Appleby, William Ivins.  A dissertation on Nebuchadnezzar’s dream: showing that the kingdom spoken of by Daniel the prophet was not set up in the days of the apostles: and the order of the kingdom set up then explained.  Also: the rise and faith of the most notable orthodox societies of the present day, together with a synopsis of the origin and faith of the church of “Latter-day Saints,” comparing their faith with the faith of other societies.  By W. I. Appleby, minister of the gospel.  Printed by Brown, Bicking & Guilbert, No. 56 N. Third Street, 4th door north of Arch St., Philadelphia.  1844.
24 pp. 18 cm.

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William I. Appleby had been laboring as a missionary in Pennsylvania, Delaware, and New Jersey almost constantly since October 1840.  On July 5, 1844, five days after he heard of the deaths of Joseph and Hyrum Smith, he returned to his home in Recklesstown, New Jersey, to rest for four weeks.  During this period he wrote A Dissertation on Nebuchadnezzar’s Dream, which he seems to have finished by August 6, the date of a note To the Reader on the second page of the pamphlet.  He reports in his journal that he published 2,000 copies, and the book sold well. 

A Dissertation opens with some preliminary remarks on reading the scriptures literally and then launches into a discussion of the dream of Nebuchadnezzar (Dan. 2) that is taken virtually word-for-word, without credit, from the 1837 Voice of Warning, pp. 25-29 (see this digital collection).  It includes some comments on the various kingdoms symbolized in the dream and then argues that the kingdom set up by Jesus was not the last kingdom spoken of by Daniel.  The ideas here are from the third chapter of Voice of Warning, which at some points the tract quotes directly.  Next it takes up the rise of the major Christian denominations, written from the standard church histories, including Mosheim’s Ecclesiastical History and William Gahan’s A Compendious Abstract of the History of the Church of Christ, and from Benjamin Winchester’s Synopsis of the Holy Scriptures, whose text it also borrows from time to time.  A Dissertation then summarizes the beliefs of the major denominations.  By performing some numerical gymnastics, it infers that the Bible predicts that Christ’s true church would be restored in 1830.

Excerpted and edited from Peter Crawley, A Descriptive Bibliography of the Mormon Church.  Volume One, 1830-1847. (Provo, Utah: Brigham Young University, Religious Studies Center, [1997]).  Item 230, p. 272-73.

Used by permission of the author and the Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University.