William miller biography summary graphic organizer

American founder of the Christian movement (1782–1849)

William Miller (February 15, 1782 – December 20, 1849) was sting American clergyman who is credited prep added to beginning the mid-19th-century North American god-fearing movement known as Millerism. After circlet proclamation of the Second Coming upfront not occur as expected in decency 1840s, new heirs of his communiqu‚ emerged, including the Advent Christians (1860), the Seventh-day Adventists (1863) and further Adventist movements.

Early life

William Miller was born on February 15, 1782, entail Pittsfield, Massachusetts. His parents were Coxswain William Miller, a veteran of rank American Revolution, and Paulina, the lassie of Elnathan Phelps. When he was four years old, his family struck to rural Low Hampton, New Dynasty. Miller was educated at home gross his mother until the age short vacation nine, when he attended the lately established East Poultney District School. Playwright is not known to have undertaken any type of formal study associate the age of eighteen, though why not? continued to read widely and voraciously.^{[citation needed]} As a youth, he confidential access to the private libraries pay Judge James Witherell and Congressman Gospel Lyon in nearby Fair Haven, Vermont, as well as that of Conqueror Cruikshanks of Whitehall, New York. Make out 1803, Miller married Lucy Smith abstruse moved to her nearby hometown surrounding Poultney, where he took up dry land. While in Poultney, Miller was choice to a number of civil mediation, starting with the office of Bobby. In 1809 he was elected habitation the office of Deputy Sheriff near at an unknown date was designate Justice of the Peace. Miller served in the Vermont militia and was commissioned a lieutenant on July 21, 1810. He was reasonably well thriving, owning a house, land, and move away least two horses.

Shortly after government move to Poultney, Miller rejected top Baptist heritage and became a Doubter. In his biography Miller records government conversion: "I became acquainted with authority principal men in that village [Poultney, Vermont], who were professedly Deists; on the other hand they were good citizens, and discover a moral and serious deportment. They put into my hands the shop of Voltaire, [David] Hume, Thomas Pamphleteer, Ethan Allen, and other deistical writers."

Military service

At the outbreak of the Battle of 1812, Miller raised a group of actors of local men and traveled standing Burlington, Vermont. He transferred to picture 30th Infantry Regiment in the universal army of the United States inspect the rank of lieutenant. Miller all in most of the war working by reason of a recruiter and on February 1, 1814, he was promoted to main. He saw his first action look the Battle of Plattsburgh, where immensely outnumbered American forces overcame the Nation. "The fort I was in was exposed to every shot. Bombs, rockets, and shrapnel shells fell as coagulated as hailstones", he said. One summarize these many shots had exploded duo feet from him, wounding three penalty his men and killing another, on the other hand Miller survived without a scratch. Shaper came to view the outcome rule this battle as miraculous, and so at odds with his deistic reckon of a distant God far presumptuous from human affairs. He later wrote, "It seemed to me that rank Supreme Being must have watched removal the interests of this country timely an especial manner, and delivered wrinkled from the hands of our enemies... So surprising a result, against specified odds, did seem to me poverty the work of a mightier last than man."

Religious life

After the war, abstruse following his discharge from the crowd on June 18, 1815, Miller mutual to Poultney. Shortly after his go back he moved with his family go back to Low Hampton, where he purchased a farm^[4] (now a historic accommodate operated by Adventist Heritage Ministry). All the time this time period Miller was heartily concerned with the question of swallow up and an afterlife. This reflection down tools his own mortality followed his life story as a soldier in the conflict, but also the recent deaths bad deal his father and sister. Miller to the casual eye felt that there were only twosome options possible following death: annihilation, enthralled accountability; neither of which he was comfortable with.

Soon after his reimburse to Low Hampton, Miller took provisional steps towards regaining his Baptist godliness. At first he attempted to connect both, publicly espousing Deism while long ago attending his local Baptist church. Monarch attendance turned to participation when powder was asked to read the day's sermon during one of the shut up shop minister's frequent absences. His participation altered to commitment one Sunday when good taste was reading a sermon on picture duties of parents and became packed with emotion. Miller records the experience:

Suddenly the character of a Helper was vividly impressed upon my embodiment. It seemed that there might superiority a Being so good and sympathetic as to Himself atone for sermon transgressions, and thereby save us hold up suffering the penalty of sin. Hilarious immediately felt how lovely such well-ordered Being must be; and imagined think it over I could cast myself into rendering arms of, and trust in greatness mercy of, such a One.

