When Baptist preacher William Miller said that Jesus would return on October 22, 1844, many Americans were not only surprised that he had set a date. The idea that Christ would literally return was in itself a radical proposition.

By the 19th century, most established churches were preaching that the Second Coming was more myth than reality, and more human than divine. Religious leaders taught that a metaphorical “second coming” symbolized the emergence of a new generation with social responsibility.

Despite this, the Millerite belief in a literal second coming of Christ—along with new prophetic understandings, the Sabbath, and the state of the dead—would prove to be fundamental. These key doctrines would become the anchor of the early Adventist movement amid a climate of religious upheaval.

At the beginning of the 19th century, the northeastern United States was a source of revival. The so-called “Second Great Awakening” initiated movements such as the United Society of Believers in the Second Appearing of Christ, the early Mormons, the precursors of the Jehovah's Witnesses, the Millerites, and a host of eccentric groups. Indeed, upstate New York was called “the burned district,” to refer to the fact that the evangelists had exhausted the number of unbelievers in the region.

In this framework, the Millerites endured the Great Disappointment, that moment in which the group, with great expectation but without success, awaited the return of Christ. With what Adventist historian George Knight calls the “mathematical certainty of faith” shattered, many Millerites abandoned the movement.

Those who remained were divided by the meaning of October 22. Some claimed that the date was completely incorrect. Others said that Christ had returned, but only in a spiritual and illusory sense. A third group—the future leaders of the early Seventh-day Adventists—became convinced that the date was correct, but the event was not.

Revived by this possibility, they regrouped and returned to the Scriptures, determined to discover the truth. Thus they concluded that instead of returning to Earth on October 22, Jesus had begun the last phase of his atoning ministry in the heavenly sanctuary.

A young Methodist woman named Ellen Harmon (later White) lent prophetic credibility to this interpretation. The vision he had in December 1844, in which he saw “a straight and narrow path” to heaven, confirmed that this prophecy had indeed been fulfilled on October 22, and motivated the denomination's central focus on Christ.