June 30, 2022 • 41 mins
As the alleged End of the World drew ever closer, William Miller and the Millerism movement became a pop culture phenomenon. Thousands of people quit their jobs, sold their possessions, and prepared to ascend into the afterlife. Yet when the predicted day came -- and passed -- without the return of Jesus Christ, many of these believers were at a loss. What should they do now?
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
(00:27):
back to the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always
so much for tuning in, and a special thank you
to people who reached out and checked on whether or
not my voice would return. It's not, but it's there,
and I'm very grateful to our own Mr Noel Brown
(00:47):
and our super producer Max Williams for Barry, there's that
golden voice. Who was that golden voice? Jeez, you know
out of that golden boy. We're glad to have you back, buddy.
Thanks man. You know, Um, we don't talk about it
too much on air, but um, for any show that Max,
(01:09):
Noel and I do, uh, we end up becoming pretty
close friends because we worked together all the time. And
I just want to thank you guys so much for
being in my corner. Thankfully it wasn't COVID, but couldn't
work with a better bunch of people. And and um, Noel,
you and I have talked about it in the past
(01:29):
when we're hanging because we are actually friends and we
do hang out outside of the show. We've talked about
how weird and extraordinary it is to genuinely vibe with
pretty much everyone you work with. I think we're immensely fortunate.
Oh yeah, I mean, you know, it's no coincidence that,
like most of my and your and uh, many of
(01:49):
our friends are people that we work with, or we've
been lucky enough to bring people that are our friends
were our friends into the work family. So it all
kind of lines kind of blurred. Like I knew Max,
you know, uh and his brother Alex before they worked
for us, and now we just get to hang out more.
And uh, you guys, are you guys in particular not
(02:11):
a ding on anyone else who work with but you
guys in particular is such a such a gift to
this show. And I'm always grateful to hang out. So um,
the gift that keeps on giving, but not like in
the Herpes kind of way, right, and not in like
the not in the short form animation gift way though,
the gift that keeps on gifting I think would be
interesting anyway. So if it didn't gift, it wouldn't if
(02:34):
it didn't keep on gifting, it wouldn't be a proper gift.
That is a very good point, Noel, That is a
very good point. So we're gonna be talking about some
very good points today with some help from one of
our excellent research associates and Mr Zach Williams. When previously
we left you without a dope beat two step too,
(02:57):
we were talking about the end of the world as
imagined by a man named William Millard now Noel Max.
When we ended part one, we had set up some
pretty in depth context about Miller's origin story and about
his move from a small town preacher to a man
(03:22):
obsessed with calculating the return of Jesus Christ, to his
role as a pop culture phenomenon of the time. Really
he was a superstar. Uh, And things got incredibly um oh,
they just escalated as he got closer and closer to
his imagined prediction the second Coming of Christ. But man
(03:46):
wet teased, we teased, how um how other denominations established
Christian denominations started to clap back at Miller because, like
where we leave off, let's see, churches started saying, if
you're a traveling preacher and you talk about Millerism, you
can't preach here. And then they started cracking down on
(04:10):
people who, um, who are just church members who might
read newspapers or pamphlets about Millers and I mean and
in a doomsday theology by any other name is still
as is depressing. Maybe they didn't call it Millerism directly
or claimed to be miller Rites, Like I kind of wonder, like,
would you even claim that it would be more just
(04:30):
kind of like you know, uh, something people would understand
based on what your theology is. I don't know you
necessarily even make that some sort of badge that you'd
wear around. But I imagine that anyone starting to preach
these end times kind of prophecies would start to be
ostracized to some degree. In fact, there's a great example
of a church elder by the name of Levi Stockman
who absolutely refused to stop preaching this doom and gloom stuff,
(04:55):
I mean Doom's Day and glooms Day stuff, I guess.
And this, this this went hard in terms of like
church leaders and in the way these these folks who
are these hardliner Millerites retreated. He fell deathly ill with
with the consumption. Then you described it as as the
doc holiday disease. He was our he was our huckleberry,
somebody's huckleberry. He was at the very least the huckleberry
(05:18):
of his wife and child who were in desperate danger
of being left penniless because the church officials, you know,
he was an elder of the church who was therefore
kind of his livelihood was tied to their rulings, were
threatening to you know, strip him of his pension if
he didn't stop talking all that job, yeah, which meant
(05:39):
that his wife and his children would not have any
pension benefits, all but condemning them to the poorhouse. Yet
Stockman stuck to his ideological theological guns and as a
result he was expelled from the ministry officially, and just
a few weeks later he died of consumption. This this
(06:03):
is one example that shows us the larger, the larger horizon.
Here by the summer of eighteen three, Millerite Adventist and
the more established Protestant denominations of Christianity are at loggerheads.
They're super tense, and a lot of Adventists, many of
(06:26):
whom already had like their own membership and an established denomination. Right,
they might be like Methodists, they might be Protestants, but
they're also Millerites, and they started saying, well, should we
get out of our membership with our current denomination. They
almost did, but an announcement went out in one of
those publications that we talked about in part one. This
(06:48):
one was called the Signs of the Times, and it
encouraged them to stay put, and it said, look, don't
run away, because you are already embedded in this community.
So stay there, and while you're there, start talking about Millerism,
(07:09):
start talking about how Jesus Christ is on the way
and very soon. We want to thank lineage journey dot
com for their excellent article a snapshot of the Millerite
movement from eighteen thirty nine to eighteen forty four. No
spoilers just yet. Uh. And you would think the Millerite
(07:32):
apparatus suing for peace would have maybe calm those tensions somewhat,
but it wasn't. It wasn't enough. That's why things like
the Congregational Journal, another publication, went out on August twelfth,
eighteen forty three, and put this hit piece out on
(07:54):
the front page that said, look, the second advent God
Spool is malarkey. And then later that year, also eighteen
forty three, they published an article by Nathaniel Wells that
was a takedown of everything Miller had written about and
(08:14):
lectured about. And this became a smear campaign. Honestly, regardless
of what you think about Christianity or or differences between denominations,
there was no real civil discussion of his weird math
that we mentioned earlier, or his his philosophically. No one
(08:36):
was talking about that. No one was adding up the numbers. Instead,
they were jumping to third base and saying, look, all
these Millerites, any second Adventist is a fanatic. Their leaders
are dangerous to society. They want you to think the
world is ending, and they're mad, they're lunatics. Yeah, I mean,
(09:00):
you know it's it's I kind of get it. Just
you know, it's like, can we find some silver lining here,
especially given that like the dude was just kind of
digging looking for he was kind of what you call
that Ben, when you like sort of have like a
a an outcome that you're sort of searching for, Uh,
you find ways of of of finding the information that
(09:22):
validates your your pre your foregone conclusion confirmation bias. Yeah,
nail on that, that's the one. Would you would you
agree there's a little bit of that going on with Miller?
I mean, or or do you think he? I can't
remember exactly didn't he sort of like always have a
bit of a doomsday mindset around religion, or did he
just figure that he he felt like he cracked the code. Yeah,
(09:43):
it's it's a little bit of column a little bit
of column B. Because he was originally more of a
deist when he was introduced to the idea of a
god who made everything right, a god who exists who
made everything. But it's sort of too high level now
to be con earned with the day to day stuff.
And then when he had his crisis of faith and
(10:06):
he encountered these revelations, he became obsessed with figuring out
exactly when the messionic figure Jesus Christ Jesus H. Christ
by some accounts, uh, mostly mostly stand up comics would return.
And uh, And so I think that we see established
(10:29):
denominations grappling with a couple of issues here. First, this
takes away socio political control from these established denominations, and
yeah it is in second, if it's all gonna come
crashing down anyway, then what's the point. And like, why
believe one over another in terms of like, you know,
(10:52):
them being able to exercise control over this earthly realm.
