OUR PRESENT POSITION: by James White

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Feb 11, 1873

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 41, No. 9.

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OUR PRESENT POSITION:

By James White

or, the Waiting, Watching Time.

BY ELDER JAMES WHITE.

NUMBER TWO.

Text: “Take ye heed, watch and pray; for ye know not when the time is.” Mark 13: 33.

There is strength in our position, as manifested in the conversion of infidels, Universalists, common worldlings, and professors from all the churches to the religion of the Bible, and in the united action and stability of our people. Their position being clear and satisfactory, they are not exposed to such influences and discouragements as shattered and nearly destroyed the once united, happy and strong body of not less than fifty thousand believers when the time passed. Their false positions on time, after the passing of the true time, proved their ruin.

And the position of those who rejected the light upon the sanctuary and its cleansing, and held that the periods reached to the coming of the Lord, and who at the same time rejected the new published times for the second advent, was a trying one, and drove many to adopt the several times upon the flimsiest evidences; while those who adopted the new times were doing their part to confuse the body of Adventists, undermine their faith in the Advent movement, and disgust the world.

The hand of God was evidently with William Miller in his conversion from deistical sentiments, his study of the Sacred Scriptures, and his public labors in the presentation of his views of the prophecies. When his positions were assailed by the theological giants of our country, he so successfully defended them as to give him still greater influence over the public mind, which resulted in bringing over to his views not a few of the ministers of the several denominations, and thousands out of their flocks. Among these were some of the ablest of the American clergy.

But age and infirmities were enfeebling the powers of the Low Hampton farmer. He had endured the hardships of the war of 1812, the toils incident to active farming life in a new country, and at the age of fifty entered upon his extremely laborious and successful career as a lecturer and writer, and was sixty-three years old at the time of the great disappointment in 1844. His work—the specific work to which God had called him—evidently closed with his disappointment. In his Apology and Defense, published in 1845, he speaks of his labors and their results as follows:—

“I labored extensively in all the New England and Middle States, in Ohio, Michigan, Maryland, the District of Columbia, and in Canada East and West, giving about four thousand lectures in something like five hundred different towns.

“I should think that about two hundred ministers embraced my views, in all the different parts of the United States and Canada; and that there have been about five hundred public lecturers. In all the sections of country where I labored,—not only in the towns I visited, but in those in their vicinity,—there were more or less that embraced the doctrine of the advent. In some places, only a very few, and in other places there have been a large number.

“In nearly a thousand places Advent congregations have been raised up, numbering, as nearly as I can estimate, some fifty thousand believers. On recalling to mind the several places of my labors, I can reckon up about six thousand instances of conversion from nature’s darkness to God’s marvelous light, the result of my personal labors alone; and I should judge the number to be much greater. Of this number I can recall to mind about seven hundred, who were, previously to their attending my lectures, infidels; and their number may have been twice as great. Happy results have also followed from the labors of my brethren, many of whom I would like to mention here, if my limits would permit.

“In all my labors I never had the desire or thought to establish any separate interest from that of existing denominations, or to benefit one at the expense of another. I thought to benefit all. Supposing that all Christians would rejoice in the prospect of Christ’s coming, and that those who could not see as I did would not love any the less those who should embrace this doctrine, I did not conceive there would ever be any necessity for separate meetings. My whole object was a desire to convert souls to God, to notify the world of a coming Judgment, and to induce my fellow-men to make that preparation of heart which will enable them to meet their God in peace. The great majority of those who were converted under my labors united with the various existing churches. When individuals came to me to inquire respecting their duty, I always told them to go where they would feel at home; and I never favored any one denomination in my advice to such.”

In the same address he also says: “My labors are principally ended. I shall leave to my younger brethren the task of contending for the truth. Many years I toiled alone; God has now raised up those who will fill my place. I shall not cease to pray for the spread of the truth.”

