Summary

Charles Fitch was a prominent New England clergyman who became a leading figure in the Millerite movement and thereby linked the Second Great Awakening’s currents of revival and social reform with Adventism. He is best known for two landmark contributions: creating, with Apollos Hale, the famous “1843 Chart” illustrating the fulfillment of Bible prophecy, and preaching the fiery “Come Out of Her, My People” sermon that called believers to separate from churches that rejected the Second Advent message. A passionate advocate for holiness, abolitionism, and the imminent return of Christ, Fitch gave everything — his reputation, his fortune, and ultimately his life — to the cause he loved.

Education, Marriage, and Early Ministry (1804–1836)

Charles Fitch was born in Hampton, Connecticut, on December 27, 1804, to Daniel and Zipporah Allen Fitch (1762–1855; 1762–1846). He was their fifth child. Daniel Fitch served in the Continental army in the American War of Independence from England from 1777–1783.

When about 20 years old, Charles enrolled at Brown University where he studied from 1825–1826 but left before earning a degree. Alongside his education, Fitch began pastoring the Congregational church in Holliston, Massachusetts, on January 4, 1825.

Charles Fitch left Holliston for Abington, Connecticut where he began his ministry on April 30, 1828. With him as pastor a “very powerful revival was experienced in 1831,” and in January 1832, 33 people joined his church, making for a total of 59 members added during his entire ministry there. Shortly after beginning his pastorate at Abington, Charles Fitch married Zerviah Roath on May 19, 1828. They had seven children who can be identified by name from various sources: Charles, William, Mary Elizabeth, Robert, Ellen, Libby, and Jennie.

Fitch then continued his ministry at the Congregational church in Warren, Massachusetts, from 1832 to 1834. From there he went to the Fourth Congregational church in Hartford, Connecticut, before pastoring the Marlboro Chapel, First Free Congregational Church, in Boston, Massachusetts, beginning May 24, 1836.

Revivalist and Radical Reformer (1836–1841)

In the mid-1830s, Fitch became closely associated with the leading revivalist of the Second Great Awakening, Charles Finney. In 1836 Fitch was called upon to deliver the dedicatory sermon for the opening of Finney’s Broadway Tabernacle in New York City. Completion of the structure had been delayed when a mob, stirred up by reports to the effect that white people would be compelled to sit “promiscuously” with colored in the church, set it on fire.

Fitch developed strong convictions about the abolition of slavery, and when he became convinced about an idea or cause, he was not one to rest satisfied with tentative, moderate or gradual steps. In his pamphlet Slaveholding Weighed in the Balance of Truth, published in 1837, Fitch attacked the institution and those who remained silent about it in language so severe that some said he was “out-Garrisoning Garrison.” This was a reference to the renowned abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison who, as editor of the Liberator, launched in January 1831, stirred outrage both in the South and the North with unsparing denunciations of the slave system as a sin against God that must be immediately abolished.

Fitch first encountered William Miller’s Second Advent teachings in 1838 when he obtained a copy of Miller’s public lectures. The book so enamored him that he read it six times, completely convinced of its truth. Filled with excitement, he immediately began preaching Miller’s message and presented it to colleagues at a ministerial association meeting. To his chagrin, Fitch’s brother ministers laughed him to scorn, calling the teaching “moonshine.” As quickly as he had taken up the message, the embarrassed preacher dropped it.

After pastoring in Boston for over three years, Fitch’s ministry led him to the Newark, New Jersey Presbyterian church on September 1, 1839. That same year he charged into another theological war zone. In a book entitled Views of Sanctification, he came out fully for Charles Finney’s controversial doctrine of holiness. Called “Oberlin perfection” for the Ohio college where Finney had become president, it defined holiness as “perfection of the will” and held that perfection in this sense was possible for all Christians after their initial conversion. The Newark, New Jersey Presbytery of the Presbyterian Church placed him on trial for heresy. This time, he did not back down from conviction. He resigned from the Presbyterian ministry in April 1841, declaring himself a full-time evangelist “for the promotion of holiness.”

During his time in Newark, Fitch’s conscience had begun troubling him about his vehement attack on Garrison in 1837. He became convicted that he had been motivated by selfish desire for status and reputation in the ministerial profession. On January 9, 1840, he sent an apology to the Liberator editor, stating that he had been moved to do so by the thought of “Jesus Christ in the clouds of heaven, coming to judge the world, and to establish His reign of holiness and righteousness and blessedness over the pure of heart.”

