Meet James White

February 4  Meet James White

 

Now the word of the Lord came to Jonah. . .saying, "Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry against it; for their wickedness has come up before me." But Jonah rose to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord. Jonah 1:1-3, RSV.

Some of us hear the call of the Lord to preach the Word, but aren't all that eager to do so. So it was with James White, the second person instrumental in the founding of Seventh-day Adventism.

James was born in Palmyra, Maine, on August 4, 1821. "At the age of fifteen," he reports, "I was baptized, and united with the Christian [Connexion] church. But at the age of twenty I had buried myself in the spirit of study and school teaching and had lain down the cross. I had never descended to the comoon sin of profanity, and had not used tobacco, tea and coffee, nor had I raised a glass of spirituous liquor to my lips. Yet I loved this world more than I loved Christ and the next, and was worshiping education instead of the God of heaven."

Young James had heard about Millerism, but regarded it "as wild fanaticism." In that state of mind he was shocked to hear his mother, whom he trusted, speak favorably of the Advent doctrine. He was unprepared for its impact upon him, partly because he had already made plans for his life. But conviction as to its truth he could not avoid.

"As I returned to the Lord," he reports, "it was with storng conviction that I should renounce my worldly plans and give myself to the work of warning people to prepare for the day of God. I had loved books generally, but, in my back-slidden state, had neither the time nor taste for the study of the sacred Scriptures, hence was ignorant of the prophecies."

More specifically, James White felt impressed to visit the students he had been instructing in a local public school. "I prayed to be excused from the task," he wrote, "but no relief came." In that state of mind he went to work in his father's fields, "hoping I could work off the feelings under which I suffered."

But he couldn't. James then prayed for relief, but none came. Finally "my spirit rose in rebellion against God, and I recklessly said, I will not go." With a stomp of his foot he put an end to the matter and set out to do his own thing.

The experience of James White is not altogether unlike that of some of the rest of us. We hear the call of God to do this or that and we stomp our feet and resist.

But God doesn't give up. He has a plan for each of us. What is His plan for you today? And, more important, how will you relate to His will?

He who had compassion on the multitude because they "fainted, and were scattered abroad" (Matthew 9:36), still has compassion on the suffering poor. His hand is stretched out toward them in blessing; and in the very prayer which He gave His disciples, He teaches us to remember the poor(TFMB 111).