Josiah Litch' Interpretation of Revelation 9 Vindicated
Amidst the solemn and busy evangelistical efforts carried out by God's people in the 1830s, a close associate of John Miller by the name of Josiah Litch, published 7 years prior to the Great Dissapointment of 1844 an exposition on Revelation 9, predicting a global event that was about to take place somewhere in August, 1840. This exposition not only attracted the minds of that generation to their present truth, but also, after that date came to pass, it gave assurance and faith to the Church, and confidence in Miller's method of interpreting the Scriptures. Their method for counting prophetic time, the day-year principle, was proven to be correct, which meant for the believers that their expectation of the imminent Coming of Jesus in 1844 would surely be consumated, since the date of 1844 is calculated using the same the day-year principle.
It is already known that the year 1844 is prophetically correct regarding the timig, but wrong regarding the event predicted. What is not that well-known is the accuracy of Litch' prophecy. It is the object of this article to prove both from the Bible and Spirit of Prophecy that on the month of August, 1840, the Ottoman Empire lost its independence to the four European allied nations of that age. The Spirit of Prophecy and history will confirm us that the exact date in which this event happened is August 11th, 1840, representing an important Biblical date in God's historical chart of events.