History of
the Millerite Movement
MILLERITE MOVEMENT. An interdenominational movement flourishing in the
United States, with some extensions elsewhere, from 1840 to 1844, based on a
distinctive prophetic interpretation, and giving rise to the group of
denominations classed as Adventist bodies, the largest of which is now the SDA
Church.
1. Miller and the Adventists. The
"Millerites" actually called themselves Adventists, but were
popularly known by the name of their leading exponent, William Miller, a New
York farmer and a licensed Baptist preacher. Since the term
"Adventist" is now often used in a broader sense or as a shortened
form of Seventh-day Adventist, the more specific term "Millerite" is
used here.
Miller first published his views on prophecy in 1832, but
the year 1840 marks the launching of the movement on a wide basis. Miller's
colleagues included ministers of various denominations, some of whom did
not agree with his expectation that Christ would return in 1843/44 but were
otherwise sympathetic with his views.
The principal doctrine on which the Millerite movement was
considered to be based was not primarily the "definite time" of the
Second Advent, but an interpretation of prophecy embodying (1) belief in
"the Advent near" and (2) a distinctive view of the nature of the
kingdom of God.
2. Part of an International Awakening. The Millerites
regarded their movement as the continuation and culmination of an international
awakening of interest in the Second Advent, and a proclamation of "the
Advent near," that had developed almost simultaneously in many countries
in the early 1800's. At that time the majority of Protestants were either
indifferent to the Second Advent or were looking for it after a millennium of
1,000 (or 365,000) years of a spiritual reign, through the triumph of the
church. It was against the latter view, called postmillennialism, that
nineteenth-century premillennialists contended by their insistence that
Christ would return before the millennium, and soon (see Premillennialism).
Among them were Petri in Germany (before 1800), Gaussen in Switzerland, Irving
and others in England, Wolff in Asia, and others elsewhere.
3. Similarities and Differences. The Millerites
circulated the works of some of these writers and regarded these
premillennialists as forerunners and colleagues. They opened correspondence
with some of the "friends of the advent near" in England, hoping that
they could unite with them, but found their differing views on the second
principal doctrine, the nature of the expected kingdom of God, an insuperable
barrier.
A study of the writings on the prophecies in many countries
shows that the Millerites were preceded by many expositors who held the same
general historical interpretation of the outline prophecies of Daniel and the
Revelation as they held, and even looked to 1843, 1844, or 1847 for the end of
the 2300 days of Dan 8:14 (the key prophecy on which Miller based his
expectation of the Advent in or about 1843). Many expected, just as definitely
and just as mistakenly as Miller, some momentous event or development of world
history introducing, or leading to, the millennium, or the Second Advent.
What distinguished Miller's group from these other
expositors was not the fact that the Millerites set dates, but the fact that
they expected the Second Advent to bring the catastrophic end of the age, the
cleansing of the world by fire, and the setting up of the eternal kingdom of
the saints. Because the Adventists formed a large and vocal movement, their
views were widely disseminated and discussed, and consequently their
disappointment made headlines while the less spectacular predictions made by
other expositors passed unnoticed or were forgotten. Furthermore, the Millerite
movement, though interdenominational, eventually gave rise to several organized
church bodies.
II. History of the
Millerite Movement. The groundwork of the Adventist movement of the 1840's was
laid by the personal activities of William Miller. For his early
preaching, beginning with a local revival in 1831, see his biographical sketch.
In 1836 he published a book of 16 lectures. In that year eight Baptist
ministers were preaching his views. In 1838 Josiah Litch, a Methodist minister,
one of the first New England ministers to join the movement, published a
48-page pamphlet and a 200 page book expounding and expanding Miller's
doctrines.
