Maranatha Media

Ellen White baptised by her husband early in experience

Posted Jul 04, 2012 by Adrian Ebens in Adventist History
4,760 Hits

Our family is currently reading the biography of James White written by Virgil Robinson in 1976. We learned something from this book that I had not heard before but this is what Robinson says:

About this time Ellen was rebaptized. She had been baptized as a girl of 14 when she joined the methodist church. Would it not be fitting for her to be baptized into the ranks of Sabbathkeepers? We have no record of the time or place where James baptized her, or who was present to witness the rite. But James, in the only record of the experience, wrote that immediately as he raised her out of the water, she was taken off in vision. Virgil Robinson, James White, (RH, 1976) page 42.

What James wrote is this:

On receiving baptism at my hands, at an early period of her experience, as I raised her up out of the water, immediately she was in vision. Life Incidents page 273.

Robinson speculates that the baptism was in relation to the Sabbath, but there is no mention that James was baptised at the same time which would logically be the case if it was simply a Sabbath issue as they both came to this knowledge together. There is no way that James White would have conducted a Trinitarian baptism from what we know of him. How I would love to know what Ellen White saw in vision during that baptism! The comforting fact regardless is that Ellen White was baptised by her husband according to his understanding of who he was baptising in the name of. What exactly was the baptism about? New truth no doubt, but why is she only mentioned as being baptised? 

If anyone finds any more infornmation on this, that would be wonderful.