No, she said the light behind them was the midnight cry, shining forward on the path. Some doubted that it was God who lead them there--on the path illuminated by the midnight cry. They denied the light--of the midnight cry.
In fact, she also said years later she still believed that there was a door shut in 1844 for those who rejected their 1844 experience:
I was shown in vision, and I still believe, that there was a shut door in 1844. All who saw the light of the first and second angels' messages and rejected that light, were left in darkness. And those who accepted it and received the Holy Spirit which attended the proclamation of the message from heaven, and who afterward renounced their faith and pronounced their experience a delusion, thereby rejected the Spirit of God, and it no longer pleaded with them.
Of course she made one exception to that last bit--William Miller himself. She said he was tired from all his labors and others influenced him so it was there fault that he didn't accept this new light they came up with.
But anyone else who realized Jesus did not come in 1843, or 1844, and therefore realized his message was not true--they were lost per Ellen White.
I just check and this is another application of the SOP taken out of context. Here let me provide the full context.
Early Statements
[Soon after the republication in 1882 of the three earliest E. G. White books, A Sketch of the Christian Experience and Views of Ellen G. White, A Supplement to Experience and Views, and Spiritual Gifts, vol. 1, all three of which today comprise Early Writings, certain questions were raised concerning the completeness of some of the articles and the significance of certain statements appearing here or in still earlier published articles. Mrs. White answered these questions in 1883 in the following statement. Reference is made to the teachings on the “shut door.” For another reference to the significance of the “shut door” see The Great Controversy, 429-432.]
Compilers.
My attention has recently been called to a sixteen-page pamphlet published by C, of Marion, Iowa, entitled Comparison of the Early Writings of Mrs. White With Later Publications. The writer states that portions of my earlier visions, as first printed, have been suppressed in the work recently published under the title Early Writings of Mrs. E. G. White, and he conjectures as a reason for such suppression that these passages teach doctrines now repudiated by us as a people.
He also charges us with willful deception in representing Early Writings as a complete republication of my earliest views, with only verbal changes from the original work.
Before I notice separately the passages which are said to have been omitted, it is proper that several facts be stated. When my earliest views were first published in pamphlet form, [Reference is here made to the 24-page pamphlet “A Word to the Little Flock,” published by James White in 1847, containing three Ellen G. White communications.—Compilers.] the edition was small, and was soon sold. This was in a few years followed by a larger book, The Christian Experience and Views of Mrs. E. G. White, printed in 1851, and containing much additional matter.
In our frequent change of location in the earlier history of the publishing work, and then in almost incessant travel as I have labored from Maine to Texas, from Michigan to California—and I have crossed the plains no less than seventeen times—I lost all trace of the first published works. When it was decided to publish Early Writings at Oakland last fall, we were obliged to send to Michigan to borrow a copy of Experience and Views. And in doing this we supposed that we had obtained an exact copy of the earliest visions as first published. This we reprinted, as stated in the preface to Early Writings, with only verbal changes from the original work.
And here I will pause to state that any of our people having in their possession a copy of any or all of my first views, as published prior to 1851, will do me a great favor if they will send them to me without delay. I promise to return the same as soon as a copy can be produced.
So far from desiring to withhold anything that I have ever published, I would feel great satisfaction in giving to the public every line of my writings that has ever been printed.
Testimonies Garbled by Eli Curtis
There is another fact that should be stated here. I am not responsible for all that has been printed as coming from me. About the time that my earliest visions were first published, several articles did appear purporting to have been written by me, and to relate what the Lord had shown me, but sanctioning doctrines which I did not believe. These were published in a paper edited by a Mr. Curtis. Of the name of the paper I am not certain. In the years of care and labor that have passed since then, some of these less important particulars have been forgotten, but the main points are still distinct in my mind.
This man took articles that came from my pen, and wholly transformed and distorted them, picking out a sentence here and there, without giving the connection, and then, after inserting his own ideas, he attached my name to them as if they came direct from me.
On seeing these articles, we wrote to him, expressing our surprise and disapprobation, and forbidding him thus to misconstrue my testimonies. He answered that he should publish what he pleased, that he knew the visions ought to say what he had published, and that if I had written them as the Lord gave them to me, they would have said these things. He asserted that if the visions have been given for the benefit of the church, he had a right to use them as he pleased.
Some of these sheets may still be in existence, and may be brought forward as coming from me, but I am not responsible for them. The articles given in Early Writings did pass under my eye; and as the edition of Experience and Views published in 1851 was the earliest which we possessed, and as we had no knowledge of anything additional in papers or pamphlets of earlier date, I am not responsible for the omissions which are said to exist.
