A Boy Named Uriah

Twelve-year-old Uriah had been looking at the calendar carefully for the past few months. Finally, at long last the special day had arrived. Soon his family and all the other people who believed in the Lord's return would be safe with Jesus and would not be teased and ridiculed like they had been over the past year.

As Uriah waited for the Lord to come that fateful day of October 22nd, 1844, he remembered back to an incident that happened to his mother, his sister, and himself a few months before that. The three traveled by buggy from their home in West Wilton, New Hampshire twenty-five miles south to some meetings being held just outside Fitchburg, Massachusetts.

Tent Trouble

While Uriah and his sister Annie quietly listened to the preacher's message with their mother inside the evangelistic tent, evil men ran through the huge cloth tabernacle and smashed all the lanterns so the people were in the dark. If that wasn't enough the men then shoved a pig inside.

After that the ruffians cut the rope attached to the poles, which caused the tent to collapse on the congregation. Then the possessed men lobbed apples from a nearby orchard at the forms of the people groping around within the confines of the tent. Inside, the two Smith children could hear the squealing of the spooked pig as it bumped into people and chairs trying to find its way out of the collapsed canvas.

When Jesus didn't Come

Several months had passed since then. And now the day had come. Just any minute now, Jesus would come for his faithful and they would all go to a place where there was no hate, no crying, no dying, a place where Jesus and the angels would be their companions forever. How Uriah had longed for this day. But neither Uriah, nor the Adventist preachers of his time truly understood the prophecy.

The prophecy concerning Jesus took place in Heaven, not on the earth. So Jesus didn't come to earth as many had expected he would. Young Uriah searched the skies until the stars came out and a new day dawned. But the long anticipated event he had waited for never happened in the manner which he and thousands of others believed it would.

Like many other Adventists of the time, he was quite disappointed and began straying away from the Lord somewhat. Then about a year later, at the age of thirteen, Uriah became even more disappointed.

Lost Leg

For quite some time he had complained of a sore on his left leg. Eventually the sore seemed to get worse. None of the

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