The Gathering of Israel

Chapter 5—Differences Among Adventists

As the developing Millerite movement diverged sharply from the Literalists, there was almost complete agreement among Adventists that the end of this world and the beginning of eternity would come at the Second Advent, with none but the immortal saints surviving in the millennial kingdom. However, a few Millerites saw a difficulty: How could the earth be purified by fire at the Second Advent and yet the bodies of the wicked be raised out of the renewed earth a thousand years later? GI 4.3

By April, 1843, George Storrs (the Millerite most active in teaching conditional immortality) concluded that the destruction at the Second Advent would not be complete. He held that there would be some “left of the nations” in the flesh, in continued probation, as subjects of the millennial kingdom of Christ and the saints, and that the destroying and renovating fires would come at the end of the period. ¹ GI 4.4

By October, 1844, wrote L. C. Gunn of Philadelphia, some in one congregation there had adopted a similar view, and Charles Fitch was at the same time (not long before his death) teaching probation for the heathen after the Advent. Others, added Gunn, like himself believed that at or just before the Advent “many of the Jews will be miraculously converted, and hail His appearing with the exclamation, ‘blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord.’” All these, he said, “had changed from their former belief, and differed entirely from Mr. Miller, and the great body of advent believers in this country—but agreeing with the Literalists.” ² GI 4.5

In 1845 Storrs went further. Disillusioned by the Millerite disappointment, he embraced the full Literalist doctrine. “He has finally gone off into Judaism,” complained Enoch Jacobs, editor of The Day Star (Cincinnati). ³ Thus Storrs was regarded as taking a position outside the ranks of Adventists. GI 4.6

Other Adventists, however, such as E. R. Pinney (1844) and James White (1845) held likewise that the kingdom would not be established on earth until after the millennium, ⁴ but did not adopt any part of Literalism. Before the disappointment these individual variations, like the differences over innate or conditional immortality, did not cause dissension in the Miller movement. GI 4.7