The First Omission
The first quotation mentioned by C is from a pamphlet of twenty-four pages published in 1847, entitled A Word to the Little Flock. Here are the lines omitted in Experience and Views:
“It was just as impossible for them [those that gave up their faith in the ‘44 movement] to get on the path again and go to the city, as all the wicked world which God had rejected. They fell all the way along the path one after another.”
I will give the context, that the full force of the expressions may be clearly seen:
“While praying at the family altar, the Holy Ghost fell on me, and I seemed to be rising higher and higher, far above the dark world. I turned to look for the advent people in the world, but could not find them—when a voice said to me, ‘Look again, and look a little higher.’ At this I raised my eyes and saw a straight and narrow path, cast up high above the world. On this path the advent people were traveling to the city, which was at the farther end of the path. They had a bright light set up behind them at the first end of the path, which an angel told me was the midnight cry. This light shone all along the path, and gave light for their feet so they might not stumble. And if they kept their eyes fixed on Jesus, who was just before them, leading them to the city, they were safe. But soon some grew weary, and they said the city was a great way off, and they expected to have entered it before. Then Jesus would encourage them by raising His glorious right arm, and from His arm came a glorious light which waved over the advent band, and they shouted, Hallelujah! Others rashly denied the light behind them, and said that it was not God that had led them out so far. The light behind them went out, leaving their feet in perfect darkness, and they stumbled and got their eyes off the mark and lost sight of Jesus, and fell off the path down into the dark and wicked world below.”
Now follows the passage said to be in the original work, but not found in Experience and Views nor in Early Writings:
“It was just as impossible for them [those that gave up their faith in the ‘44 movement] to get on the path again and go to the city, as all the wicked world which God had rejected. They fell all the way along the path one after another.”
The “Shut Door” Defined
It is claimed that these expressions prove the shut-door doctrine, and that this is the reason of their omission in later editions. But in fact they teach only that which has been and is still held by us as a people, as I shall show.
For a time after the disappointment in 1844, I did hold, in common with the advent body, that the door of mercy was then forever closed to the world. This position was taken before my first vision was given me. It was the light given me of God that corrected our error, and enabled us to see the true position.
I am still a believer in the shut-door theory, but not in the sense in which we at first employed the term or in which it is employed by my opponents.
There was a shut door in Noah's day. There was at that time a withdrawal of the Spirit of God from the sinful race that perished in the waters of the Flood. God Himself gave the shut-door message to Noah:
“My spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh: yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years” (Genesis 6:3).
There was a shut door in the days of Abraham. Mercy ceased to plead with the inhabitants of Sodom, and all but Lot, with his wife and two daughters, were consumed by the fire sent down from heaven.
There was a shut door in Christ's day. The Son of God declared to the unbelieving Jews of that generation, “Your house is left unto you desolate” (Matthew 23:38).
Looking down the stream of time to the last days, the same infinite power proclaimed through John:
“These things saith he that is holy, he that is true, he that hath the key of David, he that openeth, and no man shutteth; and shutteth, and no man openeth” (Revelation 3:7).
I was shown in vision, and I still believe, that there was a shut door in 1844. All who saw the light of the first and second angels’ messages and rejected that light, were left in darkness. And those who accepted it and received the Holy Spirit which attended the proclamation of the message from heaven, and who afterward renounced their faith and pronounced their experience a delusion, thereby rejected the Spirit of God, and it no longer pleaded with them.
Those who did not see the light, had not the guilt of its rejection. It was only the class who had despised the light from heaven that the Spirit of God could not reach. And this class included, as I have stated, both those who refused to accept the message when it was presented to them, and also those who, having received it, afterward renounced their faith. These might have a form of godliness, and profess to be followers of Christ; but having no living connection with God, they would be taken captive by the delusions of Satan. These two classes are brought to view in the vision—those who declared the light which they had followed a delusion, and the wicked of the world who, having rejected the light, had been rejected of God. No reference is made to those who had not seen the light, and therefore were not guilty of its rejection.
In order to prove that I believed and taught the shut-door doctrine, Mr. C gives a quotation from the Review of June 11, 1861, signed by nine of our prominent members. The quotation reads as follows:
“Our views of the work before us were then mostly vague and indefinite, some still retaining the idea adopted by the body of advent believers in 1844, with William Miller at their head, that our work for ‘the world’ was finished, and that the message was confined to those of the original advent faith. So firmly was this believed that one of our number was nearly refused the message, the individual presenting it having doubts of the possibility of his salvation because he was not in ‘the ‘44 move.’”
To this I need only to add, that in the same meeting in which it was urged that the message could not be given to this brother, a testimony was given me through vision to encourage him to hope in God and to give his heart fully to Jesus, which he did then and there.
to be continued
. This is what is being shared with you. It is God's truth in relation to the Sanctuary that is restored. This is the time of the day of atonement and the cleasning of the Sanctuary the final part of Gods plan of salvation for mankind (God's people).
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