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Millerism, Part II: The Great Disappointment (and the Aftermath) · Ridiculous History

0:00
Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
0:27
Speaker 1: back to the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always
0:30
Speaker 1: so much for tuning in, and a special thank you
0:34
Speaker 1: to people who reached out and checked on whether or
0:38
Speaker 1: not my voice would return. It's not, but it's there,
0:43
Speaker 1: and I'm very grateful to our own Mr Noel Brown
0:47
Speaker 1: and our super producer Max Williams for Barry, there's that
0:53
Speaker 1: golden voice. Who was that golden voice? Jeez, you know
0:59
Speaker 1: out of that golden boy. We're glad to have you back, buddy.
1:01
Speaker 1: Thanks man. You know, Um, we don't talk about it
1:04
Speaker 1: too much on air, but um, for any show that Max,
1:09
Speaker 1: Noel and I do, uh, we end up becoming pretty
1:12
Speaker 1: close friends because we worked together all the time. And
1:15
Speaker 1: I just want to thank you guys so much for
1:19
Speaker 1: being in my corner. Thankfully it wasn't COVID, but couldn't
1:22
Speaker 1: work with a better bunch of people. And and um, Noel,
1:26
Speaker 1: you and I have talked about it in the past
1:29
Speaker 1: when we're hanging because we are actually friends and we
1:31
Speaker 1: do hang out outside of the show. We've talked about
1:33
Speaker 1: how weird and extraordinary it is to genuinely vibe with
1:40
Speaker 1: pretty much everyone you work with. I think we're immensely fortunate.
1:43
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I mean, you know, it's no coincidence that,
1:45
Speaker 1: like most of my and your and uh, many of
1:49
Speaker 1: our friends are people that we work with, or we've
1:51
Speaker 1: been lucky enough to bring people that are our friends
1:55
Speaker 1: were our friends into the work family. So it all
1:57
Speaker 1: kind of lines kind of blurred. Like I knew Max,
1:59
Speaker 1: you know, uh and his brother Alex before they worked
2:02
Speaker 1: for us, and now we just get to hang out more.
2:07
Speaker 1: And uh, you guys, are you guys in particular not
2:11
Speaker 1: a ding on anyone else who work with but you
2:12
Speaker 1: guys in particular is such a such a gift to
2:16
Speaker 1: this show. And I'm always grateful to hang out. So um,
2:20
Speaker 1: the gift that keeps on giving, but not like in
2:22
Speaker 1: the Herpes kind of way, right, and not in like
2:24
Speaker 1: the not in the short form animation gift way though,
2:28
Speaker 1: the gift that keeps on gifting I think would be
2:31
Speaker 1: interesting anyway. So if it didn't gift, it wouldn't if
2:34
Speaker 1: it didn't keep on gifting, it wouldn't be a proper gift.
2:36
Speaker 1: That is a very good point, Noel, That is a
2:38
Speaker 1: very good point. So we're gonna be talking about some
2:42
Speaker 1: very good points today with some help from one of
2:46
Speaker 1: our excellent research associates and Mr Zach Williams. When previously
2:51
Speaker 1: we left you without a dope beat two step too,
2:57
Speaker 1: we were talking about the end of the world as
3:02
Speaker 1: imagined by a man named William Millard now Noel Max.
3:08
Speaker 1: When we ended part one, we had set up some
3:11
Speaker 1: pretty in depth context about Miller's origin story and about
3:17
Speaker 1: his move from a small town preacher to a man
3:22
Speaker 1: obsessed with calculating the return of Jesus Christ, to his
3:27
Speaker 1: role as a pop culture phenomenon of the time. Really
3:31
Speaker 1: he was a superstar. Uh, And things got incredibly um oh,
3:38
Speaker 1: they just escalated as he got closer and closer to
3:41
Speaker 1: his imagined prediction the second Coming of Christ. But man
3:46
Speaker 1: wet teased, we teased, how um how other denominations established
3:54
Speaker 1: Christian denominations started to clap back at Miller because, like
4:00
Speaker 1: where we leave off, let's see, churches started saying, if
4:02
Speaker 1: you're a traveling preacher and you talk about Millerism, you
4:06
Speaker 1: can't preach here. And then they started cracking down on
4:10
Speaker 1: people who, um, who are just church members who might
4:15
Speaker 1: read newspapers or pamphlets about Millers and I mean and
4:18
Speaker 1: in a doomsday theology by any other name is still
4:22
Speaker 1: as is depressing. Maybe they didn't call it Millerism directly
4:25
Speaker 1: or claimed to be miller Rites, Like I kind of wonder, like,
4:28
Speaker 1: would you even claim that it would be more just
4:30
Speaker 1: kind of like you know, uh, something people would understand
4:33
Speaker 1: based on what your theology is. I don't know you
4:35
Speaker 1: necessarily even make that some sort of badge that you'd
4:38
Speaker 1: wear around. But I imagine that anyone starting to preach
4:40
Speaker 1: these end times kind of prophecies would start to be
4:43
Speaker 1: ostracized to some degree. In fact, there's a great example
4:47
Speaker 1: of a church elder by the name of Levi Stockman
4:50
Speaker 1: who absolutely refused to stop preaching this doom and gloom stuff,
4:55
Speaker 1: I mean Doom's Day and glooms Day stuff, I guess.
