Ellen G. White and Her Critics

Rise of Seventh-day Adventism

But the story of the Millerite, or more properly, Advent movement, is not confined to this main body just described. In the days immediately following the great disappointment of October 22, 1844, there began slowly to take shape in the minds of a few of the disappointed ones certain understandings of prophecy, certain explanations of the disappointment, that were to be the doctrinal nucleus of the future Seventh-day Adventist Church. EGWC 171.1

In the seventh-month movement Adventists studied Christ’s ministry in the heavenly sanctuary in relation to Daniel 8:14, and reasoned that service, if true to the type, would end with a cleansing of the sanctuary. But they had seen in this concluding feature a sudden work of judgment that was to reveal itself in the destruction of the wicked at the coming of Christ. In fact, they focused their thoughts, not so much on Christ’s going into, as His coming out of, the sanctuary on that fateful day of cleansing—coming out to bless His waiting people, as did the high priest in the typical service. This coming out to bless, said they, is the second coming of Christ. Thus in the seventh-month movement they drew into their doctrine of the sanctuary cleansing the idea of the antitypical sanctuary in heaven above without surrendering the idea that sudden world judgment and the Second Advent were the distinguishing features of the cleansing of that sanctuary. EGWC 171.2