Great Disappointments of Faith Flashcards
The Great Disappointment (Source wiki) in the Millerite movement was the reaction that followed Baptist preacher William Miller’s proclamations that Jesus Christ would return to the Earth by 1844, what he called the Advent. His study of the Daniel 8 prophecy during the Second Great Awakening led him to the conclusion that Daniel’s “cleansing of the sanctuary” was cleansing of the world from sin when Christ would come, and he and many others prepared, but October 22, 1844, came and they were disappointed.[1][2][3][4]
Miller claims for the return of Christ (Second Coming)
Between 1831 and 1844, on the basis of his study of the Bible, and particularly the prophecy of Daniel 8:14—”Unto two thousand and three hundred days; then shall the sanctuary be cleansed”—William Miller (preacher), a rural New York farmer and Baptist lay preacher, predicted and preached the return of Jesus Christ to the earth.
Despite the urging of his supporters, Miller predicted “about 1843,” narrowing the time period to sometime in the Jewish year 5604, stating: “My principles in brief, are, that Jesus Christ will come again to this earth, cleanse, purify, and take possession of the same, with all the saints, sometime between March 21, 1843 and March 21, 1844.” March 21, 1844, passed without incident, but the majority of Millerites maintained their faith.
After further discussion and study, he briefly adopted a new date**—April 18, 1844—one based on the Karaite Jewish calendar (as opposed to the Rabbinic calendar). **Like the previous date, April 18 passed without Christ’s return.
In August 1844 at a camp meeting in Exeter, New Hampshire, Samuel S. Snow presented a new interpretation, which became known as the “seventh-month message” or the “true midnight cry”. In a complex discussion based on scriptural typology, Snow presented his conclusion (still based on the 2300-day prophecy in Daniel 8:14) that Christ would return on “the tenth day of the seventh month of the present year, 1844”.[12] Using the calendar of the Karaite Jews, he determined this date to be October 22, 1844. This “seventh-month message” “spread with a rapidity unparalleled in the Millerites experience” amongst the general population.
October 22, 1844
October 22 passed without incident, resulting in feelings of disappointment among many Millerites. Henry Emmons, a Millerite, later wrote,
I waited all Tuesday [October 22] and dear Jesus did not come;– I waited all the forenoon of Wednesday, and was well in body as I ever was, but after 12 o’clock I began to feel faint, and before dark I needed someone to help me up to my chamber, as my natural strength was leaving me very fast, and I lay prostrate for 2 days without any pain– sick with disappointment.[14]
Repercussions
The Millerites had to deal with their own shattered expectations, as well as considerable criticism and even violence from the public. Many followers had given up their possessions in expectation of Christ’s return. On November 18, 1844, Miller wrote to Himes about his experiences:
There were also the instances of violence: a Millerite church was burned in Ithaca, and two were vandalized in Dansville and Scottsville. In Loraine, Illinois, a mob attacked the Millerite congregation with clubs and knives, while a group in Toronto was tarred and feathered. Shots were fired at another Canadian group meeting in a private house.
Both Millerite leaders and followers were left generally bewildered and disillusioned. Responses varied: some continued to look daily for Christ’s return, while others predicted different dates—among them April, July, and October 1845. Some theorized that the world had entered the seventh millennium—the “Great Sabbath”, and that therefore, the saved should not work. Some members rejoined their previous denominations. A substantial number joined the Shakers.
Other views
The Great Disappointment is viewed by some scholars as an example of the psychological phenomenon of cognitive dissonance and True-believer syndrome.
MN: Some out takes from the aftermath of the Great Disappointment. Notice they even suckered thousands the following year and ruined their lives as well.
The Great Disappointment
Miller, together with some 100,000 others were expelled from their churches for their beliefs. These believers in the soon advent of Christ came from all denominations, and included at least 200 ministers from prominent Protestant churches.
Drawing from the parable of the ten virgins, Miller’s message became known as the “midnight cry,” the return of the bridegroom. There was a return to primitive godliness, as the various groups of believers awaited the return of the Lord.
As we know, Jesus did not return to this earth in 1844. Those that eagerly awaited His return were devastated, and the day became known as the Great Disappointment. Many were disillusioned and left the movement. Those that remained were ridiculed and became objects of scorn.
Ellen Harmon spent the night in tears.
Harmon — whose later decisions to marry James White and co-found the Seventh-day Adventist Church had roots in that night — was among some 100,000 people in northeastern United States who futilely waited for Jesus’ second coming on October 22, 1844.
Bitter anguish set in at midnight when they realized that their hopes would not be fulfilled. Many wept bitterly until daybreak.
“I can’t even fathom how profound and life-changing an event it must have been, not just for Ellen White but for all Advent believers who were heavily invested in the anticipation of Jesus’ return,” White’s great-grandson Charles White said in a telephone interview.
“It wasn’t just because they were anticipating Him, but they loved Him dearly,” he said. “They had such a love for Jesus and a desire to be with Him personally that it was a huge emotional letdown.”
So what happens when the first disappointment comes?
When the first disappointment came in 1843, they went back to the drawing board, and they realized that they had made an error of one year by neglecting to take into account the transition from BC to AD, and because of that, they had gotten it off by a year. So they simply moved it forward one year to 1844. So that extended the excitement for one more year. But then at that point came the Great Disappointment, and the movement simply fragmented for the moment. ..
How do they prepare for that final day? Tell me about the Great Disappointment.