1. A Full-fledged Movement From 1840. From 1840 onward the Miller
movement was no longer primarily a one-man project, but was led by a large and
increasing group of men of various denominations. In 1840 Joshua V. Himes, of
Boston, a minister of the Christian Connection (which later became part of the
Congregational Christian Churches and then of the United Church of Christ),
undertook to help "Father Miller" and to blazon to the world the
message of the Second Advent in or about 1843. A man of faith and audacity and
a born promoter, he set out to find openings for Miller to preach in
"every city of the Union," and in February, 1840, he launched a paper
in Boston called The Signs of the Times. In October Miller and others
issued a call to the first "General Conference of Christians Expecting the
Advent," held in Boston, to which came ministers of various churches. This
and later conferences served to coordinate the planning and thinking of a
rather loosely knit movement. In the proceedings of this first Millerite
conference the following appeared:
Though in some of the less important views of this
momentous subject we are not ourselves agreed, particularly in regard to fixing
the year of Christ's second advent, yet we are unanimously agreed and
established in this all-absorbing point, that the coming of the Lord to judge
the world is now specially "nigh at hand" (First Report of the
General Conference of Christians Expecting the Advent, p. 15).
The second general conference, opened June 15, 1841, with
200 present, voted to circulate the series of pamphlets called the Second
Advent Library and to establish libraries and reading rooms in every town. This
conference laid down the strategy of warfare in a number of suggestions,
urging: (1) personal consecration, (2) personal work with others, (3) Bible
classes for mutual study of the question, (4) social meetings for prayer and
exhortation, (5) questioning ministers, (6) circulation of books.
In 1841 Litch, as general agent of the Committee of
Publication, devoted his full time to traveling, lecturing, and fostering the
distribution of Millerite publications. In his campaign to proclaim the second
coming to every corner of the land, Himes, the publisher, issued a stream of
booklets and periodicals and introduced stickers bearing Second Advent texts
and slogans for use in sealing letters. In 1842 Himes launched a new paper, The
Midnight Cry, in New York, and published 300 copies of a lithographed chart
illustrating the prophecies, which was designed by Charles Fitch and Apollos
Hale and authorized by the twelfth general conference, held at Boston in May,
1842, presided over by Joseph Bates
By this time the date 1843 for the Advent was increasingly
emphasized, although belief in "the time" was not required for
membership in the conference; all who rejected certain false teachings about
the Second Advent and the millennium and believed that the personal coming of
Christ and the first resurrection were imminent, could join. Some of the
foremost leaders, such as Henry Dana Ward (Episcopalian) and Henry Jones
(Congregationalist)–chairman and secretary, respectively, of the first general
conference–never accepted Miller's "definite time" for the Advent.
2. Expansion and Opposition. Beginning in 1842,
Millerite camp meetings were held "to awake sinners and purify Christians
by giving the midnight cry, viz., to hold up the immediate coming of Christ to
judge the world" (Signs of the Times, 3:88, June 15, 1842). With
their charts, their books and periodicals, their camp meetings, their
"Great Tent" (120 feet in diameter), and their startling message, the
Millerites made no small impression on their contemporaries. Their message was
preached in England by Robert Winter and others, and it went even to far
corners of the earth through the distribution of their papers to sailors and by
the sending of publications to "every English and American mission in the
world," "so far as the opportunity has offered" (Signs of the
Times, 6: 109, Nov. 15, 1843).
In America the Millerites aroused increasing interest and
opposition. Miller's date "about the year 1843" made them the targets
of theological opposition, of public ridicule, and of irresponsible journalism.
The wildest rumors were circulated–that the Millerites were cheating the
public, that they were disorderly, that they were fanatics whose delusions
caused insanity, that they prepared ascension robes, that Miller had set April
23, 1843, as the date of the end of the world. On the other hand, an occasional
item in the press spoke of their sobriety, sincerity, and knowledge of the
Bible. Occasionally a newspaper capitalized on the interest in Millerism by
printing accounts of meetings or sermons, with refutations by prominent
clergymen.
