"I must say, dear brethren, that I hope we shall decide upon what name we shall have; what we wish to be called by. I meet with friends very often who ask me what the name of our people is; and it is quite an embarrassing position to be in, not to be able to give any. We give our children names when they become a few weeks or a few months old. When we commenced to labor in this work, when the cause was young and individuals who had embraced it, few, we did not see the necessity of any such steps. But it seems to me that the child is now so grown that it is exceedingly awkward to have no name for it." [1]
So spoke Elder James White on Sunday morning, September 30, 1860, to one of the most significant conferences in Seventh-day Adventist history. Sixteen years after the Sabbath-and-sanctuary movement was born, it was at last getting down to the business of voting itself a name.
The conference in question had begun to meet the night before, immediately following the close of the Sabbath, and it continued until its business was finished on Monday afternoon. The delegates met in the second Adventist church in Battle Creek. The first one, built only five years earlier, had already proved too small. This one seated 300 and was at present too large for the local congregation. But the energetic Battle Creek Adventists had planned it to be a center for large Adventist conferences. Even so, they scarcely dreamed that a third church would soon be needed, or that a fourth would house congregations numbering nearly 4000.
Many early Sabbath-keeping Adventists opposed denominational organization. In and of itself, this was scarcely unusual in those days. American Protestants still debated energetically as to whether the Holy Spirit worked best through independent congregations or through denominations united by presbyteries, conferences, and general assemblies. Methodists and Presbyterians believed in broad denominational cooperation, but Baptists and Congregationalists argued equally strongly for the autonomy of local congregations.
In the 1850s James and Ellen White and others urged a presbyterial form of denominational organization, but not all their brethren at first agreed with them. In particular, the establishment of a new denomination was feared by many who had once been Millerites. They had belonged to the established Protestant denominations of the day and, in fact, had been among their most dedicated members. But the churches they loved had turned against them, ridiculed their advent hope, and cast them out.
In their bewilderment, the Millerites had sought an explanation in Scripture and had discovered it in Revelation 14:6-8. Subsequent to the first angel's message about the judgment hour, which they were then proclaiming, they noticed the second angel's message, "Babylon is fallen, is fallen." They linked this to Christ's appeal in Revelation 18:1-4, "Come out of her [Babylon], my people," and with other passages elsewhere in Daniel and Revelation. The conclusion seemed inescapable.
The churches that had treated them so cruelly had rejected crucial truth and so had become "fallen" churches, as surely "Babylon" as the fallen (or "harlot") mother church from which in Reformation times and later they had broken away. They were sincerely afraid that if they set up another religious establishment they too might in time reject new Bible truth and persecute God's true children. Because they had so recently come out of Babylon, it is understandable that they had no desire to find themselves at once in a new Babylon.
But what makes a group of Christians a "Babylon"?
Error, of course. But did anything else characterize the churches that disfellowshiped them?
In the leading Millerite paper, The Midnight Cry, for February 15, 1844, George Storrs warned the believers who were just then being driven out of their churches, "Take care that you do not seek to manufacture another church. No church can be organized by man's invention but what it becomes Babylon the moment it is organized." So organization was feared by many as a hallmark of Babylon.
The Millerites had been excommunicated because their Adventist beliefs were deemed contrary to the creeds of their denominations. Therefore many Adventists felt that they must avoid creeds or become another Babylon.
And one day, as Roswell F. Cottrell, sturdy convert of Huguenot stock who had formerly been a Seventh Day Baptist (and as such a very strict "congregationalist"), reexamined Genesis 11 for the story about the founding of the original city of Babylon, he was struck with the words of the builders: "Go to, let us build us a city and a tower; whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.
"Make us a name! As late as March 22, 1860, Elder Cottrell wrote in the Review that in his opinion it would be wrong to assume a denominational name since such a practice lies "at the foundation of Babylon."
