The Great Second Advent Movement: Its Rise and Progress

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A Mighty Wave of Revivals

The nature of the revivals that followed the proclamation of the advent message are thus described by L. D. Fleming, pastor of the Casco street Christian church, of Portland, Maine:— GSAM 136.3

“The interest awakened by his [Wm. Miller’s] lectures is of the most deliberate and dispassionate kind, and though it is the greatest revival I ever saw, yet there is the least passionate excitement. It seems to take the greatest hold on the male part of the community. What produces the effect is this: Brother Miller simply takes the sword of the Spirit, unsheathed and naked, and lays its sharp edge on the naked heart, and it cuts! that is all. Before the edge of this mighty weapon, infidelity falls, and universalism withers. False foundations vanish, and Babel’s merchants wonder. It seems to me that this must be a little the nearest like apostolic revivals of anything modern times have witnessed.” GSAM 136.4