A phrase that the Millerites used repeatedly to describe their message to the world, adapted from the words of Christ’s parable regarding the wise and the foolish virgins who were sleeping while waiting for the bridegroom to come to the marriage. “At midnight there was a cry made, Behold, the bridegroom cometh; go ye out to meet him” ( see Matt 25:1–13 ). The wise, with their lamps burning, went with the bridegroom in to the wedding; the foolish, who went to buy oil, returned too late and were left outside.
The “true midnight cry” was the phrase used in 1844 in the “seventh-month movement” that emphasized the specific date of Oct. 22 for the advent of Christ. This message was based on the following reasoning: Disappointment had come in the spring of 1844; and afterward, in the language of the parable, the 10 virgins were sleeping while the “bridegroom tarried.” Since in symbolic prophecy a 24-hour day symbolizes a year, a night would symbolize half a year. Midnight would be midway of that six-month period between the spring disappointment and the expected date in October. It was in that summer that the “true midnight cry,” “Behold, the bridegroom cometh,” began to go forth.
In later Seventh-day Adventist writings the phrase “midnight cry” sometimes denotes specifically the “true” midnight cry, the message of the 2300 days ending on Oct. 22, 1844; sometimes in a loose sense it is applied also to the earlier message as including and climaxing in the 1844 movement.