An offshoot group led by Margaret W. Rowen, who had been a member of a Seventh-day Adventist church in Los Angeles, California. On June 22, 1916, she began to issue messages purporting to be testimonies from the Lord, claiming to have received the gift of prophecy. Disregarding the warnings of denominational leaders and committees who examined Mrs. Rowen’s writings and publicly declared that they contained error and were not messages from God, some church members accepted her as a divinely sent messenger and took the name “Reformed Seventh-day Adventists.”
In the autumn of 1919, Mrs. Rowen claimed to have seen in vision a document in the manuscript files of Ellen White, dated Aug. 10, 1911, stating that Mrs. Rowen would be used of God to give messages from Him to His people. When W. C. White and other workers searched the files of Ellen White manuscripts at St. Helena on Dec. 17, 1919, they found a loose sheet that had been slipped into the drawer of the 1911 documents. It purported to be a testimony written and signed by Mrs. White at St. Helena on Aug. 10, 1911, naming Margaret W. Rowen as a future messenger sent of God. The document bore evidence of forgery, but the mystery of how it got into the files remained unsolved for some time.
On Nov. 15, 1919, Mrs. Rowen was disfellowshiped from the South Side SDA Church of Los Angeles.
Mrs. Rowen announced in November 1923 that probation would close on Feb. 6, 1924, and that Christ would come in glory on Feb. 6, 1925. On Jan. 16, 1925, she said that she had been shown “that the 144,000, if necessary, will be taken from their abiding places and transported to the gathering place; and then immediately taken up in the clouds of heaven by the angels on Feb. 6, 1925.” Her announcement of the date of Christ’s coming was spread by news agencies throughout many lands, and was falsely attributed to the Seventh-day Adventist Church. The report created a sensation even though the General Conference officers released to the press an official statement branding the prediction as false and declaring that the Seventh-day Adventist Church had no part whatever in making it. The falsity of Mrs. Rowen’s prediction became painfully apparent to her followers when the date passed.
On Mar. 12, 1926, Dr. B. E. Fullmer, a physician who had been a zealous follower and assistant of Mrs. Rowen, went to SDA leaders in Los Angeles and confessed that while he and others were visiting the office of the Ellen G. White Estate at St. Helena on Nov. 11, 1919, he had opened the drawer of the manuscripts of 1911 sufficiently to slip into it the spurious document to which Mrs. White’s name had been attached by Mrs. Rowen. His sworn confession and the confessions of other persons cleared up other mysteries connected with Mrs. Rowen’s work.
On Feb. 27, 1927, Dr. Fullmer was called about midnight to give medical aid in a cottage of an auto court near Lankershim. On entering he was struck on the head with a piece of pipe. Police, summoned by neighbors, found Mrs. Rowen and two associates—a doctor and a nurse whom Dr. Fullmer recognized as aides of Mrs. Rowen—there with the unconscious victim. A shovel, burlap, and rope, apparently for disposing of the body, were also in the room. The three were sentenced to serve from one to 10 years in San Quentin prison on a plea of guilty to the charge of “assault with a deadly weapon, with intent to do great bodily injury.” Mrs. Rowen was released on parole after about one year in prison.