[306]
Section Titles
Discovering Miller's Mistake
Time Setters?
Began a World
Endeavor
Seventh-day Adventists date the origin of their movement
from the years 1844-50. Many of the original founders of the Seventh-day
Adventist faith were former associates of William Miller (a lay Baptist
preacher) and many others who, previous to 1844, with great earnestness
proclaimed the approaching Second Advent of the Lord to the earth. These
people, who represented many Protestant denominations, were known as Adventists
because of their faith in the imminence of the personal return of Jesus, and
their message resounded throughout the world and claimed converts from many
nations. This message produced a great religious awakening such as had not been
witnessed since the Reformation of the sixteenth century.
Expectation of the coming of Christ about the year 1844
was built on a study of certain Bible prophecies containing the time element.
In the exposition of such prophecies the generally accepted rule of
interpretation was, and still is, a day for a year, according to Numbers 14:34
and Ezekiel 4:6.
The particular prophecy which led Mr. Miller and his
associates to set a date for the Second Advent was Daniel 8:14, which declares,
in part: “Unto two thousand and three hundred days; then shall the
sanctuary be cleansed.”
As pointed out in the previous chapter, Daniel 9:24, 25
furnished an event from which to count these day-years, in the words:
“From the going forth of the commandment
[307]
to restore and to build Jerusalem.” This command, or
decree, went forth in 457 B.C. (See Ezra 6:14.)
Knowing that the earth, once destroyed and purged by
water, is, according to 2 Peter 3:6, 7, to be again destroyed and purged, this
time by fire, and mistakenly supposing the earth to be the sanctuary of Daniel
8:14, it was only natural for the Advent believers of that day to conclude that
the end would come at the expiration of the 2300 days, which time period ended
in the autumn of 1844, on the twenty-second day of October.
Profoundly convinced that the world was about to witness
the glory of its descending Lord, and that all men, rich and poor, were to be
summoned before the great white throne, there to face the Judge and to hear His
sentence pronounced upon them, Miller and his associates raised throughout all
Christendom the solemn cry, “Prepare to meet thy God.” Their message
rang like a trumpet call throughout the world. This produced a great religious
awakening, and people everywhere turned to God and repented of their sins.
This movement extended from 1833 to 1844. In America the
message was proclaimed by some three hundred ministers belonging to many
different denominations. In Great Britain some seven hundred Church of England
clergymen took up the cry.
Books and charts on the Second Advent were distributed
intensively in Norway, and literature on the Second Advent was sent to most of
the mission stations in heathen lands.
Dr. Joseph Wolff, a noted itinerant missionary,
“down to the year 1845, proclaimed the Lord's speedy Advent in Palestine,
Egypt, on the shores of the Red Sea, Mesopotamia,
[308]
the Crimea, Persia, Georgia, throughout the Ottoman Empire,
in Greece, Arabia, Turkey, Bokhara, Afghanistan, Cashmere, Hindostan, Tibet, in
Holland, Scotland, Ireland, at Constantinople, Jerusalem, St. Helena, also on
shipboard in the Mediterranean, and in New York City to all denominations. He
declares that he has preached among Jews, Turks, Mohammedans, Parsees, Hindus,
Chaldeans, Yesedes, Syrians, Sabaeans, to Pashas, sheiks, shahs, the kings of
Organtsh and Bokhara, the queen of Greece, etc.”—Voice of the
Church, p. 343; cited in The Great Second Advent Movement, by J. N.
Loughborough, p. 101.
Everywhere the burden of the message given was,
“Fear God, and give glory to Him; for the hour of His judgment is
come.” Revelation 14:7. Baptists, Methodists, Presbyterians, adherents of
the Church of England, and people of many other persuasions joined the
movement, and helped to swell the cry. Most of these people, however, retained
their membership in the churches to which they had always belonged. Mr.
Miller's preaching of this doctrine apparently did not disqualify him for
membership in the Baptist Church, for his biographer states:
“In 1833 Miller received a license to preach from
the Baptist Church, of which he was a member. A large number of ministers of
his denomination also approved his work, and it was with their formal sanction
that he continued his labors.”
