Miller turned on his heel without a word, stormed out through the kitchen door, tumbled into a maple grove that stood nearby, and wrestled with the Lord. He was angry with himself, angry with God, and very much afraid.
For a solid hour he pleaded to be released from his pledge. "O my God, send someone else, I pray!"
Even as a Deist he had kept his word. As a Christian could he do any less? After anguished tears, he gave in to God at last.
Then, the happiness that filled his soul! Thirteen years of reluctance overcome. The joy of surrender! Glory to His name! In a most unaccustomed manner, he hopped up and down, praising God out loud.
Lucy Ann, his littlest daughter, watching anxiously, fled into the house. "Mother, Mother, come quick!"
Immediately after lunch Miller was on his way with Irving around the neck of Lake Champlain (by whose shores years before he had fought in the Battle of Plattsburg), on to his sister's place in Dresden--and to success. To put him at ease, the meeting convened in the kitchen with Miller seated at the table in a big arm chair. The great Second Advent awakening in America had begun! [1]
So impressive was his deep Bible knowledge, so moving were his homely earnest appeals, that the people in Dresden persuaded him to preach every night for a week. Reports spread from farm to farm. Attendance grew. More than a dozen families were converted to Christ. No doubt they had moved out of the Guildford home into a church.
And when he returned home? An invitation awaited him from a minister who had not yet heard about his first series. Miller's covenant with the Lord was doubly verified. There is no doubt that he was called to his ministry. As surely as Peter, James, and John were called. With the same clarity; by the same Lord.
Right from the start Miller received more invitations than he could fill. Congregationalists, Methodists, Baptists, Presbyterians vied with each other to draw him away from his farm and into their pulpits. To help stanch the demand he published a pamphlet of his sermons at his own expense. When this only increased the demand by widening people's awareness of his work, a printer published a book of his sermons at his expense.
In 1833 a local Baptist who knew Miller well signed a license for him to preach. Two years later, a certificate recommending him as a lecturer on the prophecies was signed by several Baptist ministers and a number of leaders in other denominations. [2]
Almost everywhere Miller preached, people were converted. Often there were revivals; sometimes whole towns were transformed. "You laugh, Brother Hendryx," he wrote a friend early in his new career, "to think old Brother Miller is preaching! But laugh on; ... it is all right--I deserve it. If I could preach the truth, it is all I could ask."
In those days every village had its infidel; some small communities swarmed with them. Infidels were like Deists but with more radical doubts. In Miller they recognized a man who had asked their questions, and who had answered them. In one place a hundred infidels accepted his message in a single week. [3] Near the end of his life Miller reckoned that he had preached in no fewer than 500 towns from Massachusetts to Michigan, from Montreal to Maryland, in many of them several times, and that he had personally aided in the conversion of over 6000 souls. [4] But we are getting ahead of our story.
For his first eight years, Miller, who made it a rule to go only where the Lord "opened the way," was kept immensely busy in small churches in little towns. In the fall of 1839 at the close of a service in Exeter, New Hampshire, he met a man who changed the course of his career.
Joshua V. Himes [5] at the age of thirty-four was already widely known in New England as an ardent crusader against slavery, liquor, and war. Seeking in every way to make the world a better place to live, he was deeply moved as he listened to Miller's message on the 2300 days. As soon as the meeting was over, Himes stepped up briskly and invited Miller to repeat the sermon in his chapel on Chardon Street in Boston.
Thus on December 8, 1839, Miller presented his first series in a major city. Interest was so great that meetings were scheduled twice a day, yet hundreds had to be turned away for lack of space.
Himes was impressed. Always a commander in search of troops and a cause, he saw in Miller's appeal to prepare for the earth made new the cause to end all causes. [6]
"Do you really believe what you have been preaching to us?" he asked Miller one night at his home.
Deliberately and earnestly Miller replied, "I most certainly do, Brother Himes, or I would not be preaching it."
"Then what are you doing to spread it through the world?"
Miller recounted his attempts to reach every town and village that sent him an invitation. Himes was aghast. Every little town and village? What about the cities? Must Baltimore, Rochester, Philadelphia, and New York--indeed, the seventeen million people of the United States--go unwarned? And what of the rest of the world? "If Christ is to come in a few years as you believe," he exploded, "there is no time to lose in sending out the message in thunder tones to arouse them to prepare!"
