Camp Meeting Held on an Island

Moss, Norway, situated about 42 miles south of Christiania, was a town of about 8,000 at this time. O. A. Olsen had held tent meetings there the previous October and had succeeded in founding a church of about 30 members. Now Moss had been chosen as the site of the first Adventist camp meeting in Europe, and in connection with the camp meeting, the Fifth European Council.EGWE 300.1

The camp was set up among the pines of Bellevue Grove on Jel Island,^{*Today there is an attractive sanitarium at Jeloy (Jel Island), Moss, denominationally owned and generally well patronized.} which had originally been a peninsula about five miles long and four miles wide. For the benefit of Ellen White and visiting ministers, a house was rented on a high rise of ground overlooking the water and the city.EGWE 300.2

When Mrs. White rose the next morning at four to begin writing, the sun was already shining brightly. Church members arrived from all over Scandinavia, and while everyone was busy that Friday morning getting settled in the family tents or exploring the items at the bookstand, Mrs. White, along with Jennie Ings and Mrs. Olsen, took a carriage downtown.EGWE 300.3

Sabbath morning found her speaking to the adult Sabbath school in the 60’ by 80’ main tent.EGWE 300.4

The camp meeting was attracting wide attention, and on Sunday a reporter from the Christiania Morgenposten was on the grounds. Although the Christiania papers were, at this same time, carrying attacks on Adventists by the Lutheran minister in Moss, the reporter who visited the campground was very favorably impressed. He wrote:EGWE 300.5

“As far as we know this is the first camp-meeting ever held in Europe, but in America such meetings are very common, and in Michigan, where the Adventists are most numerous, from 2,000 to 3,000 people may be found in such a camp. They hire the ground, arrange regular streets, and appoint everyone a place for his tent. They have a camp directory by which anyone can be easily found. It is a perfectly organized though temporary city.... We received the impression that the people occupying these tents must be an economical and well-to-do people.”EGWE 300.6

The reporter went on to give a glowing report of Adventist work, not only in Scandinavia but in other parts of the world, as well.^{*In 1885 Seventh-day Adventist evangelistic work began in Australia with the arrival of S. N. Haskell, J. O. Corliss, M. C. Israel, and Wm. E. Arnold from the United States. This same year, 1887, we see D. A. Robinson, C. L. Boyd, and others in Africa opening up the work on that continent. Within a few years construction would begin on the Pitcairn, first SDA missionary ship launched to carry the Advent message to the islands of the South Pacific.}EGWE 301.1

Even before this friendly story appeared in the paper, Mrs. White could see that the camp meeting was a marked success. She was probably aware of the reporter on the grounds, for she noted optimistically that the news of the meeting would be carried throughout the Scandinavian kingdoms. Her diary reports:EGWE 301.2

“Many came to these meetings with great fear and trembling. They thought it must be at great risk to live in tents, but when they saw the arrangements ... they had naught to fear.... The terror and the dread of camp meeting is all removed and the way is opened for camp meetings in these regions.”—Manuscript 34, 1887.EGWE 301.3