He continued in the Baptist Church until his death.
Mr. Miller had the date figured out correctly. No one
from that time to this has ever been able to refute the accuracy of his
reckoning. But he was clearly mistaken regarding the event that was to take
place. The Miller Adventists
[309]
thought that the sanctuary spoken of in the prophecy, and
which was to be cleansed, was this sin-defiled earth. They saw from other
scriptures that when the earth is finally purified, its purification will be
accomplished by fire, and that this cleansing work will be connected with the
appearing of our Lord. They concluded, therefore, that if the time for
cleansing the sanctuary was to begin in 1844, it must be that the Lord would
return at that time and save His people out of the world before the cleansing
of fire began.
Their failure, therefore, lay in a wrong view of what
the sanctuary was. They did not, at that time, understand the types and
antitypes of the Old Testament, as men have come to understand them since. They
did not grasp the thought of a heavenly sanctuary, “of the true
tabernacle, which the Lord pitched, and not man” (Hebrews 8:2), and of
which Jesus, our High Priest, is minister. They did not see that in heaven
there was to be a work of judgment, the antitype of the Day of Atonement
solemnized in ancient Israel once each year (Leviticus 16), and that this
judgment, mentioned in Daniel 7:9, 10, must be completed before the Lord's
return to earth; for at that time the destiny of all will have been decided,
and Jesus will bring His rewards with Him, “to give every man according as
his work shall be.” Revelation 22:12.
When the twenty-second day of October of that year
passed without bringing the end of all things earthly, those who had
confidently looked for the return of their Lord were thrown into great
perplexity. Some entirely gave up their faith in the Second Advent. Others
sought to establish some other date for the realization of their hopes.
[310]
Others, and among them was Mr. Miller himself, thought
that for some unaccountable reason the Advent was simply delayed, and might
occur any day. To Joshua V. Himes, a devout clergyman of the Protestant
Episcopal Church, and a faithful yokefellow in heralding the Advent near, Mr.
Miller wrote:
“We have done our work in warning sinners, and in
trying to awake a formal church. God in His providence has shut the door; we
can only stir one another up to be patient, and be diligent to make our calling
and election sure.”—Advent Herald, Dec. 11, 1844.
But some of these earnest Christians who had been
disappointed, instead of seeking readjustment of time, or simply waiting, began
a diligent study of the Scriptures, and shortly found that the earth is not the
sanctuary of Daniel 8:14, and that the prophecy foretold, not the cleansing of
the earth by fire in the year 1844, but the beginning of the closing work of
our great High Priest, Jesus Christ, in the true sanctuary in heaven, and that
Christ could not come until the completion of that work.
They came to see clearly that the sanctuary whose
cleansing was to begin in 1844, at the close of the 2300 years of Daniel 8:14,
was the sanctuary of God in heaven, and not the earth, and that its cleansing
involved the work of the investigative judgment, which was to take place
immediately preceding our Lord's return, of which we have spoken more
specifically in a previous chapter.
It was in this same year (1844) that a number of
Adventist believers began the observance of the seventh-day Sabbath, and thus
became in fact Seventh-day Adventists, although this name was not formally
adopted until 1860.
[311]
We do not suggest, however, that the doctrines held by
the Seventh-day Adventists are new. Quite to the contrary; they have been held
through past ages by both patriarchs and prophets, whose faith in them has been
fittingly recorded in the Holy Scriptures.
Enoch, the seventh from Adam, prophesied of the Second
Advent of Christ, and was among those who recognized the binding claims of the
law of God and the seventh-day Sabbath. Abraham was another, Moses was another,
and the prophets and apostles were others. Even Jesus our Lord, during His
earthly life, both taught and practiced these doctrines. But these truths had
been largely lost sight of in the apostasy of the early centuries and the Dark
Ages, and it became necessary to raise up a people to set them again in their
proper light before the world that was about to meet an offended Lord over His
broken law.
