DALE RATZLAFF
In 2003 I was asked by the Worldwide Church of God to give a presentation on the topic of the Sabbath at their Eastern USA Conference. They paid for Carolyn and me to fly to New York and provided a rental car for us. The conference was in upstate New York in the fall of the year. The country was beautiful with the red, yellow, and green leaves on the maple trees. We paid for a few more days for the rental car and decided we should visit some of the historic places on the East coast while we were there.
One of the most interesting stops we made was at the William Miller exhibit, 1614 County Route 11, Fair Haven, Vermont. We went inside Miller Chapel and noticed the short pulpit. William Miller was a short man and did not want to peek over the top of a regular-sized lectern. On the front wall behind the platform was the Miller slogan, “For at the time appointed the end shall be.”
We visited “Ascension Rock” where many of the Millerites met on October 22, 1844. We were told that this rock was not only important for the Millerites, but was a very unusual rock for the area. At the William Miller exhibit there were many pictures associated with the Millerite message, including copies of “Miller’s Chart” listing the fifteen lines of Bible prophecy reaching to 1843.1 I still have the large chart we purchased there. We noticed that the people running the exhibit stated that the revised prophecy of Miller reaching to October 22, 1844, was the foundation of the Seventh-day Adventist church. I did not tell them that we were former Adventists.
I asked them why a church would want to be founded on a false prophecy. They seemed to be at a loss for any reasonable answer.
I asked them why a church would want to be founded on a false prophecy. They seemed to be at a loss for any reasonable answer. One of them stated that Miller’s interpretation was indeed correct, only that he had the wrong event. Instead of Christ coming to earth on October 22, 1844, Christ started a work of judgment. Once again, we were happy to be out from under the pressure of having to resort to all kinds of out-of-context reinterpretation to support one’s theology.
If you want to find more information on William Miller’s influence on the formation of Adventism, read Ellen White’s Early Writings, my Cultic Doctrine2 and Days of Delusion; A Strange Bit of History by Clara Endicott Sears.
INTRODUCING OUR NEW ONLINE BOOK
We will be posting a new chapter of Days of Delusion each Friday beginning next week. Days of Delusion will fill in many of the blanks in Adventist history. I found this to be a fascinating, well-documented3 story of the Millerites waiting for the Second Coming of Christ. You will see that Clara Sears mentions many of the same names included in Adventist history.
In this book you will read about some of the ladies making white ascension robes to be worn on October 22. The hope of the expected return of Christ on a specific day was mixed with hilarious joy, anxiety, and even terrifying fear. When that day came and went, the letdown turned into desperation leading to emotional breakdown for some and fanaticism for others. This event was, and is, still known as the “Great Disappointment.”
Some of the Adventists reinterpreted Miller’s prophecy ,and from this group arose the “shut-door Adventists” who became Seventh-day Adventists. Others who rejected the shut-door theology were later known as “open-door Adventists”. I encourage you to read this book that will be included in the next several editions of Life Assurance Ministry’s weekly Proclamation! It will show the danger of following proof-text prophecy and the need for sound, contextual Bible study. †
ENDNOTES
- See page 108 in original printed version of Days of Delusion.
- www.SabbathInChrist.com
- Note the approximately 170 names of people interviewed in the Acknowledgement (see Preface).
DAYS OF DELUSION CONTENTS PAGE
- The Sabbath: From Ritual to Reality - December 19, 2024
- Wise Men Still Seek Him - December 12, 2024
- The Gospel is Good News! - December 5, 2024