4:58
Speaker 1: And this, this this went hard in terms of like
5:01
Speaker 1: church leaders and in the way these these folks who
5:04
Speaker 1: are these hardliner Millerites retreated. He fell deathly ill with
5:09
Speaker 1: with the consumption. Then you described it as as the
5:11
Speaker 1: doc holiday disease. He was our he was our huckleberry,
5:15
Speaker 1: somebody's huckleberry. He was at the very least the huckleberry
5:18
Speaker 1: of his wife and child who were in desperate danger
5:22
Speaker 1: of being left penniless because the church officials, you know,
5:26
Speaker 1: he was an elder of the church who was therefore
5:29
Speaker 1: kind of his livelihood was tied to their rulings, were
5:32
Speaker 1: threatening to you know, strip him of his pension if
5:35
Speaker 1: he didn't stop talking all that job, yeah, which meant
5:39
Speaker 1: that his wife and his children would not have any
5:42
Speaker 1: pension benefits, all but condemning them to the poorhouse. Yet
5:47
Speaker 1: Stockman stuck to his ideological theological guns and as a
5:54
Speaker 1: result he was expelled from the ministry officially, and just
5:58
Speaker 1: a few weeks later he died of consumption. This this
6:03
Speaker 1: is one example that shows us the larger, the larger horizon.
6:08
Speaker 1: Here by the summer of eighteen three, Millerite Adventist and
6:15
Speaker 1: the more established Protestant denominations of Christianity are at loggerheads.
6:21
Speaker 1: They're super tense, and a lot of Adventists, many of
6:26
Speaker 1: whom already had like their own membership and an established denomination. Right,
6:30
Speaker 1: they might be like Methodists, they might be Protestants, but
6:33
Speaker 1: they're also Millerites, and they started saying, well, should we
6:38
Speaker 1: get out of our membership with our current denomination. They
6:43
Speaker 1: almost did, but an announcement went out in one of
6:45
Speaker 1: those publications that we talked about in part one. This
6:48
Speaker 1: one was called the Signs of the Times, and it
6:52
Speaker 1: encouraged them to stay put, and it said, look, don't
6:57
Speaker 1: run away, because you are already embedded in this community.
7:04
Speaker 1: So stay there, and while you're there, start talking about Millerism,
7:09
Speaker 1: start talking about how Jesus Christ is on the way
7:13
Speaker 1: and very soon. We want to thank lineage journey dot
7:17
Speaker 1: com for their excellent article a snapshot of the Millerite
7:21
Speaker 1: movement from eighteen thirty nine to eighteen forty four. No
7:24
Speaker 1: spoilers just yet. Uh. And you would think the Millerite
7:32
Speaker 1: apparatus suing for peace would have maybe calm those tensions somewhat,
7:39
Speaker 1: but it wasn't. It wasn't enough. That's why things like
7:44
Speaker 1: the Congregational Journal, another publication, went out on August twelfth,
7:50
Speaker 1: eighteen forty three, and put this hit piece out on
7:54
Speaker 1: the front page that said, look, the second advent God
8:00
Speaker 1: Spool is malarkey. And then later that year, also eighteen
8:04
Speaker 1: forty three, they published an article by Nathaniel Wells that
8:10
Speaker 1: was a takedown of everything Miller had written about and
8:14
Speaker 1: lectured about. And this became a smear campaign. Honestly, regardless
8:20
Speaker 1: of what you think about Christianity or or differences between denominations,
8:26
Speaker 1: there was no real civil discussion of his weird math
8:31
Speaker 1: that we mentioned earlier, or his his philosophically. No one
8:36
Speaker 1: was talking about that. No one was adding up the numbers. Instead,
8:40
Speaker 1: they were jumping to third base and saying, look, all
8:44
Speaker 1: these Millerites, any second Adventist is a fanatic. Their leaders
8:50
Speaker 1: are dangerous to society. They want you to think the
8:54
Speaker 1: world is ending, and they're mad, they're lunatics. Yeah, I mean,
9:00
Speaker 1: you know it's it's I kind of get it. Just
9:05
Speaker 1: you know, it's like, can we find some silver lining here,
9:08
Speaker 1: especially given that like the dude was just kind of
9:10
Speaker 1: digging looking for he was kind of what you call
9:13
Speaker 1: that Ben, when you like sort of have like a
9:15
Speaker 1: a an outcome that you're sort of searching for, Uh,
9:19
Speaker 1: you find ways of of of finding the information that
9:22
Speaker 1: validates your your pre your foregone conclusion confirmation bias. Yeah,
9:26
Speaker 1: nail on that, that's the one. Would you would you
9:28
Speaker 1: agree there's a little bit of that going on with Miller?
9:30
Speaker 1: I mean, or or do you think he? I can't
9:32
Speaker 1: remember exactly didn't he sort of like always have a
9:35
Speaker 1: bit of a doomsday mindset around religion, or did he
9:40
Speaker 1: just figure that he he felt like he cracked the code. Yeah,
9:43
Speaker 1: it's it's a little bit of column a little bit
9:45
Speaker 1: of column B. Because he was originally more of a
9:49
Speaker 1: deist when he was introduced to the idea of a
9:53
Speaker 1: god who made everything right, a god who exists who
9:56
Speaker 1: made everything. But it's sort of too high level now
9:59
Speaker 1: to be con earned with the day to day stuff.
10:01
Speaker 1: And then when he had his crisis of faith and
10:06
Speaker 1: he encountered these revelations, he became obsessed with figuring out
10:11
Speaker 1: exactly when the messionic figure Jesus Christ Jesus H. Christ
10:17
Speaker 1: by some accounts, uh, mostly mostly stand up comics would return.
10:23
Speaker 1: And uh, And so I think that we see established
10:29
Speaker 1: denominations grappling with a couple of issues here. First, this
10:34
Speaker 1: takes away socio political control from these established denominations, and
10:42
Speaker 1: yeah it is in second, if it's all gonna come
10:44
Speaker 1: crashing down anyway, then what's the point. And like, why
10:49
Speaker 1: believe one over another in terms of like, you know,
10:52
Speaker 1: them being able to exercise control over this earthly realm.
10:55
Speaker 1: If you put all the emphasis on the afterlife exclusively.
