Passion, Purpose & Power

7. Camp Meeting at Exeter, New Hampshire

Time is short! Get ready! PPP 38.1

Joseph Bates traveled north from where he was living in Fairhaven, Massachusetts, to attend what turned out to be an extremely important Millerite camp meeting. It was that Samuel S. Snow riveted his audience’s attention by pointing them to the Fall of 1844 as being the precise time for fulfilling the anti-typical ancient Jewish Day of Atonement at the end of the 2300-day prophecy of Daniel 8:14. PPP 38.2

On the 12th of August,¹³ another [camp meeting] was held in Exeter, N. H. On my way there [by train], something like the following seemed to be continually forcing upon my mind. “You are going to have new light here, something that will give a new impetus to this work. . . .” PPP 38.3

There was light given and received there, sure enough; and when that meeting closed, the granite hills of New Hampshire rang with the mighty cry, Behold the Bridegroom cometh; go ye out to meet him! As the stages and railroad cars rolled away through the different States, cities, and villages of New England, the rumbling of the cry was still distinctly heard. Behold the bridegroom cometh! Christ is coming on the tenth day of the seventh month! Time is short, get ready! Get ready. . . ! ! Who does not still remember how this message flew as it were upon the wings of the wind—men and women moving on all the cardinal points of the compass, going with all the speed of locomotives, in steamboats and rail cars, freighted with bundles of books and papers, wherever they went distributing them almost as profusely as the flying leaves of autumn.—Joseph Bates, Second Advent Way Marks and High Heaps, 1847, pp. 30, 31. PPP 38.4

Tears of repentance and confession PPP 39.1

James White, who was living at home with his parents in Palmyra, Maine, when not out preaching, also attended the historic New Hampshire camp meeting. PPP 39.2

Language cannot describe the solemnity of that hour. . . . The time for shouting, and display of talent in speaking, singing, and praying, seemed to be past. The brethren and sisters calmly consecrated themselves and their all to the Lord and His cause, and with humble prayers and tears sought his pardon and his favor.—White, Life Incidents, p. 166. PPP 39.3

The following is James White’s description of another camp meeting held a short time later in Maine, in what he and the others believed to be earth’s waning hours. PPP 39.4

Sins were confessed with tears, and there was a general breaking down before God, and strong pleadings for pardon, and a fitness to meet the Lord at his coming. . . . Before that meeting closed, hundreds testified with tears of joy that they had sought the Lord and found Him, and had tasted the sweets of sins forgiven. PPP 39.5

The parting was most solemn. That was the last camp-meeting the brethren expected to attend on these mortal shores. And as brother shook the hand of brother, each pointed the other to the final gathering on the immortal shores at the grand encampment of the saints in the new Jerusalem. Tears flowed profusely, and strong men wept aloud. —ibid., pp. 167, 168. PPP 39.6