Cult Of Ellen G. White #1: Beginning Of The 19th Century Religion Called Seventh-day

Adventism is a product of the great religious revivals that regularly swept through America, especially in certain districts of New England & New York, in the early nineteenth century. A farmer named William Miller became convinced (much the same as modern day false prophets like Harold Camping of the Family Radio Network who has repeatedly predicted the end of the world based on his own Bible interpretations) through his own study of the Bible that the 2300 prophetic days of Daniel 8:14 represented 2300 years beginning in 457 B.C. with the decree of Artaxerxes I to rebuild Jerusalem & continuing down to 1843 or 1844 when he predicted Christ would return to Earth. Miller began preaching this prediction in the 1820s & continued to preach it into the 1840s. His doomsday message gathered perhaps a million followers throughout the Middle Atlantic & New England states. When Jesus did not come back in March 1844 as Miller had declared he turned to a prediction by S.S. Snow (who wore a white robe & called himself Elijah) who said Christ would return on October 22, 1844. Naturally, as it turned out, they were both wrong (known as the "Great Disappointment") & shown to be false prophets (Matthew 24:23-36). However, some of their deluded followers refused to give up on Miller's fabrications including a 17-year-old girl named Ellen Harmon (later to become known as Ellen G. White, due to her marriage to another Millerite named James White) who taught that God had shown her in a vision that "probation" for the people of the Earth had closed on October 22 & that Christ would come in the immediate future.