10:58
Speaker 1: Then how are you going to control old people and
11:00
Speaker 1: amend them to your will? Right? Right? So why do
11:03
Speaker 1: I need to put uh ten percent tythe on my
11:06
Speaker 1: income to build a church that's not being constructed intol eight,
11:10
Speaker 1: you know what I mean? So this is a problem
11:13
Speaker 1: for them. But I would argue secondly, there's also the
11:17
Speaker 1: issue of there there's also the issue of putting an
11:21
Speaker 1: expiration date on things, right, And it's an expiration date
11:26
Speaker 1: we have to remember that's coming very soon. And this
11:30
Speaker 1: was making no mistakes, sowing some amount of chaos in society.
11:36
Speaker 1: There was one, this anonymous report. We couldn't really find
11:41
Speaker 1: the specifics here, but according to the Dartmouth article we
11:45
Speaker 1: looked at in part one, there was supposedly a selectman
11:51
Speaker 1: a committee member in some town in New Hampshire. This
11:55
Speaker 1: is a secular, you know, local municipal thing. He was
12:00
Speaker 1: a miller, right, and he resigned. He quit his job
12:04
Speaker 1: and said, look, I need to spend the rest of
12:06
Speaker 1: the year getting my affairs in order for the end
12:11
Speaker 1: of the world. Imagine quitting your job for the end
12:15
Speaker 1: of the world. Imagine like imagine we get an email
12:18
Speaker 1: or a text from Max one day and Max says, hey, guys,
12:23
Speaker 1: I've been reading some stuff. I've been on some blogs,
12:27
Speaker 1: and I'm pretty sure the world as we know it
12:31
Speaker 1: is ending in September. So I'm gonna just take some
12:35
Speaker 1: time and play sky Rim what once more, get my
12:40
Speaker 1: house in order? All right, my sky ramows guys, I
12:43
Speaker 1: I guess you haven't picked up on that, but you
12:44
Speaker 1: know I'm disappearing in September. I'm going off to Seattle
12:48
Speaker 1: in Portland. I mean, I wasn't gonna come on straight
12:52
Speaker 1: forward and stays to freak you guys out, but you
12:54
Speaker 1: know there there might be a reason behind that. Guys.
12:57
Speaker 1: All right, we're gonna put a pin in this for now.
12:59
Speaker 1: We're gonna have a suit Arius talk off air. But
13:02
Speaker 1: in the meantime, Ben, this is where I start asking
13:05
Speaker 1: myself the question of what differentiates a religion from a cult.
13:17
Speaker 1: When you start talking about these sort of like doomsday
13:20
Speaker 1: cults and people that are rallying around they perceived end
13:23
Speaker 1: of the world and it is sort of more of
13:26
Speaker 1: a niche kind of thing, is that what you'd consider
13:29
Speaker 1: a cult? Are we starting to get into more cult
13:31
Speaker 1: like territory here that is maybe more rallying around a
13:35
Speaker 1: single figure. Also, as we know, cults don't necessarily have
13:38
Speaker 1: to rally around a single figure. You can rally around
13:40
Speaker 1: like an idea. Um, what do you think though, is
13:42
Speaker 1: is this is this sort of an example of an
13:44
Speaker 1: early version of kind of a doomsday cult. That's a
13:48
Speaker 1: great question. Yeah, it's uh one of early America's very
13:52
Speaker 1: first doomsday movements for sure. And I'm so glad you asked, because, um,
13:57
Speaker 1: you know, we've worked extensively on stuff they wants you
14:00
Speaker 1: to know. Another show we do investigating various cults, like
14:04
Speaker 1: add nonok Tars sex cult in Turkey that's out now.
14:08
Speaker 1: We've also looked at how colts are formed, and one
14:11
Speaker 1: big misconception about cults is that they always are oriented
14:16
Speaker 1: around a religious belief. Multi level marketing schemes can be cults.
14:22
Speaker 1: Life coaching groups and fitness groups can be cults. Uh No,
14:26
Speaker 1: ding on you CrossFit just don't feel like after email us.
14:30
Speaker 1: And one thing that's interesting, this is a little bit
14:32
Speaker 1: of a tangent, but if you want to understand cults,
14:35
Speaker 1: I would say look toward tactics rather than ideology. The
14:40
Speaker 1: ideology is fluid and it does the ideology doesn't really matter.
14:45
Speaker 1: One of the best analyzes of what creates a cult
14:50
Speaker 1: is something called the BITE model, which was created by
14:53
Speaker 1: Steve Hassan, and it's really a model for authoritarian control.
14:58
Speaker 1: What differentiates a cult from a legion, I would say
15:01
Speaker 1: would be the tactics applied the authoritarian control. BITE stands
15:06
Speaker 1: for behavior control, information control, thought control, and emotional control.
15:12
Speaker 1: And you can read a full list of of what
15:15
Speaker 1: that means, but they're all the hits. Separation from your family,
15:19
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, separation from information from the
15:23
Speaker 1: outside world, the idea of thought crime, the idea of
15:28
Speaker 1: manipulating the ranges of emotions that people or followers can
15:32
Speaker 1: experience without being punished. I actually I will put this
15:37
Speaker 1: in our chat because this is such a great link
15:40
Speaker 1: for everyone. And if you feel a friend is involved
15:43
Speaker 1: in a cultic organization of some sort, look at the
15:48
Speaker 1: bite bite model and see what kind of control is
15:51
Speaker 1: being exercised upon them. But it's funny though, because they
15:54
Speaker 1: were talking about you know again, like sometimes there's a
15:58
Speaker 1: little bit of confusion between like what is a religion
16:00
Speaker 1: versus what is a cult? And Uh, to me, it's
16:03
Speaker 1: like if people are leaving a more let's say traditional religion,
16:07
Speaker 1: like a regular Protestant Christianity and going for this like
16:12
Speaker 1: Adventist Millerism, that could ostracize them from their families. They
16:16
Speaker 1: could be you know, treated as outsiders and shunned and
16:20
Speaker 1: fully be like all about that. It's like, it's fine,
16:22
Speaker 1: you know, it's gonna change my life, but I'm gonna
16:24
Speaker 1: I'm putting my money where my mouth is and I'm
16:26
Speaker 1: committing to this. So what we don't necessarily have specific
16:30
Speaker 1: examples of this per se outside of this elder you
16:34
Speaker 1: know who's he ultimately died um as a result of
16:38
Speaker 1: his belief system. So it's a little I don't know,
16:41
Speaker 1: maybe we'll put a pin in that one too, because
16:43
Speaker 1: I think it's a it's more of an interesting question
16:45
Speaker 1: than it is something that we necessarily have an answer for. Because,
16:49
Speaker 1: as we know, many religious movements some people call cults,
16:53
Speaker 1: other people call like, you know, religious community or religious movements.
