unbelief, our pride and self-sufficiency. How it warns us to beware, lest
by our criminal indifference we also fail to discern the signs of the
times, and therefore know not the day of our visitation.
It was not alone upon the hills of Judea, not among the lowly shepherds
only, that angels found the watchers for Messiah’s coming. In the land of
the heathen also were those that looked for Him; they were wise men, rich
and noble, the philosophers of the East. Students of nature, the magi had
seen God in His handiwork. From the Hebrew Scriptures they had learned of
the Star to arise out of Jacob, and with eager desire they awaited His
coming, who should be not only the “Consolation of Israel,” but a “Light
to lighten the Gentiles,” and “for salvation unto the ends of the
earth.”(513) They were seekers for light, and light from the throne of God
illumined the path for their feet. While the priests and rabbis of
Jerusalem, the appointed guardians and expounders of the truth, were
shrouded in darkness, the Heaven-sent star guided these Gentile strangers
to the birthplace of the new-born King.
It is “unto them that look for Him” that Christ is to “appear the second
time without sin unto salvation.”(514) Like the tidings of the Saviour’s
birth, the message of the second advent was not committed to the religious
leaders of the people. They had failed to preserve their connection with
God, and had refused light from heaven; therefore they were not of the
number described by the apostle Paul: “But ye, brethren, are not in
darkness, that that day should overtake you as a thief. Ye are all the
children of light, and the children of the day: we are not of the night,
nor of darkness.”(515)
The watchmen upon the walls of Zion should have been the first to catch
the tidings of the Saviour’s advent, the first to lift their voices to
proclaim Him near, the first to warn the people to prepare for His coming.
But they were at ease, dreaming of peace and safety, while the people were
asleep in their sins. Jesus saw His church, like the barren fig-tree,
covered with pretentious leaves, yet destitute of precious fruit. There
was a boastful observance of the forms of religion, while the spirit of
true humility, penitence, and faith—which alone could render the service
acceptable to God—was lacking. Instead of the graces of the Spirit, there
were manifested pride, formalism, vainglory, selfishness, oppression. A
backsliding church closed their eyes to the signs of the times. God did
not forsake them, or suffer His faithfulness to fail; but they departed
from Him, and separated themselves from His love. As they refused to
comply with the conditions, His promises were not fulfilled to them.
Such is the sure result of neglect to appreciate and improve the light and
privileges which God bestows. Unless the church will follow on in His
opening providence, accepting every ray of light, performing every duty
which may be revealed, religion will inevitably degenerate into the
observance of forms, and the spirit of vital godliness will disappear.
This truth has been repeatedly illustrated in the history of the church.
God requires of His people works of faith and obedience corresponding to
the blessings and privileges bestowed. Obedience requires a sacrifice and
involves a cross; and this is why so many of the professed followers of
Christ refused to receive the light from heaven, and, like the Jews of
old, knew not the time of their visitation.(516) Because of their pride
and unbelief, the Lord passed them by, and revealed His truth to those
who, like the shepherds of Bethlehem and the Eastern magi, had given heed
to all the light they had received.
18. AN AMERICAN REFORMER.
[Illustration: Chapter header.]
An upright, honest-hearted farmer, who had been led to doubt the divine
authority of the Scriptures, yet who sincerely desired to know the truth,
was the man specially chosen of God to lead out in the proclamation of
Christ’s second coming. Like many other reformers, William Miller had in
early life battled with poverty, and had thus learned the great lessons of
energy and self-denial. The members of the family from which he sprung
were characterized by an independent, liberty-loving spirit, by capability
of endurance, and ardent patriotism,—traits which were also prominent in
his character. His father was a captain in the army of the Revolution, and
to the sacrifices which he made in the struggles and sufferings of that
stormy period, may be traced the straitened circumstances of Miller’s
early life.
