William Miller

Reference

Picture; [Wikipedia];

Excerpts from Books and Wikipedia

William Miller was an American Baptist preacher. "After his proclamation of the Second Coming did not occur as expected in the 1840s, new heirs of his message emerged, including the Advent Christians (1860), the Seventh-day Adventists (1863) and other Adventist movements. . . . Basing his calculations principally on Daniel 8:14: 'Unto two thousand and three hundred days; then shall the sanctuary be cleansed', Miller assumed that the cleansing of the sanctuary represented the Earth's purification by fire at Christ's Second Coming. Then, using the interpretive principle of the 'day-year principle', Miller (and others) interpreted a day in prophecy to read not as a 24-hour period, but rather as a calendar year. Further, Miller became convinced that the 2,300 day period started in 457 BC with the decree to rebuild Jerusalem by Artaxerxes I of Persia. Simple calculation then revealed that this period would end in 1843. Miller records, ""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." [Wikipedia] "Millenarians warned of the imminent Second Coming of Christ. The evangelical movement prompted national soul-searching and argument over the country's goals and the best means to achieve them." [Howe: What Hath God Wrought, p. 6] See the event: "William Miller and his followers expect the return of Christ."