patient with all His erring children." God bless you is my prayer.--Letter 74, 1899.