The Adventist Charts

    I've made this page because there is a controversy in the Adventist Church regarding these prophetic charts. Here I've provided the two charts with related comments by Ellen White referring to them. Click on the images below to get the full size image if you want.

The first chart, known as the 1843 chart because it predicts the end of the world in 1843, was produced in May of 1842. The second chart was produced in 1850 and is thus known as the 1850 chart.

1843 Chart


    I saw that the truth should be made plain on tables, that the earth and the fullness thereof is the Lord's, and that necessary means should not be spared to make it plain. I saw that the angels' messages made plain, would have effect. I saw that the old chart was directed by the Lord, and that not a peg of it should be altered without inspiration. I saw that the figures on the chart were as God wanted them, and that His hand was over and hid a mistake in some of the figures so that none could see it until His hand was removed.  {Unpublished Manuscript 15, 1850, similar to SpM 1.3}

    I have seen that the 1843 chart was directed by the hand of the Lord, and that it should not be altered; that the figures were as He wanted them; that His hand was over and hid a mistake in some of the figures, so that none could see it, until His hand was removed.{EW 74.1}

     I saw the people of God joyful in expectation, looking for their Lord. But God designed to prove them. His hand covered a mistake in the reckoning of the prophetic periods. Those who were looking for their Lord did not discover this mistake, and the most learned men who opposed the time also failed to see it. God designed that His people should meet with a disappointment. {EW 235.3}
. . .
    Again they were led to their Bibles to search the prophetic periods. The hand of the Lord was removed from the figures, and the mistake was explained. They saw that the prophetic periods reached to 1844, and that the same evidence which they had presented to show that the prophetic periods closed in 1843, proved that they would terminate in 1844. {EW 236.1}

 1850 Chart

 
     I saw that God was in the publishment of the chart by Brother Nichols. I saw that there was a prophecy of this chart in the Bible, and if this chart is designed for God's people, if it [is] sufficient for one it is for another, and if one needed a new chart painted on a larger scale, all need it just as much.  {13MR 359.1}

     God showed me the necessity of getting out a chart. I saw it was needed and that the truth made plain upon tables would affect much and would cause souls to come to the knowledge of the truth.--Letter 26, 1850, p. 1. (To Brother and Sister Loveland, November 1, 1850.)  {5MR 202.4} 
     On our return to Brother Nichol's, the Lord gave me a vision and showed me that the truth must be made plain upon tables, and it would cause many to decide for the truth by the third angel's message with the two former being made plain upon tables. . . . {5MR 203.1}

    I saw that the charts ordered by God struck the mind favorably, even without an explanation. There is something light, lovely, and heavenly in the representation of the angels on the charts. The mind is almost imperceptibly led to God and heaven. {13MR 359.3}