Ellen White Is My Friend By Charles D. Brooks

Transcription

1 Ellen White Is My Friend By Charles D. Brooks Taken from Douglass, Herbert E., ed What Ellen White has meant to me. Washington, D.C.: Review and Herald Publishing Association. Charles D. Brooks, a general field secretary of the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists, has baptized nearly 2,400 persons so far in his ministry. A graduate of Oakwood College, Brooks has served as Ministerial secretary, associate stewardship secretary, and field secretary of the Columbia Union Conference, as well as pastor of several large churches in the Mid-Atlantic States. He is widely sought for college campus appointments and is a frequent commencement speaker. Takoma Park, Maryland 1972 When I consider God's personal concern for the individual, I exclaim with the ancient hymn singer, What is man that thou art mindful of him? My experience with God's remnant church began in a spectacular way with the infinite God bending low to speak to one of His children in a private conversation. I was just an infant at the time. But I had a blessed mother whom all her friends remember as an extraordinary Christian. God spoke to her directly, audibly, as she lay on a sickbed. He called her name and told her to keep the seventh-day Sabbath. Mother was amazed to discover that she was ignorantly observing the wrong day, but she promised the Lord then and there that she would observe His true Sabbath, even if no one else besides herself and her children did. For seven years our mother and the children who were yet at home observed the Sabbath (from midnight Friday to midnight Saturday), and we thought we were the only folks in the whole world who were doing so. This brought us into severe conflict with neighbors, relatives, and our church. I come from a long line of Methodist preachers. There was hostility from everywhere. Father did not agree with the new idea. (He was baptized later and died loving Jesus and this precious Adventist truth.) Folks all around us showered us generously with opprobrium and vitriolic abuse. After several years of rancor our church decided on a more charitable course. A committee was named to approach mother with the view of reclaiming for the church this valuable but confused member. Over the years we children had become defensive, bristling before the abuse. We had no counselor, no pastor to guide us, no books only the patient, kindly example of mother. But God was about to send us help. The committee arrived, headed by the senior deacon of the church. They pleaded and cajoled at length, then offered their arguments to refute the message that had come to mother. However, this quiet spirit, our mother, had pored over the Word by the hours on Sabbaths (with no church to attend), and had become more than a match for the committee. She did not do it with fire, but with light. She didn't argue and dispute in the face of ridicule; she questioned. Her points scored hard and well. Her lines of argument were later found

2 to my amazement in our many books. She was, in effect, quoting the thoughts of great preachers in the Adventist Church before she had ever heard of them. I use her arguments now as an evangelist in the cities of the earth. We saw the truth triumph that day. We saw the committee retreat in exasperation. When they stood to leave, the head deacon removed from under his arm a package wrapped in brown paper and tied with binder's twine. He said, Mrs. Brooks, since you believe this foolishness, here is something I've brought for you. I didn't think we could change you. After they had left, we carefully opened the package. Inside was a large, elegantly bound volume called The Great Controversy by some unheard of woman named Ellen G. White. Curiously we began to open its powerful pages, and God spoke to us again. This time He carefully, accurately, retraced history, documenting the events that led to the great apostasy in Christendom. Here was His explanation as to why He spoke to mother in that hospital room and asked her to do this unheard of new thing. The whole thing became clear. Reading this book was like God speaking in thunder tones to His own in a way that only His own could understand. Because My Word is sure, He was saying, and stands forever and is not subject to the whims and fancies of theologians and priests, fanatics and friars, scholars and sectarians, I am not moved by plebiscites and polls. I am God, and My Word is settled forever in heaven. So, walk confidently in truth though the heavens may seem to fall. I am God and My Word is as sure as I am! No volume ever spoke to us like that, and though I was not yet ten years old I understood it. I got the message! Powerful, profound, yet simple. This was our introduction to Mrs. White and, through her, to God's special message to His special people. Remember that at this time we had never heard the name Seventh-day Adventist, nor did we know anything about Ellen G. White. We only knew that God was speaking to us. He delivered a book by a Methodist deacon, and that book was delivering the truth, confirming, affirming, declaring, underscoring, strengthening, encouraging, empowering! How could we know at that time the blessed story of this weak girl, called to the high and holy office of prophetess? How could we even believe that one without great formal training had produced such a profound work? But then had she? As a matter of fact, Ellen White did not produce this great volume, nor the many other volumes we were to discover later. God produced them through her. All she possessed by grace was the holy gift. Through her, not by her, God leaned over the battlements of glory, tugged at the ear lobes of His church, and whispered special inside information that no other organization has the secrets of God for our day! Surely a well-organized church, inoffensive in nature, liberal in views, could arise and flourish and progress numerically and economically any time, anywhere. But God's remnant church, born in ridicule, preaches a straight testimony, rebukes all sin (while encouraging the sinner), upholds all of God's law (while rebuking legalism and righteousness by works), calls for obedience to God rather than keeping the commandments of men, takes on nearly the whole Christian world by exposing a man-made Sabbath, preaches the mark of the beast, the judgment, the unconscious state of the dead, and other decidedly unpopular beliefs. How could such a church progress and flourish in spite of the opposing forces? It is because of God's devotion, His defense, His guidance, especially as revealed in His gift of prophecy through Ellen G. White. I have often said that if I were shut away and isolated forever and were allowed only three books, my choices would be the Bible, The Desire of Ages, and The Great Controversy. These books all exalt Christ as the means and proof of salvation. They all exalt truth above error and tradition,

