viii
Testimonies for the Church Volume 5
The eyes of Seventh-day Adventists were being turned more and
more to the world field. For a decade we had been carrying on work
in Europe. Now, in 1885, Elders S.N. Haskell and J.O. Corliss, with
a company of workers, were sent to Australia to open up work in
that southern continent. Africa was entered two years later by Elders
D.A. Robinson and C.L. Boyd, and the message was carried to Hong
Kong that same year by a layman, Brother Abraham La Rue. Then, in
1889, colporteurs commenced their work in South America. Even Mrs.
White was called overseas, leaving for Europe in 1885. There she
spent two and a half years traveling, counseling, speaking, and writing.
In June, 1887, at Moss, Norway, she attended the first Seventh-day
Adventist camp meeting held outside the United States. Her ministry
overseas was much appreciated
.
There was also, during the time represented by volume 5, consid-
erable opposition on the part of a small group of disaffected souls who
years earlier had left our ranks. Their attacks were leveled primarily
against the agent of the prophetic gift and her writings which have
strengthened and built up the church through the years. Also during
the decade of this volume, one of our leading evangelists lost his way
and was soon actively engaged in tearing down a work he had formerly
labored to establish. Two communications written by Ellen White to
restrain this man from the plunge he was about to take, are found in
[6]
this book. One commences on page 571 and the other on page 621.
The attempt to save him was fruitless, and he turned in bitter tirade on
Mrs. White and the prophetic gift. While such attacks, of course, did
not deter the work of Seventh-day Adventists, it is clear that they were
recognized as distracting elements that should be counteracted
.
It is not strange, then, that several vital articles touching on the
prophetic gift were penned during this time. One of these forms the
basis of the introduction to The Great Controversy, 1888, edition.
Others are found in this volume. It was at this time, too, that Mrs.
White gathered from all the published Testimonies that which she had
written on the nature and influence of the Testimonies for the Church,
and compiled them into a thirty-eight-page article found near the close
of this volume
.
In the fall of 1888 an important General Conference session was
held in Minneapolis, Minnesota. At this meeting there came to those
assembled a broader, fuller conception of the great truths of righteous-