Confirmation Bias: 1844

1844 in Prophecy

There’s a line in Daniel that fuels a surprising amount of modern theology: “None of the wicked shall understand; but the wise shall understand.” Adventists often point to this as validation — a hint that their unique interpretation of Daniel proves they belong to the “wise.” After all, if you’re the only group with the answers, it’s tempting to assume you must be the people Daniel saw.

But understanding isn’t proven by exclusivity; it’s proven by coherence. And coherence is where the trouble begins.

Before we dive into timelines, horns, decrees, and prophetic arithmetic, there’s an odd feature of the book of Daniel that deserves attention. Daniel contains a major prophetic unit — the 70 weeks prophecy in chapter 9 — but the prophecy doesn’t conclude there. The thought feels suspended, like a sentence interrupted mid-air, leaving 3.5 years of the prophecy unexplained.

There’s actually a pattern of unfinished business in Daniel. For example: Gabriel explains the first layer of the vision in chapter 8, but Daniel -still confused- asks for clarity again. Then Gabriel returns to finish the explanation with an additional layer of prophecy –70 weeks of worth of years, the Messiah’s ministry, and then his death and the removal of a need for daily sacrifice in the middle of the 69th week… but there it is again! Unfinished business. The close to the 70 weeks are not foretold.

Chapter 10 establishes an image of a cosmic spiritual warfare. The chapter’s purpose is to show Daniel (and us) that geopolitical chaos has a spiritual dimension. Then Daniel prophecies of events to come** in the presence of King Darius during chapter 11. By chapter 12, there’s a need to circle back and close the unfinished 70 weeks thread from chapter 9.

**Arguably, Daniel even prophecies events up to the point of the return of Christ, though that subject won’t be in scope for Part 1.

This structural loop — prophecy, interruption, and return — becomes a thematic rhythm of the book. And once you see it, it changes the way Daniel is read. Revelation is quite similar, even repeating stories from different angles. But again that won’t be our focus in this part.

That looping pattern also makes the modern discussions around Daniel strangely ironic. Because just like Daniel’s own structure, interpreters sometimes revisit a prophetic line only after wandering through a lot of unrelated [or at least seemingly unrelated] territory. In Adventist history, that re-visitation took the form of William Miller’s calculations, the Great Disappointment, and eventually the doctrine of the Investigative Judgement starting in 1844.

But here’s the real question:
Is 1844 actually what Daniel was pointing to — or is it a conclusion reached only because the interpretive path doubled back on itself?

That’s what we’re about to test. And we’re going to do it using the very same interpretive tools Adventists** rely on — beasts representing kingdoms, symbolic time units, the day-for-a-year principle, and the identification of the ram, goat, and horn in Daniel 8 as Medo-Persia, Greece, –and well, even Rome too since Jesus took it there.

In other words, this isn’t an argument against the Adventist method. It’s an argument that the method, when applied consistently, does not land where Adventism insists it must.

**In reality most prophecy understanding scholars know these symbols as well, as the interpretations are given to us plainly in the scriptures.

The Problem With the Starting Point

For Adventists, everything hinges on one conviction:
The 2300 “days” of Daniel 8:14 begin in 457 BC and end in 1844.
That single claim, –based on the assumption that no other identifiable start point exists in the book of Daniel– supports the doctrine of the Investigative Judgment, the heavenly Day of Atonement, and Christ’s entrance into the Most Holy Place starting in the fall of 1844. If we re-align the starting point, and the entire notion of 1844 collapses .

But here’s the issue: Daniel never says the 2300 evenings and mornings begin in 457 BC.
That start date is imported from Daniel 9, patched together with the 70 weeks prophecy, and then retrofitted to chapter 8. Using the scriptural day-year principal**, William Miller began by measuring the 2300 evenings and mornings from the start point of the 70 weeks prophecy which gave him a date within his lifetime (1843–44), then worked backward until he found something that looked like it could match for verses in Daniel 12.

**Genesis 29:27 was my contribution to Wikipedia's Day-year Principal documentation back in 2018. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Day-year_principle).

The problem with the pattern described by Miller is that the start dates do not align the way Daniel 12 aligns them, and an argument that in the subject matter in Daniel must be made is a necessary side effect –being that no daily sacrifice is taken away in 508 AD. That’s not exegesis — it’s confirmation bias.

I see that William Miller would be inspired to understand how the verses in chapter 12 apply to biblical prophecy, being 12:10 says, “none of the wicked will understand, but the wise will”. But by the time we start at 457 BC for the 2300.days, we’ve already misunderstood one of the key cornerstones.