3 and they all prescribe and urge special preparation to stand in the day when the controversy ends and our splendid Christ sets up His kingdom of glory. But wait. You probably are wondering whether it has always been so simple for me to believe in Mrs. White and her writings. The answer is No! I did have a problem at one period in my life. But I have many times thought how happy I am that I had read The Great Controversy and The Desire of Ages first. Once faith and love get their hooks into you, you cannot dislodge them easily. I'm glad I didn't hear, then, about certain isolated and misunderstood statements in volume 9 of the Testimonies. I might complete this assignment by quoting precious passages here and there in the writings of Ellen White that have meant much to me. Such passages have proved veritable anchors to my soul. I quoted one to myself and others when our dear mother suffered long and intensely. I quoted others when she went to sleep in Jesus. I've meditated on the promises of these sacred books when I and my flock were deeply distressed and troubled, and God used them literally to wipe away all tears. Other passages have been buffer stones to polish character, while still others, when obeyed, have literally renewed physical health. Other writers in this present volume will tell of fulfilled predictions a sound basis for credibility and for validating Ellen White's gift. I love and believe all these things. But I am black and there was a time when Satan stormed my faith by stinging references to what Mrs. White says in volume 9 about black people. It happened that even as a youngster I weighed the positive good of all I had read against the apparent narrowness of volume 9, and decided to suspend judgment until I could understand. I could not believe that she who would write The Desire of Ages, presenting Christ as the Desire of all nations and who wrote so powerfully of the final triumph when God's people of every race, kindred, tongue, and people would be gathered home, could possibly be a racist. It just didn't make sense that Mrs. White could write with such conviction and power urging the church into jungle recesses and island villages in search of souls, and then believe that the fruit of such excursions could be one in Christ and subhuman at the same time. I couldn't allow my impression of the instrument who penned Steps to Christ to disintegrate. Would she who wrote with such tenderness, such holiness, such feeling, such sympathy, now break the bruised reed? Could one who wrote with such love now join the hostile oppressor, the inhuman, demon-inspired tyrant against a defenseless people? I'm glad I wondered and did not jump to conclusions. I'm glad I suspended judgment. I waited. But I was troubled. Men and women, black and white, were being fed a revolting diet of sanctified racism, and perhaps it did much less harm to the blacks than it did to their white brothers and sisters. It displaced love, nurtured bitterness, extended ignorance, and separated brethren. Many fell by the wayside on both sides of the issue. Could God's servant be responsible for that? Many blacks tried to find a way out. Some just dismissed the issue; but it didn't go away. Others questioned: Is all that Mrs. White wrote inspired? To me this is a dangerous approach. It opens the door to skepticism everywhere and solves nothing. One could easily dismiss any counsel or all counsel by simply deciding that one part of this counsel was not inspired. Well, I don't believe that way. I do not think of some words as inspired and others as uninspired. I believe Mrs. White was inspired. She was God's chosen instrument. We cannot categorize her writings according to our likes and dislikes. She was inspired! She was chosen! She was special to God and His church, and whatever counsel she gave came from Him.

