May 11  Centering In Battle Creek

Now in the church at Antioch there were prophets and teachers. . .While they were worshiping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, "Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them." Then after fasting and praying they laid their hands on them and sent them off. Acts 13:1-3, RSV.

Every movement has a center. The early Christian church launched its mission to the Gentiles from Antioch in Syria.

Battle Creek, a small town in Michigan, would become the headquarters of the Seventh-day Adventist Chruch during the nineteenth century. From it publications and missionaries would eventually spread to the far corners of the earth as Adventism ever more fully grasped its responsibility to preach the three angels' messages to all the earth.

Sabbatarian Adventism first found a rootage in Battle Creek when the ever moving Joseph Bates visited the village of some 2,000 people in 1852. His arrival put him in somewhat of a quandary. Usually he began in a new area by contacting members of the local first-day Adventist congregation. But Battle Creek had none. So Bates, J.N. Loughborough tells us, went to the post office and inquired to the identity of the most honest man in town. The official referred him to David Hewitt on Van Buren Street.

Finding the Hewitts at breakfast, the intrepid evangelist told the head of the family that since people considered him the most honest man in town, he had some truth to share with him. Beginning at breadfast and going to evening, Bates "laid before them the third angel's message and the Sabbath," which they accepted before the sun went down.

Hewitt's baptism was the beginning of the Sabbatarian congregation in Battle Creek. In 1855 four of Bates' converts-Dan Palmer, J.P. Kellogg, Henry Lyon, and Cyrenius Smith-provided funds for the Sabbatarins to build a publishing house in that city. Some of those men even sold their farms to finance the venture.

Battle Creek, Michigan, became the hub of Adventism for the rest of the century. As we shall see, a full range of Adventist institutions would be invented there. And at the center of the community life would be the Dime Tabernacle, built in 1879 by dimes sent from Adventists throughout the denomination. Seasting 4,000 people, it provided quite a monument for a denomination of 15,000 members worldwide at the time it was built. THe "Tab" would serve as the site for the general meetings of the denomination.

Just as the sacrificial gifts of God's people financed the move to Battle Creek, so have they every advancement of God's church. Without sacrifice there is no progress.