Our Day / In the Light of Prophecy

by William Ambrose Spicer

Centuries had passed, after this word was written in the Book, when the flight of time at last brought the hour of the prophecy—the year 1844. That very year witnessed the rise of the definite advent movement which is still proclaiming the very message of the prophecy to the world.

It was in the year 1844, in New England, that a little group of believers in the blessed hope of Christ's soon coming, saw clearly, from their study of the Bible, that the New Testament platform of "the commandments of God, and the faith of Jesus," emphasized in this prophecy of the judgment hour, meant the keeping of the fourth commandment as well as the other nine. Thereupon they began to keep and to teach the Sabbath of the Lord, the seventh day of the week, made holy and blessed and commanded by God.

One member of this group of commandment-keeping Adventists was Frederick Wheeler, from whose dictation the following statement was prepared, fixing exactly the facts as to the time:

"As a Methodist minister he was convinced of the advent truth by reading William Miller's works in 1842, and joined in preaching the first message [that of the judgment hour]. In March, 1844, he began to keep the true Sabbath, in Washington, N.H."—Review and Herald (Washington, D.C.), Oct. 4, 1906.

They were but a little band, those believers in New Hampshire, but the time of the prophecy had come, and with the coming of the hour there was the nucleus of the movement forming, believers in the near coming of the Lord, preaching the message of the prophecy, "The hour of His judgment is come," and keeping "the commandments of God, and the faith of Jesus."

From that small beginning has grown the movement that Seventh-day Adventists stand for, spreading through all the world today.

It was in the year following 1844 that Joseph Bates, of Massachusetts, a retired sea captain, and a preacher of the advent hope, began to keep the Sabbath. Captain Bates wrote and published, and soon others, following his example, embraced the Bible Sabbath.

As the Scripture teaching concerning the sanctuary was studied, light came flooding in. It was seen that the great prophetic period of Daniel 8, which ended in 1844, marked the opening of Christ's ministry in the most holy place of the heavenly sanctuary, the work of the judgment hour in heaven; and there, plainly revealed in Revelation 14, was a special gospel message to be carried to all the world while the judgment hour still continued.

The little company that began to keep the commandments of God as Adventist believers in 1844, did not understand that they were beginning the definite movement foretold by the prophecy. They only determined to turn from traditions that had made void God's law, and to obey the law of the Most High, whose servants they were.

But in the light of the Scripture prophecy and of events, we can see clearly the hand of God leading that little baud into the right pathway when the year of 1844 came; and the work there begun has grown into the world-wide movement of today.