http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Miller_(preacher)
William Miller (February 15, 1782 -- December 20, 1849) was an American Baptist preacher, whose followers have been termed Millerites. He is credited with the beginning of the Adventism movement of the 1830s and 1840s in North America. Among his direct spiritual heirs are several major religious denominations, including Seventh-day Adventists and Advent Christians. Later movements found inspiration in Miller's emphasis on Bible prophecy.
Military service
At the outbreak of the War of 1812, Miller raised a company of local men and traveled to Burlington, Vermont. He transferred to the 30th Infantry Regiment in the regular army of the United States with the rank of lieutenant. Miller spent most of the war working as a recruiter and on February 1, 1814, he was promoted to captain. He saw his first action at the Battle of Plattsburgh, where vastly outnumbered American forces overcame the British. "The fort I was in was exposed to every shot. Bombs, rockets, and shrapnel shells fell as thick as hailstones", he said. One of these many shots had exploded two feet from him, wounding three of his men and killing another, but Miller survived without a scratch. Miller came to view the outcome of this battle as miraculous, and therefore at odds with his deistic view of a distant God far removed from human affairs. He later wrote, "It seemed to me that the Supreme Being must have watched over the interests of this country in an especial manner, and delivered us from the hands of our enemies... So surprising a result, against such odds, did seem to me like the work of a mightier power than man."
After the war, and following his discharge from the army on June 18, 1815, Miller returned to Poultney. Shortly after his return however, he moved with his family back to Low Hampton, where he purchased a farm (now a historic site owned and operated by Adventist Heritage Ministry.
Basing his belief principally on Daniel 8:14: "Unto two thousand and three hundred days; then shall the sanctuary be cleansed", Miller assumed that the cleansing of the sanctuary represented the Earth's purification by fire at Christ's Second Coming. Then, using the interpretive principle of the "day-year principle", Miller, and others, interpreted a day in prophecy to read not as a 24-hour period, but rather as a calendar year. Further, Miller became convinced that the 2,300 day period started in 457 B.C. with the decree to rebuild Jerusalem by Artaxerxes I of Persia. Simple calculation then revealed that this period would end in 1843. Miller records, "I was thus brought... to the solemn conclusion, that in about twenty-five years from that time 1818 all the affairs of our present state would be wound up."[8]
Although Miller was convinced of his calculations by 1818, he continued to study privately until 1823 to ensure the correctness of his interpretation. In September 1822, Miller formally stated his conclusions in a twenty-point document, including article 15: "I believe that the second coming of Jesus Christ is near, even at the door, even within twenty-one years,--on or before 1843.
Miller never gave up his belief in the Second Coming of Christ; he died on December 20, 1849, still convinced that the Second Coming was imminent. Miller is buried near his home in Low Hampton, NY and his home is a registered National Historic Landmark and preserved as a museum: William Miller's Home.
David L. Rowe, published God's Strange Work: William Miller and the End of the World (Eerdmans: 2008), as part of the Library of Religious Biography series. One reviewer described it as a "keen historical and cultural analysis."
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1844 Demo: (William Miller)by pdm222,176 views
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