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Adventists Discover the Seventh-Day Sabbath: How to Deal with the ‘Jewish Problem’
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 March 2016
Extract
In 1831 William Miller, a farmer from Low Hampton, New York, began to preach that the Second Advent would occur ‘about the year 1843’. From this rather inauspicious beginning the number of people who agreed with Miller’s prediction grew, so that by 1844 they probably numbered more than 50,000 according to some estimates. This phenomenon would be of little historical interest—except, perhaps, to historians studying nineteenth-century American religious history—had it not been for the fact that one legacy of Millerism is the Seventh-day Adventist Church, which has over six million members world-wide and can claim, for example, one of the largest educational systems run by a Protestant denomination.
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- Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 1992
References
1 Miller, William, Apology and Defense (Boston, Mass., 1845), p. 12.Google Scholar The best collection of Millerite and early Adventist materials, such as pamphlets and periodicals, can be found in the Jenks Collection at Aurora University, Illinois, USA
2 See Nichol, Francis D., The Midnight Cry: a Defense of William Miller and the Millerites (Washington, DC, 1944), pp. 204–5 Google Scholar; Rowe, David L., ‘Millerites: a Shadow Portrait’, in Numbers, Ronald L. and Butler, Jonathan M., eds, The Disappointed: Millerism and Millenarianism in the Nineteenth Century (Indianapolis, Indiana, 1987), pp. 5–7.Google Scholar These estimates only apply to the United States; they do not include groups independent of the Millerites who made the same prediction, such as the Irvingites in England.
3 Neufeld, Don F., Seventh-Day Adventist Encyclopedia, rev. edn (Washington DC, 1976), p. 1296, and General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists, 128th Annual Statistical Report 1990, pp. 4 and 26.Google Scholar
4 Most of the writing by non-Seventh-day Adventists on the Church has been of a polemical nature. A good example of this is Anthony A. Hoekema, The Four Major Cults (Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1963).
5 There are a number of good histories of the Church written by Seventh-day Adventists which include summaries of the major doctrines. See, for example, Malcolm Bull and Keith Lockhart, Seeking a Sanctuary: Seventh-day Adventism and the American Dream (London, 1989), and R. Schwarz, Light Bearers to the Remnant (Boise, Idaho, 1979).
6 For the remainder of this paper the generic term ‘Adventists’ will be used. The people who believed the Second Advent would occur in 1843 did not think of themselves as ‘followers’ of William Miller and after 1844, when the movement began to splinter, each group called itself Advenrist. See David Tallmadge Arthur, ‘“Come out of Babylon”: A Study of Millerite Separatism and Denominationalism, 1840-1865’ (University of Rochester Ph.D. thesis, 1970).
7 See Goron O. Martinborough, ‘The Beginning of a Theology of the Sabbath among American Sabbatarian Adventists, 1842-1850’ (Loma Linda University, California, MA. thesis, 1976); David M. Young, ‘When Adventists became Sabbath-Keepers’, Adventist Heri tage, 2, 2 (1975), pp. 5-10; Andrews, J. N., History of the Sabbath and First Day of the Week (Battle Creek, Michigan, 1887)Google Scholar; Schwarz, Light Bearers, pp. 59-61.
8 Preble’s arguments were published in an Adventist periodical called the Hope of Israel; this article was republished as Tract Showing that the Seventh Day Should be Observed as the Sabbath, Instead of the First Day;’According to the Commandment’ (Nashua, New Hampshire, 1845).
9 Young, ‘When Adventists’, pp. 7-10.
10 There were numerous claims that Adventists engaged in odd and even subversive behaviour in the early 1840s; Clara Endicott Sears, Days of Delusion: A Strange Bit of History (Boston, 1924) contains a number of examples of these supposed incidents.
11 Snow published his conclusions on 22 August 1844 in a tract entitled True Midnight Cry. See also Nichol, The Midnight Cry, pp. 212-15.
12 Adventists had changed the date predicted for the Second Advent three times previously, and 22 October 1844 was their last fall-back position; therefore this day was called ‘the Great Disappointment’ by Adventists for obvious reasons. See Le Roy Edwin Froom, New World Recovery and Consummation of Prophetic Interpretation—vol. 4 of The Prophetic Faith of Our Fathers (Washington DC, 1954), pp. 793-804, 810-14.
13 The Seventh-day Adventist Church did not adopt an official name until 1860; I have chosen the term Sabbatarian Adventist as a designation because it states clearly their difference from other Adventists.
14 See Mustard, Andrew G., James White and SDA Organization: Historical Development, 1844-1881 (Michigan, USA, 1987), pp. 92–5 Google Scholar; Butler, Jonathan M., ‘Adventism and the American Experi ence’, in Gaustad, Edwin S., ed., The Rise of Adventism: Religion and Society in Mid-nineteenth-century America (London, 1974), p. 178.Google Scholar
15 Nichol, The Midnight Cry, pp. 460–1.
16 Preble, Tract, pp. 4-5.
17 Proceedings of the Mutual Conference of Adventists, Held in the City of Albany, the 20th and 30th of April, and 1st of May, 1843 (New York, 1845), P 20.
18 Jacobs, Enoch, ‘The Sabbath’, Day Star, 11 Aug. 1845, pp. 3–7 Google Scholar; ‘The Lord’s Day’, Midnight Cry, 12 Sept. 1844, p. 77.
19 Bates, The Seventh Day Sabbath, p. 12.
20 Ibid., pp. 27-30.
21 Ibid., pp. 3-5; Preble, Tract, p. 7.
22 Bates, The Seventh Day Sabbath, pp. 24-6; Preble, Tract, pp. 8-9; Andrews, J.N., ‘The Perpetuity of the Law of God’, Second Advent Review and Herald, 1, 5 (Jan. 1851), pp. 33–6 Google Scholar; ibid., 1, 6 (Feb. 1851), pp. 41-3.
23 Bates, The Seventh Day Sabbath, pp. 22-3;Nichol, The Midnight Cry, pp. 460-1.
24 See Nichol, Francis D., Answers to Objections: an Examination of the Major Objections Raised Against the Teachings of Seventh-day Adventists, 3rd rev. edn (Washington DC, 1952), pp. 123–252 Google Scholar; Seventh-day Adventists Answer Questions on Doctrine: An Explanation of Certain Major Aspects of Seventh-day Adventist Belief (Washington DC, 1957), pp. 149-76; Seventh-day Adventists believe … An Exposition of 27 Fundamental Doctrines (Hagerstown, Maryland, 1988), pp. 249–66.
25 Roswell F. Cottrell, ‘It’s Jewish’, Second Advent Review and Sabbath Herald, i, 6 (Feb. 1851), front page. There is an ironic twist to the publication of this poem: Cottrell himself became a Seventh-day Adventist soon after it was published, either in late 1851 or early 1852: see Neufeld, Seventh-day Adventist Encyclopedia, p. 354.