Editorial: March 2001

William Miller

The Adventist family of churches trace their origins back to the 1830s. William Miller, an unsophisticated but enthusiastic Baptist preacher, toured the American heartland promoting his "midnight cry" message. The end was near. Christ was coming back very soon indeed.

The prophesied years of 1843 and 1844 came and went. It was called "The Great Disappointment." But rather than fizzle into oblivion, the failed reappearance of the Son of Man ignited the fervor of the faithful. What had been a relatively unorganized movement coalesced into various denominational groups, and the Adventists settled down for the long haul.

Seventh-day Adventists were by no means the only grouping to take up where Miller left off. A rag tag bunch of independents calling themselves The Church of God also emerged, as did the Advent Christian Church. And the influence of Adventism reached beyond the original community to influence others also, including "Pastor Russell", founder of the Jehovah's Witnesses.

Time passed. The Adventist groups flourished, extending their ministries far beyond the United States. Seventh-day Adventists numbered in the millions. One group, Herbert Armstrong's Worldwide Church of God, became the largest single purchaser of religious radio and television airtime in the world. The message of Christ's return to save a chaotic and doomed world seemed tailor-made for a century that saw two bloody World Wars and a cold war that threatened nuclear annihilation.

Today however there is mounting evidence that Adventism, in all its forms, has passed its use-by-date. A period of rapid decline seems to have begun. Consider the travail of these groups over recent years.

• The SDAs have been torn by dissension. Bob Brinsmead hoisted the flag a generation ago, to be followed by Dale Ratzlaff and Desmond Ford. All committed, articulate Adventist scholars. All alienated from their church. Whole congregations have peeled away from the denomination. Growth has ground to a halt in many areas.
• In the 1990s the Branch Davidians, an obscure Adventist enclave, attracted huge negative publicity when, mindlessly following an upstart convert named David Koresh, their compound was destroyed and Koresh - along with his followers - perished.
• The Worldwide Church of God, largest and brashest of the Church of God groups, broke apart irretrievably in 1995 after many years of organizational trauma. Overall membership of the competing factions has plummeted.
• The Church of God (Seventh Day), oldest and most stable of the Church of God groups, has also had a difficult time dealing with theological issues. The church is divided over New Covenant teachings.

Tabor	Koresh	Ratzlaff

Isolated in their own little cultic ghetto, members of the WCG had little opportunity to compare notes with their estranged cousins. But the blood ties were there regardless. This was evident in the midst of the bungled operations at Waco, where the US government called on the expert services of a former WCG member, Dr. James Tabor, in an effort to understand the Branch Davidian mindset. As the crisis escalated Koresh's followers displayed placards attacking the Seventh-day Adventist church from which their founder had split decades before.

It was evident again in the chain reaction that ignited the WCG. It was the work of former SDA writers like Brinsmead and Ratzlaff that tore apart the last Sabbatarian defenses of the WCG administration. The aftershocks of that collapse are currently being felt in the Church of God (Seventh Day).

Did the flames that engulfed the Waco compound also signify the inevitable end of William Miller's strange legacy? And is the dismemberment of the WCG part of something bigger: the death throes of a once influential American religious tradition?

And on a personal level. For those of us who have jumped ship (or were forced to walk the plank) from the Church of God section of the Adventist family: is there any purpose in rowing the lifeboats to another ship in the same doomed fleet?

Or is it time, rather than trying to find "best fits" for old questions, to dare to ask bold new questions?

Gavin Rumney