Sabbatarian History
Our Own Thanksgiving Story
by Doug Ward
In the United States, the fourth
Thursday of each November is Thanksgiving, a time set aside for remembrance and
celebration of the rich blessings bestowed upon us by our Creator. One of the
greatest of these blessings is religious freedom. During the Thanksgiving
season, we Americans often think back to the seventeenth-century English
Protestants who came to New England in their search for a place to worship
freely. It was the Congregationalists of the Plymouth Colony who celebrated the
first
Thanksgiving in 1621. Less than
twenty years after that, Baptists began to settle in Rhode Island, where
complete religious freedom was
guaranteed.
Two English Baptists are of
special interest to those
who keep the seventh day Sabbath. In 1665, Stephen and Anne Mumford, Seventh Day
Baptists from a congregation in Tewkesbury, England, arrived in Newport, Rhode
Island. After fellowshipping for several years with the First Baptist Church of
Newport, Rhode Island, the Mumfords and five others covenanted together to
organize the first Sabbatarian congregation in the New World in early 1672.
I
first heard Stephen Mumford's name over twenty years ago.
Ever since that time, I have
wanted to learn more about our Seventh Day
Baptist "roots." In particular, why did the Mumfords come
to America? How many Sabbath keepers
were there in England in those days? How did their movement start, what did they
believe, and what trials did they
face? What can their experience teach us now as we enter
the twenty-first
century? Happily, the answers to such questions are more easily accessible today
than ever before, with the rather recent appearance of several books that
discuss the Seventh Day Baptists [1, 2, 5] and the presence of many relevant
papers and books on the internet
(e.g., [3, 4]).
In this article, I will describe the courage and
integrity,
the failures and ultimate
successes of the "Seventh-day men."
Sabbatarians of the English Reformation
The seventeenth century was a time of great religious and
political ferment in England. The
Bible was becoming
much more readily available, and many people were stirred to action by the
truths they were discovering in its pages.
Some, called the "Puritans," hoped to reform the Church
of
England, and ultimately all of society, along more biblical lines. More radical
Puritans, the "Separatists," wanted to start from scratch
and create new churches that were
as much like the first-century church as possible. There was much interest among
the Separatists in practices like believers' baptism, foot-washing, anointing
with oil, laying on of hands, and abstinence from unclean meats.
There was also widespread
excitement about biblical prophecy,
and many anticipated the imminent return of Jesus Christ. One group, called the
Fifth Monarchists (after Nebuchadnezzar's
dream of Daniel 2, in which God's Kingdom is portrayed as
the fifth and
greatest of a prophesied series of empires), stressed the literal
millennial reign of Christ on
earth. The most radical Fifth Monarchists hoped to pave the way for that reign
by overthrowing the King.
Puritans held the Ten
Commandments in very high regard.
Applying the Sabbath commandment to the first day of the week, they believed
that
Sunday should be observed
strictly as a day of rest, rather than merely being a day on which to hold
worship services.
They brought
this view to public attention in a number of books in the
late 1500s, most notably Nicolas Bownde's "The Doctrine of the Sabbath"
(1595). The ensuing controversy
over the fourth commandment was
so great that Bownde's book was eventually banned [5, p. 49].
Given the Puritan respect for the
Decalogue and the Protestant
belief that the Bible should be the ultimate source of
Christian belief and practice, it was inevitable that some would respond to the
Sabbath controversy by adopting the biblical seventh
day Sabbath. And indeed, that is
what happened.
During the seventeenth and early
eighteenth centuries, groups of
Sabbatarians sprang up in various parts of England and
Wales; more than sixty congregations that either met on Saturday or included
Sabbatarians
have been identified by historian
Bryan W. Ball [1].
Many of these groups lasted only a generation or two, but some survived
much longer---one of them for
over three hundred years. Moreover, through the Mumfords, the majority of the
Sabbatarian Christians in the world today
can trace their spiritual lineage, directly or
indirectly, to these
brave and determined people.