Strange as these arguments about organization, creed, and name may sound today, they do sound a valid note of warning. The harlot who is called Babylon in Revelation does represent a church or group of churches. And a church is an organized body of Christians that holds to a characteristic set of beliefs, or a creed. Furthermore, it is precisely because a church holds to certain beliefs that it tends to call other beliefs heresy. And it is because a church is unified through organizational structure that it has the clout to persecute. When we reflect on the sorrow and stress that the Millerites suffered when shutout of their cherished churches, we can better understand their hesitancy. Organization, creeds, and names can be harmful.
It is also true, of course, that their absence can be harmful.
Not all Sabbath keeping Adventists opposed organization. James White didn't. As early as 1850 he expressed a hope [2] that the church would soon get together and move in gospel order. He preached on gospel order to the Oswego Conference in 1851, and in 1853 published a series on gospel order in the Review. He used the term "gospel order" to convey his conviction that modern church organization should follow the guidance and models found in the New Testament.
Young J. N. Loughborough and elderly Joseph Bates vigorously seconded his efforts. But the more conservative folk held back. And so, without name, organization, or creed, Sabbath keepers referred to themselves quite accurately as "the little flock," "the scattered sheep," "the remnant," "the saints," or "the friends" and carried on.
In spite of their fear of organizational and creedal unity, these early Adventists regarded themselves with conviction as members of the true church. And they were held together in real unity by a variety of factors.
One obvious factor that held them together, especially in the early years of 1845 to 1850, was their common experience. Almost all of them were former Millerites who had passed through the 1844 disappointment. Other unifying factors included their numerous conferences, the dynamic leadership of Joseph Bates and of the young Whites, Ellen's visions, and, most especially, their characteristic doctrines.
Because "present truth" meant so much, they wrote articles and tracts to publish it and were in turn drawn together by these publications. For a while they were permitted use of the Day-Star, edited by Enoch Jacobs in Cincinnati. When Jacobs became a Shaker, they used Crosier's Day-Dawn for a short period. But in 1849 they began a journal of their own, the Present Truth, soon replaced by the Review and Herald. Believers mailed letters and articles to James White and were encouraged as they read the faith and experience of fellow believers, published now in their own periodical.
There was enough glue here to hold them together while they numbered only a few hundred and owned no institutions, but in the 1850s they acquired a publishing house, and their numbers expanded from around 200 to perhaps 3000 at an average rate of almost 30 percent a year, roughly six times the average percentage gain of the 1970s. Indeed, they appear to have exploded to perhaps 2000 within the first two years of the decade, [3] at an almost incredible rate of over 200 percent a year which understandably leveled off and was unfortunately reduced by some backsliding and splintering.
With this numerical growth came geographic expansion to Michigan and Illinois and Wisconsin and Canada East and Canada West--and a leapfrog to golden California. Inevitably, conditions developed requiring additional and more sophisticated elements of organization. Also, many people joined the movement who had not been Millerites and had not been cast out of their churches and who therefore did not fear organization so much.
In November 1851 a report was sent to the Review from the cradle of Sabbath-keeping Adventism, Washington, New Hampshire, stating that "a committee of seven was chosen (see Acts 6) to attend to the wants of the poor." [4] The Washington believers did not let their fear of organization interfere with their Christian duty to the underprivileged. Just the same, they refrained from calling the seven men "deacons." After all, Acts 6 didn't use the term "deacon" either! Be that as it may, reports began to appear soon afterward about the ordination of men expressly as deacons, such as at Fairhaven, Joseph Bates's hometown.
More significant than the ordination of deacons is the ordination of ministers. With the explosive increase of members came a corresponding increase in preaching brethren--or lecturing brethren, or traveling brethren, or messengers, or missionaries, or however else they were variously designated. More than forty-five are named in the Review in 1852 and 1853, better than two per hundred of the membership. Since there was no official body to "call" them, all were volunteers, many of them like Hiram Edson preaching in cold weather so they could earn a living in warm. Much of their spiritual effort was expended not on the faithful but on Sunday keepers whom Sabbath keepers interested in the third angel's message. Back and forth they traveled from Maine to Wisconsin, answering appeals published in the Review from active--or lonely--laity in isolated places. A weekend or a week or two, possibly a baptism of three or four in a river or a lake, and on their way they went, to another appointment.
