Living in the Last Days

The nearness of the end shapes the whole outlook of these traditions: their urgency in preaching, their strong prophetic interest, and their sense of being a people prepared for Christ's appearing. The emphasis distinguishes them from churches that affirm the second coming in the creed but do not treat its nearness as a defining and organising conviction. The two movements differ significantly in their detailed eschatology, but they share the expectation that the present order is soon to give way to God's kingdom, and this hope colours their identity and mission.

The two traditions responded very differently to the experience of failed expectation: Seventh-day Adventism, chastened by the 1844 disappointment, moved away from further public date-setting, reinterpreting the original calculation as marking a heavenly rather than earthly event. Jehovah's Witnesses, by contrast, have publicly revised their expected timeline more than once across the twentieth century, including expectations associated with 1914, 1925, and 1975, each revision followed by renewed theological explanation for the community; historians and sociologists of religion studying both movements have used them as prominent case studies in how millenarian groups sustain belief and membership despite repeated disconfirmation of specific predicted dates.