False Visions Bring Adverse Declarations

In North America the publication of alleged visions in certain of the advent journals led to recorded actions against all “visions.” Thus from Charles Fitch’s periodical, The Second Advent of Christ, published in Cleveland, Ohio, in a “Declaration of Principles” adopted “By the Adventists Assembled in Boston Anniversary Week, May, 1843,” and signed by “N. N. Whiting, S. Bliss, T. F. Barry, J. Litch, and C. Fitch,” we read:AGP 246.4

“We have no confidence whatever in visions, dreams, or private revelations. ‘What is the chaff to the wheat? saith the Lord.’ We repudiate all fanaticism, and everything which may tend to extravagance, excess, and immorality, that shall cause our good to be evil spoken of.” Issue of June 21, 1843.

A little later, John Starkweather, well educated and able speaker—the ministerial associate of J. V. Himes in his Boston church—looked for the restoration of the gifts. But fanaticism came briefly, though locally, in the years 1843 and 1844, to deceive and disappoint his immediate followers.AGP 246.5

Finally, in direct connection with the great expectation of October 22, 1844, an extremist on the fringes of Millerism, byAGP 246.6

the name of Dr. C. R. Gorgas, claimed that by “vision” God had “commissioned” him to call out the faithful from Philadelphia to a camp outside the city, and on printed handbills predicted that Christ would come at three o’clock in the morning.AGP 247.1