3689 — Why the Mistake?
By S.
How did William Miller, and other Adventists, make the mistake of setting definite time for the second coming of Christ, when the Scriptures so plainly teach that we know not the hour, and not even the angels? and when did they notice the mistake? It is a strange thing, and yet not strange, in a way, either, that men do not see all that is in Scripture. William Miller began by studying the prophecies of the Old Testament, especially the prophecies of Daniel. He saw the vision of Daniel 8, the 2,300 days, and the explanation of that vision in chapter 9, which gave the beginning of those days in B.C. 457. At the end of those days, or 2,300 years, the sanctuary was to be cleansed. He gathered that that sanctuary was the earth. For this he had no authority in Scripture, but he seemed to take it as a matter of course that the earth, or some part of the earth, was the sanctuary, and the cleansing of the earth was to be by fire, as the Bible abundantly teaches, and therefore the earth was to be cleansed at the second coming of Christ. And therefore Christ's second coming must be at the end of the 2,300 days; and logically, he felt that according to the type it must be on the tenth day of the seventh month of the Jewish year. Then the passage in Matthew 24, "Of that day and hour knoweth no man," was understood as, "No man maketh known the day or the hour"—God Himself would make that known. The real meaning of that text seemed to be covered from his view, and it was not until after the disappointment, when men began to study the prophecies of God anew, that they saw that the sanctuary was not the earth, but that that vision of Daniel pointed forward to a work which was to begin at a certain definite time — in 1844 — and continue an indefinite time, until Christ should come. It was not God's time then to appear. The earth must be more fully enlightened regarding His law before He could come.