What Happened to the “Messengers”

Just a little more than two years after Ellen White penned the words quoted above, James White wrote concerning the leaders in the opposition movement:1BIO 314.5

Wyman, rejected by his party for crime, and a town charge. Bezzo, their editor [turned schoolteacher], fined $25 for presenting a pistol, and threatening to shoot a scholar in school. Case, run out as a preacher, and fishing on the lakes. Chapin, in a clothing store. Lillis, a spiritualist. Russell and Hicks had denounced Bezzo and the publishers of their sheet [as] hypocrites, and were standing alone.1BIO 314.6

It seems that as soon as these restless spirits went out from the body by themselves, ... they immediately went to biting and devouring one another until not one of the eighteen messengers of which they once boasted as being with them is now bearing a public testimony, and not one place of regular meeting to our knowledge among them, east or west.—The Review and Herald, January 14, 1858.1BIO 314.7

As to those advocating the “age to come,” Stephenson soon adopted doctrinal views that cut him off from those who sympathized with him. He seemed to lose his ability as a speaker. He divorced his wife to marry a younger woman. Reported Loughborough:1BIO 315.1

In this forlorn condition—friendless, penniless, and with failing health—he was placed in the “poorhouse.” There his mental faculties failed him—not a derangement, but a state of imbecility. The last four years of his life he had no more sense, or ability to care for himself, than a year-old child.—Pacific Union Recorder, May 12, 1910.1BIO 315.2

D. P. Hall soon gave up his preaching and engaged in the real estate business. Through impracticable business transactions he lost everything and went bankrupt. This led to melancholy and terminated in insanity.1BIO 315.3