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And I saw another angel flying through the heavens, carrying the everlasting Good News to preach to the people who belong to this world--to every nation, tribe, language, and people. Rev. 14:6, NLT.
The final, and by far the most important, factor in the rapid spread of Millerism was its sense of prophetic mission and the resulting urgency generated by that understanding.
Millerism was a mission-motivated movement. A sense of personal responsibility to warn the world of its soon-coming end literally drove William Miller, Joshua V. Himes, and their Millerite colleagues to dedicate everything they had to announce the world's impending judgment. Himes put it nicely in an editorial in the very first issue of the Midnight Cry. "Our Work," he wrote, "is one of unutterable magnitude. It is a mission and an enterprise, unlike, in some respects, anything that has ever awakened the energies of men....It is an alarm, and a cry, uttered by those who from among all Protestant sects, as Watchmen standing upon the walls of the moral world, believe the WORLD'S CRISIS IS COME--and who, under the influence of this faith, are united in proclaiming to the world, 'Behold the Bridegroom cometh, go ye out to meet him!"'
That overwhelming sense of urgency, we must emphasize, rested upon an interpretation of the prophecies of Daniel and the book of Revelation. The Millerites believed with all their hearts that they had a message that people must hear. That belief and the total dedication that accompanied it pushed the Millerites into tireless mission.
That same vision, based upon the same prophecies, also provided the main-spring of Seventh-day Adventist mission. From their beginning Sabbatarian Adventists never viewed themselves as merely another denomination. To the contrary, they understood their movement and message to be a fulfillment of prophecy. They saw themselves as a prophetic people with God's last-day message to take to the entire world before the harvest of the earth (Rev. 14:14-20).
It is the loss of that very understanding that is robbing so much of present-day Adventism of any real significance and meaning. The eroding of that vision slows church growth and will eventually transform Adventism from a dynamic movement into a monument of the movement and perhaps even a museum of the monument of the movement.
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