Daniel actually gives us a different starting point entirely. One where there’s no changing the words to mean something scripturally unsupported — just plain wording that anyone should be able to grasp.

In Daniel 8:11–13, to understand the prophetic actions that trigger the vision concerning the 2300 evenings and mornings, we must do a comparison of 8:11 and 8:13.

[the horn] even exalted himself as high (or equal) as the Prince of the host; and by him the daily sacrifices were taken away, and the place of His sanctuary was cast down.
Daniel 8:11

In verse 8:11, the things that happen are in this order

The horn (symbolically early Roman empire leadership) exalting himself as equal with the Prince (that is Jesus).
- Think of where Pilot puts a sign above Jesus on the cross that says “king of the Jews” –Pilot said it himself.
  - Pilot was a ruler putting another ruler to death, and even denied the request to instead write, “He said, ‘I am the King of the Jews” (John 12:19-20)
The horn removes the Prince’s daily sacrifice –
1. In this case by ordering the death of Jesus, the ultimate sacrifice – There was not need for daily sacrifice afterward. (confirmed in 9:25)
The Prince’s sanctuary (symbolically Jesus body) being “thrown down,”
1. Think to where Jesus said, “destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up”
2. Later this would happen to the temple in Jerusalem through the Romans as well –the additional fulfillment that Jesus pointed us to.

Then I heard a holy one speaking; and another holy one said to that certain one who was speaking, “How long will the vision be, concerning the daily sacrifices and the transgression of desolation, the giving of both the sanctuary and the host to be trampled underfoot?”
Daniel 8:13

In 8:13, we see that the question starts with the events that commence this “vision”

The removal of the daily sacrifice (did not Christ’s death remove the need for it?)
Transgression that causes horror (the murder of God’s Son)
Both Gods temple “Holy Place” and his people (Barns https://biblehub.com/commentaries/daniel/8-13.htm) “host” are trampled. ‘
1. Certainly, the killing of Jesus was not the end of deaths, as this led to the apostles [the “host” of Christ] also being murdered.

You should be able to see already. The question is clear, that it starts with the death of Christ and the removal of his burnt offering**.

**I would encourage you not to forget a partial fulfillment of this prophecy in the historical records of the Maccabees. But there’s two layers: Gabriel explains one layer in chapter 8 (Maccabee content while hinting at more), and another in chapter 9 (Messianic context).

Adventist interpreters usually insist the “daily” refers to paganism, but that’s not only historically implausible — it’s linguistically unsupported. Daniel doesn’t use “daily”** to symbolize pagan rituals. He uses it to describe the regular lamb offerings — the continual sacrifices performed morning and evening until the moment Christ died.

Whie at first it might seem like a clear accident, a single word “daily”, instead of “daily sacrifice”, it is nothing special to anyone who studies Hebrew. The basis for a few ancient words now forming long modern sentences was the pattern of ancient Hebrew and Aramaic languages –both of which were used to write the book of Daniel. Hebrew was quite archaic – only referencing what should be obvious, no frills. It’s also part of the reason why there’s so many transitions. There’s a lot to translate when the sentences are so “low resolution”.

We need nothing more than Daniel 9:27 to prove that the “daily” meant the continual offering of lambs.

…And [the Messiah] will make a firm covenant with the many for one week, but in the middle of the week he will put a stop to sacrifice…
Daniel 9:27

Which means:

When the daily sacrifice ends, the prophecy starts (Daniel 8:13).

And every Christian — Adventist or otherwise — agrees that the daily sacrifice ended at the crucifixion. Christ, the true Lamb, fulfilled and ended the system of continual offerings. This isn’t esoteric. It’s the theological core of the New Testament.

So the internal logic of Daniel points to the death of Christ as the trigger for the 2300-unit prophecy — not a Persian decree which triggers the 70 weeks prophecy centuries earlier.

This forces a reconsideration:
If the starting point is wrong, the 1844 conclusion cannot stand. And if the prophecy was meant to begin with Christ, then the traditional Adventist reading has veered off from the very center of Daniel’s message.

But that didn’t stop William Miller from trying:
His reason for continuing was based on Daniel 9:24, that says the 70 weeks are cut off for the Jews, and thus this meant that the 490 years (70 weeks) were cut off from the 2300 –as in to say, the prophecies belong with the same start date.

