Massachusetts-born William Miller, a veteran of the…

Massachusetts-born William Miller, a veteran of the war of 1812 and a Freemason, had probably stopped being an active Mason following his licensing as a Baptist minister by the Low Hampton Baptist Church on September 12, 1833; the lodge of his former hometown in Poultney, Vermont—and most other lodges—having closed in 1832 during a time of anti-Masonic fervor.

Having become convinced, through his interpretation of the Bible, that the Second Coming of Christ will occur in 1843, Miller had in 1832 submitted a series of sixteen articles to the Vermont Telegraph, a Baptist paper.

The first of these had been published on May 15, and Miller had written of the public's response: "I began to be flooded with letters of inquiry respecting my views; and visitors flocked to converse with me on the subject."

In 1834, unable to personally comply with many of the urgent requests for information and the invitations to travel and preach that he received, Miller publishes a synopsis of his teachings in a sixty-four-page tract.

Its lengthy title is Evidence from Scripture and History of the Second Coming of Christ, about the Year 1843: Exhibited in a Course of Lectures.

Miller has thus founded Adventism.