In her first alleged vision of December 1844, the Seventh-day Adventist prophetess, Ellen G. White, claimed, in part:
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 in the dark and wicked world below. It was just as impossible for them 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, until we heard the voice of God like many waters, which gave us the day and hour of Jesus’ coming.
Ellen G. White, A Word To the Little Flock, pg. 14 (WLF 14.2)
To understand the “Midnight Cry,” it’s important to first understand a little bit about 19th-century Millerism, the movement out of which Seventh-day Adventism emerged.
The term “Midnight Cry” comes from the parable of the ten virgins in Matthew 25:6, which says, “At midnight the cry rang out: ‘Here is the bridegroom! Come out to meet him!’” For the Millerites, this represented a renewed sense of urgency and certainty that Christ’s Second Coming was imminent—contrary to the widespread belief of the time that it was far off. More specifically, they believed Jesus would return on October 22, 1844, a date derived from William Miller’s interpretation of Daniel 8:14 and the “2300 evenings and mornings” prophecy.
The date of October 22 is often mistakenly attributed to William Miller, but it was actually Samuel S. Snow, a Millerite preacher, who popularized it. Snow linked this date to the Jewish Day of Atonement in 1844, and his message, often called the “seventh-month movement,” became central to the “Midnight Cry.”
When Jesus did not return on October 22, 1844, this failure became known as the Great Disappointment. In the aftermath, Millerite beliefs were reevaluated, and those who continued this process eventually formed the Seventh-day Adventist Church. They reinterpreted the “Midnight Cry” as not pointing to Christ’s return to earth but to a heavenly event: the beginning of the “investigative judgment” in the heavenly sanctuary.
Ellen White’s first vision in December 1844 tied into this reinterpretation. She claimed that God revealed to her that He had rejected the “wicked world” for rejecting the Millerite message. In her vision, only those who had believed in William Miller’s teachings were on the path to heaven, which was illuminated by the “Midnight Cry.” Jesus stood at the end of the path, guiding those on it. However, those who abandoned Millerism after the Great Disappointment were shown to fall off the path, down into the “wicked world that God had rejected.”
It’s important to note that the reimagining of the “Midnight Cry,” resulting in the formal doctrine of the investigative judgment, did not come about for a number of years after this alleged December 1844 vision. Which is to say that, contextually, Mrs. White claimed to be shown by God that anyone who rejected Millerism was effectively rejected by God.
Even forty years after the Disappointment, in the 1880s, Ellen White would claim things like:
Of all the great religious movements since the days of the apostles, none have been more free from human imperfection and the wiles of Satan than was that of the autumn of 1844. Even now, after the lapse of forty years, all who shared in that movement and who have stood firm upon the platform of truth, still feel the holy influence of that blessed work, and bear witness that it was of God.
Ellen G. White, Spirit of Prophecy, Vol. 4, pg. 250 (4SP 250.1)
No matter how many failed predictions the movement experienced in their earliest days, the refusal to accept that nothing special happened in 1844 still permeates the movement to this day.