And again he says, in the following words which show the Christian spirit, and wisdom of the man whom God had called to put the armor on, and to fight in his cause under reproaches and abuses above measure, but who was meekly laying the armor off, and softening in spirit, and ripening for the hour when his probation should close:—

“I would exhort my Advent brethren to study the word diligently. Let no man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit. Avoid everything that shall cause offense. Let your lives be models of goodness and propriety. Let the adversary get no advantage over you. We have been disappointed; but disappointments will work for our good, if we make the right use of them. Be faithful. Be vigilant. Exhort with all long-suffering and patience. Let your conversation be in Heaven, from whence you look for the blessed hope. Avoid unnecessary controversy and questions that gender strifes. Be not many masters; all are not competent to advise and direct. God will raise up those to whom he will commit the direction of his cause. Be humble, be watchful, be patient, be persevering. ‘And may the God of peace sanctify you wholly, and preserve you blameless unto the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ.’”

While suffering under a sense of his disappointment, and witnessing the decline of the cause he had labored to build up, the apostasy of some and the fanaticism of others whom he had loved in the truth, he looked back in obedience to the apostles injunction—“call to remembrance the former days”—to that period in which God made him a leader in the work of giving the first message, Rev. 14: 6, 7, with great pleasure.

“When I look back to the period when we began to publish the news of a coming Saviour, I think it the happiest time of my life. How were our hearts refreshed by the readiness of the dear brethren in Christ to hear, believe, and obey, the simple gospel of the kingdom! With what delight have I, in company with many of the dear, anxious children of God read and re-read the Scriptures, searched diligently and compared the prophets, Jesus Christ, and his apostles, to see if these things were so! What glorious light I have often seen in that holy book while thus engaged! And with what joy have I taken sweet communion with kindred hearts in the house of God, where our faith was more and more established by the word of His grace; where our prayers were mingled at the same altar, and arose together as incense to the mercy-seat of our Redeemer, for a preparation to meet the coming glories, which we then expected shortly to realize; where our hearts burned with love and gratitude to God for the good news of the near approach of the King of kings; where our songs of praise and hallelujahs to the Lamb cheered our drooping spirits, and prepared us more vigorously to pursue our weary pilgrimage to the land of promise, which, from evidence to us conclusive, and which I am not ashamed of, we soon expect to reach!

“Then, heart beat in unison with heart, soul mingled with soul, and love, holy, heavenly, divine, united us in that oneness of gospel truth; and prejudice and party were dissipated from our thoughts like midnight darkness, or the morning mists by the rising sun. This was a time of love, a time of faith, working by love and purifying the heart. It was this hope, “the blessed hope,” that made us purify ourselves from our sectarian prejudices and bigotry.

“I have often thought that we then enjoyed a foretaste of the love and fellowship of the saints in light. Why is it not so now? The reason is as obvious as the sun at noonday. We have been drawn from our first principles by wicked and designing men, who have crept in among us and drawn us into parties, to follow men instead of God, and to form new tests instead of the Bible. Some of our lecturers first began the confusion, by declaring an unholy crusade against the sects, which brought in men of blood instead of men of peace. True, after the manner of men, the sects had provoked us to the course we took by all the wicked arts and misrepresentations of our views and motives that human and satanic agency could invent,—by slanders, ridicule, and wresting the word of God from the meaning which had long been laid down in their own creeds, and departing from those rules by which their fathers, for centuries, had applied mystic Babylon to the church of Rome. We were not called, in my humble opinion, to engage in so universal a war. I think we have, in this, ‘left our first principles,’ which were, to preach the blessed hope, and beseech men to be ready for the ‘glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ,’ without personal or denominational considerations. While we pursued this course, God blessed us in our work. We were commanded by the Word to be patient, sober, to judge not, not to be high-minded, but to fear, and, by so doing, manifest the same spirit that was in Christ. What have been the fruits of this departure from the plain line of duty? Surely they have not been love, peace, and joy, such as we formerly experienced, when we believed in our hearts that Christ was at the door.”

We have quoted largely from the addresses of William Miller after the time passed, that the reader may understand the real position of the man whom God had led in the great movement which we solemnly believe occurred in the fulfillment of first message of Rev. 14. Seventh-day Adventists believe that the third message, now being proclaimed, and the preparatory work for the coming of the Son of man now in progress with those who embrace it, is by the direct providence of God, in fulfillment of certain portions of his word. And this position makes the conclusion that the first and second messages of the same series were given under the same providence, and that God raised up William Miller to bring out the great truths of the first message, appear, to say the least, very reasonable.

