Adventist

Person who believes that Jesus will return to make a second appearance on Earth. Expectation of the Second Coming of Christ is found in New Testament writings generally. Adventist views are held in particular by the Seventh-Day Adventists church (with 4 million members in 200 countries), the Christadelphians, the Jehovah's Witnesses, the Four Square Gospel Alliance, the Advent Christian church, and the Evangelical Adventist church.

The term was coined as a collective name for six US Protestant evangelical groups: the Advent Christians, Evangelical Adventists, Life and Advent Union, Age-to-Come Adventists, Seventh-Day Adventists, and Church of God. They originated in the early decades of the 19th century, when a study of Bible prophecy convinced some scholars that the coming of Christ was near. William Miller, a Baptist farmer in New York State, stirred the USA with the message that Christ would come in 1843 or 1844. When the advent did not take place, the advent teaching was widely ridiculed, but a restudy of the prophecies convinced many believers that while they were mistaken as to the nature of the prophetic period terminating in 1844, the ‘signs’ of the approaching advent were multiplying, and they set themselves to look for and proclaim the ‘blessed hope’ of the second coming of Christ as the only solution to the world's ills. The most active of the groups stemming from the advent revival is the Seventh-Day Adventist Church.