If you put all the emphasis on the afterlife exclusively.
Then how are you going to control old people and
amend them to your will? Right? Right? So why do
I need to put uh ten percent tythe on my
income to build a church that's not being constructed intol eight,
you know what I mean? So this is a problem
(11:13):
for them. But I would argue secondly, there's also the
issue of there there's also the issue of putting an
expiration date on things, right, And it's an expiration date
we have to remember that's coming very soon. And this
was making no mistakes, sowing some amount of chaos in society.
(11:36):
There was one, this anonymous report. We couldn't really find
the specifics here, but according to the Dartmouth article we
looked at in part one, there was supposedly a selectman
a committee member in some town in New Hampshire. This
is a secular, you know, local municipal thing. He was
(12:00):
a miller, right, and he resigned. He quit his job
and said, look, I need to spend the rest of
the year getting my affairs in order for the end
of the world. Imagine quitting your job for the end
of the world. Imagine like imagine we get an email
or a text from Max one day and Max says, hey, guys,
(12:23):
I've been reading some stuff. I've been on some blogs,
and I'm pretty sure the world as we know it
is ending in September. So I'm gonna just take some
time and play sky Rim what once more, get my
house in order? All right, my sky ramows guys, I
I guess you haven't picked up on that, but you
(12:44):
know I'm disappearing in September. I'm going off to Seattle
in Portland. I mean, I wasn't gonna come on straight
forward and stays to freak you guys out, but you
know there there might be a reason behind that. Guys.
All right, we're gonna put a pin in this for now.
We're gonna have a suit Arius talk off air. But
in the meantime, Ben, this is where I start asking
(13:05):
myself the question of what differentiates a religion from a cult.
When you start talking about these sort of like doomsday
cults and people that are rallying around they perceived end
of the world and it is sort of more of
(13:26):
a niche kind of thing, is that what you'd consider
a cult? Are we starting to get into more cult
like territory here that is maybe more rallying around a
single figure. Also, as we know, cults don't necessarily have
to rally around a single figure. You can rally around
like an idea. Um, what do you think though, is
is this is this sort of an example of an
early version of kind of a doomsday cult. That's a
(13:48):
great question. Yeah, it's uh one of early America's very
first doomsday movements for sure. And I'm so glad you asked, because, um,
you know, we've worked extensively on stuff they wants you
to know. Another show we do investigating various cults, like
add nonok Tars sex cult in Turkey that's out now.
(14:08):
We've also looked at how colts are formed, and one
big misconception about cults is that they always are oriented
around a religious belief. Multi level marketing schemes can be cults.
Life coaching groups and fitness groups can be cults. Uh No,
ding on you CrossFit just don't feel like after email us.
(14:30):
And one thing that's interesting, this is a little bit
of a tangent, but if you want to understand cults,
I would say look toward tactics rather than ideology. The
ideology is fluid and it does the ideology doesn't really matter.
One of the best analyzes of what creates a cult
(14:50):
is something called the BITE model, which was created by
Steve Hassan, and it's really a model for authoritarian control.
What differentiates a cult from a legion, I would say
would be the tactics applied the authoritarian control. BITE stands
for behavior control, information control, thought control, and emotional control.
(15:12):
And you can read a full list of of what
that means, but they're all the hits. Separation from your family,
you know what I mean, separation from information from the
outside world, the idea of thought crime, the idea of
manipulating the ranges of emotions that people or followers can
(15:32):
experience without being punished. I actually I will put this
in our chat because this is such a great link
for everyone. And if you feel a friend is involved
in a cultic organization of some sort, look at the
bite bite model and see what kind of control is
being exercised upon them. But it's funny though, because they
(15:54):
were talking about you know again, like sometimes there's a
little bit of confusion between like what is a religion
versus what is a cult? And Uh, to me, it's
like if people are leaving a more let's say traditional religion,
like a regular Protestant Christianity and going for this like
Adventist Millerism, that could ostracize them from their families. They
(16:16):
could be you know, treated as outsiders and shunned and
fully be like all about that. It's like, it's fine,
you know, it's gonna change my life, but I'm gonna
I'm putting my money where my mouth is and I'm
committing to this. So what we don't necessarily have specific
examples of this per se outside of this elder you
know who's he ultimately died um as a result of
(16:38):
his belief system. So it's a little I don't know,
maybe we'll put a pin in that one too, because
I think it's a it's more of an interesting question
than it is something that we necessarily have an answer for. Because,
as we know, many religious movements some people call cults,
other people call like, you know, religious community or religious movements.
So it is it is a little bit of a
kind of gray area sometime. But Ben, do you have
(17:01):
an opinion on whether Millerism is a cult or just
an offshoot of a religious movement. Yeah, that's a good question. Um,
I think I will also put a pin in that,
because it's a bit of a sticky wicket. Maybe you,
fellow ridiculous historians, can give us your take at the end.
We have some plot twist ahead. I would say that
(17:21):
another like definition of a cult that I just sort
of made up along the years is really it's a
matter of time, right, because you know, one person's cult
is another person's revealed religion with a tomb and everything.
So maybe maybe you're a cult until you make it
past the first two hundred years or something like that.
(17:44):
Again totally made up, but but okay, so we know that. Um,
we know that there were other reports of people leaving
their day to day lives. The Sentinel reported uh that
same year that two Justice commissions who were working in
(18:04):
New Hampshire also left their jobs. And we're supposed to
join up with the Millerites and said, hey, the world's ending,
I don't need to go to work anymore. You know,
it gets really ugly too, because people started saying that
this Millerite movement or Millerism was also responsible for suicides.
(18:29):
They were saying, some people are so certain that the
world is ending that they are taking their own lives.
But as you and I found nol this was often
not based on uh not based on really solid evidence.
We actually have an excerpt from the Boston Evening Journal
(18:49):
which was reprinted by the Sentinel. That's right. The headline
is end of the World died in Pelham, New Hampshire.
John H. Shortage, aged about fifty five. Mr s was
formerly a merchant of respectable standing in Portsmouth, but by
misfortunes in business, had suffered much from almost incessant mental derangement.
(19:11):
On the day of his death, he was imagining the
time of the Second Advent was to take place. He
had a garb made for the occasion, and with this
he was waiting until became impatient. He climbed to the
top of a high tree. There, mantled at his long
white ascension robe. He made one aspiring effort but was
(19:31):
precipitated to the ground and instantly died from a broken neck. Okay,
once again, whenever we read these kinds of things on
the show been I'm just always taken by the ass
around the elbow approach to get to like a really
simple thing. It's like ed he fell out of a
tree and died, and instead it's there mantled in his
long wide ascension robe. He made one aspiring effort but
(19:54):
was precipitated to the ground and instantly died from a
broken neck. I mean, I'm saying I think it's wonderful,
but it is funny to see the the literary gymnastics
that that happens sometimes in these older like editorial pieces.
Oh yeah, they're feeling themselves for sure. I agree. Also
that snarky last sentence that says maybe he was jumping,
(20:16):
maybe he was trying to fly to heaven. That's really
rude to someone who has died, Yes, exactly now, it's
the subtext is dripping with with sarka. And this also
props to the Sentinel because they did say this was
doubted by the local paper. They're in Portsmouth and Portsmouth Journal.
(20:37):
But stories like this they get eyeballs. People like reading
about these things. Is this same reason people slow down
to watch car accidents in traffic Today these stories were
reprinted across the Northeast. And again we've talked in the
past about how the big red meat will run on
(20:58):
the cover of a newspaper on Monday, and the retraction
or correction will be in the back of the newspaper.
