What was the Great Disappointment?

Miller and his followers set to work to study their proofs again. By summer they discovered that Christ would come, not in the spring, but in the autumn of 1844.

Miller’s Prophecy Proved False

As the spring of 1844 drew near public testimony as to the Second Advent was most active. The time passed, and nothing happened. Mrs. White says tamely: “Those who had looked in faith for His appearing were for a season involved in doubt and uncertainty.”

She dismisses with a few general meditations the fanaticism aroused by the expectation of an event which never took place. Others tell us that Adventists left their work, gave away their property, that crops were left ungathered, that their children were kept from school for years, because time being so short, they would need no education. Those children have now grand-children and great grand-children.

And, mark you, Elder White and his wife were both involved in this time-setting. She again calmly writes: “Again they were doomed to disappointment. The time of expectation passed, and their Saviour did not appear.”

Miller—all honour to him for his honesty—wrote: “On the passing of my published time, I frankly acknowledged my disappointment … We expected the personal coming of Christ at that time; and now to contend that we were not mistaken is dishonest … I have no confidence in any of the new theories that grew out of that [Seventh-Day Adventist] movement, namely, that Christ then came as the Bridegroom, that the door of mercy was closed, that there is no salvation for sinners, that the seventh trumpet then sounded, or that it was a fulfilment of prophecy in any sense.”

Very few of the original Adventists accepted the new theories of the Seventh-Day Adventists. Miller never became a Seventh-Day Adventist. His honesty at the last fills one with the hope that he was not a mere charlatan, but a self-deceived Christian. Here we must part company with him.

Suffice it to say that by a process of loose reasoning and careless chronology Miller came to the conclusion that the Second Advent would take place in the spring of 1844.

Then, as if to court destruction, the theory was next invented that the sanctuary was to be cleansed on the tenth day of the Seventh (Jewish) month, which in 1844 fell on the 22nd of October. This they took from the day on which the Great Day of Atonement falls.

Disappointment opened the eyes of many, whilst others were driven into infidelity.

The Seventh-Day Adventists are an off-shoot of the old Millerites, the followers of William Miller of Low Hampton, N. Y., well known as predicting the end of the world in 1844. They reasoned especially from Dan. 8:13-14 — the prophecy of two thousand three hundred days to the cleansing of the sanctuary, that, taking these days for years, they began in the seventh year of Artaxerxes, king of Persia, B. C. 457, and would therefore end in the year named. The sanctuary to be cleansed was the earth, and the cleansing to be by fire.

This very palpable mistake led, of course, to bitter disappointment, which resulted in the scattering of many of their adherents, and the division of the rest ultimately into three bodies, — the more orthodox body, or Messiah's church, who deny, nevertheless, the heavenly portion of Christians; another body, which engrafted annihilationism and still more fatal errors upon their adventist views; and the Seventh-Day Adventists.

Here let us observe two facts: First, that disappointment amongst believers is caused by their cherishing mistaken expectations not warranted by the Word of God. Second, that such unwarranted expectations are entertained by believers because they base them upon a partial view of Scripture rather than "ALL that the prophets have spoken."

So now, at all costs, an explanation of the failure of Miller’s prophecies must be found. In retrieving their position, the Seventh-Day Adventists introduced into their system teaching of the most wicked and anti-Christian character. They discovered now that the earth was not the sanctuary.

But in discarding one false theory they invented another, infinitely worse, for it cast into the shade the glory of the Lord Jesus, and denied the finished work of atonement on the cross. From Hebrews and Revelation they thought they discovered that the sanctuary was in heaven—the glorious counterpart of the typical sanctuary on earth.