He had a sound physical constitution, and even in childhood gave evidence
of more than ordinary intellectual strength. As he grew older, this became
more marked. His mind was active and well developed, and he had a keen
thirst for knowledge. Though he did not enjoy the advantages of a
collegiate education, his love of study and a habit of careful thought and
close criticism rendered him a man of sound judgment and comprehensive
views. He possessed an irreproachable moral character and an enviable
reputation, being generally esteemed for integrity, thrift, and
benevolence. By dint of energy and application he early acquired a
competence, though his habits of study were still maintained. He filled
various civil and military offices with credit, and the avenues to wealth
and honor seemed wide open to him.
His mother was a woman of sterling piety, and in childhood he had been
subject to religious impressions. In early manhood, however, he was thrown
into the society of deists, whose influence was the stronger from the fact
that they were mostly good citizens, and men of humane and benevolent
disposition. Living, as they did, in the midst of Christian institutions,
their characters had been to some extent moulded by their surroundings.
For the excellencies which won them respect and confidence they were
indebted to the Bible; and yet these good gifts were so perverted as to
exert an influence against the word of God. By association with these men,
Miller was led to adopt their sentiments. The current interpretations of
Scripture presented difficulties which seemed to him insurmountable; yet
his new belief, while setting aside the Bible, offered nothing better to
take its place, and he remained far from satisfied. He continued to hold
these views, however, for about twelve years. But at the age of
thirty-four, the Holy Spirit impressed his heart with a sense of his
condition as a sinner. He found in his former belief no assurance of
happiness beyond the grave. The future was dark and gloomy. Referring
afterward to his feelings at this time, he said:
“Annihilation was a cold and chilling thought, and accountability was sure
destruction to all. The heavens were as brass over my head, and the earth
as iron under my feet. Eternity—what was it? And death—why was it? The
more I reasoned, the further I was from demonstration. The more I thought,
the more scattered were my conclusions. I tried to stop thinking, but my
thoughts would not be controlled. I was truly wretched, but did not
understand the cause. I murmured and complained, but knew not of whom. I
knew that there was a wrong, but knew not how or where to find the right.
I mourned, but without hope.”
In this state he continued for some months. “Suddenly,” he says, “the
character of a Saviour was vividly impressed upon my mind. It seemed that
there might be a being so good and compassionate as to himself atone for
our transgressions, and thereby save us from suffering the penalty of sin.
I immediately felt how lovely such a being must be, and imagined that I
could cast myself into the arms of, and trust in the mercy of, such a one.
But the question arose, How can it be proved that such a being does exist?
Aside from the Bible, I found that I could get no evidence of the
existence of such a Saviour, or even of a future state....
“I saw that the Bible did bring to view just such a Saviour as I needed;
and I was perplexed to find how an uninspired book should develop
principles so perfectly adapted to the wants of a fallen world. I was
constrained to admit that the Scriptures must be a revelation from God.
They became my delight; and in Jesus I found a friend. The Saviour became
to me the chiefest among ten thousand; and the Scriptures, which before
were dark and contradictory, now became the lamp to my feet and light to
my path. My mind became settled and satisfied. I found the Lord God to be
a Rock in the midst of the ocean of life. The Bible now became my chief
study, and I can truly say, I searched it with great delight. I found the
half was never told me. I wondered why I had not seen its beauty and glory
before, and marveled that I could have ever rejected it. I found
everything revealed that my heart could desire, and a remedy for every
disease of the soul. I lost all taste for other reading, and applied my
heart to get wisdom from God.”(517)
Miller publicly professed his faith in the religion which he had despised.
But his infidel associates were not slow to bring forward all those
arguments which he himself had often urged against the divine authority of
the Scriptures. He was not then prepared to answer them; but he reasoned
that if the Bible is a revelation from God, it must be consistent with
itself; and that as it was given for man’s instruction, it must be adapted
to his understanding. He determined to study the Scriptures for himself,
and ascertain if every apparent contradiction could not be harmonized.
