Ellen White returned home to Elmshaven from the session some time between April 10 and 12. Of the significant and far-reaching events in the early summer of 1903 she wrote:
"My strength was severely taxed while at the conference, but the Lord sustained me through the meeting, and by His blessing, I am recovering from the strain. I could have borne the work of the meeting very well, had not many perplexities arisen, to describe which would require the pen of a ready writer. While in Oakland I contracted a severe cold. Sara [McEnterfer] gave me thorough treatment, and this broke it up; but it still comes and goes, as colds often will.
During the first week of the conference, rain fell nearly every day, but for some time the weather has been very pleasant.
The prospects of the Sanitarium here are more encouraging than they have been for some time. The patients are well-to-do, and all the higher-priced rooms are taken. The patients who have recently come express themselves as being well pleased with everything about the institution. Some who have traveled much say they never before saw such beautiful scenery, or so fine a location. They roam over the hills, and are enjoying their stay very much.
Dr. Evans and his wife are the chief physicians. Both are pleased with their work, and are well thought of by others....
Sarah Peck [formerly a member of Ellen White's working
staff] and her mother live in a small cottage near our house. We intended using this building for our workers, but it proved to be too small for the office work, so I built a plain, neat structure with eight rooms for our workers.
Sarah Peck teaches the Sanitarium church school. There are about forty pupils in attendance. Sister Peck has the reputation of being an excellent teacher. Her discipline is good, and all are well pleased with her work. The schoolhouse is built among the trees and rocks, on a piece of ground at the foot of the Sanitarium hill, a little removed from the road. All think it a delightful location. I was unable to give money to help in starting the school, but I have given the land for as long a time as the church may desire to use it for school purposes....
Ella May White [Willie's oldest daughter] has been canvassing in Sacramento for The Desire of Ages, and has sold a good many books. Our people in that place are well pleased with the spiritual influence she has exerted, and put her in as superintendent of their Sabbath school.
Mabel is not well all of the time. The doctors say she cannot endure the confinement of a schoolroom, and must not use her eyes in reading or studying.... She attended the conference in Oakland, and helped in the dining tent as a waitress. She received four dollars a week and her board. She has a very good address, and the Food Company desired her to remain and help them in restaurant work....
The twins [Henry and Herbert White] are hearty boys. It is difficult to distinguish one from the other. Grace, the baby, is a strong, healthy girl, with a good disposition. She is now nearly three years old.
Brother James, who has charge of the work on our farm, occupies a cottage near us, with his family of eight children. They are a nice family. He is assisted by a faithful, intelligent man from Australia.
I have quite a company of workers with me. W. C. White takes charge of the business of my book work. He uses excellent judgment in deciding what shall be published. His brethren have wanted him with them in council meetings, and in the past I have let him go. But I have decided that he can help the cause of God more by assisting me in my work than by attending council meetings.
Marian [Davis] edits the books that are prepared. Maggie Hare and Clarence Crisler prepare the articles for the papers. Miss Helen Graham does the typewriting. Dores Robinson, a son of A.T. Robinson, has lately come to help in the work.
Marian is sick at the Sanitarium. One evening while at the conference in Oakland, she visited the observatory. Not having sufficient wraps, she took a severe cold. We sent her up to the Sanitarium, and ever since she has been sick in bed. A nurse has been with her night and day. She has had a very severe illness, and at one time we feared she might die. I have been sick myself, and I was unable to go up to see her until last Friday, when I went with W. C. White. Her room is on the fifth story, and I had to tax my strength severely to walk up the last flight of stairs. We had a season of prayer for her....
This morning, Monday, I am up early writing these lines to you. [Written to her two nieces Addie and May Walling, whom she had cared for and educated after the death of their mother when they were children.] I should be tempted to go away somewhere for a change, but the change might make me worse, and besides, I must be with my workers to decide what matters shall be published. I want to make my time count for as much as possible while I have the strength to help.
I have several books in anticipation. I want to get out a book on The Acts of the Apostles, to follow the life of Christ. I have much matter written that I wish to put in book form. I sometimes fear that a fire will come, and I shall lose much of the precious matter that I desire to print. [Written before the construction of the fireproof manuscript vault in connection with the office building.]
I can say but little in reference to the conference at Oakland. It was a profitable occasion, and the Lord certainly helped us in the meeting. Some serious questions which arose were left to be decided at the meeting of the Medical Missionary and Benevolent Association in Battle Creek, which is now in session. We have been waiting with intense interest for news from them.--Letter 70, 1903.