On Tuesday, and no one will read it, so nobody's
really fact checking these, and nobody bothered to look into
the background of the people who were allegedly committing suicide.
(21:19):
For this, It's kind of like when you hear the
old argument about video games making people violent or something,
or music making people violent. What you see in a
lot of those cases is the person who committed an
act of violence was already maybe not in the best
place mentally, right, and they just happened to play a
(21:41):
video game, or they happened to enjoy a certain genre
of music. Yeah, some people just need a little push
off the cliff or out of a tree. Um. It
really is kind of something that was probably going to
happen one way or another sooner and or later, and
then it's easy to craft and narrow around it, which
is clearly what was happening, because all of these suicides
(22:04):
were beginning to be kind of placed on the shoulders
of Miller, based almost entirely on like anecdotal evidence, like
the kind of thing we just saw reprinted. And then
people realize, publishers and journalists realized that they could sell
a lot of papers doing this, and this exacerbated the problem.
(22:24):
You know that all journalistic catchphrase it falls out of trees,
it leads, Yeah, or one of the popular statements that
papers throughout New England which said that Miller frightened old
women by scores into fits and young you know, old
children half out of their wits. Uh great. Yeah, So
(22:47):
so we know a little bit about human psychology, which
hasn't changed for thousands and thousands of years. Obviously, we
always say people throughout history were just as smart and
as vulnerable as the of us tuning in today. Well,
because I mean, you know, I remember growing up in
the Methodist Church, and I went through a period of
being terrified of of of going to hell, and of
(23:10):
of the devil and sin and all that stuff. And
then you you kind of goes even further and the
guilt gets piled on even harder with like Catholicism and
the idea of you know, God being this kind of
vengeful God. But this really like you know, takes the
cake in terms of like striking fear into the hearts
of followers, right, I mean it's like, not only do
you have to worry about the afterlife, you kind of
(23:30):
gotta worry about fire and brimstone coming here to where
you live, Like it's almost like a war is coming.
I just can't imagine living with that, you know, kind
of like it. I think some people probably took it
as a comfort in some ways and wanted others to
know and repent, because they believe the only way to
save your soul is to repent in advance of this
apocalypse of this you know, uh, this doomsday. But I
(23:52):
just can't imagine it like being a very pleasant existence. No, yeah,
it's a it's a hard sell to write act now.
But what what you're talking about with your early time
in the church reminds me of a a personal story.
I will share it. It's quite brief. When I was
a kid, for a time I was, I was forced
(24:13):
to attend a church I won't name the denomination, and
I think I just didn't pick up the right vibe
they were trying to convey because when I learned that,
I learned that Jesus Christ and again this is not
dinging on Christians, is dinging on me as a stupid kid.
I learned that there was this guy named Jesus Christ,
(24:35):
and at one day in your life, he would find you,
he would get you, he would change you. And before then,
the only creatures I had heard capable of doing this
sort of stuff we're boogeim in. So I used to
stay up at night thinking Jesus Christ could be anywhere.
He could be in my closet, he could be under
my bed, and I couldn't let my guard down because
(24:57):
he would get me. That wouldn't be me anymore. Um,
picture young ben bolan U with the uh Sunday school
teacher trying to figure out how to both correct, reassure,
and at the same time punish this wildly paranoid child.
What the patients of a saint, Well, that's the Sunday
(25:19):
school teacher at least. But the reason we're bringing up
psychology and bring up psychology because we know that in general,
when people have beliefs that are emotionally based and very
close to what they see as their identity, attacking those
beliefs doesn't tend to get them to question those beliefs.
(25:41):
It makes them double down. So it should be no
surprise that attacks on people who believed in Millerism only
made them double down. They went further into the extremities
of their school of thought they started as a result
(26:01):
of this persecution in the press and the smear campaigns.
They the Millerites started writing to Miller, finding him button
holding him in person, and saying, look, we need more
details about exactly when Jesus is returning. And by this
time in eighty three they thought they finally got their answer.
(26:24):
They narrowed the date down to a specific day, which
Miller had not done before. He had only made a
window of time when he was pressed for it. And
so it came to pass that after a few different
pitches and brainstorming, the Millerite movement believed that Jesus Christ
(26:46):
would return to Earth on October twenty two, eighteen forty four.
And by this time there were somewhere between fifty thousand
to a hundred thousand active Miller rights in the US
and in Canada. Most of them were in England and
New York. So imagine all of a sudden, You're not
(27:08):
a Miller right, right, but all of a sudden you here.
It's like a hundred thousand people coming in unison and saying,
oh watch out. October twenty two, eighteen forty four, that's
when it goes down. They've got their expiration date. And
this is I think what we were teasing earlier and all,
if the world ended in October of eighteen forty four,
(27:30):
how on earth are we here in a making this podcast? Yeah,
I mean somebody what we whisk the expression even using
ben sort of weird math um. Again, it's sort of
a hallmark of a lot of these kind of doomsday
theologies where there's uh an end date, you know, an
expiration date for humanity. Inevitably, you gotta pass it. Things
(27:55):
don't go as expected, you gotta find a way to
pass the buck and say, oh, here is it was
an honest mistake. And here's why. The biggest and funniest
version of this, I think is in the Church of
the sub Genius, which is a fake cult, a mock cult.
But then again, it's one of these ones that has
taken on such a life of its own that some
people are really into it. Um. It's it's all kind
(28:15):
of a satirical sort of like back in Alien kind
of society of of folks that like to you know,
smoke a lot of weed and live kind of openly
hippie sort of sexual lives and and do these weird
parties they have called X Day and different like gatherings
every year, multiple ones across the country. Um, but their profit.
You know, Bob Dobbs Jr. Bob Dobbs, he he had
(28:37):
a doomsday prediction as well, or at least when the
these aliens are gonna come and and you know, bring
all the sub genius up into their mothership. Maybe I'm
giving this not quite right, but the point is they
justified it with oh is he was looking at it
upside down, and then so if you look at it
right side up, the date becomes or what it should
have been that day becomes like thousands of years in
(28:57):
the future. So it's easy. That was an easy one
to pass the buck with, right. And this was a
social crisis in the United States and to a degree
in Canada at the time because spoiler alert, folks, Miller's
calculations seem to be incorrect. And we've had well more
than a century to think about that. Uh. As far
(29:21):
as we can tell, there was not a second coming
on Occouber twenty second, eighteen forty four. This became something
called the Great Disappointment. When I say social crisis, what
we mean is that numerous people gave up their farms,
(29:43):
they quit their jobs, they sold off their earthly possessions.
They thought they were on a one way ticket to heaven.
There were women in Worcester, Massachusetts who were giving away
their jewelry, They were getting rid of their clothing, they
cut off their hair are a lot of Miller Rights
started making these white gowns for themselves and sadly shades
(30:06):
of heaven. Heaven's Gate another cult that would come much later.
They called these gowns ascension robes. People in Groton, Massachusetts
actually climbed nearby Mount Wassachusetts to await the Second Coming,
and there was you know, they're heartbreaking human interest stories.
There was one older guy in Harvard, mass who couldn't
(30:28):
get all the way up to the mountain due to
some physical restrictions, so he climbed to the top of
the tallest apple tree he owned. Uh And there were
so many stories of people throughout New England climbing on rooftops,
any peak of natural elevation, just so it could be
in their mind easier to lift them to the sky,
(30:51):
all of them waiting for October. October passes. You'll see
that a lot of people in Austin, Hartford, Cincinnati, Pennsylvania,
on and on they were waiting in various places for
the end of the world in the Second Coming, and
(31:12):
a lot of them got together on the twenty three
October because there was still some debate about the exact day,
and they said, maybe it'll be you know, just like
people today who are waiting on a delivery in the
mail during the pandemic. They're like, well, maybe it's like
you know, heavenly supply chain issue. So midnight comes, don comes, noon,
(31:34):
maybe sundown, and the days passed uneventfully. Some people wait
for multiple days, and some of them, just like you said, no,
some of them start to say, well, we've got a regroup.
