The Seventh-day Adventist church was born as a direct fulfilment of prophecy. It did not see itself as a denomination but as a movement with a mission. Watch as the story unfolds.
Mission on the Move part 1
The Seventh-day Adventist church was born as a direct fulfilment of prophecy. It did not see itself as a denomination but as a movement with a mission. In fact, it resisted organizational structure and restraint. The leaders and members believed in the soon return of Christ. They used every means necessary to spread the news of the imminent return of Jesus.
A lot of people had gotten so excited that they abandoned their businesses. They left fields and crops untended and unharvested. New England winters require preparation and that preparation simply hadn’t been done. People thought they were going to heaven in October. Instead, they wouldn’t have food to eat or money for several months. Disappointment might not be a strong enough word. In the words of one Millerite, “True believers had given up all for Christ but He did not come. And now to turn against the cares, perplexities, and dangers of life in full view of jeering and reviling unbelievers who scoffed as never before was a terrible trial of faith and patience.”
A Methodist paper called for thunderbolts red with uncommon wrath upon the head of Joshua Himes and other Millerites. Critics accused him of being a liar, a fear mongerer, disturber of the peace, and a cheat. Some said Himes fled the country, some said he committed suicide.
The Boston Post called the Advent leaders unprincipled men, perfectly conscience of the absurdity of their opinions and reckless of the injury they caused. In reality Himes, Miller, and other leaders of the movement had never instructed believers to leave their jobs, sell their property, and neglect their secular responsibilities. But their faith turned them into social pariahs. William Miller himself wrote, “It passed, and the next day it seemed like all the demons from the bottomless pit were let loose upon us.”
Hiram Edson lamented, “Has the Bible proved a failure? Is there no God, no heaven? No golden home city, no paradise? Is all this but a cunningly devised fable? Is there no reality to our fondest hope and expectation of these things?”
Luther Butell said, “Everyone felt lonely, with hardly a desire to speak to anyone. All were silent save to inquire, “Where are we and what’s next?” All were housed in searching their Bibles to learn what to do.
Then Edson receives a vision while walking through a field. Reinterpretation offers new hope. Early church founders want to share that hope with the believers they had lost. Ellen Harmon White is shown in a vision that James White should start a magazine. Penniless but inspired, James convinces a publisher to print 1,000 copies of The Present Truth. The magazine
helps clarify what happened in 1844 and the full cost is repaid by generous readers. Publishing
ministry quickly becomes central to spreading emerging Adventist doctrines like the Three
Angels’ Message and Sabbath truth.
To keep printers from running on the Sabbath, the church starts it’s own publishing house
(which was literally a house that early church members lived and worked in together). Hiram
Edson sold his farm and donated the money to buy a hand press. Soon the church began
distributing The Second Advent Review and Sabbath Herald.
Since there was no paper cutter, Uriah Smith trimmed all the edges of the magazines with his
pen knife. In his own words, “We blistered our hands in the operation, and often the tracts in
form were not half so true and square as the doctrines they taught.” At age 23, Smith would go
on to serve as editor, and would hold the position in some capacity for his entire life.
As the publishing ministry grows, young Canadian immigrant, George King comes up with the
idea to sell subscriptions of Adventist publications. Signs of the Times is born. The gospel
message spills out of the church and meets people right at their front door.
The beginning of the Seventh-Day Adventist church was exciting. Was it something the pioneers could keep secret? Not a chance.
Church pioneers assumed that those who renewed their belief would share it with their brothers
and sisters. The brothers and sisters would share with their cousins, and the cousins would share with their brothers and sisters, and the whole great commission would fulfill itself.
But it didn’t work out that way.
