Edson White: His Work & Conversion Season 2 | Episode 42
Having a mother who is a prophet
and a father who, amongst many other things,
was a General Conference president
would not have been easy.
Losing one of your brothers suddenly at the age of sixteen
and having your old father suffer disease and an early death
would have been very hard.
Having parents who traveled extensively during your early years
and constantly being in the public eye
made the childhood of Edson White
more challenging than what most of us experience.
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As he was growing up he was, for want of a better term,
the black sheep of the family,
the one that Ellen White worried about more than the others.
He had a problem with lying, being deceitful—
just a problem child through and through.
He would cause severe rifts between his parents,
as James and Ellen had different views on how he should be dealt with.
Sometimes he would go to a town and trade in the Whites’ name.
But when the business fell flat he would leave town,
leaving his parents to pick up the bill.
His father would happily have let him go through the court system
and bear the consequences that way,
but his mother would bail him out, taking a softer approach.
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After his father's death, things get worse.
He has a fight with the Review and Herald over royalties
and he also writes to his mother and tells her that he is not religious.
Ellen White, though, continues to plead with him.
She tells him that she has seen heaven, that it is for real.
Ellen has a better relationship with Emma, Edson's wife,
and she writes to her and asks her to ensure
that Edison reads the letter and does not burn it.
One time she had a dream where she saw him caught in a Riptide drowning,
and she wakes up and writes him a letter.
This continues for years with seemingly little effect,
but God was working silently on his heart.
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Eventually, at the age of 44,
Edson White accepts Jesus as his personal Saviour.
He writes to his mother and he says he now realizes that Jesus loves him,
and decides to throw himself into full-time ministry.
He read his mother's book
which stressed the necessity and importance of working in the South
and decides to raise the funds
to buy a boat to sail down to the South with.
The South wasn't a sought-after mission field at the time.
Slavery had just been abolished, tensions were high,
and there were many people down there
who did not want the newly-freed slaves to have access to education.
Edson White set about to change this through the Morning Star boat.
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Edson White would go and do a great work in the South,
providing huge momentum to the work that had just started.
His boat idea was genius,
at a time when schools and churches would regularly get torched.
His work in this new field would result in approximately 15 schools,
a sanitarium, and a publishing house being opened.
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There is no foolproof method of raising children.
Children must choose for themselves.
Ellen White wrote lots of counsel on rearing children,
and yet she had troublesome children of her own.
The story of Edson strongly reminds us
that we should not give up on people,
even when hope seems lost.
There may still be great plans for that person's future.
Pray for them, work with them,
plead with them, and let God have His way.