F. History testifies to the validity of Ellen White’s prophetic insight in urging the church to work for the blacks in the South before conditions changed, making work more difficult.
Prior to the Emancipation Proclamation most of the major denominations (Presbyterians, Episcopalians, and Baptists) restricted the black ministry and placed blacks in segregated sections in their congregations. However, following the release of the slaves, the conditions were entirely changed. As John Hope Franklin comments:EGWUTRW 29.2
The end of the war led to the expansion of independent churches among Negroes. There were no longer Southern laws to silence Negro preachers and proscribe their separate organizations. Negroes began to withdraw from white churches once they had secured their freedom, and consequently the Negro church grew rapidly after the war.... The African Methodist Episcopal Church, which had only 20,000 members in 1856, boasted 75,000 ten years later. In 1876 its membership exceeded 200,000, and its influence and material possessions had increased proportionally. The Baptists likewise enjoyed phenomenal growth. Local churches sprang up overnight under the ministry of unlettered but inspired preachers.… Within a few years every Southern state had a large Negro Baptist organization. Their total membership increased from 150,000 in 1850 to 500,000 in 1870.
With four-million-plus blacks free and open and searching in their religious outlook, the fields were ripe, the time was prime for evangelism among blacks. The reaction? Hundreds of ministers moved in to assume religious leadership. Unfortunately, Seventh-day Adventists were not among them, at least not in significant numbers. And so the vast majority of blacks turned to the doctrines of the Baptists, Methodists, Episcopalians, and Presbyterians. This phenomenal period of potential is graphically set forth in the statistics of the Baptist Church and other denominations as seen in the above quotation.EGWUTRW 30.1
It was a brief period of relief and opportunity for the freed black. For a ten-to-twenty-year period after the Civil War, known to some as the “mystic years,” there was an unprecedented time for evangelism. Ellen White knew of this opportunity, hence wrote, spoke, and helped to support the black work in any way she could. She also knew that this period would not last long, and so appealed to the church and its leadership to work the Southern field, leaving the “results with God.” She was firm, clear, and decided, but the overall church response was virtually nil until the mid-nineties. (See also The Southern Work, 25, 26, and 31ff, 37ff, 54ff, 58ff, 63ff.)EGWUTRW 30.2