He was none too happy with a visit from Josiah Litch, a leading Millerite preacher, that took place not long after Fitch’s resignation from the Presbyterian ministry in 1841. But, as he read the literature Litch left, Charles Fitch once again came under the conviction of inconvenient truth. That Fall he made public his renewed faith in the near Second Advent and returned to proclaiming it, now with unstinting zeal.

Second Advent Revivalist (1841–1843)

Among the Millerites, Fitch became a very sought-after speaker. From December 1841 to July 1842 he could not keep up with half of the requests sent to him. He preached once a day, plus sixty times beyond that during this time period. He went to all of the New England states, his usual practice being to preach on holiness in the afternoon, followed by a lecture on the second advent in the evening. In August, Fitch spoke along with Millerite leader Joshua Himes at Albany, New York, with “from four to six thousand” people in attendance. The Millerite “Great Tent” — its vast size in itself an attraction to the curious — was used for the meetings.

In late 1842, Fitch moved to Cleveland, Ohio, and launched a periodical entitled The Second Advent of Christ, the first issue coming out on January 18, 1843. He also held nightly meetings in Cleveland. One night, as he was making an appeal at the end of a lecture, a certain man named Tom Cotterell descended the gallery and stumbled when almost at the bottom. As everyone began to laugh, Fitch said, “Never mind, brother, it is better to stumble into heaven than to walk straight into hell.”

As a Second Advent revivalist, Fitch developed useful aids to spreading the message. He used a carved wooden image of the statue in Nebuchadnezzar’s dream in Daniel 2. As he was speaking of the prophecies on the rise and fall of kingdoms, each part of the statue that corresponded to that respective kingdom was removed, until only the feet of iron and clay were left. He and a fellow minister, Apollos Hale, created the “1843 Chart,” which illustrated the main arguments for the coming of Christ in the year 1843. This chart was soon the main visual that the Millerites used. It depicted the statue of Daniel 2, the beasts from Daniel 7 and 8, and several other illustrations from the books of Daniel and Revelation.

Fitch and Hale unveiled the chart at the May 1842 General Conference of Adventists in Boston. The assembly decided to produce 300 of them. Joseph Bates, chair of the meeting, wrote that “these brethren had been doing what the Lord had shown Habbakuk [sic] in his vision 2468 years before, saying, ‘Write the vision and make it plain upon tables, that he may run that readeth it. For the vision is yet for an appointed time.'”

In February 1843, William Lloyd Garrison published an assessment of William Miller and his leading associates in the Liberator that was both appreciative and critical. About Fitch, Garrison wrote: “Mr. Fitch (another whole-hearted supporter of Mr. Miller) is well known to the abolitionists of the United States. No one who knows him can doubt his honesty or ability; but his mind appears to be impulsive, and it is, perhaps, fortunate for his consistency, that with the expiration of the present year, will cease all necessity for him to tax his concentrativeness on the subject of ‘the Second Advent near.'”

Ellen White later wrote: “I have seen that the 1843 chart was directed by the hand of the Lord, and that it should not be altered; that the figures were as He wanted them.” (Early Writings, p. 74)

“Come Out of Her, My People” (1843–1844)

Since 1831 Miller had been preaching, based on his exposition of the biblical prophecies, that he expected Christ would return “about the year 1843.” When pressed to be more specific, further study led him to conclude that the crucial 2,300 day-year prophecy of Daniel 8:14 would end on March 21, 1844. As the anticipated time neared, the Millerites became more controversial than ever in the Protestant churches with which they had been affiliated. Congregations began to ban Millerite services from their houses of worship. Some churches expelled Millerites who refused to keep quiet about their views. Some denominational authorities de-frocked ministers who preached the Second Advent, or exerted financial pressure against them.

As conflict intensified, Charles Fitch preached a fiery sermon on July 26, 1843 entitled “Come Out of Her, My People,” based on Revelation 14:8 and 18:1–5, passages containing the call to come out of the corrupt and oppressive system represented by “Babylon.” Widely circulated in pamphlet form, this sermon, more than anything else, would fix Fitch’s place in Adventist history. Using his talent for hard-hitting polemics to the fullest, he identified all church’s rejecting the message of Christ’s soon second advent as “Babylon,” and warned all who wished to be found in Christ to come out of them. Anyone opposed to the teaching of the premillennial, imminent return of Christ, and the establishment of his literal reign on earth he declared to be “Antichrist.”