"I know it, I know it, Brother Himes," Miller replied wearily, "but what can an old farmer do? I was never used to public speaking. I stand quite alone." He sighed. "The ministers like to have me preach and build up their congregations, and there it ends, with most of them as yet. I have been looking for help."
Himes was on fire. Forthwith (he said later) he laid himself, his family, his reputation, and all he had upon the altar of God to help Miller to the limits of his powers until the end. At once he became Miller's manager, advertising agent, and consecrated promotion specialist.
"Will you enter the cities if you get an invitation?"
"Indeed I will, God helping me."
"Then, Father Miller, prepare for the campaign. Doors will open in every city in the union, and the warning will be spread to the ends of the earth." ("Father" was used in those days as a token of affection and respect for elderly men.)
Himes made good his promise and his prophecy. Soon Miller was holding forth in the most important cities of the country, and his name was famous throughout the nation.
One way Himes got Miller into the larger cities was by persuading the pastors of his own denomination, the Christian Connection, to open up their pulpits to him. One of these ministers was Lorenzo Dow Fleming of Portland, Maine. In Fleming's Casco Street Church Miller's message reached the Robert Harmon family; and thus their teenager, Ellen, a future founder of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, committed her life to the advent hope.
Himes made many dynamic contributions. Perhaps his greatest was through publications. In February 1840, without money or subscription list, he launched the first Adventist periodical, Signs of the Times. It catapulted Adventism into prominence.
For a while Himes edited the Signs himself. As the movement spread, he got others to stay at the office while he started other journals in other cities or encouraged men of talent to publish papers of their own. Within four years the advent message was proclaimed in different cities by the Midnight Cry, the Glad Tidings, the Advent Chronicle, the Jubilee Trumpet, the Philadelphia Alarm, the Voice of Elijah, the Southern Midnight Cry, the Western Midnight Cry, the True Midnight Cry, and several others--most of them clearly written, ably edited, and well printed on good paper. There were books too, a series of more than forty known as "The Second Advent Library." Before the great disappointment of October 22, 1844, eight million copies of Adventist literature found the people and spread the word.
Magazine subscriptions were normally handled in those days by postmasters. The postmaster in Canton, Iowa, reported that when the Millerite papers arrived there was a "general rush" for any extra copies. Can you send me more? He pleaded. "You have no idea of the good" they do. [7]
Miller's message was not a "lot of fuss about a date." It was the first angel's message: "the everlasting gospel" and "the hour of his judgment is come." (Revelation 14:6, 7) It was evangelism that sought to help get people ready to meet the Lord. Through it the Methodist churches appear to have gained 40,000 new members by the fall of 1844, and the Baptist 45,000. [8] A single six-week itinerary, by one young Millerite minister, swelled local churches by a thousand! [9]
In Portland, Maine, when Miller was there, a dissolute youth ran breathless into a saloon and shouted to his friends, "Boys, there's a preacher on Casco Street who says the world is coming to an end. Won't you stop your gambling and hear what he has to say?" In Portsmouth, New Hampshire, the revival continued for weeks after Miller left. Church bells rang every day for prayer as if every day were Sunday. Grog shops became meeting rooms. Several hundred were converted, and thousands gathered at the water's edge to see them baptized.
Ministers of many denominations flocked in to help with the work.
Joshua V. Himes was only one of these. Other notable leaders who joined Miller included Josiah Litch, a Methodist who had already become widely known as an interpreter of the prophecies and who accepted Millerism only after he was sure it did not disagree with Methodism. He preached widely, published a 200-page book on Miller's lectures, and, among other things, helped persuade Charles Fitch to join too. Fitch was a Congregationalist pastor in Boston, who at one time had been an executive assistant to the famous evangelist Charles G. Finney. With the aid of Apollos Hale, a well-known Methodist, he developed the "1843 Chart," which probably all the lecturers used, showing many Bible prophecies converging on 1843. He also designed a Daniel 2 image that came apart, kingdom by kingdom.
Besides these outstanding leaders there were many more. We think of James White, like Himes a minister of the Christian Connection; and of Joseph Bates, also a member of that denomination, a layman who was regarded as a minister. But no one knows how many helpers there were! Contemporary estimates ran from 700 to 2000. Of 174 known ministers, about half were Methodist, a fourth were Baptist, and the rest included Congregationalists, Christians, Presbyterians, Episcopalians, Lutherans, Dutch Reformed, Quakers, and several others.