16:56
Speaker 1: So it is it is a little bit of a
16:58
Speaker 1: kind of gray area sometime. But Ben, do you have
17:01
Speaker 1: an opinion on whether Millerism is a cult or just
17:03
Speaker 1: an offshoot of a religious movement. Yeah, that's a good question. Um,
17:08
Speaker 1: I think I will also put a pin in that,
17:10
Speaker 1: because it's a bit of a sticky wicket. Maybe you,
17:14
Speaker 1: fellow ridiculous historians, can give us your take at the end.
17:17
Speaker 1: We have some plot twist ahead. I would say that
17:21
Speaker 1: another like definition of a cult that I just sort
17:26
Speaker 1: of made up along the years is really it's a
17:29
Speaker 1: matter of time, right, because you know, one person's cult
17:33
Speaker 1: is another person's revealed religion with a tomb and everything.
17:37
Speaker 1: So maybe maybe you're a cult until you make it
17:40
Speaker 1: past the first two hundred years or something like that.
17:44
Speaker 1: Again totally made up, but but okay, so we know that. Um,
17:50
Speaker 1: we know that there were other reports of people leaving
17:55
Speaker 1: their day to day lives. The Sentinel reported uh that
17:59
Speaker 1: same year that two Justice commissions who were working in
18:04
Speaker 1: New Hampshire also left their jobs. And we're supposed to
18:10
Speaker 1: join up with the Millerites and said, hey, the world's ending,
18:14
Speaker 1: I don't need to go to work anymore. You know,
18:17
Speaker 1: it gets really ugly too, because people started saying that
18:23
Speaker 1: this Millerite movement or Millerism was also responsible for suicides.
18:29
Speaker 1: They were saying, some people are so certain that the
18:31
Speaker 1: world is ending that they are taking their own lives.
18:34
Speaker 1: But as you and I found nol this was often
18:37
Speaker 1: not based on uh not based on really solid evidence.
18:44
Speaker 1: We actually have an excerpt from the Boston Evening Journal
18:49
Speaker 1: which was reprinted by the Sentinel. That's right. The headline
18:53
Speaker 1: is end of the World died in Pelham, New Hampshire.
18:57
Speaker 1: John H. Shortage, aged about fifty five. Mr s was
19:01
Speaker 1: formerly a merchant of respectable standing in Portsmouth, but by
19:05
Speaker 1: misfortunes in business, had suffered much from almost incessant mental derangement.
19:11
Speaker 1: On the day of his death, he was imagining the
19:14
Speaker 1: time of the Second Advent was to take place. He
19:17
Speaker 1: had a garb made for the occasion, and with this
19:20
Speaker 1: he was waiting until became impatient. He climbed to the
19:24
Speaker 1: top of a high tree. There, mantled at his long
19:28
Speaker 1: white ascension robe. He made one aspiring effort but was
19:31
Speaker 1: precipitated to the ground and instantly died from a broken neck. Okay,
19:36
Speaker 1: once again, whenever we read these kinds of things on
19:38
Speaker 1: the show been I'm just always taken by the ass
19:41
Speaker 1: around the elbow approach to get to like a really
19:44
Speaker 1: simple thing. It's like ed he fell out of a
19:46
Speaker 1: tree and died, and instead it's there mantled in his
19:50
Speaker 1: long wide ascension robe. He made one aspiring effort but
19:54
Speaker 1: was precipitated to the ground and instantly died from a
19:58
Speaker 1: broken neck. I mean, I'm saying I think it's wonderful,
20:00
Speaker 1: but it is funny to see the the literary gymnastics
20:04
Speaker 1: that that happens sometimes in these older like editorial pieces.
20:07
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, they're feeling themselves for sure. I agree. Also
20:11
Speaker 1: that snarky last sentence that says maybe he was jumping,
20:16
Speaker 1: maybe he was trying to fly to heaven. That's really
20:19
Speaker 1: rude to someone who has died, Yes, exactly now, it's
20:23
Speaker 1: the subtext is dripping with with sarka. And this also
20:28
Speaker 1: props to the Sentinel because they did say this was
20:32
Speaker 1: doubted by the local paper. They're in Portsmouth and Portsmouth Journal.
20:37
Speaker 1: But stories like this they get eyeballs. People like reading
20:42
Speaker 1: about these things. Is this same reason people slow down
20:45
Speaker 1: to watch car accidents in traffic Today these stories were
20:49
Speaker 1: reprinted across the Northeast. And again we've talked in the
20:54
Speaker 1: past about how the big red meat will run on
20:58
Speaker 1: the cover of a newspaper on Monday, and the retraction
21:03
Speaker 1: or correction will be in the back of the newspaper.
21:05
Speaker 1: On Tuesday, and no one will read it, so nobody's
21:09
Speaker 1: really fact checking these, and nobody bothered to look into
21:13
Speaker 1: the background of the people who were allegedly committing suicide.
