The “shut-door” question
The shut-door concept originated with William Miller. He first articulated his understanding in 1836, in a lecture on the parable of the ten virgins. In that parable, when the five foolish virgins return from buying oil for their lamps, they find that the door to the wedding “was shut” (Matthew 25:10). Just prior to October 1844, Miller believed that the door of mercy for the world had been closed, and he continued to believe, until early in 1845, that the work of warning sinners was finished and that their time of probation had ended. GP 81.3
Like other Millerite Adventists, Ellen White accepted Miller’s view of the shut door and believed for a time after the Great Disappointment in 1844 that the door of mercy for sinners was shut. In 1874 she wrote, “With my brethren and sisters, after the time passed in forty-four I did believe no more sinners would be converted. But I never had a vision that no more sinners would be converted. And am clear and free to state no one has ever heard me say or has read from my pen statements which will justify them in the charges they have made against me upon this point” (1SM 74).GP 82.1
In Ellen White’s first vision (December 1844), she saw the Advent people traveling on a straight and narrow path to the heavenly Jerusalem. “They had a bright light set up behind them at the first end of the path, which an angel told me was the Midnight Cry. This light shone all along the path, and gave light for their feet so they might not stumble. And if they kept their eyes fixed on Jesus, who was just before them, leading them to the City, they were safe.” GP 82.2
Some, however, took their eyes off Jesus and denied that God had led them thus far. They fell off the path down into “the dark and wicked world below. It was just as impossible for them to get on the path again and go to the City, as all the wicked world which God had rejected.” This is how she at first described what she had seen in the vision. Given her Millerite background, this description is understandable.GP 82.3
When the vision was reprinted in the book Christian Experience and Teachings of Ellen G. White in 1851, the last sentence in the above quote was left out. This led to the charge that she suppressed this statement because it taught that God had rejected the whole world. In 1883, she responded to these charges. She said,GP 82.4
It is claimed that these expressions prove the shut-door doctrine, and that this is the reason of their omission in later editions. But in fact they teach only that which has been and is still held by us as a people, as I shall show.GP 82.5
For a time after the disappointment in 1844, I did hold, in common with the advent body, that the door of mercy was then forever closed to the world. This position was taken before my first vision was given me. It was the light given me of God that corrected our error, and enabled us to see the true position.GP 82.6
I am still a believer in the shut-door theory, but not in the sense in which we at first employed the term or in which it is employed by my opponents (1SM 62, 63).GP 83.1
Ellen White had received her second major vision in February 1845. In it she saw Jesus still ministering before the Father as our great High Priest (EW 55). In the fall of the same year, she had another vision in which she was shown that the time of trouble was still in the future. Thus she could write in 1883, “Those who did not see the light, had not the guilt of its rejection. It was only the class who had despised the light from heaven that the Spirit of God could not reach. And this class included, as I have stated, both those who refused to accept the message when it was presented to them, and also those who, having received it, afterward renounced their faith” (1SM 63, 64).GP 83.2
Finally, her visions received in March and April 1847 clearly indicated that there was still an evangelistic work to be done. She saw Jesus by the ark of the covenant in the Most Holy Place. He had the tables of stone, which folded together like a book. Jesus opened them, and she saw that the four commandments on the first table shone brighter than the other six, and the fourth, the Sabbath commandment, shone brighter than all the rest. “I saw that God had children, who do not see and keep the Sabbath. They had not rejected the light on it. And at the commencement of the [little] time of trouble, we were filled with the Holy Ghost as we went forth [Hos. 6:2, 3] and proclaimed the Sabbath more fully.” Thus, by 1847, the view that probation was closed for sinners had largely disappeared.GP 83.3
It seems that Ellen White didn’t fully understand, at first, what was shown to her in those early visions, not only because she was still a young girl in her late teens but also because she was steeped in the Millerite thinking that probation for sinners was closed. Later in life she freely admitted, “Often representations are given me which at first I do not understand, but after a time they are made plain by a repeated presentation of those things that I did not at first comprehend, and in ways that make their meaning clear and unmistakable” (3SM 56). This also happened in connection with her understanding of the shut door. She was led step by step to an understanding of what had happened on October 22, 1844. The Holy Spirit not only gave her the visions, He also guided her to a fuller comprehension of them.GP 83.4
On this issue Herbert Douglass wrote, “As she developed the meaning of the events seen in her first vision, and her mind became sensitive to the truths implicit in certain Biblical expositions of others, her theological insights not only completely changed the direction of her life but set the agenda for the Seventh-day Adventist movement.” GP 84.1