BEGINNINGS OF THE ADVENT MOVEMENT

As you can imagine, as soon as the clock ticked past midnight on October 22, people were bewildered, angry, even scared. Many gave up their beliefs, and many went back to the churches they attended before. 

Others, however, who had studied the passages Miller emphasized knew this was still an important piece of prophecy. They continued their study, wondering where they might have made a mistake. Especially because the Bible itself says the timing of Christ’s return is not known by anyone except God the Father. 

“Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away. But concerning that day or that hour, no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father” (Mark 13:31, 32, ESV).³

Over the next 15 years, many former Millerites continued their studies of prophecy and Christ’s Second Coming to see what more they could learn. They established multiple “Bible conferences,” or formal groups and events focused on studying Scripture, and identified a series of Bible truths that were forgotten or neglected since the days of the early Church.⁴ These truths can be summarized as follows:

• Christ’s second coming is imminent, will be seen by all the world, and it will be literal, not metaphorical.
• The seventh day, Saturday, is God’s Sabbath. The Fourth Commandment’s instruction to celebrate and keep it remains literal to this day (along with the rest of the Ten Commandments). 
• God does not eternally torment sinners, but rather the dead “sleep” until the second coming and last judgment.
• Christ now ministers in the heavenly sanctuary, thereby mediating to us the benefits of His death on the cross, saving us by His righteousness and not our own deeds (see Hebrews 8).
• In the last days of this earth, Christians will be tempted by apostasy but be called back to divine truth—the “third angel’s message” of Revelation 14—and a relatively small “remnant” of faithful believers will answer this call.
• This remnant would be marked by a recurrence of the prophetic ministry, and many people will display the prophetic gift and proclaim the good news (see Joel 2:28 and Acts 2:17).