The European Union in Prophecy The EU in Prophecy I | Page 256

The European Union in Prophecy
serious consideration, as any other portion of the Scriptures. I therefore felt that in
endeavouring to comprehend what God had in His mercy seen fit to reveal to us, I had
no right to pass over the prophetic periods."-- Bliss, page 75.
The prophecy which seemed most clearly to reveal the time of the second advent
was that of Daniel 8:14: "Unto two thousand and three hundred days; then shall the
sanctuary be cleansed." Following his rule of making Scripture its own interpreter,
Miller learned that a day in symbolic prophecy represents a year (Numbers 14:34;
Ezekiel 4:6); he saw that the period of 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 generally received view that in the
Christian age the earth is the sanctuary, and he 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, then, the correct starting point could
be found for the 2300 days, he concluded that the time of the second advent could be
readily ascertained. Thus would be revealed the time of that great consummation, the
time when the present state, with "all its pride and power, pomp and vanity,
wickedness and oppression, would come to an end;" when the curse would be "removed
from off the earth, death be destroyed, reward be given to the servants of God, the
prophets and saints, and them who fear His name, and those be destroyed that destroy
the earth."--Bliss, page 76.
With a new and deeper earnestness, 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 and all-absorbing interest. 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, physical strength gave way. He could endure no more, and the
angel left him for a time. Daniel "fainted, and was sick certain days." "And I was
astonished at the vision," he says, "but none understood it."
Yet God had bidden His messenger: "Make this man to understand the vision."
That commission must be fulfilled. In obedience to it, the angel, some time afterward,
returned to Daniel, saying: "I am now come forth to give thee skill and
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