p. 27 | Loving and Making Lies by Dudley Marvin Canright

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jan 18, 1870

Loving and Making Lies.

By Dudley Marvin Canright

Not only the makers of lies shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone, but also the lovers of lies shall have their part with them. Rev. xxii, 15. The devil and his agents will always invent some lie against the people of God. David said, “every day they wrest my words.” Ps. lvi, 5. Paul said, “We be slanderously reported, and some affirm that we say, Let us do evil that good may come.” Rom. iii, 8. Christ's words, also, they misrepresented, and thus tried to prove him an impostor. John ii, 18–21; Matt. xxvi, 61.

But these agents of Satan are not all dead yet. They greatly delight in reporting slanderous stories about the Adventists. Here is an excellent specimen which I happened to find the other day, at Knoxville, Iowa. It was first published in the Weekly Blade, in Pella, and then copied in the Marion County Democrat, and I know not into how many more papers, nor how widely this unmitigated falsehood has been circulated. Here it is:

“The Weekly Blade says that Mr. Gottlieb, a citizen of Pella, was on the 19th day of July at Sigourney, where the Adventists are very numerous, and who were on that day expecting the world to come to an end. They had stretched a large tent in the suburbs, where they had all congregated, and were spending the day in prayer, &c. From early morning sentries were posted on the four corners of their camp, whose duty it was to give the alarm as soon as they saw the earth commence to burn. Mr. Gottlieb, who had never heard of the prophecy, was very much astonished. An old man who had been left at home alone, and at whose house Mr. G. had stopped to water his horse, warned him very earnestly not to continue his journey to Pella, but to return to the tent, and prepare for the great occurrence. Although the circumstance is laughable, yet it is strictly true. It is not necessary to add that the Adventists were very badly disappointed. It may be, that some of the people of that section will smell fire hereafter, but not from the burning of the earth.”

Doubtless many a bigot has read this with the greatest delight, and showed it to his neighbors to prove what fanatics these Adventists were, saying, this certainly must be true, for it was stated by an eye-witness. Now there is scarcely an item of truth in the whole of it. 1. Myself and Bro. Butler were at Sigourney at the time mentioned. But instead of the Adventists being very numerous there, no one had yet embraced our views, and only one family of Adventists lived there. 2. We did not set the 10th day of July, nor any other day, for the world to come to an end. 3. No such meeting on that, or any other day, ever took place in Sigourney. 4. The placing of sentries to give the alarm is simply nonsense; and finally, there is nothing true about it. But this report says with regard to this, “that it is strictly true.” This will do to be classed with the stories about ascension robes, &c.

D. M. CANRIGHT.

Monroe, Nov. 1, 1869.