1832–1924

Summary

John Norton Loughborough preached the third angel’s message for seventy-two years — from his first sermon at sixteen years old in a New York schoolhouse on January 2, 1849, to his last public addresses in his ninety-third year. He was a pioneering tent evangelist with M. E. Cornell, the church’s first organized missionary to California (with D. T. Bourdeau in 1868), the first Adventist evangelist to England (1878), the first historian of the Seventh-day Adventist Church (The Great Second Advent Movement, 1905), and an eyewitness to dozens of Ellen White’s visions. He died at the St. Helena Sanitarium in California on April 7, 1924, at the age of ninety-two.

Boyhood, Conversion, and the First Sermon (1832–1849)

Loughborough was born January 26, 1832, in Victor, New York, the second son of a Methodist exhorter. His father died of typhoid fever when John was seven, and the boy was sent to live with his grandparents on a farm in East Bloomfield. Steinweg’s Lest We Forget preserves the impression his grandfather’s prayer life left on him: the boy “often heard his grandfather praying for him by name.” (Lest We Forget, ch. 143, p. 281, ¶ 5).

The Loughborough family responded to the Millerite advent message during the winter of 1843–1844. John was twelve at the time of the great disappointment. In May 1848 he heard a stirring sermon and was converted, and within months he had decided that his hands belonged at preaching, not at the bellows of a blacksmith’s shop where he had been apprenticed. With “a dollar in his pocket, donated clothing that did not fit, and a prayer in his heart” (Lest We Forget, ch. 143, p. 281, ¶ 8), he set off for a community eighteen miles away. There he secured a Baptist church for a series of lectures and on the evening of January 2, 1849, gave his first discourse — not quite seventeen years old. As Steinweg records, in the same paragraph: “This is how he began a preaching career that lasted seventy years” (Lest We Forget, ch. 143, p. 281, ¶ 8).

The Dream and the Third Angel’s Message (1852)

In the summer of 1852 Loughborough was a First-day Adventist preacher in Rochester, New York. After working all day painting houses he could not sleep one night; he dreamed that “the face of an earnest preacher was indelibly impressed upon his mind” (Lest We Forget, ch. 143, p. 281, ¶ 4). In the dream he was at an Advent meeting in a dingy, ill-ventilated room when a door opened into a larger room — well-ventilated, light, clean, and inviting — where a chart hung on the wall and a tall man stood by it explaining the sanctuary. In the dream Loughborough rose: “I am going to get out of this. I am going into that other room.” (Lest We Forget, ch. 143, p. 282, ¶ 11).

When the Sabbath-keeping Adventists held a conference in Rochester on September 25 and 26, 1852, Loughborough went — armed with texts to refute Sabbath observance. As Steinweg records: “Looking around the room, he saw the same chart that he had seen in his dream. Standing next to the chart was J. N. Andrews, the man in his dream” (Lest We Forget, ch. 143, p. 283, ¶ 13). Andrews’s exposition that day overturned Loughborough’s prepared arguments, and three weeks later — in October 1852 — Loughborough publicly took his stand for the seventh-day Sabbath. The first Sabbath he kept, he was introduced to James and Ellen White. Steinweg records the moment: “Mrs. White had a vision that Sabbath which lasted one hour and 20 minutes. At the close of the vision, she told Loughborough some things about himself that he had never told anyone. This no doubt had an influence on him. All of the rest of his life Loughborough was a firm believer in the Spirit of Prophecy” (Lest We Forget, ch. 143, p. 283, ¶ 16).

Tent Evangelist with M. E. Cornell (1853–1860s)

In January 1853 Cornell joined James White at Grand Rapids in ordaining the young Loughborough — and sent him on a three-month preaching tour of Illinois, Wisconsin, and northern Indiana with M. E. Cornell. In his own Great Second Advent Movement Loughborough preserves a first-person record of that tour: “As an illustration of eastern prejudice against the Seventh-day Adventists in those early times, I will refer to some experience of Elder Cornell and myself in the year 1853. At the meeting held by Brother and Sister White in Jackson, it was decided that Brother Cornell and myself should travel for three months with horse and carriage in Illinois, Wisconsin, and northern Indiana, visiting Seventh-day Adventists.” (The Great Second Advent Movement, p. 549, par. 2; refcode GSAM 549.2).

In May 1854, after a large interest opened up at Locke, Michigan, the Whites, Cornell, and Loughborough planned the first Sabbatarian Adventist tent meetings — pitched at Battle Creek that July. Loughborough’s Great Second Advent Movement preserves the planning entry: “1854 May: large interest in Locke, MI, leads the Whites, M. E. Cornell, and JNL to plan tent meetings” (The Great Second Advent Movement, p. 568, par. 3; refcode GSAM 568.3).

California, England, and the Field Around the World (1868–1908)

In 1868, before the General Conference session at Battle Creek, Loughborough had had twenty separate dreams about working in California. When James White asked at the session if any minister felt impressed to take the field for the West Coast, Loughborough volunteered. He worked in California for ten years (1868–1878), then crossed the Atlantic in 1878 as the first Adventist evangelist to England, where he labored for several years.

Steinweg records the closing journey: “At the age of 76, in 1908, he travelled around the world, 30,000 miles by water and 60,000 miles on land, visiting the principal centers of work of the Seventh-day Adventist church. This was his last missionary journey in the cause of the Lord he loved so well” (Lest We Forget, ch. 143, p. 284, ¶ 22).

The First Historian and the Eyewitness (1892–1908)

In 1892 Loughborough produced Rise and Progress of the Seventh-day Adventists — the first full-length history of the Seventh-day Adventist Church — and revised and expanded it in 1905 and 1906 as The Great Second Advent Movement. As an eyewitness to the early Sabbatarian Adventist movement from 1852 onward, his testimony to Ellen White’s visions and to the early growth of the cause is referenced throughout these biographies; the reader will encounter his words on dozens of subjects in this collection.

Death (1924)

Steinweg records Loughborough’s last years: “His last years were spent first, at the home of his daughter in Lodi, California until she and her husband were called to Washington, D.C. Because of failing health Elder Loughborough spent his last years in the St. Helena Sanitarium, where he peacefully passed away April 7, 1924 at the age of 92.” (Lest We Forget, ch. 143, p. 284, ¶ 23). She closes with the verse Loughborough had asked be inscribed on his tombstone: “The memory of the just [is] blessed” (Lest We Forget, ch. 143, p. 284, ¶ 23).