Ellen White
Born in Maine in 1827, she heard William Miller lecture as a girl and shared the disappointment of 1844. She related visions from December of that year onwards, and the Seventh-day Adventist Church holds that the gift of prophecy was manifested in her ministry.
A publishers’ footnote in her Early Writings gives her birth as 26 November 1827 at Gorham, Maine (Ellen G. White, Early Writings, p. 7). She says that she was converted at eleven, was baptized and joined the Methodist church at twelve, and at thirteen heard William Miller lecture at Portland (Ellen G. White, Early Writings, p. 7). She relates that in December 1844, at prayer with four other women, she was shown in a vision the Advent people on a path to the holy city (Ellen G. White, Early Writings, pp. 9–10). A vision she dates to March 1849 concerns the heavenly sanctuary and the Sabbath (Ellen G. White, Early Writings, pp. 34–35).
The Seventh-day Adventist Church teaches that the gift of prophecy was manifested in her ministry, that her writings speak with prophetic authority, and that they make clear that the Bible is the standard by which all teaching must be tested (Seventh-day Adventist Church, Fundamental Beliefs 18). See the Millerites and the Great Disappointment.
In the timeline
- 22 October 1844, firm dateThe Millerites and the Great Disappointment
William Miller reckons from the book of Daniel that Christ will return about 1843, and by his own estimate some fifty thousand people come to expect it. On 22 October 1844 the last date set passes. Seventh-day Adventists, who give the date another meaning, organize in 1863.