William Miller and the Adventist Movement

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William Miller (February 15,1782 – December 20, 1849) was an American Baptist minister who iscredited with beginning the mid-19th-century North American religiousmovement known as Millerism. After his proclamation of the SecondComing did not occur as expected in the 1840s, new heirs of hismessage emerged, including the Advent Christians (1860), theSeventh-day Adventists (1863) and other Adventist movements.


Early life


William Miller was born on February 15,1782, in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. His parents were Captain WilliamMiller, a veteran of the American Revolution, and Paulina, thedaughter of Elnathan Phelps. When he was four years old, his familymoved to rural Low Hampton, New York. Miller was educated at home byhis mother until the age of nine, when he attended the newlyestablished East Poultney District School. Miller is not known tohave undertaken any type of formal study after the age of eighteen,though he continued to read widely and voraciously. As a youth, hehad access to the private libraries of Judge James Witherell andCongressman Matthew Lyon in nearby Fair Haven, Vermont, as well asthat of Alexander Cruikshanks of Whitehall, New York. In 1803, Millermarried Lucy Smith and moved to her nearby hometown of Poultney,where he took up farming. While in Poultney, Miller was elected to anumber of civil offices, starting with the office of Constable. In1809 he was elected to the office of Deputy Sheriff and at an unknowndate was elected Justice of the Peace. Miller served in the Vermontmilitia and was commissioned a lieutenant on July 21, 1810. He wasreasonably well off, owning a house, land, and at least two horses.


Shortly after his move to Poultney,Miller rejected his Baptist heritage and became a Deist. In hisbiography Miller records his conversion: "I became acquaintedwith the principal men in that village [Poultney, Vermont], who wereprofessedly Deists; but they were good citizens, and of a moral andserious deportment. They put into my hands the works of Voltaire,[David] Hume, Thomas Paine, Ethan Allen, and other deisticalwriters."


Military service


At the outbreak of the War of 1812,Miller raised a company of local men and traveled to Burlington,Vermont. He transferred to the 30th Infantry Regiment in the regulararmy of the United States with the rank of lieutenant. Miller spentmost of the war working as a recruiter and on February 1, 1814, hewas promoted to captain. He saw his first action at the Battle ofPlattsburgh, where vastly outnumbered American forces overcame theBritish. "The fort I was in was exposed to every shot. Bombs,rockets, and shrapnel shells fell as thick as hailstones",he said. One of these many shots had exploded two feet from him,wounding three of his men and killing another, but Miller survivedwithout a scratch. Miller came to view the outcome of this battle asmiraculous, and therefore at odds with his deistic view of a distantGod far removed from human affairs. He later wrote, "Itseemed to me that the Supreme Being must have watched over theinterests of this country in an especial manner, and delivered usfrom the hands of our enemies... So surprising a result, against suchodds, did seem to me like the work of a mightier power than man."


Religious life


After the war, and following hisdischarge from the army on June 18, 1815, Miller returned toPoultney. Shortly after his return he moved with his family back toLow Hampton, where he purchased a farm (now a historic site operatedby Adventist Heritage Ministry). Throughout this time period Millerwas deeply concerned with the question of death and an afterlife.This reflection upon his own mortality followed his experiences as asoldier in the war, but also the recent deaths of his father andsister. Miller apparently felt that there were only two optionspossible following death: annihilation, and accountability; neitherof which he was comfortable with.


Soon after his return to Low Hampton,Miller took tentative steps towards regaining his Baptist faith. Atfirst he attempted to combine both, publicly espousing Deism whilesimultaneously attending his local Baptist church. His attendanceturned to participation when he was asked to read the day's sermonduring one of the local minister's frequent absences. Hisparticipation changed to commitment one Sunday when he was reading asermon on the duties of parents and became choked with emotion.


Miller records the experience:


Suddenly the character of aSavior was vividly impressed upon my mind. It seemed that there mightbe a Being so good and compassionate as to Himself atone for ourtransgressions, and thereby save us from suffering the penalty ofsin. I immediately felt how lovely such a Being must be; and imaginedthat I could cast myself into the arms of, and trust in the mercy of,such a One.


Following his conversion, Miller'sDeist friends soon challenged him to justify his newfound faith. Hedid so by examining the Bible closely, declaring to one friend "Ifhe would give me time, I would harmonize all these apparentcontradictions to my own satisfaction, or I will be a Deist still."Miller commenced with Genesis 1:1, studying each verse and not movingon until he felt the meaning was clear. In this way he becameconvinced firstly, that postmillennialism was unbiblical; andsecondly, that the time of Christ's Second Coming was revealed inBible prophecy.


Miller's interpretation of the 2300days prophecy time-line and its relation to the 70 weeks prophecy

Beginning of the 70 Weeks: The decreeof Artaxerxes I of Persia in the 7th year of his reign (457 BC) asrecorded in Ezra marks beginning of 70 weeks. Kings' reigns werecounted from New Year to New Year following an "AccessionYear". The Persian New Year began in Nisan (March–April).The civil New Year in the Kingdom of Judah began in Tishri(September–October).


Basing his calculations principally onDaniel 8:14: "Unto two thousand and three hundred days; thenshall the sanctuary be cleansed", Miller assumed that thecleansing of the sanctuary represented the Earth's purification byfire at Christ's Second Coming. Then, using the interpretiveprinciple of the "day-year principle", Miller (andothers) interpreted a day in prophecy to read not as a 24-hourperiod, but rather as a calendar year. Further, Miller becameconvinced that the 2,300 day period started in 457 BC with the decreeto rebuild Jerusalem by Artaxerxes I of Persia. Simple calculationthen revealed that this period would end in 1843. Miller records, "Iwas thus brought... to the solemn conclusion, that in abouttwenty-five years from that time 1818 all the affairs of our presentstate would be wound up."