It cannot be overstressed that Miller was not the only leading Millerite! A large company of able, thinking men from the major denominations supported him, not a few of whom had been blessed with considerable academic training. It was an impressive testimonial for the "old farmer." Millerism was a Christ-centered reformation that was warmly accepted by many, both laymen and leaders, in the respected churches of the day, and by thousands of infidels, deists, and indifferent souls in the restless world outside.
Ever wider grew the interest until Miller, Himes, and other leaders were circulating almost incessantly between New York and Boston, Albany and Utica, Rochester and Buffalo, up north to Montreal, out west to Cincinnati, Saint Louis, and Louisville, and down south to Washington and Baltimore. Robert Winters took the word to England. The mails carried it to every post office in the United States and to every known mission station around the world. [10]
In Washington, D.C., even a hoax announcement brought out 5000. In Philadelphia the secular press reported an "immense" Adventist crowd of 15,000.
The presence in the Millerite movement of many leaders from many different churches made workers' conferences essential. Beginning in the fall of 1840, more than twenty [11] "general conferences" were convened in a variety of places, sometimes at the rate of two or three a month.
The first general conference was held in Joshua V. Himes's Chardon Street Chapel in October. A bout of typhoid fever kept Miller away and the meeting was held successfully without him, as were also the second, third, and fourth. (The fifth conference was brought to Low Hampton so he could attend.) Disappointed at having to stay away, Miller began to understand that the movement he had started at the call of God was growing far beyond him, in the power of God.
General conferences were held in the form of great public rallies. As attendance at these and other Millerite meetings soared, the conference held in Boston under Joseph Bates's leadership in May 1842 voted to try holding camp meetings and scheduled three for the summer.
The camp meeting which began on June 28 at East Kingston, New Hampshire, found Joshua V. Himes in charge and seven to ten thousand persons on the grounds. The Boston Daily Mail covered the event and congratulated the crowds on their decorum. Even the poet John Greenleaf Whittier dropped in for an hour or two. Years later he still remembered the eloquent preachers burdened with the symbolic language of the Bible, the canvas paintings Nebuchadnezzar's image and the beasts of Revelation--and the dim woodland arches, the white circle of tents, the smoke from the campfires rising like incense, and the upturned, earnest faces.
Soon camp meetings were being held in many places, often summoned by local volunteer committees. Men, women, and children flocked in from every direction, crowding steamboats, overflowing railroad cars, and jamming stagecoaches; pedestrians trudged in from every side road, as one and all, the pious and the curious, made their way to the important meetings at the Second Advent campground. It seemed that almost every believer carried a Bible in his hand. [12]
The overwhelming success of the camp meetings led the Millerites to contribute means for a tent big enough for large crowds in communities where camp meetings were impossible and halls were too small. They ordered the largest tent made in America up to that time and dubbed it the "great tent." It required a permanent team of four to pitch and strike it. Its center pole was 55 feet, its diameter 120 feet, and there was room inside for 4000. [13]
The great tent was ordered, pitched, and in use within thirty days. There was no time to lose if Christ was coming "about the year 1843." Newspapers were astonished at the speed with which it was dismantled, transported by wagon, steamboat, or train, and raised in another town. When it was pitched, people wagered that it wouldn't fill. When meetings began, they were stunned to see it jammed. Railroads scheduled special trains to accommodate the crowds.
In Rochester a sudden squall snapped fifteen chains and settled the great tent--gently--onto the heads of the people. Citizens in appreciation raised cash to repair it, on condition that the series be continued. Meanwhile, on Sunday Himes preached in the city market to three groups for eight hours.
Adventists attended their own churches on Sundays but met frequently in interdenominational conferences and prayer meetings during the week. Soon in Boston, Akron, CinCinnati, and Cleveland, they constructed sturdy but economical "tabernacles" seating thousands. When scoffers said that the buildings denied their faith in Christ's soon return, the believers quoted Jesus: Occupy till I come."
The May 1842 general conference had voted three camp meetings that year. Thirty-one were held. In 1843, forty. In 1844, fifty-four, a total of 125. Total attendance, at least half a million, besides thousands and thousands who attended other gatherings in the "great tent" and in churches, tabernacles, and rented halls.
God wanted the first angel's message preached to "every kindred, and tongue, and people." He called Miller to "tell it to the world." He did not want it confined to a corner!
Notes: