The Prime Question
Now, the question that naturally arises is this: What evidence do Seventh-day Adventists offer in behalf of their unusual claim that Mrs. White possessed the prophetic gift? This question we shall endeavor to answer in the following chapters. But properly to introduce our answer we need to look, first, at the background and the beginnings of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, a church which today has grown strong and spread far over the world.WBEGW 8.3
Where did the Adventist Church come from? How did it begin? Travel back with us to the opening decades of the nineteenth century, when there developed, first in Europe and then in America, a singular awakening of interest in those portions of the Bible that speak of the coming of Christ and the end of the world. In Europe this awakening was chiefly among ministers and Biblical scholars. It was interdenominational in nature, drawing into its circle a representative group of learned clergy from the major Protestant bodies.WBEGW 8.4
In America the awakening included not only a group of ministers but many thousands of laymen. A conservative estimate of the total was fifty thousand. The key leader in the American area was William Miller, an ex-officer of the War of 1812, who happened to be a Baptist. With him were associated ministers of many Protestant bodies who traveled about, lecturing on the subject of Bible prophecy and the end of the world. The fifty thousand, or more, people who accepted the special preaching that the end of the world was near and that Christ would then come to this world literally and personally, were known as Millerites, because of William Miller’s leadership. They really constituted a kind of loose-knit inter-church movement. Miller’s study of the Bible prophecies—specifically Daniel 8:14—led him to conclude that a very great event would occur in 1844. He was correct in concluding that the event would be great, but wrong in concluding that it would be the end of the world and second advent of Christ. To be specific, the date of the Second Advent was finally set as October 22, 1844.WBEGW 9.1
Contrary to fanciful gossip and rumor, the movement was not riddled with fanaticism and weird antics, such as the wearing of ascension robes. On the contrary, William Miller consistently denounced all fanatical actions, and the movement, though loose knit, was singularly free from any activities or ideas that could truly be called fanatical. The documented evidence on this is currently available in book form. WBEGW 9.2
At first the Millerite ministers were generally welcomed in the pulpits of Protestant churches because their preaching tended to bring a spiritual revival—and after all, these ministers held regular credentials from their respective Protestant bodies. However, when men take hold of new religious ideas they frequently find themselves out of tune with former associates. This was particularly true of the Millerites. Protestantism in general had come to believe that there would be no sudden, miraculous coming of Christ, to bring an end to wickedness. Rather, there would be a kind of spiritual coming of Christ, that is, a gradual improvement of the world through the coming of Christ’s spirit into men’s hearts, so that ultimately the whole world would be converted. The Millerite ministers declared, and rightly so, that this was an unscriptural belief, that the apostles and the great Protestant Reformers had never taught it. The avowed goal of this new and disturbing religious movement was to revive the New Testament teaching on how the promised better world, the new earth, was finally to be created—in other words, the true Biblical teaching regarding the second advent of Christ. Because of this marked difference of belief, tensions arose, and by the summer of 1844 many who had accepted Miller’s teaching found themselves disfellowshiped from their churches.WBEGW 10.1
A person could be a good Millerite without believing that Christ would come in 1844. In fact, certain of them disavowed the time-setting feature. They had in mind Christ’s statement concerning the Advent, that though we may know when “it is near, even at the doors,” we cannot know the “day and hour” (Matthew 24:33, 36). But despite this fact, critical onlookers naturally fastened on the rather startling point that the majority of Millerite leaders fixed on a date for the Advent, namely, October 22, 1844. And so because Christ did not come on the day forecast, all that Millerism stood for in prophetic preaching was made the butt of ridicule and declared to be false.WBEGW 10.2
The disappointment of the Millerites following October 22, 1844, can better be imagined than described. Unfortunately, some of them were so overwhelmed by the ridicule that now poured in on them from every side—though they had earlier met a certain amount of it—that they gave up wholly their belief in the prime scriptural and apostolic teaching regarding the Second Advent. Millerism, being at best a loose-knit movement, quickly began to fall apart. The major part of those who still held firm took the general position that not only was the preaching in general correct but also the date for the end of the world, except for some small error in computing the time. They believed that if October 22, 1844, was not the right date, then the arithmetic of Daniel 8:14 needed only a little correction. Hence they could hope that a somewhat later date would provide the fulfillment of their hopes. Another factor that tended to hold some of them together was that they had been disfellowshiped from their churches. They had nowhere to go—they were a spiritually homeless people.WBEGW 11.1