p. 117 | Adventism-An Anecdote by E. Goodrich

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Mar 26, 1872

Adventism—An Anecdote.

By E. Goodrich

It seems that quite a popular feeling or sentiment has obtained that Adventism is a new thing under the sun, a kind of mushroom thing, which, having grown up in a night like Jonah’s gourd, is destined also to perish in a night. The following incident may serve to illustrate public opinion, and Bible facts:

Some twenty years ago, while visiting friends in the State of Illinois, the following anecdote occurred. It was a warm and cloudy day in early wheat harvest, a day too wet either to cut wheat, or plow out corn (for Illinois farmers plow corn as late as wheat harvest), that quite a number of neighbors gathered at the house of the friends where I was staying. After talking upon several pleasant topics, the weather, the fine growing crops, prairie farming compared with woodland farming, and, as it was known that I was an Adventist, the subject of Adventism and the second coming of Christ was introduced.

There happened to be present a kind of ex-preacher, a man who had preached, and did even then sometimes preach and exhort. He seemed to take the lead in talking, and appeared anxious to learn what Adventists believed. Thus, perhaps, twenty minutes or half an hour was occupied in discussing the various points of Advent faith, asking and answering questions.

At this point, the conversation slackened, and the elder, as if to recover some lost thought, but in reality the better to secure the attention of those who were listening, stopped, and, looking round upon the friends, and elevating his eyebrows with a very knowing look, as much as to say, I know all about it, turned and said, Can you tell me who first preached this doctrine? He was a shrewd man, and all this time he had been asking questions, not for information, but to make a telling thrust against what he believed a modern heresy. He seemed to think that only one answer could be given to the question, viz., William Miller.

But another answer could be given. William Miller, it is true, preached the doctrine of the second personal advent of Christ, yet he was not the first. And hastily passing over in my mind, the facts that John Wesley, Martin Luther, all the apostles, and New-Testament writers, the Saviour, and all the Old-Testament prophets, had preached this doctrine, my mind rested on Enoch, the seventh from Adam. And my countenance, if not my words, may have betrayed the satisfaction that I felt in answering him, Enoch, the seventh from Adam, I believe was the first to preach this doctrine, as we read in Jude 14, 15: “And Enoch also, the seventh from Adam, prophesied of these, saying, Behold the Lord cometh with ten thousand of his saints, to execute judgment upon all, and to convince all that are ungodly among them, of all their ungodly deeds, which they have ungodly committed, and of all the hard speeches which ungodly sinners have spoken against him.”

The reply that he made, “Oh! well, I know, I know that,” could not relieve him from the embarrassment under which he was placed by the unexpected answer that was given. And it seems a matter of great surprise that so many who have the Bible, and read it almost daily, should be so ignorant of its teachings, and so prejudiced against the doctrine of the second personal advent of Christ, and those who advocate it, as to associate them with every modern humbug, Mormonism, Spiritualism, Free-love-ism, &c. Indeed, no doctrine contained in the Scriptures is more plainly, positively, and fully taught, than that of which we are now speaking; yea, the entire volume of prophetic truth may be divided into two grand divisions, viz., those prophecies that pertain to the suffering of Christ, and those that speak of the glory that should follow. The sufferings of Christ cover the entire period of his incarnation, humility, and death. The glory that should follow contemplates his resurrection, his ascension to the right hand of the Father, and his coming again in the clouds of heaven, with power and great glory, to reward every man as his work shall be.

And many of those same prophecies that speak of his humility, speak also of his exaltation. And how any one having, and reading and professing to believe, those scriptures, can ridicule the doctrine of Christ’s second advent to earth, is a most unaccountable mystery.

E. GOODRICH.