As he read he saw that Scripture taught the Second Advent of Christ. He, however, fell into the error of trying to fix a date when that event would occur, ignoring such plain passages of Scripture as—" But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but My Father only." (Matt. 24:3636But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only. (Matthew 24:36)).
Yet Mrs. White says: " Angels of heaven were guiding his mind and opening the Scriptures to his understanding." So that although the Bible distinctly states that the angels do not know the day when Christ shall come, Mrs. White says they were guiding Miller's mind. Further, there is a distinct slight upon the Holy Spirit, who, Scripture states, is the believer's Teacher and the Power by which his mind is guided into the knowledge of the truth.
Miller, desirous of fixing upon the time of the Second Advent, seized upon Dan. 8:14,14And he said unto me, Unto two thousand and three hundred days; then shall the sanctuary be cleansed. (Daniel 8:14) as "The prophecy which seemed most clearly to reveal the time of the Second Advent."
Well might Mrs. White say, " seemed.... to reveal." Miller, she tells us, adopted the then generally accepted idea that cleansing of the sanctuary meant the purification of the earth by fire.
Having fixed the period as 2,300 days, which without proof or reason he changed into 2,300 years, all he wanted, in order to fix the date of the Second Advent was the starting-point of this period. Had he honestly read Dan. 8:13, 14,13Then I heard one saint speaking, and another saint said unto that certain saint which spake, How long shall be the vision concerning the daily sacrifice, and the transgression of desolation, to give both the sanctuary and the host to be trodden under foot? 14And he said unto me, Unto two thousand and three hundred days; then shall the sanctuary be cleansed. (Daniel 8:13‑14) he would have found the starting point, viz., when the sanctuary of Israel began to be trodden under foot. Moreover, in the latter part of this Chapter, Gabriel explained the vision to Daniel. The ram with two horns illustrated the dual kingdom of Media and Persia. The rough goat, the Grecian kingdom, which, when broken up, was divided into four parts, as Dan. 8:2222Now that being broken, whereas four stood up for it, four kingdoms shall stand up out of the nation, but not in his power. (Daniel 8:22) explains. Then the King, who is to tread the sanctuary under foot for 2,300 days, is said to come "in the latter time of their kingdom," which has been literally fulfilled by the Seleucidae, the Asiatic successors of Alexander the Great, particularly by Antiochus Epiphanes. The angel here enlightened Daniel's mind. There was no Scripture then to guide him to it, therefore God gave him a vision. Nor was the Holy Ghost then present, consequent on the glory of the risen Christ, to be the believer's Teacher and Guide. Now with both Scripture and the Holy Spirit to guide, Miller rejected the plain, God-given, recorded interpretation of the angel, with the natural result: a humiliating blunder fraught with the direst consequences.
In Chapter 8 he read the account of the Sanctuary being trodden under foot. In Chapter 9 he found the account of Daniel's vision of seventy weeks. The former vision occurred in the third year of Belshazzar, the latter in the first year of King Darius, yet he treated them as if Daniel had dreamed them on two successive nights.
Mrs. White says at this point: "There was only one point in the vision of Chapter eight which had been left unexplained, namely, that relating to time-the period of the 2,300 days, therefore the angel, in resuming his explanation, dwells exclusively upon the subject of time."
Will the careful reader mark this? The vision of Dan. 8 begins with the Sanctuary being trodden under foot and fierce persecution and slaughter of the Jews; on the contrary, the vision of Dan. 9 begins with the command to restore and rebuild Jerusalem, and the Jews being in favor with the King of Babylon. Yet in spite of such plain proofs that the two beginnings cannot coincide, Miller made out they did. Why? He had got his period, but not its start. The vision of seventy weeks for him furnished the start.