GYC SE 2016: Good News

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GYC Southeast

Title for Seminar 3

Jud Lake

Ellen White and the Civil War- Part 1

I'm a professor here in the School of Religion.

And anybody had any, I don't think I've had any of you in class, have I?

I teach preaching, Adventist heritage, Ellen White studies, those are my main areas.

Couple of other classes, but mainly Ellen White studies and preaching.

And this presentation this afternoon is based on my forthcoming book, A Nation in God's Hands, The Civil War Visions of Ellen White.

Ellen White had a number of significant visions about the Civil War and that has fascinated me and for the last 3 and a half years I have been buried in the Civil War writing this book and finally I just finished it it's off to the press it'll be out in the spring so obviously there's a lot material We're supposed to go for a couple of hours this afternoon.

I could go for 4 hours straight and then more on top of that.

I think, yeah, they told me they break about 3.15.

So we'll go for about an hour and then take a 15 minute break.

And if you want to hang around for more, we'll see if I catch your attention this first hour.

Ellen White had 4 visions about the Civil War.

Her first vision was in January 12, 1861 at Parkville, Michigan.

I will give you the background to this vision.

This took place 3 months to the day before the Civil War began.

In that vision she described a terrible war.

And her second vision was just a couple of weeks into the war after the first major battle on August 3, 1861 at Roosevelt, New York.

This was an important vision because it had a lot of elements about where the war was at the beginning stage.

And she set forth the philosophy of the war and provided a remarkable statement about God's hand in the war that I'll focus on the latter part of this afternoon.

And her third vision was January 4, 1862 at Battle Creek, Michigan.

This vision is interesting because she provided a lot of insights into the war as it was taking place in its first year.

She described a lot of the problems the Union was facing.

The Union had pro-slavery influences in the army and she was concerned about things President Lincoln was doing and she discussed this in this vision.

The first 3 visions were published in Testimonies, number 7.

Ellen White, her testimonies that we have in the 9 volumes of the Testimonies, those were released originally as individual testimony, testimony 1, testimony 2.

Well this particular testimony number 7 contained all 3 of these visions.

It was later put into Testimonies Volume 1.

And then Her fourth and final vision took place on November 5, 1862 at Battle Creek, Michigan.

And this was about in the middle of the Civil War.

Historians puzzle why Ellen White didn't give a vision or have a vision later in the war.

That's an issue I discuss in the book that I won't get into now, but it's very interesting.

This last vision dealt with, I should say it was published in January of 1863, and it dealt with some very interesting features such as spiritualism.

She said that the Union generals, officers were seeking spirits, seeking mediums for guidance in battles.

I have an entire chapter devoted to that subject in my book.

And also she dealt with the first draft in the United States.

Adventists were pulling their hair out wondering How are we going to handle this draft?

And Ellen White provided counsel for them.

And I also have an entire chapter devoted to that subject as well in the forthcoming book.

I'm going to focus this afternoon mainly on the contents of her first vision and some of the elements in her second vision.

Oh, and by the way, the final vision was also put in Testimonies Volume 1, so all of Ellen White's Civil War Visions are in Testimonies, Volume 1.

The issue that really divided the nation was slavery.

Historians debate what was the real cause of the Civil War, and mainline historians today pretty much acknowledge that slavery was at the foundation of the Civil War.

There were other factors involved, of course, economical factors, but at the heart of it was slavery.

If you look at the way the North and the South developed from the revolutionary days and the establishment of America.

It divided into the North and the South and America in beginning had slaves.

But the North took a different trajectory.

They became more of an economy based on free labor.

And so they eventually did away with slavery.

There were bits and pieces of it here and there.

And unfortunately, the North remained racist.

They always believed that blacks were inferior.

And that brought on some of Ellen White's great condemnations on the North as well as the South.

But they basically went a different trajectory than the South did.

So the North based its economy on free labor, but the South based its economy on slave labor.

The South became a social slave state itself.

