Part I—The unsolved problem 1. Once to every man and nation

Part I—The unsolved problem

1. Once to every man and nation

An interesting account of this period reads:

“A converted Jew in Palestine, Joseph Wolff, predicted the Advent (of Christ) for 1847. Harriet Livermore, an eloquent and arresting woman of the time, who figures in Whittier’s Snowbound, preached the Second Coming everywhere, including the House of Representatives at Washington, where crowds gathered to hear her. Lady Hester Stanhope, a valiant madwoman, niece of William Pitt, who turned her back on London and power and fashion, made her home in Lebanon among the Arabs and Druses, in order to be ready and near to the scene of the Advent. She kept, it was reported, two white Arab steeds in her stable, one for the Messiah, one for herself!”¹

Another writer stated:

“There is a little mosque, we are told, in the Holy Land, where a priest presides, keeping ready the shoes that the Messiah is to wear when he comes to Jerusalem.”²

It was said of those days:

“So real was the hope of the Advent, people were actually taking almost violent measures for it. It was the nineteenth century, yet the shooting stars of the year 1833, and the perihelia, or halo-like rings, around the sun in 1843, were objects of the most awesome speculation and discussion. And the tail of the great comet of 1843 measured 108 million miles in length. … Whole families were engaged in making shrouds against that fateful day.”¹

Some of the more zealous believers, it is said, donned their ‘ascension robes’ and prepared to await Christ’s descent upon the clouds of heaven.

Their more sceptical, and practical, but equally uninformed neighbours pointed out that clouds did not descend, but were vapours that rose up from the earth.

Other scholars quoted St. Augustine who had written an entire volume proving that there could not be anyone living on the other side of the earth because it would then be impossible for such people to see Christ when He came down in the clouds on the day of His return.

Mathematicians asked: “Which way is down?” Furthermore, they said, taking into consideration the curvature of the earth, there would have to be thousands and thousands of ‘solo’ flights to the earth by Christ before all humanity would be able to see His descent. They poked fun at the literalists in many other ways, saying that obviously this coming down on the clouds was symbolical.

Still others suggested that perhaps these clouds were not a chariot that Christ rode from heaven, but a mist that arose from earth to obscure man’s vision.

However, in spite of scepticism and doubt, designers created special ‘ascension robes’ in various styles for the great coming event, especially for those who wished to be in fashion

on that day. It is said that they were displayed in some of the shop windows in the eastern parts of the United States. Although this matter of ascension robes has been hotly denied in many quarters, I frequently encountered the story.

The following letter, one among many, makes this point quite evident. The letter was written by Ida M. Wing to Clara Endicott Sears on 21 August 1921. It reads:

“I have heard my mother tell that when she was a girl she remembers that her mother made a white robe, put her house in order, put lamps in the windows and sat up all night waiting for the end of the world to come.”¹

When the great comet of 1843 streaked across the heavens, people pointed at it with alarm, saying:

“It is now the hour for Christ’s return!”

In that same year, the poet James Russell Lowell wrote:

“Once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide,

Some great cause, God’s new Messiah …”²

The great poet Lamartine, in a flood of praise, asked of God: “Is this not the time for you to reveal yourself?”

On 24 May 1844, in Washington D.C., Mr Samuel F. B. Morse, the inventor of the telegraph, stepped to the keyboard of his new instrument. He was about to send the first official telegram in history flashing along the wires from Washington to Baltimore. The press had heralded this day as a modern miracle. By this invention, it was said, the world would be united physically in the twinkling of an eye. These lightning-like impulses leaping along the wires would shrink the size of the planet, they said.

In fact, when Congress appropriated $40,000 for Morse to continue his work, he was told that now he could send his “lightnings” to the world. Thus his invention was associated

with the words in the Book of Job, although at the time it was said partly in jest.

Students of Scripture asked: “Is this not still another proof that 1844 is indeed the hour for the appearance of Christ? Is it not written in the Book of Job that only God can send ‘lightnings that may go and say unto thee here we are!’¹ Does it not mean that Christ is here? Does not this same Job promise”:

“For I know that my redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth.”²

Samuel Morse put his hand to the keyboard of the telegraph and tapped out that first formal message. The words were taken from the Book of Numbers:

“What hath God wrought!”³

I was curious about that message of Morse in 1844. What had God wrought in that day, if anything besides the telegraph? Was there a hidden story? Was it possible to find it? At least this was a beginning.

About this time, I came upon the account of a lecture given by the British scientist, Sir Lawrence Bragg, in Carnegie Hall, New York. Sir Lawrence drew a graph of the scientific achievements of man until the period around 1844. He showed that man’s advancement up until that time had been very slow, so slow, indeed, that the line of the graph up to 1844 was almost horizontal.

Subsequently, however, and immediately, the line of the graph went almost directly upwards, and has continued to climb ever since.

This did interest me. Why? What had caused this new spirit of energy and creation in the world following the year 1844? Why had it begun in that particular period?

Had some historical event taken place in 1844 that could account for this new upsurge of knowledge and invention? Was there some happening that the historians had overlooked, or neglected? Did it have anything to do with the coming of the Messiah, the generally talked about return of Christ in that very year?

These were questions to which I now eagerly wanted the answer. The case of the missing millennium was at last becoming interesting. I decided to make a thorough check on the exact year of Morse’s 1844 message.