Jesus was predicted to return on October 22, 1844. When He did not come as expected, a small band of believers arose out of this Great Disappointment. Four years later almost to the day, in 1848, a small group gathered in Maine for a conference. There they began to pray for a way to publish the truths they were discovering in the Bible.
A month later, on November 18, they met again. James White wrote: “We had an exceedingly powerful meeting. Ellen was again taken off in vision. She then began to describe the Sabbath light, which was the sealing truth. Said she: ‘It arose from the rising of the sun. It arose back there in weakness, but light after light has shone upon it until the Sabbath truth is clear, weighty, and mighty. Like the sun when it first rises, its rays are cold, but as it comes up, its rays are warming and powerful; so the light and power has increased more and more until its rays are powerful, sanctifying the soul; but, unlike the sun, it will never set. The Sabbath light will be at its brightest when the saints are immortal; it will rise higher and higher until immortality comes.’ ”1
When the vision was finished, Ellen spoke directly to her husband, James: “I have a message for you. You must begin to print a little paper and send it out to the people. Let it be small at first; but as the people read, they will send you means with which to print, and it will be a success from the first. From this small beginning it was shown to me to be like streams of light that went clear round the world.”2
James White did take up his pen and by 1849 distributed the first issue of The Present Truth. That paper, through many name changes eventually renamed Adventist Review, has been published continuously for the past 175 years.
In 1949 Origin and History of Seventh-day Adventists was printed, including several paintings by Harry Anderson that appear to have been commissioned for this book. The painting to the left is one in which the artist was asked to imagine the vision on that day in 1848. Behind Ellen White are James White (left) and Joseph Bates, who took notes of the words she spoke during the vision. The world above pictures the streams of light that would encircle the globe because of the publishing work.
1 Ellen G. White, The Publishing Ministry (Hagerstown, Md.: Review and Herald Pub. Assn., 1983), p. 15.
2 Ibid., p. 16.