A fascinating contemporary description of the English Sabbatarians is preserved
in "M. Misson's Memoirs and Observations in his Travels around England," a book
published by Frenchman Henri Misson in 1698 and translated
into English in 1719.
Misson, who traveled extensively
in England during the 1690s,
comments in his book on the various religious groups he encountered there. The
Sabbatarians apparently left
a strong impression upon him, because he discusses them in some detail as
follows (quoted in [1, p. 9]):
"Here and there also you meet with a Millenarian; but I know
there is a particular Society,
though it makes but little noise, of People, who though they go by the Name of
Sabbatarians make
Profession of expecting the Reign of a Thousand Years without participating in
the other opinions which are ascribed to the ancient Millenarians.
These Sabbatharians are so call'd, because
they will not remove the Day of
Rest from Saturday to Sunday.
"They leave off work betimes on Friday Evening, and are very rigid observers of
their Sabbath. They administer
Baptism only
to adult People [footnote: `in
other aspects they subscribe to
our Confession of Faith']; and perhaps they are blameable
in these
two Things only because they look
upon them to be more important than they really are.
The major Part of them will eat
neither Pork, nor Blood, nor things strangled, but they
do not
absolutely forbid the Use of
those meats; they leave it to the Liberty of every Conscience.
For the rest, their Morality is
severe, and their whole outward
Conduct pious and Christian-like. Were it only for this one Opinion or Belief
of theirs concerning the absolute
Necessity of keeping the Sabbath on Saturday without paying any Regard to the
next Day ...; that alone would be enough to make them unavoidably a Society by
themselves."
Here Henri Misson describes a group of people who believed
in a future millennial reign of
Christ, but without the radical political activism of the Fifth Monarchists;
practiced
believers' baptism; carefully
kept the seventh-day Sabbath;
observed biblical dietary laws, but not in a legalistic way; and in general were
orthodox Christians with a high standard
of biblical morality. Not all of the English Sabbatarians
fit every part
of this picture; but overall, it is a good description of them and many of their
spiritual descendants, right up to
the present day.
Prejudice and Persecution
The decision to observe the seventh day Sabbath was
not one to take lightly. Those
who made this choice placed themselves conspicuously outside of
the mainstream of society. In the
seventeenth century, people who adopted practices different from those of the
Church of England were placed under close scrutiny and
could be subjected to fines or
imprisonment.
For example, in the 1660s and 1670s, local churchwardens
kept careful records of all ``Nonconformists'', including anyone who worked or
didn't attend church on Sunday, refused to have infants baptized, or kept the
seventh day Sabbath. (These records
have provided historians with valuable clues about the identities and locations
of Sabbathkeepers. [1] )
The courage of those who adopted the seventh day is also notable given the
strongly anti-Semitic culture of Europe in those days.
(Sabbathkeepers were often labeled
as ``Jews,'' and this label was not intended as a
compliment.)
In England, the anti-Semitism of
the time was exacerbated by ignorance. All Jews in England had been expelled
from the country in 1290 AD.
By the early seventeenth century, there was a small Jewish
community in London, but it kept
a very low profile. As a result, most people had probably never met a Jew, and
those who embraced ``Jewish'' practices would have
seemed strange and threatening to many.
One well-known example of the persecutions faced by early
English Sabbatarians is the story of John and Dorothy Traske. John Traske
(1585-1636) was a controversial and apparently rather colorful traveling
preacher whose words and actions repeatedly got him into trouble with the
authorities. What exactly he taught is difficult to determine, because the
available sources on his life are largely hostile ones (see [1, pp. 48-51] ).
It is also not certain how many followers he attracted; only the names of
a few have come down to us, including Hamlet Jackson, Returne Hebdon, and
Christopher Sands. We do know that in 1617, Traske was in London teaching that
one should obey the fourth
commandment by resting on the
seventh day and working on each of the other six days.
He also taught obedience to biblical dietary laws and is said to have
advocated Christian observance of the Days of Unleavened Bread.