Everybody's making fun of us, and were we feel pretty down.
(31:55):
Miller himself, by the way, is still alive and he's
been game. Okay, maybe I got some part of the
math wrong, you know what I mean, because again, he
really believed in this. He wasn't trying to get I know,
and I know I've been sort of toying with that
idea and and in experimenting with this whole idea of
like the huckster versus the true believer, and uh, it's true,
(32:17):
he really wasn't getting trying to get money. And then
I don't know, I guess it's true. I guess you're right.
He really did. But he really was a true believer. Um,
he really did think he cracked some kind of you know,
mystical code, and he just wanted to spread the word
of what he knew. So he really was trying to,
like to understand what went wrong. Yeah, he really was.
(32:37):
And he would continue waiting for the end of the
world until he passes away in eighteen forty nine. But
as this happens, this thing we call the Great Disappointment,
We've got to go back to our great pr man
propagandist Joshua V. Himes, who really pulled the levers of
(32:57):
mass media to popular as Millerism. He continued publishing The
Advent Herald well into the eighteen fifties, and then he
went west and became an Episcopal priest. I believe for
a lot of people when this day came and passed,
it was this tremendous, bitter disappointment, almost a tragedy beyond words.
(33:21):
They felt they had given up everything for their religion,
and in a secular sense they very much had, and
they started praying. You can read again from the excellent
Dartmouth College Library bulletin article The End of the World
by Gary Waite, You can read in full a recounting
(33:43):
of this that sounds a lot like a prayer, Come
Lord Jesus, and come quickly. But he did not come.
And now to turn again to the cares, perplexities and
dangers of life, and full view of jeering and reviling
u leavers who scoffed as never before, was a terrible
trial of faith and patience. When Elder Himes visited Waterbury, Vermont,
(34:07):
a short time after the passing of the time and
stated that the Brethren should prepare for another cold winter,
my feelings were almost uncontrollable. I left the place of
meeting and wept like a child. And this was an
experience shared by many people following the Millerite movement. William Miller,
for himself, did not He was confused, but he he
(34:31):
didn't give up his faith, his certitude that the second
coming of Christ could be predicted, and he held this
belief despite public ridicule in the years that followed, all
the way to his death on December twenty eight, forty nine.
On his gravestone is the inscription, but go thou thy
(34:52):
way till the end be for thou shalt rest and
stand in thy lots at the end of days, which
as many of us in the audience may recognize, is
from Daniel twelve thirteen. It might surprise you now at
this point, folks, to realize that Adventist theology has continued.
The movement fell apart. Joshua Vie Himes tried to raise
(35:16):
money for people had given away all their stuff. William
Miller died largely forgotten, but a mill wright, a teenager
from Maine named Ellen White, continued to preach a version
of Adventist thought, and her followers, at first were called Sabbatarians.
In eighteen sixty three they formed something called the Seventh
(35:40):
Day Adventist Church. And this group is around today and
it's bigger than Millerism ever. Was there nineteen million members
of the Seventh Day Adventist Church. Yeah, it's again. That's
where I was familiar outside of advent calendar as the
idea of being an Adventist from the Seventh Day Adventist Church.
But I didn't really know much about what their their
(36:01):
beliefs were. So this was super interesting and educational, I
think for for for all of us. But here's the thing.
It's another one of those examples of like, okay, the
date it passes, but it can also lead to other conversations.
So the exact date of the Second Advent was revised
a couple of times. So you might point to critics
(36:22):
of of the movement saying that, well, I mean, we
passed Miller's prediction. Therefore the whole thing was bunk. And
then the guy, you know, was was a fraud, or
at the very least was not keyed into the Holy
Spirit in the way that he may have thought. Miller's
year of the Second Advent came with the appearance of
a very visible and uh and brilliant comment. Uh. It
(36:46):
was it was, you know, one of these things that
was like an event, you know, on planet Earth at
the time when people really didn't understand much about the
movement of of this of the spheres, or at least
in so much as they do today. Yeah, And this was,
by the way, a these revisions come about partially because
people were committing a sunk cost fallacy. They had already
(37:08):
gotten rid of all their stuff, you know what I mean,
They had become convinced that they were right. They had certitude,
and when this didn't come to pass, they were parodied.
They had to, in many ways start life over again.
This was a great disappointment. It was a great disappointment
for William Miller himself. He was still convinced the end
(37:28):
was near, but as as we said earlier, he thought
maybe he had made a slight miscalculation. The error was
not divinity, the error was human on his part. So
he wrote this letter to his pal Himes and a
general address to his followers, and he apologized. He apologized
(37:52):
in a very sincere way, and he added a poem,
and we thought that would be a nice place to end.
It's a little bit long, so I think we're gonna
double dragon. Uh no, you want to do the honors here,
and let's just like really lean into the emotional depth.
Will you say? Two lines apiece, days and even number. Yeah,
(38:12):
let's try how tedious and lonesome the hours while Jesus,
my savior delays, I have sought him in Solitude's bowers
and looked for him all the long days, Yet he lingers,
I pray, tell me why his chariots no sooner returns
(38:36):
to see him in clouds in the sky. My soul
with intensity burdens. I longed to be with him at home,
my heart swallowed up in his love on the fields
of New Eden, to room and to dwell with my savior.
(39:00):
Oh wow, that's that's powerful stuff. And let's we're leaning
into the reading. Is it's fun? We're not mocking the Uh,
it's it's just it's fun to do. Uh. This kind
of writing lends itself to this sort of reading. And
that's where we leave it for today. This is a
really interesting two part episode on the history of I
(39:22):
guess one of America's first doomsday theologies. Is it a cult?
Is it just a niche religion? It's certainly your Seventh
day Adventist. Can't really call niche? What I believe? What
did we say? Ben? Nineteen million followers? Uh, that is
is pretty pretty massive. So why don't you let us know?
We have ways that you can contact us. In fact,
(39:44):
um Ben and I both exist on the Internet as
individual human people, and if you send it to one
of us, we share it with each other and we'll
we'll write back to you. You can find me on
Instagram where I am at How now Noel Brown. Ben's
got a couple other ways, one of which might be
one of the best ways to to reach out in
terms of a tweet goodness. Yes, i am on Instagram
(40:06):
at Ben Bowling bo w l I N where you
can learn more about some stuff that I can't quite
say on air. But I've got a ton of secret
projects on the way. If you are more of a
Twitter Twitter native, then you can find me at Ben
Bowling hs W on Twitter, where I don't need a
voice to contact people, and I love to hear from
(40:28):
all our fellow ridiculous historians. The big what Corporate America
we call the value add for hitting me up on
Twitter is that you will also be able to find
the one and only Mr Max Williams. Yes, you can
find me on Twitter at a t L underscore Max Williams. Well, yeah,
you'll see all my fun activities and trolling of Ben
and stuff. Okay, great, Yes, So come for the tweets,
(40:53):
stay for the trolling as Noel, Max and I figure
out what our own prediction for the end of the
world is. In the meantime, we can't wait for you
to join us again, folks, where we're going to talk
about some very unethical shenanigans. Uncle Sam got up to
in our own St. Louis, Missouri. Thanks as always the Max,
(41:13):
thanks to our composer, Mr Alex Williams, and again special
thanks to you knowl and you Max for bearing with
me when I thought I would I would be mute.