21:19
Speaker 1: For this, It's kind of like when you hear the
21:21
Speaker 1: old argument about video games making people violent or something,
21:28
Speaker 1: or music making people violent. What you see in a
21:31
Speaker 1: lot of those cases is the person who committed an
21:35
Speaker 1: act of violence was already maybe not in the best
21:38
Speaker 1: place mentally, right, and they just happened to play a
21:41
Speaker 1: video game, or they happened to enjoy a certain genre
21:44
Speaker 1: of music. Yeah, some people just need a little push
21:49
Speaker 1: off the cliff or out of a tree. Um. It
21:51
Speaker 1: really is kind of something that was probably going to
21:54
Speaker 1: happen one way or another sooner and or later, and
21:57
Speaker 1: then it's easy to craft and narrow around it, which
22:01
Speaker 1: is clearly what was happening, because all of these suicides
22:04
Speaker 1: were beginning to be kind of placed on the shoulders
22:08
Speaker 1: of Miller, based almost entirely on like anecdotal evidence, like
22:12
Speaker 1: the kind of thing we just saw reprinted. And then
22:16
Speaker 1: people realize, publishers and journalists realized that they could sell
22:20
Speaker 1: a lot of papers doing this, and this exacerbated the problem.
22:24
Speaker 1: You know that all journalistic catchphrase it falls out of trees,
22:27
Speaker 1: it leads, Yeah, or one of the popular statements that
22:34
Speaker 1: papers throughout New England which said that Miller frightened old
22:38
Speaker 1: women by scores into fits and young you know, old
22:42
Speaker 1: children half out of their wits. Uh great. Yeah, So
22:47
Speaker 1: so we know a little bit about human psychology, which
22:50
Speaker 1: hasn't changed for thousands and thousands of years. Obviously, we
22:53
Speaker 1: always say people throughout history were just as smart and
22:58
Speaker 1: as vulnerable as the of us tuning in today. Well,
23:02
Speaker 1: because I mean, you know, I remember growing up in
23:04
Speaker 1: the Methodist Church, and I went through a period of
23:06
Speaker 1: being terrified of of of going to hell, and of
23:10
Speaker 1: of the devil and sin and all that stuff. And
23:13
Speaker 1: then you you kind of goes even further and the
23:15
Speaker 1: guilt gets piled on even harder with like Catholicism and
23:18
Speaker 1: the idea of you know, God being this kind of
23:20
Speaker 1: vengeful God. But this really like you know, takes the
23:23
Speaker 1: cake in terms of like striking fear into the hearts
23:26
Speaker 1: of followers, right, I mean it's like, not only do
23:29
Speaker 1: you have to worry about the afterlife, you kind of
23:30
Speaker 1: gotta worry about fire and brimstone coming here to where
23:34
Speaker 1: you live, Like it's almost like a war is coming.
23:36
Speaker 1: I just can't imagine living with that, you know, kind
23:39
Speaker 1: of like it. I think some people probably took it
23:41
Speaker 1: as a comfort in some ways and wanted others to
23:44
Speaker 1: know and repent, because they believe the only way to
23:46
Speaker 1: save your soul is to repent in advance of this
23:49
Speaker 1: apocalypse of this you know, uh, this doomsday. But I
23:52
Speaker 1: just can't imagine it like being a very pleasant existence. No, yeah,
23:57
Speaker 1: it's a it's a hard sell to write act now.
24:00
Speaker 1: But what what you're talking about with your early time
24:02
Speaker 1: in the church reminds me of a a personal story.
24:06
Speaker 1: I will share it. It's quite brief. When I was
24:09
Speaker 1: a kid, for a time I was, I was forced
24:13
Speaker 1: to attend a church I won't name the denomination, and
24:17
Speaker 1: I think I just didn't pick up the right vibe
24:21
Speaker 1: they were trying to convey because when I learned that,
24:24
Speaker 1: I learned that Jesus Christ and again this is not
24:28
Speaker 1: dinging on Christians, is dinging on me as a stupid kid.
24:31
Speaker 1: I learned that there was this guy named Jesus Christ,
24:35
Speaker 1: and at one day in your life, he would find you,
24:40
Speaker 1: he would get you, he would change you. And before then,
24:44
Speaker 1: the only creatures I had heard capable of doing this
24:46
Speaker 1: sort of stuff we're boogeim in. So I used to
24:48
Speaker 1: stay up at night thinking Jesus Christ could be anywhere.
24:52
Speaker 1: He could be in my closet, he could be under
24:54
Speaker 1: my bed, and I couldn't let my guard down because
24:57
Speaker 1: he would get me. That wouldn't be me anymore. Um,
25:00
Speaker 1: picture young ben bolan U with the uh Sunday school
25:05
Speaker 1: teacher trying to figure out how to both correct, reassure,
25:09
Speaker 1: and at the same time punish this wildly paranoid child.
25:13
Speaker 1: What the patients of a saint, Well, that's the Sunday
25:19
Speaker 1: school teacher at least. But the reason we're bringing up
25:22
Speaker 1: psychology and bring up psychology because we know that in general,
25:27
Speaker 1: when people have beliefs that are emotionally based and very
25:33
Speaker 1: close to what they see as their identity, attacking those
25:37
Speaker 1: beliefs doesn't tend to get them to question those beliefs.
25:41
Speaker 1: It makes them double down. So it should be no
25:44
Speaker 1: surprise that attacks on people who believed in Millerism only
25:51
Speaker 1: made them double down. They went further into the extremities
25:57
Speaker 1: of their school of thought they started as a result
26:01
Speaker 1: of this persecution in the press and the smear campaigns.
26:04
Speaker 1: They the Millerites started writing to Miller, finding him button
26:09
Speaker 1: holding him in person, and saying, look, we need more
26:13
Speaker 1: details about exactly when Jesus is returning. And by this
26:19
Speaker 1: time in eighty three they thought they finally got their answer.
