Basic HTML Version
xiv
Testimonies to Ministers and Gospel Workers
the times. The second chapter, “Our College,” carries subheadings,
“The Bible as a Textbook,” “Object of the College,” and “Teachers
in the College.” Following chapters are entitled: “Parental Training,”
“Important Testimony,” “The Testimonies Slighted,” “Workers in
our College,” “Jealousy and Faultfinding Condemned.”
These were difficult days, and as Ellen White went the following
year into the 1883 General Conference session at Battle Creek, she
was divinely led to give a series of morning addresses to Seventh-day
Adventist ministers, presenting practical lines of counsel. Signifi-
cantly, among these was one devoted to “Christ our Righteousness.”
(See
Selected Messages 1:350-354
.) These historic circumstances
form part of the background for the E. G. White counsels found in
this volume
.
The 1880’s—A Period of Notable Advance
Although the church had sent J. N. Andrews to Europe in
1874, while it was engaged in building the college, not until the
decade of the 1880’s did the church move into a period of notable
missions advance and institutional development. In 1882 two new
schools were started, one at Healdsburg, California, and the other
at South Lancaster, Massachusetts. In 1885 the publishing work
was established in Basel, Switzerland, in the newly built central
[xxi]
publishing house. The same year workers were sent to Australia, and
soon the Echo Publishing Company was established in Melbourne.
The personal presence of Ellen G. White in Europe in the years
1885-1887 brought strength and encouragement to the work in the
countries she visited
.
As one reviews certain points in the development of denomi-
national history, there grows upon him an awareness of the reality
of the conflict between the forces of righteousness and the forces
of evil. The church which had emerged was the remnant church of
prophecy, with God’s message for the times. The great adversary
did all within his power to bring the work to naught
.
The Setting of the 1888 Minneapolis Conference
One of the enemy’s most effective measures was to lead good
men to take positions which ultimately brought hindrance to the