March 1  Bates Gets The Sabbath-2

So God blessed the seventh day and hallowed it, because on it God rested from all his work which he had done in creation. Gen. 2:3, RSV.

Yesterday we noted that the Seventh Day Baptists had had some results in their effort in the early 1840s to stimulate attention among other Christians regarding the biblical Sabbath.

Interestingly, a significant part of that interest had developed among the Millerite Adventsits. As a result, the Sabbath Recorder reported in June 1844 "that considerable numbers of those who are looking for the speedy appearance of Christ, have embraced the seventh day, and commenced observing it as the sabbath." The Recorder went on to suggest that obedience to the Sabbath was part of "the best preparation" for the Advent.

We do not know exactly what the Recorder meant by saying that "considerable numbers" of Millerites had begun to keep the Sabbath by the summer of 1844, but we do not know that the issue of the seventh-day Sabbath had become problematic enough by September for the Millerite Midnight Cry to publish two lengthy articles on the topic.

"Many persons," we read, "have had their minds deeply exercised respecting a supposed obligation to observe the seventh day." The editors decided that "there is no particular portion of time which Christians are required by law to set apart as holy time." But if such a conclusion was incorrect, "then we think the seventh day is the only day for the observance of which there is any law."

The final article concluded with the thought that the "seventh-day brethren and sisters. . .are trying to mend the old broken Jewish yoke, and put it on their necks." The article also suggested that Christians should not call Sunday the Sabbath.

The Seventh Day Baptists responded to the Midnight Cry articles by noting that "the new discovery of the Second Advent believers, which makes it morally certain to them that Christ will come on the tenth day of the seventh month, has probably unfitted their minds in a great measure for the consideration of the claims of the Sabbath upon their attention."

And so it had. But biblical truth is persistent. And for that we can be thankful. God leads His people as a whole and each of us as indivisuals step by step in the pathway of His Word.

The only safeguard against evil is the indwelling of Christ in the heart through faith in His righteousness. It is because selfishness exists in our hearts that temptation has power over us. But when we behold the great love of God, selfishness appears to us in its hideous and repulsive character, and we desire to have it expelled from the soul. As the Holy Spirit glorifies Christ, our hearts are softened and subdued, the temptation loses its power, and the grace of Christ transforms the character.(TFMB, 118).