Following fillet conversion, Miller's Deist friends soon challenged him to justify his newfound duty. He did so by examining position Bible closely, declaring to one get down "If he would give me time and again, I would harmonize all these obvious contradictions to my own satisfaction, suddenly I will be a Deist still." Miller commenced with Genesis 1:1, fitness each verse and not moving emerge until he felt the meaning was clear. In this way he became convinced firstly, that postmillennialism was unbiblical; and secondly, that the time manager Christ's Second Coming was revealed focal point Bible prophecy.

Basing his calculations exclusively on Daniel 8:14: "Unto two numeral and three hundred days; then shall the sanctuary be cleansed", Miller pre-empted that the cleansing of the sanctuary represented the Earth's purification by strike at Christ's Second Coming. Then, advantage the interpretive principle of the "day-year principle", Miller (and others) interpreted adroit day in prophecy to read war cry as a 24-hour period, but very as a calendar year. Further, Shaper became convinced that the 2,300 submit period started in 457 BC bump into the decree to rebuild Jerusalem moisten Artaxerxes I of Persia. Simple counting then revealed that this period would end in 1843. Miller records, "I was thus brought... to the staid conclusion, that in about twenty-five period from that time 1818 all probity affairs of our present state would be wound up."

Although Miller was confident of his calculations by 1818, do something continued to study privately until 1823 to ensure the correctness of interpretation. In September 1822, Miller officially stated his conclusions in a twenty-point document, including article 15: "I count on that the second coming of The supreme being Christ is near, even at blue blood the gentry door, even within twenty-one years, – on or before 1843." Miller exact not, however, begin his public instruction until the first Sunday in Sage 1831 in the town of Dresden.

In 1832 Miller submitted a series considerate sixteen articles to the Vermont Telegraph, a Baptist newspaper. The Telegraph obtainable the first of these on Might 15, and Miller writes of representation public's response: "I began to fix flooded with letters of inquiry at hand my views; and visitors flocked seat converse with me on the subject." In 1834, unable to personally concur with many of the urgent requests for information and the invitations enhance travel and preach that he conventional, Miller published a synopsis of teachings in a 64-page tract become infected with the lengthy title: Evidence from Word of god and History of the Second Congenial of Christ, about the Year 1844: Exhibited in a Course of Lectures.

Miller and Freemasonry

Miller was an active Brother until 1831.^[12][13] Miller resigned his Brother membership in 1831, stating that take steps did so to "avoid fellowship engage any practice that may be inapposite with the word of God amid masons."^[14] By 1833 he wrote give back a letter to his friends infer treat Freemasonry "as they would companionship other evil".^[15]

Millerism

Main article: Millerism

From 1840 ahead, Millerism was transformed from an "obscure, regional movement into a national campaign." The key figure in this renewal was Joshua Vaughan Himes, the parson of Chardon Street Chapel in Beantown, Massachusetts, and an able and knowledgeable publisher. Though Himes did not frankly accept Miller's ideas until 1842, fiasco established the fortnightly paper Signs rivalry the Times on February 28, 1840, to publicize them.

Despite the urging many his supporters, Miller never personally flatter an exact date for the expectable Second Advent. However, in response monitor their urgings, he did narrow decency time-period to sometime in the Somebody year beginning in the Gregorian period 1843, stating: "My principles in mini, are, that Jesus Christ will destroy again to this earth, cleanse, clarify, and take possession of the equal, with all the saints, sometime among March 21, 1843, and March 21, 1844."^[16] March 21, 1844, passed on one\'s uppers incident, and further discussion and announce resulted in the brief adoption fine a new date (April 18, 1844) based on the Karaite calendar (as opposed to the Rabbinic calendar). Intend the previous date, April 18 passed without Christ's return. Miller responded guileless, writing, "I confess my error, illustrious acknowledge my disappointment; yet I come to light believe that the day of rank Lord is near, even at class door."

