At the 1843 General Conference of the American Seventh Day Baptists, an action was voted which deserves our close attention.
Several dozen "messengers" attended the session, representing some 5500 members residing chiefly in Rhode Island and New Jersey and scattered over several other states. A spate of Sunday bills in state and federal legislatures had recently increased public interest in the Sabbath. The times seemed ripe to advance the cause of God's holy day; and the conference voted a recommendation unusual for their church: "That the first day of November next be observed by our churches as a day of fasting and prayer that Almighty God would arise and plead for his holy Sabbath. [1]
The faithful Seventh Day Baptists who observed this recommendation on Wednesday, November 1, 1843, little anticipated the manner, or the magnitude, of the answer that God for centuries had been preparing in advance.
Even as they fasted and prayed, one of their number, Mrs. Rachel Oakes (after remarriage, Mrs. Preston) of Verona, Oneida County, New York, was thinking of moving to the mountain village of Washington, New Hampshire. Her eighteen-year old daughter, Delight, had accepted a position there as a public school teacher; and being herself a widow, it seemed reasonable to Mrs. Oakes that she spend the winter with Delight in Washington. Why not?
Besides, she might have an opportunity to witness there. She could take along a supply of Sabbath tracts.
Suiting action to her thought, Mrs. Oakes found herself in the late winter of 1844 attending church with the Christian brethren in her adopted village. Theirs was an unaffiliated congregation which, with their minister, had accepted the advent message of William Miller. It was also, to be sure, a Sunday-keeping congregation, but there being no church of her own persuasion nearby, Mrs. Oakes kept the Sabbath as best she could with her daughter Delight, and then attended church on Sunday for Christian fellowship. This particular Sunday was communion day, and the pastor, Frederick Wheeler, a youngish Methodist circuit rider from Hillsboro, twelve miles away, was preaching the sermon. All at once he said something that almost made Mrs. Oakes start up from her pew. [2]
She contained herself until Wheeler, fine shepherd that he was, came to call on his new parishioner from New York.
"While you were speaking, Elder Wheeler," she told him abruptly, "I could scarcely contain myself. You said that we must observe all of the Ten Commandments, and yet you yourself constantly break one of them!"
"Why, Sister Oakes," exclaimed the good man, "whatever do you mean?"
"I mean that the fourth commandment says, 'The seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God,' but you keep the first day. You observe the pope's Sunday instead of the Lord's Sabbath!"
Whether or not the pastor felt irritated we do not know, but we do know that sometime during that same winter, possibly on March 16, 1844, [3] he made his decision to keep the seventh day as the Sabbath.
Thus it came about that Frederick Wheeler, a Millerite Adventist Methodist, of Hillsboro, New Hampshire, became the first Sabbath-keeping Adventist minister in North America. And although he did not at that time preach about the Sabbath in his Washington church, it appears that he did do so in a schoolhouse near his home, and that he discussed the matter privately with at least one other minister who, like himself, had adopted the advent hope. By August 1844 Thomas M. Preble, formerly a Freewill Baptist who pastored a congregation in the shoe-making township of Weare, New Hampshire, about a dozen miles east of Hillsboro, became the second Sabbath-keeping Adventist minister in North America.
By early October 1844 there was at least one other Sabbath-keeping Adventist, a Sister S. Blake in Rhode Island, who may have been a Seventh Day Baptist lady like Mrs. Oakes. [4]
Outside North America quite a few other early Adventists adopted the seventh-day Sabbath at approximately this same time or earlier. One of these was Francisco Hermogenes Ramos Mexia (1773 to 1825) of Argentina, a prominent statesman who combined reformatory politics with large-scale farming and Indian evangelism. He made a good number of converts, and was arrested in 1821 for keeping the Sabbath. Another, James A. Begg (1800 to 1868) of Scotland, well known in the British Isles as a writer on prophecy and the Second Advent, began to keep the Sabbath about 1832. [5]
But we must return to Washington, New Hampshire. It seems that Delight Oakes lived in the large Farnsworth farmhouse. It follows that her mother most likely stayed there too. Many were the comments about Sabbath and Sunday that must have passed between the forthright Mrs. Oakes and her generous, honest hosts.
