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Advent HOPE Sabbath School

Advent HOPE - Adventist History Class

Tim Arakawa

The Great Advent Awakening

All right, why don't we begin with a word of prayer.

Dear Father in Heaven, we thank you so much for the many times that you have led your people throughout history.

We think especially of the history of the Adventist Church.

And now as we spend time going over various events, we ask that you would not only help us to understand our identity as Seventh-day Adventists, But that you would also help us to understand and partake of the spirit of the pioneers as well.

Well, welcome to the Adventist history class at Advent Hope.

We're happy that each 1 of you can be here and we're looking forward to studying highlights from Adventist history.

Obviously after about 165 years or so you can't cover everything But we're going to try to hit some of the main points.

Before we begin though, I just want to read you a couple of quotes to talk about a philosophy behind studying Adventist history.

And 1 of them you probably are familiar with.

It's found in Life Sketches, page 196, and it says that, does anyone know that?

We have nothing to fear for the future, except what?

As we shall forget the way the Lord has led us and His teachings in our past history.

And so we want to remember the way that the Lord has led.

We want to go over those teachings that we have learned throughout the past.

The other quotation I want to bring up is found, it's actually a manuscript release, 346.

Daniels in 1903, and she says, again and again I have been shown that the past experiences of God's people are not to be counted as dead facts.

So while we're talking here about Adventist history, these are not dead facts.

In fact, In a very real sense, each 1 of us is still part of that history and are making history each day.

We are not to treat the record of these experiences as we would treat last year's almanac.

The record is to be kept in mind for history will repeat itself.

The darkness of the mysteries of the night is to be illuminated with the light of heaven.

And so we're going to be studying Adventist history with an eye towards the future.

And we're going to want to learn the lessons so that we can put them into practice as we make Adventist history today.

A couple things about the class before we begin.

This class is just inherently kind of more lecture-based.

And so while there will be times where you might…you'll be reading Bible texts and things like that, we're not going to be taking too many questions.

We've got a lot of material to cover and very little time.

And so If you do have questions, we will have a question and answer period probably on the last Sabbath that we studied the last, our last topic.

And so maybe that afternoon we'll have a question and answer time.

Save your questions, write them down, and we can cover them during that session.

But let me just go over it with you and for our audio-verse audience.

The first topic we'll be covering this morning is called the Great Advent Awakening.

And we'll be covering basically the Millerite Movement.

However, there's so much to cover we're going to split it into 2.

And next week we'll be covering the specific part of the Millerite movement that was right before 1844, called the Seventh Month Movement and when the Midnight Cry was given.

The week after that we'll be covering what we are calling present truth, the development of the truths that the Adventist church holds now.

Many of them are distinctive and there'll be a special emphasis on the sanctuary, the spirit of prophecy and the Sabbath.

After that, we have a topic called Almost a Canaan, and it's what you could term the close calls that we as a church have had when Jesus potentially could have come.

And so there are 3 major times that that happened.

The last 1 happened in 1888, and that is so important that we're going to split that out into a second section.

So The next section after that is going to be about the 1888 General Conference.

After that, we're going to cover the health message and medical missionary work, and we'll include in there a talk about Kellogg and Battle Creek Sanitarium.

After that, we're going to cover education and Madison especially, as well as some other things.

And then we're going to move on into some more recent Adventist history.

We're going to cover what happened in the 1950s when Walter Martin approached the Adventist church with questions about our doctrines.

And after that we're going to cover what happened in the 70s and the 80s, especially dealing with what happened with Desmond Ford.

And finally, we're going to end with current events in Adventism, talking about what's happening now and perhaps even a little bit about the future.

So that's kind of the outline of what's going to happen so that you can look forward to those things.

We'll still be using our Bibles here and there to talk about some of the different things.

And this class will be primarily taught by 3 people.

That will be Norman McNulty, Adrian Zahid, and myself, Tim Arakawa.

Let's start our talk with a little bit of historical context, okay?

Because if you're familiar with the time period of the late 1700s and the early 1800s, a lot was going on during that time.

And some of those things that were happening were specifically made it conducive for the Advent movement to begin.

So the first thing that I want to talk about is the fact that in the United States at the time of William Miller, there was a tremendous amount of religious freedom.

And this was very, very important because If you think about it, there were scholars and lay people all over the world in the 1800s who were studying the second coming and they were studying the prophecies.

