March next [1844]. It may then be asked why we are now to look for the coming of the Lord, if we are but just entered the last of the 2300 years?”6 According to the article “Karaite Calendar” in Te Ellen G.
White Encyclopedia: “At this point Millerites were simply seeking a basis for determining the close of the biblical year 1843”—since the failure of the March date nudged them toward adopting what some thought was the Karaite-calculated April 1843 date—and “If the Jewish year of 1844 began with the new moon of April 1844, then Yom Kippur, a little more than six months later, would fall on October 22, not September 23.”7 Although the anonymous Millerite claimed there was a dispute
“as to the correct time of commencing the year,” the point was largely, if not entirely, moot by 1843. Karaites living in Palestine may have initially retained their strict adherence to the letter of the Torah; however, there is no evidence that any Karaite Jews were living in Palestine who calculated and observed a Day of Atonement different from the date calculated according to rabbinic Judaism. Today, most Adventist apologists also acknowledge a lack of evidence to support the writer’s claim that Karaite Jews “still adhere to the letter of the Mosaic law.” Notice that the dispute over calculating the beginning of a new
year necessarily involved determining the end of the previous year. Te end of the 2300-year period would coincide with the end of the Jewish year in 1843. But which Jewish year? Until about the spring of 1843, Millerites had assumed the rabbinic Jewish year, but now they had an alternative: the Karaite date. Te calculations between Gregorian, Julian, and a generic Jewish year were already esoteric, and it began to appear that this vital doctrine of the date of Christ’s return was dependent on which Jewish sect’s astronomical calculation was more reliable. Adventist historian George R. Knight notes in his book
Millennial Fever and the End of the World that it was not until April 4, 1844, that leading Millerite preacher Joshua V. Himes had adopted that explanation.8 Only aſter March 21, 1844, had been disconfirmed did Millerite leaders adopt a new calculation.9 In fact, Miller and Himes didn’t set October 22, 1844, as the definitive date until October 6, 1844. Te historic impact of this rejiggering was that from March 21, 1844, to April 18, 1844, Millerites confidently continued to predict the second coming of Jesus by April 20, 1844. When that date likewise failed, they proposed an ephemeral “tarrying time” to buy yet more prophetic time. Tis justification eerily foreshadowed their post-October 22, 1844, explanation; Josiah
Litch said, aſter April 1844, that the Millerites were “only in error relative to the event [emphasis added] which marked its [the Jewish year 1843] close.”10
Who Was Samuel S. Snow? Te largely unknown writers of 1843-1844 who mentioned the Karaites are not credited with leading the Millerites to adopt their method of calculating the end of the Jewish year. Instead, the credit goes to Samuel S. Snow. It was his publication, Te True Midnight Cry, that explicitly endorsed October 22, 1844.11
Yet,
nowhere in this indispensable Millerite tract does he mention the Karaite method of calculating the Jewish calendar or argue its virtues as contrasted with the rabbinic method! Not once does he mention the importance of ripe barley or the observation of the new crescent moon. Knight observes, “It was determined that the tenth day of the
seventh month in 1844, according to the reckoning of the Karaite Jews, would fall on October 22, 1844.” But who exactly “determined” this? I have been unable to find
any Snow document in which he explicitly argues the correctness of the Karaite reckoning. Neither of his letters published in Te Midnight Cry (February 22, 1844, and June 27, 1844) mentions the word “Karaite”—though he does vigorously assert in his document published August 22, 1844, that he had found 15 biblical texts proving that mankind could know the exact day of Christ’s return and that it would happen in the autumn of 1844, rather than the spring. It appears that the Millerites had been living in a high state
of expectancy for several years, and Snow’s letters to the weekly journal convinced the greater number of them that since their spring prediction had failed, autumn must be the time fervently awaited. Snow’s trumpet call, which he published on August 22, 1844, set a date a bare 60 days in the future! No one had time to nitpick over whether any observant Karaite Jews in the Holy Land were still attentively observing the skies for a crescent moon and their fields for ripe barley. In December of 1844, Ellen White’s first vision retrospectively
endorsed Snow’s doctrine and even claimed that the light coming directly from Jesus’ glorious right arm was Snow’s indispensable “Midnight Cry”: “Tey [the Millerites] had a bright light set up behind them at the first [1844] end of the path, which an angel told me was the Midnight Cry. ... Jesus would encourage them by raising His glorious right arm, and from His arm came a glorious light which waved over the Advent band.”12
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