I'm glad you won that particular battle with the Sea
Witch this time down, so we mean there's that golden voice,
(41:33):
that golden blessing. See you next time, folks. For more
podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,
Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
(00:27):
back to the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always
so much for tuning in, and a special thank you
to people who reached out and checked on whether or
not my voice would return. It's not, but it's there,
and I'm very grateful to our own Mr Noel Brown
(00:47):
and our super producer Max Williams for Barry, there's that
golden voice. Who was that golden voice? Jeez, you know
out of that golden boy. We're glad to have you back, buddy.
Thanks man. You know, Um, we don't talk about it
too much on air, but um, for any show that Max,
(01:09):
Noel and I do, uh, we end up becoming pretty
close friends because we worked together all the time. And
I just want to thank you guys so much for
being in my corner. Thankfully it wasn't COVID, but couldn't
work with a better bunch of people. And and um, Noel,
you and I have talked about it in the past
(01:29):
when we're hanging because we are actually friends and we
do hang out outside of the show. We've talked about
how weird and extraordinary it is to genuinely vibe with
pretty much everyone you work with. I think we're immensely fortunate.
Oh yeah, I mean, you know, it's no coincidence that,
like most of my and your and uh, many of
(01:49):
our friends are people that we work with, or we've
been lucky enough to bring people that are our friends
were our friends into the work family. So it all
kind of lines kind of blurred. Like I knew Max,
you know, uh and his brother Alex before they worked
for us, and now we just get to hang out more.
And uh, you guys, are you guys in particular not
(02:11):
a ding on anyone else who work with but you
guys in particular is such a such a gift to
this show. And I'm always grateful to hang out. So um,
the gift that keeps on giving, but not like in
the Herpes kind of way, right, and not in like
the not in the short form animation gift way though,
the gift that keeps on gifting I think would be
interesting anyway. So if it didn't gift, it wouldn't if
(02:34):
it didn't keep on gifting, it wouldn't be a proper gift.
That is a very good point, Noel, That is a
very good point. So we're gonna be talking about some
very good points today with some help from one of
our excellent research associates and Mr Zach Williams. When previously
we left you without a dope beat two step too,
(02:57):
we were talking about the end of the world as
imagined by a man named William Millard now Noel Max.
When we ended part one, we had set up some
pretty in depth context about Miller's origin story and about
his move from a small town preacher to a man
(03:22):
obsessed with calculating the return of Jesus Christ, to his
role as a pop culture phenomenon of the time. Really
he was a superstar. Uh, And things got incredibly um oh,
they just escalated as he got closer and closer to
his imagined prediction the second Coming of Christ. But man
(03:46):
wet teased, we teased, how um how other denominations established
Christian denominations started to clap back at Miller because, like
where we leave off, let's see, churches started saying, if
you're a traveling preacher and you talk about Millerism, you
can't preach here. And then they started cracking down on
(04:10):
people who, um, who are just church members who might
read newspapers or pamphlets about Millers and I mean and
in a doomsday theology by any other name is still
as is depressing. Maybe they didn't call it Millerism directly
or claimed to be miller Rites, Like I kind of wonder, like,
would you even claim that it would be more just
(04:30):
kind of like you know, uh, something people would understand
based on what your theology is. I don't know you
necessarily even make that some sort of badge that you'd
wear around. But I imagine that anyone starting to preach
these end times kind of prophecies would start to be
ostracized to some degree. In fact, there's a great example
of a church elder by the name of Levi Stockman
who absolutely refused to stop preaching this doom and gloom stuff,
(04:55):
I mean Doom's Day and glooms Day stuff, I guess.
And this, this this went hard in terms of like
church leaders and in the way these these folks who
are these hardliner Millerites retreated. He fell deathly ill with
with the consumption. Then you described it as as the
doc holiday disease. He was our he was our huckleberry,
somebody's huckleberry. He was at the very least the huckleberry
(05:18):
of his wife and child who were in desperate danger
of being left penniless because the church officials, you know,
he was an elder of the church who was therefore
kind of his livelihood was tied to their rulings, were
threatening to you know, strip him of his pension if
he didn't stop talking all that job, yeah, which meant
(05:39):
that his wife and his children would not have any
pension benefits, all but condemning them to the poorhouse. Yet
Stockman stuck to his ideological theological guns and as a
result he was expelled from the ministry officially, and just
a few weeks later he died of consumption. This this
(06:03):
is one example that shows us the larger, the larger horizon.
Here by the summer of eighteen three, Millerite Adventist and
the more established Protestant denominations of Christianity are at loggerheads.
They're super tense, and a lot of Adventists, many of
(06:26):
whom already had like their own membership and an established denomination. Right,
they might be like Methodists, they might be Protestants, but
they're also Millerites, and they started saying, well, should we
get out of our membership with our current denomination. They
almost did, but an announcement went out in one of
those publications that we talked about in part one. This
(06:48):
one was called the Signs of the Times, and it
encouraged them to stay put, and it said, look, don't
run away, because you are already embedded in this community.
So stay there, and while you're there, start talking about Millerism,
(07:09):
start talking about how Jesus Christ is on the way
and very soon. We want to thank lineage journey dot
com for their excellent article a snapshot of the Millerite
movement from eighteen thirty nine to eighteen forty four. No
spoilers just yet. Uh. And you would think the Millerite
(07:32):
apparatus suing for peace would have maybe calm those tensions somewhat,
but it wasn't. It wasn't enough. That's why things like
the Congregational Journal, another publication, went out on August twelfth,
eighteen forty three, and put this hit piece out on
(07:54):
the front page that said, look, the second advent God
Spool is malarkey. And then later that year, also eighteen
forty three, they published an article by Nathaniel Wells that
was a takedown of everything Miller had written about and
(08:14):
lectured about. And this became a smear campaign. Honestly, regardless
of what you think about Christianity or or differences between denominations,
there was no real civil discussion of his weird math
that we mentioned earlier, or his his philosophically. No one
(08:36):
was talking about that. No one was adding up the numbers. Instead,
they were jumping to third base and saying, look, all
these Millerites, any second Adventist is a fanatic. Their leaders
are dangerous to society. They want you to think the
world is ending, and they're mad, they're lunatics. Yeah, I mean,
(09:00):
you know it's it's I kind of get it. Just
you know, it's like, can we find some silver lining here,
especially given that like the dude was just kind of
digging looking for he was kind of what you call
that Ben, when you like sort of have like a
a an outcome that you're sort of searching for, Uh,
you find ways of of of finding the information that
(09:22):
validates your your pre your foregone conclusion confirmation bias. Yeah,
nail on that, that's the one. Would you would you
agree there's a little bit of that going on with Miller?
I mean, or or do you think he? I can't
remember exactly didn't he sort of like always have a
bit of a doomsday mindset around religion, or did he
just figure that he he felt like he cracked the code. Yeah,
(09:43):
it's it's a little bit of column a little bit
of column B. Because he was originally more of a
deist when he was introduced to the idea of a
god who made everything right, a god who exists who
made everything. But it's sort of too high level now
to be con earned with the day to day stuff.
And then when he had his crisis of faith and
(10:06):
he encountered these revelations, he became obsessed with figuring out
exactly when the messionic figure Jesus Christ Jesus H. Christ
by some accounts, uh, mostly mostly stand up comics would return.
And uh, And so I think that we see established
(10:29):
denominations grappling with a couple of issues here. First, this
takes away socio political control from these established denominations, and
yeah it is in second, if it's all gonna come
crashing down anyway, then what's the point. And like, why
believe one over another in terms of like, you know,
(10:52):
them being able to exercise control over this earthly realm.
If you put all the emphasis on the afterlife exclusively.