26:24
Speaker 1: They narrowed the date down to a specific day, which
26:29
Speaker 1: Miller had not done before. He had only made a
26:31
Speaker 1: window of time when he was pressed for it. And
26:35
Speaker 1: so it came to pass that after a few different
26:38
Speaker 1: pitches and brainstorming, the Millerite movement believed that Jesus Christ
26:46
Speaker 1: would return to Earth on October twenty two, eighteen forty four.
26:53
Speaker 1: And by this time there were somewhere between fifty thousand
26:57
Speaker 1: to a hundred thousand active Miller rights in the US
27:02
Speaker 1: and in Canada. Most of them were in England and
27:05
Speaker 1: New York. So imagine all of a sudden, You're not
27:08
Speaker 1: a Miller right, right, but all of a sudden you here.
27:12
Speaker 1: It's like a hundred thousand people coming in unison and saying,
27:16
Speaker 1: oh watch out. October twenty two, eighteen forty four, that's
27:19
Speaker 1: when it goes down. They've got their expiration date. And
27:23
Speaker 1: this is I think what we were teasing earlier and all,
27:27
Speaker 1: if the world ended in October of eighteen forty four,
27:30
Speaker 1: how on earth are we here in a making this podcast? Yeah,
27:36
Speaker 1: I mean somebody what we whisk the expression even using
27:39
Speaker 1: ben sort of weird math um. Again, it's sort of
27:44
Speaker 1: a hallmark of a lot of these kind of doomsday
27:46
Speaker 1: theologies where there's uh an end date, you know, an
27:49
Speaker 1: expiration date for humanity. Inevitably, you gotta pass it. Things
27:55
Speaker 1: don't go as expected, you gotta find a way to
27:57
Speaker 1: pass the buck and say, oh, here is it was
28:00
Speaker 1: an honest mistake. And here's why. The biggest and funniest
28:04
Speaker 1: version of this, I think is in the Church of
28:06
Speaker 1: the sub Genius, which is a fake cult, a mock cult.
28:09
Speaker 1: But then again, it's one of these ones that has
28:11
Speaker 1: taken on such a life of its own that some
28:13
Speaker 1: people are really into it. Um. It's it's all kind
28:15
Speaker 1: of a satirical sort of like back in Alien kind
28:19
Speaker 1: of society of of folks that like to you know,
28:21
Speaker 1: smoke a lot of weed and live kind of openly
28:24
Speaker 1: hippie sort of sexual lives and and do these weird
28:27
Speaker 1: parties they have called X Day and different like gatherings
28:30
Speaker 1: every year, multiple ones across the country. Um, but their profit.
28:34
Speaker 1: You know, Bob Dobbs Jr. Bob Dobbs, he he had
28:37
Speaker 1: a doomsday prediction as well, or at least when the
28:40
Speaker 1: these aliens are gonna come and and you know, bring
28:43
Speaker 1: all the sub genius up into their mothership. Maybe I'm
28:46
Speaker 1: giving this not quite right, but the point is they
28:48
Speaker 1: justified it with oh is he was looking at it
28:50
Speaker 1: upside down, and then so if you look at it
28:53
Speaker 1: right side up, the date becomes or what it should
28:55
Speaker 1: have been that day becomes like thousands of years in
28:57
Speaker 1: the future. So it's easy. That was an easy one
28:59
Speaker 1: to pass the buck with, right. And this was a
29:02
Speaker 1: social crisis in the United States and to a degree
29:05
Speaker 1: in Canada at the time because spoiler alert, folks, Miller's
29:10
Speaker 1: calculations seem to be incorrect. And we've had well more
29:17
Speaker 1: than a century to think about that. Uh. As far
29:21
Speaker 1: as we can tell, there was not a second coming
29:24
Speaker 1: on Occouber twenty second, eighteen forty four. This became something
29:28
Speaker 1: called the Great Disappointment. When I say social crisis, what
29:39
Speaker 1: we mean is that numerous people gave up their farms,
29:43
Speaker 1: they quit their jobs, they sold off their earthly possessions.
29:47
Speaker 1: They thought they were on a one way ticket to heaven.
29:50
Speaker 1: There were women in Worcester, Massachusetts who were giving away
29:54
Speaker 1: their jewelry, They were getting rid of their clothing, they
29:58
Speaker 1: cut off their hair are a lot of Miller Rights
30:02
Speaker 1: started making these white gowns for themselves and sadly shades
30:06
Speaker 1: of heaven. Heaven's Gate another cult that would come much later.
30:10
Speaker 1: They called these gowns ascension robes. People in Groton, Massachusetts
30:15
Speaker 1: actually climbed nearby Mount Wassachusetts to await the Second Coming,
30:21
Speaker 1: and there was you know, they're heartbreaking human interest stories.
30:25
Speaker 1: There was one older guy in Harvard, mass who couldn't
30:28
Speaker 1: get all the way up to the mountain due to
30:31
Speaker 1: some physical restrictions, so he climbed to the top of
30:34
Speaker 1: the tallest apple tree he owned. Uh And there were
30:38
Speaker 1: so many stories of people throughout New England climbing on rooftops,
30:43
Speaker 1: any peak of natural elevation, just so it could be
30:47
Speaker 1: in their mind easier to lift them to the sky,
30:51
Speaker 1: all of them waiting for October. October passes. You'll see
30:58
Speaker 1: that a lot of people in Austin, Hartford, Cincinnati, Pennsylvania,
31:03
Speaker 1: on and on they were waiting in various places for
31:09
Speaker 1: the end of the world in the Second Coming, and
31:12
Speaker 1: a lot of them got together on the twenty three
31:14
Speaker 1: October because there was still some debate about the exact day,
31:19
Speaker 1: and they said, maybe it'll be you know, just like
31:22
Speaker 1: people today who are waiting on a delivery in the
31:26
Speaker 1: mail during the pandemic. They're like, well, maybe it's like
31:28
Speaker 1: you know, heavenly supply chain issue. So midnight comes, don comes, noon,
31:34
Speaker 1: maybe sundown, and the days passed uneventfully. Some people wait
31:41
Speaker 1: for multiple days, and some of them, just like you said, no,
31:46
Speaker 1: some of them start to say, well, we've got a regroup.
