The Disappointment

Notes

1. "In common with the rest of the Christian world, Adventists then held that the earth, or some portion of it, was the sanctuary. They understood that the cleansing of the sanctuary was the purification of the earth by the fires of the last great day, and that this would take place at the second advent. Hence the conclusion that Christ would return to the earth in 1844."—Great Controversy, page 409.

2. "Great Controversy," pp. 403, 404, says: "Some who had been very confident were so deeply wounded in their pride that they felt like fleeing from the world. Like Jonah, they complained of God, and chose death rather than life. . . . The earnest, sincere believers had given up all for Christ. . . . With intense desire they had prayed, 'Come, Lord Jesus, and come quickly.' But He had not come; and now to take up again the heavy burden of life's cares and perplexities, and to endure the taunts and sneers of a scoffing world, was a terrible trial of faith and patience." Another writer says: "A mistake had been made which apparently involved the integrity of the little book they had been eating. What had been so like honey to their taste suddenly became like wormwood and gall. But those who had the patience to endure, so to speak, the digesting process, soon learned that the mistake was only in the event, not in the time, and that what the angel had given them was not unto death, but to their nourishment and support."

3. They must distinguish between the precious and the vile, between truth and error, and put a difference between the holy and the profane. Eze. 22:26; 44:23, 24. "Be ye clean that bear the vessels of the Lord." The sanctuary must be cleansed. Then "shalt thou be as My mouth." Jer. 15:19. And that is the work of the third angel's message.