Ellen White and the Shut Door of Salvation

It is best to read what Ellen herself wrote about the "shut door"

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 angel’s 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. Long 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 Wm. 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." - Ellen White, 4LtMs, Ms 4, 1883, par. 18 - 30