Participants: Bill Knott
Series Code: OTR
Program Code: OTR000975
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01:02 Good morning and welcome to Spring Camp meeting
01:06 2010 here at the 3ABN worship center. You know 01:10 when you see a bunch of great looking people 01:12 standing before you and you've got a suit on and 01:13 a microphone you almost want to automatically say 01:16 happy Sabbath. It just seems to fit. And then 01:18 of course the next thing you want to say is shall 01:20 we have the offering. It seems we just go when 01:23 you got a bunch of people together but we welcome 01:25 you today number two of our camp meeting 01:29 encounter with the Lord. And if you were with us 01:32 last night you know we had a wonderful 01:33 time in the Lord didn't we. 01:35 Two powerful presentations, one by 01:37 Dr. Bill Knott and other by our friend the 01:40 roadrunner we call him David Asscherick. 01:44 And he did stand still long enough to give us a 01:46 powerful word from the Lord. Until this morning 01:49 sitting is going to really be a great one because 01:52 I am a lover of Adventist history and Bill Knott 01:56 is going to be telling us about Adventist History. 01:58 He is of course the editor editor of the Adventist 02:01 review and is doing a very, very fine job in that 02:04 capacity, a preacher of the word and a student of 02:07 Adventist history and we will hear in this particular 02:10 seminar some of the nuggets he has gleaned 02:13 over the years as pastor, editor, writer and author 02:17 in the Adventist Church. But before he comes, 02:19 our friend Darrell Marshall is here. 02:21 Now, I've got a little secret I heard about 02:23 Darrell Marshall. He is going to getting 02:25 married very soon and I, I told him backstage, 02:30 all of those women is going to be weeping, 02:32 wailing and gnashing of teeth. Because Darrell 02:36 Marshall would no longer be available, but he has 02:38 been by himself for a while now as you know his 02:41 wife died tragically several years ago and 02:45 he has dedicated himself to ministry. But somebody 02:48 caught his eye and his ear. His future wife 02:52 is an expert organist on the Hammond B3. 02:55 And if you know anything about the Hammond B3, 02:57 that's a particular organ with a great sound and 03:00 she is an expert organist. So she played just the 03:03 right note and landed a big fish. 03:09 Darrell Marshall is coming to sing 03:11 'there is a river' and then after him without 03:13 further ado our presentation on Adventist 03:16 history will come from Dr. Bill Knott, 03:18 editor of the Adventist Review. 03:36 There is a river and it flows from deep within. 03:56 There is a fountain and it frees the soul from sin. 04:16 Come to these waters, for there is a vast supply. 04:36 There is a river that never shall run dry. 04:56 There came a thirsty woman, 05:06 and she was drawing from a well. 05:15 You see her life, it was ruined and wasted, 05:25 and her soul was bound for Hell. 05:34 Oh! But then she met the Master, 05:46 and he told her of her sin 05:56 He said if you'll drink from this water, 06:06 you'll never thirst again. 06:16 There is a river and it flows from deep within. 06:36 There is a fountain and it frees the soul from sin. 06:56 Come to these waters, for there 07:06 is a vast supply. 07:16 There is a river that never shall run dry. 07:40 Amen. Amen. She wasn't pretty, 07:57 she wasn't witty, she wasn't charming or famous 08:03 or rich but her story changed the life of the 08:09 Seventh-Day Adventist church and it's changed 08:13 my life too. I want to tell you this morning 08:18 about a remarkable woman who many of you 08:20 may never have heard of, those of us who have 08:24 grown up in this faith will remember some small 08:30 pieces of a story that ended badly, described in 08:34 first and second volume of testimonies. 08:37 We will get to that in a movement but I want to 08:39 show you first a picture of a woman named Hannah 08:43 More. Her story begins in a town called Union 08:49 Connecticut. I happened to know quite a lot about 08:52 Union Connecticut because I was the pastor of the 08:55 district that included Union Connecticut but 08:58 never knew her story when I worked there. 09:02 I drove the back roads of Union all the time. 09:06 Union is one of those towns that got settled 09:09 last and least because it's a very poor farming 09:12 territory. It's a jumble of rocks and ponds and 09:15 twisted pine trees and it's difficult to get any 09:18 flat acreage to grow much on. And the New England 09:22 farmers who tried to make a living there mostly did 09:24 it with dairy and with a few subsistence crops. 09:29 Hannah More's parents were no exception, 09:31 they were trying to raise a family and eke out a 09:35 living on a farm that almost exactly straddled 09:38 the Connecticut Massachusetts border 09:40 in Northeastern Connecticut. 09:42 Hannah was born is 1808, just a few months before 09:46 Abraham Lincoln. So, she is a contemporary of many 09:50 of the figures of early Adventism and of American 09:53 history in the 19th century that you are 09:55 familiar with. She grew up in the 09:59 Congregationalist faith that was the dominant 10:01 religion of New England at the time. In fact I will 10:04 show you a picture here of her home church in 10:07 Union. It's still a functioning 10:10 congressionalist church I know I was just there 10:13 with them last fall. They've invited me to 10:16 come back and tell her story in the church she 10:18 used to worship in, that comes up soon I hope. 10:23 She grew up there as part of the great revivals of 10:26 the 1810's and 20's role through New England. 10:31 The second great awakening was happening 10:33 over almost a 50 years span from about 10:35 1800 to 1850 in America and it rolled through 10:40 New England in successive waves, bringing more 10:42 and more people to revived faith in Jesus 10:45 Christ and ultimately sowing the seeds of the 10:49 Millerite movement and Adventism as we know 10:51 it today. But Hannah More was one to faith as 10:55 young child and took her stand for Jesus publicly 10:59 at the age of 12 in that Union Connecticut church. 