ADVENTISTS (ADVENTISTS, SECOND ADVENTISTS).
This name, which designates certain Protestant sects in America, derives from the belief of their followers in the second coming of Christ to earth. Their founder was William Miller (b. at Pittsfield, Massachusetts, on 5 Feb. 1782; d. at Low Hampton, New York, on 10 Dec. 1849), of the Baptist confession in New England, who from 1831 began to preach a doctrine that he had developed through his study of the sacred books, especially the prophetic ones, and which he set forth in the volume *Evidence from Scripture and History of the Second Coming of Christ about the Year 1843* (Brandon [Vermont] 1842), succeeding in proselytizing even among Baptists and Methodists. His conviction was that Christ would descend again to earth to reign, in human form, in communion with the Saints, for a thousand-year period, during which the exaltation of the good and the condemnation of the wicked would take place.
From calculations made by taking as terms the 2300 days (to be considered as years) of the prophecy of Daniel (8:14), and computing them from the return of Ezra to Jerusalem, placed in 457 BC, Miller fixed the very year of the end of the world and thus of the Second Advent, which according to him was to fall between 21 March 1843 and 21 March 1844; a date later postponed by one of his followers, S. S. Snow, to 22 Oct. 1844, after the disappointment, confessed by Miller himself, over the non-occurrence of the event, adducing as a reason the non-correspondence of the Hebrew year with the Christian year. But as this latter date also passed without anything happening, many of the new proselytes cooled, and little by little they moved away from the central movement to return to the fold of other sects. Those who remained adherents of Miller (ca. 50,000) were gathered by him in a general assembly at Albany on 25 Apr. 1845, within which the fundamental canons of their faith were established, centering mainly on the imminent Second Advent of Christ, without however fixing the date, and on the resurrection of the Saints for the life of the millennium, and the name "Adventists" was adopted as official for the sect.
In the course of time, however, differences of view further divided the community of Adventists, so that upon the original stock, now almost extinct, of the Evangelical Adventists, considered as the primal group, five new churches gradually formed, which, while retaining in common the constitutional and programmatic belief in the physical return of Christ, differ among themselves in pecuniary characteristics. Today, therefore, the following are counted among them: the Advent Christian Church, the Seventh-day Adventists, the Church of God, the Life and Advent Union, and the Churches of God in Jesus Christ.
The Seventh-day Adventists, so called because of their observance of the Sabbath rest, began to organize as early as 1844 in New Hampshire, establishing their first headquarters at Middletown, Conn. (1849), then at Battle Creek, Mich. (1885), and finally at Washington (1903). In keeping with the other Adventist sects, they too believe that the personal Second Coming of Christ, triumphant in the glory of the Saints, for the thousand-year reign, is imminent, at the end of which the good will receive eternal reward and the wicked will be dispersed. The soul of this new Adventist movement was Ellen Gould White, considered, because of the inspiration of her preaching, as a prophetess. The Seventh-day Adventists constitute not only the largest branch of the so-called Adventist Church, in terms of the number of members, institutions, and ministers, but also the best organized, both in internal spiritual and temporal administration and in the field of foreign missions, which embrace countries on all continents.
The Advent Christians, originally constituted in New England (1861), where they still have the greatest number of adherents, have their official headquarters in Boston. They partly oppose the doctrines enunciated by the Evangelical Adventists, especially with regard to the immortality of the soul, holding that this does not belong at all to the wicked, who will be raised from the dead, at the end of the millennium, only to receive their final condemnation, eternal life being reserved for the good, which, as a reward, will be granted to them by Christ at the Second Coming.
Around 1864–65, from the Seventh-day Adventists there separated, under the leadership of the Adventist pastor Cranmer, all those who refused to accept the "inspired" word of Ellen G. White, to constitute themselves in a separate community under the name of Church of God, agreeing, as to the rest, with the general theories of Adventism.
For the adherents of the Life and Advent Union (The Life and Advent Union), who constitute the minority of the discordant family of Adventists, the millennium has already passed and was not a period of serenity and enjoyment, but of persecution and suffering for Christians. Organized in 1864, they still believe that there will be no resurrection for the wicked and that eternal life will be a reward only for the good.
Another small group of separated Adventists, gathered in Philadelphia in 1888, under the denomination of Churches of God in Jesus Christ (otherwise called Age-to-Come Adventists), believes that Christ, on returning to earth, will establish Jerusalem as the capital of His kingdom and will restore the Israelite nation to God’s favor. For this reason they are also called restorationists or restitutionists.