ABSTRACT
On 22 October 1844 thousands of Americans in the North and Midwest spent the day looking for Jesus to appear in the clouds of heaven. Most had only recently heard the warning to prepare for the end of all things, but some had been getting ready for this great day since the early 1830s when the message about Jesus’ approaching return was first published. The nonbelieving public called them “Millerites” for William Miller, an upstate New York farmer who had founded and led the movement since 1831, but most of them preferred to call themselves “Adventists” or “second Adventists” thus announcing to that same public that their faith was not founded on the word of a man but on the promises of God as revealed in scripture. Their commitment to Adventism varied from ardent “true believers” to those who were “covering their bets,” getting ready just in case Miller was proved correct. But all of them lived in a world in which prophecy was real and the terrible events forecast in the Bible were at least future, and perhaps present, certainties.
