Sabbath, February 3, 2007

“A TARRYING TIME”

1. How did William Miller designate the last prophetic year?
Daniel 8:14 And he said unto me, Unto two thousand and three hundred days; then shall the sanctuary be cleansed.

“Miller believed the prophetic year 1843 should be reckoned from March 21, 1843, to March 21, 1844

[according to the Jewish calendar].” –Francis D. Nichol, The Midnight Cry, p. 171.

2. What other opinion existed among the Millerites before this time ended?
Ezra 7:7, 8 And there went up some of the children of Israel, and of the priests, and the Levites, and the singers, and the porters, and the Nethinims, unto Jerusalem, in the seventh year of Artaxerxes the king. And he came to Jerusalem in the fifth month, which was in the seventh year of the king.

“Even before this uncertainty began to trouble the Millerites, a new date was already being suggested. Samuel S. Snow [a Congregationalist, later a Millerite minister], in The Midnight Cry, as early as February [16], 1844, put forth the view that the great time prophecy of 2300 prophetic days (Daniel 8:13, 14), which is at the heart of all Millerite reckoning, would not end until the autumn of 1844. We need not here go into the details of his reasoning, though it should be said that his arguments were not intended to alter in any way the basic premises of Millerite belief, but only to make more exact the calculations.” –Francis D. Nichol, The Midnight Cry, pp. 220, 221.

3. What happened when the designated last date, March 21, 1844, had passed?
Revelation 10:10 And I took the little book out of the angel’s hand, and ate it up; and it was in my mouth sweet as honey: and as soon as I had eaten it, my belly was bitter.

“The time of expectation passed, and Christ did not appear for the deliverance of His people. Those who with sincere faith and love had looked for their Saviour, experienced a bitter disappointment.” –The Great Controversy, p. 374.

4. After the time of expectation expired, what was the Millerites’ first discovery?
Habakkuk 2:3 For the vision is yet for an appointed time, but at the end it shall speak, and not lie: though it tarry, wait for it; because it will surely come, it will not tarry.

“Those faithful, disappointed ones, who could not understand why their Lord did not come, were not left in darkness. Again they were led to their Bibles to search the prophetic periods. The hand of the Lord was removed from the figures, and the mistake was explained. They saw that the prophetic periods reached to 1844, and that the same evidence which they had presented to show that the prophetic periods closed in 1843, proved that they would terminate in 1844. Light from the Word of God shone upon their position, and they discovered a tarrying time—‘Though it [the vision] tarry, wait for it.’” –Early Writings, p. 236.

“BEHOLD THE BRIDEGROOM COMETH”

5. When was the second angel’s message first proclaimed?
Revelation 14:8 And there followed another angel, saying, Babylon is fallen, is fallen, that great city, because she made all nations drink of the wine of the wrath of her fornication.

“The second angel’s message of Revelation 14 was first preached in the summer of 1844, and it then had a more direct application to the churches of the United States, where the warning of the judgment had been most widely proclaimed and most generally rejected, and where the declension in the churches had been most rapid. But the message of the second angel did not reach its complete fulfillment in 1844.” –The Great Controversy, p. 389.

6. What did some Millerites declare in 1843?
Revelation 18:4 And I heard another voice from heaven, saying, Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues.

“About the same time [in the summer of 1843] that Hawley was expressing himself in this way, Charles Fitch, one of the most prominent of the Millerite leaders, was writing a sermon entitled: ‘Come Out of Her, My People’.… This sermon set forth the view that ‘Babylon’ refers not only to the ‘Catholic Church,’ as Protestantism had taught since Reformation times, but also to the great body of ‘Protestant Christendom.’” –Francis

7. What new movement within the Millerite movement was set in motion in the summer of 1844, thus setting the stage for the grand climax of Millerism?.
Matthew 25:6 And at midnight there was a cry made, Behold, the bridegroom cometh; go ye out to meet him.

“On the twelfth of August a five-day camp meeting opened in Exeter, New Hampshire, only a few miles away from East Kingston, where the first Adventist camp meeting in the United States had been held just two years earlier. It was at this Exeter meeting, according to the united testimony of all the Millerite writers, that this new belief concerning the specific date, October 22, finally took full hold of the Adventists in New England, changing their indefinite, though very real conviction of the nearness of the Lord’s coming, into a belief so specific as to send them forth with a crusading zeal to warn men in the little while that remained.

“Immediately after the Exeter camp meeting The Advent Herald gave a brief report of the meeting, mentioning almost casually that ‘Brother Snow remarked with great energy on the time [October 22, 1844], and displayed much research in his presentation of the evidence which, in his view, points to the tenth day of the seventh month of the Jewish sacred year, as the day of the Lord’s advent.’” –Francis

8. When did William Miller accept this new teaching?
Matthew 19:30 But many that are first shall be last; and the last shall be first.

“The ‘seventh month movement,’ as this late development in Millerism was known, was now finally to gain the support of Miller. On October 6, scarcely more than two weeks before the anticipated great day, he wrote Himes a letter which began thus: “‘I see a glory in the seventh month which I never saw before.’” –Francis D. Nichol, The Midnight Cry, p. 243.