Chapter 23—What is the Sanctuary?
The scripture which above all others had been both the foundation
and central pillar of the Advent faith was the declaration, “Unto two
thousand and three hundred days; then shall the sanctuary be cleansed.”
[
Daniel 8:14
.] These had been familiar words to all believers in the
Lord’s soon coming. By the lips of thousands was this prophecy re-
peated as the watchword of their faith. All felt that upon the events
therein foretold depended their brightest expectations and most cher-
ished hopes. These prophetic days had been shown to terminate in
the autumn of 1844. In common with the rest of the Christian world,
Adventists then held that the earth, or some portion of it, was the
sanctuary. They understood that the cleansing of the sanctuary was
the purification of the earth by the fires of the last great day, and that
this would take place at the second advent. Hence the conclusion that
Christ would return to the earth in 1844.
But the appointed time had passed, and the Lord had not appeared.
The believers knew that God’s Word could not fail; their interpretation
of the prophecy must be at fault; but where was the mistake? Many
rashly cut the knot of difficulty by denying that the 2300 days ended
in 1844. No reason could be given for this, except that Christ had not
come at the time they expected him. They argued that if the prophetic
days had ended in 1844, Christ would then have returned to cleanse
the sanctuary by the purification of the earth by fire; and that since he
had not come, the days could not have ended.
To accept this conclusion was to renounce the former reckoning of
[410]
the prophetic periods. The 2300 days had been found to begin when
the commandment of Artaxerxes for the restoration and building of
Jerusalem went into effect, in the autumn of B. C. 457. Taking this as
the starting-point, there was perfect harmony in the application of all
the events foretold in the explanation of that period in
Daniel 9:25-27
.
Sixty-nine weeks, the first 483 of the 2300 years, were to reach to the
Messiah, the Anointed One; and Christ’s baptism and anointing by the
Holy Spirit, A. D. 27, exactly fulfilled the specification. In the midst
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