Daily Devotional For July 7, 2025
And the voice which I had heard from heaven spoke with me again, “Take the opened scroll which is in the hand of the angel standing upon the sea and upon the land.” And I went to the angel and said to him, “Give me the scroll.” He said to me, “Take it and eat it. It will make your stomach sour, but in you mouth it will be as sweet as honey.” And I took the scroll out of the angel’s hand and ate it. And it was as sweet as honey in my mouth, but when I had eaten it made my stomach sour. Rev 10:8-10.
This little acted parable expresses John’s disappointment. He saw that his book would not bring the End. At the time of the end, his book would prophesy again by means of another people (Rev 10:11). In the context of Rev 10:5-7, John’s experience is also a forecast of another disappointment at the close of Daniel’s time prophecies, a group of people who thought the end would come and it does not. To have hopes of Jesus’ return raised and dashed would be a bitter experience for God’s faithful people at any time.
Many people believe that second disappointment occurred in the year 1844. Thousands of Americans believed that Jesus would return on October 22 of that year. On that day they eagerly expected to see Jesus Himself coming in the clouds surrounded by all the holy angels. They looked forward to meeting all the dear friends who had been torn from them by death. They expected that all their trials and sufferings would be over. They would be caught up to meet their coming Lord, and to inhabit bright golden mansions in the golden city, the New Jerusalem.
Feel the passion of Hiram Edson’s own words: “Our expectations were raised high, and thus we looked for our coming Lord until the clock tolled 12, at midnight. The day had then passed and our disappointment became a certainty. Our fondest hopes and expectations were blasted, and such a spirit of weeping came over us as I never experienced before. It seemed that the loss of all earthly friends could have been no comparison. We wept, and wept, till the day dawn.
“I mused in my own heart, saying, My advent experience has been the richest and brightest of all my Christian experience. If this had proved a failure, what was the rest of my Christian experience worth? Has the Bible proved a failure? Is there no God, no heaven, no golden city, no paradise? Is all this but a cunningly devised fable? Is there no reality to our fondest hope and expectation of these things?’ And thus we had something to grieve and weep over, if all our fond hopes were lost. And as I said, we wept till the day dawn.”1
Lord, help me face the disappointments of each day in the knowledge that You have foreseen them and provided what I need to survive.
1 Hiram Edson, manuscript fragment on his “Life and Experience,” n.d., pp. 4-5, Ellen G. White Research Center, James White Library, Andrews University, Berrien Springs, MI.