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Preface
xix
a Seventh Day Baptist, Rachel Oakes, who distributed tracts set-
ting forth the binding claims of the fourth commandment. Some
in 1844 saw and accepted this Bible truth. One of their number,
William Farnsworth, in a Sunday morning service, stood to his feet
and declared that he intended to keep God’s Sabbath of the fourth
commandment. A dozen others joined him, taking their stand firmly
on all of God’s commandments. They were the first Seventh-day
Adventists
.
The minister who cared for this church group, Frederick Wheeler,
soon accepted the seventh-day Sabbath and was the first Adventist
minister to do so. Another of the Advent preachers, T. M. Pre-
ble, who lived in the same state, accepted the Sabbath truth and in
February, 1845, published an article in the
Hope of Israel
, one of
[xxi]
the Adventist journals, setting forth the binding claims of the fourth
commandment. Joseph Bates, a prominent Adventist minister resid-
ing in Fairhaven, Massachusetts, read the Preble article and accepted
the Seventh-day Sabbath. Shortly thereafter, Elder Bates journeyed
to Washington, New Hampshire, to study this new-found truth with
the Sabbathkeeping Adventists residing there. When he returned to
his home, he was fully convinced of the Sabbath truth. Bates in time
determined to publish a tract setting forth the binding claims of the
fourth commandment. His 48-page Sabbath pamphlet was published
in August, 1846. A copy of it came to the hands of James and Ellen
White at about the time of their marriage in late August. From the
scriptural evidence therein presented, they accepted, and began to
keep the seventh-day Sabbath. Of this Ellen White later wrote: “In
the autumn of 1846 we began to observe the Bible Sabbath, and to
teach and defend it.”—
Testimonies for the Church 1:75
.
Significance of the Sabbath Revealed
James and Ellen White took their stand purely from the scriptural
evidence to which their minds had been directed in the Bates tract.
Then on the first Sabbath in April, 1847, seven months after they
began to keep and teach the Seventh-day Sabbath, the Lord gave a
vision to Mrs. White at Topsham, Maine, in which the importance
of the Sabbath was stressed. She saw the tables of the law in the
ark in the heavenly sanctuary, and a halo of light about the fourth