"While I was praying at the family altar, the Holy Ghost fell upon me and I seemed to be rising higher and higher, far above the dark world. I turned to look for the Advent people in the world, but could not find them, when a voice said to me, 'Look again, and look a little higher.' "
It was not to Hiram Edson alone that Christ brought new light after the disappointment. Following His crucifixion and resurrection Jesus appeared not only to Cleopas and his companion on the country road, but also to Mary in the garden, to the eleven disciples at supper, to 500 believers in Galilee, to Paul in a vision, and to others. Likewise, after October 22 He brought new light to Edson in a cornfield, to Joseph Turner in (apparently) the quiet of his study, and to Ellen Harmon in prophetic vision.
Joseph Turner edited a Millerite periodical. By December 1844 he too came to see that the saints must wait till the Bridegrom returns from the wedding. He and Apollos Hale, another prominent Adventist, quickly published their light in the Advent Mirror.
Ellen Harmon was brought up in Gorham and Portland, Maine. Her father, Robert Harmon, a hat maker, and her mother, Eunice, were active laymen in the Methodist Episcopal Church. "They had the joy of seeing their children, eight in number, all converted and gathered into the fold of Christ." [1]
As an elementary school child, Ellen was injured in a freak accident to her face, caused when an older girl threw a rock at her. It resulted in considerable loss of blood at the time and in lingering damage to her respiratory system. In the absence of modern medical services, her condition deteriorated alarmingly, and for many years any ordinary infection might precipitate a crisis. When her nerves could no longer cope with her copybook, she dejectedly dropped out of school.
When she was twelve, her family heard William Miller and accepted his message. When he made a call, Ellen went forward; but keenly sensing her sinfulness, she had no feeling of being saved. At a Methodist camp meeting the next summer she prayed intensely, and her burden lifted so suddenly that she felt guilty! Then a sweet sense of acceptance took its place. Soon she and several others were baptized near Portland in Casco Bay.
She tried again to get an education by attending a local girls' school, but once more had to withdraw.
Miller returned to Portland. Ellen saw him stop in the middle of his sermons to usher old people to seats in the crowded assembly. She loved him for it; and she was deeply impressed with his earnest Bible sermons. But her joy in the second coming was soon marred by hell-fire preaching from a non-Adventist minister who made God so cruel that her doubts came back. She stayed awake all night, praying for mercy. Her mother sent her to Elder Stockman.
Elder Levi Stockman, a young Methodist minister who, like the Harmons, had adopted the advent hope, told Ellen that God is not a tyrant but a loving heavenly Father who longs to draw His children close to Him in simple trusting faith. "Go free, Ellen," he said. "God loves you!" He also said that God must have a very special plan in mind for her, cultivating in one so young so deep a religious experience. He prayed for her, and she left, a much happier girl.
With her conviction that only a little time remained before the second coming, Ellen exerted herself to the limit in winning souls to God, and she won most of those with whom she labored.
All the rest of her long life she vividly remembered the weeks preceding October 22. "With diligent searching of heart and humble confessions, we came prayerfully up to the time of expectation. Every morning we felt that it was our first work to secure the evidence that our lives were right with God. ... We prayed much with and for one another. ... The joys of salvation were more necessary to us than our food and drink." [2]
When Jesus failed to appear on October 22, Ellen's family was as disappointed as any other. Of the eight Harmon children, only the youngest four were still at home: Sarah, aged 22; Robert, 18; and Ellen and her twin sister, Elizabeth, both 16. Of those who had left, two married sisters lived in Poland, Maine, about thirty miles away.
Robert and Elizabeth soon gave up all hope in the second coming, though Robert returned to it after a few years, and it appears that Elizabeth may ultimately have died a Christian. [3] But during November and early December 1844, Ellen, Sarah, and their parents lived from day to day hoping, but only with declining faith, that Christ would yet come soon.
In this frame of mind Ellen, now seventeen (her birthday was November 26), went by wheelchair [4] in December to visit Mrs. Haynes, a friend of hers. One morning a small group of other Adventist women joined them in prayer--for light, no doubt, on the disappointment, and for mercy on their loved ones whose faith was no longer strong.
As they knelt, the Holy Spirit drew close with an especially beautiful sense of assurance. At that moment, Ellen received her first vision.
When it was over, she told the ladies how she had searched the world in vain for the advent people, until an angel said, "Look again, and look a little higher." At that, she saw a path, high above the world, on which the believers were traveling to the Holy City.
People, path, and city, however, were mere props for the real message which the vision was intended to convey. Ellen's grateful attention was drawn to "a bright light set up behind them at the beginning of the path, which the angel told me was the midnight cry."
Here was an answer to their prayers! Heaven said that the midnight cry--the proclamation about the coming of the Bridegroom on October 22--was light, genuine light. No explanation of the disappointment was given, but this was reassurance indeed!
