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Show Page 39 New York, passing Christmas on Lake George with Orson's Dickinson grandparents. Millennium fever was rampant in this district; a Baptist licensee named William Miller was already spreading the message throughout upstate New York that the world would definitely end in 1843. Miller,like Orson a native of Washington County, started his crusade at Hampton, just a few miles from Benson, Vermont, in 1831, and it was drawing widespread 24 attention. Mormonism, with all its millennial emphasis, nevertheless refused to name a date for the winding up of things. Taking a less antic approach to the coming apocalypse, Orson Pratt made fewer converts than the Adventists in this region, but they were a more stable lot, less inclined to burn out with disappointment when the predictions failed of realization. At the end of winter, Orson returned with David W. Patten and Reynolds Cahoon to Kirtland, having "traveled on foot near 4,000 miles, attended 207 meetings...baptized 104 persons and organized several new branches 25 of the church." In Kirtland Orson found that the brethren were now being called upon to purify and educate themselves in preparation for the coming apocalyptic events. A revelation to Joseph Smith had commanded the priesthood to tarry here, to form a solemn assembly of"the first laborers in this last kingdom" in order to"teach one another the doctrine." Apparently, the kingdom was coming on the heels of the crumbling republic, for Joseph Smith had announced on Christmas Day that South Carolina's threatened secession would precipitate the wars to be "poured out upon all nations." The key to survival and salvation was to "stand...in holy places," and a "new school of the prophets" had been organized to serve just such 26 a purpose. Orson boarded with the Prophet- and joined the new school upon its inauguration in February 1833. In keeping with the ordinance required for |