4 I finished school, refusing to lose faith in spite of all the foolishness some people had associated with certain statements in volume 9. I heard painful references applying the statement about the amalgamation of man and beast, to the production of subhuman beings. I endured the insults aimed at black morals and black brains and black worship. I lived with the discipline of humiliation and sustained myself with private thoughts and faith. Then one day my wife's father, a saintly minister of God and president of my conference, answered a question for me. His radiant, confident, poised faith was something to emulate. He was a fighter for human rights and dignity, but he was always at peace. I wanted to know whether all this bothered him. He pulled from a special recess in his desk a battered old copy of The Southern Work by Ellen G. White and began to read. I cannot tell you how I felt. There it was, God coming through for me and for disinherited peoples of all lands. There was what I had heard at mother's knee from the fancy-backed volume that the Methodist deacon brought truth, courage, power, judgment, and through it all the sterling quality of the gift and the vessel. I didn't have to surrender one iota of respect or confidence. Some time later I got my own copy of this book The Southern Work. I was no longer afraid to investigate, no longer fearful that the whole beautiful thing would come crashing down on me. I should have known better. I think I did. Here is a sample of what became clearer to me as the days of study passed: The white people who embrace the truth in the Southern field, if converted to God, will discern the fact that the plan of redemption embraces every soul that God has created. The walls of sectarianism and caste and race will fall down when the true missionary spirit enters the hearts of men. Prejudice is melted away by the love of God. All will realize that they are to become laborers together with God. Both the Ethiopian and the white race are God's purchased possession, and our work is to improve every talent that has been lent to us of God, to save the souls of both white and black." The Southern Work, p. 55. There is to be no special heaven for the white man and another heaven for the black man. We are all to be saved through the same grace, all to enter the same heaven at last. Then why not act like rational beings, and overcome our unlikeness to Christ." Ibid. He who is closely connected with Christ is lifted above the prejudice of color or caste." Testimonies, vol. 9, p He [Christ] laid the foundation for a religion by which Jew and Gentile, black and white, free and bond, are linked together in one common brotherhood, recognized as equal in the sight of God." Ibid., vol. 7, p These are only a few of the general statements of principle, but all her comments taken in context are essentially incisive, direct, clear, sharp, bold in rebuke, and loving in appeal. Not all that has been written is complimentary to the black race, and certainly not to the white race. But her counsel is practical, timely, and realistic; it is just. The point is, the Lord's servant was what we should expect her to be in her witness: flawlessly pure and true to principle. She said, I do not intend to live a coward or die a coward. Like all of God's prophets, she was first faithful to her calling to speak for God without accommodating to the ingrained sins of the people. She never compromised. The negative, soul-withering impressions too long ascribed to volume 9 are the responsibility then, not of the sacred gift or of the holy vessel, but of misguided persons who want to project their own views and that of a hostile, divided, hate-filled society on the authority of the Lord's servant. In recent years I have cooperated with concerned church leaders to see that The Southern Work, so long out of print, was republished and joined the other well-known Ellen G.

5 White volumes. Together, they pull up the slack, exalt the dark valleys of oppression, make low the mountains and hills of pride and superiority, and place the flock of God everywhere on an equality in all nations and among all races. She challenges all to stand equal in Christ Jesus, a common brotherhood of saints. I did not have to surrender my faith in Ellen White. Had I found her to be a racist I would have found her to be immoral, for racism is immoral. On the other hand, I did not have to surrender my manhood or my convictions on the brotherhood of man in order to believe in her. No one else can decide for me whether or not I am a man and equal to all other men in that respect. I decided that. The God who created me said so, and as surely as I am born, Mrs. White confirms it. She was a champion of human rights. She spoke up when it was unpopular to do so even dangerous. The pioneers of our faith joined her and risked much for this principle. I am grateful now that our church stands on this principle, supports this principle. We are officially and forever with her on this question. Anyone in the church showing weakness in this area is out of step with the church, out of agreement with what she wrote, and out of harmony with God. Such deserve our pity and our prayers. Ellen White is my friend. I believe in her as a person, a prophetess, a servant of God. The church moves ahead as it moves back to her God-given counsel. Believe his prophets, so shall ye prosper.