Endeavoring to lay aside all preconceived opinions, and dispensing with
commentaries, he compared scripture with scripture by the aid of the
marginal references and the concordance. He pursued his study in a regular
and methodical manner; beginning with Genesis, and reading verse by verse,
he proceeded no faster than the meaning of the several passages so
unfolded as to leave him free from all embarrassment. When he found
anything obscure, it was his custom to compare it with every other text
which seemed to have any reference to the matter under consideration.
Every word was permitted to have its proper bearing upon the subject of
the text, and if his view of it harmonized with every collateral passage,
it ceased to be a difficulty. Thus whenever he met with a passage hard to
be understood, he found an explanation in some other portion of the
Scriptures. As he studied with earnest prayer for divine enlightenment,
that which had before appeared dark to his understanding was made clear.
He experienced the truth of the psalmist’s words, “The entrance of Thy
words giveth light; it giveth understanding unto the simple.”(518)
With intense interest he studied the books of Daniel and the Revelation,
employing the same principles of interpretation as in the other
scriptures, and found, to his great joy, that the prophetic symbols could
be understood. He saw that the prophecies, so far as they had been
fulfilled, had been fulfilled literally; that all the various figures,
metaphors, parables, similitudes, etc., were either explained in their
immediate connection, or the terms in which they were expressed were
defined in other scriptures, and when thus explained, were to be literally
understood. “I was thus satisfied,” he says, “that the Bible is a system
of revealed truths, so clearly and simply given that the wayfaring man,
though a fool, need not err therein.”(519) Link after link of the chain of
truth rewarded his efforts, as step by step he traced down the great lines
of prophecy. Angels of heaven were guiding his mind and opening the
Scriptures to his understanding.
Taking the manner in which the prophecies had been fulfilled in the past,
as a criterion by which to judge of the fulfilment of those which were
still future, he became satisfied that the popular view of the spiritual
reign of Christ—a temporal millennium before the end of the world—was not
sustained by the word of God. This doctrine, pointing to a thousand years
of righteousness and peace before the personal coming of the Lord, put far
off the terrors of the day of God. But, pleasing though it may be, it is
contrary to the teachings of Christ and His apostles, who declared that
the wheat and the tares are to grow together until the harvest, the end of
the world;(520) that “evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse;”
that “in the last days perilous times shall come;”(521) and that the
kingdom of darkness shall continue until the advent of the Lord, and shall
be consumed with the spirit of His mouth, and be destroyed with the
brightness of His coming.(522)
The doctrine of the world’s conversion and the spiritual reign of Christ
was not held by the apostolic church. It was not generally accepted by
Christians until about the beginning of the eighteenth century. Like every
other error, its results were evil. It taught men to look far in the
future for the coming of the Lord, and prevented them from giving heed to
the signs heralding His approach. It induced a feeling of confidence and
security that was not well founded, and led many to neglect the
preparation necessary in order to meet their Lord.
Miller found the literal, personal coming of Christ to be plainly taught
in the Scriptures. Says Paul, “The Lord Himself shall descend from heaven
with a shout, with the voice of the Archangel, and with the trump of
God.”(523) And the Saviour declares: “They shall _see_ the Son of man
coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory.” “For as the
lightning cometh out of the east, and shineth even unto the west; so shall
also the coming of the Son of man be.”(524) He is to be accompanied by all
the hosts of heaven. “The Son of man shall come in His glory, and all the
holy angels with Him.”(525) “And He shall send His angels with a great
sound of a trumpet, and they shall gather together His elect.”(526)
At His coming the righteous dead will be raised, and the righteous living
will be changed. “We shall not all sleep,” says Paul, “but we shall all be
changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for
the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and
we shall be changed. For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and
this mortal must put on immortality.”(527) And in his letter to the
Thessalonians, after describing the coming of the Lord, he says: “The dead
in Christ shall rise first: then we which are alive and remain shall be
caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air:
and so shall we ever be with the Lord.”
