How did the early Adventists view the commission to preach the Christian gospel to all the world? The answer depends upon the particular time period, but the historical prologue to Adventism almost guaranteed that it would become an active recruiter for the kingdom of God. From what kind of background did the Adventist Movement arise to provide its later enthusiasm for soul winning?
Adventism is evangelistically indebted to the heritage of the Wesleyan revival, which swept England and her colonies in the mid-eighteenth century. The Reformation in England under King Henry VIII was as much a political revolt as a religious reform, and the same was true when later Puritanism eventually precipitated a civil war and for a time even banished the monarchy. With its restoration, however, the Church of England leaned firmly toward an altar-centered, formal service, tied to a modified Calvinist creed. By the early 1700s it had largely ceased to speak to the growing masses of poor clustered about the mills of the Industrial Revolution.
Into this scene came the Wesleys and George Whitefield, whose work led to a revival of magnificent proportions; it was a concerted effort to reach the widespread public with the power of the gospel. Religion, for Wesley, was not a matter merely to be defined by intellect and liturgy; it was also—even especially—a matter of experience. Ronald Knox's analysis of the Wesleyan phenomenon, Enthusiasm (London: Oxford University Press, 1950), although critical of it, demonstrates its influence and that of its continental counterpart, Pietism.
But during much of the later eighteenth century the fires of enthusiastic religion burned low. Wars swept both Europe and the American colonies, and the radical skepticism of Enlightenment philosophers led to the absentee God of the deists. About 1800, however, there came another revival wave that church historians have labeled the Second Awakening. From this grew the Millerite movement, whose members were forerunners of modern Seventh-day Adventists.
The Second Awakening was much more concerned with action than with reflection. Theologically it laid aside the old Calvinist-Puritan emphasis upon divine election and total human depravity. Man now was seen as endowed with the ability to make truly significant choices between good and evil; indeed, he was obligated to exercise this ability to the advancement both of himself and of those around him.
In America this spirit, combined with personal opportunity, a laissez faire social system, and the semipolitical philosophy of a divinely sponsored manifest destiny, led at times to religious extremes. But there emerged also a mainstream of more sober qualities. Charles G. Finney, an attorney and the outstanding evangelist of his day, packed crowds into the largest auditoriums of the Eastern cities, calling for repentance and developing the altar call as a method of indicating decisions. Untidy as all this appeared to the staid, traditional clerics around him, it set a pattern still widely used in evangelistic crusades. The popularity of the public evangelistic series paved the way for Finney's contemporary, William Miller, to attract great crowds to his prophetic lecture series during the eleven years from 1833 to 1844.
On the frontier, away from the cities, however, it was the spontaneous, often rowdy, camp meeting that caught fire. Whatever may have been its faults, it was widely adopted by Methodists, Baptists, and others, including the Millerite Adventists. It was at such a camp meeting that Ellen Harmon was exposed to the message of William Miller. In fact, publications and tent meetings were virtually the only methods used by the early proponents of Christ's return "about the year 1843," as Miller first put it. But their impact was impressive. We should not forget, however, that Miller's work represented only the American phase of a worldwide revival based on the hope of Christ's soon return—a revival that reached much of the civilized world.
It was never William Miller's purpose to found a new denomination. On the contrary, he hoped his emphasis on the prophecies would be accepted as glorious good news throughout all Christendom, and he was deeply hurt when, instead, he became the butt of scorn, ridicule, and caricature. Up to the very time of the great Disappointment itself his idea was of an ecumenical, rational study of the prophecies and history, not a new and separate church. Not even his most bitter enemies accused Miller of raw emotionalism. Instead, his meetings were marked by an almost solemn decorum as large crowds were held spellbound while he proceeded throughout extensive prophetic diagrams and charts. Contemporaries reported that many of his audiences were composed mostly of men between the ages of 20 and 50 years. Clearly, Miller's intent was to bring additional light that would prepare as many as possible for the approaching return of Jesus.
But 1843 came and went, as did 1844. Miller had based his labors on the calculation that Jesus would return no later than the spring of 1844. When this failed to occur he gave qualified endorsement to a revived hope based on October 22, 1844, the Hebrew Day of Atonement. When the day passed and the hopes of Adventists were dashed in bitter disappointment, evangelism ceased.
So complete was the collapse of Advent ism that as a people it virtually disappeared. In Boston, which had been a center of Adventist work, an early letter to the Review and Herald reported that only a sprinkling of believers remained. Cincinnati, once the site of the largest Adventist concentration west of the Appalachians, saw their great house of worship, the tabernacle, converted to a cider ware house. Among the few who yet clung to the hope of the Saviour's return, scarcely any two agreed. At this very low point the first Sabbath-keeping Adventists appeared, but soul winning was scarcely their concern. How could there be concern for the lost under such circumstances? The long, agonizing prayer services—and there were many of them—were spent in pleading for light, for understanding. Why had their abounding expectations been rebuffed, and what would the future bring?
