Ellen G. White: The Early Years: 1827-1862 (vol. 1)

Acceptance of the Seventh Day as the Sabbath

For a few weeks prior to this trip to Massachusetts, James and Ellen had been observing the seventh day of the week as the Sabbath. Of this she wrote: 1BIO 116.4

In the autumn of 1846 we began to observe the Bible Sabbath, and to teach and defend it.—Testimonies for the Church, 1:75. 1BIO 116.5

Reference has been made to her negative reaction when earlier in the year, Joseph Bates introduced the Sabbath to her. Bates had taken his stand in 1845, having had his attention called to it through an article in The Hope of Israel, written by T. M. Preble. A man of conviction and action, Bates in turn prepared a forty-eight-page pamphlet, which he published in August, 1846, under the title The Seventh-day Sabbath a Perpetual Sign From the Beginning to the Entering Into the Gates of the Holy City According to the Commandment. James White took a copy home with him after the funeral service he conducted at Falmouth. As he and Ellen studied the Biblical evidences for the sacredness of the seventh day, they took their stand and began to teach it as they met with their fellow Adventists. At this time there were about fifty Sabbathkeepers in New England and New York State (Ibid., 1:77). Years later Ellen White recalled what taking this step meant: 1BIO 116.6

The light upon the fourth commandment, which was new and unpopular and generally rejected by our Adventist brethren and sisters, we had accepted. If we had trials and difficulties before this in accepting the message that the Lord would soon come the second time to our world with power and great glory, we found that accepting new and advanced truth brought us into positions of still greater difficulty. It brought down upon us not only the opposition of the Christian world who refused to believe in the Lord's soon coming, but opposition unexpectedly came upon us from those with whom we had been united in the faith and glorious hope of the second advent of our Saviour. In the place of closely investigating the Scriptures as did the noble Bereans to see if these things were so, there were those with whom we had taken sweet counsel together who denounced the third angel's message as heresy.—Manuscript 76, 1886. 1BIO 117.1

As James and Ellen White made their trip to Massachusetts they undoubtedly spent time with Bates, reviewing their experience and the sound basis for the step they had so recently taken. 1BIO 117.2