In the face of the growing hostility in the churches, some
Millerites questioned whether they should enter or remain in such churches, and
others found themselves shut out. By the summer of 1843 the idea of separation
was expressed (principally by Charles Fitch) and was printed in Millerite
papers, but there was no united acceptance of it.
3. The End of "1843" Passes. Miller's
"year of the end of the world" passed by in the spring of 1844. Since
the Millerites had not looked to any specific date and had allowed for the
possibility of some slight error in computation, there was no sudden
disillusionment. However, in May it was evident that "1843" must have
run out. Miller acknowledged his disappointment but exhorted the believers to
watch, for the coming of the Lord was near, even at the door. With Himes and
others he went on a summer preaching tour to the "West" (Ohio). The
fact that Millerism was more than belief in a point of time explains why the
movement did not disintegrate with this disappointment on the time element.
The increased suppression of Millerite believers in the
churches led finally to their separation from these churches. Miller never
accepted the idea of separation, but he did not speak against it when Himes
himself finally conceded:
We are agreed in the instant and final
separation from all who oppose the doctrine of the coming and kingdom of God at
hand. . . . "Come out from among them" (Letter Aug. 29, 1844, in Midnight
Cry, 7:80, Sept. 12, 1844).
By the summer of 1844 Millerism stood sharp and clear on the
religious horizon as a well-defined and more or less separate movement, with
ministers, Advent associations, and meetinghouses.
4. The October, 1844, Expectation. After the spring
disappointment, camp meetings were announced for New England "if time
lingers." It was at one of these in August at Exeter, New Hampshire, that
a new expectation, one for a specific date, Oct. 22, was proclaimed.
Joseph Bates, in the speaker's stand, stopped in mid sermon
to hear S. S. Snow, a man with a new message, sound the call to make ready for
the coming of the Lord and the cleansing of the sanctuary on the Day of
Atonement, the Biblical "tenth day of the seventh month," which he
reckoned as Oct. 22. This new date fired the Adventists in New England,
changing their indefinite though very real conviction of the nearness of the
Lord's coming into a belief so specific as to send them forth with crusading
zeal to warn men in the little while that remained. This "seventh-month
movement," as it came to be known, was soon to give a new tempo to
Millerism and bring it to a dramatic and speedy climax.
The editor of the Advent Herald (the new name of The
Signs of the Times) said in retrospect:
At first the definite time was generally opposed; but
there seemed to be an irresistible power attending its proclamation which
prostrated all before it. It swept over the land with the velocity of a
tornado, and it reached hearts in different and distant places almost
simultaneously, and in a manner which can be accounted for only on the
supposition that God was [in] it....
The lecturers among the Adventists were the last to
embrace the views of the time, and the more prominent ones came into it last of
all....
[About the first of October] we had such a view of
it, that to oppose it, or even to remain silent longer, seemed to us to be
opposing the work of the Holy Spirit; and in entering upon the work with all
our souls we could but exclaim, "What were we, that we should resist
God?" It seemed to us to have been so independent of human agency, that we
could but regard it as a fulfillment of the "midnight cry" (Advent
Herald, 8:93 Oct. 30, 1844).
This seventh-month movement finally gained the support of
Miller, Himes, and other prominent leaders, about two weeks before the fateful
day of Oct. 22. Though Miller's earlier message of the imminent Advent had been
called the "midnight cry" –"Behold, the bridegroom cometh; go ye
out to meet him" (Mt 25:6)–this new, specific message of the tenth day of
the seventh month was claimed to be the true midnight cry.
5. The "Great Disappointment" and After. With
spiritual exaltation and hope the Millerites gathered in churches and homes on
Oct. 22. They truly believed they would meet Him; that with others "loved
long since, and lost awhile," they would be gathered into a blest abode
where sorrow, sickness, and death are no more. But as the sun sank in the west,
their hopes sank with it. Some waited until midnight; then their disappointment
became a certainty.