And it became the heart of the South and the North went a different trajectory.

And so the big issue in the years prior to the Civil War, really, the about 40 years, the Civil War was building for about 40 years.

You go all the way back to the Compromise of 1820.

If you look at the history, the way America developed, you had free states and slave states.

When a new state would be added, the South would say, is it going to be a slave state?

The North said, no, it's going to be a free state.

And by the time you get to 1820, you had 11 free states and 11 slave states.

And that meant equal representation in the House and the Senate.

And the South always wanted to make sure that they had equal voting power.

So the conflict was at the heart of the Capitol.

And the compromise of 1820, I won't get into all the details, but it had to do with a new state entering the Union, and the fight was, is it going to be a slave state, a free state?

And they had another slave state enter, and so they had 14 states equal half of it slave half of it free.

They developed a compromise of 1820 but the slave issue continued to fester over the years.

It really resurrected again in the war with Mexico, and this became the heart of what would evolve into the Civil War.

The war with Mexico in the last 2 years of the decade of the 1840s, 46 to 48, had to do with acquiring the western territories from Mexico.

Of course, the United States won the war with Mexico and they acquired all those western territories that we know as California and Oregon today, but they were not states at that time.

It was just all this territory that now belonged to the United States.

And so the big issue was, the North said, we're going to make free states out there.

The South said, we want them to be slave states.

And by the time you get into the decade of the 1850s, they were fighting with 1 another and they wanted to, you know, slave states, free states, and then they developed or they solved things temporarily with the Compromise of 1850.

Now please note these are called compromises.

The Compromise of 1820, the Compromise of 1850, the North Compromise with the South and slavery.

Ellen White and the Civil War- Part 2

We had talked about Ellen White's forecast.

I'll read it again from Testimonies, Volume 1, page 262.

Then it was explained, this is after she described the angel intervening in the battle.

Then it was explained that God had this nation in His own hand and would not suffer victories to be gained faster than He ordained and would permit no more losses to the northern men that in His wisdom He saw fit to punish them for their sins.

I spoke of the significance of the statement, God has this nation in his own hand.

And by the way, that's the thesis of my book.

The title of my book, at least the proposed title, the press may change it.

They said they wanna play with it a little bit.

But what I'm proposing is a nation in God's hands, the civil revisions of Ellen White.

Because that right there is a central theme throughout my book.

And I wanna tell you, isn't that encouraging for today?

If he had this nation in his hands then, he still has this nation in his hands.

As we face this crazy election and the future, you know, with 1 of these 2 candidates, Something like that I find to be very encouraging.

God still has this nation in His hands and even in spite of Trump and Hillary, He is in control and will preserve this nation or punish it as is necessary.

What she's saying here is that this victory would not come quickly and easily though.

God would not suffer victories to be gained faster than He ordained and would permit no more losses to the northern men than in his wisdom he saw fit.

The words suffer and permit indicate the divine displeasure with the north because of its compromises with the slave-holding south." as I spoke of earlier, summarized earlier.

At the beginning of this particular vision, White set forth her view very clearly.

God is punishing this nation for the high crime of slavery.

Her indictment included both sides in the war.

He will punish the south for the sin of slavery and the north for so long suffering its overreach and overbearing influence." She said that earlier in this chapter where she described the angel.

Yet, He has the destiny of this nation in His hands.

So the fact that He holds this nation in His hands means He will preserve it, but He will also punish it as well and He would do so through the battles.

Victory would come but it would be a long protracted victory.

But momentum would take place only as the Union began to be more in harmony with God's ways and dispense with slavery.

That happened through, I believe, God's key agent.

Accordingly, God would not let the North experience victory out of His blessing and pleasure, but out of His patience and tolerance.

He would permit battle losses out of His wisdom to humble and punish the North.

The victories would keep the South from crushing the North, and the losses would humble it to the point of repentance.

And there are some low points where the North was on its knees, literally, in the war.

Thus, ultimate victory would come slowly and painfully.

