The Seventh-day Adventist Church has a long and storied history in St. Louis, Missouri. It all began in Trendley 2000, when the first Seventh-day Adventist Church was established in East St. The pastors at the time were Elder Edward Avinger, Vernon Joyner, Robert Smith, Charles Gibson, and Pastor Henry Holt.
Pastor Holt felt the need for a larger place of worship and located a Presbyterian church for sale at 6901 State Street. A fund was created for construction and the congregation joined the program. The church was formed in the 19th century by many anti-Trinitarian ministers from Christian Connexion who had an anti-Trinitarian vision. According to church statistics, an average of 2,900 people joined the Seventh-day Adventist Church every day, bringing the total number of baptized adult members to 16.6 million. The General Conference session of 1980 in Dallas produced the first official statement of beliefs of the church voted by the world body, called the 27 fundamental beliefs. Adventists have played a pivotal role in introducing the biblical doctrine of premillennialism to the United States.
In his book The Kingdom of the Sects, Walter Martin explains why Seventh-day Adventists are accepted as orthodox Christians and summarizes the key role that Adventists played in advancing premillennialism in the 19th century. The General Conference sessions of 1901 and 1903 reorganized the structure of the church to include union conferences that managed a group of local conferences in their area. As a result of an evangelistic campaign, Ida Robinson and her family from Culp, Illinois, and others became baptized members of the First Seventh-day Adventist Church in East St. The purchase was made and the new name was changed from Trendley Avenue Adventist Church to Reid Memorial Adventist Church in memory of a faithful and trustworthy founding member until his death. In Romania, where there were more than 25,000 Adventists, the union conference, the six local conferences and all the churches were also disbanded. Retired pastor Rick Howard drew attention to what he saw as the dangers of spiritual formation in the second decade of the 21st century. The Seventh-day Adventist Church is premillennialist after the Tribulation who accept the 1,000-year-old literal biblical teaching in Revelation 20 which immediately follows the second literal coming of Christ described in Revelation 19. President Wilson counseled: “Stay away from non-biblical spiritual disciplines or methods of spiritual formation that are rooted in mysticism, such as contemplative prayer, centered prayer, and the emerging church movement in which they are promoted”.