To their disappointment were added the jeers and ridicule of
scoffers and the problem of caring for the needs of those who had impoverished
themselves for the cause. Most of the believers had spontaneously devoted the
last few days or weeks to attending meetings or to engaging in missionary work
before the expected end of the world. Although there seems to have been no
general policy of selling possessions, farmers in some instances did not
harvest their crops. Many who had joined the Adventists through fear now went
over to the mocking, scoffing rabble. But the true Millerites retained their
faith. The leaders, and even some among those who had not joined the
seventh-month movement, held that in the mysterious plans of God this preaching
of an exact date when men must meet God had served the purpose of a test to
discover those who really loved the Lord and His appearing. They reasoned that
God overruled to make this disappointing experience serve a divine purpose.
Refusing to set another definite time, Miller looked for
Christ "Today, Today, and Today, until He comes"; however, he
could not refrain from expressing confidence that the fixing of the year was
justified, and that Christ would surely come before "this Jewish
year" would terminate. In the spring of 1845, he concluded that he had
made some error in calculation, though he continued to look for the Advent as
near. (See Miller, William.)
The experience of Millerism at this time has been
graphically described as follows:
For years the river of Millerism had flowed on in
ever-increasing volume. It was no meandering stream, listlessly spreading over
flat country for lack of sharply defined banks. There was a sense of urgency,
of hastening toward a destination, that gave velocity and a sharply defined
course to the river. Though there were eddies and swirls and cross currents and
even marshy spots along the banks, these were mere incidentals. The main course
and character of the stream were evident to all.
Now the river of Millerism expected to be swallowed
up in the ocean of eternity on October 22–Millerite charts marked out no land
beyond that point. Instead, the erstwhile fast-moving stream poured out over an
arid, uncharted waste. The scorching sun of disappointment beat down, and the
burning winds of ridicule swept in from every side. The river suddenly lost its
velocity. There was no momentum to cut " a clearly marked channel in this
new, parched land. Sun and wind quickly began to play havoc with this
directionless body of water, now spread thinly over a wide area. While a
central stream of what had once been an impressive river, was more or less well
defined, there were many lesser streams, which often ended in miniature dead
seas, where stagnation and evaporation soon did their work. Indeed, no small
part of the once large river, when evaporated under the scorching sun of
disappointment, was finally returned to the sources from whence it came, the
other rivers in the religious world (Francis D. Nichol, The Midnight Cry, p.
274).
The Millerite movement was not constituted to meet the
conditions that confronted it after 1844, and it markedly subsided after that
year. Various small groups split off.
In a conference at Albany, New York, held in April, 1845,
the majority party, led by Miller, Himes, and others, adopted a series of
statements abandoning the 1844 ending of the 2300 days and looking to a future
fulfillment of the midnight cry. This majority group divided, a decade later,
into the Evangelical Adventists (now defunct) and the Advent Christians. (For a
fuller narrative of the Millerite movement, see F. D. Nichol, The Midnight
Cry, 576 pp.)
III. Millerite Eschatology.
1. Miller's
Views Summarized. In William Miller's study of Bible prophecies one of his
first major conclusions was that "the popular views of the spiritual reign
of Christ" through the church on earth were "not sustained by the
Word of God." He wrote:
I found it plainly taught in the Scriptures that
Jesus Christ will again descend to this earth, coming in the clouds of heaven,
in all the glory of his Father: . . . that at his coming the bodies of all the
righteous dead will be raised, and all the righteous living be changed from a
corruptible to an incorruptible, from a mortal to an immortal state, that they
will all be caught up together to meet the Lord in the air, and will reign with
him for ever in the regenerated earth: . . . that the bodies of the wicked will
then all be destroyed, and their spirits be reserved in prison until their
resurrection and damnation: and that when the earth is thus regenerated, the
righteous raised, and the wicked destroyed, the kingdom of God will have come,
when his will will be done on earth as it is done in heaven, that the meek will
inherit it, and the kingdom become the saints[']. I found that the only
millennium taught in the word of God is the thousand years which are to
intervene between the first resurrection and that of the rest of the dead as
inculcated in the xx[th chapter] of Revelation; and that it must necessarily follow
the personal coming of Christ and the regeneration of the earth: that till
Christ's coming and the end of the world, the righteous and wicked are to
continue together on the earth . . .; so that there can be no conversion of the
world before the advent: and that as the new earth wherein dwelleth
righteousness, is . . . the same for which we look, according to the promise of
Isa. Ixv. 17, and is the same that John saw in vision after the passing away of
the former heavens and earth, it must necessarily follow that the various
portions of Scripture that refer to the millennial state, must have their
fulfillment after the resurrection of all the saints that sleep in Jesus. I
also found that the promises respecting Israel's restoration, are applied by
the apostle to all who are Christ's,–putting on of Christ constituting them
Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise....
