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The Great Controversy
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 (
Genesis 6:3
);
the seven days that were to precede it, with forty days of predicted
rain (
Genesis 7:4
); the four hundred years of the sojourn of Abraham’s
seed (
Genesis 15:13
); the three days of the butler’s and baker’s dreams
(
Genesis 40:12-20
); the seven years of Pharaoh’s (
Genesis 41:28-54
);
the forty years in the wilderness (
Numbers 14:34
); the three and a half
years of famine (
1 Kings 17:1
) [see
Luke 4:25
;] ... the seventy years’
captivity (
Jeremiah 25:11
); Nebuchadnezzar’s seven times (
Daniel
4:13-16
); and the seven weeks, threescore and two weeks, and the one
week, making seventy weeks, determined upon the Jews (
Daniel 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.”—
Bliss, pages 74, 75.
[324]
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;” and the Lord declares by the prophet Amos, that
He “will do nothing, but He revealeth His secret unto His servants
the prophets.”
Deuteronomy 29:29
;
Amos 3:7
. The students of God’s
word may, then, confidently expect to find the most stupendous event