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In Times Like These
E
ven before the American nation lurched toward Civil War, Ellen White saw what was coming and raised her voice in warning. Seeing the crisis approaching in a vision three months before Fort Sumter was attacked, she told the church members at Parkville, Michigan, “There is not a person in this house who has even dreamed of the trouble that is coming upon this land.” At that time most thought that any kind of danger was a joke, and they laughed at ideas of secession. But Ellen White warned that the crisis was very real: “There are those in this house who will lose sons in that war.” These words recorded by John Loughborough, pioneer evangelist to the West, brought the Adventist Church to a greater realization of the worst crisis faced by the U.S. and how to respond to it. On that day, Sabbath, January 12, 1861, Loughborough wrote, “Mrs. White further stated that Seventh-day Adventists ‘would be brought into strait places in consequence of the war, and that it was the duty of all to earnestly pray that wisdom might be given them to know what to do in the trying times before them.’”1
From the Editors
February 2021 17
