{"id":4228,"date":"2011-05-11T10:45:00","date_gmt":"2011-05-11T14:45:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/?p=4228"},"modified":"2011-06-01T09:04:36","modified_gmt":"2011-06-01T13:04:36","slug":"the-north-country-preacher-and-the-end-of-the-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/2011\/05\/11\/the-north-country-preacher-and-the-end-of-the-world\/","title":{"rendered":"The North Country preacher and the end of the world"},"content":{"rendered":"

In case you’ve missed it, there is one particular flock of Christians convinced that the end of the world is nigh…as in, very nigh indeed.\u00a0 <\/a><\/p>\n

May 21st, to be exact.<\/a> Check out NPR’s story on the end-times prophecy here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Talk of millenial doom (for sinners) and salvation (for the saintly) is a more or less constant part of the human condition, in all faiths and all eras.<\/p>\n

But it turns out one of the biggest end-time dramas played out right here in the North Country.<\/p>\n

In the 1840s, a Baptist preacher from the Washington County town of Low Hampton named William Miller rose from obscurity to lead the early “adventist” movement, which came to be known as “Millerism.”<\/p>\n

He claimed that the Second Coming was about to occur when the wheat would be separated from the chaff.\u00a0 With his followers, he established October 22nd, 1844 as the fateful day.<\/p>\n

The so-called Millerites waited eagerly, but nothing happened.\u00a0 “We wept, and wept, till the day dawn,” one of Miller’s followers wrote afterward.\u00a0\u00a0 The day was rechristened by many adventists as The Great Disappointment<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cSome are tauntingly enquiring, ‘Have you not gone up?'” Miller himself wrote afterward.\u00a0 “Even little children in the streets are shouting continually to passersby, ‘Have you a ticket to go up?’“<\/sup><\/p>\n

There was a certain amount of scandal and Millerites faced mockery, scorn and even some hazing and violence.<\/p>\n

But in the way of such things, a lot of Christians continued to believe and these days Miller’s North Country home is maintained by an Adventist congregation as a historical site<\/a>, complete with an “ascension rock.”<\/p>\n

I know it’s futile, but in cases like this I am always a bit baffled that devout Christians — Miller was obviously no huckster — would ignore that most explicit of warnings in the book of Matthew<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Bible can be tricky and vague and complicated, but this particular passage is straightforward, warning bluntly about\u00a0 “false prophets” who claim to know when the end-times will occur.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut concerning that day and hour no one knows,” Jesus is quoted as saying, “not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father only.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In case you’ve missed it, there is one particular flock of Christians convinced that the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[4790],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4228"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4228"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4228\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4229,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4228\/revisions\/4229"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4228"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4228"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4228"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}