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Tell It to the World--For It Doesn't Belong Only to the People Who Happen to Be Seventh-Day Adventists Today

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Tell It to the World--For It Doesn't Belong Only to the People Who Happen to Be Seventh-Day Adventists Today TTEELLLL IITT TTOO TTHHEE WWOORRLLDD Mervyn Maxwell 1 Preface Seventh-day Adventists do not regard themselves as making up any mere "religious society." They look at their church as a dynamic spiritual movement entrusted with a momentous message and motivated by an impelling sense of mission. Their message is all about Jesus: The "everlasting gospel" of Christ's dying and rising again to give people new hearts; the "advent hope" in Christ's coming again to give people a new home; and the "present truth" about Christ's contemporary ministry in heaven, blotting out sin in a unique sense and offering as never before to make people healthy, holy, and happy. Their mission is to take such good news and tell it to the world--for it doesn't belong only to the people who happen to be Seventh-day Adventists today. It is a universal message for everyone everywhere. It is to be taken to "every nation, and kindred, and tongue, and people"; to all cities, to all villages; to every country, commonwealth, colony, and "creature." That is, "person." (Mark 16:15) 2 One book cannot tell all there is to know about Seventh-day Adventists. Selectively, this one tells most about how their movement began, because that explains best what makes it go, and how it hopes to end, soon. 3 Chapter 1 "No, God. I Cannot Preach!" "No, God. No! "Thou knowest that I cannot preach. "I cannot preach!" Before William Miller surrendered to the Lord and became the leader of the great Second Advent awakening in America, he argued with God and struggled with his conscience for thirteen years. It needs to be emphasized at the outset that he did not want to tell the world that Christ was coming soon. [1] In an age when nine tenths of the American population lived on farms, William Miller too was a farmer. But he was not an ordinary one. As a boy, after the family had fallen asleep, he had read books, Lincoln style, by the light of pitch knots in his log cabin in Low Hampton, New York. Married 4 in 1803 and settled among the Green Mountains, in Poultney, Vermont, he quickly exhausted the local library. His new wife, Lucy, did many of the farm chores herself so he could find extra time for study. Sociable and energetic as well as studious, Miller was successively elected constable, deputy sheriff, and justice of the peace. Soon he was wealthy enough to own two horses, wise enough to have close friendships in both political parties of the day--and worldly enough to give up his boyhood faith, such as it was, and turn Deist. Brought up in a Baptist home, William as a lad had worried seriously for a time about his soul. He tried to find peace by strict obedience to his parents and by sacrificing cherished possessions, but to no avail. He continued to believe the Bible, but he fretted over its seeming ineffectiveness and contradictions. But after his marriage, in the days when America was young, Miller read the books that Jefferson, Franklin, and the other Founding Fathers had read the writings of David Hume, Voltaire, and Thomas Paine. Other thinking people in Poultney read the same books, and soon he 5 adopted Deism, their attractive but superficial philosophy about the universe. According to Deism, God created the world and set it in operation under unalterable laws of cause and effect. In harmony with these laws, men ought to live clean, kindly, and honest lives; but to believe in prayer, a Saviour, or life after death was regarded as childish superstition. Miracles, forgiveness, and resurrection would require God to act contrary to His own natural laws, and this was unthinkable. God had wound up the world like a watch and left it to run on its own. Not Christianity but decent, law-and-order Americanism would bring out the best in a man, Miller concluded; and his house became a regular meeting place for the patriotic but irreligious couples of his new hometown. Back in Hampton, Miller's mother heard what was going on in Poultney and was deeply concerned. She begged her brother-in-law and her aging father, both of them Baptist clergy, to visit 6 William from time to time, and she promised that her prayers would go with them. William warmly welcomed Uncle Elihu and Grandfather Phelps, but after they left he mimicked them mischievously to the huge enjoyment of his friends. Convinced that love of country rather than love for Christ was mankind's greatest hope, Miller volunteered for service in the War of 1812. Forty- seven others also volunteered, on condition that they serve directly under his command! The War of 1812, America's second military struggle for independence, was a desultory, do- nothing affair most of the time. The Battle of Plattsburg, fought on a shore of Lake Champlain not many miles from Miller's boyhood home, was a brilliant exception. On the morning of September 11, 1814, the British boasted a land force of 15,000 regulars and a small, well-equipped navy on the lake. The Americans numbered only 5500, gloomily certain of defeat. 