Jan 19, 2025

Disappointment of William Miller

Patheos: Disappointment of William Miller

"The Great Disappointment is the name given to a time when the world as we know it didn’t end. Tens of thousands of people fervently believed the date the world would change was October 22, 1844. They sincerely thought on that day Jesus would come in glory to gather the faithful to heaven before cleansing the world of sin. Many of them even gave away all their wordly possessions, donned white robes, and waited on hilltops — or in trees — for the great event. And it didn’t happen. Hence, there was great disappointment.

End-of-the-world predictions are fairly common, and occasionally some catch on with enough people that the eventual non-event becomes an event in itself. This particular non-event was one of the most famous in modern times. It’s been studied by historians, theologians, and social psychologists for clues to why this particular prediction was so compelling. Answers vary. How the non-event came to be rationalized by the disappointed has also been a focus of study.
It’s also the case that 19th century America, and to some extent Europe, was something like the Golden Age of Religious Free Spirits and Eccentrics. See, for example,  “Talking With The Dead In 19th Century America” and “The Oneida Community: An Experiment In Perfectionism.” It was a time when the grip of many old orthodoxies was broken. And many otherwise psychologically normal people seemed willing to believe just about anything where spirituality was concerned. So maybe if you wanted to understand it, you had to be there.

The Great Disappointment: Origins
William Miller (1784-1849) thought a lot about religion. As a young man he rejected his Baptist upbringing and embraced Deism instead. Service in the War of 1812 left him with questions about death and an afterlife. His questions eventually took him back to the Baptists. When his Deist friends challenged his changed beliefs, he began a close reading of the Bible to look for support. And that close reading persuaded him the world was about to end."



https://www.patheos.com/blogs/thereligioushistorynerd/2024/04/the-great-disappointment-of-willliam-miller/

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