“Mother Ann stood waiting to welcome Reuben Wight and Talmadge Bishop. She said she had been expecting them — a premonition told her they were approaching. She invited the two men to spend the night and join the Shakers in worship, which they did.
“The visitors were amazed by everything they saw and heard. Is it possible, they asked, that the Christ we have waited for in vain actually has come, as these devout people claim — and in the form of a woman?
“The Shakers’ answer was a resounding yes.
“‘It is true,’ said Mother Ann. ‘I am the embodiment of the Christ spirit. But you, too, can experience that in-dwelling presence, if you will forsake the world and the flesh and let yourself be imbued by his consuming love.’”
“She told them salvation is not an event. There would never be a universal day of judgment for all humankind. Salvation, said Mother Ann, is a quiet transformation that takes place within an individual who enters wholly into the life of the spirit. For a person who has been ‘saved,’ the world and all its desires melt away and the Millennium begins.”
