Christ, he could not but regard them as
the "times before appointed," which God had revealed unto His servants.
"The secret things," says Moses, "belong unto the Lord our God: but those
things which are revealed belong unto us and to our children
forever;"(531) and the Lord declares by the prophet Amos, that He "will do
nothing, but He revealeth His secret unto His servants the prophets."(532)
The students of God's word may, then, confidently expect to find the most
stupendous event to take place in human history clearly pointed out in the
Scriptures of truth.

"As I was fully convinced," says Miller, "that 'all Scripture given by
inspiration of God is profitable;'(533) that it came not at any time by
the will of man, but was written as holy men were moved by the Holy
Ghost,(534) and was written 'for our learning, that we through patience
and comfort of the Scriptures might have hope,'(535) I could but regard
the chronological portions of the Bible as being as much a portion of the
word of God, and as much entitled to our serious consideration, as any
other portion of the Scriptures. I therefore felt that in endeavoring to
comprehend what God had in His mercy seen fit to reveal to us, I had no
right to pass over the prophetic periods."(536)

The prophecy which seemed most clearly to reveal the _time_ of the second
advent was that of Dan. 8:14: "Unto two thousand and three hundred days;
then shall the sanctuary be cleansed." Following his rule of making
Scripture its own interpreter, Miller learned that a day in symbolic
prophecy represents a year;(537) he saw that the period of 2300 prophetic
days, or literal years, would extend far beyond the close of the Jewish
dispensation, hence it could not refer to the sanctuary of that
dispensation. Miller accepted the generally received view, that in the
Christian age the earth is the sanctuary, and he therefore understood that
the cleansing of the sanctuary foretold in Dan. 8:14 represented the
purification of the earth by fire at the second coming of Christ. If,
then, the correct starting-point could be found for the 2300 days, he
concluded that the time of the second advent could be readily ascertained.
Thus would be revealed the time of that great consummation, the time when
the present state, with "all its pride and power, pomp and vanity,
wickedness and oppression, would come to an end;" when the curse would be
"removed from off the earth, death be destroyed, reward be giv