John Nevins Andrews (July 22, 1829 – October 21, 1883) was a Seventh-day Adventist minister and co-founder of the Seventh-day Adventist Church. He was the first official Seventh-day Adventist missionary, writer, editor, and scholar. Andrews University (Michigan, USA), a university owned and operated by the Seventh-day Adventist church, is named after him.
Biography
John Nevins Andrews was born on July 22, 1829, in Poland, Maine. He became a Millerite in February 1843 and began to observe the seventh-day Sabbath in 1845. He met James White and Ellen G. White in September 1849. Later, the Whites boarded with the Andrews family.
In 1850, he began itinerant pastoral ministry in New England, and he was ordained in 1853. Andrews played a pivotal role in the establishment of Adventist theology. Among his more memorable achievements in Adventist prophetic interpretation, was developing the connection between the two-horned beast of Revelation as the United States of America.
On October 29, 1856, Andrews married Angeline Stevens (1824–1872) in Waukon, Iowa, where the Andrews and Stevens families had recently moved. In June 1859, a conference in Battle Creek voted that Andrews should assist J. N. Loughborough in tent evangelism in Michigan. He returned to Iowa in the fall of 1860. During these years, their first two children were born: Charles (b. 1857) and Mary (b. 1861), and Andrews wrote the first edition of his most prominent book, The History of the Sabbath and the First Day of the Week (Battle Creek Steam Press, 1859).
