The Times Were Exciting 2

January 3  The Times Were Exciting 2

 

And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all naitons; and then shall the end come. Matt. 24;14.

The study of Bible prophecy wasn't the only religious reaction to the French Revolution. A second was the greatest religious revival to ever shake America. Beginning in the 1970s and running up into 1840s the Second Great Awakening did more than anything else in the history of the young country to transform the United States into a Christian nation.

Accompanying the religious revival was a wave of social and personal reform. many had come to believe that the political and technological breakthroughs of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries had begun to provide the machinery for the creation of heaven on earth. Hundreds of reform movements arose for the betterment of human society.

Reform societies arose in the early nineteenth century in almost every conceivable area of human interest. It was in those decades that campaigns for the abolition of slavery, societies emerged to promote public education better treament of the deaf, blind, mentally incapacitated, and prisoners the equality of the sexes and races and so on. Beyond the social realm, one finds organizations sponsoring personal betterment.

Both religionists and secularists pooled their energies and resources in the hope of perfecting society through reform. But religionists went beyond their contemporaries through the establishment of Bible societies, home and foreign mission societies, Sunday school unions, and associations for the promotion of Sunday sacredness. For the first time Protestant Christians felt the need to preach the gospel to all the world.

Because of the reforms and mission outreach entusiasm, millennial expectations were omnipresent in the 1830s. Charles Finney, the greatest American evangelist of the day, set forth the prevailing opinion of the churches when he penned in 1835 that "if the church will do her duty" in reform, "the millennium may come in this country in three years."

The idea was that the reforms and other aspects of the Awakening would prepare the world for the beginning of the millennium of Revelation 20, during which the earth would continue to improve until Christ returned at the end of the 1,000 years.

It was into a world of millennial excitement that William Miller came preaching his Advent message. As a result, churches everywhere welcomed him with open arms.

God had prepared the way. He always does. It is  our job to follow His leading.

No one can occupy a neutral position; there is no middle class, who neither love God nor serve the enemy of righteousness. Christ is to live in His human agents and work through their faculties and act through their capabilities. Their will must be submitted to His will; they must act with His Spirit. Then it is no more they that live, but Christ that lives in them(TFMB 94).