They were especially studying them because of the French Revolution.

The French Revolution renewed the interest in the 1260 year prophecy because they believed that that was the fulfillment.

So why didn't the Advent movement begin in Europe?

And 1 of the answers is that Europe did not have religious freedom.

In Europe you had a state religion that was pretty much in control of the way things were going to be and they dominated the religious landscape.

But in America, there is religious freedom.

Everyone had the opportunity to choose which denomination that they would worship and what their beliefs would be.

And so in America, there were a lot of mostly Protestant denominations, but there was a lot of them.

And so this provided an atmosphere that people could study.

So if you think about it, the establishment of the United States and especially its constitution which guarantees freedom of religion and the separation of church and state was critical for Adventism to begin.

Another important part of this time period was development of a lot of isms.

And if you know what I mean by isms, let's just go through a few and maybe you can think of a few as well.

Humanism came from basically the age of enlightenment where reason and rational thought was people's way of finding truth.

And so it led to the idea that humans could find truth and that humans could develop and think for themselves and find truth.

Deism is the idea that God is a very distant God.

He started things off, let it go, it rejects a personal God, it develops divine revelation, especially through scripture.

And so deism was a way of using rational thought to come into truth.

Can you think of any other isms that were happening during the 1700s, 1800s?

Spiritualism was a big part of what was happening then.

Spiritualism actually started in 1844 and continued to grow throughout the beginnings of the Advent movement and beyond.

Mormonism actually began in 1830 and was right around the same time that Adventism started, believe it or not.

There's a whole series of lectures by Dr.

Dupre about the different isms and different things that started.

Okay, so you could call it Darwinism also started.

Norman McNulty

The Midnight Cry

And then also for those of you listening on AudioVerse, the handout that we have here in the class should be up on the AudioVerse website to go along with the class.

So this time let's go ahead and bow our heads for a word of prayer and we'll get started.

Father in heaven we thank you for the Sabbath day.

We thank you that we can study about the midnight cry and the great disappointment.

Please be with us now as we get into this topic.

Raise your hand if you didn't get a handout.

So we'll just leave them on the back, Dwayne, and people can pick them up when they come in if they'd like.

So what we are going to do today, last week Timur Akawa taught the class and we started with the Great Advent Awakening and got up to about the time period of 1840 in the Millerite movement.

What we're going to do today is we're going to hit a couple of key issues that happened in the Millerite movement from the time period of 1840, and we're going to get through the first and second angels' messages as they came into the Millerite movement.

And we're going to look specifically at the Midnight Cry, what was it, what was the purpose of the Midnight Cry.

We'll get into the Great Disappointment, and then we'll look at the big picture and look at what is the significance, prophetically, of the Midnight Cry, the Great Disappointment, and us as God's people today.

Now, when we, what we covered last week, we saw that there was an awakening and studying Advent prophecy.

And the Millerite movement really in the United States filled in that gap.

And of course, all over the world, there were people studying these prophecies as well.

William Miller was the key person who studied these prophecies.

He was a simple farmer, and yet he studied the Bible hours a day.

That's a rebuke to us who think, well, I could never know the Bible like that.

Well, if we're studying 10 minutes a day, of course we won't.

But if we study hours a day like William Miller did, we might have a chance to learn what he learned.

Now, when we get into the fulfillment of prophecy with the Millerite movement, William Miller began preaching Revelation 14, 6 and 7, fear God, give glory to him for the hour of his judgment has come, at the very beginning of his preaching.

And he believed that the first angel's message was being fulfilled through his preaching.

Now, the reason why is because the first angel's message announcing the hour of God's judgment is Revelation's description of the fulfillment of the 2300 days.

And William Miller's cornerstone preaching was about the 2300 day prophecy.

So William Miller's preaching was a fulfillment of Revelation 14, 6 and 7.

Now, there was a specific fulfillment of Bible prophecy that gave extra power to the first angel's message, and that was the fulfillment of the sixth trumpet, and that's under heading, well, number 3, and then we get into number 4.

We've talked about this in the Revelation class last quarter, about how you have the time prophecy of 1 hour, 1 day, 1 month, 1 year, which is 391 years and 15 days literally, and Josiah Lich was able to correctly calculate this.