Now this statement should be coupled with another statement she made about a fast that God has chosen.

She talked about she was condemning the national fast and she said God's fast is to end slavery.

Lincoln had called for a national fast in September of 1861.

And Ellen White condemned that fast because he was asking the nation to pray and yet the war was not, the Union war effort was not to end slavery.

They wanted to bring the South, Southern States back into the Union and leave slavery alone.

That's what Lincoln had promised in his first inaugural address.

God will hear the nation's prayers when they begin to change the war effort and make it end slavery.

And that was not happening at that time but she promised that when that happens God will hear their prayers and God will give them victory so as a matter of time and events in the war And I have another lecture and Lincoln features prominently in my book, but what you see about Abraham Lincoln is a president who evolved through the trials of war.

And his whole perspective on how he viewed the black race and how he viewed slavery, he never liked slavery.

But he felt he didn't have a constitutional right to end it.

So he developed the brilliant strategy of the Emancipation Proclamation.

Some say the emancipation proclamation ended slavery.

It was the beginning of a long process that would culminate in the 13th Amendment, which when it was ratified, that ended slavery.

It's got a little bit of spin here and there, but basically it's historically accurate.

And it's all about the passing of the 13th Amendment, but I'm jumping ahead.

But this victory would evidently come, according to White, after the North experienced enough losses as God's wisdom saw fit and enough victories as He ordained them.

This terminology then indicated divine control and intervention in the pattern of battle victories and losses in the war.

So the angelic intervention she depicted in the battle of First Manassas would evidently be a pattern throughout the war but she never said anything more about it.

So it appears that there was more divine intervention in battles.

We can't pinpoint that because she had no more visions about that.

But I will conjecture where I think that happened here in a moment.

This is the distinguishing feature of White's contribution to the way the war played out.

Rather than the battle patterns or victories or losses being totally dependent upon the decisions of generals and commanders or the strengths or weaknesses of the armies, God had the final word in the battles of the Civil War.

These words then, first published approximately a month after the battle of First Bull Run, indicate a seesaw pattern of Union victories and losses in the forthcoming war.

That is, according to Ellen White's interpretation, there would be up periods in the battles and down periods for the Union throughout the war.

The implication in this forecast was that once God's purposes of punishment ran their course and the sin of slavery was dealt with, the Union would experience enough victories to win the war.

That was related to emancipation that I mentioned earlier, when they changed the purpose of the war.

Moreover, once emancipation became official and transformed the war into a crusade to end slavery, the patterns of battle would be decidedly in favor of the Union and that's precisely what happened.

Now what I'm about to share with you, this is an interpretation.

There are many interpretations by historians and enthusiasts of the Civil War.

This is a specifically religious or theological interpretation by Ellen White and she didn't talk about all the battles.

It's up to the interpreter to take that forecast and look at the battles.

You can see the big pictures, but never before has an analysis this in depth been done.

What you will read in my forthcoming book, analysis of the battles in relationship to this forecast by Ellen White.

But there's a subjective element that's unavoidable in this.

I've looked at the battles and I can see this pattern.

But when I say that now this clearly must have been God at work here, that of course is an interpretation.

But it fits with precision, that forecast at the outset.

So I want to make it clear, as I do in my book, that this is a personal interpretation of the battles.

The interpreter must look at the statement and then look at the battles and make their own determination.

So let's look at the pattern of battles in 1861.

Again, there are 3 chapters in my book on this, 3 big chapters.

So at the outset of the war, you had several skirmishes in the spring and summer, early summer of 1861, but the first bull run where she saw the angel come down, that was the first major battle.

Then Wilson's Creek later that fall and the Battle of Balls Bluff was also a major defeat.

The first senator was killed in Balls Bluff, a good friend of Lincoln.

Then Lincoln fired the general at first bull run, McDowell, because he had failed, and he hired or put into place George B.

McClellan, a brilliant general at the time, to build up a massive Union army during the fall season.

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