Travels
Soon after returning to England, Joseph accepted an invitation from Drummond and Way to join some of the most eminent Adventist thinkers of the time, including Edward Irving, at Drummond's country estate, Albury Park, for the first of a series of conferences dedicated to the study of Biblical prophecy.
A year later, Joseph embarked on a search for the Lost Tribes of Israel [1] and second missionary journey and to the east which lasted from 1827–1834, and involved visits to Anatolia, Armenia, Turkestan Afghanistan, Kashmir, Simla, Calcutta, Madras, Pondicherry, Tinnevelly, Goa and Bombay, returning via Egypt and Malta. It was during this journey that he mentioned his belief concerning the return of Christ, fixing on the year 1847. In Loodhiana, India, he "preached extempore on the second coming of our Lord Jesus Christ", and a year later in Madras, he was invited to lecture on "the personal reign of Christ, and state his proofs for believing that Christ would come again upon the earth in 1847." Concerning the exact year, in 1852, Joseph's good friend Sir Charles Napier reminded him that "in 1827 you told me that the world would come to an end in 1845", and Joseph himself had once written in relation to his settling on 1847, that "if now an opponent were to ask Wolff, 'why did you fix that time', he has but one answer to give, which he candidly gives to every one, 'because I was a great ass'".
In 1836, he found Samuel Gobat in Ethiopia, who took him to Jeddah, and visited Yemen and Bombay. He continued to the United States, where he was ordained deacon on 26 September 1837 at Newark, New Jersey. Trinity College Dublin awarded him an honorary Doctorate of Laws. Wolff was ordained as a priest in 1838 by Richard Mant, Bishop of Down and Connor. In the same year, he was given the rectory of Linthwaite in Yorkshire.
In his travels in Bukhara, he found the doctrine of the Lord's soon coming held by a remote and isolated people. The Arabs of Hodeyda, he says, "are in possession of a book called 'Seera,' which gives notice of the coming of Christ and His reign in glory, and they expect great events to take place in the year 1840". "In Yemen I spent six days with the Rechabites. They drink no wine, plant no vineyards, sow no seed, live in tents, and remember the words of Jonadab, the son of Rechab. With them were the children of Israel of the tribe of Dan ... who expect, in common with the children of Rechab, the speedy arrival of the Messiah in the clouds of heaven."
In 1843 Wolff went to Bukhara (home of the Bukharan Jews) to seek two British officers, Lieutenant Colonel Charles Stoddart and Captain Arthur Conolly, who had been captured by the Emir, Nasrullah Khan in June 1842. He learned that they had been executed, and he was spared death himself only because the Emir laughed uncontrollably at Wolff's appearance in full canonical garb. His Narrative of this mission sold well and was printed in seven editions between 1845 and 1852. Fitzroy Maclean, then a junior diplomat travelling incognito, retraced Wolff's trip in 1938. He wrote of Wolff in his memoir, Eastern Approaches. Almost fifty years later, Maclean contributed a foreword to a biography of the missionary.
When Joseph arrived in Mashad in late August 1844 on his return from Bukhara he noted, "It is remarkable that dissenters in doctrine are now prevailing largely in the Mohammadan religion" and that "there had arisen there another partly, who may be called the Mohammadan tractarians". At that time, the Shaykhi branch of Islam in Persia was experiencing a growing Adventist movement in parallel to that taking place in Christian circles in North America, Britain and Europe. According to Islamic prophecy the Promised Mahdi would appear in the year 1260, which is 1844 in the Gregorian calendar. It was in Shiraz, during May 1844, that Siyyid 'Alí Muḥammad Shírází declared Himself to be the Báb, the Gate, the Promised Mahdi.
