Podcast Transcript: Click HERE to listen to full episode.
Today, October 22nd, 2019 marks an important anniversary for Adventists all around the world. 175 years ago, William Miller, along with thousands of other early Adventists around the world, believed Jesus was going to come. And yet, of course, he didn’t come. Thus, the day has somewhat infamously become known as the Great Disappointment
I had the personal privilege to attend the anniversary camp meeting style gathering at William Millers farm this past Sabbath near the town of Whitehall, NY just a few short miles from the border of Vermont, where the story was retold about how he first began studying the book of Daniel and eventually came to 2300-day prophecy in chapter 8 and calculated the time when that prophecy would end – sometime around the year 1843 or 1844.
Of course, at first, he was unwilling to tell the world what he had discovered, but after a series of providential events he committed his life to the Lord in the maple groves I walked through just a few yards from his home and went out and began preaching the soon coming of Jesus. Everyone who accepted this belief in a soon coming savior eventually became known as Adventists. Thus, his farm is literally the birthplace of Adventism and eventually Seventh-day Adventism in the world.
But why would Adventist’s want to commemorate something they obviously got wrong? Well – because it became that catalyst by which we reexamined the scriptures, and through that process it was discovered that the problem wasn’t with the date – but the event. Instead of Jesus coming to the earth to Cleanse the Sanctuary after 2300 days – instead we realized it was the cleansing of the sanctuary in heaven that the prophecy was referring to – opening up to us a system of truth that eventually became the pillar – with Jesus at the center – of the world-wide Advent movement we find today.
Now on this podcast we have talked about the Judgment on many occasions and as we work our way through the book of Daniel we will surely talk about it again as we study the 2300-day prophecy in Daniel chapter 8 in more detail – but for now I wanted to try to flesh out the broader implications of the Judgment to make it more practical for us today.
To do that I invited my friend, attorney, and colleague in ministry Steve Allred on for a discussion with me about the topic. Therefore, this episode is not a monologue and neither is it an interview per se. Rather I think you will see that it is a deep dive discussion into the implications of living in the hour of Judgement particularly as it relates to how we do justice today in light of his coming again.
I hope you enjoy the episode as much as I did.
So without further ado let’s get right into it.