V. Ohio College President Maintains Premillennial Positions

Out in southeastern Ohio, Prof. J. P. WEETHEE, ^{25J. P. WEETHEE received his A.B. from Ohio University in 1832. After two years in the study of medicine, he turned to the Presbyterian ministry, being licensed in 1835 and ordained in 1836. For several years he was stated clerk. After serving eight years at Uniontown, Pennsylvania, he was made president of Madison College, and was one of the State’s meteorologists. He went back to Ohio in 1842 and was invited to the presidency of Cumberland College, of Princeton, Kentucky. But as Kentucky was then a slave State he did not accept, and in 1842 was elected president of Beverly College, Ohio. About this time he heard and accepted the teaching of the imminent second advent. One of the professors took his stand against him and resolved to put him out of the church. But Weethee continued preaching it. In the spring of 1844 he moved to Chauncy. Later he was offered the presidency of LaGrange College (M.E. South), as well as of the state academy of Indiana.} president uniting with the Congregational Church, he was graduated from Bowdoin with a B.A., and received his M.A. from Brown University in 1810. Through the study of Greek he became convinced that sprinkling was not valid baptism, and so was buried in baptism. A revival led him into the ministry. Ordained in 1811, he taught successfully in Maine, Massachusetts, and at Washington, Pennsylvania, from 1814-1839. At the request of the Virginia Education Society he became president of Rector College at Pruntytown, now West Virginia, where he served from 1839-1851. He was declared to be a good administrator, and during the ten years of his presidency the institution grew in usefulness and influence. Dr. Wheeler was loved by his students. Following his death the college declined rapidly, and by the time of the Civil War had ended its career of Beverly College in the little town of Beverly, under Cumberland Presbyterian sponsorship, expressed his belief in the pre-millennial advent and the literal first resurrection and judgment in a letter to Joshua V. Himes, dated March 17, 1843. He likewise declared that, having long discarded the idea of a spiritual millennium, he had now—rejected the popular position on the literal return of the Jews and was active in publicly presenting his convictions on the second coming in neighboring towns over the week ends between his major administrative duties at Beverly. One expression is indicative of his entire position: “The last sands are dropping from the glass of time; the great time—bell is about to toll the hour of midnight.” ^{26Signs of the Times, April 5, 1843, p. 38; reprinted in The Second Advent of Christ, April 19, 1843, p. 2.} In Weethee’s chief work, The Coming Age (issued in 1884), he still generally follows the British Literalists, although he avoids future specific dating.PFF4 375.3