Traske's preaching was too
radical to go unnoticed for long. By late 1617, Traske and several associates
had been arrested,
and on June 19, 1618, he was charged with ``having a fantasticall
opynion of himselfe with ambicion
to bee the Father of a Jewish
faccion'' and making ``the people of God, his majesty's subjects, little better
than Jews.'' [4; 5, p. 51] Traske
was whipped and pilloried,
and his forehead was branded with a letter ``I'' (for ``Iew'', as ``Jew''
was written at that time).
He was also sentenced to life in prison, where
he subsisted on a meatless diet (rather than eat the pork prescribed
by the court) until he recanted
his ``Jewish'' views and was released in
1619. He published an account of his changed beliefs in
"A Treatise of Libertie from Judaisme" (1620) and apparently never taught
seventh-day
Sabbathkeeping after that. However, two of his associates refused to
recant and eventually died in
prison---Returne Hebdon in 1625, and his wife Dorothy in 1645.
The example of Dorothy Traske, who remained steadfast over many years in
prison, was a great inspiration to other
seventeenth-century Sabbatarians.
John Traske was by all accounts
very eccentric, and he was threatened with arrest and imprisonment both before
and after
he advocated observance of the Sabbath.
However, one didn't have
to be as provocative as Traske to face persecution; a
thoroughly orthodox Christian who wrote or spoke in favor of the Sabbath
was also in danger in the early
seventeenth century. Such was the
case with Theophilus Brabourne (1590-1662), an Anglican clergyman who hoped
to persuade the Church of England
to adopt the seventh day Sabbath in two books that he wrote in 1628 and 1632.
In 1634 and early 1635, Brabourne was imprisoned, repeatedly examined by
church officials, and threatened with excommunication and
a fine of 1000 pounds before his carefully-worded recantation
was accepted on April 30, 1635
[1, p. 66]. (Brabourne claimed that
he never recanted anything of any substance, and in the more tolerant climate of
the 1650s he wrote again in favor of the
Sabbath.)
During the Puritan rule of the
Commonwealth period of the 1650s, there was much more religious freedom for
Separatists, and both Sunday and Sabbatarian Baptists began to worship openly
throughout
England and Wales. But a new wave of
persecution followed the Restoration of the Monarchy in 1660 under Charles II.
The king feared
that groups like Fifth Monarchy
Men and Baptists were a threat to
his government, especially after Fifth Monarchist Thomas
Venner
and a group of fifty armed men
terrorized London for four days in January 1661.
In the resulting crackdown, John James, the pastor of the Seventh Day
Baptists in Bullstake Alley, Whitechapel Road, London,
was arrested while preaching to his congregation on
October 19, 1661.
James was no threat to the king; he did not advocate violent overthrow
of the government.
However, he did actively preach that Christ would return
to rule over all nations---his favorite scriptural text was said to be Rev.
11:15---and that was enough to get him into serious trouble
in the tense political climate of
the time. James was executed, then
drawn and quartered, on November 26, 1661 [3].
The government of Charles II
hoped to bring greater peace and stability to the kingdom by enforcing religious
uniformity. In 1662, it introduced the Act of Uniformity, which excluded from
parish churches all ministers who would not conduct services according to the
Church of England's Book of Common Prayer.
The Act of Uniformity resulted in the ejection from Anglican pulpits of
many Nonconformist ministers who had gained their positions during the 1650s.
In
order to silence those ejected clergy, the government
went on to institute the
Conventicle Act in 1664. (A
"conventicle" is a secret religious meeting.)
The Conventicle Act forbade any worship service not conducted according
to the Book of Common Prayer that involved more than five people in addition to
the family of the house. Anyone caught violating this rule for the third time
could be banished to the West Indies. [3] The persecution
that followed this harsh
legislation was probably what led Stephen and Anne Mumford to leave for Rhode
Island in 1664.