Although Miller was convinced of hiscalculations by 1818, he continued to study privately until 1823 toensure the correctness of his interpretation. In September 1822,Miller formally stated his conclusions in a twenty-point document,including article 15: "I believe that the second coming ofJesus Christ is near, even at the door, even within twenty-one years,– on or before 1843." Miller did not, however, begin hispublic lecturing until the first Sunday in August 1831 in the town ofDresden.


In 1832 Miller submitted a series ofsixteen articles to the Vermont Telegraph, a Baptist newspaper. TheTelegraph published the first of these on May 15, and Miller writesof the public's response: "I began to be flooded with lettersof inquiry respecting my views; and visitors flocked to converse withme on the subject." In 1834, unable to personally complywith many of the urgent requests for information and the invitationsto travel and preach that he received, Miller published a synopsis ofhis teachings in a 64-page tract with the lengthy title: Evidencefrom Scripture and History of the Second Coming of Christ, about theYear 1844: Exhibited in a Course of Lectures.


Miller and Freemasonry


Miller was an active Freemason until1831. Miller resigned his Masonic membership in 1831, stating that hedid so to "avoid fellowship with any practice that may beincompatible with the word of God among masons". By 1833 hewrote in a letter to his friends to treat Freemasonry "asthey would any other evil".


Millerism


From 1840 onwards, Millerism wastransformed from an "obscure, regional movement into anational campaign." The key figure in this transformationwas Joshua Vaughan Himes, the pastor of Chardon Street Chapel inBoston, Massachusetts, and an able and experienced publisher. ThoughHimes did not fully accept Miller's ideas until 1842, he establishedthe fortnightly paper Signs of the Times on February 28, 1840, topublicize them.


Despite the urging of his supporters,Miller never personally set an exact date for the expected SecondAdvent. However, in response to their urgings, he did narrow thetime-period to sometime in the Jewish year beginning in the Gregorianyear 1843, stating: "My principles in brief, are, that JesusChrist will come again to this earth, cleanse, purify, and takepossession of the same, with all the saints, sometime between March21, 1843, and March 21, 1844." March 21, 1844, passedwithout incident, and further discussion and study resulted in thebrief adoption of a new date (April 18, 1844) based on the KaraiteJewish calendar (as opposed to the Rabbinic calendar). Like theprevious date, April 18 passed without Christ's return. Millerresponded publicly, writing, "I confess my error, andacknowledge my disappointment; yet I still believe that the day ofthe Lord is near, even at the door."


In August 1844 at a camp-meeting inExeter, New Hampshire, Samuel S. Snow presented a message that becameknown as the "seventh-month" message or the "truemidnight cry." In a discussion based on scriptural typology,Snow presented his conclusion (still based on the 2300 day prophecyin Daniel 8:14), that Christ would return on, "the tenth dayof the seventh month of the present year, 1844." Again,based largely on the calendar of the Karaite Jews, this date wasdetermined to be October 22, 1844.


The Great Disappointment


After the failure of Miller'sexpectations for October 22, 1844, the date became known as theMillerites' Great Disappointment. Hiram Edson recorded that "Ourfondest hopes and expectations were blasted, and such a spirit ofweeping came over us as I never experienced before... We wept, andwept, till the day dawn."


Following the Great Disappointment mostMillerites simply gave up their beliefs. Some did not and viewpointsand explanations proliferated. Miller initially seems to have thoughtthat Christ's Second Coming was still going to take place—that "theyear of expectation was according to prophecy; but...that there mightbe an error in Bible chronology, which was of human origin, thatcould throw the date off somewhat and account for the discrepancy."Miller never gave up his belief in the Second Coming of Christ.


Estimates of Miller's followers—theMillerites—vary between 50,000, and 500,000. Miller's legacyincludes the Advent Christian Church with 61,000 members, and theSeventh-day Adventist Church with over 19 million members. Both thesedenominations have a direct connection with the Millerites and theGreat Disappointment of 1844. A number of other individuals with tiesto the Millerites founded various short-lived groups. These includeClorinda S. Minor, who led a group of seven to Palestine to preparefor Christ's second coming at a later date.


Miller died on December 20, 1849, stillconvinced that the Second Coming was imminent. He is buried near hishome in Low Hampton, NY and his home is a registered NationalHistoric Landmark and preserved as a museum: William Miller's Home.


Resources


The papers of William Miller arepreserved in the archives at Aurora University. Other papers byMiller can be located at the archives at Andrews University and LomaLinda University. In addition some historical documents were found inMiller's home when his home was purchased by Adventist HeritageMinistry as a historic property in 1983, and are housed in the EllenG. White Estate vault in Silver Spring, Maryland.


The standard biography of WilliamMiller is Memoirs of William Miller by Sylvester Bliss (Boston:Joshua V. Himes, 1853). It was republished with a criticalintroduction by Andrews University Press in 2006. Other helpfultreatments include F. D. Nichol, The Midnight Cry and Clyde Hewitt,Midnight and Morning.


David L. Rowe published God's StrangeWork: William Miller and the End of the World (Eerdmans: 2008), aspart of the Library of Religious Biography series. One reviewerdescribed it as a "keen historical and cultural analysis."



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