October 22, 1844
It was just about a week ago, I went on an amazing trip to the Hamptons. As Mecca and Medina is to Muslims, Hampton (not Long Island but Upstate, New York) and Elmshaven, California — or Berrien Springs, Michigan, depending who you ask — are equally significant to Seventh-day Adventists, or the Christian denomination colloquially known as Adventists. I should point out, however, that Adventists do not believe that one must make a pilgrimage to one of these sites to make it into the Kingdom. What we simplify believe is that God used two ordinary people to form a small but distinct Laodicean company that would stand for truth, make it plain, and bring the final message found in the last book of the Holy Bible: The Revelation of Jesus Christ. (Ellen White had only three years of formal education; William Miller was also a simple War of 1812 veteran and yeoman farmer.) It is also important to note that as a rule of life, the messenger is always subject to the message — in this case, the Word, the Bible, and thus, God Himself. Adventists believe this test to be true because John’s early writings tell us that “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God.” So-called Christians should readily believe thence that not “one jot or one title” can insofar change the Word of God, and the commands therein.
The heart of the John’s latter message in the Book of Revelation is the reason why I went to Hampton. Specifically Chapter 14 of Revelation, which is the main ventricle of the message. John was inspired to write the book in a style where the middle — Chapters 13 and 14 of the 22 Chapters of Revelation — is the apogee of the prophecy. This unique literary devise employed by a number of inspired writers of the Bible is called a chiasm. Its purpose is to set up a theme early on, hit the crux of the theme in the midst of the text, and again settle on the same theme to ensure no detail is misunderstood. UnIike a Hollywood film, the clixam is in the middle rather than at the end. In any event, John the Revelator (Apostle) — different from John the Baptist, who died a Martyr’s death, beheaded at the behest of Herodias, Herod’s claimed wife but really his brother’s wife — was in exile at the Isle of Patmos, miraculously surviving his own death by boiling, and was probably the last living witness of Christ in the flesh, the risen Christ, and Christ in the Spirit. For on this Island at the end of his life, John was in the Spirit, that is to say in holy vision, when wrote the book the Revelation.
So, how does Hampton, New York tie into the highly symbolic book of Revelation that is filled with seven churches, ten plagues, two beasts, One Savior, and so on? Well, Hampton, New York is the birth-place of Adventism. And Adventism is the door that led back to the Book of Revelation to rediscover important last day truisms and events, such as the everlasting primacy of the Seventh-day Sabbath (Saturday) for Christians, Jews, and all of humanity; the mortality of the soul and the state of the dead; counsels on health and vegetarian diet; the heavenly Sanctuary, where Christ’s final ministry and the judgement (after 1844) began after His resurrection (using Daniel 8:14’s 2300-day reckoning), and the imminent second coming of Christ.
Now, the story of William Miller is that he was a well-respected deist at the local masonic lodge before he found the good news of Jesus Christ, renounced his Masonic affiliation, and converted to Baptist Christianity in 1816 in Hampton, New York. He had settled into a well-to-do subsistence and commercial farming life after honorably completing his military service as Captain in the War of 1812, when on a certain day while tilling his land, William Miller was inspired to study the scriptures to discover new drafts of the Gospel. Generally a curious man that sought answers to the deepest questions of life, he prayed and studied the Scriptures for two years with a particular interest in the books of Daniel and Revelation. At the end of his autodidactic scholarship, he was hesitantly moved to share his findings, which according to Daniel Chapter 8, 9 and Revelation 14:7, was a 2,300-day prophecy that nobody could or had attempted to decipher until then. The prevailing Jesuitical tradition had put forth two ideas — Preterism and Futurism — that fell woefully short when measured with Biblical eschatology. Miller’s exposition, however, was novel, fresh, and credible, though no less controversial. His interpretations ushered in a thirst for new scriptural dispensation. This Spirit-led Philadelphian expression and movement of the mid-1800s in America and Europe was known as the Second Great Awakening. At the time of his conversion in 1816, William Miller accepted Christianity — and by most accounts was a good Baptist until his excommunication in 1844 by his brethren for daring to follow truth to its end, and for the ostensible failure in his prophecy.
“And it shall come to pass in the LAST DAYS, saith God, I will pour out of my Spirit upon all flesh; and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams, &c.” (Acts 2:17; Joel 2:28.)
Miller focused on two important pieces of the Daniel 8: 14, Revelation 14:7 prophecy, which held that Christ’s return was not only imminent but a few years away in 1844. He finally saw fit to share his calculations in 1831, after fully grasping their meaning but evidently not their manifestation. The first part of the prophecy was in determining the actual beginning and end dates of the 2,300-day prophecy. And the second was the spiritual and physical event that would occur on October 22, 1844. The former was correct; the latter was too, but not entirely. The 2,300 days which began on 457 B.C., according to Ezra 4:6, when Artaxerxes decreed the rebuilding of the Temple, did in fact culminate on 10.22.1844 (the Seventh month of the Jewish calendar, during which “Yom Kippur” or the annual Day of Atonement, occurred). Though the event of the Lord’s final heavenly ministry — the investigative judgement — was misinterpreted as His return to Earth: “then the Sanctuary shall be cleansed,” according to Daniel 8:14. Christ did not come down to Earth, as Miller and the Adventists had hoped. But something had happened. They just didn’t know what.
It turns out that this human error in interpretation (including the first date of October 22, 1843) was “purposed” and “willed” by Almighty God to sift and shake out those that who were not genuinely looking forward to Christ’s return, thus fulfilling the traits of the Church of Brotherly Love known as “Philadelphia” (Revelation 3:7–13). But the “Great Disappointment” unsealed the meaning and significance of the Sanctuary, and evidenced what transpired that day. Sister E.G. White, a Jesus Christ Spirit-filled authoritative leader of the Adventists, references Paul, in the Epistle to the Hebrews 1:1, as saying: “Then verily the first covenant had also ordinance of divine service, and a worldly sanctuary.” (GC, 411.2) The word also intimates that the earthly sanctuary given to Moses in transit from Egypt to Canaan, and permanently settled in Solomon’s rebuilt Temple by Artaxerxes (until its destruction in A.D. 70), symbolized the original representation of the true living Sanctuary — in heaven. The earthly sanctuary and all it’s services pointed to the “Lamb that was slain, yet lives again,” and His work in the heavenly. Surely, Miller made a reasonable assumption — though wrong on the outcome — that the cleansing of the sanctuary meant the end of the world, and the return of Jesus Christ for them that love His appearance.
So what did happen on that October 22nd day of disappointment in Hampton, New York and across the world where the Adventists congregated in their Accession robes? In his Epistle to the Hebrews in Chapter 8 verses 1 and 2, Paul clarifies that “Now of the things which we have spoken this is the sum: We have such an High Priest, who is set on the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in the heavens; a Minister of the sanctuary, and of the true tabernacle, which the Lord pitched, and not man.” Thus, Sister White clears up the reason for their disappointment: “The realization that Christ had entered the most holy place in the heavenly sanctuary to begin His closing ministry in our behalf, typified in the sanctuary service observed by Israel of old, solemnized the hearts of our pioneer Adventists.”(GC, 413.2)
The rest of this piece can be found at…https://www.patreon.com/meekswords — and for a nominal fee it can also be read.
