On October 22nd, 1844, the religious cult of Millerites was very disappointed when Jesus did NOT return…after he already failed to return on the three previously-agreed-upon dates.

I mean, how dare the Lamb of God not appear when William Miller wanted him to? What was he off doing instead? At least the Millerite leaders were able to flawlessly pivot after all of their predictions were stricken down.

We wont get into exactly how William Miller came up with his magical dates (mostly because all of his reasoning was…well…entirely incorrect). But lets just say that Miller read the Bible a few times, assumed that the phrases “2,300 days” actually meant “2,300 years” and then did some other silly calculations and whatnot in order to predict when Jesus would make his grand return to Earth.

This guy is really good at remembering dates

So after all of these calculations, Miller predicted it would be October 22nd, 1844, right?

Wrong.

Millers first guess was that the second coming would occur “sometime between March 21, 1843 and March 21, 1844.”

Alas, March 21st of 1844 passed without incident.

So all of his followers abandoned him, right?

Wrong again.

Surprisingly, most Millerites stuck with the fraud and allowed him to recalculate.

Miller quickly pivoted and gave the new, REAL date of the Second Coming as April 18, 1844. Alas….that date also passed without incident.

No joke, this is an image of the calculations that Miller performed to reach his dates…

Now having disappointed his followers twice, Miller was ramping up for his third and final Great Disappointment. Having lost some credibility, Miller had to bring in Samuel Snow to do more calculations and magical math. Together they landed on October 22nd, 1844.

And thus, as that fateful date passed by without much ado, the Millerites experienced what is known as the Great Disappointment.

Unfortunately many of Millers followers had given up most of their physical possessions in preparation for the Coming, so they weren’t too pleased to still be on Earth when the 23rd came around. The public as a whole was also pissed off at Miller, since his crew had stoked fear and spread lies for years and years.

So did all of the Millerites abandon these absurb teachings immediately?

Nope!

Most of them just altered their beliefs slightly. The most famous of which are the Seventh-Day Adventists who essentially believe that the October 22nd date was the beginning of Jesus PREPARING for the Second Coming.

How long he’ll prepare? No one knows.

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