Another kind of evidence that vitally affected my
mind, was the chronology of the Scriptures. I found, on pursuing the study of the
Bible, various chronological periods extending, according to my understanding
of them, to the coming of the Savior....
Reckoning all these prophetic periods from the
several dates assigned by the best chronologers for the events from which they
should evidently be reckoned, they all would terminate together, about A.D.
1843 (Apology and Defence, 1845, pp. 7-11).
2. Differences From Views of Contemporaries. The
Millerites held that the millennial reign introduced at the Second Advent would
be that of the glorified righteous in the immortal state, on a purified and
renewed earth, and not, as many held, a triumphant reign of the church or of
literal Jews in a mortal state (see PremillenniaIism).
In opposition to these concepts of a "temporal
millennium" and world conversion either before or after the Second Advent,
the twelfth general conference of the Adventists, held at Boston, voted:
Resolved, That we regard the notion of a Millennium previous to
the coming of Christ, when all the world shall be converted, and sinners in
great multitudes saved, as a fearful delusion, . . . and that the nearer such a
millennium is represented, the more dangerous is its tendency, because the more
likely to encourage present impenitence, with the hope of future conversion to
God.
Resolved, That no portion of the New Testament scriptures
give[s] the most indirect intimation of the literal restoration of the Jews to
old Jerusalem, we believe that the arguments drawn from the Old Testament
prophecies are based on a mistaken view of those prophecies: and that they have
been fulfilled in what the gospel has already done, or remain to be fulfilled
in the gathering all the spiritual seed of Abraham into the New Jerusalem....
Resolved, That the notion of a probation [opportunity for
conversion] after Christ's coming, is a lure to destruction, entirely
contradictory to the word of God, which positively teaches that when Christ
comes the door is shut, and such as are not ready can never enter in (The
Signs of the Times 3:69, June 1, 1842).
3. "Midnight Cry." The reference is to the
cry heard at midnight in Christ's parable of the wise and foolish virgins (Mt
25:1-13), "Behold, the bridegroom cometh; go ye out to meet him." The
Millerites regarded this scripture as a prophetic parable and used it as one of
the bases of their message. For this application and the special emphasis
placed on it the summer of 1844, see Midnight Cry; Seventh-Month Movement.
4. Various Prophecies. Several Millerite publications
set forth detailed interpretations of various prophecies: the already widely
accepted view of the four kingdoms of Dan 2 and 7 as the Babylonian,
Medo-Persian, Grecian, and Roman empires; the ten horns as the barbarian
kingdoms that succeeded Rome; the dragon of Rev 12 as pagan Rome; the two
beasts of chapter 13 as papal Rome and "the infidel French
government" (Miller originally had civil and papal Rome, with the number
666 in Rev 13:18 representing 666 years of Roman paganism); 1260 years as the
period of the papacy from the time of Justinian to 1798; the "seven
times" (Lev 26:18, etc.) interpreted as 2520 years, ending in 1843; the 70
weeks (Dan 9:25) as 490 years, extending to A.D. 33, the crucifixion; the 2300
days (Dan 8:14) as years from the same starting point, ending in 1843; and the
thousand years of Rev 20 as literal years between the resurrection of the
righteous at the Second Advent and the resurrection of, and final execution of
judgment on, the wicked. The Millerites generally believed that the 1290 years
(of Dan 12:11) ended jointly with the 1260 years in 1798, and that the 1335
years (Dan 12:12) would end 45 years later, along with the 2300 years in 1843.