31:51
Speaker 1: Everybody's making fun of us, and were we feel pretty down.
31:55
Speaker 1: Miller himself, by the way, is still alive and he's
31:59
Speaker 1: been game. Okay, maybe I got some part of the
32:02
Speaker 1: math wrong, you know what I mean, because again, he
32:05
Speaker 1: really believed in this. He wasn't trying to get I know,
32:09
Speaker 1: and I know I've been sort of toying with that
32:11
Speaker 1: idea and and in experimenting with this whole idea of
32:13
Speaker 1: like the huckster versus the true believer, and uh, it's true,
32:17
Speaker 1: he really wasn't getting trying to get money. And then
32:19
Speaker 1: I don't know, I guess it's true. I guess you're right.
32:23
Speaker 1: He really did. But he really was a true believer. Um,
32:26
Speaker 1: he really did think he cracked some kind of you know,
32:28
Speaker 1: mystical code, and he just wanted to spread the word
32:31
Speaker 1: of what he knew. So he really was trying to,
32:33
Speaker 1: like to understand what went wrong. Yeah, he really was.
32:37
Speaker 1: And he would continue waiting for the end of the
32:41
Speaker 1: world until he passes away in eighteen forty nine. But
32:44
Speaker 1: as this happens, this thing we call the Great Disappointment,
32:48
Speaker 1: We've got to go back to our great pr man
32:51
Speaker 1: propagandist Joshua V. Himes, who really pulled the levers of
32:57
Speaker 1: mass media to popular as Millerism. He continued publishing The
33:03
Speaker 1: Advent Herald well into the eighteen fifties, and then he
33:07
Speaker 1: went west and became an Episcopal priest. I believe for
33:12
Speaker 1: a lot of people when this day came and passed,
33:15
Speaker 1: it was this tremendous, bitter disappointment, almost a tragedy beyond words.
33:21
Speaker 1: They felt they had given up everything for their religion,
33:25
Speaker 1: and in a secular sense they very much had, and
33:29
Speaker 1: they started praying. You can read again from the excellent
33:35
Speaker 1: Dartmouth College Library bulletin article The End of the World
33:38
Speaker 1: by Gary Waite, You can read in full a recounting
33:43
Speaker 1: of this that sounds a lot like a prayer, Come
33:48
Speaker 1: Lord Jesus, and come quickly. But he did not come.
33:52
Speaker 1: And now to turn again to the cares, perplexities and
33:56
Speaker 1: dangers of life, and full view of jeering and reviling
33:59
Speaker 1: u leavers who scoffed as never before, was a terrible
34:03
Speaker 1: trial of faith and patience. When Elder Himes visited Waterbury, Vermont,
34:07
Speaker 1: a short time after the passing of the time and
34:10
Speaker 1: stated that the Brethren should prepare for another cold winter,
34:14
Speaker 1: my feelings were almost uncontrollable. I left the place of
34:17
Speaker 1: meeting and wept like a child. And this was an
34:20
Speaker 1: experience shared by many people following the Millerite movement. William Miller,
34:26
Speaker 1: for himself, did not He was confused, but he he
34:31
Speaker 1: didn't give up his faith, his certitude that the second
34:36
Speaker 1: coming of Christ could be predicted, and he held this
34:40
Speaker 1: belief despite public ridicule in the years that followed, all
34:44
Speaker 1: the way to his death on December twenty eight, forty nine.
34:48
Speaker 1: On his gravestone is the inscription, but go thou thy
34:52
Speaker 1: way till the end be for thou shalt rest and
34:55
Speaker 1: stand in thy lots at the end of days, which
34:58
Speaker 1: as many of us in the audience may recognize, is
35:01
Speaker 1: from Daniel twelve thirteen. It might surprise you now at
35:05
Speaker 1: this point, folks, to realize that Adventist theology has continued.
35:11
Speaker 1: The movement fell apart. Joshua Vie Himes tried to raise
35:16
Speaker 1: money for people had given away all their stuff. William
35:19
Speaker 1: Miller died largely forgotten, but a mill wright, a teenager
35:26
Speaker 1: from Maine named Ellen White, continued to preach a version
35:30
Speaker 1: of Adventist thought, and her followers, at first were called Sabbatarians.
35:35
Speaker 1: In eighteen sixty three they formed something called the Seventh
35:40
Speaker 1: Day Adventist Church. And this group is around today and
35:45
Speaker 1: it's bigger than Millerism ever. Was there nineteen million members
35:49
Speaker 1: of the Seventh Day Adventist Church. Yeah, it's again. That's
35:53
Speaker 1: where I was familiar outside of advent calendar as the
35:55
Speaker 1: idea of being an Adventist from the Seventh Day Adventist Church.
35:59
Speaker 1: But I didn't really know much about what their their
36:01
Speaker 1: beliefs were. So this was super interesting and educational, I
36:04
Speaker 1: think for for for all of us. But here's the thing.
36:07
Speaker 1: It's another one of those examples of like, okay, the
36:09
Speaker 1: date it passes, but it can also lead to other conversations.