Now I'm going to read this quote from Great Controversy to have been exactly fulfilled before Diakoses ascended the throne by permission of the Turks and that the 391 years 15 days commenced at the close of the first period it will end on the 11th of August 1840 when the Ottoman power in Constantinople may be expected to be broken and this I believe will be found to be the case.

And then she goes on to say, at the very time specified, Turkey through her ambassadors accepted the protection of the allied powers of Europe and thus placed herself under the control of Christian nations.

The event exactly fulfilled the prediction.

When it became known, multitudes were convinced of the correctness of the principles of prophetic interpretation adopted by Miller and his associates, and a wonderful impetus was given to the Advent movement.

Men of learning and position united with Miller, both in preaching and in publishing his views, and from 1840 to 1844 the work rapidly extended." So here's a couple of key points to take note of here.

Ellen White says that what happened on August 11, 1840 was an event that exactly, it was the event that exactly fulfilled the prediction of the 391 years and 15 days.

So that prophecy was fulfilled on August 11, 1840.

The significance is that Josiah Litch was using the principles of prophetic interpretation that had been developed by William Miller.

Now if you follow any kind of logic, if you see a fulfillment of Bible prophecy to the very day, 391 years and 15 days, that says this is gonna be fulfilled on this day, And then you realize that that's not even the cornerstone prophecy that the Millerites are preaching about.

The cornerstone prophecy is 2, 300 days, and that's just 3 or 4 years away.

Then you're like, okay, this prophecy just got fulfilled right on the money, so they know what they're talking about, so the 2300 days is most likely going to come to pass right about the time that they're predicting as well.

So what happens then is from 1840 to 1844, there an extra power, as Ellen White describes here, the work rapidly extended, the fulfillment of that prophecy gave extra power to the first angel's message.

So now you have the first angel's message going forth with power, not only is William Miller preaching it with power, but so is Josiah Litch, so is Joshua Himes, so is Charles Fitch, and many other Millerite preachers.

So this was a significant event in the development of the Millerite movement.

Tim talked last week about Joshua Himes' assistance in developing the publishing work.

That happened at about the same time that this fulfillment of prophecy took place.

So you have a fulfillment of prophecy, you have Joshua Himes helping William Miller out to spread this message through publication in all the major cities.

So now this preaching that William Miller had been doing in these small little towns throughout the Northeast starts to take off like wildfire.

The first 9 years, people know about it but it hasn't gone too far.

Now all of a sudden it's exploding into the northeast and it's coinciding with people like Joseph Wolfe in Europe and other preachers around the world who are preaching the very same thing.

Now, Let's put this into a little bit of a practical context.

If you study about William Miller again, you discover that when he went through the Bible and studied for himself, he not only was discovering intellectual truths where he figured out, hey, Jesus is gonna come in 1843.

He found in Jesus what he describes as his best and dearest friend.

So you put that together, William Miller wasn't just preaching intellectually about the coming of Christ, he was excited because his best and dearest friend was coming back to this earth to take him home.

And he wouldn't have to be on this wicked world anymore.

And if we wonder sometimes why our preaching of the second coming lacks power, it's because probably for many of us we have too many roots here on this earth and Jesus isn't as dear to us as he should be.

If Jesus was as dear to us as he was to William Miller and the Millerites, our preaching would have much more power.

And so that's 1 of the reasons why the Millerites had so much power.

Now moving quickly here, so first angels message is given and William Miller had predicted that by the end of 1843, which happened to be around March or April of 1844, he expected that Jesus would come by then.

And what happens, obviously we're still here in 2008 so we know Jesus didn't come in March of 1844, so this is known as the early disappointment or the first disappointment.

And after this period in time, William Miller, and you can read about it in the books, he gets kind of confused himself.

And the Millerite movement goes through a period of what is called the delay, and they're not really sure what's happening.

But they still have not given up their faith because the the time period that had been pointed to was around March of 1844.

So they didn't have a real set date to hang their hats on, it was just a general time period.

And so after the first disappointment comes, it was a disappointment, but they went back and they started studying further.

Why were we looking at the spring of 1844?

Is there something that we should have taken into consideration in these prophecies?

So by no means have the Millerites given up.

Some people did, but a majority of the Millerites hung on to their treasured hope, their cherished hope, that Jesus would be coming in that time frame very soon.

Now at the same time, and you can read about this in Ellen White's book Great Controversy on page 389, in the summer of 1844 the Protestant churches started kicking the Millerites out of their churches.