The acceptance of the Scriptural doctrine that the
sanctuary is in heaven, opened an entirely new field to the vision of these
Advent believers. They saw that there was an essential and solemn work to be
wrought by our great High Priest in the most holy apartment of the heavenly
temple before He could come to earth, and that during the same time a work of
great magnitude and importance must be accomplished by the church upon the
earth. They read in an entirely new light the striking prophecy of Revelation
11:19: “The temple of God was opened in heaven, and there was seen in His
temple the ark of His testament.”
They remembered that the ark was kept only in the most
holy place of the earthly sanctuary, and that that apartment was opened only
when the high priest went in
[312]
on the tenth day of the seventh month to make final
atonement before the ark to cleanse the sanctuary and the people. Here they saw
the same work revealed in heaven. Here, then, was the cleansing of the
sanctuary which was to begin at the end of the 2300 days in 1844.
They now received a new view of the law of God, since
its position in the antitypical sanctuary or temple in heaven was found to be
exactly the same as was its position in the typical sanctuary upon earth, thus
utterly and forever precluding the idea of any change in that law through all
the intervening ages. It must read in the ark in heaven just exactly as it read
in the ark upon earth. Vividly there came now to their minds the words of Jesus
when He said, “One jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the
law” (Matthew 5:18); and remembering that the law emphatically declares
that “the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt
not do any work” (Exodus 20:8-11), they recognized that Christians are
under obligation to keep this original Sabbath of the fourth commandment.
For some time the burden of those who had become
Seventh-day Adventists by embracing the Bible Sabbath was for “the
scattered flock,” or in other words, for those who had accepted the
message of the Second Advent as preached by William Miller and some three
hundred other ministers in this country, of nearly all the orthodox
denominations.
They later, however, came to see that before Christ's
coming a great reform message must go to the world, warning men of the
approaching day of God, and urging them to make full preparation for it by
repentance of sin and belief of the gospel. They further saw that this
[313]
reform message would be similar to the work of Elijah, and
would call men everywhere to the keeping of the commandments of God as revealed
in the Decalogue, or Ten Commandments, including the fourth commandment, which
clearly enjoins the observance of the seventh day of the week (Saturday) as the
holy Sabbath; that while righteousness comes only through faith in the
atonement made by our Lord Jesus Christ, yet that faith does not make void the
law of Jehovah, nor free Christians from obligation to keep it.
Being profoundly convinced that these things were true,
the few Seventh-day Adventist believers, after several years' study and
adjustment, began to plan for the dissemination of what to them was a message
of great importance and urgency. They concluded that the message of the soon
coming of Christ and the warning to prepare for that momentous event must be
world wide in its application, and since no other branch of the Christian
church seemed to feel any particular burden to give it, they decided that it
was incumbent upon them to carry it to the entire world, and this is what they
then set out to do. Their convictions in this matter were based upon such texts
of Scripture as the following:
“Behold, I will send My messenger, and He shall
prepare the way before Me; and the Lord, whom ye seek, shall suddenly come to
His temple, even the Messenger of the covenant, whom ye delight in: behold, He
shall come, saith the Lord of hosts.” Malachi 3:1.
“This gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in
all the world for a witness unto all nations; and then shall the end
come.” Matthew 24:14.
“Blow ye the trumpet in Zion, and sound an alarm in
My Holy mountain: let all the inhabitants of the land tremble:
[314]
for the day of the Lord cometh, for it is nigh at
hand.” Joel 2:11.
“Sanctify ye a fast, call a solemn assembly, gather
the elders and all the inhabitants of the land into the house of the Lord your
God, and cry unto the Lord, Alas for the day! for the day of the Lord is at
hand, and as a destruction from the Almighty shall it come.” Joel 1:14,
15.
“I saw another angel fly in the midst of heaven,
having the everlasting gospel to preach unto them that dwell on the earth, and
to every nation, and kindred, and tongue, and people, saying with a loud voice,
Fear God, and give glory to Him; for the hour of His judgment is come: and
worship Him that made heaven, and earth, and the sea, and the fountains of
waters.” Revelation 14:6, 7.
