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From Here to Forever
Mistake Corrected
“While the bridegroom tarried, they all slumbered and slept. And
at midnight there was a cry made, Behold, the bridegroom cometh;
go ye out to meet him.” In the summer of 1844 the message was
proclaimed in the very words of Scripture.
That which led to this movement was the discovery that the
decree of Artaxerxes for the restoration of Jerusalem, which formed
the starting point for the period of the 2300 days, went into effect
in the autumn of 457 B.C., and not at the beginning of the year, as
had been believed. Reckoning from the autumn of 457, the 2300
years terminate in the autumn of 1844. The Old Testament types
also pointed to the autumn as the time when the “cleansing of the
sanctuary” must take place.
The slaying of the Passover lamb was a shadow of the death of
Christ, a type fulfilled, not only as to the event, but as to the time. On
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the fourteenth day of the first Jewish month, the very day and month
on which for centuries the Passover lamb had been slain, Christ
instituted that feast which was to commemorate His own death as
“the Lamb of God.” That same night He was taken to be crucified
and slain.
In like manner the types which relate to the second advent must
be fulfilled at the time pointed out in the symbolic service. The
cleansing of the sanctuary, or the Day of Atonement, occurred on the
tenth day of the seventh Jewish month when the high priest, having
made an atonement for all Israel, and thus removed their sins from
the sanctuary, came forth and blessed the people. So it was believed
that Christ would appear to purify the earth by the destruction of sin
and sinners, and to bless His waiting people with immortality. The
tenth day of the seventh month, the great Day of Atonement, the
time of the cleansing of the sanctuary, which in 1844 fell upon the
twenty-second of October, was regarded as the time of the Lord’s
coming. The 2300 days would terminate in the autumn, and the
conclusion seemed irresistible.