Satan’s movement in Revelation 12 is driven by opposition to God’s plan of salvation. The dragon’s first aim is to devour the child born to the woman—the child represents Jesus. This immediate pursuit matches the text where the dragon stands ready to destroy him as soon as he is born. After Jesus’ birth and his ascent, the drama shifts to persecution of the woman and, subsequently, of her offspring—the faithful followers who keep God’s commandments and bear witness to Jesus. The angels aren’t the target described in this scene. Understanding this sequence shows why the dragon’s most direct pursuit is the child, not the angels.

The second phase of the cleansing of the sanctuary describes a twofold purification: sins are blotted out in the heavenly sanctuary during the investigative judgment, and then there is a cleansing of both the sanctuary and the individual believer—the blotting out of sin from the records of heaven as well as from the lives of believers. This reflects Adventist teaching that salvation includes clearing the heavenly records and preparing the people to stand righteous before God at the end of the judgment. The other options don’t capture both aspects: forgiveness alone misses the sanctuary’s cleansing, cleansing of the sanctuary alone misses the believer’s cleansing, and the Second Coming is the event that follows these phases, not the phase itself.

During the early, formative years after the Great Disappointment, personal connections among Adventist leaders helped push the movement forward. In 1846, the Whites met Bates, a meeting that connected the White couple with a broader Sabbatarian circle and gave momentum to their developing ministry. This encounter helped strengthen their mission and contributed to spreading the emphasis on Sabbath observance and prophetic interpretation that would shape Adventist identity in the years ahead.

The idea being tested is how prophetic timelines are tied to real-world events and how early Adventist teachers used current world events to evaluate or challenge a date set from biblical prophecy. Josiah Litch is the figure who did this: a Millerite preacher who argued that the 2300 days mentioned in Daniel could be connected to worldly events and used that approach to forecast a specific outcome—the fall of the Ottoman Empire in 1840. He published a tract in 1839 laying out this prediction, presenting it as a test of Miller’s chronology. The hoped-for fulfillment would show that prophecy could be validated by events, not just by a fixed date. Although the Ottoman Empire did not fall in 1840, Litch’s effort is notable for showing how Adventist teachers attempted to test and refine prophetic timelines by linking them to contemporary events.