As already indicated, Seventh-day Adventists believe
these scriptures clearly teach that just before Jesus comes, He will raise up
messengers to prepare the way before Him, as John the Baptist was raised up to
prepare the way for the first advent of Jesus. This preparatory message must be
world wide in extent, going “to every nation, and kindred, and tongue, and
people.” It is a warning message, and is reformatory in its nature; and as
John the revelator wrote of it, he clearly indicated that it would result in
gathering out of the nations a people of whom it is said, “Here are they
that keep the commandments of God, and the faith of Jesus.” Revelation
14:12.
One of the charges urged by Mr. Canright against the
Seventh-day Adventists is that they are “time setters.” He says of
them:
“They set the time for the end of the world in
1843, and failed. They set it again in 1844, and
failed.”—Seventh-day Adventism Renounced, p. 79.
[315]
We submit that this constitutes a gross
misrepresentation. We have no disposition whatsoever to cover up the fact that
some who later became Seventh-day Adventists were in the Miller movement and
believed and preached that the end of the world would come in 1844, yet as Mr.
Canright well knew, the Seventh-day Adventist movement, which arose
subsequently to the 1844 disappointment, has held as one of its basic beliefs
from the very outset an interpretation of prophecy that shut out the
possibility of setting a time for our Lord's return and the end of the world.
We refer to the interpretation given by Seventh-day Adventists to the prophecy
of the 2300 days of the eighth and ninth chapters of Daniel.
Seventh-day Adventism as a distinctive movement was not
launched until after the disappointment of Miller and his followers in 1844,
and therefore this church cannot rightly be charged with the 1844 mistake.
We would remind the reader that Mr. Canright renounced
“Seventh-day Adventism,” and not merely “adventism” in
general, which includes many sects and beliefs. Certain Adventist bodies have
set times for the Lord to return, but the Seventh-day Adventists as a
body have never done so.
Mr. Canright knew that he was writing his book against a
denomination which had its rise subsequent to the disappointment of 1844, and
yet he boldly declares that “they set the time for the end of the world in
1843, and failed. They set it again in 1844, and failed.”
He challenges Seventh-day Adventists on their
denominational view of the heavenly sanctuary, which absolutely precludes time
setting, and yet says that they are the time setters, and believe that the
earth is the sanctuary.
[316]
The very first statement in Mr. Canright's book is half
truth and half error, and is therefore calculated to deceive. This appears on
page 25, chapter 1, paragraph 1, and in it he says:
“Seventh-day Adventism originated about fifty years
ago in the work of Mr. Miller, who set the time for the end of the world in
1843-44.”
This opening statement is intended, of course, to brand
Seventh-day Adventists as fanatical “time setters,” and thus
immediately to create prejudice against them and their teachings.
Again on page 76 of his book we read:
“Miller is responsible for all the time setting
done by the Adventists since his time, because they are the legitimate
outgrowth of his work. He began setting time. He did it the second time. He
taught them how to do it. He fathered the idea. He inculcated it in all his
followers. They then simply took up and carried on what he had begun.”
This is a gross misrepresentation of the work and
teachings of Seventh-day Adventists, as anyone who had preached for them for
twenty-eight years, as had Mr. Canright, would well know. These statements
would indicate that William Miller, who set the time for the return of our Lord
in 1844, was the founder of the Seventh-day Adventist Church; that Miller and
the Seventh-day Adventists believed and taught the same thing; in fact, that it
was all one movement, Millerism and Seventh-day Adventism being one and the
same thing. No other impression could be received from these words of Mr.
Canright, “They … took up and carried on what he had
begun,” in the matter of time setting.
Now let the reader note how quickly Mr. Canright's
[317]
fertile mind could change from one side of an argument to
another when it served his purpose to do so. A little farther on in his book,
where he tries to show how very unpopular Seventh-day Adventists were when
their work first started, he speaks of the opposition they had from William
Miller, this very man who, in his first chapter, he sets forth as the
founder of the Seventh-day Adventist Church.
“He [Miller] especially points out the Seventh-day
Adventist positions as utterly wrong. He knew all about their arguments on the
three messages, the sanctuary, the Sabbath, etc., and yet he not only rejected
them, but earnestly warned his people against them…. Not a leading man in
Miller's work ever embraced the views of the Seventh-day
Adventists.”—Seventh-day Adventism Renounced, p. 78.