In [1, p. 257], Ball describes
the precautions taken by one Sabbatarian Baptist congregation during this era to
avoid arrest under the Conventicle Act. This congregation met on Saturday
evenings at a roadside
cottage near the village of Stalham in the county of Norfolk.
According to Ball, "John Woolstone, who at the time lived four or five
miles away at Walcott, would frequently arrive to conduct worship disguised as a
drover and carrying a whip to allay suspicion. The large, lower room of the
cottage
would be laid out as a
dining-room, and Woolstone would preach from a seat at the table, to a
congregation assembled in the upper rooms. On other occasions, meetings were
held in a barn at the rear of the cottage,
and look-outs were posted at strategic points to warn of the approach
of informers. Many of the
worshippers lived at a distance from the meeting-place, and would travel home by
various routes to avoid detection. It was a situation typical of many
Nonconformist gatherings
throughout he country at the time."
Not all were able to escape persecution.
For example, Francis Bampfield (1615-1684), an early leader among the
English Sabbatarians,
was imprisoned for over ten years
of his life.
Originally an Anglican, Bampfield prepared for the ministry by obtaining B.A.
and M.A. degrees at Oxford. He then
served congregations in Rampisham and Sherborne, becoming known for his
``eloquence, learning,
and pastoral concern'' [1, p. 145].
During the 1650s, he began to adopt Nonconformist beliefs, and he lost his
position as vicar in Sherborne in 1662
under the Act of Uniformity.
After that, he began to conduct services in his home, but
he was soon
arrested and spent much of the next decade in jail.
While in jail,
he became convinced of the seventh-day Sabbath and the validity of believers'
baptism by immersion. For several
years before his release in 1672, he conducted Sabbath services in prison.
Later, in 1676, he founded
the Pinners' Hall Seventh Day
Baptist congregation in London, which he served
as pastor until a final arrest in 1683.
When he died in prison in 1684,
the Seventh Day Baptists lost one
of their ablest spokesmen.
Firm
Convictions
The Sabbatarians resolutely observed the seventh day in
spite of ridicule and persecution.
What convictions led them
to this course of action and sustained them in carrying it
out?
First and foremost, the
Seventh-day Men looked to the Bible
as the ultimate authority for their faith and practice. Like other Puritans,
they viewed the Sabbath as divinely established at Creation and confirmed as
part of the eternal moral
law of the Ten Commandments. They
also recognized Sabbath
observance as the custom of Jesus and the early church, and they saw no biblical
directive to abrogate or change the Sabbath.
Like other Protestants of their day, the Sabbatarians saw
the Roman
Catholic Church as the ``little horn'' of Daniel 7:24-25 that would ``think
to change times and laws.''
For them, observance of the seventh day was part of a return of the
church to its first-century foundations,
before its corruption by
centuries of Catholic traditions.
And they were
strengthened by an awareness that
through the centuries, there had been
many Christians who had kept the Sabbath (see [1, Chapter
1]).
Moreover, the Sabbatarians valued
the biblical meanings of the Sabbath
as a memorial of creation, a symbol of the rest in Christ
enjoyed in this
present life by believers, and a foretaste of the eternal rest of God's
Kingdom.
The first of these meanings is discussed in William Saller's "A
Preservative against Atheism and
Error"(1664). Saller, a Sabbatarian
leader in London from about
1653-78, stressed in this work that the Sabbath is a weekly reminder of the fact
that God is our Creator.
The second and third meanings are
expressed poetically in the classic hymn ``Another Six Days' Work is Done'' by
Joseph Stennett (1663-1713), the distinguished pastor of the Pinners' Hall
congregation
from 1790 until his death. This hymn
mentions the present peace and anticipation of future joys that have always been
part of the Sabbath
experience:
Another six days' work is done,
Another Sabbath is begun;
Return, my soul, enjoy thy
rest,
Improve the day that God hath blest.
O, that our thoughts and thanks may rise,
As grateful incense, to the skies,
And draw from heav'n that sweet repose
Which none but he that feels it knows!
