The Great Disappointment of 1844

by John de Patmos
Misketonic University Press, 2001
567 Pages, US$30
ISBN: 0-7388-2356-2

Please note that this piece is alternative history. The book it purports to review does not exist.
The Second Coming did not occur in 1844.
The Millerite Movement and its sequel are, for obvious reasons, the most studied manifestations
of mass millennialism since the New Testament period itself. Indeed, so carefully has this grand
finale of America's "Second Great Awakening" been examined that one may wonder whether
there is anything new for historians to say. Certainly the author of the present study does not
aspire to novelty. Rather, "The Great Disappointment of 1844" performs the invaluable service of
sifting through the last generation of scholarship on the subject to provide a narrative that is
both readable and current.

The optimism of America in the early decades of the 19th century was reflected in the
"postmillennial" view of history that underlay the great outbreak of religious revival and social
reform that we know as the Second Great Awakening. Postmillennialism, as all students of
eschatology know, was the doctrine that the Second Coming of Christ would occur at the end of
the thousand year reign of the Saints, the Millennium foretold by Chapter 20 of the Book of
Revelation. The implication was that the Saints would themselves put the world in order in
preparation for the great event.

The Second Great Awakening was in fact characterized by a high level of political and cultural
engagement by Christians. The reform movements of the time, from Abolitionism to Women's
Suffrage to the Prohibition of Alcohol, began as aspects of postmillennial religious revival. While
some progress was made on these fronts, the failure of the reform movements to remake
society as a whole caused many persons to despair of the possibility that the world could be
perfected purely by human efforts. The time was ripe for a return of premillennialism, the
doctrine that the Second Coming would inaugurate rather than conclude the Millennial kingdom,
which would then develop under divine guidance.

The name that became inextricably linked with the triumph of premillennialism was William
Miller, a respectable farmer and keen amateur student of scripture living in northern New York
State. His reexamination of the dating of people and events in the Bible, set alongside certain
familiar interpretations of the complex prophetic number systems of Daniel, Ezekiel and
Revelation, convinced him that the Second Coming would occur around the year 1843. Though
his analysis was multi-layered, a key feature of his logic was a demonstration that a proper
calculation of the generations mentioned in the Old Testament showed that Bishop Ussher, who
had famously announced that the world had been created in 4004 BC, had in fact
underestimated the age of the world by a good 150 years. Thus, the six-thousandth year of the
world would occur in the first half of the 19th century. Then would begin the "Seventh Day of
Creation," a concept long associated with the Millennium.

William Miller was not the first student of scripture to set a near-term date for the Parousia. Still,
he was a little unusual in the transparency of his argument and his willingness to engage critics.
Miller was never the "prophet" of Millerism; his authority was arithmetic, not personal
revelation. It was possible to disagree with his calculations, and many people did. Still, the
argument was of such a nature that it could not be merely dismissed; it had to be refuted.

William Miller reached his conclusions about the dating of the Second Coming about 1830. He
soon began to disseminate them in print and, more diffidently, on speaking tours. His message
took on a life of its own, becoming the template for an interdenominational network of
evangelists and publications. People abandoned their ordinary affairs to propagate the gospel of
the last days, often giving away their property or neglecting to plant their fields. The precise date
for the great event, October 22, 1844, did not come from Miller, or indeed from any of the
leading figures of the movement. Rather, it appeared among the mass of believers, who
overwhelmingly gave it immediate acceptance.

Of course, as we now know, the prediction was correct. The study of the Parousia Event of 1844
naturally overshadows the Millerite Movement (as it does the contemporary Taiping and Babist
movements). However, the Days of the Presence required the creation of a new historiographical
discipline, which the present study only briefly outlines. The Millerite story picks up when
coherent documentation again begins to become available in January of 1845.

Against the unsettled economic and cultural landscape of the early Millennial world, Millerism
presents the not unfamiliar spectacle of a movement destroyed by its own success. The ironic
details are well known. Even historical survey courses devote some attention to accounts of the
attempts by exasperated Millerites to regain control of property that they had given away,
sometimes by arguing in court that they had been temporarily insane during the months leading
up to the Advent. Far more important, however, was the fact that Millerism, and premillennial
Christianity in general, had nothing to say to the Millennium.

The movement had come into existence as a reaction to the theory that Christians, as Christians,
had a duty to leaven the world. Premillennialists had consciously recoiled from the labor of
formulating a social philosophy, or even a coherent political program. The Millerite Movement
had been entirely about chronology. Though the train left at the expected time, the
premillennialists found that they had no idea where they were going.

This vacuum at the heart of post-Millerite evangelicalism had profound implications for the role
of religion in the English-speaking world during the 19th and 20th centuries. It is a commonplace
among historians that the great events of those years, the US Civil War and the First and Second
World Wars, were to a greater or lesser extent "Wars of Armageddon," fought by societies for
reasons that were essentially millenarian. All the great social movements of the period were also
informed by the millennialist "Social Gospel." However, though evangelicals took part as
individuals in the general historical process, they did not engage the great issues on a
soteriological level. It was only in the last quarter of the 20th century that they began to emerge
from the isolation of the denominational subcultures into which they had retreated. The end of
the long alienation of a large a fraction of Christianity can only be applauded.

We will never cease to experience the influence of the events of 1844. Even the completion of
the current Sabbatical Millennium will not nullify the process that began with the Parousia of
that year. However, there are stories within that greater story, some of the saddest of which deal
with the disappointment occasioned by the fulfillment of prophecy. Those stories can have an
ending. Thus, though the historical debates may go on, we may hope that the long afterlife of
Millerism is at last drawing to a close.