5. The 2300 Days. The key prophetic period was that
of the 2300 (Dan 8:14) years (see Twenty-three Hundred Days), ending with the
cleansing of the sanctuary, which the Millerites believed to involve the final
purification of the earth at the Second Advent. As noted earlier, Miller ended
this period in or about 1843, but he never preached an exact date.
Pressed to be more specific, he finally, by December, 1842, defined
"1843," by which he meant the Jewish year, as probably "sometime
between March 21st, 1843, and March 21st, 1844" ( The Signs of the
Times, 4:47, Jan. 25, 1843)–for he knew the Jewish religious year ran from
spring to spring. (Other Millerite leaders, knowing that the Jewish calendar
was lunar, began and ended the year with the new moon of April.)
When the "Jewish year 1843" passed (in the spring
of 1844) without the return of the Lord, and the public expected the Millerites
to "yield the whole question," Litch wrote:
The doctrine does not consist in merely tracing
prophetic periods.... But the whole prophetic history of the world . . .
affords indubitable evidence of the fact, that we have approached a crisis. And
no disappointment respecting a definite point of time can move them, or drive
them from their position, relative to the speedy coming of the Lord ("The
Rise and Progress of Adventism," The Advent Shield, 1:80, May,
1844).
Then he quoted the "Fundamental Principles" of the
Millerites as published in their periodicals in 1843, adding this footnote:
The above was written in the Jewish year 1843, which
has now expired. . . . We can only wait, . . . continually looking for, and
momentarily expecting, his appearing (ibid.).
6. The Shift From 1843 to 1844. It was not until the
summer of 1844 that the majority of the Millerites began to pay serious heed to
a few who had been insisting that the correct computation of the 2300 years and
the 70 weeks would lead to an ending date in the autumn, on the day of the
month the ancient sanctuary was cleansed, the tenth day of the seventh Jewish
month which they understood to fall in 1844 on Oct. 22. (For the basis and
development of this expectation, see Seventh-Month Movement; Twenty-three
Hundred Days.) On this day they believed that Christ would end His priestly
ministry and emerge from the holy of holies, or heaven, to return to the earth
to "bless His waiting people."
7. The Three Angels' Messages. The Millerites
believed also that they were fulfilling the prophecy of the flying angel of Rev
14:6, 7, the first of three (see Three Angels' Messages), proclaiming,
"The hour of his judgment is come," and many of them also gave the
second angel's message, to come out of fallen Babylon (v 8; cf. ch 18:4),
advocating separation from hostile churches. They gave little or no attention
to the message of the third angel (v 9).
8. Aftermath–Three-Way Split. After the great
disappointment of Oct. 22, 1844, the Millerites–at least those who did not fall
away in their disillusionment–split into three groups, differing according to
their respective views of the cause of their error in expecting the return of
Christ in 1844.
(1) The majority group, including, by April, 1845, Miller
and most of the leaders. These held that they had been right in applying the
2300-day prophecy and the parable of the Bridegroom to the Second Advent; and
that, therefore, since the Lord had not come they had been in error in the
chronology; that there had been no fulfillment of prophecy in 1843-1844 and the
"definite time" movement had been a mistake.
(2) A minority group known as the
"spiritualizers," or "spiritualists." These held that they
had been right both in chronology and in the expected event: the Second Advent
had actually occurred at the time specified, but as a spiritual coming, in His
saints (the spiritualizers). For their fanatical doctrines, see Spiritualisim
[1]. Many of these went into extreme splinter groups, and a number of them
joined the Shakers.
