God's Strange Work: William Miller and the End of the World. By David L. Rowe. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008. xxii, 249 pp. Paper, $24.00, ISBN 978-0-8028-0380-1.)

Abstract

During the past thirty years, several studies of the Millerite movement of the 1830s and 1840s have been published, but these works have given relatively little attention to the movement's originator, William Miller. With this biography, David L. Rowe, professor of history at Middle Tennessee State University, successfully focuses on Miller himself. A deistic farmer in upstate New York, Miller converted to Christianity after serving in the War of 1812. Intensive study of the Bible led him to the conclusion that Christ's Second Coming would take place about 1843, an interpretation that he began presenting publicly in 1831. After meeting Miller in 1839, Joshua V. Himes, a Boston preacher, began publishing papers and organizing conferences and camp meetings to promote Miller's views, soon developing a following of more than fifty thousand. When Jesus did not return on October 22, 1844, the date ultimately settled upon, the movement fractured between moderates and radicals. Miller sided with the moderates, but illness prevented significant activity between 1845 and his death in 1849.