(SDA Dr. Allan Lindsay speaking:) And Jesus came in through His Word, corrected their error, brought them through their disappointment, reaffirmed their confidence, and gave them a message to take to the world. Well, with that experience in our minds, dear friends, let’s go back to the morning after the disappointment, Wednesday, October 23. And where should we go? That’s a map of the State of New York, and along that blue line you can see a blue line here that starts over here. There’s New York City, there’s a river that goes right along there. And in 1825 the American government cut a canal without tractors and all the other things they have today, right across to a lake, Lake Erie. That’s a lake there, and there’s a lake up there, and Niagara Falls is just there. And prior to that time even ships coming from Europe could come down this far, but they could not come past Niagara Falls for obvious reasons. And therefore they could not get into Lake Erie. And round here they came and of course eventually they would have opened up Detroit and Chicago. And so the cutting of that canal opened up the central part of America and changed the history of the United States. It was built in 1825.

Why do I mention this? Because along that canal round about there is a little village called Port Gibson. Why is that relevant to our story today? Because in Port Gibson there lived a man called Hiram Edson. He was a Methodist lay preacher and he had been converted in 1839 to the teachings of William Miller that Jesus was coming in the mid 1840s. And here he’d shared his faith with his neighbors. And he had about 200 neighbors converted and waiting anxiously for Jesus to come on that Tuesday, October 22.

If you have a look at that map it makes it a little bit clearer. And there’s some interesting things on that map because here you’ll see is the Erie Canal. But there are three places there that while I’m going to talk about one of them tonight, the other two are very interesting.

Here is Hiram Edson’s farm, this man, this lay preacher that I’m going to talk about tonight. And just a few miles over to the west is Hill Chumorah which is the beginnings of Mormonism. It was here that Joseph Smith discovered the gold plates that led to the writing or to the translation of the Book of Mormon. And just above it up there is the Fox Cottage. And this is the birthplace of modern Spiritualism.

I was amazed when I first visited this place to think that within a few miles of each other is the beginnings of Adventism, the beginnings of Mormonism, and the beginnings of Spiritualism, right there. And of course Spiritualism may remind us all, is the agent that Satan is going to use to gather the whole world together into one body. Read Revelation 16 sometime. Very significant that it should come so close.

Well, if you go to that site today you’ll see the site of Hiram Edson’s home. The home has long since gone, and they have put a barn on the property for reasons I’ll explain in just a moment.

There’s a photograph of the reconstructed barn. Hut here is Hill Chumorah. This is this a magnificent visitors center that the Mormons have constructed right there to celebrate the discovery of the gold plates and the Book of Mormon. And then of course they’re the Fox family, that little cottage where Spiritualism began as you saw there on the map.

Well, let’s go back to Hiram Edson. This man and many others had waited for Jesus to come. He’d pass through that disappointment. And he too tells us a little of his disappointment. There is a photograph that I took of the Erie canal right there where Hiram Edson’s farm is. And I was interested to discover that a little I was walking through a cemetery up there in New York and discovered the grave of Hiram Edson because he became a pioneer Adventist minister, and died in 1882.

But have a look at this statement. Remember the one I put on the screen about James White? Look at this. Hiram Edson has written a manuscript, and in that manuscript he wrote this about his experience that Wednesday and that Tuesday.

“We looked for our coming Lord until the clock toll 12 at midnight. The day had then passed, and our disappointment became a certainty. Our fondest hopes and expectations were blasted, and such a spirit of weeping came over us as I never experienced before. We wept and wept till the day dawn.”

Bitter disappointment. As the sun rose on that Wednesday morning, Hiram Edson goes on to tell us that he suggested to some of his friends that they should go down to the barn on his property because that was the largest building in those days to protect the animals in the wintertime, and meet for prayer, an earnest prayer to God, an earnest supplication to God that He would somehow help them to understand why Jesus hadn’t come the day before. And Hiram Edson tells us that they continued in prayer until their conviction came that their prayers had been heard and accepted, and that light would be given, and that their disappointment would be explained. They felt after that prayer meeting that Wednesday morning, dear friends, that God was going to give them an answer as to why He hadn’t come the day before.

After the prayer session, Edson, and an unknown friend, did you get that? Hiram Edson and one other, and we don’t know who the other was really. Oh, we’ve guessed. Bible scholars have a guess, and I’ve got a little bit of an idea. But he’s not named. He’s not named.