The light was set up "at the beginning of the path." This was a new thought. They had hoped the midnight cry would mark the end of the path. Evidently God expected His followers to travel a new path of experience and service.
The light "shone all along the path and gave light for their feet so they might not stumble." But it was not their only source of light. Jesus was just before them, leading them to the city, and encouraging them with light from "His glorious right arm."
Tragically, Ellen saw that some Adventists "rashly denied the light behind them and said that it was not God that had led them out so far." The light behind these people, who said that the 2300 days were of no account and that October 22 was a mistake, went out, and their feet were left in perfect darkness, and "they stumbled and lost sight of the mark and of Jesus, and fell off the path down into the dark and wicked world below." [5]
Before the vision closed, Ellen had another surprise to tell the ladies about. Elder Stockman, like Elder Charles Fitch, died sometime before October 22. Near the end of the vision she was shown that when the second coming eventually takes place, both of them will be taken to heaven. This too was good news, and it provided additional evidence that God was with the advent movement.
A week after this first happy vision Ellen received another one in which God called her formally to work for Him as a prophet. He warned her of the great sacrifice this would entail, and also promised the abundance of His grace.
Ellen shrank away in terror. So ill that she could scarcely cross the floor or speak above a whisper, she was glad to give her last to save the lost, but she dreaded opposition and misrepresentation. A meeting of Adventist believers was scheduled for her home. Unwilling to face them, she escaped by sleigh to a neighbor's house instead.
But in a little while she surrendered. At a prayer service, visible light shone upon her. She gave her witness to the Portland Adventists and at the end heard about sixty confess that they had given up faith in the midnight cry but were now convinced again that it was of God. Shortly after, while visiting her sister Mary, she presented her visions to an Adventist group at MacGuire's Hill, near Poland. She started in a whisper, but God gave her a strong voice for nearly two hours. When she was through and people asked her questions after the meeting, she could only whisper again. [6]
Still too sick even to read, Ellen set out in the depth of a New England winter to visit other Adventists who lived "east" along the coast of Maine. At a small gathering in Exeter, Maine, she had a vision of exceptional significance.
"I saw a throne," she told the people when it was over," and on it sat the Father and the Son." Until this moment she had known only that October 22 was important; she had not known the reason why. Now she was shown inside the heavenly sanctuary. As she watched, she "saw the Father rise from the throne, and in a flaming chariot go into the holy of holies within the veil, and sit down."
Jesus, too, stepped from the throne. And as He did so, He raised His arm and said to His followers who were represented as worshiping Him there, "Wait here; I am going to My Father to receive the kingdom; keep your garments spotless, and in a little while I will return from the wedding and receive you to Myself."
Fascinated, she watched as "a cloudy chariot, with wheels like flaming fire, surrounded by angels, came to where Jesus was. He stepped into the chariot and was borne to the holiest, where the Father sat."
"There," said Ellen, "I beheld Jesus, a great High Priest, standing before the Father " [7]
This was Ellen's turn to learn about the Bridegroom's going to the wedding on October 22 and returning from it at the second coming. But more clearly than Edson or Turner, she saw the precise fulfillment of Daniel 7:9-14. After the four "beasts" of Daniel 7, the ten "horns," and the terrible "little horn" have run their fearful course and history nears its close, Daniel saw that majestic thrones would be set in place and the Ancient of Days would come and take His seat. "The judgment was set, and the books were opened." Then "one like the Son of man" would come "with the clouds of heaven" to the Ancient of Days to receive dominion and a kingdom.
Thus the Bible predicted that prior to the Second Advent when the time for judgment arrived, the Father would move from one part of heaven to another and the Son would follow Him there. In Exeter, Maine, in February 1845, Ellen was shown, to her total astonishment, that this prophecy had now been fulfilled.
So this was why October 22 was so important!
She also got an idea of the magnificence of the heavenly sanctuary. Grand enough for flaming chariots and retinues of angels, "no earthly structure could represent its vastness." [8]
That summer, with her health somewhat improved, she and her sister Sarah began an eight-month tour among the Adventists of Massachusetts, staying some of the time with the Otis Nichols family in Dorchester, and now and then taking a quick trip home to Portland. [9] In October, in Carver, Massachusetts, she had a third special vision to add to the "Midnight Cry" and "Bridegroom" visions.
In this one she saw the time, yet future, when Christ would complete His priestly ministry in the most holy place and the "time of Jacob's trouble" would begin. She had never heard of this before. The thought that men would have to live sometime without a mediator was a solemn one. [10]
As Ellen traveled, accompanied by her sister Sarah, and also at times by others including James White and her near relative Louisa Foss, she told her visions to any Millerite Adventist who would listen, and brought understanding and joy to many of them.
Notes: