The Day Sabbath

The Sabbath was introduced to the Adventist movement of William Miller and his followers by the Seventh Day Baptists. The group of "sabbatarian Adventists" emerged from 1845 to 1849 from among the Adventist groups, later to become the Seventh-day Adventists. Joseph Bates was the foremost proponent of the Sabbath amongst this group.

A young Seventh Day Baptist layperson named Rachel Oakes Preston living in New Hampshire was responsible for introducing the Sabbath to the Millerite Adventists. Due to her influence Frederick Wheeler began keeping the seventh day as the Sabbath after personally studying the issue in March 1844 following a conversation with Preston, according to his later report. He is reputed to be the first ordained Adventist minister to preach in support of the Sabbath. Several members of the church in Washington, New Hampshire he occasionally ministered to also followed his decision, forming the first Sabbatarian Adventist church. These included William Farnsworth (biography) and his brother Cyrus. T. M. Preble soon accepted it either from Wheeler, Oakes, or someone else at the church. These events actually preceded the "Great Disappointment" which followed shortly after, when Jesus did not return as expected on October 22, 1844.

Preble was the first Millerite to promote the Sabbath in print form; through the February 28, 1845 issue of the Hope of Israel in Portland, Maine. In March he published his Sabbath views in tract form as A Tract, Showing that the Seventh Day Should be Observed as the Sabbath". This tract led to the conversion of J. N. Andrews and other Adventist families in Paris, Maine, as well as to Joseph Bates (in 1845). These men in turn convinced James and Ellen White, as well as Hiram Edson and hundreds of others.[2] (Preble is known to have kept the seventh day Sabbath until mid-1847. He later repudiated the Sabbath and opposed the Seventh-day Adventists).

Bates proposed that a meeting should be organized between the believers in New Hampshire and Port Gibson. At this meeting, which occurred sometime in 1846 at Edson's farm, Edson and other Port Gibson believers readily accepted the Sabbath message and at the same time forged an alliance with Bates and two other folk from New Hampshire who later became very influential in the Adventist church, James and Ellen G. White. Between April, 1848, and December of 1850 twenty-two "Sabbath conferences" were held in New York and New England. These meetings were often seen as opportunities for leaders such as James White, Joseph Bates, Stephen Pierce and Hiram Edson to discuss and reach conclusions about doctrinal issues.[3]

Also in 1846, a pamphlet written by Bates created widespread interest in the Sabbath. Shortly afterwards Bates, James White, Ellen Harmon (later White), Hiram Edson, Frederick Wheeler and S. W. Rhodes led the promotion of the Sabbath, partly through regular publications.[4]

While initially it was believed that the Sabbath started at 6pm, by 1855 it was generally accepted that the Sabbath begins at Friday sunset.[citation needed]

The Present Truth magazine was largely devoted to the Sabbath at first. J. N. Andrews was the first Adventist to write a book-length defense of the Sabbath, first published in 1861.

Two of Andrews' books include Testimony of the Fathers of the First Three Centuries Concerning the Sabbath and the First Day and History of the Sabbath. The most prominent early critic of the Adventist church was former Adventist D. M. Canright. Books he wrote include The Lord's Day From Neither Catholics nor Pagans: An Answer to Seventh-Day Adventism on this Subject, and Seventh-day Adventism Renounced which is largely about the Sabbath.