Une nouvelle édition d'écrits de William Miller

Memoirs of William Miller, Andrews University Press, 2005, 520 pages.

Publié dans la série Adventist Classic Library éditée par George Knight, ce nouveau volume consacré au Mémoires de William Miller est préfacé par Merlin Burt, directeur du Center for Adventist Research, Andrews University. Trois autres textes sont en appendice : Memoir of William Miller de Joshua Himes, Mr. Miller's Influence upon the People du même auteur, William Miller's Apology and Defense, de William Miller lui-même.

Originally published in 1853, Memoirs of William Miller still remains the most comprehensive biographical study of the founder of Adventism and the instigator of one of the most dramatic episodes in American religious history. Thus, the Adventist Classic Library is proud to announce the publication of this most "classic" of all Adventist classics.

In the early 1830s, Miller, a farmer and lay Baptist preacher in upstate New York, began preaching and writing that the second coming of Christ would occur about the year 1843. By the fall of 1844, most of America was very aware and significantly agitated that the "Millerites" had finally named the day : Jesus would return, and the earth would be destroyed by fire, on October 22, 1844.

Memoirs has remained useful for more than 150 years, and still provides the foundation of all other popular and scholarly studies of Miller. It was written by those who worked most closely with Miller from the early 1840s until the end of his life and is based on significant primary source material, some of which is no longer extant.

The Adventist Classic Library edition of Memoirs of William Miller includes two other important contemporary biographical accounts of Miller's life. The first comprises two short essays from Views on the Prophecies and Prophetic Chronology, Selected from Manuscripts of William Miller, a work published by Himes in 1841. The second is Miller's own Apology and Defence, first published in 1845 as Miller's explanation of the “Great Disappointment” of October 22, 1844.