Matthew 24:35-37 Time of the Second Coming

³⁶ But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only.
³⁷ But as the days of Noah were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.
-King James Version (KJV)


   William Miller

The Great Disappointment was a major event in the history of the Millerite movement, a 19th-century American Christian sect that formed out of the Second Great Awakening. Based on his interpretations of the prophecies in the book of Daniel, William Miller, a Baptist preacher, proposed that Jesus Christ would return to the earth during the year 1844. The specific date of October 22, 1844, was preached by Samuel S. Snow. Thousands of followers, some of whom had given away all of their possessions, waited expectantly. When Jesus did not appear, the date became known as the Great Disappointment. Between 1831 and 1844, on the basis of his study of the Bible, and particularly the prophecy of Daniel 8:14—"Unto two thousand and three hundred days; then shall the sanctuary be cleansed"—William Miller, a Baptist preacher, predicted and preached the imminent return of Jesus Christ to the earth. He first assumed that the "cleansing of the sanctuary" represented purification of the earth by fire at Christ's Second Coming. Then, using an interpretive principle known as the day-year principle, Miller, along with others, interpreted a prophetic "day" to read not as a 24-hour period, but rather as a calendar year. Miller became convinced that the 2,300-day period started in 457 B.C. with the decree to rebuild Jerusalem by Artaxerxes I of Persia. Simple calculation revealed that this period would end—and hence Christ would return—in 1843. Despite the urging of his supporters, Miller never announced an exact date for the expected Second Advent. But he did narrow the time period to sometime in the Jewish year 5604, stating: "My principles in brief, are, that Jesus Christ will come again to this earth, cleanse, purify, and take possession of the same, with all the saints, sometime between March 21, 1843 and March 21, 1844." March 21, 1844, passed without incident. After the failure of Miller's expectations for October 22, 1844, the date became known as the Millerites' Great Disappointment. Hiram Edson recorded that "Our fondest hopes and expectations were blasted, and such a spirit of weeping came over us as I never experienced before... We wept, and wept, till the day dawn."[15] Following the Great Disappointment most Millerites simply gave up their beliefs. Some did not and viewpoints and explanations proliferated. Miller initially seems to have thought that Christ's Second Coming was still going to take place—that "the year of expectation was according to prophecy; but... that there might be an error in Bible chronology, which was of human origin, that could throw the date off somewhat and account for the discrepancy."[16] Miller never gave up his belief in the Second Coming of Christ; he died on December 20, 1849, still convinced that the Second Coming was imminent. Miller's legacy includes the Advent Christian Church with 61,000 members, and the Seventh-day Adventist Church with over 18 million members. Both these denominations have a direct connection with the Millerites and the Great Disappointment of 1844. (From Wikipedia)