The Great Disappointment

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The Great Disappointment that resulted from the wrong interpretation, by Millerite prophets, of the second coming of Jesus Christ led to the formation of several small sects, including the Seventh Day Adventist Church, which have similar beliefs.
Who was William Miller?
Miller’s life is narrated by many present-day Adventist movements. In this part of the paper, I used three websites: Pastor Russell, Adventist Heritage Ministry and New Hampshire Seventh Day Adventist Church. William Miller was a farmer and Baptist preacher. More detailed information about Miller’s life are provided in this paper although some of these information might be recalled from the class lecture in chapter eight ‘Visions of Religious Community’. He was born in 1782 in Pittsfield, Massachusetts and raised in Low Hampton, in the northern area of New York. His father was a soldier and his mother was a very religious lady. Miller was mostly self-educated. Between the ages of 9 and 14, he only went to school for three months each winter. After marrying Lucy P. Smith, the couple moved to Poultney, Vermont. Miller read a lot of books and was influenced by his friends to become a deist. According to the dictionary, Deism is “the belief in the existence of God on the evidence of reason and nature only, with rejection of supernatural revelation”. According to Knight, this belief started becoming popular in the late 18th century in Europe and North America. After the 1790 French Revolution, many Deists in Europe returned to Christianity in the early 19th century. In the U.S., this return was called the Second Great Awakening. Miller returned to Christianity at that time (Knight). During the war of 1812, the young man volunteered for some community service. There, he...

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...ing to Duke, thousands of followers had waited with faith for the return of Christ. As the day was approaching, many followers started a diet imitating Adam in Paradise. Some of them even sold their houses and other stopped working on their farms because they thought it would be useless. After October, 22, the Great Disappointment, Miller announced that he miscalculated the date. He continued to believe that the “day of the Lord is near, even at the door” (Duke). Although many followers left the movement, many kept their faith but were made fun of. Those ones that stayed, including the leader Miller, were comforted by Matthew’s gospel "Watch therefore, for ye know neither the day nor the hour wherein the Son of man cometh" (Matthew 25:13). Their new understanding of the Bible was that there were not wrong instead they could just not predict a specific date (Parry).

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