Dedication - thank you for an accurate, reasonable, and rational post.

Well, if you do this, you just may be well ahead of many of us here. Well said.

Still trying to set times?

The thousand year statement happens AFTER the second coming, it does not pertain to time allotted to earth events.

The testimonies declare:

"Our position has been one of waiting and watching, with no time-proclamation to intervene between the close of the prophetic periods in 1844 and the time of our Lord's coming.--10MR 270 (1888).

So His Child, what's the latest dates now? You should always have one date a few months away, then a backup date about a year. That way it keeps the interest up and allows a way out.


I don't know if you have any truth or not. It's too hard weeding through the errors. If you start backing up things scripturally, logically, and reasonably, someone may start listening....

That is a great quote if understood correctly. Clarification inserted below from the context of the quote itself

The testimonies not only condemn definite actual dates in time settings, they also warn against approximate time predictions like we've been hearing here -- like; Jesus will come within one or two or three years.

They also warn against setting time periods for probation to close and the latter rain to fall.

The testimonies declare:

"Our position has been one of waiting and watching, with no time-proclamation [do not insert your own qualifications here] to intervene between the close of the prophetic periods in 1844 and the time of our Lord's coming.--10MR 270 (1888).

"No one has a true message fixing the time when Christ is to come or not to come. Be assured that God gives no one authority to say that Christ delays His coming five years, ten years, or twenty years. “Be ye therefore ready also: for the Son of man cometh at an hour when ye think not.”. . . {CTr 343.5}

" You will not be able to say that He will come in one, two, or five years, neither are you to put off His coming by stating that it may not be for ten or twenty years. . . . We are not to know the definite time either for the outpouring of the Holy Spirit or for the coming of Christ.--Review and Herald, March 22, 1892. {Ev 221.1}

"We are not to live upon time excitement. We are not to be engrossed with speculations in regard to the times and the seasons which God has not revealed. Jesus has told His disciples to "watch," but not for a definite time. His followers are to be in the position of those who are listening for the orders of their Captain; they are to watch, wait, pray, and work, as they approach the time for the coming of the Lord; but no one will be able to predict just when that time will come; for "of that day and hour knoweth no man." You will not be able to say that He will come in one, two, or five years, neither are you to put off His coming by stating that it may not be for ten or twenty years. {1SM 189.2}

"We are not of that class who define the exact period of time that shall elapse before the coming of Jesus the second time with power and great glory.
We are not of that class who define the exact period of time that shall elapse before the coming of Jesus the second time with power and great glory. {SpTEd 106.2}


Also, let's not confuse the proclamation of the 2300 prophecy which ended in 1844 in the same category as what's going on now after 1844. That's what she was referring to when she wrote "The world placed all time-proclamation on the same level and called it a delusion, fanaticism and heresy." There were time prophecies leading us to the judgment hour that began in 1844. There are no more time lines between 1844 and the second coming.

Notice as well -- EGW placed E.P.Daniels' vague prediction of Christ coming within five years, as unfounded time setting.


" I understand that Brother [E. P.] Daniels has, as it were, set time, stating that the Lord will come within five years. Now I hope the impression will not go abroad that we are time-setters. Let no such remarks be made. They do no good. Seek not to obtain a revival upon any such grounds, but let due caution be used in every word uttered, that fanatical ones will not seize anything they can get to create an excitement and the Spirit of the Lord be grieved." {LDE 34.4}

The Lord showed me that the message must go, and that it must not be hung on time; for time will never be a test again. I saw that some were getting a false excitement, arising from preaching time, that the third angel's message can stand on its own foundation, and that it needs not time to strengthen it, and that it will go with mighty power, and do its work, and will be cut short in righteousness. {RH, March 22, 1892 par. 8}

The Bible is pretty clear on this point.

I agree, and whether or not Ellen White was referring specifically to just calculating the time of the second coming, the act of calculating events since 1844 does end up being an attempt to do exactly that through a route of reasoning by elimination.

Even if the calculation avoids addressing the date for the second coming, it's still eliminating the possibility of Jesus returning during that stretch of time by saying that we still had a certain number of one kind of leader or another to go through, or that it wasn't yet a certain phase of a time cycle. If every other possibility is eliminated, then we're left with the time to expect the second coming just as if it had been directly calculated.

These methods then work to invalidate what Ellen White said about the possibility of Jesus returning back in her time if people had just been ready.

Suppose there had still been a long list of required signs and decades worth of many leaders to fulfill. It wouldn't have actually been possible for Jesus to have returned in the 1800s without just ignoring a huge amount of prophecy and telling us to never mind all of that. Especially so if there were specific time prophecies that stretch well into the 20th and 21st centuries.

We are supposed to be always waiting and watching.

I disagree with how His Child is using things and what he's trying to make things say, and I agree for the most part of what you are saying, but I'm not sure of your last sentence there. Did Ellen White say anything like that which does not relate to the 2300 prophecy?