7 The outcome was a total surprise. "Sir: It is over, it is done," reported an enthusiastic American officer at twenty minutes past two that afternoon. "The British fleet has struck to the American flag. Great slaughter on both sides--they are in plain view, where I am now writing.... The sight was majestic, it was noble, it was grand. This morning, at ten o'clock the British opened a very heavy and destructive fire upon us, both by water and land. Their ... rockets flew like hailstones.... You have no idea of the battle.... You must conceive what we feel, for I cannot describe it." The officer reviewed with pride the part that he had played. "I am satisfied that I can fight. I know I am no coward.... Three of my men are wounded by a shell which burst within two feet of me." "Huzza! Huzza!" he exclaimed in his excitement; and then, as twenty or thirty prisoners were led into the fort, he carefully signed his name: 8 "Yours forever, William Miller." The war ended in 1815. Captain William Miller had demonstrated his aptitude for leadership years before he involuntarily founded a religious movement. But as he returned home to milk and plow and sow and reap, his mind probed restlessly into the religion of the patriots. By the law of cause and effect, he reasoned, the victory at Plattsburg ought to have gone to the British. Their troops were veterans who had just defeated Napoleon, and they outnumbered the Americans three to one. A modern historian has called Plattsburg the "decisive action" of the war, [2] and the American commodore, in his report to the war office at the time, gave the glory to God: "The Almighty has been pleased to grant us a signal victory." [3] Was it possible, perhaps, that God had taken a personal interest in America? And what about the shell that exploded at his feet without hurting him or killing his friends? Was there a God who cared? 9 He moved from Poultney back to Low Hampton. His father having died, he paid off the mortgage on his boyhood home so his mother could live on the place debt free; then he settled on 200 acres nearby. To be polite, Miller attended the local Baptist church whenever his uncle had the sermon. Otherwise he stayed away. "We missed you at service last Sunday," said his mother tenderly. "You can't expect me there when Uncle's gone, Mother." "Why not, my son?" "It's the way the deacons read the sermon." "They do the best they can, I'm sure." "When Uncle's away, Mother, why don't they let me read it?" 10 Thus Miller unwittingly set a trap for himself, and the good brethren whom he laughed at so merrily made sure that he was caught in it. The sermons they assigned him to read from Alexander Proudfit's Practical Discourses sobered him. His doubts about Deism deepened. September 11, 1816, rolled around, the second anniversary of the victory at Plattsburg. A public dance was scheduled; a sermon, too, on the night before. The visiting evangelist sent the people home bathed in tears. A revival was on and the dance was off. Next Sunday it was Miller's turn to read again, this time a homily in Proudfit called, "The Duty of Parents to Their Children." [4] Overcome by emotion in the middle, he could not make it to the end. In despair over his sins, Miller imagined how good it would be to throw himself into the arms of a Saviour and trust completely in His grace. 11 He needed a Saviour. The world needed a Saviour. But did such a wonderful being exist? Back to the Bible he went; and in its covers he found the Saviour whom he sought. "I was constrained to admit that the Scriptures must be a revelation from God," he wrote later. "They became my delight, and in Jesus I found a friend." [5] Immediately he began regular family worship. But his worldly friends taunted him now, as before he had often taunted other Christians. "How do you know the Bible is the Word of God?" they teased. "What about its contradictions?" "If the Bible is the Word of God," Miller responded staunchly, "then everything it contains can be understood, and all its parts made to harmonize.
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