ESTESBOG

by Peter Walker

Puritan Mainers abhor open controversy and avoid public display. They tend to minimize or, better still, deny any history that appears ostentatious (or, Heaven forbid, possibly sinful!) until succeeding generations forget it entirely. Thus embarrassing incidents in Maine history, such as the stealing of the statehouse in 1879, the burning of Falmouth (what is now Portland) by the British during the revolution, and the raid on Casco Bay by a Confederate warship, were omitted in the junior high Maine history texts of my time.

Nevertheless, my seventh grade teacher, a career one-room school teacher until the consolidated Poland Community School was first opened in September, 1954, once mentioned that a remarkable religious event occurred in the first half of the 1800s in an area of West Poland called Rabbit Valley or “the Promised Land.”  There seems to be absolutely no mention of these goings-on in history texts or town accounts despite the fact that this activity indirectly resulted in the birth of a major Protestant denomination. From a few internet sites, particularly the website of the Seventh Day Adventists, I’ve been able to piece together what happened.

It all began when Rev. William Miller, a Baptist preacher from upstate New York, came to the conclusion after years of study that no prophesies in the Old Testament Book of Revelations had yet come to pass. Miller was apparently sincere; he did not consider himself a prophet but just an enlightened interpreter of the Word of God. Among his conclusions was that the number of “days” mentioned in Revelations actually referred to years. By his calculations, therefore, Judgment Day would take place on October 22, 1843.

In the years prior to the scheduled event, Miller convinced hundreds, perhaps thousands of followers that they needed to settle their worldlyaffairs and prepare with him for the end of the world. The faithful Millerites liquidated their estates since there would be no need for such. At some point it was decided that the flock would gather in West Poland, Maine, in an area not far from Tripp Lake Camp and now known either as Rabbit Valley or the Promised Land, to be received en masse into the Kingdom of Heaven. Thus Rabbit Valley filled with h8undreds, if not thousands, of the faithful by October, 1843.

When the date passed without incident (to the great astonishment and enormous disappointment of all), William Miller went back to the Book of Revelations and discovered that his predictions were one year short. The real thing, he declared, would occur on October 22, 1844.

The second failure of Miller’s predictions the following year brought anger and frustration to most and complete nervous breakdown for some. Miller perhaps wisely seems to have disappeared after that, never to be heard from again. However, in the aftermath an opportunistic, if not divinely inspired, former Millerite, Mrs. Ellen G. White, gave convincing public testimony in a meeting place on “MacGuire Hill” in Poland, Maine in 1845 (probably the Meguire Hill Meetinghouse) to a series of visions she claimed to have received from God. Mrs. White’s prolific visions and writings from that point on into the first decade of the Twentieth Century gave rise out of the rubble of the Millerite movement to the Seventh Day Adventist Church. (It was one of White’s numerous visions which led to the vegetarian beliefs and customs in practice by modern day Adventists.)

In recent times, Seventh Day Adventist historians and theologians have reviewed Ellen White’s teachings and claims with brutal honesty. They have proven that her first public “vision” was a hoax, plaguerized from an experience related to her from a local dairy farmer. Her prolific writing was for the most part plaguerism and doubtless all of her subsequent visions.

It led Seventh Day Adventist scholars to admit their theology has little or no basis in the Bible. But this in no way detracts from the sincerity of adherents to this denomination or lessens their humanitarian accomplishments.

I admire the willingness of latter day Adventists to openly and honestly examine their roots. Leaders of other denominations have at times gone to great expense to confiscate, hide, and deny inconvenient documents.