Concern for Developments at Battle Creek
Only too well Ellen White sensed the critical situation in Battle Creek and awaited the news of the outcome of the important meetings being held there--the meetings of the General Conference Committee, meetings of the Review and Herald constituency, and the meetings of the International Medical Missionary and Benevolent Association.
In the heat of the battle at the General Conference session in Oakland, Dr. Kellogg challenged Elder Daniells on the steps of the church:
"You think that this little body of men over here are the General Conference. I will show you that there is another General Conference when I get back to Battle Creek."--DF 15a, AGD, "How the Denomination Was Saved from Pantheism," copy A, p. 21.
Pressing close, the doctor shook his finger at Daniells' nose and boasted:
"I will show you that I have a bigger delegation representative of this body of people than you have."-- Ibid., 21, 22.
It is true that at that time Seventh-day Adventists who were engaged in medical-related lines of work outnumbered all other denominational workers--evangelists, administrators, publishing-house employees, and educational workers--by about two to one.
Seeing the approaching struggle over control of institutions, Dr. Kellogg had called a twelve-day meeting of the International Medical Missionary and Benevolent Association in Battle Creek to follow the Oakland General Conference session, which closed on Sunday, April 12. To set aside twelve days for such a meeting was most unusual, but these were unusual times. The meeting would open in Battle Creek on the afternoon of Tuesday, April 21. Delegates were called in from the United States and Europe, representing "each of our sanitariums, food companies, benevolent institutions, and other enterprises connected with the medical missionary work" (The Medical Missionary, February, 1903).
The delegates would be housed in the new Sanitarium building that was to be dedicated in a few weeks' time. The meeting was billed as "without doubt the most interesting one ever held in the history of the association." "Matters of the highest importance, questions of vital interest, principles which are far-reaching, must be considered calmly, earnestly, and resolutely."-- Ibid.
As interest-drawing features, a series of special separate conferences was announced for missionary nurses, for physicians, for sanitarium business managers, for superintendents of food work, and for those engaged in city medical missionary work (Ibid.).
The day this convention would open was the day appointed for the Review and Herald constituency meeting, when decisions would be made concerning the future of the publishing house. The next day, April 22, delegates to the General Conference session held in Oakland would meet in the Battle Creek Tabernacle to hold the last meeting of the 1903 session, which for legal reasons had to be held there.
Fully aware of all these activities, Ellen White hoped and prayed that all concerned would yield fully to the leadings of the Spirit of God, particularly Dr. Kellogg, for whom she carried a heavy burden. She had not conversed with him at the session, for as she explained to Elder Haskell, "At the time of the General Conference in Oakland, I was forbidden by the Lord to have any conversation with Dr. Kellogg."--Letter 51, 1904. In words that gave an inkling of what might well be ahead, she wrote, "I have been shown that Dr. Kellogg has had papers drawn up by lawyers, the wording of which was such that few would see beneath the surface, and discern their final influence upon the work."--Letter 59, 1903.
On the day the session closed in Oakland, she wrote from her home to Elder Daniells:
A great sadness is upon me. I see that some in God's service are inclined to find fault and to work selfishly, using the Lord's goods to please and glorify self. Some do this [in] one way and some in another....
There is an important work to be done in Battle Creek in the coming councils. If you can move so wisely as to save Dr. Kellogg, and yet not sacrifice one principle of truth, if you can pass through this crisis without the loss of one soul, it will be because the Lord has worked with minds.--Letter 49, 1903.
Ellen White Working Through A. T. Jones
Just a week later, on Sunday, April 19, she wrote to A. T. Jones, who, as a General Conference Committee member would be, attending the meetings in Battle Creek. Jones and Kellogg had worked very closely together, sympathized with each other on the principles of organization, and seemingly had a good rapport. Jones would be in a position to approach Dr. Kellogg. To Elder Jones she wrote:
Dear Brother,
I am sending to you three manuscripts to be read to the brethren assembled at Battle Creek in council. These I desire that you shall read to the brethren when you discern that the time has come. You know my anxiety regarding the work--my desire that everything possible shall be done to establish unity and drive out dissension. We must do all in our power to save Dr. Kellogg and his associates from the result of the mistakes they have made, and to help them to see and understand the way of the Lord.--Letter 59, 1903.
Elder Jones received the letter and the documents on Thursday, April 23, and shared them with Elder Daniells, who on Friday wrote to W. C. White:
Our hearts are all made exceedingly glad by the arrival of the documents your mother has sent. They bring relief to the situation....
The crisis is here. The settlement must now be made. We shall do everything in our power to win every brother over to the right side, but we cannot compromise nor surrender the banner at this time.... We feel that your mother has certainly been inspired to send us what she has, and we shall endeavor to use it as we ought.--AGD to WCW, April 24, 1903.
