Before You Begin
Thesis. The key opens the casket. Miller's method — compare Scripture with Scripture, the Bible its own interpreter — is the one key that unlocked the whole casket of advent truth, and every later link of this handbook was drawn out by that same key. The study walks the chain chronologically, 1816 to 1888: from the forging of the key at Low Hampton, through the great image and the longest prophetic line, the seventy-week anchor and the 1840 vindication, the cry and the Great Disappointment, the sanctuary and the Sabbath, the three angels assembled, the lesser light, the organized remnant, and at last the gospel root — righteousness by faith. Each link is drawn out by the same key, and each is given its full weight as both narrative and doctrine, equal parts history and Scripture.
Method. After Haskell's Bible Handbook: every line is ref → gloss, Bible and pioneer/EGW alike. Each passage is walked, and every symbol is defined the first time it appears — symbol = meaning, with the receipts that prove it; symbols are defined on first appearance and later sections reference the owning section by title. History is grounded in primary sources and cited secular records, and the pioneer cloud of witnesses is verified against the local corpus. The interpretive frame is historicist, governed by the year-day principle; each section closes with the DEFINITION its verses built, and the appendix gathers every symbol into one dictionary.