Some of these men had been ordained to the ministry by the churches to which they had formerly belonged--Frederick Wheeler, for example, and Joseph Baker, and M. E. Cornell, and John Byington, and James White. Others, and perhaps most, were dedicated laymen--J. P. Kellogg, Otis Nichols, H. S. Gurney, Stockbridge Howland, and many more. Few, even of the ordained, were formally trained and not all lasted long in their efforts. Genial E. L. H. Chamberlain proved a better mixer than messenger, and after testing his talent for a season withdrew at Ellen White's suggestion to his former trade.
It was generally understood that no one could "celebrate the ordinances of the Lord's house," that is, lead out in the Lord's Supper and baptism by immersion, [5] without first being ordained. This was, of course, a serious handicap to so rapidly expanding an interest among neighbors and friends.
The first known ordination of a minister by Sabbath-keeping Adventists, a somewhat informal occasion by later standards, occurred in East Bethel, Vermont, in the summer of 1851. Sister F. M. Shimper subsequently reported to the Review [6] that Brother Washington Morse had been "set apart" by the laying on of hands, to the administration of the ordinances of God's house." Apparently this ordination was performed by George Holt, who had been an ordained minister in his former denomination.
A much more formal ordination [7] took place on Monday, September 5, two years later, at what was known as the "Potsdam Conference" because it convened in Bucks Bridge, which is in the Potsdam District of Saint Lawrence County, New York. John Byington fixed up a shady place in front of his home to accommodate 300 for the "First-day" (Sunday) meeting to which the public would be invited. He and Mrs. Byington felt rewarded for their labors when eighty believers attended on Sabbath, including two sisters who came sixty-five miles by private carriage and later professed themselves well fed by the spiritual feast. James and Ellen White came up from Rochester; but, because Elder White was somewhat ill, he let brilliant young John Andrews do most of the preaching. Sunday night they held a service two miles up the Grass River at Morley Wesleyan Church, where the good Wesleyans crowded in to hear good preaching without holding any grudge against John Byington for having left them a year before to join the Adventists.
But the climax came on Monday morning, probably back at the Byington home. "Remarks were made relative to the importance of church order," presumably by James White, who must surely have been feeling better by now. A "plain testimony" was born, presumably by Ellen White. Tears of repentance and fellowship were shed. And the matter was taken up of ordaining a dedicated lay worker in his twenties, Horace W. Lawrence of West Bangor, New York. Brother Lawrence had been baptized in 1842 into "the Christian Church," joined the Millerites in 1843, passed through the disappointment of 1844, been licensed as an exhorter by the Sunday Adventists, been rebaptized into the Sabbath message by Joseph Bates, and proved a very effective lay witness, even helping win John Byington and his wife to the Sabbath, which was a great prize. Further, a few weeks prior, carried away with zeal and a sense of need, he had celebrated a baptism and the Lord's Supper for some isolated believers without being ordained.
Those who knew him best thought it was time to "lay hands" on him. The others agreed. And so, Elder White wrote later, " 'it seemed good to the Holy Ghost and to us,' to set apart our dear Bro. Lawrence to the work of the gospel ministry, to administer the ordinances of the church of Christ, by the laying on of hands. The church," White added, "was of one accord in this matter."
Incidentally, as the leading brethren knelt for the ordination prayer--John Byington and H. G. Buck, ministers recently converted from Wesleyanism, James White, ordained in the Christian Connection, and John Andrews--no one in the audience anticipated that three of them would become the first three presidents of the Seventh-day Adventist General Conference.