I wonder if he had ever understood what apophenia is.

See, the 70 weeks are very important as a time for the Jewish nation. Israel did not officially have a chance to make their own choices until returning to Jerusalem after 457 BC. 457 is the moment when the time for “your people and your holy city to stop their transgression” (same verse, Daniel 9:24) begins. And, even after Jesus’ death, they would have a little more time to repent.

However, the bible prophecy shows us that they would not repent. They’d kill Stephen, and that would be “the straw that broke the camel’s back” –the gospel would pass from a strictly Jewish calling to a gentile one. Nothing about that talks about how prophecies start together, it talks about how much time the Jews would be given before they no longer were God’s obvious choice.

Re-centering Daniel on Christ, Not 1844

One of the most overlooked facts about Daniel 8–12 is also the most obvious:
Christ —not a 19th-century heavenly event—is the central figure of each prophecy.

Daniel 8 depicts a conflict in which the “Prince” is opposed, his sanctuary is cast down, and the continual offering (“the daily”) is taken away. In other words, the prophecy describes a moment when the Messiah’s life, ministry, and sacrificial significance would come under attack. Daniel 9 then names this Prince explicitly as the Messiah, the Anointed One.

This is why the “daily” being taken away can only refer to His death. The explanation is in contest of the vision referencing the same thing. After all, lambs were not sacrificed by Christians daily after Christ’s crucifixion. They ceased—forever—not as the result of pagan Rome or a theological shift but because the true Lamb had been slain – through the actions of pagan Rome.

This is a key mistake in the standard SDA approach. Instead of keeping the prophecy anchored to Christ’s sacrifice, the interpretation is pulled away into an intricate timeline that only makes sense if the reader ignores Daniel’s own anchor points. The prophecy becomes impersonal, distant, and excessively coded—requiring seminar charts, color-coded beasts, and a trained guide to explain it. No cruelty needed here – we need charts, maps, and all the rest –but even in writing this I must occasionally look back to SDA charts due to their complexity.

Sure, understanding the beasts as empires is important too, but the purpose is to lead us through a succession of empires that are implicated in biblical history. A spacetime map of you will. The nations they represent they take a back seat in Daniel chapter 9 and again in 12.

Daniel was written for ordinary readers—Jews living in exile, people with no training in 19th-century American revivalist numerology. The structure is symbolic, yes, but not so cryptic that only a modern denomination can uncover its point.

Think of the three wise men at Jesus’ birth. They knew the time of his birth, being 30 years before his ministry would begin, which was already outlined in Daniel 9.

The original audience was meant to understand the thread:

The sacrifice ends → the covenant is confirmed → persecution follows → deliverance arrives.

Certainly the three wise men understood what the first part meant. Daniel 9 sets the stage by describing the Messiah’s arrival, ministry, and death. But Daniel 9 famously leaves the final half-week unspoken. There’s a deliberate pause. The prophecy begins, but the narrative does not resolve.

Daniel 12 picks up that suspended thread.

When the angel introduces “a time, times, and half a time,” it closes the half-week** of the 70-week prophecy left dangling in Daniel 9. In other words, Daniel 12 doesn’t introduce a new prophetic problem—it completes an old one.

**This is a simple 1-to-1 comparison since “times” is used figuratively to represent literal years in Daniel 4:32-33.

This is why the timelines of Daniel 12 (the 1260, 1290, and 1335) make no sense when ripped out of their Christ-centered framework and scattered across the medieval or early modern eras. Daniel gives the starting point explicitly:
the moment the daily sacrifice is taken away.

That’s the crucifixion—not 457 BC.

Read this way, the timelines suddenly form a coherent, sequential pattern that matches the earliest days of the Christian movement rather than an event in 1844.

Daniel 12 as an Overlay of Acts 7–9

Once the starting point is restored to where Daniel places it—the death of Christ—the timelines in Daniel 12 suddenly click into place. What once looked cryptic becomes surprisingly straightforward. Daniel isn’t outlining a distant, abstract chronological puzzle beyond even the book of Revelation; he’s giving a prophetic preview of the earliest, most turbulent years of the Christian movement.

This is scripturally sound due to the five different methods used for referencing years in the book of Daniel, which leaves us with the keys we need to understand when they are first intended to be used literally or not. We’ll discuss this in Part 2 of this series.