After the Great Disappointment, we have very poignant accounts of believers who describe the dismay, the weeping, literally the disappointment they felt. They had anticipated that they were going to be carried into heaven. It didn’t happen. The world went on as before. Life went on as before. And it was a very traumatic experience for those who had been caught up in the movement. …
When one catches the spirit of the early Adventists, it is obvious why their disappointment was so great and bitter. Thousands wept until they had no strength to weep. Some were so ashamed to face the mocking world that they dropped out of sight or fled into the wilderness for weeks, even months.
The aftermath of the Great Disappointment was an absolute shambles for the Adventists. The Millerite ship smashed to pieces on the rocks of the Disappointment.
Miller’s prediction was, of course, wrong, and when the last date within his timeframe passed, he apologized and offered to retire from public life. But religious fervor was not so easily suppressed, and one of his followers, Samuel Snow, concluded that Miller had used the wrong Jewish calendar to do his calculations. Using the Jewish calendar of the ancient Karaite sect, Snow calculated that the Second Coming would actually occur on the next Jewish Day of Atonement, set for this week (Oct. 22) in 1844. Miller’s millions of followers, and Miller himself, quickly switched their faith to this new date, which — due to its specificity — attracted even more converts.
And even more fervor. In anticipation, across the country countless believers paid off debts, quit their jobs, closed their businesses, or let their crops rot in their fields. Others confessed sins to their loved ones (as well as to God), and made good on past wrongs. Many wealthy gave away their money, while both rich and poor rushed to get baptized. Some even planned to don ascension robes so that God would know them on the appointed day.
A day that passed without a visit from God or His Son — a day that became known as the Great Disappointment.
This is the story of the Rapture May 21, 2011.
They called it The Great Disappointment.
Now it looks as though history is about to repeat itself.
As I’m sure you’ve heard, Family Radio broadcaster Harold Camping has garnered quite a following by predicting that the Rapture will occur on May 21, 2011. (That’s tomorrow, my friends!) Many of his followers have quit their jobs, emptied their bank accounts, and travelled the country handing out tracts and pamphlets to warn others of their impending doom, news reporters in tow.
The nice thing about completely crazy religious people is that they make slightly less crazy religious people like you and me feel better about ourselves. Oh I’ve had some fun at Camping’s expense—retweeting jokes about requesting pagan airline pilots on Saturday, sharing weather reports that include “rapture” in the weekend forecast, giggling at the plan to leave empty pairs of clothes at notable places around the country, and speculating on what Camping and company will do on Sunday morning when the sun rises once again.
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JIM JONES 1978
James Warren Jones (May 13, 1931 – November 18, 1978) was an American religious cult leader who initiated and was responsible for a mass suicide and mass murder in Jonestown, Guyana. He considered Jesus Christ as being in compliance with an overarching belief in socialism as the correct social order. Jones was ordained as a Disciples of Christ pastor, and he achieved notoriety as the founder and leader of the Peoples Temple cult.
Jones started the Peoples Temple in Indiana during the 1950s. He moved the Temple to California in the mid-1960s and gained notoriety with its activities in San Francisco in the early 1970s. He then relocated to Guyana. In 1978, media reports surfaced that human rights abuses were taking place in the Peoples Temple in Jonestown. United States Congressman Leo Ryan led a delegation into the commune to investigate what was going on; Ryan and others were murdered by gunfire while boarding a return flight with defectors. Jones subsequently committed a mass murder-suicide of 918 of his followers, 304 of whom were children, almost all by cyanide poisoning via Flavor Aid. This historical episode gave rise to the American-English expression “drinking the Kool-Aid”.
Mass murder in Jonestown
Houses in Jonestown, Guyana, 1979.
Later that same day, 909 inhabitants of Jonestown,[89] 304 of them children, died of apparent cyanide poisoning, mostly in and around the settlement’s main pavilion.[90] This resulted in the greatest single loss of American civilian life in a deliberate act until the September 11 attacks.[91] The FBI later recovered a 45-minute audio recording of the suicide in progress.[92]
On that tape, Jones tells Temple members that the Soviet Union, with whom the Temple had been negotiating a potential exodus for months, would not take them after the airstrip murders.[93] The reason given by Jones to commit suicide was consistent with his previously stated conspiracy theories of intelligence organizations allegedly conspiring against the Temple, that men would “parachute in here on us”, “shoot some of our innocent babies” and “they’ll torture our children, they’ll torture some of our people here, they’ll torture our seniors”.[93] Parroting Jones’ prior statements that hostile forces would convert captured children to fascism, one Temple member states “the ones that they take captured, they’re gonna just let them grow up and be dummies”.[93]
With that reasoning, Jones and several members argued that the group should commit “revolutionary suicide” by drinking cyanide-laced grape-flavored Flavor Aid. Later-released Temple films show Jones opening a storage container full of Kool-Aid in large quantities. However, empty packets of grape Flavor Aid found on the scene show that this is what was used to mix the solution, along with a sedative.[93] One member, Christine Miller, dissents toward the beginning of the tape.[93]
When members apparently cried, Jones counseled, “Stop these hysterics. This is not the way for people who are socialists or communists to die. No way for us to die. We must die with some dignity.”[93] Jones can be heard saying, “Don’t be afraid to die”, that death is “just stepping over into another plane” and that it’s “a friend”.[93] At the end of the tape, Jones concludes: “We didn’t commit suicide; we committed an act of revolutionary suicide protesting the conditions of an inhumane world.”[93]
According to escaping Temple members, children were given the drink first and families were told to lie down together.[94] Mass suicide had been previously discussed in simulated events called “White Nights” on a regular basis.[78][95] During at least one such prior White Night, members drank liquid that Jones falsely told them was poison.[78][95]
