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New Light in the New World
185
Lord declares 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 confidently expect to find the
most stupendous event in human history clearly pointed out in the
Scriptures.
“I was fully convinced,” says Miller, “that all Scripture given by
inspiration of God is profitable; that it ... was written as holy men
were moved by the Holy Ghost, and was written ‘for our learning,
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that we through patience and comfort of the Scriptures might have
hope.’ ... 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.
The prophecy which seemed most clearly to reveal the time
of the second advent was
Daniel 8:14
: “Unto two thousand and
three hundred days; then shall the sanctuary be cleansed.” Making
Scripture its own interpreter, Miller learned that a day in symbolic
prophecy represents a year.
He saw that the 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 general view that in the Christian age the
earth is the “sanctuary,” and therefore understood that the cleansing
of the sanctuary foretold in
Daniel 8:14
represented the purification
of the earth by fire at the second coming of Christ. If the correct
starting point could be found for the 2300 days, he concluded that
the time of the second advent could be revealed.
Discovering the Prophetic Timetable
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. 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, he could
endure no more. Daniel “fainted, and was sick certain days.” “I was
3
Ibid.