Ellen G. White and Her Critics

The Seventh-Month Movement

From this preaching there developed, within the broad and not too sharply defined Advent movement in America, what became known as the “seventh-month movement,” so-called because October 22 was the tenth day of the seventh month, Karaite Jewish reckoning. This was a movement within the larger movement, for it did not at first have the support of the principal leaders. William Miller, Joshua V. Himes, Josiah Litch, and others who had been in the forefront of the Millerite movement since it first had taken definite shape, looked on uncertainly at first, though they did not oppose. As a matter of fact, they did not accept the October 22 date until within a very few weeks of that time. EGWC 164.2

The seventh-month movement rapidly became the dominant feature of the whole Advent movement. On every side was heard with new emphasis, and with a now specifically timed element, the cry, “Behold the bridegroom cometh, go ye out to meet Him.” EGWC 164.3

From the beginning of their preaching, William Miller and the ministers associated with him believed not only that they were reviving a long-neglected and primary truth of the Christian religion, the truth of the personal coming of Christ, but that they were fulfilling the prophecy of the angel described in Revelation 14:6, 7, who proclaimed with a loud voice: “Fear God, and give glory to him; for the hour of his judgment is come.” It was this conviction, coupled with a sense of the gravity of the Advent doctrine they were preaching, that gave to leaders and laity alike a crusading zeal, a sacrificial devotion, and an unremitting ardor in the propagation of the doctrine of the personal, literal coming of Christ. The preaching in the summer of 1844 only intensified that ardor. EGWC 164.4

Despite the fact that the movement was marked by sobriety, that the leaders preached with dignity from the Word of God and called on men everywhere to believe the apostolic doctrine of the literal, personal coming of Christ, the movement increasingly met bitter opposition, both within and without the churches. The opponents quite generally admitted that the Adventist principles of prophetic interpretation were in harmony with those of historic Protestantism, particularly the principle of a day for a year. Some were even willing to admit that the prophecy of the 2300 days was doubtless due to end about the time that the Adventists declared that it would. In fact a number of the ministry of other religious bodies were forecasting the ending of certain great Bible prophecies approximately at that time. EGWC 165.1

What, then, was the main cause of the opposition? Chiefly this: Adventists declared that when the great prophecies ended, particularly the 2300-day prophecy, the world would come to a sudden end under the fiery judgments of God and the coming of Christ, and that a wholly new world would be created, as the apostle Peter foretold. No, said all their opponents on every side, what is in store for the world at the ending of the great prophecies, which we also believe are about to be fulfilled, is not a conflagration, but a regeneration of the earth by a gradual improvement of the inhabitants. EGWC 165.2