She had already sent several other documents and she promised that more would follow. One of the letters sent to Jones was addressed to Kellogg. This course of action reveals how at times she was impressed by the Spirit of God to do her work. She wrote:
I am also sending to you a copy of a letter that I have written to Dr. Kellogg. In it there are very many plain admonitions. Some of these it may be difficult for the doctor to understand. I have not yet sent him a copy of this letter, nor shall I do so at present. My wish is that you shall talk and pray with him, and then read the letter to him, when you think that the time has come. I greatly desire that he shall see his danger, and turn to the Lord....
I could not speak of his dangers in open conference; for there were some present who would have misunderstood and stumbled, making an unwise use of any statements made that were unfavorable to him.--Letter 59, 1903.
The letter she sent for Elder Jones to read to the medical missionary workers assembled was written on April 16, and was addressed "To Those in Council at Battle Creek, Michigan." The opening sentence calls for the members of the Medical Missionary Association to work in concert with "responsible men of the General Conference" (Letter 54, 1903). The whole communication is an appeal for unity: "Seek for unity, and seek it in faith," she wrote. And then she reminded the group:
Our work is not left in the hands of finite men. God rules, and He will turn and overturn. He will not allow His work to be carried forward as it has been. His medical missionary work is not to be ruled, controlled, and molded by one man, as for some years it certainly has been. The exercise of such a power, if continued, will mar the work, and will be the certain ruin of the man exercising control.--(Ibid.
She promised that God would work with men carrying large responsibilities if they humbly worked in His way. But she warned that watchmen on the walls of Zion must "take heroic action to save the man and the cause" if anyone set himself up "as being above God" (Ibid.)
She recounted an incident she had recently read of an artist painting on a high scaffold. He stepped back to admire his work, then watched in horror as an assistant rushed forward and smeared the delicate work. One more step backward would have plunged the artist to his death. His angry surge forward saved his life. Ellen White asked: "Will our brethren in peril consent to be saved from the dangers they are in?" (Ibid.).
She reproved God's watchmen for their blindness:
They should have been wide awake to see that one man's mind, one man's judgment, was becoming a power that God could not and would not endorse. To invest one man or a few men with so much power and responsibility, is not in accordance with God's way of working.-- Ibid.
Then, as she did at the 1901 General Conference session, she called for a complete change--a reorganization:
There must be a reorganization.... At the General Conference of 1901 the light was given, Divide the General Conference into union conferences. Let there be fewer responsibilities centered in one place.
Let the work of printing our publications be divided. The principles that apply to the publishing work apply also to the Sanitarium work.... The gospel ministry, medical missionary work, and our publications are God's agencies. One is not to supersede the other. But you have sought to make the medical missionary work the whole body, instead of the arm and hand.--Ibid.
Her appeal closed with clear-cut concepts. The medical missionary work, properly conducted, was but a means to an end:
By the ministry of the Word, the gospel is preached; by medical missionary work the gospel is practiced. The gospel is bound up with medical missionary work. Neither is to stand alone, bound up in itself. The workers in each are to labor unselfishly and unitedly, striving to save sinners.--Ibid.
Other documents were in Elder Jones's hands to be read. One in which she addressed herself to "Our Leading Brethren, to Our Ministers and Especially to Our Physicians," made a strong appeal to banish both pride and a desire for prominence. "The Lord calls for a decided reformation," she wrote. "And when a soul is truly reconverted; let him be rebaptized."--Letter 63, 1903.
While copies of these documents were entrusted to A. T. Jones as one who might most effectively bring them to the medical personnel assembled in Battle Creek, copies had also been sent to other church leaders. The meeting of medical personnel had opened on Tuesday, April 21, but Jones did not reach Battle Creek till Thursday, April 23, during the extended and heated debate over the removal of the Review and Herald publishing plant to some point in the East. It was Friday evening when he finally got together with the General Conference Committee to consider how the Ellen White testimonies should be used. They reached no final decision, but came back together Sabbath morning, April 25, before the eleven-o'clock service to give the documents more study and to try to decide whether they should be presented in a general meeting to all the people or in some other way. Again no decision was reached, and the General Conference Committee, with Jones present, met from 5:00 P.M. Saturday evening until late at night. The biggest issue seems to have been whether harmony could be reached without either the General Conference leaders or Dr. Kellogg actually yielding their positions on the various issues in question.