A heavenly calm pervades the breast,
The earnest of
that glorious rest
Which for the Church of God remains,
The end of cares,
the end of pains. With joy, great God, thy works we view,
In various scenes,
both old and new;
With praise, we think on mercies past;
With hope, we
future pleasures taste. In holy duties let the day,
In holy pleasures, pass
away;
How sweet a Sabbath thus to spend,
In hope of one that ne'er shall
end!
On the other hand, it should be emphasized that the
Sabbatarians
did not view Sabbathkeeping as a
means of earning salvation. William Saller stated this clearly in 1671 when he
wrote the
following (quoted in [1, p. 87]):
"Let him not slander Christ
whatever he casts upon the Sabbath-keepers. But this I shall say for my brethren
as well as for myself, we are all of us of the Apostles mind, quite dead to the
Law, not having the least hope or expectation to bring
forth any acceptable fruit unto
God by virtue of it. We look
not at all to receive grace or strength from the Law, to sanctify us no more
than to justify us.''
It is also the case that they did not generally
avoid fellowship with Christians
who did not share their
convictions about the Sabbath, nor did they claim to constitute
the "one true church." In
Salisbury, Seventh Day and Sunday Baptist congregations cooperated in using the
same building throughout most of the eighteenth century [1, p. 141]. A number of
Seventh
Day Baptist pastors---e.g., Joseph Stennett---preached for Sunday congregations
as well. And in various parts of England and Wales, scattered Sabbatarian
Baptists who did not have congregations of their own worshipped with their
Sunday-keeping Baptist brethren. For instance, the Tewkesbury congregation with
which Stephen and Anne Mumford fellowshipped before their move to Rhode Island
apparently included people of both persuasions. In summary, the English Seventh
Day Baptists determined to obey what they saw as a clear
biblical command, regardless of
the cost. With the Psalmist, they said, in effect, "The Lord is on
my side; I will not fear:
what can man do unto me?"
(Ps. 118:6) They saw their
Sabbathkeeping as an
appropriate response to God's grace, not as a means of earning salvation or of
determining the identity of "true Christians."
Interest Waned in England---Why?
After the persecutions of the seventeenth century had
died down, English Sabbatarians enjoyed substantially greater freedom of
worship, but by this
time their movement seemed to have expended much of its energy. Several
congregations flourished for a while, especially those in London, and they
counted among their members such distinguished citizens as barrister Sir William
Tempest and lexicographer Nathaniel Bailey. However, they slowly diminished in
numbers and impact as the eighteenth
century passed, and by 1800, only
a few small congregations remained.
Several factors seem to have been involved in this
decline.
One is the failure of the
congregations to organize together on a national level to promote evangelism,
train pastors, and instruct and
support their young people. As a result, many of the congregations faded
away when their pastors died and
no replacements could be found.
Part of the blame for their lack of organization may lie
in divisions stemming from differences on other points of doctrine.
In London, for instance, the Mill
Yard congregation consisted of Arminian or "General" Baptists who felt that
Christ had died
for the sins of all and believed in man's free will. Other London
Sabbatarian congregations were
Calvinist or "Particular" Baptists who believed that Christ had died only for
the elect, those predestined to be saved. The two groups often cooperated in
certain ways, sometimes sharing meeting places and speakers, but there was also
frequent friction
between them that hindered their working together on larger projects.
This friction was heightened in
the eighteenth century when there were many in the Mill Yard congregation who
were not Trinitarians. Another factor detrimental to the Sabbatarian
cause was the occasional extremism exhibited by some of its proponents. As I
have mentioned above, the English Seventh Day Baptists usually did not have a
legalistic or exclusivistic outlook, but one exceptional episode in the
mid-seventeenth century dealt a great
blow to their reputation and the progress of their
movement in the northern and eastern parts of England.
Thomas Tillam, the pastor of a Sabbathkeeping congregation in Colchester
beginning in the late 1650s, became convinced that Sabbatarians should not
associate with those who would
not accept the seventh day
Sabbath. He also believed that Christ would return soon to judge England. In
order to flee the persecution of the 1660s,
Tillam and Christopher Pooley led a group of Sabbatarians
to a "place of safety" in Germany. They hoped to set up a community there that
would live strictly according to biblical law and wait in peace and safety for
the coming judgment. Their community did not survive long, and
some of the congregations in
Essex, Norfolk, Suffolk, and counties further north greatly suffered from loss
of members. In 1667, seven Sabbatarian leaders published a tract denouncing the
Tillam-Pooley scheme, but
not before some lasting damage had been done.
In the final analysis, though, the best explanation for the decline
of the English Sabbatarian movement may be that the early
persecution
it endured was ultimately too great for it to overcome. In coping with the
Conventicle Act and other persecution, the Sabbathkeepers apparently became
accustomed to being a scattered, underground
community. As Henri Misson put it
in his 1698 memoir, they made
"but little noise." When
circumstances eventually became more favorable, they were not prepared to take
full advantage of new opportunities. Although the Sabbatarian movement largely
died out in England,
it should not be viewed as a failure. In addition to leaving us a commendable
example of integrity and courage, the English Sabbathkeepers
succeeded in exporting their
cause to America, where it enjoyed a freedom that was much more conducive to
growth. Let us now turn to the story of the Mumfords and their American
brethren.
The Sabbath in America
The Baptist congregation in Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire, to which Stephen and
Anne Mumford belonged in the early 1660s
kept its membership records in code to ensure secrecy.
When the Mumfords arrived in Newport, Rhode Island, in 1665,
no further secrecy was required. The charter that Baptist leader
Dr. John Clarke had secured for the Rhode Island colony in 1663
explicitly guaranteed freedom of
worship. The Mumfords could worship openly with the First Baptist Church of
Newport, which had been founded under Clarke's direction in 1644.
Two other Newport Baptists, Samuel and Tacy Hubbard,
began to keep the seventh day Sabbath in the spring of 1665, and soon the number
of Sabbatarians in the group increased to eleven. For a while, their
relationship with the rest of the congregation
was peaceful, but fellowship became strained in 1669 when
four of the eleven changed their
minds and started to speak against the Sabbath [5, p. 98]. At this point, the
remaining seven were not sure what to do. Should they remain together
with the rest of the Newport
Baptists, a course of action that was becoming increasingly difficult, or should
they form their own separate congregation? Counsel on this question came to
Newport from several sources.
Baptist churches in Boston and Providence urged the Newport
congregation to stay together. On
the other hand, letters to the Mumfords and Hubbards from fellow Sabbatarians in
London
encouraged them to start a new congregation.
One thing that probably increased the tension in Newport was the fact
that about ten years before, twenty-one members had left the Newport Baptists in
a disagreement over the practice of laying on of hands and other doctrines of
Heb. 6:1-2. This incident may have made the congregation wary of other doctrinal
differences. In any case, the situation reached a crisis point in 1671 when
Obadiah Holmes gave a sermon against the Sabbath, saying it was causing people
to leave
Christ and go to Moses. On January 3, 1672 (by today's calendar),
the Mumfords, Hubbards, William
Hiscox, Roger Baster, and Rachel Langworthy signed a covenant to become the
Newport Seventh
Day Baptist Church. This first Sabbatarian congregation in America received
continuing moral support from the Bell Lane Seventh Day Baptist Church in
London, which kept in touch with
the Newport group for about twenty years. Stephen Mumford
returned to London for a brief
visit in 1675, and shortly thereafter, Bell Lane member William Gibson and his
family
joined the Mumfords in Newport.
Gibson would later succeed William Hiscox as pastor of the Newport church.
Under Hiscox and Gibson, the Seventh Day Baptists thrived
in Rhode Island. There were thirty-seven members in 1678
and seventy-six by 1692. In 1708,
a second congregation was formed in Westerly, Rhode Island.
