Understanding the Theology of Seventh-day Adventism: Beliefs, History, and Key Figures

[Music] welcome back to Sheamus poy I'm Joe hesm today I want to dip a toe into exploring

the Theology of a group called seventh day Adventists or sth day adventism and saying okay what are some

of the distinctive things that they believe and are those things true what can we say about them as as

non-adventist particular and if you're an Adventist watching this Bravo congratulations I I appreciate you being

here I hope I do a good job of Fairly presenting your views I look forward to kind of hearing your responses thoughts

in the comments below so to start off with what is it that sth day Adventists believe and it's

kind of right there in the name although you might hear that name and say I don't know what any of those words mean

together you know Advent is that season before Christmas and what does that have to do with the seventh day and the

seventh they of what well let me explain this is really two different kind of theological systems fused together and

what I mean by that is this and take it as a VIN diagram because you can believe in the Advent the imminent return of

Christ or you could believe in the seventh day being the day Christians ought to worship meaning that we should

worship on Saturday and not Sunday and not have the other belief but seventh day Adventists are people who believe in

both things they believe number one Christ is going to come back very soon that's the Advent so just as the season

of Advent to prepare for Christmas is all about getting ready for Christ's first coming adventism is the

theological system which is all about preparing for Christ second coming but the emphasis on it being really

soon seventh day adventism is distinct in that it's a form of adventism that says and one of the important things

things to do right now is to have worship and rest Beyond Saturday and not Sunday so this is going to be as you

might imagine a very simplified summary there's a lot of other really interesting controversial doctrines uh

that seventh day Adventists believe in I'm not going to touch on 99% of them I'm going to look at just the kind of

Hallmark issues here and in particular I want to look at the role of Ellen G white Ellen gold white who plays a

really important role in the history of adventism in today because she's regarded as something of a modern

Prophet although she preferred the term messenger that she is the messenger of the Lord and her writings are considered

by many Adventists to be inspired or infallible there's some question about kind of the status that they have but

either way she is officially recognized by her church as being someone who wrote Under Divine Authority in some sense of

what that looked like we don't need to get into the Weeds on all of that but that when when you're reading her

writings a devout Adventist would say you're not just reading the musings of a 19th century woman you're you're

reading theological musings prompted by the Lord and she's actually a Visionary there's a lot going on there we'll get

into all of that but I want to go kind of an order what is adventism what is the importance of Saturday and then what

do we make of Ellen gold white and in particular what do we make about Ellen gold white talking

about the alleged history of of Saturday and Sunday worship and the role of the emperor

Constantine so hopefully it won't be too much but this is just going to be kind of a

primer so first what is adventism as I've already said it's the preparation for the imminent second coming of Christ

now imminent is really important and the Bible verse I think any Adventist could point you to is revelation 22: 7 when

Jesus says behold I'm coming soon now that soon was 2,000 years ago and so the question we should be asking is okay but

how soon and St Peter gives us an answer that it's going to be soon by our Lord's Reckoning and not by ours and so he says

don't ignore this fact beloved that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years in a thousand years as one day so think

about it that way that what to the Lord is just a few days there's no time at all on the cosmic scheme of things is

numerous gener Generations countless Generations Millennia by our time and so this is something to always remember

that yes we should absolutely be prepared for Christ's coming and return but also we should be aware that the

vast majority of us thought we were in the very last days and that Christ was going to come in our lifetime we've all

been wrong and that includes Ellen White as we're going to see and so Jesus warns us

watch therefore for you know neither the day nor the hour that's Matthew 2513 and the problem is as we've kind of

geared up to say okay we are ready to meet Jesus people can't help but kind of

guess about the day and the hour and so the most famous of these in in this context was a man by the name of William

Miller in the 19th century now he is a fascinating figure and in many ways actually a pretty sympathetic figure uh

Daniel Walker how who's a secular historian has a good description of this in his book what hath God wrought the

transformation of America 1815 to 1848 as you can imagine from the title it's the book about much more than that but

there's a section in there about Miller and how Miller had been a captain in the War of 1812 he comes home he helps

runaway slaves escape to Canada he studies the Bible every chance he gets I mean he seems to be a guy who's trying

to do right by God and neighbor and he is not someone who is trained in theology biblical studies he is not

someone who understands Hebrew or Greek but as how notes or Walker how notes he applied a mixture of Ingenuity and

common sense to the task dignified in the Protestant tradition of individual interpretation of

scripture and so he finds this verse to be the key to his whole eschatology which is the Bel in the end times so in

