Miller, in Mr. Miller's Apology and Defense, page 4. He says, In 1813 I received a captain's commission in the U.S. service and continued in the army until peace was declared. While there, many occurrences served to weaken my confidence in the correctness of the deistical principles. I was led frequently to compare this country, this country being the United States, I was led frequently to compare this country to that of the children of Israel before whom God drove out the inhabitants of the land. It seemed to me that the supreme being must have watched over the interests of this country in a special manner and delivered us from the hands of our enemies. I was particularly impressed with this view when I was in the Battle of Plattsburgh when with 1,500 regulars and about 4,000 volunteers we defeated the British who were 15,000 strong. We being also successful at the same time in an engagement with the British fleet on the lake. At the commencement of the battle we looked upon our defeat as almost certain and yet we were victorious. So surprising a result against such odd did seem to me like the work of a mighty mightier power than man. And we'll see William Miller recognized God's divine protection for this country and we'll see this truth echoed in the spirit of prophecy. Another passage from a pioneer Hiram Edson. This is from a series of articles that were in the Review and Herald by Hiram Edson and in this particular article called the time of the Gentiles what Hiram Edson is doing and he's reaching he's building this I'm not going to read the entire article but if you have the the Pioneer CD-ROM you could pull this whole series of articles out and at this point in this series what Hiram Edson doing is he's reaching into Old Testament prophecy and establishing that in a prophetic sense during the 1260 years of papal supremacies known as the Dark Ages that God's Church had been scattered and that based on Old Testament prophecies at the end of that time period that God would gather his people again and based upon Old Testament prophecies Hiram Edson here is making a case that when God gathers his people from this spiritual captivity of the 1260 years that he gathers them to a wilderness land and Hiram Edson identifies this wilderness land as the United States. Hiram Edson in this article even goes so far as to say the glorious land of Daniel 11 verse 41 is the United States this is a pioneer understanding this isn't simply something that is a new thought about the glorious land in verse 41 here at the end of the world but I'm just going to pick some of the