The Messages Reach Dr. Kellogg
Sunday evening, April 26, Jones had occasion to present the testimonies Ellen White had placed in his hands to the Medical Missionary and Benevolent Association leaders. Their reaction, as Jones recounted to Ellen White, was of spontaneous agreement and confession. As that meeting closed, he walked with Kellogg toward his home, chatting about the situation. Approaching the Kellogg residence, Jones sensed that the time had come to present Ellen White's personal testimony to him. He mentioned the letter, and Kellogg invited him in. Again Jones pictures Kellogg as willing and eager to accept every line:
I am happy to say that from the beginning to the end there was in the doctor no sign of any irritation or impatience with anything that was said; but a quiet, considerate readiness to look fairly and candidly at every statement, and to receive it for just what it said.... I am sure that I never saw a brother accept a testimony any more thoroughly than did he.--A. T. Jones to EGW, April 29, 1903.
In her letter to Kellogg, the messenger of the Lord explained that three times after sleepless nights, she had been ready to address the delegates at the 1903 General Conference regarding the doctor and the points at issue, but she was restrained because her words might be misunderstood. Now she must speak:
"What can I say that will in any way affect you?" she asked. "In some respects you have been pursuing a strange course during the last two years. This cannot continue."
She mentioned the General Conference of 1901 and said:
If at that meeting you had fallen on the Rock and been broken, you would since that time have had a much deeper spiritual experience. But since that conference things have continually been occurring that show your mind is far from being free from evil....
I greatly desire that your soul shall be saved. You should no longer feel that your individual judgment is to be the criterion by which others are to be guided in carrying forward the medical missionary work....
Does not the sweeping away of the Sanitarium by fire mean much to you? Such a manifest token of God's displeasure should lead you to most earnest self-examination.... Study to find out why this punishment has come. Allow not this rebuke to pass by unheeded, lest it be followed by still sterner punishment.--Letter 55, 1903.
She pleaded with the doctor to repent:
Pray for yourself, in the name of Christ. Pray earnestly, fervently, sincerely. I hope that your life may be spared, and that you may give yourself wholly to repentance. Come to the Lord, and surrender all to Him. You must, or you will be taken captive by the enemy.
I cannot but write these words, for One of the highest authority has made this appeal to you.--Ibid.
The next afternoon, Monday, April 27, Kellogg appeared before the General Conference Committee. He made a frank admission that he had been wrong in some of his positions, he acknowledged the divine Source of Ellen White's writings, and he asked for unity. The committee responded wholeheartedly with apologies and confessions. As Jones put it, "There was a breaking down all around. With tears of contrition and joy, brethren embraced one another in Christian love."--A. T. Jones to EGW, April 29, 1903.
The doctor and the General Conference leaders went directly to the Tabernacle, where a session of the Medical Missionary and Benevolent Association was in progress, and told everyone about the new-found harmony. The next day, Tuesday, Kellogg and Daniells sent a joint telegram to Ellen White: "Peace established according to Ephesians 2:14-22."
In a letter to W. C. White, Elder Daniells describes the experience and its aftermath:
Personally, I received very much help. Complete reconciliation to the doctor was established in my heart, and I told him so. This seemed to affect him very much.... When our meeting was over, peace reigned in all our hearts, and it seemed like a beautiful calm that follows a terrific storm. The medical convention was in progress at the Tabernacle, and we all went over and told them what God had done for us.
I need not tell you that there was great rejoicing. The doctor and I thought it would be a privilege for us to send a message to your mother. In establishing this peace, neither party claims a victory; neither one was asked to compromise the principles of right for which we felt that we were standing.--AGD to WCW, April 29, 1903.
A little later, after she had received letters from both Daniells and Kellogg reporting the reconciliation, she wrote:
I received your letter, also one from Elder Daniells. It made my heart very thankful to know that our brethren are doing all they possibly can to come into unity. May the Lord lead them on step by step.--Letter 80, 1903.
But the harmony was short-lived. Her period of rejoicing was soon cut short by a vision of which she wrote in a letter to Willie:
After I received the letter in regard to the excellent meeting of confession and unity that had been held in Battle Creek, I was writing in my diary, and was about to record my thankfulness I felt over the fact that there was a change, when my hand was arrested, and there came to me the words: "Write it not. No change for the better has taken place. The doctor is ensnared in a net of specious deception. He is presenting as precious the things that are turning souls from the truth into ... forbidden paths.--Letter 172, 1903.
She wrote in the same vein to Dr. Kellogg, and said:
Your case, my brother John, weighs heavily on my soul. You are presented to me as one who has been making strange paths for his feet, exerting an influence that leads others out of the right way.--Letter 181, 1903.
Crisis days were to continue. These crises led church leaders to put their dependence wholly in God and to reach out for every bit of light the Lord might send through His messenger.