The Great Second Advent Movement: Its Rise and Progress

The Apostles Disappointed, Yet Fulfilled Scripture

This is not the only instance where people have done the will of the Lord, fulfilled scripture, and yet have been disappointed in their expectations simply because they did not understand the nature of the event to transpire. Thus it was with the apostles of Christ. When he was seated on the colt, riding into Jerusalem, they shouted as they remembered the words of the prophet: ¹⁴ “Shout, O daughter of Jerusalem: behold, thy King cometh unto thee; he is just, and having salvation; lowly, and riding upon an ass, and upon a colt the foal of an ass.” ¹⁵ It was so needful that there should be shouting on that occasion that had they held their peace, the very stones would have cried out. ¹⁶ The disciples supposed that Christ, then and there, was going to ascend the throne of David as a temporal king (“we trusted that it had been he which should have redeemed Israel” ¹⁷), and so they shouted, “Blessed be the kingdom of our father David, that cometh in the name of the Lord.” How much shouting would there have been on that occasion had they understood that within a week Christ would be dead in Joseph’s tomb, surrounded by the Roman guard? How much of giving “glory” to God and of consecration would there have been with the Adventists in 1844 had they understood that the cleansing of the sanctuary at the end of all prophetic time was to occupy a series of years before the Lord would come? GSAM 191.3