SEVENTH DAY ADVENTISTS and THE SIGNPOST YEARS

Concluding our look at other groups who have used some level of Signpost thinking, the third of these are the Adventists. The comments here are from an excellent book, 'The Kingdom of the Cults', and it is very interesting to note how Dr Martin points to the fact that many biblically skilled writers of the time had come to a basic view which is today in line with the Signpost Year proposal. He means, of course, writers such as Clarke and Guinness.

“Seventh-day-Adventism sprang from the ‘great second advent awakening’ that shook the religious world about the middle of the nineteenth century, when a re-emphasis about the second advent of Jesus Christ was rampant in Britain and on the continent of Europe. Before long, many of the Old World views of prophetic interpretation crossed the Atlantic and penetrated American theological circles.

Based largely upon the apocalyptic books of Daniel and Revelation, the theology of the Advent Movement was discussed in the newspapers as well as in theological journals. New Testament eschatology competed with stock market quotations for front-page space, and the ‘seventy weeks’, ‘twenty-three hundred days’ and ‘the abomination of desolation’ (Daniel 8,9) were common subjects of conversation.
Following the chronology of Archbishop Ussher, and the interpretation of the 2300 days of Daniel 8 as 2300 years, many Bible students of various denominations concluded that Christ would come back about the year 1883.

Of this studious number was one William Miller, a Baptist minister and resident of Low Hampton, New York… As Miller himself put it, ‘I was thus brought in 1818 at the close of my two-year study of the Scriptures to the solemn conclusion that in about twenty-five years from that time all affairs of our present state would be wound up.’
…At length his associates set October 22, 1844, as the final date when Jesus Christ would return for His saints, visit judgment upon sin, and establish the Kingdom of God on earth. One need only read the words of the Lord Jesus Christ to realize that Miller was teaching in contradiction to the Word of God. Jesus said, ‘But of that day and hour knoweth no man, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only’ (Mat 24:36)
….Certainly this should have been deterrent enough for William Miller and his associates, but sad to say it was not…the Milleristes set the exact date (22 October 1884). And history bears a bitter record of their terrible disappointment.

Lest anyone reading the various accounts of the rise of Millerism in the United States come to the conclusion that Miller and his followers were ‘crackpots’ or ‘uneducated tools of Satan’, the following facts should be known: The great advent awakening movement which spanned the Atlantic from Europe was bolstered by a tremendous wave of contemporary Biblical scholarship. Although Miller himself lacked academic theological training, actually scores of prophetic scholars in Europe and the United States had espoused Miller’s views before he himself announced it. In reality, his was only one more voice proclaiming the 1883/1884 fulfilment of Daniel 8:14, or the 2300 days period allegedly dating from 457 BC, and ending in 1883-1884.…
Clearly it may be seen that although Miller popularised the 1883-1884 concept of Christ coming again, he was by no means alone. If we condemn him, we must also condemn a large number of internationally known scholars who were among the most highly educated men of their day. Yet they too had a blind spot in prophetic interpretation and endorsed this fallacious system of date-setting.
Regardless of the number of scholars who confirmed his errors, however, the fact remains that Miller and the Millerite movement operated contrary to the express injunctions of Scripture. Both Miller and his followers lived to reap the reward of their fool hardy quest and to suffer crushing humiliation, ridicule and abject despair…The outcome can best be summed up in the words of Dr Josiah Litch, a Millerite leader in Philadelphia, who wrote on October 24: ‘It is a cloudy and dark day here – the sheep are scattered – the Lord has not come yet.’

The entire superstructure of the Millerites’ prophetic interpretation was based upon their view of the book of Daniel chapters 8 and 9, with particular emphasis upon Daniel 8:14 and 9:24-27. The Millerites believed that the prophecy of the seventy weeks of Daniel nine must date from the year 457 BC, which as recent archaeological evidence confirms, was the exact date of the decree of King Artaxerxies to rebuild Jerusalem (9:25). Tracing the seventy weeks of Daniel on the theory that, as the Hebrew indicated, it should be rendered ‘seventy weeks of years’ or 490 years, the Millerites arrived at the date 33 AD; that is from 457 BC to AD 33. Since this date reliably refers to Christ’s crucifixion, Millerites then linked it to Daniel 8:14, ‘Unto 2300 days, then shall the sanctuary be cleansed.’ Thus, if you subtract 490 years (adding of course AD 1 to 33), the figure 1843 is arrived at.

Many Biblical scholars have historically shown that in Scripture a day frequently symbolises a year; further, that the seventy weeks could have begun on the same date. And that date, according to the Millerites, was 457 BC. In The Prophetic Faith Of Our Fathers, Dr LeRoy Froom shows that many expositors had embraced the same method of interpretation, which is no argument for accepting it, but a strong argument for the right of the Millerites to do so.

On…the morning following the ‘Great Disappointment’, Hiram Edson …suddenly received a great spiritual ‘revelation’… ‘instead of our high priest coming out of the most holy of the heavenly sanctuary to come to earth….at the end of the 2300 days, He for the first time entered on that day the second apartment of that sanctuary, and that He had a work to perform in the most holy before coming to earth.’ The sanctuary was not the earth but was located in heaven! Instead of coming to earth, therefore, Christ had passed from one ‘apartment’ of the sanctuary into the other to perform a closing work now known as the ‘investigative judgement.’

- "The Kingdom Of The Cults. Walter Martin. Bethany House Publishers. USA. August 1977 revised edition. pp 361 -364


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