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The Prophetic Faith of Our Fathers, vol. 3

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    CHAPTER FOURTEEN: Summing Up the Witness for North America

    I. Last of the Eighteenth-Century Witnesses

    Such was the last of the eighteenth-century American prophetic witnesses whose testimony is surveyed in this volume. TIMOTHY DWIGHT, educator and prophetic expositor, stood as the stalwart champion of the Historical School of interpretation. Following upon the heels of Joshua Spalding, he was about the last to raise a protest against the rising tide of change and repudiation steadily creeping over the religious world. Strong, clear, and consistent, Dwight’s message stands out above the increasing confusion and abandonment all about him.PFF3 250.1

    It seems fitting that this final voice be that of another college president. The change from advocacy of the Historical School of Protestant interpretation, first to silence and then to hostility, on the part of the great colleges and universities of the land, typified the change in the attitude of the ministry and the populace at large. The waning interest in prophecy, the repudiation of the prophetic faith of our colonial fathers, and the espousal of the fascinating fallacy of a thousand years of world betterment before the appearance of Christ among men were now increasingly ascendant.PFF3 250.2

    That was the condition of affairs in America when the great second advent message began to be sounded in the early decades of the nineteenth century. The ministry was divided and apathetic. The schools were largely indifferent or antagonistic. And a growing percentage of the religiously inclined were persuaded of a millennium of world betterment and peace gradually getting under way-a millennium without an antecedent second advent, without a literal resurrection of the dead, or a catastrophic end of the age. That is the historical setting. And that is the basic issue confronting, as we pause with our witnesses here at the threshold of this vibrant period, which in its later American phase must be reserved for the final volume in this series.PFF3 250.3

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