Seventh-day Adventist Church
Christian denomination
The Seventh-day Adventist Church (SDA) is an Adventist Christian denomination which is distinguished by its observance of Saturday, the seventh day of the week in the Christian (Gregorian) and the Hebrew calendar, as the Sabbath; its emphasis on the imminent Second Coming (advent) of Jesus Christ; and its annihilationist soteriology. The denomination grew out of the Millerite movement in the United States during the mid-19th century, and it was formally established in 1863. Among its co-founders was Ellen G. White, whose extensive writings are still held in high regard by the church. Seventh-day Adventists have compared Ellen G. White to biblical prophets.
Some of the theology of the Seventh-day Adventist Church corresponds to common evangelical Christian teachings, such as the Trinity and the infallibility of Scripture. Distinctive eschatological teachings include soul sleep, the doctrine of an investigative judgment and annihilationism. The church emphasizes following the Jewish dietary law, advocates vegetarianism, and its holistic view of human nature—i.e., that the body, soul, and spirit form one inseparable entity. The church holds the belief that "God created the universe, and in a recent six-day creation made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day." Marriage is defined as a lifelong union between a man and a woman. The second coming of Christ and resurrection of the dead are among official beliefs.
The world church is governed by a General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists, with smaller regions administered by divisions, unions, local conferences, and local missions.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Seventh-day Adventist Church” is christian denomination. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Seventh-day, Adventist and Church, not as a finished interpretation.
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This entry incorporates text from “Seventh-day Adventist Church” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.