Troubleshooter

William Miller (1782 – 1849) was an American Baptist preacher whose followers were called Millerites....
...he is credited with the beginning of the Advent movement of the 1830s and 1840s in North America...
...among his direct spiritual heirs are Seventh-day Adventists...
...who formed following 'the great disappointment' when Jesus did not return.

Prior to 1843/1844 William Miller held to a 33AD date for the crucifixion of Christ in accord with most of Christendom...
…but changed his position to the 31 AD date to fit his 2300 day/year prophetic schema...
...which he saw as having the same start date in 457 BC as the 'seventy-sevens' (Dan 9:24)...
...then by converting the days to years in Daniel 8:14 using the extra-biblical year for a day principle...
...found the 2300 days/years terminus in 1844 on 22 October, the Karaite date of the Day of Atonement that year.

Question: How did changing to a Karaite luni-solar calendar make 31 AD a viable date?
Answer: On a luni-solar calendar every Passover falls on a weekly Sabbath day.

This is how it works...
...on a lunar calendar, weekly Sabbaths were calculated from the first appearance of the New Moon each month…

”In the first day ye shall have an holy convocation: ye shall do no servile work therein.” Lev 23:7…

The first day of the month was New Moon day, the day following the sighting of the New Moon, it was a rest day…
…then six work days were counted until the first Sabbath of the month that was always on the eighth day of the lunar cycle...
...so the 15th, the 22nd and the 29th were also weekly Sabbath’s...
...then the New Moon was again sighted and the weekly cycle repeated.


So weekly Sabbaths in the Karaite luni-solar calendar were determined by the sighting of the New Moon each month…
…and not by the perpetual weekly cycle we use now.


For the Hebrews the lunar year began with the month Nisan…
…the 1st day of Nisan was calculated from the first sighting of the New Moon following the Barley Harvest…
...Barley naturally ripens according to the solar cycle, so this device kept the lunar year in sync with the solar year...
...with the occasional extra intercalated or leap month added to the end of the year.

The Passover lamb was killed on the 14th Nisan…
…and eaten that night, the night of the full moon (Passover Moon)…
…this was the beginning of the 15th Nisan which was a lunar weekly Sabbath every year.


So on the Karaite luni-solar calendar every Passover fell on a lunar weekly Sabbath...
...and William Miller/Samuel Snow relied on this Lunar calculation to place the crucifixion in 31 AD...
...to calculate 2300 days/years from 457 BC via 31 AD through to 1844...
...establishing 22 October 1844 as the Day of Atonement on which Miller believed Jesus would return.
...this is also the date that Seventh-day Adventists claim as their origin.

However, this created for Seventh-day Adventism a Sabbath paradox...
...when they later adopted a Saturday/Sabbath based on the Julian/Gregorian calendar...
...so their prophetic origin was determined by a lunar calendar that calculated weekly Sabbath from the New Moon each lunar cycle....
...but they observed a successive Saturday/Sabbath determined by the Roman Julian/Gregorian calendar...
...which can not be reconciled with the conditions for a 31 AD crucifixion.