Daniel 8:14 says un 2,300 days then shall the sanctuary be cleansed and you'll find

variations of that translation something like that that after 2,300 days the Lord's going to purify or cleanse

restore his sanctuary and so Miller says okay well days must mean years here there's other times like in Daniel

itself where that seems to be the case the cleansing of the sanctuary must mean the second coming of Christ now those

are both big logical leaps and then he just does the math based on when he sees all this stuff happening and just says

okay well 2,300 years later that's going to be somewhere between March of 1843 and April of 1844 now this if memory

service is in 1831 that he's coming up with these calculations so he suddenly realizes that the world only has 12

years left before the coming of Christ and as you can imagine this makes something of a splash even though he's

again he's a shy guy he's not particularly charismatic he you can see even from his portrait he doesn't seem

like a guy who's a natural just like charismatic Allstar he believed God was calling to

share this message that the world is going to end in 13 years and so he as how describes the pudgy farmer is almost

50 years old now in 1831 and then he goes and he preaches this and he continues to do do this until he's in

his 60s and he meets some pretty influential people along the way Joshua heims who's a minister in a social

reformer he's convinced of this and he helps him spread this in massive ways so they distribute millions of pages of

tracks they have uh this enormous portable tent that they bring and bring half a million people in the three

Summers of 1842 to 1844 to these basically tent revivals to get people ready for the fact that

Christ is coming any day now now by 1843 there were about 25,000 50,000 Americans mostly in New England

Upstate New York this is what sometimes called the burned over District because this is where a lot of 19th century

religious movements start there's a bunch of revivals and a bunch of strange new theological systems that take off

there or having started elsewhere get popular there this the Shakers are there uh if you look at the history of Jehovah

his Witnesses is to right here Mormonism right here this like this period in this time has a bunch of people and what's

then kind of the Backwoods who are devout but aren't particularly educated and are looking for something and then

people keep coming in one after another preaching some new system and lots of American religions are born right here

and the millerites are no different and so Miller gets 25 to 50,000 really committed people and way more than that

who are okay I'm not sure you're right but I don't want to be the guy who's you know saying I'm I'm going to stay inside

when Jesus gets here so a lot of people are just saying well okay you might have something

here and uh then the day comes and the day goes and Miller realizes that the year that he prophesied Jesus would

returning Jesus didn't come and so then some of his followers kind of take up the banner and say no no

no no you you weren't totally wrong you got to fix the numbers a little bit and so they adjust it for October 22nd 1844

using the kite judish Jewish calendar um Samuel snow is the one who does the recalculation there now if you're

familiar in modern times uh with a group called family radio Herbert camping I believe is his Herold camping excuse me

is his name um they had a very similar thing about 10 years ago where they claimed the end of the world and then

when that day came and went they adjusted it for six months down the road and then that day came and went and they

realized they were just totally wrong well that's what happens here they have this year window it comes and goes then

they have a new date the day of atonement October 22nd 1844 and spoiler alert it does not

happen and it's really important because you've got these tens of thousands of people at least who are giving up

everything they're paying off their debts they're quitting their jobs they're closing their businesses they're

leaving their crops unharvested in the fields in the fall because they don't think there's going to be a winter and

they don't think there's going to be a next year they are giving money to the government over uh past frauds and

cheats that they may have performed they're giving their money away because they have no reason to keep

it and they're rushing to get baptized a lot of these are actually really good things obviously but you can imagine

that they are living as if this is their last day on Earth and then they go outside to watch for Jesus's return and

they stay up all night and he doesn't show up and this is known as the great disappointment or the great

disappointment of 1844 and I don't want to make light of it it's true they should not have been trying to guess the

day in the hour and they got what they deserved in one sense but it is still tragic to

see William Miller who by the way seems like a a good man as I said uh he did not form a

denomination because he didn't think there was a need to form a denomination he

was just about to go return to be with Jesus but after the great disappointment a lot of his followers these millerites

who've been uh sort of thrown for a loop and have to figure out well what do we do next they form into various groups

and various denominations and a lot of them start gravitating towards some new idea

and amongst them there is this teenage girl who starts claiming to be a Visionary claiming to be able to receive

the words of Jesus and as you might guess this is Ellen gold white and that's going to help transform now

discredited millerism into seventh day adventism now she's only the co-founder there's more to that story um but this

is an important kind of role and so as how notes the largest group organized as the sth day Adventist

so the the largest group of of EX millerites now a lot of people just went back to mainstream Christianity they

