October 22, 1844 is an important part of Seventh-day Adventist eschatological doctrine, since it was first the date prophesied for the second coming of Christ and later the beginning of an event of great importance for them: “the investigative judgment.” The key to that date is supposedly hidden in chapter 8 of Daniel:
Daniel 8
1 In the third year of the reign of King Belshazzar, I, Daniel, had a vision after the one I had had previously.
2 I looked during the vision and saw myself in Susa, the fortress that is in the province of Elam; in the vision I looked, and I was at the gate of the Ulai.
3 I lifted up my eyes to see, and saw a ram standing before the gate. It had two horns; both horns were high, but one was higher than the other, and the higher one had come up last.
4 I saw the ram charging toward the west, the north, and the south. No beast could withstand it; nothing could escape its power. It did as it pleased, and so it became great.
5 While I was pondering, behold, a he-goat came from the west, crossing the whole earth without touching the ground; this he-goat had a “magnificent” horn between its eyes.
6 It came to the ram with two horns that I had seen standing before the gate and ran toward it with all the fury of its strength.
7 I saw how it reached the ram, enraged against it; it struck the ram and broke its two horns, while the ram had no strength to resist it; it cast it to the ground and trampled it; there was no one to deliver the ram from its hand.
8 The he-goat became very great, but when it was at the height of its power, the great horn was broken, and in its place four “magnificent” horns came up toward the four winds of heaven.
9 From one of them came forth a little horn, which grew exceedingly toward the south, toward the east, and toward the Glorious Land.
10 It grew up to the host of heaven, cast down to the earth part of the host and of the stars, and trampled them under its feet.
11 It even reached the Prince of the host, abolished the continual sacrifice, and shook the foundation of his sanctuary
12 and the host; in place of the sacrifice it set iniquity and cast truth to the ground; thus it acted and prospered.
13 Then I heard a holy one speaking, and another holy one said to the one who spoke: “How long shall the vision be: the continual sacrifice, the desolating iniquity, the sanctuary and the host trampled underfoot?”
14 He answered: “Until two thousand three hundred evenings and mornings; then the sanctuary shall be vindicated.”
15 While I, Daniel, was watching this vision and trying to understand it, I suddenly saw before me one with the appearance of a man,
16 and I heard a man’s voice over the Ulai, crying out: “Gabriel, explain the vision to this man.”
17 He came near the place where I was, and when he arrived I was terrified and fell on my face. He said to me: “Son of man, understand: the vision refers to the time of the End.”
18 While he was speaking to me, I fainted, face to the ground. He touched me and made me stand where I was.
19 Then he said: “See, I am going to show you what will happen at the end of the Wrath, for the End is fixed.
20 The ram that you saw, with its two horns, is the kings of Media and Persia.
21 The shaggy he-goat is the king of Javan; the great horn between its eyes is the first king.
22 The broken horn and the four horns that came up in its place are four kingdoms arising from his nation, but they shall not have his strength.
23 “And at the end of their kingdom, when sins have reached their fullness, a king shall arise, insolent and skilled in deceit.
24 His power shall become mighty, but not by his own power; he shall devise unheard-of things, prosper in his undertakings, and destroy the mighty and the people of the saints.
25 And by his skill, deceit shall prosper in his hands. He shall exalt himself in his heart and destroy many by surprise. He shall rise up against the Prince of Princes, but, without any human hand intervening, he shall be broken.
26 The vision of the evenings and mornings that has been told is true; but you, keep the vision secret, for it concerns many days yet to come.”
27 I, Daniel, fainted and was sick for some days. Then I rose and went about the king’s business. I remained perplexed by the vision, which could not be understood.
Their interpretation begins specifically from verses 13 and 14, where it is said that the time during which the sanctuary would be trampled underfoot would be “two thousand three hundred evenings and mornings,” which for them symbolize 2300 years counted from the moment when the decree to rebuild Jerusalem was issued, to which they assign the year 457 B.C. Thus, counting 2300 years after 457 B.C., they arrive at the year 1844.
Now, someone may ask: on what grounds do they conclude that these 2300 years begin from the decree to rebuild Jerusalem? The reason is that they suppose that, since Daniel chapter 8 does not specify the starting point of the 2300 years, the angel Gabriel explains it later in chapter 9, verse 25: “Know and understand: from the moment the order went forth to rebuild Jerusalem until an Anointed Prince, seven weeks and sixty-two weeks; square and moat shall be rebuilt, but in the distress of the times”
Since the parousia did not occur in 1844 and defections began in what became known as “the Great Disappointment,” Ellen White made adjustments to the doctrine preached by the founder of the movement[1] and explained that he had not been entirely wrong, but that what happened was that on that day the investigative judgment began, in which God will examine the lives of all those who believed in Jesus in order to judge them[2].
