The Great Controversy The Great Controversy | Page 337

only offense was that they looked with joy for the return of their Lord
and were striving to live holy lives and to exhort others to prepare for
His appearing.
Earnest were the efforts put forth to draw away the minds of the
people from the subject of the second advent. It was made to appear a
sin, something of which men should be ashamed, to study the prophecies
which relate to the coming of Christ and the end of the world. Thus the
popular ministry undermined faith in the word of God. Their teaching
made men infidels, and many took license to walk after their own
ungodly lusts. Then the authors of the evil charged it all upon Adventists.
While drawing crowded houses of intelligent and attentive hearers,
Miller’s name was seldom mentioned by the religious press except by
way of ridicule or denunciation. The careless and ungodly emboldened
by the position of religious teachers, resorted to opprobrious epithets,
to base and blasphemous witticisms, in their efforts to heap contumely
upon him and his work. The gray-headed man who had left a
comfortable home to travel at his own expense from city to city, from
town to town, toiling unceasingly to bear to the world the solemn
warning of the judgment near, was sneeringly denounced as a fanatic,
a liar, a speculating knave.
The ridicule, falsehood, and abuse heaped upon him called forth
indignant remonstrance, even from the secular press. “To treat a subject
of such overwhelming majesty and fearful consequences,” with lightness
and ribaldry was declared by worldly men to be “not merely to sport with
the feelings of its propagators and advocates,” but “to make a jest of the
day of judgment, to scoff at the Deity Himself, and contemn the terrors
of His judgment bar.”—Bliss, page 183.
The instigator of all evil sought not only to counteract the effect of
the advent message, but to destroy the messenger himself. Miller made
a practical application of Scripture truth to the hearts of his hearers,
reproving their sins and

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