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toxiczen
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Jehovah Witnesses / Seventh-Day Adventists items
William Miller
William Miller was a farmer from upstate New York who was a veteran of the War of 1812. He started telling people in 1831 that the Biblical prophecies described in Revelation had yet to transpire. And if that wasn't enough, he revealed that they were about to.
Basically, Miller singlehandedly revived the "End Is Near" mania. Lots of other religious figures began making similar apocalyptic claims. Miller drew a large following, and in 1840, he finally announced a specific range of dates for the second coming of Jesus Christ. He said it would occur sometime between March 21, 1843 and March 21, 1844.
When March 22, 1844 arrived without any perceptible return of Christ, it was kind of a problem for Miller. Thousands of followers had given away their possessions in anticipation of the big day. Not good. But then one of Miller's followers realized that his calculations had been off by one year, because he neglected to count the BC to AD rollover. So he revised the date to October 22 and tried again.
In October, of course, the same damn thing happened. Except this time, there weren't any arithmetic errors to blame. Upwards of 100,000 Millerites had expected to finally meet God Jr. Many of them dressed in white robes and climbed up on roofs and hilltops. But the chosen night came and went. The milestone would come to be known as the Great Disappointment of 1844.
According to one believer: "The world made merry over the old Prophet's predicament. The taunts and jeers of the 'scoffers' were well-nigh unbearable." Nevertheless, Miller hung tough. The following month, he expressed his never-say-die attitude in a letter:
Although I have been twice disappointed, I am not yet cast down or discouraged ... My hope in the coming of Christ is as strong as ever. I have done only what after years of sober consideration I felt a solemn duty to do ... I have fixed my mind upon another time, and here I mean to stand until God gives me more light. And that is Today, TODAY, and TODAY, until He comes, and I see HIM for whom my soul yearns.
William Miller finally did see "HIM" when he died on December 20, 1849. Almost overnight, the remnants of his church splintered over doctrinal differences. This fragmentation ultimately gave rise to a variety of denominations, including the Jehovah Witnesses and the Seventh-Day Adventists.
In the 20th century, an offshoot of the Seventh-Day Adventists updated Miller's prophecy by claiming a Biblical ETA of April 22, 1959. (Yahweh's bastard child was a no-show yet again.) This group, calling itself the Davidian Seventh-day Adventists, broke into two pieces in the resulting schism. One product of this fission decided to call themselves the Branch Davidians.
timeline
1 Jan 1843 William Miller commits to a range of dates for the Second Coming: "I am fully conviced that somewhere between March 21st, 1843 and March 21st, 1844, according to the Jewish mode of time computation, Christ will come."
21 Mar 1844 Contrary to William Miller's prediction, Jesus misses His deadline for returning to Earth. Shortly thereafter, Miller recalculates and comes up with October 22, 1844.
22 Oct 1844 The followers of William Miller experience the Great Disappointment when Jesus apparently fails to make His second scheduled appearance.
20 Dec 1849 William Miller dies.
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~from the rotten archives: >CLICK<
Last revised by toxiczen, 10/22/2007, 5:44 pm
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"Love is the strongest force the world possesses, yet! it is the humblest imaginable."
~Gandhi
"it is easier to tell the truth: you don't have to remember anything"
~Mark Twain
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10/22/2007, 5:43 pm
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Lesigner Girl
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Re: Jehovah Witnesses / Seventh-Day Adventists items
I remember going to church one Saturday with my grandma (dad's mom) when I was a little girl. She smiled at me and said, "You know what today is? Today is the Sabbath," and the way she said it made me think it was a special holiday. Well, the day was special for her, but I later realized that the Sabbath is really just the 7th day of the week. Well, I suppose that is pretty special in itself, for those of us who work Monday through Friday, but that's not quite how she thought of it. 