During those first few years that scattered little flock, seed for the coming Seventh-day Adventist Movement, was searching for insight and a sense of destiny. Both emerged slowly, taking shape with the Sabbath conferences of 1848. Here the foundation truths from Scripture were examined, tested, re-examined, and finally adopted—doctrines such as the sanctuary truth, which explained the cataclysm of 1844, the Sabbath, life only in Christ, and the major lines of the great Bible prophecies. Not until there was a clear message could anyone be prepared for widespread evangelism. In this process, though, a few leaders of the little flock traveled extensively, holding what today would be called cottage meetings, primarily in an effort to find harmony in diversity.
The principal body of survivors of the 1844 disappointment, including Miller himself, tried to explain the entire affair by denying that the 2300 years expired in 1844. This left the way open for a series of new date-settings. Holding this view, it was natural that they would regard human probation as still open.
The Sabbath-keeping branch, much fewer in numbers, accepting the 1844 termination date, and taking their cue from the parable of Matthew 25, which speaks of the door of admission being shut upon arrival of the bridegroom, believed temporarily that the door of mercy was now shut, that all God's true followers had already reached a proper relationship with Him. To hold otherwise seemed to them to undercut the validity of the 1844 termination date for the prophetic time period. The very earliest Sabbatarian Adventist periodicals, The Present Truth (1849-1850) and The Advent Review (five issues in 1850 only), carried extensive discussions of the shut-door teaching.
Gradually it dawned on them that the shut-door position was untenable. Already in December, 1849, David Arnold's lengthy defense of the shut-door thesis recognized that if God is to be just, mercy must yet be open to developing youths and others "in innocency." With increasing insight into the implications of Christ's ministry in the Most Holy Place of the sanctuary in heaven, it became clearer that opportunity was still open for all who believed. In addition, new truths such as the Sabbath message had emerged since 1844. Surely God would have the world hear these truths, too. So, from a ministry limited (by the shut-door idea) to only those who had been participants in the pre-1844 movement, light began to dawn that a message was yet to be proclaimed to all the world, a message summed up in the proclamation of the three angels of Revelation 14. But still the vision was not global.
By 1855 Seventh-day Adventists had outgrown the restrictive shut door. Now periodicals were coming from the press on a regular basis and being sent to the general public, including those who had had no prior connection with Millerism. In her message "To the 'Little Flock," Ellen White, as early as April, 1850, appealed to believers to give money "to save perishing souls, by sending them the truth." One by one, the few ministers of the movement began to hold meetings designed for this wider public, and were elated with the response. Just as in Acts, where the apostle Peter defended his work for non-Jews on the grounds that the Holy Spirit was given to them, so the Adventist preachers of the late 1850s became more and more excited about conversions from such efforts. Soon direct soul winning was turned toward the general public, with tent meetings or preaching missions being held in town after town and virtually all the twenty or so active ministers becoming involved. Among these, none was more indefatigable than the patriarch of the group, Joseph Bates, who lived an almost gypsy existence of long itineraries filled with numerous series of meetings. As a result of such widened evangelistic activity, the mem bership of the fledgling new movement grew rapidly, increasing from a few hundred in 1850 to 3,500 by 1863, when the General Conference was organized, a dramatic growth percentage by anyone's standards.
Just as the Seventh-day Adventist Church was beginning a serious effort to reach the nation, expanding its labors from New England to the West (at that time Michigan and Iowa), the nation was divided by a massive civil war, which left more than 600,000 casualties and distracted the citizenry from all other enterprises, religious ones included. Not until the war's conclusion in 1865 could evangelistic labors be revitalized and resume their work.
But during the doldrums of the Civil War, God was not at rest. Both Adventist leaders and members were catching a vision of a grander work. Eyes were turning to the Pacific Coast and the South, where no work as yet existed. These too must hear the message. By 1870 opportunity was opening for a foothold in Europe, a call soon met by dispatching John N. Andrews to Switzerland for pioneer work. A global vision was dawning, and a passion for souls was building.
The next two decades marked a great period for public evangelism and personal work by Seventh-day Adventists. Tents were purchased, and wagons groaning with equipment and other necessary goods rolled in many directions. Literally dozens of new churches were founded every year, and membership grew rapidly. Powerful exponents of the Adventist faith, although sometimes pugilistic in temperament, took on all comers in debates over the central pillars of the message. Substantial numbers responded to urgent appeals, and the church marched forward. A careful study of Adventist membership figures shows these two decades to be a period of truly great growth. From 1870 to 1890 a base was built that was capable of founding and making a success of both medical and educational institutions, as well as thrusting forward a missionary penetration into vast new regions of the world under the marked blessing of God. The thrill of reaching new souls had penetrated Adventists everywhere, and a mighty movement was now firmly on the way.
How far the movement had gone in only forty years! From a few dozen self-conscious believers searching for meaning in the aftermath of the great disappointment of 1844, the Seventh-day Adventist Church had grown by 1884 to be an inspired, aggressive people of expanding vision and thousands of new believers. The work of reaching the world, even if yet dimly understood in all its complexity, was well begun. But still, few could conceive of a future when the church would number its followers by the millions and include every continent. Fewer still had the vision to think in terms of one thousand souls a day being won for Christ and His church.
Yet our evangelistic purpose today is the same as that of the nineteenth century—a completed task of heralding the triumphant return of Jesus!
