The year 1798 is an important date. It identifies the end of a long period during which the church of Rome tortured millions of thinking dissenters to death. It is a dividing line between the long dark history of Roman church oppresssion and the dawn of religious light and freedom.

During the first part of the nineteenth century, in democratic Protestant America, William Miller correctly recognised 1798 as the end of the 1260 years foretold in Daniel 7:25 and Revelation 13:5. This was not speculation. In February 1798, Napoleon's General Berthier entered Rome, took the pope prisoner, and inflicted on Rome what was universally recognised as a “mortal wound” from which it was expected she would never recover.

Prophecy had been unmistakably fulfilled.

1798 is an immovable milestone in history.

From their study of the prophecies Miller and his associates expected Christ to return in 1843. Because 1843 lay 45 years after 1798, they concluded that this period fulfilled the final 45 days between the 1290 and 1335 days of Daniel 12. Assuming these “days” represented years, they naturally thought the 1335 years must end with Christ’s return—in 1843.

In 1842 this interpretation seemed convincing. They produced a complicated visual chart showing prophetic symbols and timelines.

But Christ did not return. Their expectation was shattered.

By now the expression the “Time of the End” had become linked to the Millerite understanding.

Nearly two centuries later Christ has still not returned. It is therefore clear that William Miller’s understanding of the “Time of the End” cannot be the same as Daniel’s. Daniel 12 describes events that belong only to the closing period of Earth’s history, the very time Jesus declared in Matthew 24:15.

Failing to decouple Miller’s honest error from Daniel’s prophecy since then has obscured the chapter’s vital core message.

Ellen White consistently identified 1798 as the beginning of the Time of the End, never 508. She described it as the commencement of a period of unspecified length, not as an interval ending in 1843.

Over time, the phrase the "Time of the End" became familiar Historicist terminology, but in the process it drifted far away from the meaning Daniel originally gave it.

This raises an important and timely question: Would God give Daniel a prophecy, specifically intended for the end of time, if every one of its time components have already been fulfilled—beginning more than 1,500 years ago and ending almost two centuries in our past?

Of the greatest significance is the fact that Daniel 12 contains the only sign Jesus pointedly warned His followers to recognise. Yet that sign is commonly burried by assumptions inherited from the Millerite phenomenon—assumptions that history itself proved to be mistaken.

If those assumptions are wrong, then Daniel's final prophecy deserves to be examined again with fresh eyes. The implications could hardly be more important.

In AD 70 they were a matter of life and death.

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Why the Möbius loop? It is a famous optical illusion that aptly illustrates the logical and historical impossibility of the traditional understanding of the 1335 Days prophecy in Daniel 12.