Hence we are the more willing to let him speak for himself, that the candid reader may correctly view this representative and providential servant of Jesus Christ, whose name is associated in the public mind with Adventism everywhere.

A Methodist presiding elder, of near kin, once remarked to us, “But few public men grow old gracefully.” William Miller entered upon his public labors as a lecturer upon the prophecies in the strength of manhood, after acquiring habits of self-reliance, firmness, and undaunted courage as an army and civil officer. And this stamp of character, sanctified by the grace of God, constituted one of the important qualifications

necessary to meet the different forms of determined opposition and persecution which he met.

And then, after serving himself to the battle for thirteen years, forming the strongest combative habits, at that period of his life, as he was about sixty years of age, when strong men’s habits generally become very strongly established, to see him calmly, and gently, laying off the armor; and under his bitter disappointment, to witness his resignation to the will of God, and his affectionate appeals and warnings to his younger brethren to be holy men of God, ready for the coming of the Son of man, carries the strongest conviction to candid minds that God had raised him up to do the very work which he did do. As he thus laid his armor off he said to his brethren that his work was done. In this we can see the hand of God. He had spent the strength of his ripe manhood in giving the first message. His burden fell off, which he interpreted, for a short time, that the work of warning sinners was done. But the great work of the third message was then in the future, and if God designed to use him in giving it, he would have given him a new lease of life, and opened the subject to his mind. But he did not see this work and feel its importance; and why should he? He had done his work faithfully and well, and was soon to sleep in Jesus.

It is proper here to state that William Miller did not view the second message as we do. Neither did he change his views upon the immortality and Sabbath questions. Having finished his mission in giving the first message, and having reached the point in respect to age, and debility from his extremely arduous labors as a lecturer for thirteen years, with no periods of cessation, only when compelled by sickness, the candid reader can see the love and wisdom of God in not impressing his mind with those subjects which he could not investigate and vindicate before the people.

Having done, and well done, the great work given him to do, the probation of public labor with him successfully past according to the will of God, he could say in the language of Paul, “I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith; henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, shall give me at that day; and not to me only, but unto all them also that love his appearing.” 2 Tim. 4: 7, 8.

It is just what might be expected, that those who understandingly embrace the principles of the third message, would first inquire relative to the second and first messages; and would feel the deepest interest in the man whom God raised up to lead off in the opening work of giving the great threefold warning to the world.

Those who have been continually publishing a new time upon the heels of a failure, have been not only disgusting the public, but, at each effort, have been virtually condemning the position of William Miller on the time question, and losing regard for his valuable labors. These can have but little, if any, interest in his life and views.

And on the other hand, those who stood with him on the time question in 1844, and have confessed to the world that they were in error, and have given up their past second-advent experience, virtually condemning his positions and work, and can take, comparatively, but little interest in the history of his life, views, and labors. Both of these classes have departed from the position of William Miller, and have denied, or, at least, hold very lightly, their past second-advent experience, and have left the field to Seventh-day Adventists who stand upon the ‘original advent faith.’ And while occupying the position we do relative to the past movement, the public have reason to expect that, while we hold that William Miller moved in the providence of God in his work,

we should publish the facts as they existed in his life, views, and labors, in explanation and defense, so far as such facts constitute a defense of our position.

Seventh-day Adventists still love the Advent name, and hold it very dear to them. And while they hold the name, consistency would lead them to cherish, and also hold dear, the very means that made them Adventists. To still hold the Advent name, and turn round and curse, or deny, or even hold lightly, the means God employed to make them what they are, seems the very climax of inconsistency. When Seventh-day Adventists can no longer honor the great second-advent movement, and feel called upon to confess to the world that the pioneers of the cause were mistaken on the very calculation that shook the world, and which resulted in making Adventists a separate people, then they will drop “Adventists” from their name, and pass for simply Sabbatarian Christians.