The Prophetic Faith of Our Fathers, vol. 4

VIII. Scope and Emphasis of Bates’s Sabbath Tract

It was early in 1846 that Bates decided to write a tract on the Sabbath question. How to pay for its publication he did not know, since his funds were now exhausted. But having made his decision on his knees, he took his Bible, concordance, and histories, and proceeded to write. So the forty-eight-page tract, The Seventh Day Sabbath, A Perpetual Sign, was brought forth in August, 1846, with payment for its cost coining in small sums from friends of the enterprise, the last of the money being given anonymously by faithful H. S. Gurney, who settled the remainder of the bill with the printer.” ²⁵ PFF4 956.3

Here Bates presented his case for the Sabbath almost exclusively on the premise that the Sabbath was instituted at creation and reinforced at Sinai. He maintained that the Ten Commandments are the moral guide and rule for all mankind, including Christians—the historic Protestant position-with the seventh day enjoined as the Sabbath. He touched briefly on the prophesied change of the Sabbath, as the papal Little Horn of Daniel 7 thinks “to change times and laws” of God, particularly the law of the Sabbath. (It was the typical Seventh Day Baptist presentation.) Then, as a prophetic expositor, he asks pointedly: “Now the second advent believers have professed all confidence in his [Daniel’s] visions; why then doubt this?” ²⁶ However, in the second edition of the tract, issued in 1847, Bates adds a fuller prophetic argument, based primarily on Revelation 14:9-12 in conjunction with the aforementioned argument of Daniel 7. On the basis of the long-accepted Protestant identification of the beast with the Papacy, he contrasts God’s appointed Sabbath with its change as the badge of papal power-and therefore finally as the “mark of the [papal] Beast.” ²⁷ This became henceforth a characteristic and separating feature of Sabbatarian Adventist preaching. Bates here held that the message of Revelation 14 is the foundation of the full advent message-“Fear God, and give glory to him; for the hour of his judgment is come.” This, he maintained, began to be fulfilled in the preaching of the Millerite movement. And the second angel’s message, on the fall of Babylon, with its climax in the call, “Come out of her, my people,” was likewise initially sounded in 1843-1844. PFF4 957.1

Then, Bates continues with logical progression, according to Bible prophecy a third message is to follow those two, which will warn against following and worshiping the papal Beast and ultimately receiving his “mark.” And he notes that those who refuse that mark are immediately described thus: “Here is the patience of the saints: here are they that keep the commandments of God, and the faith of Jesus.” (Revelation 14:12.) They must not stop with the first two messages. There is a third, inseparable in the series, to be received and obeyed-namely, full obedience to God’s holy commandments, including the observance of the seventh day as the Sabbath. But that obedience is by faith. PFF4 958.1

The Sabbath was next set forth as the “seal of God,” as based on the sealing work of Revelation 7. In January, 1849, Bates issued his tract, A Seal of the Living God. ²⁸ From the fact of John’s declaration that the number of the sealed is 144,000, Bates drew the conclusion that the “remnant” who keep the commandments of God and have the testimony of Jesus Christ would number 144,000. PFF4 958.2

So, to the concept of Christ’s entering the most holy place of the heavenly sanctuary, on October 22, 1844, for the final work of judgment and the receiving of His kingdom, was added the Sabbath, as involved in the third of this commissioned series of special last-day messages. This concept of the “seal” was likewise built into the message of the Sabbath, as an added prophetic element. And this thought was similarly attested by Ellen White, who wrote, “This seal is the Sabbath,” ²⁹ and described the most holy place in which was the ark (Revelation 11:19), containing the Ten Commandments, with a halo of light surrounding the fourth. ³⁰ Thus the Sabbath and sanctuary became inseparably tied together. PFF4 958.3

So the Sabbatarian Adventists held the doctrine of the second advent much as preached in the Millerite movement, except that they dropped the element of definite time for the advent as a gratuitous and erroneous interpretative addition. But they separated the 2300 years from any dating of the second advent, thus avoiding the pitfall of periodic time setting that plagued not a few of the first-day Adventists. They simply declared that the signs of the times and the fulfilling prophecies all show that Christ’s return is near. PFF4 959.1

Thus the Sabbath, first received under the simple binding claim of the law of God, was now reinforced by various prophetic passages, particularly of Revelation 14:9-12, which gave the Sabbath the significance of a testing, sealing message for the last days. And the doctrine of the heavenly sanctuary, which explained the Disappointment and enforced the soundness of their basic positions, was now clearly interlocked with the doctrine of the Sabbath. PFF4 959.2

Bates’s argument on the Sabbath did not, however, at first appeal to Ellen Harmon and James White—the former having been brought up in Methodist “free grace and dying love,” and the latter at first holding that Christians are “not under the law.” They both felt Bates erred in placing so much stress upon the keeping of the Sabbath, at that time regarding it as Jewish. However, after their marriage in August they studied Bates’s pamphlet, which meanwhile he had sent them, and on the basis of the clear Biblical and historical evidence soon began to keep the Sabbath. ³¹ They were all amazed at the bitterness of opposition that developed as they pressed the claims of the Sabbath. And in the intensity of the controversy some had recourse to stern replies. They used such texts as, “He that turneth away his ear from hearing the law, even his prayer shall be abomination.” (Proverbs 28:9.) In their early earnestness to turn men away from the wrath to come they exhibited a vehemence they soon came to modify. To them their message was a life line they were flinging out to men floundering in the ocean of sin, transgression, and indifference, urging them to lay hold of it. But their very earnestness tended to create early conflict. PFF4 959.3