Fitch also broke new ground in applying the apocalyptic symbol of “Babylon” not just to the papacy, as Protestants had done for three hundred years, but to the Protestant denominations that had “fallen” because of their obstinate opposition to the Second Advent message sent from God. In sum, Fitch declared: “If you are a Christian, come out of Babylon. If you intend to be found a Christian when Christ appears, come out of Babylon, and come out Now!”

William Miller and other leaders who were more on the cautious side never fully accepted Fitch’s message, but it struck a chord throughout the ranks of the movement. Thus, “coming out of Babylon” became a central feature of the Second Advent movement in its final stages. According to an estimate generally regarded as conservative, some 50,000 Millerites left or were expelled from their churches.

Personal Trials and Loss

Fitch bore great personal sorrow. On December 5, 1843, William — Charles Fitch’s seven-year-old son — died. Twenty-two days later, on December 27, Robert, not yet two years old, also passed away. “Two dear boys are thus taken in a single month,” wrote Fitch. Robert was now the fourth child that the Fitch family laid in the grave, two having previously died in the east.

Following the deaths of his two sons, Fitch wrote to George Storrs, a fellow Second Advent preacher, on January 25, 1844:

“As you have been fighting the Lords [sic] battles alone, on the subject of the state of the dead, and of the final doom of the wicked, I write this to say that I am at last[,] after much thought and prayer, and a full conviction of duty to God, prepared to take my stand by your side. I am thoroughly converted to the Bible truth, that ‘the dead know not anything.'”

Fitch thus “was the only top leader in the 1843 movement to accept conditionalism and annihilationism in the 1840s.”

Fitch also adopted another departure from his Congregationalist background — baptism by immersion. On January 23, 1844, Charles and Zerviah Fitch were baptized by immersion, along with 19 other people, in Youngstown, Ohio.

Final Days and Death

Fitch remained strong in his convictions on the Second Advent of Christ after the “first disappointment” when Christ did not return by March 21, 1844. In May he preached in Cincinnati, with close to 5,000 people coming to hear him each evening, and he continued to travel and preach extensively throughout the summer of 1844. In September, at a camp meeting in St. Georges, Delaware, Fitch baptized Josiah Litch, the one who had first led him into the Second Advent message.

As he was speaking in Rochester, New York, Fitch stated that “he had a presentiment that he must sleep a little while before the coming of the Lord.” After this impression, he baptized “three successive parties in Lake Erie on a cold, windy day.” His daughter Mary Elizabeth Fitch recounted that he started for home twice, but turned back to baptize new candidates.

After this, Fitch went to Buffalo where a severe fever attacked him. He died on October 14, eight days before the date to which he with other believers now looked with joyful anticipation for Christ’s return, October 22, 1844. His dying words were, “I believe in the promises of God.” A correspondent wrote the Midnight Cry! editors on October 17 that “Sister Fitch” remained in Buffalo, “without a tear, expecting to meet her husband very soon.”

Legacy

Fitch was in the top tier of Millerite movement leadership. His uncompromising call in 1843 for all those who claim allegiance to Christ to separate from the established denominations comprising Protestant Christendom in America is an historical landmark in the process by which a separate denomination called Seventh-day Adventist eventually came into existence. Seventh-day Adventists would come to regard the declaration “Babylon is fallen” that Fitch sounded in 1843 as a fulfillment of apocalyptic prophecy — the second of the “three angels’ messages” in Revelation 14:6–12, the passage that more clearly than any other revealed the identity and purpose of their movement preparatory to the second advent of Christ.

Conditional immortality and baptism by immersion — two other convictions that Fitch broke with the past to embrace — would also be accepted by the Seventh-day Adventists and would be key points distinguishing them from other Adventist groups that formed in the years following 1844 and from other Christian denominations more broadly.

Ellen White wrote regarding Brother Fitch’s early death that God had laid him in the grave to save him and that while in vision she had met him at the tree of life in heaven (see Early Writings, p. 17).

Key Quotes

“Never mind, brother, it is better to stumble into heaven than to walk straight into hell.” — Charles Fitch, to a man who stumbled while answering an altar call in Cleveland

“If you are a Christian, come out of Babylon. If you intend to be found a Christian when Christ appears, come out of Babylon, and come out Now!” — Charles Fitch, “Come Out of Her, My People,” July 26, 1843

“As you have been fighting the Lords battles alone, on the subject of the state of the dead, and of the final doom of the wicked, I write this to say that I am at last, after much thought and prayer, and a full conviction of duty to God, prepared to take my stand by your side.” — Charles Fitch, letter to George Storrs, January 25, 1844

“I believe in the promises of God.” — Charles Fitch, dying words, October 14, 1844