Not until the personal advent of Christ can His people receive the
kingdom. The Saviour said: “When the Son of man shall come in His glory,
and all the holy angels with Him, then shall He sit upon the throne of His
glory: and before Him shall be gathered all nations: and He shall separate
them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats:
and He shall set the sheep on His right hand, but the goats on the left.
Then shall the King say unto them on His right hand, Come, ye blessed of
My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the
world.” We have seen by the scriptures just given that when the Son of man
comes, the dead are raised incorruptible, and the living are changed. By
this great change they are prepared to receive the kingdom; for Paul says,
“Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; neither doth
corruption inherit incorruption.”(528) Man in his present state is mortal,
corruptible; but the kingdom of God will be incorruptible, enduring
forever. Therefore man in his present state cannot enter into the kingdom
of God. But when Jesus comes, He confers immortality upon His people; and
then He calls them to inherit the kingdom of which they have hitherto been
only heirs.
These and other scriptures clearly proved to Miller’s mind that the events
which were generally expected to take place before the coming of Christ,
such as the universal reign of peace and the setting up of the kingdom of
God upon the earth, were to be subsequent to the second advent.
Furthermore, all the signs of the times and the condition of the world
corresponded to the prophetic description of the last days. He was forced
to the conclusion, from the study of Scripture alone, that the period
allotted for the continuance of the earth in its present state was about
to close.
“Another kind of evidence that vitally affected my mind,” he says, “was
the chronology of the Scriptures.... I found that predicted events, which
had been fulfilled in the past, often occurred within a given time. The
one hundred and twenty years to the flood (Gen. 6:3); the seven days that
were to precede it, with forty days of predicted rain (Gen. 7:4); the four
hundred years of the sojourn of Abraham’s seed (Gen. 15:13); the three
days of the butler’s and baker’s dreams (Gen. 40:12-20); the seven years
of Pharaoh’s (Gen. 41:28-54); the forty years in the wilderness (Num.
14:34); the three and a half years of famine (1 Kings 17:1);(529) ... the
seventy years’ captivity (Jer. 25:11); Nebuchadnezzar’s seven times (Dan.
4:13-16); and the seven weeks, threescore and two weeks, and the one week,
making seventy weeks, determined upon the Jews (Dan. 9:24-27),—the events
limited by these times were all once only a matter of prophecy, and were
fulfilled in accordance with the predictions.”(530)
When, therefore, he found, in his study of the Bible, various
chronological periods that, according to his understanding of them,
extended to the second coming of Christ, he could not but regard them as
the “times before appointed,” which God had revealed unto His servants.
“The secret things,” says Moses, “belong unto the Lord our God: but those
things which are revealed belong unto us and to our children
forever;”(531) and the Lord declares by the prophet Amos, that He “will do
nothing, but He revealeth His secret unto His servants the prophets.”(532)
The students of God’s word may, then, confidently expect to find the most
stupendous event to take place in human history clearly pointed out in the
Scriptures of truth.
“As I was fully convinced,” says Miller, “that ‘all Scripture given by
inspiration of God is profitable;’(533) that it came not at any time by
the will of man, but was written as holy men were moved by the Holy
Ghost,(534) and was written ‘for our learning, that we through patience
and comfort of the Scriptures might have hope,’(535) I could but regard
the chronological portions of the Bible as being as much a portion of the
word of God, and as much entitled to our serious consideration, as any
other portion of the Scriptures. I therefore felt that in endeavoring to
comprehend what God had in His mercy seen fit to reveal to us, I had no
right to pass over the prophetic periods.”(536)
The prophecy which seemed most clearly to reveal the _time_ of the second
advent was that of Dan. 8:14: “Unto two thousand and three hundred days;
then shall the sanctuary be cleansed.” Following his rule of making
Scripture its own interpreter, Miller learned that a day in symbolic
prophecy represents a year;(537) he saw that the period of 2300 prophetic
days, or literal years, would extend far beyond the close of the Jewish
dispensation, hence it could not refer to the sanctuary of that
dispensation. Miller accepted the generally received view, that in the
Christian age the earth is the sanctuary, and he therefore understood that
the cleansing of the sanctuary foretold in Dan. 8:14 represented the
purification of the earth by fire at the second coming of Christ. If,
then, the correct starting-point could be found for the 2300 days, he
concluded that the time of the second advent could be readily ascertained.