It appears, furthermore, that Cyrus, one of the Farnsworth boys, was falling in love with the school teacher. (They later married)
But overshadowing every other concern was the approaching end of the world. Christ was coming, and there was little time for most Adventists to consider the obligations of a new holy day. Thus it was that among those who looked eagerly for the second coming on October 22, 1844, there were at least three who kept the Sabbath, Frederick Wheeler in Hillsboro, Thomas Preble In Weare, and Sister Blake in Rhode Island--unless, that is, Mrs. Oakes, who thus far had apparently failed to persuade the Washingtonians to become Sabbath keepers, had by this time (as she did at some time) allowed them to persuade her to become an Adventist. In that case, there were at least four.
After the "passing of the time" on October 22, Adventists in Washington did not give up their faith, but continued patiently to await Christ's return. At this time they turned their attention with deeper interest to Mrs. Oakes's sabbath.
A short time later, when the sturdy little Christian Brethren church was solemn with worship on a Sunday morning, William, the eldest of the Farnsworth sons, stood to his feet during the social meeting and announced before folk who had known him since his birth that he had made his decision to live henceforth by the Sabbath of the fourth commandment. Jesus Christ had not changed the day, but the pope had done so in fulfillment of prophecy. William said he wanted to be counted among the Lord's Sabbath keepers and not among the Pope's Sabbath breakers.
Hardly had he sat down than his brother Cyrus stood up and made the same ringing testimony.
Mrs. Oakes and her daughter each shed a tear and praised the Lord.
Not everyone was pleased, however. The larger part of the congregation did not accept the Sabbath at this time, though many of them did later. Those who did, ceased to use the church for the time being and met instead at the large Farnsworth place--the first congregation of Sabbath-keeping Adventists in North America.
But before we trace the future of the Sabbath, it is most interesting and helpful to look backward for a moment. After all, Seventh-day Adventists got the Sabbath from Mrs. Oakes and she, a former Methodist, got it from the Seventh Day Baptists. How far back can the Sabbath be traced?
To creation, of course! But in recent centuries it is valuable to go back at least to the 1520s, when the Reformation was in full swing in central Europe. [6] With Martin Luther and the other great Reformers all saying that truth must be sought in "the Bible and the Bible only," it is not surprising that a dialogue arose among their followers over the question of Sunday and the Sabbath. The Sabbath is taught as plainly in Scripture as almost anything else.
There were Christians in Europe in the 1520s who asked, "If Luther says we must follow the Bible and the Bible only, why doesn't? He do so himself?" Among these were some who adopted believer's baptism in place of infant baptism, earning themselves the appellation Anabaptists. From among the Anabaptists there emerged two men of particular interest. Both had at one time been Catholic priests. In their quest for truth they gave up their careers as priests to become Lutherans. As they continued to study, they became Anabaptists. After still further study, they adopted the Sabbath and became the first "Sabbatarian Anabaptists."
Luther sent theologians to dissuade them. From their reports we learn that these two men, Oswald Glait and Andreas Fischer, had not made their decision for the Sabbath lightly. They had thought through their position carefully. The Sabbath, they said, could not be part of the ceremonial law because it was instituted at creation before the need arose for a ceremonial law; therefore it is part of the moral law and still binding. Quoting Matthew 5:17, 18, they showed that Jesus refused to alter even a jot or tittle of the law; and referring to James 2:10, they added that the apostles didn't change it either. Sunday worship, they pointed out, was a fulfillment of the prophecy of the work of the little horn (Daniel 7:25) who was to "think to change times and laws."
In those days men could not take such a position, even in Protestant countries, and hope to live out their natural lives. In 1529 Mr. and Mrs. Andreas Fischer were sentenced to death, she by drowning, he by hanging. She was successfully drowned, but when her husband was in the process of being hanged, he fell to the ground and escaped.
Not forever, unfortunately. In 1539 or 1540 he was seized by the soldiers of a "robber" knight, dragged into his castle, and hurled from the top of a wall.
