Who were the Millerites?

The Seventh-Day Adventists are an offshoot of the old Millerites, the followers of William Miller, of Low Hampton, N.Y., U.S.A. To get a clear idea of the movement, it will be necessary to sketch the origin of Millerism.

Miller was born in 1782, of humble parentage. His mother was pious, and early instructed him in Bible truths. Thrown into the company of Deists in early manhood, he embraced their views. After twelve years of unbelief, being far from satisfied with his negative beliefs, at the age of thirty-four, he began the study of the Bible. It resulted in his confession of the Lord Jesus as his Saviour, and he took his stand accordingly. His old companions assailed his beliefs, as they had once shared his disbeliefs. Miller studied his Bible to find an answer to their objections, as he himself wrote: “To ascertain if every apparent contradiction could be harmonized.”

An unlettered man, by occupation a small farmer, he asked for no further help than the marginal references of his Bible, and a Concordance. Independence of mind is a good thing up to a point, but if it leads the child to attempt to educate himself without the aid of a teacher; or the apprentice to learn his trade without the help of his master; or the Christian to refuse help from the gifts given by the ascended Lord to His Church, it can only work disaster. So with Miller. He asked no counsel or help. Alas! that independence of mind that led him into infidelity, now led him into error.

The Seventh-Day Adventists are an off-shoot of the old Millerites, the followers of William Miller of Low Hampton, N. Y., well known as predicting the end of the world in 1844. They reasoned especially from Dan. 8:13-14 — the prophecy of two thousand three hundred days to the cleansing of the sanctuary, that, taking these days for years, they began in the seventh year of Artaxerxes, king of Persia, B. C. 457, and would therefore end in the year named. The sanctuary to be cleansed was the earth, and the cleansing to be by fire.

This very palpable mistake led, of course, to bitter disappointment, which resulted in the scattering of many of their adherents, and the division of the rest ultimately into three bodies, — the more orthodox body, or Messiah's church, who deny, nevertheless, the heavenly portion of Christians; another body, which engrafted annihilationism and still more fatal errors upon their adventist views; and the Seventh-Day Adventists.

Suffice it to say that by a process of loose reasoning and careless chronology Miller came to the conclusion that the Second Advent would take place in the spring of 1844.

Miller, desirous of fixing upon the time of the Second Advent, seized upon Daniel 8:14 as: “the prophecy which seemed most clearly to reveal the time of the Second Advent.”

Well might Mrs. White say, “seemed … to reveal.” Miller, she tells us, adopted the then generally accepted idea that the cleansing of the sanctuary meant the purification of the earth by fire.

Having fixed the period as 2,300 days, which without proof or reason he changed into 2,300 years, all he wanted, in order to fix the date of the Second Advent, was the starting-point of his period. Had he honestly read Daniel 8:13-14, he would have found the starting-point, viz., when the sanctuary of Israel began to be trodden under foot. Moreover, in the latter part of the chapter Gabriel explained the vision to Daniel. The ram with two horns illustrated the dual Kingdom of Media and Persia. The rough goat, the Grecian Kingdom, which, when broken up, was divided into four parts, as Daniel 8:22 explains. Then the King, who is to tread the sanctuary under foot for 2,300 days, is said to come “in the latter time of their kingdom,” which has been literally fulfilled by the Seleucidae, the Asiatic successors of Alexander, particularly by Antiochus Epiphanes. The angel here enlightened Daniel’s mind. There was no Scripture then to guide him as to it, therefore God gave him a vision, nor was the Holy Ghost then present, consequent on the glory of the risen Christ, to be the believer’s teacher and guide. Now with both Scripture and the Holy Ghost to guide, Miller rejects the plain God-given recorded interpretation of the angel, with the natural result, a humiliating blunder fraught with the direst consequences.

Miller and his followers set to work to study their proofs again. By summer they discovered that Christ would come, not in the spring, but in the autumn of 1844.

Miller—all honour to him for his honesty—wrote: “On the passing of my published time, I frankly acknowledged my disappointment … We expected the personal coming of Christ at that time; and now to contend that we were not mistaken is dishonest … I have no confidence in any of the new theories that grew out of that [Seventh-Day Adventist] movement, namely, that Christ then came as the Bridegroom, that the door of mercy was closed, that there is no salvation for sinners, that the seventh trumpet then sounded, or that it was a fulfilment of prophecy in any sense.”

Very few of the original Adventists accepted the new theories of the Seventh-Day Adventists. Miller never became a Seventh-Day Adventist. His honesty at the last fills one with the hope that he was not a mere charlatan, but a self-deceived Christian. Here we must part company with him.

Mrs. White writes: “I saw leading men watching William Miller, fearing lest he should embrace the third angel’s message and the commandments of God. … I saw a human influence exerted to keep his mind in darkness. … At length William Miller raised his voice against the light from heaven” (Spiritual Gifts. Vol. I. p. 167).

And, mark you, Elder White and his wife were both involved in this time-setting. She again calmly writes: “Again they were doomed to disappointment. The time of expectation passed, and their Saviour did not appear.”

Miller’s Prophecy Proved False

As the spring of 1844 drew near public testimony as to the Second Advent was most active. The time passed, and nothing happened. Mrs. White says tamely: “Those who had looked in faith for His appearing were for a season involved in doubt and uncertainty.”

She dismisses with a few general meditations the fanaticism aroused by the expectation of an event which never took place. Others tell us that Adventists left their work, gave away their property, that crops were left ungathered, that their children were kept from school for years, because time being so short, they would need no education. Those children have now grand-children and great grand-children.

Disappointment opened the eyes of many, whilst others were driven into infidelity.

A, — They used to be called Millerites, the leader being bold enough to set a certain day for the Lord's coming in 1844, which of course was untrue. Now, if numerous, they are in various portions, rejecters of all the truth of Christianity. Their new name proclaims this really for them all. For as the sabbath or seventh day was under the law a sign between Jehovah and Israel, and the memorial of the old creation, the Lord's day or first day is characteristic of grace and the new creation. They are therefore stamped on their own profession as men that say they are Jews, and are not, but lie. Turning their back on the faith, they make themselves debtors to the law which condemns all that fail, and especially apostates from Christianity. No wonder that they deny the heavenly hope, hold the soul's sleep or its extinction, and look for resurrection (if at all) for the earth, when only eternal life is given, with no more than a promise now. But many deny the Lord's deity, etc. They are not entitled to the name of Christians in any real sense. The Salvation Army are beyond the line of destruction, but only borderers. To leave them for the S.D.A. is an awful step backward.