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Advent HOPE Sabbath School

Justin Torossian

Ellen, the Woman Behind the Ministry

Well, before we begin in our last message, Ellen, the woman behind the ministry, shall we bow our heads together for a word of prayer?

Our Father in heaven, thank you so much that you include us in the work of the salvation of our fellow men.

You could use them to finish this work of taking the gospel to the world, but you choose to use us, weak, frail, broken humans.

Yet you say that your strength is made perfect in our weakness.

We thank you for that, Lord, and we thank you for not choosing the strong things of this world to display your strength in, but for choosing the weak and making yourself strong in our weakness.

We pray that you would open our ears, open our hearts to the message you have for us this evening as we take a look at the life of your last day messenger, LMG White.

Ellen was born on November 26, 1827 in Gorham, Maine.

She was 1 of 8 children, and there were 2 brothers in the family and 6 daughters.

She actually had an identical twin sister whose name was Elizabeth.

Her parents, Robert and Eunice Harmon, worked the land that they lived on, and Ellen's father, Robert, was also a hat maker.

In fact, her mother, Eunice, was also a school teacher.

4 of the 8 siblings, by the way, became Sabbath-keeping Christians and continued on in their faith after the Great Disappointment.

You know, from a very young age, Ellen had a very tender heart and she had a loving spirit and kind disposition.

In the biography series by Arthur White in volume 1.

The story is recorded there about how Ellen recalled when her family, her siblings and her would go and actually in the wintertime, after the squirrels had stored up walnuts in little stumps and you know nooks of trees, they would actually go and take all of their walnuts that they had stored up and take the walnuts and eat them.

But Ellen felt so bad that She would actually carry a bag of corn and she would actually fill up the holes where they had taken walnuts from because she didn't want the poor squirrels to come back home and find absolutely nothing.

So even from a young age and as a little girl, Ellen was very conscientious, kind and thoughtful.

When Ellen was just 9 years old, her and her twin Lizzy were on their way home with a classmate.

The 3 girls noticed that there was an older girl from another school who was following them.

And she started, for some reason, shouting angry words at them.

Now, Ellen and Lizzy were taught never to retaliate, and that if they were in trouble they should just run home.

So you know turning around and seeing that this girl was shouting angry words they said let's go, let's run.

And after they took off running, they'd been running for some time, and the girl started chasing them.

And Ellen turned around to see how far away the girl was.

And As soon as she turned her face, wow, she got hit in the face with a rock.

The girl had thrown a rock at her and hit her square in the nose, straight on the face.

Now, Ellen's face was completely disfigured and she was in a terrible coma.

In fact, everyone thought that she was going to die.

Doctors, family members, the only 1 that said, no, my daughter is going to live, was her mother.

And praise the Lord that her mother was right.

Her schooling actually ended in the third grade because after she healed and was well enough to go back to school, even with the help of another student, who happened to be the girl who had thrown the rock at her.

After going back to school, she couldn't keep up with the rest of the students because of what the accident had caused.

She had come out of the coma after 3 weeks, but her life was forever changed.

Now Her family were members of the Methodist Church and they were faithful members of that church.

But they began attending the lectures of a man named William Miller.

Now at this time in history, it was the late 1830s, the early 1840s, and the study of Bible prophecy was sweeping not only our nation, but stretching across Europe.

There was a man named Bengal, and as well there was a man named Manuel Lacunza, who was actually a Jesuit priest who published his writings under the name Rabbi Ben Ezra.

But he was studying into the prophecies of Daniel.

And he came to the conclusion that Jesus was coming around the year 1843 or 1844.

There was Joseph Wolfe who traveled into the Middle East and actually all the way to India.

And people all around the world were hearing the Word of God preached with power and coming to a faith that Jesus was coming in the year 1844.

God poured out his Holy Spirit in a powerful way upon the world to prepare them for what was going to take place.

Now, when the Harmon family went to a lecture by William Miller after they heard this clear explanation of prophecy, they actually became believers in the soon advent of Jesus.

The logic, the reasoning behind prophecy was so solid that it was clear that the year 1844 was the end, it was the termination of the Bible's longest prophecy, the 2, 300 day prophecy that we find in Daniel chapter 9 and chapter 8.

Now, the Methodist Church became disgruntled with the Harmon family.

