LEWISTON — William Hiss, a graduate of Bates College, will be the speaker at the University of Southern Maine’s Lewiston-Auburn Senior College “Food for Thought” luncheon at 11:30 a.m. Friday, Dec. 11, in Function Room 170, 51 Westminster St.
His topic is “Shiloh: Frank W. Sandford and The Kingdom.”
Hiss wrote an extensive, independent history of The Kingdom. He will offer a history of the movement, with slides of the movement’s work over the decades up to the present. His work to understand and write a history of The Kingdom has led to close personal friendships with many members of the families that made generations of commitments to this work.
The Rev. Frank W. Sandford, an 1886 graduate of Bates, had created a uniquely American religious movement to “evangelize the world in our generation” by the mid-1890s. By the early 20th century with his hundreds of followers, he had built a religious community on the sand hilltop in Durham that came to be called “Shiloh.”
The last verse of the Old Testament, in Malachi 4, says that “Before the great and terrible day of the Lord, I will send you Elijah the Prophet again…” Coming at this symbolic Biblical location to close the Old Testament, this prophecy of a second Elijah figure as a precursor to the return of the millennial Jesus has attracted much thought from Christians.
In Auburn in the first years of the 20th century, Frank Sandford announced that he was the Elijah of Malachi 4. From that moment on, his Shiloh movement attracted both hundreds of loyalists and much public hostility.
Through much of the next 20 years, Sandford and his closest followers were at sea, following the commandments they had received to take the gospel and the evangelization of the world to every continent.
Through inexpressible spiritual joy and some periods of great suffering and conflict with the civil authorities, the community lasted as a religious community preparing evangelists until 1920, when it was dissolved as a community. The Kingdom still exists as an evangelical movement, and the original Shiloh sanctuary building in Durham is still in use for Christian services.
Hiss retired in 2013 after 35 years as a dean, vice president and lecturer in Asian Studies at Bates. He earned a bachelor’s degree in English from Bates, an MTS in Ethics and American Church History from Harvard Divinity School, and an MA and Ph.D. from Tufts University. He is the moderator of the West Auburn Congregational Church, a beekeeper, gardener, soccer referee and the principal researcher on a national study of optional standardized testing in college admissions.
Cost is $7 with advance reservation or $8 at the door. Reservations must be made by noon on Wednesday, Dec. 9, by calling 207-753-6510.
Send questions/comments to the editors.