Now, it would be utterly impossible to harmonize these
two statements of Mr. Canright's regarding Miller and his relation to the
Seventh-day Adventist movement. In the one Miller is made responsible for what
Seventh-day Adventists have done, and in the second he as plainly declares that
Miller rejected the teaching of Seventh-day Adventists and warned his people
against them, and that not a leading man in Miller's work ever embraced the
views of the Seventh-day Adventists. Could two statements possibly be more
conflicting?
The Miller movement, as such, ended with the passing of
the time, October 22, 1844, before the Seventh-day Adventist Church was
founded. It is true, also, as stated by Mr. Canright, that Mr. Miller, who was
still living at the time the work of Seventh-day Adventists began, refused to
accept their teachings, and continued on as a member of the Baptist
Church till his death.
Except the doctrine of the imminence of the personal
[318]
and literal Advent of our Lord, there was practically
nothing held in common by the Adventists of Miller's movement and the
Seventh-day Adventists, who, as such, came upon the stage of action after the
disappointment. The Seventh-day Adventists believe that the dates worked out by
Miller for the cleansing of the sanctuary in 1844 were correct, but they
recognize that he was mistaken as to the event which was to take place on that
date. Mr. Miller believed that the sanctuary was the earth; Seventh-day
Adventists believe it is the place where Christ ministers as High Priest in
heaven.
In common with most other Baptists, Mr. Miller observed
Sunday, the first day of the week, as the Sabbath; the Seventh-day Adventists
hold that the seventh day should be kept according to the fourth command of the
Decalogue.
We understand that Mr. Miller believed in the natural
immortality of the soul, and that people go to their reward at death;
Seventh-day Adventists believe that man is mortal, that the dead are asleep,
unconscious, and that they will not receive their rewards until after the
judgment and the resurrection of the dead.
As already pointed out, a number of those who were
associated with Mr. Miller in his work were among those who later became
Seventh-day Adventists. But that fact does not make the Seventh-day Adventist
Church responsible for Mr. Miller's unscriptural views.
If, therefore, Mr. Miller and his followers were not
Seventh-day Adventists, but were Baptists, Methodists, etc., who believed in
the Second Advent, how can it be truthfully said that Seventh-day Adventists
are time setters simply because Mr. Miller set the time for the Lord
[319]
to come? Why not say that the Baptists are time setters,
seeing that Mr. Miller was a Baptist and not a Seventh-day Adventist? Why
should Mr. Canright, a Baptist preacher, try to confuse the issue by shifting
the responsibility of time setting from members of his church to the
Seventh-day Adventist Church? There could be only one reason—to create
prejudice against that church.
Seventh-day Adventists do believe that our Lord will
return in person to this earth, in harmony with His definite promise recorded
in John 14:1-3 and Acts 1:9-11. They also believe that the prophetic portions
of the Scriptures clearly point to the fact that His coming is near, “even
at the doors.” Matthew 24 '33. They are attempting, by the grace of God,
to prepare their hearts and lives for that great day, and believe they should
embrace every opportunity to encourage others to do likewise; but never
has the Seventh-day Adventist denomination fixed a date for our Lord's
return.
Mr. Canright says on page 75 of his work that Elder
James White, who became a strong leader in the Seventh-day Adventist Church,
was associated with Mr. Miller, and engaged in preaching a definite time for
the Lord to come. Of course this is true. Elder James White was in the Miller
movement, and ardently believed in Miller's teachings. But it should be
understood that Elder White was then a member of the Christian Church. He had
not yet become a Seventh-day Adventist.
That some lone individual or minister who became a
Seventh-day Adventist should have clung for a little period to the idea of time
setting would be expected in the very nature of the case. And the citing of
some such individual is no valid indictment of the denomination.
[320]
But there is no need that we make further answer to this
time-setting charge, for Mr. Canright himself, in his book The Lord's
Day, which he wrote subsequently to his Seventh-day Adventism
Renounced, makes this sweeping admission:
“To their credit it should be said that Seventh-day
Adventists do not believe in setting time definitely since
1844.”—The Lord's Day, p. 38.