Then how are you going to control old people and
amend them to your will? Right? Right? So why do
I need to put uh ten percent tythe on my
income to build a church that's not being constructed intol eight,
you know what I mean? So this is a problem
(11:13):
for them. But I would argue secondly, there's also the
issue of there there's also the issue of putting an
expiration date on things, right, And it's an expiration date
we have to remember that's coming very soon. And this
was making no mistakes, sowing some amount of chaos in society.
(11:36):
There was one, this anonymous report. We couldn't really find
the specifics here, but according to the Dartmouth article we
looked at in part one, there was supposedly a selectman
a committee member in some town in New Hampshire. This
is a secular, you know, local municipal thing. He was
(12:00):
a miller, right, and he resigned. He quit his job
and said, look, I need to spend the rest of
the year getting my affairs in order for the end
of the world. Imagine quitting your job for the end
of the world. Imagine like imagine we get an email
or a text from Max one day and Max says, hey, guys,
(12:23):
I've been reading some stuff. I've been on some blogs,
and I'm pretty sure the world as we know it
is ending in September. So I'm gonna just take some
time and play sky Rim what once more, get my
house in order? All right, my sky ramows guys, I
I guess you haven't picked up on that, but you
(12:44):
know I'm disappearing in September. I'm going off to Seattle
in Portland. I mean, I wasn't gonna come on straight
forward and stays to freak you guys out, but you
know there there might be a reason behind that. Guys.
All right, we're gonna put a pin in this for now.
We're gonna have a suit Arius talk off air. But
in the meantime, Ben, this is where I start asking
(13:05):
myself the question of what differentiates a religion from a cult.
When you start talking about these sort of like doomsday
cults and people that are rallying around they perceived end
of the world and it is sort of more of
(13:26):
a niche kind of thing, is that what you'd consider
a cult? Are we starting to get into more cult
like territory here that is maybe more rallying around a
single figure. Also, as we know, cults don't necessarily have
to rally around a single figure. You can rally around
like an idea. Um, what do you think though, is
is this is this sort of an example of an
early version of kind of a doomsday cult. That's a
(13:48):
great question. Yeah, it's uh one of early America's very
first doomsday movements for sure. And I'm so glad you asked, because, um,
you know, we've worked extensively on stuff they wants you
to know. Another show we do investigating various cults, like
add nonok Tars sex cult in Turkey that's out now.
(14:08):
We've also looked at how colts are formed, and one
big misconception about cults is that they always are oriented
around a religious belief. Multi level marketing schemes can be cults.
Life coaching groups and fitness groups can be cults. Uh No,
ding on you CrossFit just don't feel like after email us.
(14:30):
And one thing that's interesting, this is a little bit
of a tangent, but if you want to understand cults,
I would say look toward tactics rather than ideology. The
ideology is fluid and it does the ideology doesn't really matter.
One of the best analyzes of what creates a cult
(14:50):
is something called the BITE model, which was created by
Steve Hassan, and it's really a model for authoritarian control.
What differentiates a cult from a legion, I would say
would be the tactics applied the authoritarian control. BITE stands
for behavior control, information control, thought control, and emotional control.
(15:12):
And you can read a full list of of what
that means, but they're all the hits. Separation from your family,
you know what I mean, separation from information from the
outside world, the idea of thought crime, the idea of
manipulating the ranges of emotions that people or followers can
(15:32):
experience without being punished. I actually I will put this
in our chat because this is such a great link
for everyone. And if you feel a friend is involved
in a cultic organization of some sort, look at the
bite bite model and see what kind of control is
being exercised upon them. But it's funny though, because they
(15:54):
were talking about you know again, like sometimes there's a
little bit of confusion between like what is a religion
versus what is a cult? And Uh, to me, it's
like if people are leaving a more let's say traditional religion,
like a regular Protestant Christianity and going for this like
Adventist Millerism, that could ostracize them from their families. They
(16:16):
could be you know, treated as outsiders and shunned and
fully be like all about that. It's like, it's fine,
you know, it's gonna change my life, but I'm gonna
I'm putting my money where my mouth is and I'm
committing to this. So what we don't necessarily have specific
examples of this per se outside of this elder you
know who's he ultimately died um as a result of
(16:38):
his belief system. So it's a little I don't know,
maybe we'll put a pin in that one too, because
I think it's a it's more of an interesting question
than it is something that we necessarily have an answer for. Because,
as we know, many religious movements some people call cults,
other people call like, you know, religious community or religious movements.
So it is it is a little bit of a
kind of gray area sometime. But Ben, do you have
(17:01):
an opinion on whether Millerism is a cult or just
an offshoot of a religious movement. Yeah, that's a good question. Um,
I think I will also put a pin in that,
because it's a bit of a sticky wicket. Maybe you,
fellow ridiculous historians, can give us your take at the end.
We have some plot twist ahead. I would say that
(17:21):
another like definition of a cult that I just sort
of made up along the years is really it's a
matter of time, right, because you know, one person's cult
is another person's revealed religion with a tomb and everything.
So maybe maybe you're a cult until you make it
past the first two hundred years or something like that.
(17:44):
Again totally made up, but but okay, so we know that. Um,
we know that there were other reports of people leaving
their day to day lives. The Sentinel reported uh that
same year that two Justice commissions who were working in
(18:04):
New Hampshire also left their jobs. And we're supposed to
join up with the Millerites and said, hey, the world's ending,
I don't need to go to work anymore. You know,
it gets really ugly too, because people started saying that
this Millerite movement or Millerism was also responsible for suicides.
(18:29):
They were saying, some people are so certain that the
world is ending that they are taking their own lives.
But as you and I found nol this was often
not based on uh not based on really solid evidence.
We actually have an excerpt from the Boston Evening Journal
(18:49):
which was reprinted by the Sentinel. That's right. The headline
is end of the World died in Pelham, New Hampshire.
John H. Shortage, aged about fifty five. Mr s was
formerly a merchant of respectable standing in Portsmouth, but by
misfortunes in business, had suffered much from almost incessant mental derangement.
(19:11):
On the day of his death, he was imagining the
time of the Second Advent was to take place. He
had a garb made for the occasion, and with this
he was waiting until became impatient. He climbed to the
top of a high tree. There, mantled at his long
white ascension robe. He made one aspiring effort but was
(19:31):
precipitated to the ground and instantly died from a broken neck. Okay,
once again, whenever we read these kinds of things on
the show been I'm just always taken by the ass
around the elbow approach to get to like a really
simple thing. It's like ed he fell out of a
tree and died, and instead it's there mantled in his
long wide ascension robe. He made one aspiring effort but
(19:54):
was precipitated to the ground and instantly died from a
broken neck. I mean, I'm saying I think it's wonderful,
but it is funny to see the the literary gymnastics
that that happens sometimes in these older like editorial pieces.
Oh yeah, they're feeling themselves for sure. I agree. Also
that snarky last sentence that says maybe he was jumping,
(20:16):
maybe he was trying to fly to heaven. That's really
rude to someone who has died, Yes, exactly now, it's
the subtext is dripping with with sarka. And this also
props to the Sentinel because they did say this was
doubted by the local paper. They're in Portsmouth and Portsmouth Journal.
(20:37):
But stories like this they get eyeballs. People like reading
about these things. Is this same reason people slow down
to watch car accidents in traffic Today these stories were
reprinted across the Northeast. And again we've talked in the
past about how the big red meat will run on
(20:58):
the cover of a newspaper on Monday, and the retraction
or correction will be in the back of the newspaper.
On Tuesday, and no one will read it, so nobody's
really fact checking these, and nobody bothered to look into
the background of the people who were allegedly committing suicide.