went back to being Baptists or they went back to being shakers and a lot of cases Baptists and shakers were particularly

prone to falling into this uh or they just lost faith in God altogether because he hadn't shown up when they

believed the Bible said he would but of those who thought Miller was still onto something the biggest kind of Remnant

group is what is the seventh Adventist so Joseph Bates is the main founder and Ellen Harmon white or Ellen gold white

as she's also known is the co-founder and Bates his big thing is we should observe Sunday excuse me we should

observe the Jewish sabbath instead of Sunday and White's big thing is that we should stay away from things like

tobacco alcohol coffee and meat and so these are all kind of central ideas I'm going to actually not touch on the

dietary stuff at all as you can imagine is important as you can imagine it's related to the kind of judaizing element

uh within 7th Day adventism of trying to keep a lot of these Jewish elements but I'm going to just a light it for now I I

might cover it in a topic down the road but here's how Ellen gold white describes uh the millerite kind of

experience again as someone who who lived through it she writes uh Herman Edson one of this grou group lived in

central New York State at Port Gibson he was the leader of the Adventists in that area the Believers met in his home on

October 22nd 1844 to a wait the coming of the Lord calmly and patiently they awaited the great event but as the hour

of midnight came and they realized the day of expectation had passed it became clear that Jesus would not come as soon

as they had thought it was a time of bitter disappointment then she says the early

morning hours the next day heram Edson a few others went out to his born to pray and she says as they

prayed he felt assured that light would come a little later he and a friend are crossing a cornfield to visit some

fellow Adventists he looks up to see as if a hand touched his shoulder and she says he looked up to see as if in a

vision the heavens opened in Christ in the Heavenly Sanctuary entering into the most holy place there to begin a work of

ministry in behalf of his people instead of coming forth from the most holy place to cleanse the world with fire as they

had taught in other words she's like oh yeah yeah no the the October 22nd date was actually

right but it just wasn't that Jesus was going to come back to earth then rather he

invisibly enters into his Sanctuary to cleanse his Heavenly sanctuary and this is what she going to

uh stick to later on but this these are his her early writings and so she points out that uh eram medson we already heard

from and then two other guys one of them a physician another a school teacher they sit down and they start reading the

Bible and they become convinced the sanctuary to be cleansed at the end of the 2300 years isn't the Earthly but the

Tabernacle in heaven with Christ ministering on our behalf in the most holy place and so they've just

reinterpreted what the 2300 year prophecy is all about and much later in a work called the Great controversy she

says the same thing she quotes Daniel 7 about the son of man receiving glory and she says the coming of Christ here

described is not his second coming to the Earth he comes to the Ancient of Days in heaven to receive dominion and

glory in a kingdom which will be given him at the close of his work and as a mediator it is this coming and not his

second coming to the Earth that was foretold in Prophecy to take place at the termination of the 2300 days in

1844 now in terms of Daniel 7 about Christ receiving Glory from the Ancient of Days seeing that as a Heavenly event

makes complete sense it's stranger though I think to see Daniel 8 which is what the 2300 year prophecy is about in

that light because if you read Daniel 8: 13 to 14 you'll see that the line is for how long is a vision concerning the

continual burnt offering the transgression that makes desolate and the giving over of the sanctuary and

host to be trampled underfoot and he said to him for 2,300 evenings and mornings then the sanctuary

shall be restored to its rightful state so to apply this to Heaven you have to say that the abomination of desolation

described in Daniel 8 is occurring in heaven this trampling of the hosts the holy ones underfoot this kind of

diabolical corruption is happening in heaven so it's a very strange kind of reinterpretation but it means that she

doesn't have to say they were wrong just that they you know they had the right date just the wrong

event and so she says attended by Heavenly Angels our great high priest enters the

holy of holies and there appears in the presence of God to engage in the last acts of his ministration in behalf of

man to perform the work of investigative judgment and to make an atonement for all who are shown to be entitled to its

benefits so yeah there's a lot of stuff going on there the the rule of the investigative judgment in 1844 is just

kind of this non-falsifiable sort of claim like yeah I mean you have to assume Heaven's timeline works way

works on earth that is 1844 in heaven at the same time it is on Earth we've covered that two weeks ago whether

that's a plausible kind of reading of time in heaven uh remember a day is like a thousand years to the Lord we've got

pretty good biblical evidence that's not the case but then also like the idea that

