An additional comment. Storrs left Millerite Adventism in the mid-1840s and adopted Literalist belief. This led to a huge controversy. Even when associated with the Life and Advent Union, Storrs did not advocate Millerite Adventism. By the time Russell met him, Storrs was fully literalist in belief, and he was not viewed with favor by any Adventist body. Many on this board make assertions about Storrs that are not at all true. Almost every issue of Bible Examiner is fairly easy to find and read. The problem here and elsewhere is that no one reads them. So the simplified view that he was an Millerite is all you see.
For instance, in the July 1849 issue of Bible Examiner we find Storrs writing thus:
Whatever the “church” or ‘the world’ may understand by Millerism, I understand it to have three peculiarities, and nothing more: viz. “Definite time for the advent,” …. That view I gave up in the winter of ’44 and ’45; and time has since demonstrated that I was right in so doing. The two other peculiarities of Millerism I gave up, one in the month of Feb. ’44, and the other in June ’45. The three may be summed up thus, 1. “Definite time for the advent, not to go beyond ’47.” 2, “No return of the literal posterity of Jacob to the land wherein their fathers have dwelt.” 3, “The earth all to be melted at the time of the advent, and none of its inhabitants left upon it.”
These three points constitute the whole of what I call Millerism. … The second personal advent of Christ – that advent premillennial – nigh, even at the door – the kingdom of God on earth, or the earth the inheritance of the saints – the earth renewed, Paradise restored, and all those kindred doctrines relating to the kingdom of God, are no part nor parcel of Millerism: They had a distinct existence from his theory, and before his views were published to the world. The fact that some who embraced his theory had no knowledge that these other points had been published, by English Literalists, years before they heard from Mr. Miller, does not make them really any part of his peculiarities: they are not, and never were, any of his peculiar views. … The three points I have named are all that constitutes the peculiarities of Millerism.
The leaders in his theory did not like to retain the name of Millerites after 1843-4 passed by, though they gloried in being called so in those years. No sooner did the time pass away, and they commenced the work of organizing churches, than they assumed the name of Adventists; thus showing they were unwilling to go forward under their former one, and so assumed that which is equally appropriate to all believers in the speedy return of Christ and his personal reign on earth, of whom there are many who never were Millerites. In assuming the name Adventists they wronged this latter class of believers; who thus became, in the public mind, identified with them; and they were as really a sect as any other. Why should they have left the name Millerite, by which they were every where known, to assume another without having given up one of Mr. Miller’s peculiarities? Was it to cover their errors without “confession?” It certainly has that appearance, whatever might have been their design. -- G. Storrs: Misapprehension Corrected, Bible Examiner, July 1849, page 106.
