An Explanation the Author Would Like to Have You Read  

Although he has spent his working lifetime involved in the custody of the Ellen G. White writings, the author has been amazed at the frequency and number of visions given to Ellen White during the last decade of her life. What has not amazed him, however, is the substantial influence these visions exerted as the counsels given were heeded and the reproofs were received and integrated into the thinking and actions of church members and leaders. {6BIO 9.1}  

The Early Elmshaven Years, covering the period between late 1900 and mid-1905, quite naturally forms the introduction to this volume, which is devoted to the last decade of the fruitful life of the messenger of the Lord. The same words of appreciation for competent assistance and the same explanations could be given here, but I will do no more than to ask the reader to review again the author’s aims and objectives that have motivated him during the year this volume was being prepared: {6BIO 9.2}  

1. To write for the average reader, but in such detail and with such documentation as will meet the expectations of the scholar. {6BIO 9.3}  

2. To leave the reader with the feeling that he or she is acquainted with Ellen White as a very human person. {6BIO 9.4}  

3. To portray accurately the life and work of Ellen White as the Lord’s messenger in the Seventh-day Adventist Church, not by a slavish chronicle of each day of her active ministry, but to select from her experience events and happenings that illustrate her lifework and make a contribution to the cause. {6BIO 9.5}  

4. As far as possible, to keep these events in a year-by-year development, picturing her home life, her travels, her weaknesses and strengths, her burden of heart, and her earnest devotional life. {6BIO 9.6}  

5. To select and present, in detail, significant events, two or three in a given year, that best illustrate her prophetic mission, depicting the interplay between Ellen White and church leaders, institutions and individuals, recounting the sending of testimonies and the response to these messages. {6BIO 10.1}  

6. As a secondary objective, to provide a knowledge of the principal points of the history of the church in a unique way as it is seen especially through the eyes of, or in relation to, the messenger of the Lord. {6BIO 10.2}  

7. Not only to make the work an interesting narrative, but in the selection of illustrative experiences, to choose those with which the reader may at times vicariously associate himself. {6BIO 10.3}  

8. To keep constantly before the reader the major role the visions, in one form or another, played in almost every phase of the experiences comprising the narrative. {6BIO 10.4}  

9. Where convenient to the purposes of the manuscript, to let Ellen White speak in her own words rather than to call upon the author to provide a paraphrase. This ensures an accurate conveyance of the unique and fine points of the messages in the very expressions of the prophetic messenger herself. In doing so, to provide many important statements in a form that will be of value to all readers. {6BIO 10.5}  

10. To provide a documented running account of the literary work done both by Ellen White and her literary assistants, in the production of her articles and books. {6BIO 10.6}  

11. And in all of this, to present, in a natural way in the narrative, confidence-confirming features. {6BIO 10.7}  

As stated in Seventh-day Adventists Believe, “The writings of Ellen White are not a substitute for Scripture. They cannot be placed on the same level. The Holy Scriptures stand alone, the unique standard by which her and all other writings must be judged and to which they must be subject” (Seventh-day Adventists Believe [Washington, D.C.: Ministerial Association, General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists, 1988], p. 227). {6BIO 10.8}  

Arthur L. White