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Chapter 1—Beginnings
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A Young Adult’s Encounter with Ellen White ... on Salvation
Ellen White makes the topics of salvation and the love of Christ,
who died for me, both simple and personal. When I open
The Desire
of Ages
, He’s right there. He’s so real, so able to save.
When I read what Ellen White says about the topic of salva-
tion, it’s like no other author. What she writes has to do with me
personally. It’s my life she’s talking about—my feelings and experi-
ences. I recognize them. This is a salvation of experience, one I can
touch, because it’s about Jesus. I know she knew Jesus personally.
Whatever any other writer knew, it doesn’t compare with this.
Other writers may have something important to say, they may
try to share the right ideas, but in the pages of
The Desire of Ages
Ellen White is trying to share salvation through Jesus. And the best
thing is she makes me want it! I want it with all my heart.
In her writings she talks about salvation in the real world—my
world. It’s not about only ideas. It’s not a beehive of rhetoric. The
intellectual part has its place, but when I get up in the morning to
face my day spiritually, what I want needs to be clear, vivid, and
personal. I find that in her writings. My strength to save myself
is like “ropes of sand,” as she puts it. I know she’s right because
I’ve felt those ropes crumble in my hands. What she describes I can
touch, for it’s a theology of flesh and blood. It’s about Jesus! Ellen
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White paints a picture of a Christ as someone who is real, who is
able to save me from myself.
Most of all, I know she has written because she wanted me to
be saved and not because she wanted me to believe her ideas. And I
do want to be saved, with all my heart. I want to know Christ and
the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in His
sufferings, becoming like Him in His death, and so, somehow, to
attain to the resurrection from the dead.
Laura, age 24
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