William Miller
(Note: This is the concluding part of a 4-part article series: Read Part 1: Failed Predictions of Jesus' Second Coming: The Early Christian Thessalonians in End-Time Excitement
Read Part 3: Failed Predictions of Jesus' Coming: The Black Death, Columbus and Nostradamus (1000-1600 A.D.) )
The Nineteenth Century was exceptionally productive with regard to the delusional Christian hope that Jesus is coming again. Some of the most dramatic cases of Christian millenarian upheavals come from the Nineteenth Century era of American history.
Probably the most influential Armageddon prophet to arise in America in the Nineteenth Century was William Miller ("Mad Miller"). In 1836, Miller published his book: Evidence From the Scriptures and History of the Second Coming of Christ About A.D. 1843.
News of Miller's prediction spread quickly in the U.S., with the advantage of news media coverage. He won converts mostly from the established churches and his followership grew quickly to about 50 000 (Miller's mother had been a member of the Baptist Church and Miller himself was a Deist before he began studying bible prophecy). The rapid early growth of his followership spurred him to elaborate further on his prophetic predictions of Armageddon, and on January 1, 1843, he announced a detailed timetable for the "Advent."
According to Miller's timetable, Jesus' Second Coming would come sometime from March 21, 1843 to March 21, 1844 (since Christ himself had said that no one except his father new the exact time, Miller avoided setting an exact date). The coincidence of a comet appearance in the sky during this period seemed, to Miller's followers, confirmation of the timetable of Advent Miller had laid out in detail, and expectations peaked. In the blind excitement which followed the comet appearance, many abandoned their jobs and other secular responsibilities, and soon a thriving tailoring industry in white ascension robes sprang up, supported solely by Millerites awaiting the Lord's coming in eager and pious anticipation.
But in spite of the excitement of his followers and certainty on Miller's part, the set date range came and passed and nothing happened. The confusion which set in when March 21, 1844, the last day of the date range Miller had set, passed was temporarily abated by Samuel Snow, one of Miller's followers, who reset the date at October 22, 1844. People who had given up their secular lives for the ascension and were as a result in a desperate situation were all too willing to renew hope and await ascension on the new set date. But, yet again, the set date came and passed and nothing happened. Samuel Snow's date of October 22, 1844, is known in the annals of the history of the Millerite movement as the Day of Disappointment. Miller himself is said to have retired in dejection and died in 1848. But the Advent madness persisted among his followers.
Hiram Edson, one of the leading personalities of the Millerites in New York soon fangled a new interpretation which explained tortuously that Jesus had indeed come but not visibly on the earth but to what he termed the heavenly sanctuary. Hiram Edson claimed he received the revelation in a dream in which he saw Jesus entering into and cleansing his Heavenly Sanctuary in preparation for what, in Adventist eschatological jargon, was "Investigative Judgment." In the new eschatological teaching introduced by Hiram Edson, and which soon became generally accepted in Adventist circles, the purpose of "Investigative Judgment" was to determine who will be going to heaven. At the completion of "Investigative Judgment" Jesus would then come to the earth and take the saints with him to heaven.
Yet another Millerite leader and teacher Joseph Bates began teaching that the Christian world had gone astray in its replacement of the Jewish Sabbath (Saturday) with Sunday. He began teaching that only those Christians who worshiped on Sabbath would be spared the "Mark of the Beast." In a widely circulated tract he published in 1846, titled, The Seventh Day Sabbath, A Perpetual Sign, Joseph Bates set forth the argument that the Sabbath day had not been abolished in the New Testament. Yet another group of Millerites was led by the charismatic Ellen G. White. White, in the fashion of Hiram Edson also began having visions which she claimed confirmed Hiram Edson's "Investigative Judgment" teaching. She had other visions which confirmed Bate's teaching that the Jewish Sabbath day was the right day of worship for Christians. Ellen G. White's group would become the core group around which the Seventh Day Adventist Church which finally emerged was organized.
One of the splinter groups from the Millerite movement was the Second Adventists. The Second Adventists moved Samuel Snow's date of October 22, 1844 to 1874. This was the group from which the Jehovah's Witnesses arose. The first leader of the Jehovah's Witnesses was Charles Taze Russell. In the early years the Jehovah's Witnesses were known as the Russellites. After some period of vacillation between 1874 and 1914 the Russellites finally settled for 1914 as the date of Christ's return, after the outbreak of the First World War in 1914. The saw the outbreak of the First World War in 1914 as confirmation of Russell's setting of that year as the year of Jesus' Second Coming. They, however, thought that Jesus' coming was invisible.
The Jehovah's Witnesses (as they later came to be known) believe that the generation which saw the onset of the First World War in 1914 will live to see Armageddon in which God will destroy all non-Jehovah's Witnesses.
JohnThomas Didymus is the author of "Confessions of God: The Gospel According to St. JohnThomas Didymus" (Read a Free Three Chapters Excerpt)
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