11:03 She was from a family of all girls save one 11:06 younger brother and I have a sense that 11:10 there must have been something special going 11:12 on in the More household. There must have been a 11:15 kind of intellectual climate some would call 11:18 it today, a place of learning and activity 11:21 because the More girls particularly became well 11:24 known in the Union Connecticut community 11:27 and in surrounding towns for their amazing 11:29 memories. When Hannah would go to Sunday 11:33 school with her sisters, the other children when 11:37 asked to recite Bible verses for their memory 11:40 verses would all shake their heads and just 11:42 point at the More sisters because they would 11:45 rattle off 200 and more verses at a time. Amen. 11:50 One of her contemporaries tells us from later 11:52 in life that Hannah More had the entire 11:55 New Testament memorized and portions of the Old. 11:59 And you thought J.N. Andrews was the only one 12:02 who had accomplished that. No, in fact God was 12:05 working in lives in many places including this 12:08 humble life in Union Connecticut. 12:12 Hannah with these amazing intellectual gifts 12:15 this memory gift that God had given her, 12:18 longed to do something with her life that 12:20 mattered more, she felt than milking cows and 12:24 working on a dairy farm with her family. 12:28 She knew she said that she had been dedicated 12:30 to the Lord from before her birth and she had 12:34 made her own commitments and by the time she 12:37 was in her late teens she had already begun to 12:40 seek work a public school teacher in the 12:42 many little school houses around that area of 12:45 Connecticut. We have recovered letters and 12:47 fragments of her time there, but she really 12:49 didn't want to be a school teacher in a public 12:51 school system the rest of her career what she 12:54 really wanted to be above all else was a missionary. 12:58 There was just one problem, if a woman 13:05 wanted to be a missionary she better have a husband 13:06 and Hannah as a young adult was not exactly the 13:10 kind of person by her giftedness and her strong 13:13 personality that was going to leave young man 13:16 weeping in the Isles. Hannah was a school 13:19 teacher, she was a clear, thoughtful, articulate 13:22 woman with these amazing skills as I mentioned 13:25 it and it seemed that while her sisters each 13:28 found husbands Hannah did not. She began 13:32 writing the mission boards in her late 20s, 13:37 I want to go as a missionary she said. 13:40 And they wrote back and said just as soon as your 13:42 married and she would continue writing even as 13:45 she continued public school teaching for eight 13:48 years she wrote the mission boards in Boston 13:51 pleading for an opportunity to go and 13:54 serve as a missionary particularly in one region. 13:57 While she would have liked to go to Africa, 14:00 her heart she said was set on going to the area 14:03 then known as Indian Territory, present-day 14:08 Oklahoma. The region in which the five civilized 14:13 tribes of the American southeast to which they 14:16 had been forced to go on the trail of tears 14:19 when they were driven out of Georgia, 14:20 North Carolina and Tennessee by state 14:22 militias and the United States president did 14:26 nothing to stop the injustice. Lawful 14:29 landowners, individuals who had long titles to 14:34 those lands were driven out, whole families and 14:36 clans, thousands of them died on the trail 14:39 of tears. And by the early 1830's as these stories 14:42 were washing through New England Hannah's 14:45 mind burned with a desire to do something to 14:48 help this afflicted people. So she kept 14:51 writing the mission board, let me go to Indian 14:54 Territories she said and they said you must be 14:57 crazy. You're a single woman but you know 15:00 persistence often pays off and eight years of 15:03 writing they either got tired or something and 15:06 soon someone from the mission board came out 15:09 to where Hannah was attending the refresher 15:11 school course in Western Massachusetts. 15:13 They interviewed her and they realized that 15:16 she had the gifts of a teacher and a missionary 15:19 though she wasn't married yet. In fact 15:23 the mission board president, who became 15:25 famous later in the century is one of the 15:26 most prominent mission directors in the country. 15:33 He said in cryptic line about Hannah, I will not 15:34 say that she is ill formed but she is better 15:36 suited to a teacher than a wife. 15:40 So much for male chauvinism. Hannah 15:46 finally got that opportunity in 1840. 15:49 A call to go and work at Dwight mission and what 15:52 is now Eastern Oklahoma in the middle of Cherokee 15:55 Territory where the Cherokee had been 15:57 resettled after being driven out of the southeast. 16:02 But getting there was going to take some doing. 16:05 The mission board wrote and said, by which method 16:09 of water would you prefer to travel canal 16:11 boat, steam boat and she said I frankly don't know, 16:16 I have never been on water longer than to 16:21 cross the Connecticut River. The thought of 16:22 making a 2500 mile journey down rivers and 16:25 across up and up other river branches was 16:28 daunting but Hannah didn't stop it much. 16:32 She traveled down to Pittsburgh with another 16:34 missionary couple then boarded a boat on the 16:37 Ohio, went down to the Mississippi, sailed down 16:40 the Mississippi and eventually up on a 16:42 tributary into eastern Oklahoma. And they 16:45 let her off, they let her off as evening fell at a 16:50 little isolated wharf with a single cabin. 16:55 She by herself, the family that met her 16:58 there said well it's dark, you probably want to 17:01 stay here tonight and she did. Discovering the 17:06 next morning that she had already met the first 17:09 Native Americans, because that was the family 17:11 that hosted her. It was another day and half 17:14 journey by horse pack fording streams riding 17:17 through uncharted areas with an Indian guide that 17:20 got her to Dwight mission and let me tell you 17:22 I have been to Dwight mission several times 17:24 it's still difficult to get there. You have to know 17:27 where to get how to do it and no GPS will get 17:30 you there. She arrived at Dwight mission for 17:34 what would be a seven years stay with no 17:37 furloughs. Seven years away from her family in 17:41 New England. Away from her aging parents, 17:45 seven years devoted to the people she had come 17:48 to serve, whose cause she had taken up in her 17:51 heart. She wanted justice done for them, she wanted 17:53 the gospel in their life and she was determined 17:56 that God was gonna use her to bring it. 17:59 Amen. Amen. At the mission station 18:01 she was the dormitory dean. She taught classes, 18:05 she served as a cook, she thought embroidery 18:08 and needlework. We have recovered a picture of 18:11 that early Dwight mission station, actually we know 18:15 now that this is one of the earliest Prince ever 18:19 made of that place, Dwight mission in the 18:21 1840s is exactly when Hannah was there was 18:25 imaged in what's no called daguerreotype, 18:27 not photography. If we can put that slide up we 18:30 will see the oldest known photo of the place 18:33 where she worked at the time she was working 18:36 there. You can see it was carved out of the 18:38 wilderness. And in fact when you look at the 18:42 next pictures in this sequence as we go now to 18:45 a picture of the old school house that comes 18:47 from a little later than when Hannah taught there. 18:50 You can see this is not exactly a university of 18:53 major renowned. In fact even today as we go to 18:57 the next slide you will see that they have taken 19:00 some of those old timbers and put them 19:01 back together in a house that resembles one of 19:04 the kind that was there when Hannah taught 19:06 there between 1840 and 1847. But Hannah 19:10 discovered something as she worked among these 19:12 people. They were desperately poor, 19:14 they had been dispossessed from their 19:16 land but not all of them were poor and not all 19:19 of them had a keen sense of justice as she had. 19:22 Many of them had brought their slaves with them 19:25 from the American southeast. And Hannah 19:27 was disappointed to discover that the people 19:31 she had come to free were themselves keeping 19:35 others in slavery and what made it worse for 19:39 her was that the mission board for which she 19:41 worked tolerated the holding of slaves by 19:44 people who had joined the same faith that she 19:46 belonged to. She had read the Gospel, she knew 19:49 that Christ came to set us free, Amen. 19:52 And she was determined to see that freedom 19:54 extended to all the people she served. 19:58 She kept writing the mission board back in 19:59 Boston. We have now recovered some 95 20:03 of her letters over her lifetime. She kept 20:06 writing the mission board urging them to take 20:08 action and they kept saying it is a bigger 20:11 issue than you know Sister More. Hannah was 20:15 not always I suspect the easiest person to work 20:18 alongside in a mission station. Particularly 20:22 when other people were in a sort of go along 20:25 and get along mode. Nothing about Hannah 20:27 was ever casual, if she taught you, you learn, 20:31 if she watched you embroider, you did it 20:33 well, or you pull the stitches out, if she 20:36 cooked it was good food and good for you. 20:40 Hannah knew that excellence was what the 20:42 Lord required. And the longer she stayed there 20:45 and the more she released that the mission 20:47 board wasn't going to change anything she began 20:49 appealing for a new assignment and so, 20:51 they said alright you can go Choctaw territory a 20:54 little further south west in Oklahoma. And so, 20:57 she went and spent another year and half 20:59 there in both places, she learned the native 21:02 language, Cherokee and Choctaw, learned it 21:04 fluently, learned to write it and speak it. 21:07 She alone among the missionaries working 21:09 there, among the congressionalist 21:10 missionaries would go and travel among the 21:13 people staying in their homes. Other white 21:16 missionaries would not do that. She insisted that 21:19 was part of her responsibility. While she 21:22 was at Dwight mission, she often spent time 21:28 down by the river that runs behind Dwight. 21:30 You will see a picture of it coming up now 21:32 I have been down there several times standing 21:34 on the reconstructed dock thinking about the 21:37 woman who must have come down here many 21:39 times to pray, to think, to think about home, 21:45 to think about what it was that God wanted 21:48 her to do with the rest of her life. Down here in 21:51 this quite spot by the river she must have often 21:54 had conversations with the Lord. We know a fair 21:56 amount about her time at Dwight mission because 21:59 she wrote home. There was a post office, 22:02 it was literally at Dwight mission a tiny little hut 22:06 on the edge of the campus and Hannah as a 22:10 very prolific word smith, spun words quickly 22:15 and lots of them. If you'll pull up the next 22:17 slide you will see a sample of one of letters 22:20 Hannah wrote home. Now, if anything looks a 22:24 little odd about that image, its when you begin 22:27 noticing that the writing goes both left, right and 22:31 north, south, it's a kind of writing its become 22:35 known in some places as crosshatch because it 22:38 looks very much like a grid or a quilt. 22:42 Paper was precious on the American frontier and 22:45 so many of Hannah's letters that I've 22:47 recovered she begins in a fairly large looping 22:50 script that gets smaller, and smaller, and smaller 22:53 as she works her way toward the end of the 22:55 paper and then she circles around the 22:57 outside and then she writes on the envelope 22:59 and she circles the stamp. She always had 23:03 more to say. Eventually she came on the idea of 23:07 writing and spacing her writing in this 23:09 crosshatch fashion. You read across left, 23:12 right then you turn the page 90 degrees and read 23:16 across left, right again. Trust me it takes a while 23:19 to decipher words on a page when they look like 23:22 that. I have spent as much as three hours on a 23:25 single page trying to tease the words out of 23:29 the old microfilm from which these were 23:31 recovered. Hannah wrote and taught and prayed, 23:37 watched revivals come through and was excited 23:39 in 1843 when a young Millerite preacher 23:43 straight from Boston, from William Millers 23:44 revival came to Dwight mission with the news of 23:47 the soon coming of Jesus. We know that Hannah 23:50 latched on to that message quickly, 23:53 latched on to the belief that Jesus would come, 23:56 physically come some where between 1843 and 23:59 1844. And there was a lot of opposition among 24:02 her peers at the mission station, the local 24:04 preacher in fact preached a series of 24:07 Anti Adventist sermons proving that as he said 24:10 they were all wrong. Hannah may have gone 24:12 quite but she hid that one in her heart and some 24:16 years later it would blossom. By 1847 when she 24:20 had finished her year and half in Choctaw 24:22 Territory, she was again so frustrated with the 24:26 slave holding habits of those whom she served 24:29 that she requested to go home and she went 24:31 back to New England spent a year convalescing 24:34 after episodes of bad health in Oklahoma and 24:38 then went to work in small public schools in 24:42 the area just south of Watertown, New York. 24:46 Up again on a frontier area where logging was 24:50 the major industry, she worked in hardscrabble 24:53 little towns. I have recovered her name from 24:56 census records, I have even been able to figure 24:58 out the families who lived on the streets 25:01 that were served by the schools where she taught. 25:04 I have been visited the cemeteries where various 25:06 people with whom she stayed during that time 25:08 lie today. While there she became more and 25:12 more convinced that God intended no human 25:16 being to be in slavery. The home she stayed is 25:19 now been identified as a very likely spot on the 25:22 underground rail road running through that 25:24 stretch of Northern New York where slaves who 25:27 had escaped from the south were fleeing to 25:29 Canada. Very likely Hannah herself was part 25:33 of some of those escape attempts, but she still 25:36 had them in her mind I don't want to be a public 25:39 school teacher, I wanna be a missionary, 25:42 I wanna be a missionary. During her time in 25:45 Oklahoma she had come to know some famous 25:48 people and her connections perhaps 25:50 helped her make some of those opportunities 25:52 materialize to become a missionary. One of them 25:55 was the great Cherokee Chief John Ross whose 25:58 picture you will see here in a moment. John Ross 26:00 was one of the most celebrated figures of 26:03 that age among Native Americans. The head of a 26:07 warring Cherokee faction, he spent many years 26:11 lobbying in Washington D.C. well known to the 26:13 mission boards. Hannah almost also certainly 26:16 knew the Cherokee Indian Sequoyah. 26:20 You will remember perhaps from your 26:22 American History lessons that Sequoyah invented 26:26 the Cherokee alphabet. His cabin was a mere 15 26:29 miles from Dwight mission, he was frequently at 26:31 Dwight. We don't have a record of their actual 26:33 meeting but it seems almost inevitable that 26:36 they did because she learned Cherokee and she 26:39 learned the alphabet that he had invented. 26:43 When she went back she; looking for connections 26:46 for people who could recommend her to mission 26:49 stations in Africa, she eventually found an 26:52 abolitionist mission board. An Abolitionist 26:55 mission board was one that insisted no one in 26:58 their ranks could hold slaves or tolerate the 27:01 holding of the slaves. And in 1850 she got the 27:05 call she had been waiting for, 27:06 the opportunity to go to Africa, to serve on the 27:10 west coast of Africa. We'll skip through one 27:14 slide that after showing bead work that she did 27:16 with her students at Dwight mission to show 27:18 you an image of the west coast of Africa as it 27:22 looked to cartographers in the 1850s when she 27:26 arrived there. Hannah More had never being 27:29 on an ocean vessel, but she packed things up, 27:34 sailed out of Boston and in fact we can even 27:38 today discover the manifest of the things 27:41 she took with her. Hannah did not have many 27:44 illusions about what mission service in Africa 27:48 was going to cost. On of the things listed on 27:51 the manifest among her own belongings, 27:54 the few belongings there was a shroud and a 27:58 coffin. That's how she expected to returned she 28:03 literally took with her as many did in those 28:05 days who were going to mission service the 28:08 means by which their bodies would be returned 28:10 to their loved ones one day. And in fact when 28:13 Hannah arrived on the West Coast of Africa 28:16 in what is today Sierra Leone, she went to work 28:18 among a group of West Africans, who had been 28:23 enslaved, who had then been mutinied, who had 28:26 then been arrested, who had then been tried and 28:29 who have ultimately were freed by the 28:30 United States Supreme Court. If you've heard 28:32 the name Amistad, then you know the group 28:35 I am talking about. A group of African slaves 28:38 who mutinied against their slave holders on a 28:42 ship off the Cuba coast, sailed their freed vessel 28:45 into New Haven in 1840 and were ultimately 28:49 arrested by people they thought would welcome 28:51 them, only an act of the United States Supreme 28:54 Court ultimately freed them. They went back 28:56 to the coast of Sierra Leone and Hannah went to 29:00 work among them. So, we have her record of 29:03 working among these famous celebrated freed 29:06 slaves, now repatriated to Africa. On the West 29:10 Coast of Africa things were difficult. 29:14 She went a party of a 11 others, five other women, 29:18 six men, within six months the other 29:23 five women were dead. All victims of Malaria, 29:29 at that time it wasn't known that Malaria was 29:31 communicated by mosquitoes. They kept 29:34 thinking it was something that came up in the 29:36 night air, a miasma Hannah called it. 29:40 We now know that she probably survived because 29:43 she herself had already contracted and survived 29:46 malaria in the American Southwest and probably 29:49 had some immunity. The five other women died, 29:53 the six men said we can't stay here, they went 29:56 back down to the coast 30 miles down the river, 29:58 leaving one person at a mission station of 200 30:01 students, one person to be the teacher, the cook, 30:07 the preacher in the middle of tribal warfare. 30:13 Hannah writes about bodies lying in the 30:15 mission yard as tribal warfare racked the area. 30:20 As Muslim tribes fought animist tribes and you 30:23 could hear the pounding of drums outside the 30:25 mission station all the time. Hannah held forth 30:31 for almost two years as the only missionary up 30:37 there at that mission station. Ultimately they 30:41 sent another family to come work the station, 30:44 a family that became a life long friend of hers, 30:48 but Sunday after Sunday in her faith she stood up 30:51 and she preached trying out the skills to which 30:53 she thought God had called her. She writes in 30:56 another place that she had believed ever since 30:59 she was a young woman that God had called her 31:01 to publicly testify about her faith and so, she did, 31:04 she was the only option Sunday after Sunday 31:07 preaching developing skills leading people to 31:09 Christ as revivals began to break out at that 31:12 mission station, Hannah was there in the middle 31:14 of them praying with sinners on the floor 31:16 weeping along side individuals who were 31:18 giving their hearts to Jesus. The family that 31:21 joined her in the mid 1850s stayed there 31:24 through her time and when she finally got so 31:26 ill in the late 1850s that she had to return to 31:30 America after another seven year on furloughed 31:33 stint, they carried on at the mission station, 31:36 stayed on for some more years. She came back 31:39 in about 1858 to Connecticut to 31:42 convalesce, to try to recover her health. 31:45 She again taught school, again stayed with family 31:48 in her hometown of Union. And by the time 1861 31:54 came along, as Hannah was beginning to again 31:57 have a burning heart to go back into mission 32:00 service she came across a very interesting 32:03 individual. His name was Steven Haskell, 32:07 a very young and yet unordained Adventist 32:10 preacher. Steven Haskell must have been a man 32:14 of some ingenuity. You wouldn't usually 32:17 think of a funeral as an evangelistic opportunity, 32:21 but the first union general to die in the 32:23 American Civil war happened to come from 32:26 a town that neighbored Union Connecticut and 32:28 there was a major funeral as thousands of 32:31 people flocked into the area to attend the 32:33 funeral of this first Union General to die in the 32:36 civil war. Steven Haskell thought, big crowd big 32:39 opportunity, he announced an evangelistic 32:43 series at a little school house and guess who 32:46 showed up. It was a school house after all; 32:50 Hannah More sat there and listened to someone 32:53 talk about the scriptures in a way that resonated 32:57 with her own thinking about where God was 32:59 leading in her life. She didn't have to open her 33:02 New Testament to check out and see whether he 33:05 was quoting correctly. In fact when you read her 33:09 letters, you rarely go more than two sentences 33:12 without a quotation or an illusion to scripture. 33:15 Her writing is laced with the thought and the idiom 33:18 of scripture. She sat and listened to Haskell 33:22 through part of that one day and than discovered 33:24 at the end of the day that Haskell and his wife 33:27 were staying at the same boarding house where 33:28 she was staying that night. Haskell tells us 33:31 later they stayed up most of the night opening 33:33 the Bible and talking together, down in the 33:35 parlor. And in fact Haskell says when he 33:38 came down in the morning. Hannah was still 33:40 sitting there going over those Bible texts he had 33:43 been sharing with her. 33:47 Haskell began feeding her Adventist literature, 33:51 sending her books and pamphlets including J.N. 33:54 Andrews' history of the Sabbath. By the time 33:57 Hannah managed to find a way to get back to 34:00 Africa in late 1862 paying her own way this 34:04 time as an independent missionary. Haskell made 34:07 that she would stay supplied with Adventist 34:09 literature when she reached Africa by making 34:12 sure that a subscription to a little magazine 34:14 called the Adventist review got to her. 34:18 Now you know why I love this story, Hannah 34:23 began reading the copies of review in Herald now 34:26 the Adventist review that arrived by packet both 34:29 there on the West Coast of Africa. You're gonna 34:31 see an image now of one of the places she worked, 34:34 the Cape Palmas mission station right on the very 34:37 Western Horn of Africa. She worked as an 34:42 independent at a variety of mission stations up 34:45 and down the West African coast for the 34:47 several years, but only six months into her time 34:51 there. She wrote a letter, a letter that 34:54 got published in that little magazine she had 34:56 been receiving, from Sister More in Africa 35:03 and in May 1863, she wrote words that I don't 35:07 think I will ever forget. She wrote to the editor 35:11 of the magazine saying you may now be assured 35:14 that you have whole hearted Sabbath keepers 35:21 here on the West Coast of Africa. 35:23 Amen. Amen. Hannah had already 35:24 won a convert, that was her nature after all. 35:28 If you believe something you're not quiet about 35:30 it. Amen. If you believe in the truth you share 35:33 it with some one and one of the persons she 35:34 shared with was an Australian Missionary 35:37 surviving at the same station by the name of 35:39 Dickenson. She persuaded Dickenson of the truth 35:42 of the Sabbath, of the truth of the soon coming 35:44 of Jesus, she wrote you may now considered that 35:47 you have whole hearted Sabbath keeping 35:50 Seventh-Day Adventists here on the West Coast 35:52 of Africa. She and Dickenson and we've 35:55 discovered since Haskell tell us that she made 35:59 numerous converts up and down the West Coast 36:02 of Africa. Amen. But Dickenson perhaps didn't 36:07 manage to finance it very well and his belief 36:11 in the Sabbath soon got him fired. He packed 36:15 things up and went back to Australia and became 36:18 the first Sabbath keeping Adventist on the 36:21 continent of Australia. So, Hannah More not only 36:25 is the first Sabbath keeping Adventist on 36:28 the African continent she is directly responsible 36:33 for the first Sabbath keeping Adventist on the 36:35 continent of Australia. A woman who launched 36:38 Adventist missions on two continents and most 36:40 of you never heard of her. 36:43 We know stories about everyone else, 36:46 every Adventist school child can tell you about 36:48 the time Joseph Bates fell off a canal boat on 36:51 the Erie canal, but we don't know about a woman 36:55 who started Adventist presence on two 36:57 continents. Hannah read herself into Adventism 37:03 more and more, waiting for the opportunity when 37:05 she could be baptized by a Seventh-Day Adventist 37:09 pastor. She believed it she considered herself in 37:12 every sense a Seventh-Day Adventist, taught where 37:15 she could, preach when she could, but by 1865 37:19 and '66, her mission hosts were not so 37:22 comfortable with her Sabbath keeping Adventism 37:24 they were after of all Episcopalians or 37:27 Anglicans or Methodists, and they were not all 37:31 together comfortable with this very clear 37:34 forth right articulate Adventist among them. 37:37 And they began saying things like wouldn't you 37:39 feel it be more comfortable for you 37:41 back in the States. And Hannah released that at 37:44 some point that and her declining health she was 37:47 going to need to return home and so she did. 37:50 In the summer of 1866 she sailed back into 37:54 Boston. When she got to Boston, she got on the 37:58 railway and she rode to a town that I know 38:01 real well. A town called South Lancaster, 38:04 where I spend a big part of my life where Atlantic 38:06 Union College stands today. She went to the 38:09 home of surprisingly enough, Steven Haskell. 38:13 He and his wife lived right beside the Church 38:16 that today is known as the village Seventh-Day 38:19 Adventist church, we'll pull that picture up now. 38:21 You'll look at the interior of a Church that 38:24 was organized in 1864, it was only, had only 38:28 been there a couple of years not in that 38:31 building but as a company of Adventist. 38:34 The very first person ever baptized into that 38:37 church was Hannah More. In 1866, she 38:42 finally got a chance three years after living 38:44 the Adventist faith to be baptized down very likely 38:48 in the Nashua River just a mile away. 38:52 She lived with the Haskells for most of the 38:54 next year, wrote letters to her family trying to 38:57 persuade them of the truth she now believed 39:00 and embraced with all of her life, she had more 39:02 than 20 years of mission experience behind her, 39:06 there was no one in the Adventist Church like her, 39:08 no one yet had caught the vision of foreign 39:10 missions to which Hannah had already dedicated 39:12 her life. No one had the experience of crossing 39:16 salt water, this was after all still eight 39:18 years before Andrews would go to Europe. 39:21 Michael Czechowski in late 1863 had gone off 39:24 an independent to Europe and had begun winning 39:28 some converts but himself ran into trouble 39:31 and ultimately left that faith of Adventism. 39:33 Hannah however, the flame burned more brightly. 39:36 I have read letters where she argues with 39:38 a young upstart nephew of his who considered 39:41 himself quite a theologian and Hannah, as my 39:43 sons would say took him off at the knees. 39:48 Hannah could have marshaled Biblical 39:49 arguments like few people and she didn't hesitate 39:52 to say so. Amen. But a bigger goal has begun 39:56 growing in her mind, she wanted to get where 40:00 there was a large community of Adventists 40:02 and the one place that came to her mind was 40:05 Battle Creek. That's where that magazine was 40:08 being printed. That was where James and 40:11 Ellen White lived at various times when they 40:13 weren't traveling or off at a, at a place where 40:16 James is recovering his health in Greenville. 40:19 So, she made up her mind in the summer of 40:21 1867 to travel to Battle Creek. It was about a 40:24 four day journey by rail then. You can 40:28 imagine taking that long by rail, made her way to 40:32 Battle Creek, financed her own way sure that 40:36 by the time she got to Battle Creek people who 40:39 had seen her letters through the years in the 40:42 review and herald, somebody would create an 40:44 opportunity. They would say Sister More, 40:47 we need a school teacher, there was no one like her 40:50 in Adventism with 25 years of teaching 40:52 experience already much of it as a foreign 40:54 missionary. Someone would say we need a 40:57 governess for our children, some Adventist 40:59 would say Sister More you have spent your life 41:01 for the Lord just live here with us but when she 41:03 got to Battle Creek in July 1867 happened to be 41:08 on carriage; a rail carriage with the wife 41:11 of an Adventist preacher when she got off. 41:14 It just didn't work out. We know that she stayed 41:19 at the Western Health Reform institute what 41:22 would ultimately battle be Battle Creek 41:24 Sanitarium, she stayed the maximum three days 41:27 that you could with paying 50 cents a day 41:30 and 50 cents more for food and she began 41:34 knocking on doors and meeting the Adventist 41:36 leaders who were in town at that time. James 41:38 and Ellen White were sixty miles and about 41:42 three days travel through the Woods of Michigan 41:46 up in Greenville where James was convalescing 41:48 after one of his strokes. The Whites weren't in 41:51 town and that was compounding the tragedy 41:53 because as Hannah went from leader to leader, 41:55 as she went to Uriah Smith, as she went to 41:58 J. N. Luffborough and others they all said. 42:00 Oh! It's so wonderful to meet you, we've read 42:02 your letters and we're so sorry there really are 42:05 no opportunities in Battle Creek. Hannah 42:08 could see school children. School aged children 42:11 who needed teaching and there was no 42:14 Adventist teacher, but somehow they didn't 42:17 need her. No one had a place for her to stay. 42:20 Although she managed a night or two, we know 42:22 that in total she may have spent about eight 42:25 days in Battle Creek trying to find a home 42:29 among the people she longed to live and be 42:32 with. And when that didn't happen; the Battle 42:37 Creek of 1867 when that didn't happen she had 42:42 to begin making other plans. You will see an 42:44 old map of Battle Creek as it looked up on the 42:46 screen just now. You will see the image of the 42:50 street plan of what was then a relatively small 42:53 but bustling the mid American city, out in the 42:56 West end where the Adventists all lived, 42:59 there were homes enough, there was space enough 43:01 but there just wasn't compassion enough for an 43:05 aging missionary whose health wasn't so good 43:10 and who wanted to live among God's people. 43:13 You'll see another picture here coming up of 43:15 the reconstructed 1857 meeting house in Battle 43:20 Creek. This is where person, Adventists were 43:23 worshiping when Hannah was there. We don't, 43:26 we know that she was there over at Sabbath 43:29 very likely she attended worship in the building 43:31 that this reconstructed model now has replaced. 43:37 But after eight days and no success in meeting 43:43 or finding a family to live with no 43:45 opportunities for work, she eventually pulled 43:49 out what would be her last resource. 43:52 She had a standing invitation by that family 43:55 she had known in Africa. The Thompson family 43:58 that had stayed on at the mission station they 44:00 had since moved to Michigan themselves. 44:02 They had since moved way up in the little 44:06 finger peninsula of Michigan up in Leelanau 44:10 County, you will see a map on the screen here 44:12 in a movement of Leelanau County. 44:14 It's way up there in that middle land of Michigan 44:17 where you see the red on your screen, 44:19 its not that far as you look on the map from 44:22 Battle Creek in South Central but they were no 44:25 roads running to Leelanau. The nearest rail road 44:29 was still many, many miles from Leelanau, 44:32 in order to get from Battle Creek to Leelanau 44:35 you had to take the train to Chicago; take the 44:38 train from Chicago to Milwaukee. Get on a 44:41 packet boat in Milwaukee and sail across Lake 44:45 Michigan and get off at the little town of 44:48 Leelanau. Disappointed, heart broken, 44:53 to find no home among the people of God, 44:56 Hannah made that trek knowing that the 44:59 Thompsons would take her in, the Thompsons 45:01 of congressionalist missionary family who 45:03 were settled up there in Leelanau, working 45:05 among French Canadian Trappers and Native 45:07 Americans who worked up there and it's the 45:10 logging industry was beginning to boom in 45:12 Northern Michigan. Hannah arrived at the 45:15 little wharf just down the street from the 45:17 humble home where they lived and up there 45:22 in Leelanau she found. She found the family 45:27 she had been looking for, not the Adventist 45:29 family she had been looking for but one that 45:32 loved her. The children thought of her as Aunt 45:34 Hannah. Mrs. Thompson would quietly secretly 45:40 read Hannah's tracks about the Sabbath when 45:42 her preacher husband was out of the house. 45:45 Hannah writes letters saying she is convinced 45:48 that Mrs. Thompson would take her stand for 45:50 the Sabbath were it not for the job her husband 45:52 was doing. And Brother Thompson, he admired 45:56 Hannah's gifts in fact he said you can go preach 45:59 for me on Sundays. I am a circuit riding preacher 46:01 I can't cover all my congregations and she 46:04 did. He said but there is one rule, you can't talk 46:06 about the Sabbath. That must have been hard for 46:09 Hannah, she lived in the attic of the Thompson 46:13 home you will see an image of it coming up 46:15 here in on the screen in just a moment. 46:17 The home has been added to many times since 46:19 the humble dwelling that Hannah lived in. 46:21 Today it looks like a large substantial place, 46:24 I managed to get inside one time, when it was 46:26 up for sale and convinced a real estate agent to 46:29 let me go walk through those rooms and imagine 46:32 the lady who had lived up there in the attic. 46:36 It was fall of 1868, the Whites discovered and 46:40 when they came back to Battle Creek, excuse me 46:43 in 1867, they, the Whites discovered when they 46:46 came back to Battle Creek what had happened to 46:48 Hannah when they came and they were outraged. 46:51 How would Adventist turn away this woman whom 46:53 God had brought to the Church, how could they 46:56 turn away a person with such skills when the 46:59 church was just beginning to thing about foreign 47:01 missions. Amen. Ellen White told off the good 47:05 members in Battle Creek rather strongly in 47:08 in a sermon there in October. Meanwhile she 47:10 and James were writing letters that had to 47:12 to travel that same route by rail and packet boat to 47:16 get up there to Leelanau, writing to Hannah saying 47:18 we would like to have you come and live with us 47:22 here in Greenville. Can you meet us at the Right 47:23 Michigan camp meeting in late September? 47:25 But that appointment couldn't get made, 47:28 Hannah couldn't raise the money to make the 47:30 return trip and the Whites were desperately 47:32 poor, they were all trying to save money. 47:35 So, they waited a little longer still hoping 47:37 that they would be an opportunity before the 47:39 ice set in the harbors of Northern Michigan for 47:42 Hannah to make the trip back and live with the 47:45 Whites who had offered her a place to live when 47:47 people of Battle Creek had turned her away. 47:51 But you know Northern Michigan is not the 47:55 warmest climate I can testify, the ice comes 48:01 early in the harbors and the winter set in. 48:06 And soon Hannah was writing to say it doesn't 48:08 look like I will be able to come before winter. 48:11 It looks like I will need to spend the winter here. 48:14 The Thompsons were warm and hospitable, 48:16 she was doing things she loved, sharing the 48:19 message of Jesus Christ wherever she had the 48:21 opportunity and still working on Mrs. Thompson 48:24 about the Sabbath. But over that winter 48:28 her health began to decline. It's likely that 48:33 she was suffering from what we would today 48:34 call congestive heart failure. Her condition had 48:38 been weakened by the years of work in Malarial 48:41 Africa. The many bouts of epidemic diseases she 48:46 had endured and as the winter went on; 48:49 she began to develop a racking cough. 48:52 She wrote to the Whites mentioning that she 48:54 didn't really want to complaint to the 48:56 Thompsons but living up there in that little 48:58 attic room where the stove pipe ran through, 49:01 the smoke but occasionally seep out of 49:04 the stove pipe and fill that litte attic chamber 49:08 and made it difficult to breath. She said some 49:10 nights she had to sit up in order to able to 49:12 breathe and try to sleep sitting up. 49:16 By late winter, she was beginning to wonder if 49:19 she would survive this and on the 20th of 49:22 February she wrote what ended up being a last 49:24 letter to James and Ellen White. In it she expressed 49:29 her desire to see them but also her, 49:32 the likelihood that she never would. That in fact 49:35 while she waited for the 49:44 coming of Jesus. That's what happened. March 3, 49:46 1868, George Thompson sent a message down 49:51 to the Review and Herald, indicating a short 49:54 obituary and mentioned that the Adventists would 49:58 certainly want to come and claim Hannah's 50:01 remains because of course they would her 50:03 buried in Battle Creek. It made sense by then 50:07 Ellen White had already told them how much 50:09 they had missed that opportunity and George 50:12 Thompson was quite sure in this notice on 50:14 back page of the review that Adventists would 50:16 finally do their duty. The next Seventh-Day 50:21 Adventists to see her grave were a 120 years 50:27 later my and wife and I. We found our way, 50:33 piecing together old maps and documents, 50:35 getting some help from a Sheriff's office and on 50:37 a cold, cold winter day that started at 27 below 50:41 in Northern Michigan, my wife suddenly sang 50:44 out as we walked out across the cemetery; 50:46 Bill here it is and sure enough there was 50:49 headstone. You will see an image of the 50:51 headstone coming up here now, where they put 50:54 Hannah More they thought temporarily until 50:57 Adventists would come to reenter her in Battle 51:00 Creek, but none ever came. You'll see another 51:07 close up, now the image of her headstone; 51:10 it simply says Hannah More, missionary to 51:13 Africa. It includes a favorite text from 51:16 Galatians at the bottom. The stone today is 51:20 propped up against a family headstone, 51:22 she was buried in the middle of a family plot 51:25 they didn't think she would be there very long, 51:27 today Hannah More the women who never 51:30 married lies between a husband and a wife. 51:41 When Ellen White learned what had happened, 51:44 she wrote some of the strongest words I have 51:46 ever read from her pen. Let me read you a few 51:51 lines. Those who attempted to think that 51:54 Ellen White was simply a mild mannered 51:57 devotional author. Have not read in the case of 52:03 Hannah More in first testimonies or in second 52:06 testimonies where she revisits the story. 52:10 She writes of Hannah More, she being dead yet 52:15 speaketh. Her letters, which I have given will 52:17 be read with deep interest by those who 52:18 have read her obituary in a recent number of the 52:21 Review. She might have been a blessing to any 52:23 Sabbath-keeping family, who could appreciate 52:25 her worth; but she sleeps. Our brethren at Battle 52:28 Creek and in this vicinity could have made more 52:30 than a welcome home for Jesus, in the person of 52:33 this Godly woman. But that opportunity is past. 52:37 It was not convenient. They were not acquainted 52:39 with her. She was advanced in years, 52:41 and might be a burden. Feelings of this kind 52:43 barred her from the homes of the professed friends 52:45 of Jesus, who are looking for his near advent, 52:48 and drove her away from those she loved, 52:50 to those who opposed her faith, to Northern 52:52 Michigan, in the cold of winter, to be chilled to 52:55 death. She died a martyr to the selfishness and 52:58 covetousness of professed commandment-keepers. 53:01 Amen. Providence has administered, 53:03 in this case, a terrible rebuke for the conduct of 53:06 those who did not take this stranger in. 53:09 She was not really a stranger. By reputation, 53:11 she was known, and yet she was not taken in. 53:15 She writes again, this thing was not done in 53:16 a corner. And yet, notwithstanding the 53:19 matter was made public, followed by the great 53:21 and good work in the church at Battle Creek, 53:23 no effort was made by that church to redeem the 53:25 past by bringing Sister More back. And one, 53:28 a wife of one of our ministers, stated 53:30 afterwards, "I do not see the need of Brother and 53:33 Sister Whites making such a fuss about Sister More. 53:35 I think they do not understand the case." 53:38 True, we did not understand the case. 53:40 It is much worse than we supposed. Amen. 53:46 Ellen White continues, poor Sister More! 53:48 When we heard that she was dead my husband 53:50 felt terrible. We both felt as though a dear 53:53 mother for whose society our very hearts yearned 53:56 was no more. She goes on to write, the remark 54:01 was made as an excuse for this neglect. 54:04 We have been bitten so many times that we are 54:07 afraid of strangers. Did our Lord and his 54:10 disciples instruct us to be very cautious, 54:13 and not entertain strangers, lest we should 54:15 possibly make some mistake and get bitten by 54:18 having the trouble of caring for an unworthy 54:20 person? Paul exhorts the Hebrews, "Let brotherly 54:23 love continue," do not flatter yourselves that 54:25 there is a time when this exhortation will not 54:28 be needed; when brotherly love may cease. 54:30 He continues, "Be not forgetful to entertain 54:32 strangers, for thereby some of entertained 54:35 angels unawares. Read it, brethren, the next time 54:38 you take the Bible. Read it, brethren, 54:40 at your family evening devotions. 54:42 The good works performed by those 54:44 who are to be welcomed to the kingdom were done 54:46 to Christ in the persons of his suffering people. 54:51 In second testimony she concludes in the case of 54:53 Sister Hannah More, I was shown that the 54:56 neglect of her was the neglect of Jesus in her 55:00 person. Ellen White was righteously angry that 55:08 this enormous asset that God had brought the 55:10 early church. A woman with more then 20 years 55:13 of foreign mission experience had been 55:15 turned away, that a woman with her gifts 55:18 and her skills had not been welcomed. 55:20 All because some said, Oh! She dresses a little 55:23 out fashion and she is a little elderly and maybe 55:26 her health isn't so good. Ellen White administered 55:31 one of the greatest rebukes that of her career 55:35 in the case of Sister Hannah More. 55:38 And when Adventists gathered in the spring of 55:40 1868 for the first time in May of that year to work 55:45 of how they were going to plan for the coming 55:48 year, their first action, the very first action was 55:51 to form the Seventh-Day Adventist Benevolent 55:53 Association to take care of widows, orphans and 55:56 transients. You know what you call that 55:58 organization today? ADRA. The birth organization 56:04 of today's Adventist Development And Relief 56:06 Agency was founded as a direct consequence 56:09 of the tragic story of Hannah More. Amen. 56:12 You see God can bring some good, good for 56:15 millions around the world out of a case where 56:17 we didn't get it right. I have in my pocket just 56:21 now; your cameras may want a close in on it. 56:24 A little seed, a rose hip in fact, picked from the 56:30 rose bush you saw there beside Hannah More's 56:33 grave. I've been carrying it around for most of the 56:35 last year and I don't really know enough 56:37 about rose hips. To know if the dried seeds in 56:40 there will ever grow. But, will compassion grow? 56:44 Amen. Will that seed ever take root among us? 56:48 I don't know the answer of that one. But, I think 56:51 you do. Will compassion take root among us? 56:55 God willed that it be so. Let's pray together. 56:58 Lord Jesus, this story is known to you, now that 57:02 it is known to us, work on our hearts, change us, 57:05 into men and women with hearts of compassion 57:08 especially for those who share this wonderful hope 57:11 in the soon coming of Jesus, make us ready to 57:14 beside Hannah on that day coming soon and to 57:17 say lo, this is our Lord, we have looked for him 57:21 and he will save us. In Jesus name, Amen. |
Revised 2014-12-17