This is where the overlooked parallel emerges: Daniel 12 aligns precisely with the narrative of Acts 7–9.
Not symbolically, not vaguely, but with a level of narrative and chronological symmetry that is hard to ignore once seen. Rather than pointing to medieval church history or a 19th-century heavenly event, these time periods point to real events that followed immediately after the crucifixion.

“A time, times, and half a time” (1260 days)
To an Adventist audience, “time, times, and half a time” typically triggers thoughts of the 1260-year papal era. But that association comes from Revelation, not Daniel. In Daniel 12:7, this is the conclusion of the half-week left unfinished in Daniel 9—the missing final 3½ years after Christ’s death. We must yield first to “times” being used in Daniel 4:32-33 to reference literal years –at least for context in the book of Daniel.

This “shattering of the holy people” aligns perfectly with the stoning of Stephen and the violent persecution that erupted under Saul. Acts 7:54–8:3 describes the breaking of the Jerusalem believers’ unity and safety—the precise “shattering” Daniel foresaw.

The 1290 Days
Daniel 12:11 gives a second time marker: 1290 days from the end of the daily sacrifice –so what happens in the first month after persecution of Christians in Jerusalem. It’s a continuation of time after the 3.5 years (1260 days) close.
Roughly one month after Stephen is killed, the gospel explicitly goes to the Gentiles for the first time— believers fleeing Jerusalem and taking the message out to the gentiles in Roman Empire held areas, followed by Philip baptizing the Ethiopian in Acts 8.

This fits Daniel’s description: the abomination of desolation is not a single figure but symbolically the Roman Empire and by extension the Gentile world system Jesus warned would “trample Jerusalem” (Luke 21:24). The gospel’s shift to the Gentiles—and the Gentile presence around the holy city—matches both Daniel’s and Jesus’ language.

The 1335 Days
Daniel’s “blessed is he who waits and reaches the 1335” is one of the most enigmatic lines in the book—until Acts 9 enters the picture. Approximately 1335 days after the crucifixion, Saul’s persecution comes to a dramatic end as he becomes Paul—the most influential apostle to the Gentiles.

The persecutor becomes the builder.
The one who shatters the holy people becomes the one who lifts them up– an image of God’s grace for a transgressing Jewish nation.
The story turns from destruction to blessing, and has a hint of what is to come. Persecution will continue, but even the persecutors are capable of conversion to Christ.

What news! What a blessing this must have been for those who hadn’t let their faith fail during those early years. I’m sure John must have realized the connection at some point, and especially after the vision in the island of Patmos.

This is exactly the sort of narrative reversal Daniel’s closing words anticipate. The blessing is not attached to a lackluster date that confuses humanity—it’s attached to an event that transforms the future of the church, and ends the time of the Jewish nation.

They will fall by the sword and will be taken as prisoners to all the nations. Jerusalem will be trampled on by the Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled.
–Jesus (Luke 21:24)

When Daniel 12 is read in sequence—with all three timelines anchored to the crucifixion and understood through the same Christ-centered framework Daniel 8–9 establishes—Acts becomes the natural historical fulfillment. It’s elegant, coherent, and requires no speculative arithmetic stretching across millennia.

Re-centering Daniel on Christ, Not 1844

At this point, the contrast becomes too sharp to ignore. When Daniel is read on its own terms—using its internal start points, its own symbolic language, and its Christ-centered structure—the timelines of chapter 12 form a coherent sequence tied directly to the crucifixion and the earliest events of the church.

By contrast, the 1844 model requires an entirely different approach:

mixing chapters with unrelated time frames,
disconnecting Daniel 12’s three timelines from each other –including the dates the commence from,
arguing that the Bible text must not have the appropriate word (ie: daily actually means paganism)
ignoring Daniel’s stated start point,
and inserting interpretive assumptions Daniel never mentions.

For the 1844 interpretation to work, the set of prophetic durations (the 1260, 1290, and 1335) must begin several years apart, end together on the same event, and ultimately confirm an enigmatic date used to confirm a denomination. Daniel explicitly ties these dates together at the death of Christ. Adventism has to pull them apart.

If you are with me, let’s confirm Christ and the bible prophecy that showed us he knew what his people -Christians- were going to experience.

This is the core issue:

Daniel’s timelines are unified; 1844 requires them to be fragmented.
Daniel states the starting point plainly: the removal of the “daily,” which is the crucifixion. The 1844 framework must relocate that starting point to 457 BC—where Daniel nevr places it—and then reinterpret “daily” as “paganism,” something never supported by the text, the language, or Old Testament sacrificial practice.

