"We were hoping that it was He who was going to redeem Israel." (Luke 24:21, NASB)
It is helpful to remind ourselves that the tragedy of October 22, 1844, was not the first great disappointment experienced by God's children. Think of the sadness when Jesus died on the cross!
On the Sunday immediately after the cross, unaware that Jesus had risen from the dead, two of His followers were walking into the country when Jesus caught up with them. Not expecting ever to see Him again, they failed to recognize Him and talked gloomily about the crucifixion. Cleopas, one of the travelers, sighed mournfully, "We were hoping that it was He who was going to redeem Israel."
Two thousand years and thousands of miles removed from that time and place, we still catch the sob in the sad traveler's voice.
And his were not the only tears.
Imagine a young couple a few days earlier bringing their stricken child to the Passover. Everything depended on keeping him alive a few more weary miles, a few more anxious hours, till they could be in Jerusalem in the presence of the great Healer, who for a number of years had regularly attended the feast. And they made it through those tiring miles, those dreadful hours. They arrived with the child still alive, only to learn that the Healer Himself was dead, Thousands shared their sorrow. "On every side the cry was heard, We want Christ the Healer! ... But the people were driven back from the temple courts, and soldiers were stationed at the gates. ... The sufferers ... sank under their disappointment. ... Physicians were consulted in vain; there was no skill like that of Him who lay in Joseph's tomb." [1]
"We were hoping that it was He who was going to redeem Israel." Here, if you will, was "Great Disappointment !" Now, the sorrow of crucifixion weekend was heightened by the fact that, only a few days prior to His death, Jesus staged the exciting celebration known as the triumphal entry.
We must not overlook this. It helps a great deal in our understanding of the Millerite disappointment.
On the Sunday before His death Jesus sent two of his disciples to find a donkey, untie it, and bring it to Him. When they looked surprised, Jesus told them to tell the owners, "The Lord needs it." So the disciples fetched the donkey, and Jesus rode Into Jerusalem on it--in fulfillment, the Bible says, of the Old Testament prophecy: "Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion; shout, O daughter of Jerusalem : behold, thy King cometh unto thee : he is Just, and having salvation; lowly, and riding upon an ass, and upon a colt the foal of an ass." (Zechariah 9:9)
As the people watched Him ride a donkey in fulfillment of Zechariah's prophecy, they became certain that He was about to set Himself up as an earthly king, drive the hated Romans off their backs, and make Jerusalem, not Rome, the capital of the world. Plainly, Christ took the initiative in an enterprise that left the people with a very wrong impression of Him, one which in consequence was followed by a tragic disappointment.
How could Christ, the way, the truth, and the life, be party to so calculated a deception? How could the Prince of Peace so purposefully set the stage for the heartbreak that followed?
Or are these questions misleading? Was Jesus "He who was going to redeem Israel"? Indeed! He was the Saviour of the whole world! Was Jesus, as He sat on the donkey, really a king? He was King of the universe!
Then when Jesus led the people to look on Him as a king, did He deceive them? Of course not!
Then what made them so confused about Him and, a little later, so disappointed in Him? It was their own misunderstanding.
To make it perfectly clear in our minds that Jesus was not responsible for their misapprehension and subsequent disappointment, let us ask another question: Did Jesus ever warn His followers that He was not the kind of king they thought He was and that He was going to be killed? The answer is that about nine months before the crucifixion "began Jesus to shew unto his disciples, how that he must go unto Jerusalem, and suffer many things of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and be raised again the third day." (Matthew 16:21)
Christ could scarcely have been more explicit! Yet heaven did even more than this to let people know the truth in advance. Jesus was introduced by John the Baptist at the first moment of His official ministry as the Lamb of God. (John 1:29) Everyone knew that in the sanctuary service lambs of God died as sacrifices every day of the year and annually at the Passover. Daniel 9, written 500 years before Christ's birth, revealed that in the "midst" of the last week of the seventy weeks of years, Messiah would be "cutoff." Isaiah 53, written some 700 years before the birth of Christ, foretold that God's Servant would, like a lamb, be "led to the slaughter." (Verse 7, RSV) Genesis 3:15, the very first promise of a Saviour, warned that the enemy would "bruise" the woman's seed. Thus for 4000 years heaven did its best to prevent the people's misapprehension and consequent disappointment!
But why did Jesus stage the triumphal entry at all? Why didn't He stay at His carpentry bench in Nazareth and avoid all occasion for misunderstanding?
You know the reason! The time had come for Him to perform the most significant act in all history. He was to die on the cross as atonement for the sins of the world, to make forgiveness possible for every human being on earth, and to restore confidence in God's character and government throughout the starry universe. On that Sunday morning of the triumphal entry Jesus knew that in the midst of the seventieth and final prophetic week of years foretold in Daniel 9--specifically, on that upcoming Passover Friday at the very hour, three o'clock in the afternoon, when the Passover lamb was slain--He, the Creator of heaven and earth, was to expire on a cross outside the walls of old Jerusalem. He knew that by this act He would demonstrate God's love unmistakably, opening the way for man's redemption and making eternal life possible for every guilty sinner. "God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life."
But what use would it be to demonstrate such love if no one ever heard about it? Such goodness demanded the widest publicity so that guilty man might learn, and believe, and live.
This is why Jesus staged the triumphal entry. He did all that He could to keep people from misunderstanding. But when they persisted in their misapprehension, He went ahead anyway, knowing that in time many would come to understand clearly who otherwise would never have cared.
