May 15, 2014

Unveiling: 'This Is the Very Place'

The sculpture will be situated at this location atop the Nichol Hall hill.

“This Is the Very Place” will be unveiled and dedicated Saturday, May 24, atop the Nichol Hall hill. This will be the newest faith-based sculpture on campus.

The sculpture remembers the unwavering faith and obedience to the call of the Lord by Ellen White and John Burden in founding Loma Linda University Health, and it will serve as a reminder to further God’s plans for the future of the organization.

The ceremony takes place at 3:30 p.m., and all are invited to come. Members of the White and Burden families will be in attendance.

The sculpture captures Ellen White and her son Willie’s first visit to the future campus in 1905 to meet John Burden, who two weeks earlier had put a $1,000 deposit to hold the bankrupt property that had recently been renamed Loma Linda, meaning “beautiful hill.”

While viewing the buildings and grounds, Ellen White said, “Willie, I have been here before.” 

He responded, “No, Mother. You have never been here.” 

“Then this is the very place the Lord has shown me, for it is all familiar,” she answered. 

Although White had never been to Loma Linda before, she recognized the property as the very place she had seen in vision nearly four years earlier.

Emphasizing the need to move forward with the purchase of the land, she told the group, “We must have this place. We should reason from cause to effect. The Lord has not given us this property for any common purpose.”

 

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