Oswald Glait survived many adventures while traveling in central Europe to encourage the faithful and to make new Sabbath keepers. In 1545 he was captured. After a year and six weeks in jail he was awakened at midnight by the clatter of soldiers in the hall outside his cell. His door burst open. By the fluttering light of the flaming torches which they held, he read in the grim cruelty of their faces his impending fate. He was led through the silent city to the banks of the Danube, bound hand and foot, and cast into the river.
As the soldiers heard his splash, little did they realize that the truth for which he gave his life would live on for centuries in Germany, burst into new life in Great Britain, be transferred to the American colonies, and in the twentieth century capture the hearts of millions around the world.
Other Sabbath keepers from this period are known to have lived in the Netherlands, Switzerland, Moravia, and Sweden, [7] and according to recent research, in Seville, Spain. [8]
Everyone knows that the early American Puritans were extremely strict about their Sunday observance, believing that Sunday should be kept in fulfillment of the fourth commandment. The British Puritans were the same; and during the 1600s there occurred such a stir in England about the fourth commandment that a number of persons were led to keep the Sabbath. Seventh Day Baptists cherish their memory as pioneers of their movement. [9]
Among the first of these were John and Dorothy Traske. He was a zealous Puritan minister, she, a talented teacher who had a knack for helping very young children from wealthy homes learn to read.
Both were sent to prison for their Sabbath keeping. Mr. Traske was sentenced (about 1617) to be "set upon the pillory at Westminster, and from thence whipped to the fleet, there to remain a prisoner."
It was two miles from Westminster to the Fleet prison. How he must have suffered, tied behind a wagon and flogged all the way. But about the time his three-year sentence was completed, he recanted and gave up the Sabbath. His wife, however, gained courage from his cowardice. In her filthy, flea-ridden, rat-infested prison she remained faithful for fifteen or sixteen years until her death.
Francis Bampfield, a minister of the Church of England, was imprisoned in 1662 for conscientious refusal to swear an oath. In prison he soon became a Sabbath keeper as a result of personal Bible study. By preaching almost every day during the remainder of his nine-year sentence, he raised up a company of Sabbath keepers in the jail! Released, he was imprisoned again in a short time. Released once more, he moved to London where he was arrested three more times for preaching the truth about the Sabbath, finally ending his life in the damp and cold of Newgate prison.
John James, another Sabbath-keeping minister, was preaching on Sabbath afternoon, October 19, 1661, when police entered his church and demanded in the name of King Charles II that he cease.
A man of Spirit, he went right on.
A commotion arose. James was arrested, convicted by a packed jury on trumped-up charges, and sentenced like a traitor to be hanged, drawn, and quartered.
In spite of two brave appeals to the king by his wife, John James was hanged by the neck at Newbury, taken down, his body butchered, his heart drawn out of his chest and flung into a fire, and his head impaled outside his church as a grim warning to anyone who might desire to keep the seventh-day as the Sabbath.
For many an early Seventh Day Baptist, the Sabbath was a day worth dying for.
Not all British Sabbath keepers in the seventeenth century were required to suffer persecution. Dr. Peter Chamberlen, the favorite obstetrician of several royal and noble ladies in England, kept the sabbath safely for over thirty-two years. He spoke several languages, he recommended hot and cold water in the treatment of disease, and, incidentally, he invented a horseless carriage propelled by wind. With his brilliance and ability, he was too valuable for the British crown to persecute.
Observance of the seventh day was transferred to America by Stephen Mumford, who emigrated from England in 1664 and organized, in Rhode Island, in 1671, the first Seventh Day Baptist church in America. In the early 1700s there were Moravian Sabbath keepers, too, in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. After visiting them, Count Nicolaus von Zinzendorf determined to keep the Sabbath as well as Sunday. And there were still other German Sabbath keepers in various parts of the colonies.
The Seventh Day Baptists in America organized themselves into a General Conference in 1802 with a membership around 1200. Though they grew steadily in numbers, they were never very energetic about evangelism. For them, the Sabbath became a day to cherish rather than to share. But share it some of them did--which brings us back to their significant General Conference of 1843, with its resolution setting apart November 1, 1843, as a day for fasting and prayer that God would "arise and plead for his holy Sabbath."
Through widow Rachel Oakes, their prayer was to be answered beyond their fondest dreams.
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