The Westerly Church
(later called the First Hopkinton
Church) became the leading
Seventh Day Baptist congregation in the United States, with
764 members by 1800 [5]. These
congregations maintained
a good relationship with the Rhode Island Baptists who met
on Sunday. Seventh Day Baptists
played a significant role in the history of the American colonies. Especially
notable are the descendants of Thomas and Amy Ward (no relation to the author),
early members of the Newport congregation. Their son Richard was governor of
Rhode Island from
1740-1742, and their grandson Samuel (1725-1776) was
governor of Rhode Island in the 1760s and later
represented
the state in the First and Second
Continental Congresses.
Samuel Ward, who became a baptized member of the
Westerly congregation in 1769, was chairman of the
Committee of the Whole of the Continental Congress. Unfortunately, he did not
live to be able to sign the Declaration of Independence, dying of smallpox on
March 15, 1776. His great-granddaughter Julia Ward
Howe later wrote the words of the famous Battle Hymn of
the Republic. Meanwhile, some people in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, two other
havens of religious liberty, became Sabbatarians
during the colonial period. When
the Seventh Day Baptist General Conference was organized in about 1802, it
consisted
of 1119 members in eight churches in four states. During the nineteenth century,
the denomination spread across the United States, and by 1902, there were 9098
members in 100 churches
in twenty-three states. Missionary
efforts and the discovery of the Sabbath by people in various parts of the world
have since resulted in the founding of
Seventh Day Baptist congregations in a number of countries.
Today the churches in the Seventh Day Baptist World Federation
include well over 50,000 members, the vast majority outside of the United
States. For over 300 years, the
Seventh Day Baptists
have provided a living testimony
to the fact that Sabbatarianism
does not necessarily lead to legalism or exclusivism.
The Seventh Day Baptists are also indirectly responsible for
the acceptance of the Sabbath by other groups of Christians.
In particular, they helped
introduce it to the Adventists of the Millerite movement. In 1841, Rachel
Preston Oakes, a Seventh
Day Baptist, joined a congregation of Adventists in Washington,
New Hampshire, and convinced her
pastor, Frederick Wheeler,
to accept the Sabbath in 1844. Other Adventists soon adopted
the seventh day Sabbath, and two
Sabbatarian denominations---the Seventh-day Adventists and the Church of God
Seventh Day---soon came out of the Millerite movement. Later, in the 1930s,
Herbert W. Armstrong and others associated with the Oregon Conference of
the Church of God Seventh Day
began the Radio Church of God (later called the Worldwide Church of God), which
itself has had a number of Sabbatarian offshoots. At present, there are well
over ten million Sabbatarian Christians
in the world, and that number is likely to continue
growing in the years
ahead. In today's fast-paced world, the value of a weekly appointment
with our Creator is greater than
ever. And as more and more Christians
reclaim the Hebraic roots of their faith, the number who
choose to keep that appointment on the biblical seventh day will increase. The
courageous Sabbatarians of the seventeenth century would no doubt be glad
to know about the ultimate fruits
of their efforts. I, for one, am
honored to follow in the footsteps of such people of integrity and am very
thankful for the freedom to do so openly.
References
1. Bryan W. Ball, The Seventh-day
Men: Sabbatarians and Sabbatarianism
in England and Wales, 1600-1800,
Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1994.
2. David S. Katz, Sabbath and
Sectarianism in Seventeenth
Century England, E.J. Brill, New York, 1988.
3. James
McGeachy, 'The Times of Stephen Mumford,' Seventh Day Baptist Center,
3120 Kennedy Road, P.O. Box 1678,
Janesville, WI 53547. (This 1964
paper is available on the internet at
http://www.ozemail.com.au/~sdbbris.)
4.
Ralph Orr, From Sunday to Sabbath:
The Puritan Origins
of Modern Seventh-day Sabbatarianism.
(This 1999 paper is available on the
internet at http://www.wcg.org/lit.)
5. Don A.
Sanford, A Choosing People: The History of the Seventh Day Baptists,
Broadman Press, Nashville, 1992.