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For I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him against that day. 2 Tim. 1:12.
We saw early in the year that Joseph Bates, James White, and Ellen White were the founders of the Seventh-day Adventist Church. Bates passed away in 1872 and James in 1881, but Ellen continued to guide the Adventist church until 1915. Although she never held an official administrative position in the denomination, she possessed immense charismatic authority. Her writings and counsels had special meaning for both individuals and corporate Adventism.
On July 16, 1915, "the little old woman with white hair, who always spoke so lovingly of Jesus" (in the words of her non-Adventist neighbors) died at age 87. The last words that her family and friends heard were "I know in whom I have believed" (LS 449). Her passing, her son Willie noted, "was like the burning out of a candle, so quiet."
She may have died quietly, but her long life had been one of constant activity and accomplishment. Remarkably active in her old age, she attended her last General Conference session at Washington, D.C., in 1909. After the meetings she visited her old hometown in Portland, Maine, where she had begun her prophetic ministry some 65 years earlier. It was her last trip to the eastern United States. Although advanced in age, she still spoke 72 times at 27 locations during the five-month journey.
Returning home to southern California, she devoted her remaining years to the development of such books as The Acts of the Apostles (1911), Gospel Workers (1915), Life Sketches of Ellen G. White (1915), the final version of The Great Controversy (1911), and Prophets and Kings (published in 1917 after her death).
On the morning of February 13, 1915, Ellen White tripped and fell in her Elmshaven home. An X-ray examination disclosed a fractured left hip. She spent her last five months in bed and a wheelchair. On July 24 she was buried beside her husband in the Oak Hill Cemetery in Battle Creek, Michigan. Side by side they await their resurrection at the Second Coming--a teaching for which both of them had given their lives.
My hope is to meet them on that day as we all greet Jesus in the air.
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