The Great Controversy The Great Controversy | Page 325

When, therefore, he found, in his study of the Bible, various
chronological periods that, according to his understanding of them,
extended to the second coming of Christ, he could not but regard them as
the “times before appointed,” which God had revealed unto His servants.
“The secret things,” says Moses, “belong unto the Lord our God: but
those things which are revealed belong unto us and to our children
forever;” and the Lord declares by the prophet Amos, 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, then,
confidently expect to 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

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