Great Disappointment

The Great Disappointment in the Millerite movement was the reaction that followed preacher William Miller's proclamation that Jesus Christ would return to the Earth by 1844, which he called the Second Advent. The topic was spreading during the Second Great Awakening, on the second advent of Jesus Christ and with the studies from Archbishop Usher, who interpreted the 2300 days of Daniel 8:14 as 2300 years, who along with other Bible Scholars concluded that the return of Christ would be around 1843. William Miller a Baptist preacher began to study it and soon began to preach on it and finally set October 22, 1844 as the final date Christ would return. His study of the Daniel 8 prophecy during the Second Great Awakening led him to conclude that Daniel's "cleansing of the sanctuary" was cleansing the world from sin when Christ would come, and he and many others prepared. When Jesus did not appear by October 22, 1844, Miller and his followers were disappointed, hence the name. These events paved the way for the Adventists who formed the Seventh-day Adventist Church. They contended that what had happened on October 22 was not Jesus's return, as Miller had thought, but the start of Jesus's final work of atonement, the cleansing in the heavenly sanctuary, leading up to the Second Coming.