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Verse:“But about that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. Be on guard! Be alert! You do not know when that time will come.” —Mark 13:32, 33, NIV
Jesus warned against predicting the time of His return.
But many have ignored the warnings and ventured into that kind of speculation. After the October 1844 disappointment, Sunday-keeping Adventists proposed at least twenty-one new dates for the Second Coming.
Even within Sabbath-keeping Adventist circles, Joseph Bates suggested that the seven times the high priest sprinkled the blood before the mercy seat (Leviticus 16:14) represented seven years that should be reckoned from the fall of 1844 to the fall of 1851. But every speculation has failed! By November 1850, Ellen White had written, “The Lord showed me that TIME had not been a test since 1844, and that time will never again be a test.”47 On June 21, 1851, while at Camden, New York, she received a vision warning against attempting to place the fulfillment of any time prophecy beyond October 1844.
She explained, “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.” Despite these and many other subsequent admonitions by Ellen White, some individuals always find a way to justify their personal fascination with time-setting.
Some argue that Jesus forbade us only from knowing “the day and hour” of His coming (Matthew 24:36; Mark 13:32) but not the specific year.
Others claim that we cannot know the specific date of the Second Coming but that some time prophecies, such as the 1,290 and 1,335 days (Daniel 12:11, 12), are still to be fulfilled in the future. Some prophetic theories might sound very logical and convincing. But those who take Christ’s warnings and Ellen White’s admonitions seriously will not venture into such ungrounded fantasies.
The Adventist message does not need this kind of crutch to move forward.