Louis Gaussen

The last of this sample group is a French-Swiss evangelical professor—François Samuel Robert Louis Gaussen. Louis Gaussen’s parents were Protestant refugees at Geneva when he was born in 1790. In 1814 Gaussen graduated from the University of Geneva, and the next year he was licensed to preach. The year following he was ordained to the ministry. For twelve years he served as pastor of the church at Satigny, near Geneva. Because of a clash with a group representing the majority of the Geneva clergy, Gaussen was suspended. As a result, he, with Merle d’Aubigné, the Swiss church historian, and others, formed the Evangelical Society to distribute Bibles and tracts and to foster missionary work. The group founded the Geneva Evangelical Society’s School of Theology, in which Gaussen accepted the professorship of theology in 1834.APAY 180.2

The doctrine of the second advent played an important part in Gaussen’s teaching. He gave special study to the book of Daniel, and the prophecies became the center of his teaching. Over a period of twenty-five years he held a position as a leading representative of orthodox Protestantism, and he exercised a wide influence through his preaching, teaching, and writing. He became one of the most prominent of the heralds of the return of Christ. Opposition led him to adopt the device of preparing lessons on the book of Daniel and teaching them to children. His actual purpose was to reach the parents. The plan succeeded and older persons filled the lecture hall to capacity. Gaussen constantly emphasized that Daniel 2 constitutes the “key to the world’s history,” and from that prophecy he branched out into others of Daniel and the Revelation.APAY 181.1

Louis Gaussen’s influence was widespread. The length of his career, his excellent scholarship, his clear-cut interpretations of prophecy, and his unique methods, attracted much attention, and turned the thinking of many persons to the second advent.APAY 181.2

Into a period of less than eighty years were compressed a most important group of events predicted in the Bible to be signs that the second advent was near. The brief biographical sketches of four men reveal how fitting were the times for the coming of the signs and the preaching of the advent. Yet how difficult it was, because of circumstances, to keep men’s minds long fixed on even such impressive tokens!APAY 181.3