(21:19):
For this, It's kind of like when you hear the
old argument about video games making people violent or something,
or music making people violent. What you see in a
lot of those cases is the person who committed an
act of violence was already maybe not in the best
place mentally, right, and they just happened to play a
(21:41):
video game, or they happened to enjoy a certain genre
of music. Yeah, some people just need a little push
off the cliff or out of a tree. Um. It
really is kind of something that was probably going to
happen one way or another sooner and or later, and
then it's easy to craft and narrow around it, which
is clearly what was happening, because all of these suicides
(22:04):
were beginning to be kind of placed on the shoulders
of Miller, based almost entirely on like anecdotal evidence, like
the kind of thing we just saw reprinted. And then
people realize, publishers and journalists realized that they could sell
a lot of papers doing this, and this exacerbated the problem.
(22:24):
You know that all journalistic catchphrase it falls out of trees,
it leads, Yeah, or one of the popular statements that
papers throughout New England which said that Miller frightened old
women by scores into fits and young you know, old
children half out of their wits. Uh great. Yeah, So
(22:47):
so we know a little bit about human psychology, which
hasn't changed for thousands and thousands of years. Obviously, we
always say people throughout history were just as smart and
as vulnerable as the of us tuning in today. Well,
because I mean, you know, I remember growing up in
the Methodist Church, and I went through a period of
being terrified of of of going to hell, and of
(23:10):
of the devil and sin and all that stuff. And
then you you kind of goes even further and the
guilt gets piled on even harder with like Catholicism and
the idea of you know, God being this kind of
vengeful God. But this really like you know, takes the
cake in terms of like striking fear into the hearts
of followers, right, I mean it's like, not only do
you have to worry about the afterlife, you kind of
(23:30):
gotta worry about fire and brimstone coming here to where
you live, Like it's almost like a war is coming.
I just can't imagine living with that, you know, kind
of like it. I think some people probably took it
as a comfort in some ways and wanted others to
know and repent, because they believe the only way to
save your soul is to repent in advance of this
apocalypse of this you know, uh, this doomsday. But I
(23:52):
just can't imagine it like being a very pleasant existence. No, yeah,
it's a it's a hard sell to write act now.
But what what you're talking about with your early time
in the church reminds me of a a personal story.
I will share it. It's quite brief. When I was
a kid, for a time I was, I was forced
(24:13):
to attend a church I won't name the denomination, and
I think I just didn't pick up the right vibe
they were trying to convey because when I learned that,
I learned that Jesus Christ and again this is not
dinging on Christians, is dinging on me as a stupid kid.
I learned that there was this guy named Jesus Christ,
(24:35):
and at one day in your life, he would find you,
he would get you, he would change you. And before then,
the only creatures I had heard capable of doing this
sort of stuff we're boogeim in. So I used to
stay up at night thinking Jesus Christ could be anywhere.
He could be in my closet, he could be under
my bed, and I couldn't let my guard down because
(24:57):
he would get me. That wouldn't be me anymore. Um,
picture young ben bolan U with the uh Sunday school
teacher trying to figure out how to both correct, reassure,
and at the same time punish this wildly paranoid child.
What the patients of a saint, Well, that's the Sunday
(25:19):
school teacher at least. But the reason we're bringing up
psychology and bring up psychology because we know that in general,
when people have beliefs that are emotionally based and very
close to what they see as their identity, attacking those
beliefs doesn't tend to get them to question those beliefs.
(25:41):
It makes them double down. So it should be no
surprise that attacks on people who believed in Millerism only
made them double down. They went further into the extremities
of their school of thought they started as a result
(26:01):
of this persecution in the press and the smear campaigns.
They the Millerites started writing to Miller, finding him button
holding him in person, and saying, look, we need more
details about exactly when Jesus is returning. And by this
time in eighty three they thought they finally got their answer.
(26:24):
They narrowed the date down to a specific day, which
Miller had not done before. He had only made a
window of time when he was pressed for it. And
so it came to pass that after a few different
pitches and brainstorming, the Millerite movement believed that Jesus Christ
(26:46):
would return to Earth on October twenty two, eighteen forty four.
And by this time there were somewhere between fifty thousand
to a hundred thousand active Miller rights in the US
and in Canada. Most of them were in England and
New York. So imagine all of a sudden, You're not
(27:08):
a Miller right, right, but all of a sudden you here.
It's like a hundred thousand people coming in unison and saying,
oh watch out. October twenty two, eighteen forty four, that's
when it goes down. They've got their expiration date. And
this is I think what we were teasing earlier and all,
if the world ended in October of eighteen forty four,
(27:30):
how on earth are we here in a making this podcast? Yeah,
I mean somebody what we whisk the expression even using
ben sort of weird math um. Again, it's sort of
a hallmark of a lot of these kind of doomsday
theologies where there's uh an end date, you know, an
expiration date for humanity. Inevitably, you gotta pass it. Things
(27:55):
don't go as expected, you gotta find a way to
pass the buck and say, oh, here is it was
an honest mistake. And here's why. The biggest and funniest
version of this, I think is in the Church of
the sub Genius, which is a fake cult, a mock cult.
But then again, it's one of these ones that has
taken on such a life of its own that some
people are really into it. Um. It's it's all kind
(28:15):
of a satirical sort of like back in Alien kind
of society of of folks that like to you know,
smoke a lot of weed and live kind of openly
hippie sort of sexual lives and and do these weird
parties they have called X Day and different like gatherings
every year, multiple ones across the country. Um, but their profit.
You know, Bob Dobbs Jr. Bob Dobbs, he he had
(28:37):
a doomsday prediction as well, or at least when the
these aliens are gonna come and and you know, bring
all the sub genius up into their mothership. Maybe I'm
giving this not quite right, but the point is they
justified it with oh is he was looking at it
upside down, and then so if you look at it
right side up, the date becomes or what it should
have been that day becomes like thousands of years in
(28:57):
the future. So it's easy. That was an easy one
to pass the buck with, right. And this was a
social crisis in the United States and to a degree
in Canada at the time because spoiler alert, folks, Miller's
calculations seem to be incorrect. And we've had well more
than a century to think about that. Uh. As far
(29:21):
as we can tell, there was not a second coming
on Occouber twenty second, eighteen forty four. This became something
called the Great Disappointment. When I say social crisis, what
we mean is that numerous people gave up their farms,
(29:43):
they quit their jobs, they sold off their earthly possessions.
They thought they were on a one way ticket to heaven.
There were women in Worcester, Massachusetts who were giving away
their jewelry, They were getting rid of their clothing, they
cut off their hair are a lot of Miller Rights
started making these white gowns for themselves and sadly shades
(30:06):
of heaven. Heaven's Gate another cult that would come much later.
They called these gowns ascension robes. People in Groton, Massachusetts
actually climbed nearby Mount Wassachusetts to await the Second Coming,
and there was you know, they're heartbreaking human interest stories.
There was one older guy in Harvard, mass who couldn't
(30:28):
get all the way up to the mountain due to
some physical restrictions, so he climbed to the top of
the tallest apple tree he owned. Uh And there were
so many stories of people throughout New England climbing on rooftops,
any peak of natural elevation, just so it could be
in their mind easier to lift them to the sky,
(30:51):
all of them waiting for October. October passes. You'll see
that a lot of people in Austin, Hartford, Cincinnati, Pennsylvania,
on and on they were waiting in various places for
the end of the world in the Second Coming, and
(31:12):
a lot of them got together on the twenty three
October because there was still some debate about the exact day,
and they said, maybe it'll be you know, just like
people today who are waiting on a delivery in the
mail during the pandemic. They're like, well, maybe it's like
you know, heavenly supply chain issue. So midnight comes, don comes, noon,
(31:34):
maybe sundown, and the days passed uneventfully. Some people wait
for multiple days, and some of them, just like you said, no,
some of them start to say, well, we've got a regroup.
