find the most stupendous event to take place in human history clearly pointed out in the Scriptures of truth.
" As I was fully convinced," says Miller, " that all Scripture given by inspiration of God is profitable( 2 Timothy 3:16); that it came not at any time by the will of man, but was written as holy men were moved by the Holy Ghost( 2 Peter 1:21), and was written ' for our learning, that we through patience and comfort of the Scriptures might have hope '( Romans 15:4), I could but regard the chronological portions of the Bible as being as much a portion of the word of God, and as much entitled to our serious consideration, as any other portion of the Scriptures. 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."-- 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."
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