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William P Collins

The Final Consummation: American Bahá'ís, Millerites and Biblical Time Prophecy The relationship of the Millerites and biblical time prophecy to the sacred drama of the Bahá'í Faith is the theme of this book. For American Bahá'ís, two millennial visions on far-separated continents, within different religious milieux, and from contrasting social climates, have been perceived to have a direct link at the level of spiritual idea and predictive force. Sociologist Peter Berger's notion of religious "motif" has been used by Peter Smith in analyzing the major concerns of the Babi-Baha'i religious community. The first of the religious motifs to be expressed in Babi-Baha'i history, and the most enduring, is the millennialist/millenarian motif: the desire to conform to a divine plan to build the Kingdom of God on earth. The three conditions that often, though not always, precede the appearance of millenarian movements are discussed: a source of charismatic authority, the existence of a traditional millenarian milieu in the surrounding culture (a significant aspect of which is the fascination exercised by the power and mythic potency of numbers and dating systems), and some major ongoing disruption of social life and belief structure as perceived by the incipient millennialists. Two millennialist movements -- Millerism and Babism -- were born in the first half of the nineteenth century on two continents. The Millerites in the United States were at their height in the 1830s and 1840s. These premillennialist Protestants, followers of William Miller, expected the imminent bodily return of Jesus Christ, and predicted specific dates in the 1843-1844 period.

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