Messenger of the Lord

The 1840s a Turbulent Period for Prophetic Claims

One of the most prominent features of the religious churning of the “restless [eighteen] thirties and forties” is that much of the interest “lay outside the bounds of conventional religion.” ¹⁴ MOL 36.9

One of the more striking voices of this religious ferment was that of millennial expectation. ¹⁵ MOL 37.1

For a decade or more, North America had been listening to many voices, in the pulpit and in the public press, that the Second Advent was near. But most of the Christian world believed that Jesus would return only after the world had been converted to Christianity. Called post-millenialists (the Second Advent occurs after the 1,000 years of Revelation 20), these Christian leaders looked with disdain on the pre-millenialists (Second Advent occurs before the 1,000-year period) who predicted that Jesus would return in 1843-1844. ¹⁶ MOL 37.2

Also, among the many fascinating happenings of the 1840s was the emergence of a number of persons who claimed the prophetic gift. Not all these claimants were pre-millenialists; some were developers of “new” religions; some focused on social experiments. Because bizarre happenings often accompanied these experiments, religious or social, many contemporaries were hostile to charismatic phenomena. ¹⁷ MOL 37.3

Looking at this period from Satan’s standpoint, in the light of the Great Controversy Theme (see pages 256-263), would it not be expected that he would muddle events in order to make the acceptance of a genuine prophet more difficult? The book of Revelation makes plain that Satan is aware of the prophetic time-line and the projected end of his own time in the universe. As events continued to take place as divinely predicted, “the devil” will have “great wrath, because he knows that he has a short time” (chap. 12:12). MOL 37.4

Extreme fanaticism and outlandish manifestations associated with false prophets caused sober men and women to look with disgust at anyone who claimed to speak for God. Both post-millennialists and pre-millennialists looked with disdain on the manifestation of the gift of prophecy. ¹⁸ MOL 37.5

J. V. Himes, at the 1845 Albany Conference of Millerite leaders, said, “The seventh month movement produced mesmerism seven feet deep.” ¹⁹ Millerite leaders, at the same conference, voted the following resolution, as reported in The Advent Herald, May 21, 1845: “Resolved, That we have no confidence in any new messages, visions, dreams, tongues, miracles, extraordinary gifts, revelations, impressions, discerning of spirits, or teachings, etc., etc., not in accordance with the unadulterated word of God.” MOL 37.6

Furthermore, largely paralleling the rise of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, was the development of the Shakers, the Mormon Church, the Christian Scientists, and the emergence of Spiritualism. ²⁰ MOL 37.7

It is notable that each of these modern religious movements was generated by charismatic leaders who claimed the gift of prophecy. Jemina Wilkinson and Ann Lee were early American prophetesses. Lee, best known for “mothering” the Shakers, experienced what appeared to be “trances and visions in which it was revealed to her that the root and foundation of human depravity and the source of all evil was sexual intercourse.... During the final four years of her life, ‘Mother Ann’ was reported to have performed miracles which convinced her followers that she was Christ in his ‘second coming.’” ²¹ MOL 37.8

Young Joseph Smith became very disturbed by the smorgasbord display of religious choices: “In the midst of this war of words and tumult of opinions,’ I often said to myself, ‘what is to be done? Who of all these parties are right? Or are they all wrong together?’” MOL 37.9

Soon his prayer was answered by the “appearance” of both the Father and the Son. According to him, they told him that he should not join any denomination, that all were corrupt. After a period of further study, he reported that the angel Moroni had appeared to him and led him to “long-buried gold plates which told the story of a lost tribe of Israel that had inhabited the American continent centuries before.” Later, Smith published the Book of Mormon in 1830. MOL 37.10

This new scripture became the Mormons’ authority on most every issue. It declared that “anyone who denies ‘the revelations of God’ and says ‘that they are done away, that there are no revelations, nor prophecies, nor gifts, nor speaking with tongues and interpretation of tongues’ betrays his ignorance and denies ‘the gospel of Christ.’” ²² MOL 38.1

Spiritism, or spiritualism, found its theological roots in the prevailing Christian doctrine of the conscious state of the dead—in hell or heaven. The modern resurrection of this age-old paganism is attributed to Andrew Jackson Davis (1826-1910), the “Poughkeepsie Seer,” and to the audible phenomena at the home of the Fox sisters, near Rochester, N.Y., in 1848. Davis is referred to as the one who introduced “intellectual Spiritualism,” and Katie Fox as the introducer of “phenomenal Spiritualism.” ²³ MOL 38.2