And they said, we don't want you preaching about the literal second coming of Christ in our churches.

And the question is, why did the Protestants not want the Millerites to preach about the literal second coming?

Because if you're a Christian church and you profess to believe in Jesus as your Savior, You profess to believe that Jesus is coming again.

Why would you not want a group of people to come in and preach that Jesus is coming soon?

Most Protestants had accepted the teaching that Jesus would come after a thousand years of peace and prosperity here on this earth and during that thousand years the whole world would be converted to Christianity and then Jesus would come after that thousand years of peace and prosperity.

These theologians also believed that the 2300 day prophecy would be fulfilled around 1843, 44, or 1866.

So they didn't disagree, many of them didn't disagree with William Miller's day for year principle of 2, 300 days, but their interpretation was after 2, 300 days, we're gonna have a thousand years of peace and prosperity.

You know, they can criticize William Miller for saying Jesus was coming at the end of that time, but they were predicting a thousand years of peace and prosperity.

So they want a thousand years of peace and prosperity.

And so they kick the people out that are saying, hey, Jesus is coming before the thousand years, not after the thousand years.

In fact, some people said if you take the day for the year principle, it's going to be 365, 000 years of peace and prosperity here on this earth before Jesus comes.

So that was some of the stuff that was going on.

So when the Protestant churches started kicking out the Millerites, this was a fulfillment of prophecy that the daughter churches of the papacy, also known as you have the mother and the mother who's the mother of harlots, so the harlots who are the Protestant churches who rejected the preaching of the coming of Christ, became part of Babylon as well.

And that was the summer of 1844, and Ellen White talks about that.

And Charles Fitch was the first Millerite preacher to preach that the Protestant churches also consisted of Babylon in addition to the papacy.

Adrian Zahid

The Theological Development of Present Truth

I'm very glad that we are able to do this Adventist history class and that as we study this class we can see how God has led his church in the past and we can recount some of the teachings, some of the principles that have been learned, and we can learn those so that we don't have to go through those again.

Also, today I apologize, I do not have any handouts for you.

I do have this 15-page paper that I wrote on this class today.

And if you do the math, 15 times 50, it would be way too much for me to copy for all of you.

So hopefully I'll make this available online, on Audiverse, and you can find it there.

Dear Father, we ask that as we study the theological development of present truth, that each 1 of us come away with a sense of how well the foundation was laid for this church.

And that deep Bible study and prayer were some things that were commonplace in the times of our pioneers.

I want to just review really quickly with you some of the pioneer principles of Bible study.

These are principles that they held to and that they used when they studied the Bible.

And these are principles that William Miller used as to guide him in his Bible study, and later other pioneers adopted them as well.

The first 1 is all scripture is necessary and may be understood by diligent study by 1 who has faith.

Principle number 2, the scripture its own expositor.

Number 3, to understand doctrine all scripture passages on the topic must be brought together.

Number 4, God has revealed things to come by visions, in figures, and in parables.

These must be studied together since 1 prophecy complements another.

A word should be understood literally if it makes good sense.

Otherwise, 1 must discover from other passages its figurative sense.

Number 5, a historical event is the fulfillment of prophecy only when it matches the prophecy in all its details.

These principles are all built on the historical grammatical or the historical biblical method of interpretation that the reformers used and our pioneers used as well.

In 1884, Ellen White wrote that those who are engaged in proclaiming the third angel's message are searching the scriptures upon the same plan that Father Miller adopted.

After quoting these 5 rules that I just quoted to you, she added, in our study of the Bible, we shall all do well to heed the principles set forth." So these are the principles that they used to study the Bible.

And let us go into now the theological development of present truth.

Present truth is defined by certain truths in the Bible that are presently pertinent for us today.

And that these truths are central to the Adventist faith.

And as we look at these truths today, we will see how central they are and how well the foundation has been laid for them.

As Norman discussed last week, 1844, October 22, there was a great disappointment when Jesus did not come.

They just had no clue what to do, where to go.

And now they were faced with a winter and they had absolutely no direction as to where to go.

There was an editor, his name was Apollos Hale.

He distinguished 4 classes of Adventists, or Millerites, in those days.

Class number 1, those who deplored and condemned their past Advent experience and strongly objected to any further time calculations.

Series

Advent HOPE - Adventist History Class

Questions and Answers: Adventist History Class

Transcript

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