Everybody's making fun of us, and were we feel pretty down.
(31:55):
Miller himself, by the way, is still alive and he's
been game. Okay, maybe I got some part of the
math wrong, you know what I mean, because again, he
really believed in this. He wasn't trying to get I know,
and I know I've been sort of toying with that
idea and and in experimenting with this whole idea of
like the huckster versus the true believer, and uh, it's true,
(32:17):
he really wasn't getting trying to get money. And then
I don't know, I guess it's true. I guess you're right.
He really did. But he really was a true believer. Um,
he really did think he cracked some kind of you know,
mystical code, and he just wanted to spread the word
of what he knew. So he really was trying to,
like to understand what went wrong. Yeah, he really was.
(32:37):
And he would continue waiting for the end of the
world until he passes away in eighteen forty nine. But
as this happens, this thing we call the Great Disappointment,
We've got to go back to our great pr man
propagandist Joshua V. Himes, who really pulled the levers of
(32:57):
mass media to popular as Millerism. He continued publishing The
Advent Herald well into the eighteen fifties, and then he
went west and became an Episcopal priest. I believe for
a lot of people when this day came and passed,
it was this tremendous, bitter disappointment, almost a tragedy beyond words.
(33:21):
They felt they had given up everything for their religion,
and in a secular sense they very much had, and
they started praying. You can read again from the excellent
Dartmouth College Library bulletin article The End of the World
by Gary Waite, You can read in full a recounting
(33:43):
of this that sounds a lot like a prayer, Come
Lord Jesus, and come quickly. But he did not come.
And now to turn again to the cares, perplexities and
dangers of life, and full view of jeering and reviling
u leavers who scoffed as never before, was a terrible
trial of faith and patience. When Elder Himes visited Waterbury, Vermont,
(34:07):
a short time after the passing of the time and
stated that the Brethren should prepare for another cold winter,
my feelings were almost uncontrollable. I left the place of
meeting and wept like a child. And this was an
experience shared by many people following the Millerite movement. William Miller,
for himself, did not He was confused, but he he
(34:31):
didn't give up his faith, his certitude that the second
coming of Christ could be predicted, and he held this
belief despite public ridicule in the years that followed, all
the way to his death on December twenty eight, forty nine.
On his gravestone is the inscription, but go thou thy
(34:52):
way till the end be for thou shalt rest and
stand in thy lots at the end of days, which
as many of us in the audience may recognize, is
from Daniel twelve thirteen. It might surprise you now at
this point, folks, to realize that Adventist theology has continued.
The movement fell apart. Joshua Vie Himes tried to raise
(35:16):
money for people had given away all their stuff. William
Miller died largely forgotten, but a mill wright, a teenager
from Maine named Ellen White, continued to preach a version
of Adventist thought, and her followers, at first were called Sabbatarians.
In eighteen sixty three they formed something called the Seventh
(35:40):
Day Adventist Church. And this group is around today and
it's bigger than Millerism ever. Was there nineteen million members
of the Seventh Day Adventist Church. Yeah, it's again. That's
where I was familiar outside of advent calendar as the
idea of being an Adventist from the Seventh Day Adventist Church.
But I didn't really know much about what their their
(36:01):
beliefs were. So this was super interesting and educational, I
think for for for all of us. But here's the thing.
It's another one of those examples of like, okay, the
date it passes, but it can also lead to other conversations.
So the exact date of the Second Advent was revised
a couple of times. So you might point to critics
(36:22):
of of the movement saying that, well, I mean, we
passed Miller's prediction. Therefore the whole thing was bunk. And
then the guy, you know, was was a fraud, or
at the very least was not keyed into the Holy
Spirit in the way that he may have thought. Miller's
year of the Second Advent came with the appearance of
a very visible and uh and brilliant comment. Uh. It
(36:46):
was it was, you know, one of these things that
was like an event, you know, on planet Earth at
the time when people really didn't understand much about the
movement of of this of the spheres, or at least
in so much as they do today. Yeah, And this was,
by the way, a these revisions come about partially because
people were committing a sunk cost fallacy. They had already
(37:08):
gotten rid of all their stuff, you know what I mean,
They had become convinced that they were right. They had certitude,
and when this didn't come to pass, they were parodied.
They had to, in many ways start life over again.
This was a great disappointment. It was a great disappointment
for William Miller himself. He was still convinced the end
(37:28):
was near, but as as we said earlier, he thought
maybe he had made a slight miscalculation. The error was
not divinity, the error was human on his part. So
he wrote this letter to his pal Himes and a
general address to his followers, and he apologized. He apologized
(37:52):
in a very sincere way, and he added a poem,
and we thought that would be a nice place to end.
It's a little bit long, so I think we're gonna
double dragon. Uh no, you want to do the honors here,
and let's just like really lean into the emotional depth.
Will you say? Two lines apiece, days and even number. Yeah,
(38:12):
let's try how tedious and lonesome the hours while Jesus,
my savior delays, I have sought him in Solitude's bowers
and looked for him all the long days, Yet he lingers,
I pray, tell me why his chariots no sooner returns
(38:36):
to see him in clouds in the sky. My soul
with intensity burdens. I longed to be with him at home,
my heart swallowed up in his love on the fields
of New Eden, to room and to dwell with my savior.
(39:00):
Oh wow, that's that's powerful stuff. And let's we're leaning
into the reading. Is it's fun? We're not mocking the Uh,
it's it's just it's fun to do. Uh. This kind
of writing lends itself to this sort of reading. And
that's where we leave it for today. This is a
really interesting two part episode on the history of I
(39:22):
guess one of America's first doomsday theologies. Is it a cult?
Is it just a niche religion? It's certainly your Seventh
day Adventist. Can't really call niche? What I believe? What
did we say? Ben? Nineteen million followers? Uh, that is
is pretty pretty massive. So why don't you let us know?
We have ways that you can contact us. In fact,
(39:44):
um Ben and I both exist on the Internet as
individual human people, and if you send it to one
of us, we share it with each other and we'll
we'll write back to you. You can find me on
Instagram where I am at How now Noel Brown. Ben's
got a couple other ways, one of which might be
one of the best ways to to reach out in
terms of a tweet goodness. Yes, i am on Instagram
(40:06):
at Ben Bowling bo w l I N where you
can learn more about some stuff that I can't quite
say on air. But I've got a ton of secret
projects on the way. If you are more of a
Twitter Twitter native, then you can find me at Ben
Bowling hs W on Twitter, where I don't need a
voice to contact people, and I love to hear from
(40:28):
all our fellow ridiculous historians. The big what Corporate America
we call the value add for hitting me up on
Twitter is that you will also be able to find
the one and only Mr Max Williams. Yes, you can
find me on Twitter at a t L underscore Max Williams. Well, yeah,
you'll see all my fun activities and trolling of Ben
and stuff. Okay, great, Yes, So come for the tweets,
(40:53):
stay for the trolling as Noel, Max and I figure
out what our own prediction for the end of the
world is. In the meantime, we can't wait for you
to join us again, folks, where we're going to talk
about some very unethical shenanigans. Uncle Sam got up to
in our own St. Louis, Missouri. Thanks as always the Max,
(41:13):
thanks to our composer, Mr Alex Williams, and again special
thanks to you knowl and you Max for bearing with
me when I thought I would I would be mute.
I'm glad you won that particular battle with the Sea
Witch this time down, so we mean there's that golden voice,
(41:33):
that golden blessing. See you next time, folks. For more
podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,
Ridiculous History News
Hosts And Creators
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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