The pioneer of the Great Advent Movement, William Miller, was the first to identify “the daily” in Daniel 8:9-14 as an evil thing by interpreting it to mean paganism.  Regarding this new view of “the daily” Ellen White stated that “Then I saw in relation to the "daily" (Dan. 8:12) that the word "sacrifice" was supplied by man's wisdom, and does not belong to the text, and that the Lord gave the correct view of it to those who gave the judgment hour cry.  When union existed, before 1844, nearly all were united on the correct view of the ‘daily.’” – Early Writings, p. 74.  This unity resulted in the Great Advent Movement of the early 1840s, and was a result of the interpretation that “the daily” represented paganism.  Up to about the turn of the 20th century, this view of “the daily” to mean paganism was still accepted by the majority of the pioneer Adventists.  However, during this time, L. R. Conradi, who was a leading scoffer and rejecter of the Christ Our Righteousness message of 1888, resurrected the view that “the daily” now represented Christ’s high priestly ministry in the heavenly sanctuary.  This resurrected view had later gained the acceptance of several prominent church leaders, including A. T. Jones.

Down to our contemporary time, Desmond Ford, who was considered the leading Adventist scholar by many people, was also one that had accepted Conradi’s view of “the daily” to mean Christ’s high priestly ministry in the heavenly sanctuary.  However, in 1980, Desmond Ford ended up totally rejecting the Sanctuary doctrine that Christ was performing the act of investigative judgment in the most holy place of the heavenly sanctuary since 1844, THE central pillar and distinction of Seventh-day Adventism, and afterwards formed his own group.  Ford’s scholarly arguments led many Adventist ministers and scholars to reject the sanctuary Adventist message, which also led them to eventually leave the church altogether.  Shortly after, in order to combat this rejection, several key scholars under the auspices of the General Conference of the Seventh-day Adventist Church Biblical Research Institute came together to discuss how they might strengthen the pure sanctuary message.  This led to their monumental work called the “Daniel and Revelation Committee Series (DARCOM)” based mainly on the prophecies of Daniel and Revelation to support the historical view of the sanctuary, which consisted of 7 books covering over 2,400 pages.  This series was the work of a 10-year (1982-1992) effort of intense studying which brought many significant and beneficial achievements.

The Seventh-day Adventist Church, or more specifically current Adventist scholarship, to this day still accept and strongly support the fact, which is also clearly evident in their DARCOM Series as discussed above, that “the daily” means Christ’s high priestly ministry in the heavenly sanctuary.  The past interpretation of “the daily” as paganism seems now to be only a fainting memory.  However, even after their attempted exhaustive exegesis of Daniel 8:9-14, several key questions and difficulties are still left unanswered regarding this current interpretation of “the daily.”

The link below contains an intensive exegesis of Daniel 8:9-14 supporting the contention that “the daily” represents paganism, and also clears up what the DARCOM Series was unable to present.  After examining the evidence contained therein, one should be able to easily decide for themselves whether “the daily” represents paganism or Christ’s high priestly ministry.

Did the Lord God really give the correct view of “the daily” during the great Advent movement?  Were the Adventist pioneers wrong in their understanding of “the daily” for all those 50 or so years?  In summary, either all evidences stand or fall regarding the interpretation of “the daily” as paganism or Christ’s high priestly ministry.

http://ims.truepath.com/biblestudy/tamid/