Now, since there were no Seventh-day Adventists before
the end of 1844, and since, as Mr. Canright admits, they “do not believe
in setting time definitely since 1844,” we submit that they are not time
setters at all.
It seemed presumptuous for so small a group of people as
the Seventh-day Adventists were in the early years of their movement, to
undertake a world endeavor. There were only a few of them at first, and for
sixteen years they had no church organization, no buildings, no institutions,
practically no literature, and but little money. But they had a growing
conviction that they had discovered in the Holy Scriptures light and truth
which must be given to the world, and with undaunted courage born of faith in
God, they began the work.
The first tracts by Sabbath-keeping Adventists were
published in 1846; and in 1849 a periodical entitled The Present Truth
was started. The first general meeting to be held by them was called at Rocky
Hill, Connecticut, in 1848. This was before they fully realized what was
involved in giving a world-wide message. The name Seventh-day Adventist was
adopted in 1860, but it was not until 1861 that their first churches were
formally organized.
[321]
The General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists was
organized two years later, with delegates present from six State conferences,
which had been previously organized.
In 1874 missionaries began to go out to other countries,
and the work soon became established in every continent of the world, from
which it quickly spread to adjacent island fields, and in all those lands
converts began to appear and churches were established. Paralleling this spread
of missionary endeavor was a steady growth of institutional work. Publishing
houses were established, scores of periodicals and hundreds of books and tracts
began to be printed; schools and colleges were built for the purpose of
educating and training gospel workers who could go everywhere with the message;
and sanitariums and hospitals were founded for the relief of the sick and
suffering, these being operated entirely by Christian physicians and nurses. In
seeking to bring their patients under tile influence of the gospel, they
furnished balm to both body and soul.
Taking a retrospective view of this movement during the
eighty-nine years since it had its first feeble beginnings, we find that its
development has been very remarkable, to say the least. In some countries
Seventh-day Adventist membership has been doubling every four or five years,
and today there is scarcely a land on earth where their work is not established
or into which their missions are not being projected.
From the very character of their message, it is only
natural that their appeal is to all men alike. They preach to Jew, Christian,
Mohammedan, Buddhist, heathen—anybody anywhere who will pause to hear.
Thousands of
[322]
their converts have been made direct from heathenism, and we
believe that their mission stations may be found today in more of the heathen
tribes of the world than those of any other Protestant church.
At the close of 1945 they had a total of 14,874
evangelical laborers, 69 union conferences, 137 state and provincial
conferences, and 197 organized mission fields.
They were operating 52 publishing houses and branches,
publishing literature in nearly 200 languages, and distributing the product of
their presses throughout the world to the value of nearly $10,000,000 annually.
The total sales of literature during the eighty-two years since their first
paper was established amounts to $161,748,519.50.
They were conducting 3,189 primary schools and 269
institutions of intermediate grades and higher learning. Of the latter, one is
an A-grade medical college, one a theological seminary granting the Master's
degree, and eleven are baccalaureate colleges granting the Bachelor of Arts and
Bachelor of Science degrees. The total student enrollment in primary,
intermediate, and college grades is approximately 150,000.
Sixty-two Seventh-day Adventist medical institutions are
in operation, employing 256 physicians and 5,757 nurses and other helpers. The
total investment in all these educational and medical institutions is
$118,565,591.70.
Not a dollar of earnings from any institution operated
by them accrues to any individual, but any gains made from year to year are
either used to extend the work of the respective institutions or are
appropriated to the mission
[323]
treasury to be used in the extension of the work in other
lands.
The ministers of the church are supported by tithe paid
voluntarily by the church membership, and the mission work in foreign lands is
supported by additional freewill offerings. These offerings to foreign missions
now total nearly $8,000,000 annually.
The membership, comparatively speaking, is not large. In
the very nature of the case this is to be expected. The acceptance of the
Seventh-day Adventist faith entails a great sacrifice in every land,
particularly in civilized countries. The keeping of the seventh-day Sabbath and
the nonuse of tobacco and all alcoholic liquors are points that bring a real
test to all would-be adherents. But that which has astonished multitudes in the
religious world is the fact that only a few hundred thousand people should be
able, under God, to maintain such an extensive work, embracing every great
country of the entire globe, besides many smaller ones.
