William Miller

During the late eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries, the Second Advent movement was a potent religious force in both Europe and North America. Its adherents focused on a specific date for the literal fulfilment of Christ’s Second Advent—his return to earth to establish his kingdom. In America, the rising prosperity and growth of social democracy of the Jacksonian era evoked a fervid optimism that for many focussed on utopian visions of America’s millennial glory. Such an environment proved fertile ground for the theories of William Miller, and his followers, the Millerites, who became the largest and most influential early nineteenth-century American premillennial group.
William Miller (1782-1849) was a primarily self-educated farmer living in upstate New York who, while raised a Baptist, became a Deist as a young man. Following his participation in the War of 1812, he first questioned and then rejected his Deist beliefs, undergoing a dramatic conversion experience and rejoining the Baptist Church. In order to respond to the questions of his Deist friends regarding the Bible’s reliability and their accusations that the Bible contradicted itself, Miller began a systematic reading of the Bible from Genesis to Revelation.
While reading, Miller became convinced that the Second Coming of Jesus Christ to the earth would take place, “about the year 1843”. He began to publicly proclaim this Second Advent message in 1831, and soon gathered a large number of followers who accepted his message. Miller came to his conclusions because of the particular way in which he approached Scripture—seeing the Bible as a “feast of reason”—and by using a very systematic approach influenced by Scottish Common Sense Philosophy and based on Historicist principles. Miller approached the Bible “rationally” and a belief in the Bible’s perspicuity, literality, and truthfulness, was at the core of his hermeneutical approach. While he himself refrained from setting an exact date, he eventually accepted the October 22, 1844 date predicted by Samuel S. Snow. When this date passed without Christ’s return, the majority of Millerites gave up their beliefs.
A minority of Millerites maintained their beliefs in the soon return of Jesus Christ and/or the significance of October 22, 1844. These groups developed a variety of explanations for Jesus’ non-appearance on that date and either reinterpreted the event linked to October 22, 1844 or set other dates for Christ’s return. The Seventh-day Adventist denomination that formally formed in 1860 out of these Millerite believers was one such group who developed an alternative scenario allowing them to maintain their belief in the significance of the October 22, 1844 date. The Seventh-day Adventist Church is now a 17 million strong denomination with a worldwide presence that reads and interprets the Bible using an approach that owes a great deal to Miller’s hermeneutic.

Resumo: O cenário teológico do protestantismo no século XXI apresenta uma fragmentação de pensamento, tendência que começa a ser observável no adventismo. Haja visto que o princípio protestante sola Scriptura projetou e proporcionou o desenvolvimento da identidade adventista, sua importância é vital para preservar o adventismo de uma eventual fragmentação. O presente artigo traça preliminarmente a rota desde a hermenêutica protestante do século XVI até a fomentação da identidade adventista no século XIX, surgido após o desapontamento vivenciado pelos participantes do movimento mierita, que anunciava o retorno de Jesus à Terra como cumprimento das profecias. Na sequência, se aborda o modelo canônico de sola Scritura, ferramenta vital para uma abordagem canônica das Escrituras. Essa proposta se apresenta no contexto contemporâneo como uma forma de extrair do cânon bíblico as pressuposições necessárias para interpretar a própria Bíblia, alinhando-se com a tradição que se iniciou no século XVI e que deu origem ao movimento adventista. Ao fim, se reflete sobre a importância de vincular o movimento adventista ao sola Scriptura com o propósito de manter sua identidade.

This research document provides ample and true biblical and historical evidence that the SDA historicism has failed in its attempt to establish itself as a valid and reliable interpretation school for the prophecies in Daniel and Revelation. The issues that have confronted and still confront the SDA historicism are as follows:

Definition and Application Issues

Factual evidence indicates that the SDA definition for historicism is fragmented into various and uneven formulations that as a whole present an inconsistent hermeneutical perspective. This fragmentation has produced uneven prophetic interpretations and incorrect exegetical applications to Daniel and Revelation due the intentional or non-intentional confusion between human historical events and assumed fictional or non-terrestrial events. Some claimed and assumed “events” also appear to have been concocted and reshaped from real event distortion and misinterpretation.

No Divine Origin for Historicism

The SDA theologians have claimed that God himself has originated the historicist hermeneutics and that the Bible has been written from a historicist perspective. Another assumed but undocumented SDA claim is that Daniel, John, Jesus, Paul, and other Bible writers have written their books as historicists. All these claims are assumptions derived from an excessive theological focus on historicism as a method and the attempt to obtain a pre-established deductive conclusion that cannot be substantiated with biblical and historical evidence and fails to demonstrate authentic and reliable “fulfillments” for the SDA assumptive and erroneous time and event predictions.

Selective Historical Attestation

The SDA historicist theologians have used selective, tendentious, and therefore biased historical data to establish false claims for “prophetic fulfillments,” a fallacious and non-scientific approach to data authentication. Based on these deceptive “proofs” the SDA theologians have argued for untenable and irresponsible prophetic interpretation positions on Daniel and Revelation. Such excesses have weakened and discredited the SDA historicism in the Christian World and have made the historicist hermeneutics impossible to consider and accept.

Repeated SDA Prediction Failures

The fact that William Miller, the amateur historicist and preacher has committed multiple interpretation and logical errors while he computed the prophetic time for the assumed Second Coming in 1844 is well known. What is less known and ignored is the fact that the SDA pioneers and also the present SDA theologians and scholars are still dependent on Miller’s hermeneutics and worldview in their Daniel and Revelation interpretations. There were multiple attempts for time setting during the Millerite effervescent period and also multiple “prophetic fulfillment” errors, and these errors have been adopted in the SDA theological circles as true and self-evident “prophetic fulfillments.” This research document has provided the most relevant examples that demonstrate the repeated Adventist failures to provide verification for the speculative hermeneutical approach through solid historical evidence that would indicate indisputable prediction fulfillment and validate the spurious SDA historicist claims.

Historicist Mania and the Gospel

The SDA fixation or rather obsession with the eschatological prophecies in Daniel and Revelation has caused a backlash effect and collateral damage in the Adventist circles. The true fact is that almost all Adventist church members have noticed that most “Net Seminars” or local Evangelistic Meetings appear to have a singular focus, and that is not the Gospel but the strange beasts in Daniel and Revelation. One other item that is promoted and circulated in an excessive manner and on a regular basis in the SDA evangelistic meetings is the one related to the presumed time “landmarks” or the word’s end countdown. The obsessive denominational focus on Daniel and Revelation associated with the excessive preaching from the two prophetic books together with the bombastic and triumphalist emphasis on the “final events” and the “imminent” Second Coming which is considered the “remnant message” or the “present truth” has replaced the Christian Gospel with fantastic and implausible tall tales and has caused almost the complete and inexcusable failure to preach the genuine Gospel, the Bible’s Good News, of salvation, to the truth-starved world.