Problems with Adventist eisegesis
Adventist eisegesis has many problems, among which the following could be mentioned:
1) It is an interpretation out of context. The prophecy makes no reference to the second advent of the Messiah, nor is any investigative judgment mentioned. They have understood this because verse 17 mentions the “time of the End” in which the sanctuary will be “vindicated,” but verse 19 clarifies that it refers to the “end of the wrath,” an expression that need not be understood in that way, as will be seen later.
2) The fact that in some biblical texts days symbolize years[3] does not mean that this criterion must necessarily be applied to every prophecy. It often happens that when the word days is used allegorically, the text itself indicates how it should be understood.
They take the day-for-a-year principle from texts such as Numbers 14:34 or Ezekiel 4:6, in a completely different context.
Numbers 14:34 says:
“According to the number of the days you spent exploring the land, forty days, you shall bear your sins forty years, a year for each day. Thus you shall know what it is to turn away from me.”
There God punishes the people with one year for each day of disobedience, but from that one cannot derive a principle that in every prophetic text the equivalence of one day for one year must be assumed.
The same happens in Ezekiel 4:6: the prophet will lie on his right side for forty days in penance for the sins of the people during forty years.
“…When you have finished these, you shall lie again on your right side, and you shall bear the guilt of the house of Judah for forty days. I have assigned you a day for a year.”
In Daniel 8:14, on the contrary, there is an absolute absence of any mention that the expression “evenings and mornings” should be understood as years, an expression that denotes the succession of days and nights.
So here we have two Adventist assumptions: that the expression evenings and mornings is equivalent to days, and that one must understand that there a day symbolically means a year.
3) Nor is there anything in Daniel chapter 8 indicating that those 2300 days (which they understand as years) must be counted from the decree to rebuild Jerusalem. In Daniel chapter 9, the angel explains a different prophecy, and there is no reason to assume that both have the same starting point.
4) The explanation that the angel Gabriel himself gives Daniel in verses 20 to 25 is quite clear and does not agree with Adventist eisegesis, but rather with the traditional exegesis of the Church throughout history.
Orthodox and traditional exegesis
A correct explanation of Daniel chapter 8 is given by Saint Jerome, and we could summarize it as follows:
– The ram with two horns, one higher than the other (verse 3), represents the Persian empire: an empire that no people could withstand, and which Daniel himself identifies in his explanation of the prophecy[4].
“[Daniel] gives the name ram to Darius, the great-uncle of Cyrus, who succeeded his father Astyages on the throne of the Medes. On the other hand, the horn higher than the other and which would have sprung up later represents Cyrus himself, king of the Medes and Persians after Astyages, his maternal grandfather, together with his maternal uncle Darius, who in Greek is called Cyaxares.” [5]
– The he-goat with a great horn represents Alexander the Great: who obtains total victory over the Persian empire, first defeating King Darius Codomannus and later conquering Egypt and defeating the remnants of the Persian empire at Arbela in 331 B.C.
“This he-goat, which came from the west and which, because of the great speed with which it came, seemed not to touch the ground, is Alexander, king of the Greeks, who, after destroying Thebes, took up arms against the Persians and, after a first battle on the bank of the Granicus River, defeated Darius’s generals, attacked the ram itself directly and broke its two horns, the Medes and the Persians, threw it at his feet and subjected the two horns to his power.”[6]
– The death of Alexander the Great is represented by the breaking of the great horn: as a result of which four kingdoms arise, formed from the dismemberment of his empire, symbolized by the four horns that arise after the great horn is broken:
“The great horn is the first king, Alexander, and after he died in Babylon at the age of thirty-two, four generals arose in his place and divided the empire among themselves: Ptolemy, son of Lagus, obtained Egypt; Philip of Macedon, also known as Arrhidaeus, brother of Alexander, Syria and Babylon; and Seleucus Nicator, all the kingdoms of the East; in Asia Antigonus reigned; but they did not have his strength (Daniel 8:22), it says: none, indeed, could equal the greatness of Alexander.”
– The little horn, which abolished the continual sacrifice, symbolizes Antiochus Epiphanes:
“And at the end of the years, in Syria, there shall arise a king, insolent and skilled in deceit, Antiochus Epiphanes, son of Seleucus, who also received the name Philopator.
After having been a hostage in Rome and, without the Senate knowing it, having seized the empire by deceit, he confronted Ptolemy Philometor, that is, the south and the Egyptians[7], and then the east[8], those who were preparing uprisings in Persia; finally, he confronted the Jews and, after taking Judea, entered Jerusalem and erected a statue of Olympian Jupiter in the temple of God[9]. And even to the host of heaven – that is, the children of Israel, protected by the angels – his magnificence reached[10], so that he subjected many saints to idolatry and crushed them under his feet as if they were stars of heaven[11], and all this happened in such a way that he subjected to his empire the south and the east, that is, Egypt and Persia.
