Seventh Day Sabbath

'Baptist' comes first for Seventh Day Baptists

JANESVILLE, Wis. (ABP) -- Are Christians wrong to worship on Sunday when the biblical Sabbath is Saturday? Rob Appel, executive director of the Seventh Day Baptist General Conference answers with a question of his own: “What day did Christ go to church? Saturday. OK, let’s be Christ like.”

The affable leader of a tiny North American conference of Baptist churches offers his argument with no hint of offense. He’s made it a million times. And frankly, he says, although the conference is defined – even named – by its rare worship theology, Saturday worship is not a definitive marker over which the church is willing to fight.

“It’s not a big thing,” said Appel. “We’re not like some where we spout a lot of nasty comments. We believe in salvation through Christ and in spreading the gospel. Those are a lot more important than whether we worship on the Sabbath or on Sunday.

“We are Baptist,” Appel said. “We just have a different day of worship.”

Seventh Day Baptists are one of the founding members of both the Baptist World Alliance and the North American Baptist Fellowship. With 80 congregations -- including two in Canada and another 40 branches or fellowships “in process” -- their first North American church was founded in 1671.

The U.S./Canada Conference is one of 24 national conferences in the Seventh Day Baptist World Federation. Malawi has the largest Seventh Day Baptist membership and the North American Conference is not among the largest three.

Appel said Seventh Day Baptists cannot trace their beginning to a particular person or event. They arose in England when some Baptist Christians realized they were worshipping on Sunday but believed the Sabbath was still biblical.

For many years their national headquarters was in Plainfield, N.J. Living on the edge of the country made it impractical, inconvenient and costly for convention leaders to stay in touch with their churches, and facilities were aging in a region from where it was expensive to operate.

Leaders appointed a 12-person task force to study a possible move. While central locations such as Chicago or Nashville, Tenn., were considered, a group in Janesville, Wis., learned of a fairly new building coming onto the market for a reasonable cost.

Suddenly the task force was finished and in 1982, conference headquarters moved to a small northern city two hours from the Chicago airport – a painful two hours for Appel who travels about 50,000 miles a year to stay in touch with his congregations.

Saturday in Scripture: Supplanting the Holy Sabbath | Prayer Books

One argument commonly used as undeniable proof that Saturday just has to be the Bible Sabbath is the undisputed fact that the Jews today keep Saturday as the Sabbath.  Even The World Book Encyclopedia states, under its entry for Saturday: “It is named for the Roman god Saturn . . . Saturday is the Sabbath among the Jews and the Seventh-day Adventists.” (1) However, this does not prove Saturday is the original Sabbath established at Creation.  It is possible to find references to worship on “Saturday” (Saturn’s day) in the Bible; but it must be clearly understood that all such occasions occurred when Israel was in apostasy and rebellion against their Creator.  Saturn appears in scripture as Moloch/Molech/Milcom: the evil, child-sacrifice demanding, “abomination of the children of Ammon.” (2)

The first reference to God’s people worshipping Saturn appears in Exodus 32: the apostasy at Mount Sinai with the golden calf.  Most people have been unaware that this apostasy was actually the worship of Saturn, but references to that appear in Amos 5:26 and Acts 7:43 (discussed later).

Surrounded by the idolatry of the sun-worshipping Egyptians, the Children of Israel had lost their original method of calendation by which the Sabbath is to be calculated.  It was necessary for God to reeducate them, which He did just before the exodus: “This month shall be unto you the beginning of months: it shall be the first month of the year to you.” (3) The Creator’s calendar year begins in the Spring; the Egyptian year began with the emergence of the star, Sirius, in the constellation Canis Major, roughly around the summer solstice, or modern June 21.

In their bondage the Israelites had to some extent lost the knowledge of God’s law, and they had departed from its precepts.  The Sabbath had been generally disregarded, and the exactions of their task masters made its observance apparently impossible.  But Moses had shown his people that obedience to God was the first condition of deliverance . . . .(4)

Being immersed in pagan Egyptian calendation, the Israelites were very quick to return to the familiar when they thought that Moses had died or deserted them in the desert:

And when the people saw that Moses delayed to come down out of the mount, the people gathered themselves together unto Aaron, and said unto him, Up, make us gods, which shall go before us; for as for this Moses, the man that brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we wot not what is become of him . . . And all the people brake off the golden earrings which were in their ears, and brought them unto Aaron.  And he received them at their hand, and fashioned it with a graving tool, after he had made it a molten calf: and they said, These be thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt.

The Seventh Day Sabbath, a Perpetual Sign

The seventh day Sabbath, a perpetual sign from the beginning to the entering into the gates of the Holy City according to the commandment

Seventh-day Sabbath

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The seventh-day Sabbath, or, A brief tract of the IV. Commandment. Wherein is discovered the cause of all our controversies about the Sabbath-day ...