At that time there was no General Conference. There wasn't even a Seventh-day Adventist Church, strictly speaking.
In addition to the cry for increased manpower in the growing movement, another critical situation which also required at least a semblance of organization was the recurring need to deal with troublemakers and backsliders.
Routinely James White or some other recognized leader handled these problems when making his now-and-then visits to the congregations where the disturbing persons lived. The difficulties were candidly and prayerfully discussed and an open vote was taken. Soon afterward the Review might carry the account that "the brethren" in such and such a place "felt called upon to withdraw fellowship from one who had fallen into, and taught dangerous errors," or that in another place "rather a gloomy state of things existed, in consequence of the blighting influence of one (a professed teacher) from whom we had to withdraw our fellowship." [8]
Shortly after such reports appeared, a confession like this might be printed from the person whose sinful course had been dealt with: "I can now freely say, that ... [what I did] was wrong. Also, I now see, that it was my privilege, as well as duty, to have submitted to the voice of the church"; or like this: "I would say that I feel very thankful for the kind spirit that you have manifested towards unworthy me, after having grieved the Spirit of God, and bringing a reproach and a wound upon his suffering cause. ... I confess that I am guilty of these wrongs. ... I am sorry for the trials that I have brought upon his people."
And with such confessions, notices like the following might appear in their turn from the leading elders: "We therefore hope that Bro. and Sr. ... will be restored to the confidence of their brethren as though the trial mentioned had not existed." [9]
To help keep the movement pure, on other occasions the Lord intervened directly. We go back to early fall of 1852. In September the Review moved to the big house on Mount Hope Avenue in Rochester. John Loughborough, who had been a boy preacher with the Sunday-keeping Adventists and had now turned twenty, came to the worship room in that residence to hear John Andrews (age twenty-three) preach on the Sabbath question and was convinced. The Whites returned from a trip to Maine on the first Friday in October. Next day during services Loughborough cheered every heart with his public stand to keep the Sabbath holy.
Oswald Stowell, who had accepted the Sabbath in Paris, Maine, after reading the very same copy of T. M. Preble's tract that had convinced John Andrews, was ill with pleurisy and so was listening in from an adjoining room.
Doctors had given Oswald up to die, but he asked the believers to pray. As they knelt at his bedside, Elder White anointed him. By the time they rose from their knees, Oswald was sitting up in bed, punching his sides that had been so painful, and exclaiming, "I'm fully healed! I can work the handpress tomorrow!"
Ellen White remained on her knees. Her husband studied her a moment and remarked "Ellen is in vision. She doesn't breathe while in this condition. If any of you desire to satisfy yourselves of this, you are at liberty to examine her."
She was kneeling with her eyes open, intelligently gazing at objects only she could see. For an hour and twenty minutes, as long as the vision lasted, no one could detect any evidence of breathing, even though now and then she spoke words or sentences in response to what she saw. Her face was a natural color, and the gestures she made with her hands and arms were graceful.
When the vision ended, she looked for Loughborough, whom she had met briefly for the first time the night before, and told him things about himself he thought that no one knew.
Then she spoke of someone whom she had never met. She said he was traveling away from home, witnessing a lot about the fourth commandment but breaking the seventh. It happened that one of Andrews's recent converts was in Michigan at the time. He had always been a faithful husband and no one supposed the vision referred to him.
But six weeks later, when this brother returned home, Ellen White recognized him at a glance, gathered several folk around as witnesses, told him earnestly what God had told her, and concluded with the words of Nathan to David: "Thou art the man."
Promptly the sinful new convert knelt before his wife, confessed with tears that it was all too true, said it was the first time it had ever happened, and promised sincerely it would be the last. [10]
But if some of the problems facing the "scattered flock" could be solved by weekly publications, occasional ordinations, prayerful excommunications, and timely revelations, many others could not. And so, as James White observed at the beginning of this chapter, sooner or later Adventists would be driven to give the child a name and to organize as a church.
Notes: