Great Religious Awakening
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would come the second time. When the missionary answered that
he knew nothing about it, the priest seemed greatly surprised at such
ignorance in one who professed to be a Bible teacher, and stated his
own belief, founded on prophecy, that Christ would come about 1844.
As early as 1826 the advent message began to be preached in Eng-
land. The movement here did not take so definite a form as in America;
the exact time of the advent was not so generally taught, but the great
truth of Christ’s soon coming in power and glory was extensively pro-
claimed. And this not among the dissenters and nonconformists only.
Mourant Brock, an English writer, states that about seven hundred
ministers of the Church of England were engaged in preaching “this
gospel of the kingdom.” The message pointing to 1844 as the time
of the Lord’s coming was also given in Great Britain. Advent pub-
lications from the United States were widely circulated. Books and
journals were republished in England. And in 1842 Robert Winter, an
Englishman by birth, who had received the advent faith in America,
returned to his native country to herald the coming of the Lord. Many
united with him in the work, and the message of the judgment was
proclaimed in various parts of England.
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In South America, in the midst of barbarism and priest-craft, La-
cunza, a Spaniard and a Jesuit, found his way to the Scriptures and
thus received the truth of Christ’s speedy return. Impelled to give the
warning, yet desiring to escape the censures of Rome, he published
his views under the assumed name of “Rabbi Ben-Ezra,” representing
himself as a converted Jew. Lacunza lived in the eighteenth century,
but it was about 1825 that his book, having found its way to London,
was translated into the English language. Its publication served to
deepen the interest already awakening in England in the subject of the
second advent.
In Germany the doctrine had been taught in the eighteenth century
by Bengel, a minister in the Lutheran Church and a celebrated Bib-
lical scholar and critic. Upon completing his education, Bengel had
“devoted himself to the study of theology, to which the grave and reli-
gious tone of his mind, deepened by his early training and discipline,
naturally inclined him. Like other young men of thoughtful character,
before and since, he had to struggle with doubts and difficulties of
a religious nature, and he alludes, with much feeling, to the ‘many
arrows which pierced his poor heart, and made his youth hard to bear.’”