When Mr. Canright separated from the Seventh-day
Adventist communion and published his “dumfounder” in 1889, he
predicted an early failure of the entire movement. Speaking of the efforts of
the Seventh-day Adventists to extend and support their work, he said:
“It is doubtful how long they can maintain this
strain without a crash.”—Seventh-day Adventism Renounced, p.
27.
On page 26 of his work he gives statistics to show the
extent to which the work of the Seventh-day Adventists had grown at that time.
Here he says:
“In 1888 they had 400 ordained ministers and
licentiates, 901 churches, 21,112 members, 31 conferences, and five
missions.”
[324]
He further states that they sold that year $90,000 worth
of books, were issuing twenty-six periodicals in different languages, had seven
publishing houses, three sanitariums, two colleges, one academy, and several
smaller schools, with sixty-two teachers and 1,000 students. He pictures these
institutions as being hopelessly in debt, and says the efforts made to meet
these debts had drained the pockets of many of their people and discouraged
others. It was then that he predicted the “crash.”
But that was many years ago, and the crash has not come.
During this time their work has increased in every land; the number of
evangelical workers has multiplied more than thirty-five times; their
conference and mission field organizations, about eleven times; their principal
institutions have increased from 13 to 510; their annual student enrollment has
grown from 1,000 to 148,144. Membership gains have been made every year.
The total funds contributed annually for religious work
have increased from something like $200,000 in 1888 to $31,540,935.24 in 1945.
At the time Mr. Canright wrote, “It is doubtful how long they can maintain
this strain without a crash,” the per capita giving was about $8 per
annum. This had increased to $54.72 in 1945, and, strange to say, the crash
seems as far off today as it did when Mr. Canright wrote his book. In fact, if
the writer is any judge of humanity, it would be hard to find a happier and
more contented people on the earth than are these Seventh-day Adventists, who
are thus contributing more liberally per capita than any other people in the
whole world to the support of the gospel work.
[325]
The General Conference sessions of the denomination draw
representatives from all over the world. Chinese, Japanese, Koreans, Filipinos,
Africans, South Sea Islanders, Egyptians, South American Indians, Mexicans,
Europeans—all mingle with their American and Canadian brethren in a
fellowship that is expressed in joyful countenances as they tell of the advance
of the last gospel message to the far corners of the earth. The “blessed
hope” of the soon coming of the Lord to put an end to sin and suffering
buoys them up in the face of adversity and discouragement. But there are so
many evidences of the providential leadings of God in every feature of their
work that every setback and Satanic opposition is matched by overruling
circumstances that only encourage them to redouble their zeal for the finishing
of their world task.
That Seventh-day Adventists are not unappreciated in
other church communions is in evidence from the following excerpt taken from a
sermon preached by the pastor of the Tenth Avenue Baptist church as a broadcast
some time ago over Station KTAB:
“Seventh-day Adventists have become accepted
members of the community. Their little churches are nestled among the hills and
the valleys. Their hospitals bring welcome ministrations to the sick. They are
good neighbors, good comrades, good citizens…. They have given to the
world the ministry of healing. They have gone forth, not as fanatics or
theorists, but as empiricists, adopting the purest findings of medical and
surgical science and reinforcing all this with the sweet spirit of Jesus of
Nazareth. These are the men who unweariedly follow the footsteps of Him who
went about doing good. In every case they have striven to blend the healing of
the body with the healing of the soul, God bless them. To be a Seventh-day
Adventist is to know anew the meaning of the cross. They possess adequate funds
to
[326]
carry on the Master's work. Why? Because each member obeys
the law of the tithe. Their churches are filled with worshippers because they
insist on loyalty to the Lord. To the Seventh-day Adventist the peace of
Christ, and not the madness of sinful pleasure is the great quest of the soul.
You don't find them in passion-polluted showhouses. Their women are not to be
seen amid the shameless nudities of the modern ballroom. These men and women
are to be found in places where prayer is wont to be made. These people expect
the coming of Jesus, they are waiting for Him, and when the Master comes He
will find them where Christians ought to be.”