#3 MILLER'S 2300 YEARS - as clear as mud?

Following:  http://hotspuds.blogspot.com.au/2014/02/great-disappointment-of-1844.html


Mmm...it looks to me like it says 'days'!

Okay, William Miller borrowed 2300 days from Daniel’s vision and called them years – what did he do with them?                                              

About 12 years after Daniel’s vision, the angel Gabriel paid him a visit to reveal more about what would happen to the Jewish people and Jerusalem. Using a Jewish expression, it would take 70 ‘weeks’ of 7 years, in 3 segments: (62+7+1) x 7 = 490 years, to turn things around completely starting with the order to rebuild Jerusalem after the Babylonian captivity. Daniel 9

When did that happen?     Nehemiah tells us Artaxerxes I (Longimanus) gave the order in the 20^th year of his reign. Some say this was 455 BC but most others say 445 BC; Adventists say 457 BC, so okay, let’s run with their date….                                               

(62+7) x 7 = 483 years brings us to AD 27 when they say ‘Messiah was cut off’.  One last ‘week’ of 7 years would wrap up the 70 weeks or 490 years when they say Stephen was stoned in AD 34 – but don’t expect proof of these dates.

Oh! Then what?                                                           

According to Ellen White: “When Christ should hang upon the cross of Calvary, Israel’s day as a nation favored and blessed of God would be ended.”….and later on she says: “…the nation sealed its rejection of the gospel by the martyrdom of Stephen and the persecution of the followers of Christ.”

Well that sure doesn’t sound like the turnaround for Daniel’s people and the Holy City after 70 ‘weeks’!...more like it’s curtains for Israel – according to Ellen White, that is.
Keep in mind: Daniel’s vision was about what would happen to the Jews at the end of the Greek empire, but Gabriel showed up to explain what would also happen to the Jews over 100 years later under the Roman Empire and beyond.                     

Adventists don’t blend it all, do they?                                             

Yes. This time Miller decided to take notice of the Hebrew behind “the seventy weeks are determined…” in Daniel 9:24, where ‘determined’ comes from chathak meaning ‘cut off’. 
490 years ‘cut off’ from what?...his 2300 years of course!

You’re kidding me aren’t you??  Just use the same starting date of 457 BC, add 2300 years and hey presto.....you wind up at 1844!...and call it all ‘church history’?                                                          

The Church wasn’t even formed until Pentecost after Christ’s resurrection! Acts 2:47      To further justify connecting Daniel’s vision with Gabriel’s message Miller borrowed from the final verse of chapter 9: “in the midst of the week he shall cause the sacrifice and the oblation to cease…” and said that Messiah did this by dying - leaving the sanctuary still to be cleansed.

Hang about!  History proves this all happens under a Roman prince. From the Bible we know it was business as usual at the temple after Christ was crucified, until finally the city was sacked and the temple torn apart in AD 70.

No, Ellen White says: “With the great sacrifice offered upon Calvary, ended that system of offerings…all the sacrifices and oblations of the ceremonial system were there to cease.”

So after the stoning of Stephen you just add 1810 more years of real church history until you reach the Great Disappointment of 1844? Sorry, I just don’t get it!              
On the contrary, Ellen White tells us from Revelation 14 that:                   
- early in 1844, the 1^st angel announced: “the hour of his judgment has come”            
- in the summer of 1844, the 2^nd angel’s message: “Babylon is fallen, is fallen” was first preached, at the same time as the cry in Matthew 25: “Behold, the bridegroom cometh….!” - although fulfilment is delayed of course.
Finally she tells us that on that seemingly non-eventful day of 22^nd October, 1844, when the Earth wasn’t purified by fire after all, Jesus Christ finally entered the Holiest Place - the sanctuary in heaven - on the Day of Atonement or Yom Kippur.

Hey this is confusing!  Let’s quickly recap before we go any further…                    
In about 551 BC, Daniel had a vision (ch 8) about the rise and fall of the Persian and Greek empires resulting in the defiling of the Jewish temple and even though history tells us this prophecy was fulfilled by Antiochus IV Epiphanes, Adventists say the cleansing of the sanctuary after 2300 days means: ‘after 2300 years of church history’.                                                          
About 12 years later, Gabriel told Daniel (ch9) it would take 490 years to completely turn around the Jews and their city Jerusalem after the re-build order was given - in about 457 BC, some 82 years into the future.                                                         
Where do Adventists count 2300 years from?....457 BC, because Gabriel’s message ended with something about the sacrifice ceasing.                         
2300 years on from 457 BC brings us to 1844 and let’s settle for 22^nd October which happens to be Day of Atonement for the Jews. According to the theory, the sanctuary now has to be cleansed – nothing has happened on Earth, so it must be the heavenly sanctuary.                                                           

...as clear as mud for me!

 

Simple!...or as clear as mud?

NEXT: What’s happening in the heavenly sanctuary?

Click on:
http://hotspuds.blogspot.com.au/2014/02/whats-happening-in-heavenly-sanctuary.html

Acknowledgements: 

White E, ‘The Great Controversy’, United Publishers, 1971