Hiram Edson| The Theological Birthplace Season 2 | Episode 13
Port Gibson is a rural area
just east of Rochester in New York State.
It's a quiet area with many farms that dot the landscape.
In the 1840s there was a farm owned by Hiram Edson
that housed some very important meetings
and saw some key developments take place.
Here in the quietness of the countryside
let us take a walk down this particular part of memory lane.
[music]
After the 22nd of October, 1844,
the Advent believers were terribly disappointed
as their hopes and dreams had been shattered and destroyed.
Hiram Edson was no different.
He was confused,
as he believed that his study of the prophecies had been accurate,
yet Jesus hadn't come.
How would they reconcile this?
Did they have the date wrong, as some had suggested?
He didn't think so.
The dates and calculations had been solid.
Did they have the event wrong?
Well, they must have, because Jesus hadn't come.
But what else could it mean?
[music]
Hiram Edson was walking through a cornfield one day soon after,
when he realized they had gotten something major wrong.
They had been so focused on the parable of the ten virgins in Matthew 25,
as it seemed to match the events of 1844,
that they had missed Christ's other wedding parable in Luke chapter 12.
In Luke it says that we must wait
while we wait for the Lord to return from the wedding.
He also realized that in Daniel 7 it says that the Son of Man
would come to the Ancient of Days rather than to the earth.
[music]
This was a revelation.
Later he would study this out with Dr Franklin B Hahn and O R L Crosier,
and they would solidify their views on this matter.
They saw that Jesus was not scheduled to come to the earth
at the end of the 2300-day prophecy of Daniel 8:14,
but rather he transitioned from the Holy Place
to the Most Holy Place in the sanctuary in heaven,
beginning the work of the investigative judgment.
It was Owen Russell Loomis Crosier who wrote the first issue
of The Day Dawn in March of 1845
that explained the reason for the delay in Jesus return
and preserved the historicist framework of Daniel 8 and 9.
[music]
Hiram Edson's barn is also the place that Captain Joseph Bates
shared the truth of the Sabbath in late 1846.
As he was reading his tract, Edson jumped up and said,
'Brother Bates, this is light and truth.
The seventh day is the Sabbath, and I am with you to keep it.'
Crosier and Hahn also accepted the Sabbath,
and thus this linked those in western New York
who were presenting the sanctuary
with those in New England who were teaching the Sabbath.
[music]
For this reason, this farm has been seen
as the theological birthplace of the Seventh-day Adventist Church,
for it's where the two pillars of the Sabbath and the sanctuary came together.
The blending of these two teachings would form the uniqueness of this new movement.
The Sabbath was not just seen as a reminder of creation
or as part of the Ten Commandments,
but rather in the light of the sanctuary
and its eschatological, or end-time context.
[music]
In time, Hiram Edson and the other Advent believers
would see that their experience in October 1844 was part of Bible prophecy
and that their very disappointment itself
was further proof that God was leading them.
In Revelation 10 it points out
that their experience would first be sweet in the mouth
and then it would be bitter in the belly,
and oh, how bitter it had been.
The last verse in Revelation 10 admonished them and it echoes to us today:
'Thou must prophesy again.'
May we take the admonition
of the preaching of the unique message of God to heart
and go wherever He calls.