Thus would be revealed the time of that great consummation, the time when
the present state, with “all its pride and power, pomp and vanity,
wickedness and oppression, would come to an end;” when the curse would be
“removed from off the earth, death be destroyed, reward be given to the
servants of God, the prophets and saints, and them who fear His name, and
those be destroyed that destroy the earth.”(538)
With a new and deeper earnestness, Miller continued the examination of the
prophecies, whole nights as well as days being devoted to the study of
what now appeared of such stupendous importance and all-absorbing
interest. In the eighth chapter of Daniel he could find no clue to the
starting-point of the 2300 days; the angel Gabriel, though commanded to
make Daniel understand the vision, gave him only a partial explanation. As
the terrible persecution to befall the church was unfolded to the
prophet’s vision, physical strength gave way. He could endure no more, and
the angel left him for a time. Daniel “fainted, and was sick certain
days.” “And I was astonished at the vision,” he says, “but none understood
it.”
Yet God had bidden His messenger, “Make this man to understand the
vision.” That commission must be fulfilled. In obedience to it, the angel,
some time afterward, returned to Daniel, saying, “I am now come forth to
give thee skill and understanding;” “therefore understand the matter, and
consider the vision.”(539) There was one important point in the vision of
chapter eight which had been left unexplained, namely, that relating to
time,—the period of the 2300 days; therefore the angel, in resuming his
explanation, dwells chiefly upon the subject of time:
“Seventy weeks are determined upon thy people and upon thy holy city....
Know therefore and understand, that from the going forth of the
commandment to restore and to build Jerusalem unto the Messiah the Prince
shall be seven weeks, and threescore and two weeks: the street shall be
built again, and the wall, even in troublous times. And after threescore
and two weeks shall Messiah be cut off, but not for Himself.... And He
shall confirm the covenant with many for one week: and in the midst of the
week He shall cause the sacrifice and the oblation to cease.”
The angel had been sent to Daniel for the express purpose of explaining to
him the point which he had failed to understand in the vision of the
eighth chapter, the statement relative to time,—“Unto two thousand and
three hundred days; then shall the sanctuary be cleansed.” After bidding
Daniel “understand the matter, and consider the vision,” the very first
words of the angel are, “Seventy weeks are determined upon thy people and
upon thy holy city.” The word here translated “determined,” literally
signifies “cut off.” Seventy weeks, representing 490 years, are declared
by the angel to be cut off, as specially pertaining to the Jews. But from
what were they cut off? As the 2300 days was the only period of time
mentioned in chapter eight, it must be the period from which the seventy
weeks were cut off; the seventy weeks must therefore be a part of the 2300
days, and the two periods must begin together. The seventy weeks were
declared by the angel to date from the going forth of the commandment to
restore and build Jerusalem. If the date of this commandment could be
found, then the starting-point for the great period of the 2300 days would
be ascertained.
In the seventh chapter of Ezra the decree is found.(540) In its completest
form it was issued by Artaxerxes, king of Persia, B.C. 457. But in Ezra
6:14 the house of the Lord at Jerusalem is said to have been built
“according to the commandment [margin, decree] of Cyrus, and Darius, and
Artaxerxes king of Persia.” These three kings, in originating,
re-affirming, and completing the decree, brought it to the perfection
required by the prophecy to mark the beginning of the 2300 years. Taking
B.C. 457, the time when the decree was completed, as the date of the
commandment, every specification of the prophecy concerning the seventy
weeks was seen to have been fulfilled.