(a) Originally, and properly, a member of the Adventist (or Millerite) movement or of any one of the six (now five) Adventist church bodies ( SB , no. 6 ) that sprang from it; (b) in Seventh-day Adventist usage, a short term for “Seventh-day Adventist”; (c) in some dictionaries, any believer in “Adventism,” which they define loosely as the doctrine of the nearness of the Second Advent and the end of the world, or age. The terms Adventist and Adventism were coined by the Millerites ( SB , no. 7 ). Hence these terms are most correctly employed in the framework of Millerite eschatology, which included not only the teaching of the near, personal advent of Christ but also a distinctive body of doctrine concerning the events connected therewith. Understood in this way, Adventism was and is distinct from and should not be confused with other views of the Second Advent; the differences are discussed under Premillennialism.
Defined in the loose sense of believing in the nearness of the Second Advent, “Adventism” originated neither in the U.S. nor with the Millerite movement. In the early nineteenth century in the British Isles and on the Continent there was a great revival of interest in the return of Christ as near, in contrast with the then-dominant view that Christ would come only after a future millennium. The Millerites in America were a distinctive part of this general “Advent awakening,” and looked upon all those who held “the Advent near” as brothers and sisters, despite differences in other areas of doctrine ( see Premillennialism ). Later, when representatives of the Sabbathkeeping branch of the Adventists in America went abroad, first to Europe, they found others looking for the Second Advent. In many languages, the term Adventist has come to be used by those who do not know the origin of the word, to mean specifically the church that teaches both the keeping of the seventh-day Sabbath and preparation for the coming of the Lord, namely the Seventh-day Adventist Church.