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10/22/2007, 8:09 pm
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MaximusDementis
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Re: Jehovah Witnesses / Seventh-Day Adventists items
Cool history lesson, Paul. Interestingly enough, Jesus was an apocalyptic Jew himself, preaching the coming end of the world. His followers were convinced it was going to end in their time. The author of Revelations certainly preached the end of the world in his time, but since it didn't happen why then other interpretations have been placed upon that rather weird, enigmatic book.
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10/22/2007, 10:31 pm
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Lesigner Girl
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Re: Jehovah Witnesses / Seventh-Day Adventists items
William Miller is every bit as relevant to JWs and SDAs as Constantine is to Christianity as a whole.
Without Constantine, the Bible wouldn't exist, all the stories that are now contained within the Bible would be just as scattered as the stories of Zeus or Horus, and Christianity never would have been forced on everyone as the Roman Empire's official religion.
Without William Miller, Miller's doctrines wouldn't exist. Without his doctrines, there wouldn't have been people arguing over these doctrines. Without people arguing these doctrines, we wouldn't have the splinter groups that originated from his church, along with the revised doctrines that came about as a result of those arguments.
Of course, Miller couldn't have done what he did if it weren't for Constantine before him, but JWs and SDAs wouldn't exist today if it weren't for Miller.
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10/23/2007, 7:29 pm
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Morwen Oronor
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Re: Jehovah Witnesses / Seventh-Day Adventists items
Hey this is fun reading old pasts and reviving them.
I've had experiences with both these two religions. My in-laws are all JWs (without exception) I've been with my husband for over 20 years in that time my mother-in-law (who is almost 90 and still campaigns for the JWs) has had only one meal in my house and that was because she wanted to see where we'd moved to. My husband only phones her when she is sick or sees her when she's in hospital and the rest of them also have only visited us since we moved to the coast out of curiosity. I threw the cat among the pigeons when I told them I was Jewish - they knew they'd never convert me then so they leave me alone.
And the SDAs, when we were growing up, to help my mother get over being married to a Jew, she joined these people. She used to schlep us to Saturday services occasionally until I started working at 16 and said no more. They wanted 10% of my salary despite the fact that I wasn't interested in either their or any other religion. When my mom got older and stopped giving them money, they dumped her.
I agree with what LG has said, and having just written exams on the subject, without Constantine's being too lazy to sort out religious differences himself and handing over too much power to the church to solve their own problems, there might never have been all this over-emphasis on religion, and the Dark Ages would never have happened, who knows we might have gone to the moon 1,000 years ago without all the mumbo-jumbo.
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8/6/2008, 12:15 am
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Morwen Oronor
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Re: Jehovah Witnesses / Seventh-Day Adventists items
Sorry, forgot to click the notification thingy. So I'll know when there's a reply.
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8/6/2008, 12:16 am
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Lesigner Girl
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Re: Jehovah Witnesses / Seventh-Day Adventists items
...who knows we might have gone to the moon 1,000 years ago without all the mumbo-jumbo.
Wow, Mo. I have actually said the same thing myself on a few occasions, and had to re-read my posts in this thread to see if I had said it here. It shouldn't surprise me to see someone else saying that, though, because it really is true.
At the top of this board, I have revolving quotes. One of them is this:
If that's hard for anyone to read, it says "To assert that the earth revolves around the sun is as erroneous as to claim that Jesus was not born of a virgin." It was said by Cardinal Bellarmine in 1617 (almost 400 years ago), during the trial of Galileo.
For those who don't know, the trial of Galileo was typical of the Inquisition, one of many setbacks of scientific progress, and he was on trial for heresy because he stated a fact that contradicted the Bible and Christian dogma. Yesterday it was the heliocentric nature of our solar system and alchemy, today it's evolution and stem cell research. The only difference is that these days, our great scientists aren't being murdered for their heretical ideas and so-called sorcery, but they still manage to hinder scientific progress in other ways.
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8/6/2008, 9:08 pm
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PM Lesigner Girl
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