Reply concerning SDA -
It would probably be helpful for you to review the history of the Christian 7th day Sabbath Churches - beginning with the Church that Christ built.
I copied some highlights from this booklet
GOD'S CHURCH THROUGH THE AGES
that pertains to your question.
(Also see telecast video Sabbath or Sunday?)
God's Church Through the Ages
CHAPTER 4
TAKING ROOT IN A NEW WORLD
By the end of the 1500s, congregations that the world labeled “Sabbatarian Anabaptists” had emerged from remnants of the Waldensians and were growing in
Central Europe, Germany and England. They were termed Sabbatarianbecause they taught and observed the seventh-day Sabbath. They were called Anabaptists, meaning “re-baptizers,” because they refused to accept as Christians those who had merely been sprinkled as babies. They taught that baptism was only for adults who had come to believe the Gospel and had repented of their sins (cf.
Acts 2:38).
THE CHURCH IN EARLY AMERICA
Upon arriving in Rhode Island, the only American colony founded upon the principle of religious liberty, the Mumfords began to fellowship with Baptists in Newport. They were not quiet, however, about their belief in the Sabbath. In 1665, within the first year of the Mumfords’ arrival, Tacy Hubbard started keeping the Sabbath with them, becoming the first convert in America. Shortly afterward, her husband Samuel joined her. In 1671, the first Sabbath-keeping church in America officially began with seven members. William Hiscox was the first pastor of the church, serving from 1671 until his death in 1704.
In 1708, a second church was officially organized in Westerly, Rhode Island (later renamed Hopkinton). Throughout the eighteenth century, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania and New Jersey seem to have been the main areas of Sabbath-keeping churches. During this time, German Sabbath-keepers immigrated to Pennsylvania. Peter Miller was the best-known minister of the German Sabbath-keepers in Pennsylvania and was a friend of Benjamin Franklin.
THE ADVENTIST MOVEMENT
In the 1830s, a movement arose among Protestant churches in western New York that focused on the return of Jesus Christ to this earth, and on the establishment of His literal Kingdom. This message, which first began to be forcefully proclaimed by William Miller, was totally different from accepted Protestant doctrine. His teachings on prophecy attracted much interest and stirred increasing attention as his predicted 1844 date for the return of Christ drew near. After what was termed “the great disappointment,” confusion set in among these Protestant Adventists. Ridiculed by mainline Protestants, some became disillusioned and gave up religion altogether. Others continued to search the Scriptures to see where they had gone wrong.
THE FIRST QUARTER OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
At the beginning of the twentieth century, the Church of God was small and scattered, with fewer than 1,000 members, living mostly in the American Midwest. The General Conference of the Church of God legally incorporated in 1900 in the state of Missouri. The Church’s newspaper underwent a name change that same year to become
The Bible Advocate.
In 1903, Gilbert Cranmer, a minister since the 1850s and one of the chief builders of the Church in the aftermath of the Seventh-Day Adventist/Church of God split in the 1860s, died at age 89. In 1910, Alexander Dugger, who had served as a leader of the General Conference since its inception, as well as having served as editor of
The Bible Advocate, also died. A third faithful pioneer, Jacob Brinkerhoff, died in 1916. He had served as editor of the
Advocate on and off from 1871 to 1914. Mr. Brinkerhoff was considered by many to be the most outstanding leader of the Church in his time. “Jacob Brinkerhoff had served the Church of God for over 40 years.… Instead of buying a home in 1874, Brinkerhoff used the money instead to buy the press equipment for the
Advent and Sabbath Advocate.… Single-handedly, it seems, he had prevented the total collapse of the Work” (Richard Nickels,
History of the Seventh Day Church of God, p. 85).
THE ADVENTIST MOVEMENT
........ Into the fellowship of these zealous Sabbatarian Adventists came Roswell Cottrell, a long-time minister and Sabbath-keeper. His family had been among the earliest members of the Church of God in Rhode Island, but the Cottrell family withdrew from the fellowship of what was then being called the Seventh-Day Baptist Church over doctrine. This was the time when such changes as the Trinity and the immortality of the soul were being adopted as official Seventh-Day Baptist doctrine. About 15 years after coming into the fellowship of the Sabbatarian Adventists, he found himself once again embroiled in controversy. Elder James White, who had emerged as the main leader among the Sabbath-keeping, Adventist Churches of God, was pushing for an organizational conference and an official name, Seventh-Day Adventist Church. There were those who opposed this change as unscriptural and also opposed giving credence to the visions of Elder White’s wife, Ellen G. White. Roswell Cottrell opposed Mr. White’s organizational moves. He wrote, in the May 3, 1860,
Review and Herald, “I do not believe in popery; neither do I believe in anarchy; but in Bible order, discipline, and government in the Church of God” (Nickels, p. 162).
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