And what it says: And he equaled himself in greatness even with the chief of the host[12], means that he rose up against God and persecuted his saints, and abolished the continual sacrifice offered in the morning and in the evening, and defiled and shook the foundation of the sanctuary[13]. And he did not achieve this thanks to his courage, but because of the sins of the people, and it happened that truth fell to the ground[14] and, while the worship of idols flourished, reverence for God disappeared”[15]
– The two thousand three hundred evenings and mornings correspond to the time during which the profanation of the temple would last: a time during which the sacrifices in the temple had also been abolished:
How long shall the vision be trampled underfoot, the continual sacrifice, the sin of the desolation that has been committed, the sanctuary and the host? [16]. One angel asks another angel how long, by the judgment of God and under the reign of Antiochus in Syria, the temple is to remain desolate and how long the statue of Jupiter is to remain in the temple of God.
And he answered: Until two thousand three hundred evenings and mornings; afterward the sanctuary shall be purified[17]. Let us read the books of the Maccabees and the history of Josephus, and there we shall find it written that one hundred and forty-three years after Seleucus, who was the first king of Syria after Alexander, Antiochus entered Jerusalem and devastated it completely, and that three years later he returned and placed in the temple a statue of Jupiter; and until Judas Maccabaeus, that is, until one hundred and forty-eight years later, during the six years that the devastation of Jerusalem lasted and the three in which the temple was defiled, two thousand three hundred days and three months elapsed, after which the temple was purified”[18]
“And what he adds: The sanctuary shall be purified, refers to the time of Judas Maccabaeus, who, with the support of his brothers and relatives from the village of Modin and many other Jews, defeated Antiochus’s generals near Emmaus, now known by the name Nicopolis[19]; when Antiochus heard this – he who had risen up against “the prince of princes,” that is, “the Lord of the mighty” and “king of kings”[20] – while he was in Elymais, a province of Persia, intending to plunder the temple of Diana, which contained valuable treasures, he perished there without violence, that is, he died of sickness and sorrow[21].
An explanation is not only much more rational, but has been fully fulfilled and can be verified by history.
Adventist doctrine compromised
Not so with Adventist interpretations, based on assumptions, eisegesis, and texts taken out of context, which were accepted by believers because the “prophetess” Ellen White supported them with “private revelations” to which she attributed divine origin.
The investigative judgment was nothing other than the device to which Adventists resorted in order to justify their Great Disappointment and avoid acknowledging their error; but it is now an obsolete device, one that becomes more difficult to sustain every day, since even among themselves they are beginning to ask how it is possible that this judgment, which is mentioned nowhere in Scripture, has lasted 167 years and counting, for an omniscient God who knows all things. Some are satisfied with the excuse their leaders give them: God delays because he is merciful and wants to give time for conversion.
Author: José Miguel Arráiz
NOTES
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[1] William Miller
[2] In the Bible there are references to the particular judgment of each believer after death (Hebrews 9:27) and to the final judgment (Matthew 24:30-31; Rev. 20:11-14). There is no mention whatsoever of any “investigative” judgment.
[3] Numbers 14:34; Ezekiel 4:6
[4] Daniel 8:20
[5] Complete Works of Saint Jerome, Bilingual Edition, Volume Vb, Biblioteca de Autores Cristianos 662, Madrid 2006, p. 644
[6] Ibid. p. 644-645
[7] 1 Maccabees 1:19-20
[8] Daniel 8:9
[9] 1 Maccabees 1:21-28; 43-57; 2 Maccabees 5:11-26; 6:1-7
[10] Daniel 8:10
[11] 1 Maccabees 1:30-42; 58-67; 2 Maccabees 5:24-27; 6:8-7:42;
[12] Daniel 8:11
[13] Passage of disputed interpretation. Perhaps it alludes to the sacrilegious events that took place on December 25 of the year 167 B.C. Cf. C. G. OZANE, “Three textual problems in Dan 8,12; 9,26; 11,18”: JthSt 16 (1965), p. 445-448
[14] Daniel 8:12
[15] Complete Works of Saint Jerome, Bilingual Edition, Volume Vb, Biblioteca de Autores Cristianos 662, Madrid 2006, p. 645
[16] Daniel 8:14
[17] Ibid.
[18] Complete Works of Saint Jerome, Bilingual Edition, Volume Vb, Biblioteca de Autores Cristianos 662, Madrid 2006, p. 647
[19] 1 Maccabees 4:3-25; 2 Maccabees 8:1-36; Ioseph., Ant. Iud. 12,7,304 (298-312)
[20] Daniel 8:25;11:36
[21] Daniel 8:25; 1 Maccabees 6:9-16; 2 Maccabees 9:5-10 and 28; Ioseph., Ant. Iud 12,9,1 (354-358)