36:15
Speaker 1: So the exact date of the Second Advent was revised
36:18
Speaker 1: a couple of times. So you might point to critics
36:22
Speaker 1: of of the movement saying that, well, I mean, we
36:25
Speaker 1: passed Miller's prediction. Therefore the whole thing was bunk. And
36:29
Speaker 1: then the guy, you know, was was a fraud, or
36:31
Speaker 1: at the very least was not keyed into the Holy
36:33
Speaker 1: Spirit in the way that he may have thought. Miller's
36:36
Speaker 1: year of the Second Advent came with the appearance of
36:41
Speaker 1: a very visible and uh and brilliant comment. Uh. It
36:46
Speaker 1: was it was, you know, one of these things that
36:48
Speaker 1: was like an event, you know, on planet Earth at
36:50
Speaker 1: the time when people really didn't understand much about the
36:53
Speaker 1: movement of of this of the spheres, or at least
36:56
Speaker 1: in so much as they do today. Yeah, And this was,
37:01
Speaker 1: by the way, a these revisions come about partially because
37:04
Speaker 1: people were committing a sunk cost fallacy. They had already
37:08
Speaker 1: gotten rid of all their stuff, you know what I mean,
37:10
Speaker 1: They had become convinced that they were right. They had certitude,
37:14
Speaker 1: and when this didn't come to pass, they were parodied.
37:18
Speaker 1: They had to, in many ways start life over again.
37:21
Speaker 1: This was a great disappointment. It was a great disappointment
37:24
Speaker 1: for William Miller himself. He was still convinced the end
37:28
Speaker 1: was near, but as as we said earlier, he thought
37:32
Speaker 1: maybe he had made a slight miscalculation. The error was
37:37
Speaker 1: not divinity, the error was human on his part. So
37:41
Speaker 1: he wrote this letter to his pal Himes and a
37:45
Speaker 1: general address to his followers, and he apologized. He apologized
37:52
Speaker 1: in a very sincere way, and he added a poem,
37:57
Speaker 1: and we thought that would be a nice place to end.
37:59
Speaker 1: It's a little bit long, so I think we're gonna
38:01
Speaker 1: double dragon. Uh no, you want to do the honors here,
38:05
Speaker 1: and let's just like really lean into the emotional depth.
38:09
Speaker 1: Will you say? Two lines apiece, days and even number. Yeah,
38:12
Speaker 1: let's try how tedious and lonesome the hours while Jesus,
38:18
Speaker 1: my savior delays, I have sought him in Solitude's bowers
38:24
Speaker 1: and looked for him all the long days, Yet he lingers,
38:30
Speaker 1: I pray, tell me why his chariots no sooner returns
38:36
Speaker 1: to see him in clouds in the sky. My soul
38:41
Speaker 1: with intensity burdens. I longed to be with him at home,
38:48
Speaker 1: my heart swallowed up in his love on the fields
38:52
Speaker 1: of New Eden, to room and to dwell with my savior.
39:00
Speaker 1: Oh wow, that's that's powerful stuff. And let's we're leaning
39:06
Speaker 1: into the reading. Is it's fun? We're not mocking the Uh,
39:10
Speaker 1: it's it's just it's fun to do. Uh. This kind
39:13
Speaker 1: of writing lends itself to this sort of reading. And
39:16
Speaker 1: that's where we leave it for today. This is a
39:19
Speaker 1: really interesting two part episode on the history of I
39:22
Speaker 1: guess one of America's first doomsday theologies. Is it a cult?
39:28
Speaker 1: Is it just a niche religion? It's certainly your Seventh
39:31
Speaker 1: day Adventist. Can't really call niche? What I believe? What
39:33
Speaker 1: did we say? Ben? Nineteen million followers? Uh, that is
39:38
Speaker 1: is pretty pretty massive. So why don't you let us know?
39:41
Speaker 1: We have ways that you can contact us. In fact,
39:44
Speaker 1: um Ben and I both exist on the Internet as
39:46
Speaker 1: individual human people, and if you send it to one
39:48
Speaker 1: of us, we share it with each other and we'll
39:51
Speaker 1: we'll write back to you. You can find me on
39:53
Speaker 1: Instagram where I am at How now Noel Brown. Ben's
39:56
Speaker 1: got a couple other ways, one of which might be
39:58
Speaker 1: one of the best ways to to reach out in
40:00
Speaker 1: terms of a tweet goodness. Yes, i am on Instagram
40:06
Speaker 1: at Ben Bowling bo w l I N where you
40:08
Speaker 1: can learn more about some stuff that I can't quite
40:11
Speaker 1: say on air. But I've got a ton of secret
40:13
Speaker 1: projects on the way. If you are more of a
40:17
Speaker 1: Twitter Twitter native, then you can find me at Ben
40:21
Speaker 1: Bowling hs W on Twitter, where I don't need a
40:24
Speaker 1: voice to contact people, and I love to hear from
40:28
Speaker 1: all our fellow ridiculous historians. The big what Corporate America
40:32
Speaker 1: we call the value add for hitting me up on
40:34
Speaker 1: Twitter is that you will also be able to find
40:38
Speaker 1: the one and only Mr Max Williams. Yes, you can
40:41
Speaker 1: find me on Twitter at a t L underscore Max Williams. Well, yeah,
40:45
Speaker 1: you'll see all my fun activities and trolling of Ben
40:48
Speaker 1: and stuff. Okay, great, Yes, So come for the tweets,
40:53
Speaker 1: stay for the trolling as Noel, Max and I figure
40:57
Speaker 1: out what our own prediction for the end of the
40:59
Speaker 1: world is. In the meantime, we can't wait for you
41:02
Speaker 1: to join us again, folks, where we're going to talk
41:05
Speaker 1: about some very unethical shenanigans. Uncle Sam got up to
41:10
Speaker 1: in our own St. Louis, Missouri. Thanks as always the Max,
41:13
Speaker 1: thanks to our composer, Mr Alex Williams, and again special
41:17
Speaker 1: thanks to you knowl and you Max for bearing with
41:21
Speaker 1: me when I thought I would I would be mute.
41:25
Speaker 1: I'm glad you won that particular battle with the Sea
41:28
Speaker 1: Witch this time down, so we mean there's that golden voice,
41:33
Speaker 1: that golden blessing. See you next time, folks. For more
41:45
Speaker 1: podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app,
41:47
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,