Even within early Adventism, this interpretation was controversial.
The idea that “the daily” meant paganism was introduced, promoted, and ultimately cemented not through linguistic study or biblical consensus but ultimately through the personal influence and endorsement of Ellen G. White. Once her authority was invoked, internal debate basically froze. The meaning of “daily” was no longer a question of exegesis; it became a matter of loyalty.

The tragedy is that this shift obscured the simplicity of Daniel’s message.
Daniel wasn’t trying to hide the timeline in layers of metaphysical symbolism—He laid it out clearly and tied it to events around the Messiah Himself. The Adventist model makes Daniel sound like he wrote an encrypted riddle with 19th-century Protestants in mind, requiring multi-night chart seminars just to decode. But the book wasn’t written for Millerites—it was written for exiles, for believers, for apostles, for the faithful, and for the “wise” in every generation.

And when you place Daniel’s timelines back in the context of Christ, the fog lifts.
The “daily” refers to the sacrificial system Christ fulfilled.
The half-week missing in Daniel 9 reappears in Daniel 12.
The timelines align naturally with Acts 7–9.
And the prophecy remains centered—beautifully—on the Messianic prophecy

Adventists often say that removing 1844 erases the sanctuary message and pointers to the Messiah’s purpose. In reality, it restores the sanctuary message to its biblical setting: the celebration of Christ’s heavenly ministry in exonerating us from judgement because he took our place. .

The scriptures are clear. Admit our sin, and he will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness (1 John 1:9). We have surety that until we die, we have an opportunity to take hold of these promises through repentance. Psalm 139:16 says, “all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be”.

In a day before computational technology, it might have seemed there would be some latency in processing our cases, but I’m pretty sure the bible paints a picture of a book like a database. Names can be added and removed, and if they are there, the investigation is already complete.

Jesus, seems to confirm this in Luke 10:20, saying, “rejoice that your names are recorded in heaven”. While we are here on earth – in the land of the living-, we have an opportunity to receive the Holy Spirit, by which we can do all things.

1844 becomes indefensible not because Adventists lack sincerity –I mean, just look at its prestigious universities– but perhaps it becomes indefensible because the text lacks support.

Conclusion: Daniel’s Beauty Without the Baggage

Recognizing that the 2,300-day period in Daniel 8 begins with the removal of sacrifice isn’t a betrayal of faith—it’s a return to the faith Daniel was actually pointing toward. It restores coherence to the roles of Medo-Persia and Greece, and even allows Roman history and the work of Christ to sit in their proper prophetic layers –clearly establishing the identity the abomination of desolation as it takes root. Instead of forcing the text to serve a later tradition, it brings us back to what would have given hope first to the Jews and then to Jewish Christians. It clears the ground for John, whose own prophetic message builds on a foundation already fulfilled during this lifetime—plain enough, in fact, that the wise of his day could see it.

Maybe this wasn’t widely grasped in its own time, but the alignment between Daniel and Acts 7–9 is the sort of thing the Spirit of Truth delights in revealing—a pattern hiding in plain sight.

One of the refreshing things about this re-centered reading is that it doesn’t tear down the meaningful parts of Adventist prophetic insight. The emphasis on Christ’s ministry, on the sanctuary theme, the rise and fall of empires, the horns, the beasts, the identities behind the apocalyptic sweep of Revelation —none of that is diminished. Those themes were never the problem.

If anything crumbles, it’s not Christianity but the 1844 pillar itself. Christ’s heavenly ministry as Priest and King doesn’t depend on a 19th-century calculation. It stands because He stands.

And if generations of scholars and institutions worked earnestly from faulty assumptions, that’s not a scandal—it’s just human. But human error still calls for honesty, humility, and yes, repentance. As Neil deGrasse Tyson puts it, “One of the great challenges in this world is knowing enough about a subject to think you’re right, but not enough to know you’re wrong.”

We have to accept that God moves on His own timetable, not ours, and prophecy becomes clear when the moment is ripe—not when we strong-arm a timeline into submission. Very few people in history have understood prophecy before it happened. Out of the whole world, only three wise men (Magi) managed to calculate the timing of Christ’s birth from Daniel’s 70 weeks prophecy. Not a hundred. Not ten. Just three.

Others were studying Daniel in this context around the time of the Magi, of course. The Melchizedek document from Qumran (11Q13) –Dead Sea Scrolls– shows that some understood a Messiah who they referenced as Melchizedek was coming—one connected directly to the Prophet Daniels prophecies –using his name– in the document. But even then the understanding was sparse, scattered, and far from universal. Maybe that’s how it was meant to be: God revealing enough to draw the faithful forward, but not enough to let us crown ourselves as the exclusive club of the enlightened.