But before we leave "Triumphal Entry I," we must ask ourselves two more questions about it and about "Great Disappointment" that followed it. On the Emmaus road, to whom and by what means did Jesus explain what had happened?
Can you name the two disciples who went walking into the country? You know Cleopas. You don't remember the other person's name? No, the Bible doesn't give it.
After the great disappointment of crucifixion weekend, Jesus made the most significant revelation of Himself, the most helpful explanation of what had gone wrong, not to the leading disciples, Peter, James, and John, but to two otherwise unknown, dedicated Christian laymen.
And in what way did Jesus explain the disappointment to them? "He said unto them, O fools, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken: ought not Christ to have suffered these things, and to enter into his glory? And beginning at Moses? and all the prophets, he expounded unto them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself." (Luke 24:25-27)
There it is. Apparently He reminded them of such Bible verses as we mentioned a moment ago--Genesis 3:15, about the serpent's bruising the woman's seed; Isaiah 53, about the lamb's being led to the slaughter in the ceremonial sanctuary system; Daniel 9, about Messiah's being "cut off"; and no doubt many other passages. As He did this, Cleopas and his companion must have exclaimed, "We've heard that a hundred times! Why couldn't we see it before?"
And their hearts burned within them as He opened unto them the Scriptures.
A little later, after they recognized Jesus, He left them. Then how they raced back to Jerusalem, stumbling up the rocky trail in the light of the Passover moon, rushing to tell the leading disciples what they had learned and Whom they had seen!
The leaders carefully restudied the Scriptures for themselves. Soon, empowered by the grace of God, they founded a great new religious movement, the Christian church.
Triumphal Entry II
So much for "Triumphal Entry I" and its sequel, "Great Disappointment I." But just as we may, if you will, call the sorrow of October 22, 1844, "Great Disappointment II," so we may think of the great Second Advent awakening as "Triumphal Entry II."
As we shall see in subsequent chapters, on October 22, 1844, Jesus commenced a new work of atonement as essential in its way as the atonement at Calvary. In the orderliness of God's grace, just as Jesus died on the cross at three pm on Passover Friday near the end of the seventy weeks, so Jesus began this other ministry of atonement on the ceremonial Day of Atonement on Tuesday, October 22, 1844, at the close of the 2300 year-days of Daniel 8:14. And just as on the first occasion He was nailed to a cross outside old Jerusalem, so this time He took His stand at a specific location beside the tables of the law in the most holy place of the heavenly sanctuary in New Jerusalem. This new ministry of atonement is, as we shall see, an exquisitely gracious process sometimes called the "blotting out of sins," a ministry designed to remove all sin from the hearts and lives and records of Christ's dear believers and to prepare them for eternal unity, eternal "at-one-ment" with the Father.
So great and gracious an act of atonement demanded the widest publicity, so that again men could learn, and believe, and live.
And wide publicity it received, as we have seen, in both the Old World and the New.
But how could God call Miller and so many others to preach a message that wasn't true?
We have seen that Miller's message was very nearly true. On the literalness of the second coming, the kind of preparation needed, the vital importance of winning souls, and the calculation of the 2300 days, he was far more right than his contemporaries.
He was wrong only in thinking that the sanctuary to be cleansed in Daniel 8:14 was on earth, and in concluding that Christ's cleansing of the sanctuary would be fulfilled in His coming to earth to cleanse the world and judge the church as King of kings.
He made no greater mistake than the disciples made when they thought that the prophecies foretold Christ's coming as a king in the year AD 31.
But if this is so, why didn't Jesus clarify the issue with Miller and make sure he had his message straight?
The answer is that He tried, just as He tried with His own disciples before the first triumphal entry. Phrases in Daniel 7, Luke 12, Hebrews 8 and 9, Revelation 10, and Revelation 11, rightly understood, would have prevented the disappointment of 1844, just as other phrases in the Old Testament could have saved the disciples from their disappointment.
Also, there is an amazing analogy to Jesus' warning His disciples that He would suffer many things, die, and rise again on the third day. In the early 1840s He selected two Millerites, William Foy (a light-skinned black minister) and Hazen Foss, and in prophetic vision warned them that time would continue beyond October 22, 1844! [2] Once again the misapprehension was in the minds of the people--not in the will of God.
But if in these particulars Miller was wrong, why did God have him preach at all? Why didn't He leave him sowing grain and milking cows for the rest of his life? After all, that was the way Miller wanted it. Then there would have been no great disappointment.
We just gave the reason. Jesus was about to enter upon a great process of atonement equal in grace and effectiveness to His death on the cross--and the world needed to know about it so that men could learn and believe and live.
And to whom, where, and how did Jesus first explain the misunderstanding after the disappointment?
On October 23, the very morning following October 22, an active but almost unknown Adventist, Hiram Edson by name, was taking a shortcut across a cornfield in the company of a friend, when all at once there flashed into his mind the true, consistent explanation of the key phrases in Daniel 7, Luke 12, Revelation 10 and 11, and (a few hours later, back home) in Hebrews 8 and 9, which the Millerites had thus far overlooked or mistaken.
In other words, Jesus opened to him out of the Scriptures the things concerning Himself. Hiram Edson was Adventism's "cornfield Cleopas," traveling into the country with a companion as Christ drew near!
Edson's new insight was studied and restudied. Out of it arose, in due course, a great new worldwide religious movement, the Seventh-day Adventist Church.
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