(3) Another minority group, intermediate between the other
two groups. Holding that the prophetic chronology had been correct, but that
the error lay in the event expected, they rejected on the one hand the
"spiritualist" view of an invisible Advent and a spiritual kingdom
(they insisted that the Advent was personal, literal, and still future); on the
other hand, they rejected the majority contention that the 2300 days had not
ended and that the 1844 movement had been a complete mistake.
To this third group (as to the second) the majority party
appeared to have abandoned the Adventist message by denying their past
experience in the 1844 movement. The majority group, in turn, were inclined to
condemn the third group, along with the second, for holding that the 2300 days
had ended and that the "midnight cry" was valid.
Among this third group were the leaders of the future SDA's,
who arrived at the conclusion that the proper interpretation of the symbols
indicated a different fulfillment–not the Second Advent by the final phase of
Christ's ministry (see Sanctuary).
9. Albany Conference. The main body led by Miller and, especially, Himes,
in the Albany conference in April, 1845, took its stand on a series of statements,
some of which may be summarized thus:
(1) They retained their principle of a
non-"Judaizing" premillennialism that is opposing the "Judaizing
doctrine" of the restoration of the literal Jews as a fulfillment of the
Abrahamic covenant.
(2) They made what appears to be a rather vaguely worded
concession toward the new view of conditional immortality taught by a few
Millerite leaders.
(3) They abandoned, necessarily, the 1844 date for the
Second Advent, but in so doing they also abandoned the idea that the 1844
movement was a fulfillment of prophecy, or that a prophetic landmark had been
passed that would explain the disappointment.
(4) Since they had emphasized the close of human probation
(which they held was symbolized by the "shut door" of the parable of
the Ten Virgins) as involved in the ending of the 2300 days, and since they
were convinced that probation had not ended, they now insisted also that the
2300 years, and the parable with its shut door, had likewise not been
fulfilled. (This left an opening for revisions of the chronology and later
dates set for the Advent by the leaders.)
(5) They declared themselves opposed to all "new
tests," and thereby barred not only various forms of fanaticism, but any
advance in prophetic exposition based on the premise of a valid prophetic
landmark in the 1844 movement. (For a fuller discussion of the Millerite
teachings, see L. E. Froom, The Prophetic Faith of Our Fathers, vol. 4,
part 2, especially chs 22, 34, 36, 37, 39.)
IV. Relation of SDA's to
Millerism. The
leaders of the small group that formed the nucleus of the organized SDA Church
came out of the Millerite movement, and they regarded themselves as the true
successors of the movement, as retaining and carrying on to completion the main
principles of Millerite doctrine and correcting and clarifying the
misunderstanding that had caused the disappointment and had resulted in the
repudiation of the 1844 message by the leaders.
Retaining the distinctive principles of Millerite
premillennialism, the SDA's modified certain points; for example, holding to
the close of probation at the Second Advent but placing the renewal of the
earth, and the establishment on it of the everlasting kingdom of the saints, at
the end of the millennium. They accepted the minority view of conditional
immortality. They explained the Disappointment by showing that the
"cleansing of the sanctuary" represented not the end of the heavenly
ministry of Christ, but a new phase of it (see Investigative Judgment;
Judgment). They held that their new Sabbath message was symbolized by the third
angel's message of Rev 14:9-12, combining "the commandments of God, and
the faith of Jesus," and that this third message involved the proclamation
of the first and second also (see Three Angels' Messages). Thus the doctrines
of Millerism formed the background of many of the distinctive teachings of the
SDA Church. However, not all of these doctrines originated in Millerism (see
Prophetic Interpretation), and they were incorporated selectively into the structure
of the SDA Church.
From
the Seventh-day Adventist Encyclopedia, Volume 10, pages 892-898, 1976. Review
and Herald Publishing Association.