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By Roger W. Coon
A few months ago I attended the funeral of an 89-year-old member of our
little church in Berkeley Springs, West Virginia. In his homily the pastor
assured the mourners that they would soon be reunited with the loved one
from whom they were now parted. Why? Because Jesus was coming back to
earth soon, to put an end to sin, misery, unhappiness, sickness, and death.
Seventh-day Adventists have been preaching the imminence of the Second
Coming for 156 years. But how near is near? How soon is soon? One
hundred fifty-six years is a long time to wait!
This month (October 2000) marks an important anniversary for Seventh-day
Adventists. It holds the 156th anniversary of both the Day of Great
ExpectationOctober 22, 1844and the Day of Great DisappointmentOctober
23, 1844. It may likely be an anniversary that will bring with it a degree of
embarrassment for some within our ranks whom, I suspect, would just as
soon forget anything and everything connected with 1844.
On October 23, 1844the day after Jesus did not return as foretold by William
Miller and his followersthe Millerite movement (estimated at between 50,000
to 250,000 strong by various historians) disintegrated for two cogent and very
compelling reasons: They no longer had a message, and they no longer had
an audience willing to listen to them. The movement broke up into four
splinter groups.
The largest group abandoned religion of any kind. They had been greatly
embarrassed, even mortified, when the predicted return of Jesus did not occur
as they had believed it would. They were angry with God and, truth to tell, not
a little with themselves. They saw themselves as having been duped into
joining a movement that was alternately reviled and derided by most
segments of the populace. In frustration and weariness they gave up all
religion altogether.
The second group went off into various forms of fanaticism, many successively
setting new dates for the Lords return in the process. But they continued to
cry Wolf, wolf just one time too many. Soon no one listened to them
anymore. Within a half dozen years they disappeared from the scene.
The third group continued to look for the Adventnear, but without setting any
dates. And they continued, like the vast majority of the Millerites before them,
to worship God on Sunday, the first day of the week. In 1860 they formed
themselves into a denomination known as the Advent Christian Church.
Theyre still around, though their numbers continue to decline year by year.
In recent years the Advent Christian membership in North America has slipped
from something more than 31,000 members to something less than 19,000
membersa drop of more than one third.
The fourth and smallest group to emerge from Millerism was a body of
perhaps half a hundred, scattered throughout New York and New England,
who coalesced around the leadership of James and Ellen White and retired sea
captain Joseph Bates. In 1860 they too organized and took to themselves the
name Seventh-day Adventist. They accepted the seventh-day Sabbath; they
believed that God had bestowed upon Ellen White the spiritual gift of prophetic
utterance; and they believed that Christ had entered a new phase of His
heavenly high priesthood on October 22, 1844.
Like their Advent Christian friends, these Saturday-keeping Adventists
continued to believe the return of Jesus was near, and they too refused to set
any dates. In 1863 their half dozen state conferences organized a General
Conference, and they were off and running. Today they number some 11
million around the globe.
But 156 years is a long time to wait. How soon is soon? How near is
near?