October 22, 1844
Samuel Snow, the seventh-month message and October 22, 1844
Well documented Prediction was reinterpreted End TimesBiblical NumerologyDate SettingMillerismFailed Predictions
Quick facts
- Predicted date
- October 22, 1844
- Who predicted it
- Samuel S. Snow, Millerites
- When announced
- 1844
- Reasoning
- A calendar calculation using the Karaite Jewish calendar, which fixed the start of the seventh month later than the rabbinic calendar did.
- What happened
- The day passed without the expected event. The experience became known as the Great Disappointment. Believers' accounts record grief and confusion, and some later accounts, written decades afterward, have been challenge…
- Historical status
- Well documented. The prediction and its date appear in primary or reliable secondary sources.
- Outcome label
- Prediction was reinterpreted
- Editorial certainty
- High: multiple primary or independent sources
- Editorial review
- Pending. This entry has not yet been checked line by line against its sources. Treat details as provisional.
Prediction
What did Samuel S. Snow predict?
After earlier dates passed, Millerite preacher Samuel Snow argued in August 1844 that Christ would return on the Jewish Day of Atonement, which he calculated as October 22, 1844.
Interpretation by the author
Why did they believe it?
Snow argued that the Old Testament feasts were types, or patterns, that were fulfilled in order. The spring feasts had been fulfilled in Christ's first coming, so the autumn feast, the Day of Atonement, would be fulfilled at the second.
He calculated that the tenth day of the seventh Jewish month in 1844 fell on October 22, using a calendar that differed from the one used by most rabbinic Jews.
Scripture as used by the author
Biblical basis cited
Leviticus 16 and 23 (the Day of Atonement), read together with Daniel 8:14. The Millerites called the argument the seventh-month message or the True Midnight Cry, from the parable of the ten virgins in Matthew 25.
Method
How the date was calculated
A calendar calculation using the Karaite Jewish calendar, which fixed the start of the seventh month later than the rabbinic calendar did.
Historical record
Historical context
Snow presented the argument at a camp meeting in Exeter, New Hampshire, in August 1844. Millerite newspapers, especially The Midnight Cry, spread it rapidly. William Miller accepted the date in early October. Accounts of the final weeks describe believers settling debts, ceasing normal work and gathering to wait.
Historical record
What happened when the date passed?
The day passed without the expected event. The experience became known as the Great Disappointment. Believers' accounts record grief and confusion, and some later accounts, written decades afterward, have been challenged by historians as exaggerated in their details.
Historical record
What happened afterward
Most believers returned to their former churches. A smaller group reinterpreted the date, and from them emerged the denominations described in the William Miller entry.
Interpretation
Later reinterpretation
Hiram Edson, a Millerite, reported a vision the next morning that the event of October 22 had taken place in heaven. This became the foundation of the Seventh-day Adventist teaching about an investigative judgment that began in 1844.
Scripture
Passages cited
-
Leviticus 16:29–30 (KJV)
The Day of Atonement.
-
Matthew 25:6 (KJV)
"And at midnight there was a cry made, Behold, the bridegroom cometh; go ye out to meet him."
The text behind the movement's name for the message.
Excerpts are from the King James Version (public domain). Listing a verse here does not mean this site agrees with how the author used it.
Sources
Sources and further reading
- Ronald L. Numbers and Jonathan M. Butler (eds.). The Disappointed: Millerism and Millenarianism in the Nineteenth Century. Indiana University Press. 1987. Academic Includes essays on the seventh-month movement and on the later memory of the Disappointment.
- David L. Rowe. God's Strange Work: William Miller and the End of the World. Eerdmans. 2008. Academic
- Joshua V. Himes (ed.). The Midnight Cry!. 1842 to 1844. Newspaper The movement's principal newspaper. Issues from autumn 1844 carry the seventh-month argument.
Found an error or a better source? Send a correction. See also the methodology.