Observance of the seventh-day Sabbath

A knowledge of the doctrine of the seventh-day Sabbath was first brought to Millerite Adventists during the early 1840s by Seventh Day Baptists. In early 1844 in Washington, New Hampshire, Rachel Oakes (later Preston), a Seventh Day Baptist, introduced the Sabbath to Adventists in her area. Far from being an innovation of the nineteenth century, the seventh-day Sabbath as a day of rest and worship has been observed by Christians since the beginning of Christianity and by Seventh Day Baptists since the seventeenth century. During 1844 and 1845, two ministers in the Washington, New Hampshire, area, Frederick Wheeler and Thomas Preble, accepted this doctrine and began to propagate their views. Thus it came to the attention of Joseph Bates, who, with James and Ellen White, would later become one of the founders of the Seventh-day Adventist Church. When she first heard of Bates’s position on the Sabbath in 1845 or 1846, Ellen White’s initial reaction was negative. “I did not feel its importance and thought that he erred in dwelling upon the fourth commandment more than upon the other nine.” ^{4EGW, Life Sketches of Ellen G. White (Mountain View, CA: Pacific Press®, 1915), 95.} In August 1846, Bates published his first Sabbath tract, The Seventh Day Sabbath, a Perpetual Sign, and James and Ellen White acquired a copy. From the biblical evidence presented in this tract, they decided to accept this doctrine. ^{5EGW, Testimonies for the Church, 1:75.} In 1874, Ellen White recalled in a letter to John Loughborough, “I believed the truth upon the Sabbath question before I had seen anything in vision in reference to the Sabbath. It was months after I had commenced keeping the Sabbath before I was shown [in vision] its importance.” ^{6EGW, Letter 2, 1874, in Manuscript Releases (Silver Spring, MD: Ellen G. White Estate, 1990), 8:238.}UEGW 110.1

A similar scenario took place regarding the time to begin the observance of the Sabbath, an issue that was not settled among Sabbatarian Adventists until November 1855. Four views of when the Sabbath begins coexisted among them during the late 1840s and early 1850s: (1) sunrise Saturday morning; (2) midnight Friday night (“legal time”); (3) 6 P.M. Friday (“equatorial time”), the position favored by Bates; and (4) sunset on Friday, the Jewish and Seventh Day Baptist position. J. N. Andrews was commissioned to study out the matter from Scripture, and wrote a report for a November 1855 conference in Battle Creek. On the basis of biblical and historical evidence, Andrews concluded that the proper time to begin the Sabbath was sunset on Friday. ^{7J. N. Andrews, “Time for Commencing the Sabbath,” Review and Herald, December 4, 1855, 76-78.} Ultimately, the attendees at this conference accepted Andrews’s study and conclusions. ^{8Arthur L. White, Ellen G. White: The Early Years, 1827-1862 (Hagerstown, MD: Review and Herald®, 1985), 1:322-325; cf. EGW, Testimonies for the Church, 1:116.} Ellen White, in subsequent years, continued to give strong support to the doctrine of the Sabbath and its theological and spiritual meaning. She also provided numerous counsels regarding Sabbath keeping. But it can hardly be said that Adventists got their distinctive belief regarding the Sabbath from Ellen White.UEGW 110.2