The leaders told them, you can't remain Millerites and stay in our congregation.

Well Ellen's father for some time, you know, for some time Ellen's father tried his best to stay within the congregation and to work as an elder But it came to a point that the church said you just simply cannot be Millerites Believing in the soon advent of Jesus and be a part of our church congregation at the same time.

We will go because we have seen that this is clear from the scripture.

This prophecy is pointing to this date and to this time.

So they were disfellowshipped from the Methodist Church, unfortunately.

Now, leading up to 1844 was a great movement, a great swelling of individuals who believed that Christ was coming soon in the clouds of heaven.

Unfortunately, as we know from history, when October 22, 1844 came, the clock struck 12, and the followers, the Millerites, who believed that Jesus was going to come, were bitterly disappointed.

At first, they thought he was going to come in the daytime and then the sun began to set.

And they said, well, He'll come, maybe he'll come before midnight, there's still time.

But when the clock struck 12, they wept and wept.

This was a bitter time in their experience.

They were ridiculed, they were mocked, They were made fun of by their neighbors and by the different people who before were actually somewhat in fear that Jesus might really come back in 1844.

Well praise the Lord that not all of those believers who were bitterly disappointed in the great disappointment gave up their faith.

There were a number of believers who said, God's word cannot be wrong.

Therefore, the problem must have been with us.

It must have been with our interpretation of it.

So what they did was they said, We need to seek the Lord to determine what this prophecy was really saying.

Well it was actually the next week that a gentleman named Hiram Edson was walking through a cornfield when he had an epiphany and realized that the Bible in Hebrews chapter 8 and 9 says that the sanctuary is actually in heaven.

You see, in Daniel 8, 14, where the Bible said, unto 2, 300 days and then shall the sanctuary be cleansed, they had interpreted that sanctuary to be the earth.

And that the sanctuary of the earth was going to be cleansed when Jesus came back and the earth was destroyed by fire.

But the Bible nowhere says that the earth is a sanctuary.

The Bible does say however, as Hiram Menton came to the realization of, that the Bible says in Hebrews 8 and 9 that there is a tabernacle in heaven.

And that Jesus did not return because on October 2, 1844, Jesus moved from his priestly ministry, his high priestly ministry in the holy place of the heavenly sanctuary into the most holy place of the heavenly sanctuary.

It was the time when the investigative judgment began.

The believers, seeking the Lord on their knees, seeking to know the truth of His Word, were encouraged to discover many of the truths that had been lost sight of for years.

It was during this time that God poured out His Holy Spirit in a powerful way as He had promised in His Word on a young lady, 17-year-old lady, named Ellen Harmon.

Now, the Bible said that in the last days, excuse me, the Bible says that in the last days, God will pour out his spirit on all flesh.

He said, your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, and your young men shall see visions.

And also upon the servants and upon the handmaids in those days will I pour out my spirit.

In Joel 2 verses 28 and 29, God gave this promise, which was partially fulfilled at Pentecost, in the book of Acts, chapter 2, but continued to be fulfilled here when God poured out his spirit on Ellen Harmon, who was later to become Ellen White.

It was through this vision, the first vision that God gave her, that the believers were encouraged.

The believers were encouraged that they indeed had their faith, had put their faith in God, not for no good reason, but that their faith was well-grounded, that their faith was in the right place.

That they hadn't believed cunningly devised fables, but that they were believing the truth and that God's word was indeed true.

They realized what their misunderstanding was, that Jesus had transitioned to the most holy place of the heavenly sanctuary rather than returning to this earth.

No God did not choose somebody who was incredibly well educated.

She did not have PhDs when she was a 17-year-old girl.

She was actually physically very weak, very frail.

And when she was an older lady, actually, in her late 60s and even her early 70s at Elm Save, and someone asked her as she was climbing the stairs, she said, or they asked her, how does it feel to climb these stairs?

Don't you wish that you felt like you did when you were a young girl, probably spry and able to just run to the top.

And she looked back with a smile and said, oh no, I feel much better right now than I did when I was a young girl.

I'm in better health now than I was then.

When she was young, she wasn't in good health.

She was suffering in a number of ways and actually suffered with a weak heart for the rest of her life although the Lord sustained her.

Now God chose not the strongest, not the wisest, not the most educated, but He chose the weakest of the weak.