If Millerism had allowed God to distinguish between the chosen and the mistaken, perhaps the whole movement would have settled into humility. But pride has a long track record of sending religious movements tumbling head-first. If God (who is impartial) were selecting a last-day remnant based mainly on Sabbath observance, He could have gone straight to the Seventh-day Baptists, who were already faithful in that regard. The fact that He didn’t ought to give us pause. Maybe the message was never meant to be what the early Adventists insisted it was.

When we treat each other well and resist the urge to boast, we’re far less likely to repeat the same lessons in humility. Romans 11:18 reminds us that it’s not the branches that support the root—it’s the root that supports the branches. Forgetting that has a way of turning spiritual confidence into spiritual arrogance.

God is calling Adventism away from self-declared exceptionalism—the idea that it alone is the pure, chosen remnant and the one true bride of Christ. We are called instead to participate in -to be a part of- the remnant, to be faithful while remembering that even when we’re right, we’re still partly wrong. That posture is called a contrite heart, and it’s the only safe place for any Christian movement.

Proverbs 26:12 warns us plainly: “Do you see a man who is wise in his own eyes? There is more hope for a fool than for him.” The message here isn’t subtle. Spiritual confidence becomes spiritual blindness the moment it stops being anchored in humility. Insight isn’t the same thing as maturity—and certainty isn’t the same thing as obedience.

Ultimately, the true sign of faith isn’t a perfect prophetic chart; it’s the posture of the heart. Even if someone could “fathom all mysteries” and exercise mountain-moving faith, Paul reminds us that without love, it all collapses into nothingness (1 Corinthians 13:2). That should terrify any movement that prides itself on doctrinal precision while drifting from compassion –and I have been witness to it.

We should be careful with the “sword of the Spirit.” It was never given to us to cut each other down in judgment. It’s meant for defense—for wisdom—for clarity. The moment we start swinging it around to prove our superiority, we end up dying by the same weapon we turned on others. Grace doesn’t flourish in that environment; fear does.

Second Corinthians 3:17 says, “Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.” That’s not just poetic—it’s diagnostic. When our interpretation of prophecy leads to anxiety, rivalry, elitism, exclusion, or self-importance, we’re no longer operating in the freedom of the Spirit. We’ve traded the living God for a theological system that behaves more like spiritually beating our neighbors than a calling.

Daniel’s message loses nothing when it’s freed from being treated like a cosmic math puzzle — and yet it still kind of is. It still reveals kingdoms rising and falling, God’s people suffering and persevering, and a Messiah who appears at the exact moment history turns. The prophetic arc remains vast: from Medo-Persia, to Greece, to Rome, to the return of Christ, and even the final vindication of the saints before God. These layers still exist—Adventists were right about that—but they become healthier and more grounded when anchored in the central, immovable event: the Lamb slain, the Messiah victorious.

Spiritual date-setting hasn’t worked for anyone since those three wise men, and that should tell us something. God didn’t design the Christian walk to revolve around a countdown clock. He designed it around relationship. Fixation on a future date almost always distracts from the daily surrender that actually produces spiritual life.

Should we not live prepared every day? For countless people, today is their final day on earth. For them, there is no prophetic timeline left—only the question of whether they meet God clothed in Christ or standing alone in their own merit. That is a far more urgent reality than any date we might circle on a calendar.

No future date is “the date” to get ready. The only day that matters is today. Grace makes that possible. Through Jesus, both the righteous and the modern-day thief on the cross can be prepared in the present moment, not because of prophetic precision but because of His mercy. “The Son of Man will come at an hour you do not expect” (Matthew 24:44), and Jesus meant that as a warning against complacency—not as a challenge to start predicting.

May each of us be found ready, humble, faithful—faithful in the way Noah was described: “perfect for his generation.” That phrase doesn’t imply sinless perfection; it implies sincerity, integrity, and a heart aligned with God in the time and place where one actually lives.

And ultimately, where is the Spirit of the Lord found? Wherever He is, there is freedom—and where there is freedom, there is mission. If we know where the Spirit is leading, then our task is simply to point others toward Him. Everything else—the boasting, the boundary-drawing, the prophetic one-upmanship—evaporates into vanity.

Don

I would rather do the Lords work than anything else.

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