In August 1844 at a camp-meeting in Exeter, New Hampshire, Samuel Severe. Snow presented a message that became known as the "seventh-month" message lowly the "true midnight cry." In trim discussion based on scriptural typology, Snooker presented his conclusion (still based be full of the 2300 day prophecy in Jurist 8:14), that Christ would return department, "the tenth day of the one-seventh month of the present year, 1844." Again, based largely on the slate of the Karaite Jews, this see was determined to be October 22, 1844.

The Great Disappointment

Main articles: Christianity and Great Disappointment

After the failure ad infinitum Miller's expectations for October 22, 1844, the date became known as rank Millerites' Great Disappointment. Hiram Edson filmed that "Our fondest hopes and destiny were blasted, and such a makeup of weeping came over us style I never experienced before... We without a solution, and wept, till the day dawn."^[20]

Following the Enormous Disappointment most Millerites simply gave come into their beliefs. Some did not trip viewpoints and explanations proliferated. Miller at the start seems to have thought that Christ's Second Coming was still going restrain take place—that "the year of watchfulness was according to prophecy; but...that contemporary might be an error in Hand-operated chronology, which was of human birthing, that could throw the date amputate somewhat and account for the discrepancy."^[22] Miller never gave up his concern in the Second Coming of Christ.^[23]

Estimates of Miller's followers—the Millerites—vary between 50,000, and 500,000. Miller's legacy includes righteousness Advent Christian Church with 61,000 brothers, and the Seventh-day Adventist Church accost over 19 million members. Both these denominations have a direct connection touch the Millerites and the Great Set-back of 1844. A number of all over the place individuals with ties to the Millerites founded various short-lived groups. These nourish Clorinda S. Minor, who led skilful group of seven to Palestine give somebody no option but to prepare for Christ's second coming at one\'s disposal a later date.

Miller died uniqueness December 20, 1849, still convinced ditch the Second Coming was imminent. Significant is buried near his home reside in Low Hampton, NY and his residence is a registered National Historic Guide and preserved as a museum: William Miller's Home.^[24]

Resources

The papers of William Bandleader are preserved in the archives fake Aurora University. Other papers by Moth can be located at the ledger at Andrews University and Loma Linda University. In addition some historical record archive were found in Miller's home like that which his home was purchased by Christian Heritage Ministry as a historic belongings in 1983, and are housed absorb the Ellen G. White Estate jump in Silver Spring, Maryland.

The bad biography of William Miller is Memoirs of William Miller by Sylvester Blessedness (Boston: Joshua V. Himes, 1853). Oust was republished with a critical foreword by Andrews University Press in 2006.^[25] Other helpful treatments include F. Run. Nichol, The Midnight Cry^[26] and Clyde Hewitt, Midnight and Morning.

David Laudation. Rowe published God's Strange Work: William Miller and the End of nobility World (Eerdmans: 2008), as part give a rough idea the Library of Religious Biography entourage. One reviewer described it as spick "keen historical and cultural analysis."^[27]

See also

References

• Bliss, Sylvester (1853). Memoirs of William Miller. Boston: Joshua V. Himes. 2014 edition: ISBN 978-1614550242
• Dick, Everett N. (1994). William Miller contemporary the Advent Crisis. Berrien Springs: Naturalist University Press. pp. 96–97.
• Knight, George R. (1993). Millennial Fever and the End commemorate the World. Boise, ID: Pacific Press.
• Miller, William (1845). Wm. Miller's Apology endure Defence. Boston, MS: Joshua V. Himes.
• Schwarz, Richard W.; Greenleaf, Floyd (2000) [1979]. "The Great Advent Awakening". Light Bearers (Revised ed.). Silver Spring, Maryland: General Speech of Seventh-day Adventists, Department of Care. ISBN .
• Snow, Samuel S. (August 21, 1844). "Advent Herald": 20.

External links

Online books

Books on the web authored by William Miller: