Talk:William Miller (preacher)

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Opinion of Jews[edit]

What did he think about Jews?

Psychological profile?[edit]

Joseph Smith, Jr (the Mormon prophet) seems to be treated in the psychological litterature, but what about this person? ... said: Rursus (bork²) 16:50, 20 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Smith called himself a prophet. Miller was just a bible student whose interpretation of Biblical prophecies became popular, but not because of his personality or force of character. Johnjonesjr (talk) 03:43, 2 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Influence on Jehova's Wittnesses[edit]

Just seen the influence mentioned on a segment of the show QI (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QI), which lead me to read the article, but it is not mentioned here. So I did a small Google and Wikipedia search on it - I didn't go too deeply into Google since the first few sites shown already mentioned it and it is also mentioned on a few other Wikipedia articles:

On Millerism it is at least indirectly mentioned here via Charles Taze Russell - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millerism#Influences - and the Jehova's Wittnesses article (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jehovah%27s_Witnesses) has him mentioned under "Formative influences". I am not versed enough to even know if adding this would be appropriate, yet alone how exactly regarding sources and such, but I think it could be useful to have it mentioned on this article as well, so maybe someone who is more experienced could look into this.

Also, since I am already on it, this sentence here:

"Miller commenced with Genesis 1:1, studying each verse and not moving on until he felt the meaning was clear."

English is only my second language, but this reads a bit weird for me. From context I would say that he went through the whole bible and stayed on every verse until he felt the meaning was clear for him, but it still feels oddly phrased. Maybe this is just me (as I even had to look up the word "commenced"), but I feel like, if going with that sentence, adding the part that he went through the whole bible would help, something like "Miller went through the whole bible, commencing with Genesis 1:1, studying each verse and not moving on until he felt the meaning was clear." or "...studying each verse of the bible without moving on...". But again, just the feeling and feedback of someone who isn't a native speaker :) .

Sephtan (talk) 21:37, 24 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Much of Jehovah's Witnesses' doctrine is indeed derived from the Adventist teachings of William Miller, and as you say, this is already given attention at various articles. However, it does not seem essential to make the point at this article, otherwise, equal attention would have to be given to Miller's influence on every individual Adventist group (at least, all of appreciable size). It would be technically accurate to add Jehovah's Witnesses to the list of denominations in the {{Adventism}} template, but this would immediately be met with disagreement, as JWs do not self-identify as Adventists despite their Adventist origins and eschatology.

Regarding your second point, the sentence in its current form seems okay to me (although specifically stating that he started at Genesis 1:1 is somewhat redundant because it is the default starting point). The fact that he went through the whole Bible is implied by the rest of the statement, and the paragraph already provides the context of "examining the Bible closely" in the previous sentence.--Jeffro77 (talk) 03:39, 25 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]