Messages at the Devotional Meetings

The next morning, Tuesday, March 31, Ellen White gave the devotional message. She spoke on how to receive a blessing. She called attention to the evidences of God's leading in the past and pointed out the importance of confession of sin. Then she dealt with faultfinding and criticism. She closed her words with an earnest prayer for pardon and help. The prayer occupied about the same amount of time as her talk. She talked with God about the things that were on her heart, and the mistakes that had been made. She confessed these mistakes and thanked the Lord for opening up to His people the true situation. She pleaded that the Holy Spirit might come into their hearts and break down every barrier.5BIO 246.4

Wednesday morning, April 1, she spoke again at the devotional service. Again she dealt with faultfinding and criticizing, backbiting and cannibalism. Then she began to deal with the church institutions and some of the problems faced by those institutions.5BIO 246.5

She reminded her audience of the financial embarrassment that had come to the publishing house in Christiania, Norway. Some wanted to let the house sink in its financial problems, but she said that “light was given me that the institution was to be placed where it could do its work.”—Ibid., 58,. Then she came to the question of the Battle Creek Sanitarium, which was on the minds of many, for the institution was being rebuilt at a cost of two or three times what had been anticipated. Large debts were accumulating. Some in the meeting were probably surprised when they heard the words:5BIO 246.6

And let me say that God does not design that the sanitarium that has been erected in Battle Creek shall be in vain. He wants His people to understand this.5BIO 247.1

He wants this institution to be placed on vantage ground. He does not want His people to be looked upon by the enemy as a people that is going out of sight.— Ibid.5BIO 247.2

She called for another effort to place the institution on solid ground, and declared, “The people of God must build that institution up, in the name of the Lord.”5BIO 247.3

One man is not to stand at its head alone. Dr. Kellogg has carried the burden until it has almost killed him. God wants His servants to stand united in carrying that work forward.— Ibid.5BIO 247.4

Before she closed her presentation, she declared:5BIO 247.5

Because men have made mistakes, they are not to be uprooted. The blessing of God heals; it does not destroy. The Mighty Healer, the great Medical Missionary, will be in the midst of us, to heal and bless, if we will receive Him.—Ibid., 59,.

We should pause for just a moment to note Ellen White's relationship to situations of this kind. She knew that institutions had been overbuilt, in disregard of counsel that God had given. But even though mistakes had been made, she contended that it was God's institution, that the church was to stand by it and make it succeed.5BIO 247.6

This was Ellen White's sympathetic approach to the problem of the rebuilt but heavily indebted Battle Creek Sanitarium. Her deep concern was for its medical superintendent, Dr. John Harvey Kellogg, of whom she declared a few months later:5BIO 247.7

At the General Conference held in Oakland, Dr. Kellogg gave an exhibition of himself that revealed the spirit that controlled him. Long before that meeting he was presented to me as a man who understood not the spirit that controlled him. The enemy of souls had cast upon him a spell of deception....5BIO 247.8

During that meeting a scene was presented to me, representing evil angels conversing with the doctor, and imbuing him with their spirit, so that at times he would say and do things, the nature of which he could not understand. He seemed powerless to escape from the snare. At other times he would appear to be rational.—Letter 51, 1904.5BIO 248.1