The Great Controversy The Great Controversy | Page 407

by the Spirit of God and hearts burning with its living power; positions
which had withstood the most searching criticisms and the most bitter
opposition of popular religious teachers and worldly-wise men, and
which had stood firm against the combined forces of learning and
eloquence, and the taunts and revilings alike of the honorable and the
base.
True, there had been a failure as to the expected event, but even
this could not shake their faith in the word of God. When Jonah
proclaimed in the streets of Nineveh that within forty days the city
would be overthrown, the Lord accepted the humiliation of the Ninevites
and extended their period of probation; yet the message of Jonah was
sent of God, and Nineveh was tested according to His will. Adventists
believed that in like manner God had led them to give the warning of
the judgment. “It has,” they declared, “tested the hearts of all who heard
it, and awakened a love for the Lord’s appearing; or it has called forth
a hatred, more or less perceivable, but known to God, of His coming. It
has drawn a line, ... so that those who will examine their own hearts, may
know on which side of it they would have been found, had the Lord then
come—whether they would have exclaimed, ‘Lo! this is our God, we
have waited for Him, and He will save us;’ or whether they would have
called to the rocks and mountains to fall on them to hide them from the
face of Him that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb.
God thus, as we believe, has tested His people, has tried their faith, has
proved them, and seen whether they would shrink, in the hour of trial,
from the position in which He might see fit to place them; and whether
they would relinquish this world and rely with implicit confidence in the
word of God.”—The Advent Herald and Signs of the Times Reporter,
vol. 8, No. 14 (Nov 13, 1844).
The feelings of those who still believed that God had led them in their
past experience are expressed in the words of William Miller: “Were I
to live my life over again, with the

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