Christ isn't making his atonement until 1844 and what's significant about 1844 you know like why this particular date

in heaven none of that I think think is is particularly convincingly explained but nevertheless that's where she ends

up um that's the kind of Seventh Day Adventist view of the Advent so Christ is still coming he's still coming soon

but modern-day Adventists following white are very careful not to claim a particular date and this is a really

important thing now I will say if you're familiar with the Theology of Jehovah's Witnesses there's a lot of similarities

here they have an early 20th century date I want to say 1914 might be 19 17 I I'll have to go back and look but an

early 20th century date where they thought there was going to be a major in of the world event it came and went and

they said well it just ended spiritually so they do a similar thing yeah sure there was no visible evidence we got our

date right but we're just going to reinterpret that to mean it was a spiritual event none of us could see and

at that point it's a good question to ask like what could possibly debunk your prophetic claims then but that's just

the first the other half remember they're not just Adventists because there are

non seventh day Adventists there are first day Adventists who believe you should worship on Sunday but they're

much smaller and basically die out but seventh day Adventists are those who believe that we should be worshiping on

Saturday and it makes complete sense that they would hold this because the Ten Commandments say remember the

Sabbath day to keep it holy six days you shall labor and do your work the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God

and notice it doesn't just say be because of your sin it says uh in six days the Lord made Heaven and Earth the

sea and all that is in it and rested the seventh day therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and holed and so that's

actually a pretty reasonable argument that hey look in the order of creation Sabbath rest is built in particularly if

you're someone uh who believes that the six days of creation are literal days and this is the basis

of course for the 7-Day week so in Washington New Hampshire a group of Adventists well they're not even

actually Adventists at this point they're just Protestants in an independent Christian Church in 1843

they come and hear someone preaching the Advent message so now they become Adventists and they they buy into that

and then uh another woman comes in Woman by the name of Rachel Oaks she so remember the first script that comes in

is Adventist but not seventh dayers Rachel Oaks isn't an Adventist she's a seventh day Baptist

and she comes and starts handing out tracks saying that the Sabbath is still binding on Christians and so in 1844

they take on this too so they like when I say they're open to just like whoever is kind of coming through the door this

is what I'm talking about is that there's these incredible religious shifts that you see going on all over

during this period if you remember the series that I did on Mormonism you'll see some of that stuff and I didn't even

get into kind of all of the religious movements uh that were going on during that time sometimes you you'll Trace

like the biography of one of the major figures in this and you'll realize they were in like five different kind of

radical Protestant Fringe groups that's not particularly unusual for the mid 19th century in New York okay so then

one of the now seventh day Adventists gets up on a Sunday morning and declares that he intends to start keeping the

Sabbath again and a dozen or others follow him and that's the beginning she says of seventh Adventists so there it

is that's kind of the history of the movement now she will later claim a sort of or this is still early writings but

she'll later claim a sort of um religious Vision to explain the whole thing in which the faithful uh are taken

up in Jesus opens the door of the holy of holies and they see the light of the Sabbath people of God were tested as the

children of of Israel were tested anciently to see if they would keep God's law and so there's three Angels

I'm skipping two of the Angels these are the Three Angels depicted in Revelation according to adventism and these are

really important the notion of the Three Angels messages and so the third Angel is pointing upward showing the

disciplined ones the way to the holiest of the Heavenly sanctuary and they by faith enter the

most holy they find Jesus and they start to uh feel hope and joy and she says I saw them looking back

reviewing the past from the proclamation of the second Advent of Jesus down through their experience to the passing

of the time in 1844 they see their disappointment explained enjoy uncertainty again

animate them so these are the disappointed faithful like these are the millerites and they're being comforted

and consoled but also the third Angel is revealing the past present and future to them and it's there that they they

follow Jesus in into the holy of holies into the most holy place they behold the ark The Mercy Seat and then Jesus lifts

the cover of the Ark and inside are the Ten Commandments and he opens up the Ten Commandments and they're all there but

one of The Commandments has a halo around it because it's the holiest of the Ten Commandments and that's the

fourth Commandment it's not the first one about loving God honoring no one besides God it's not God being you know

the one you should worship no it's it's honoring the Sabbath that is according to Ellen White Holier it's the one out

of the 10 uh now you would think if that was the case it would be the first one that that would be the first commandment

but it's not it's a fourth Commandment oh according to her numbering and so in the fourth

Commandment it's shining and uh the people there these wres who are being consoled see that there's nothing

in there about the Sabbath being abolished or changed to Sunday and so they start to mourn

because she says they saw they'd been trampling upon the fourth Commandment of the decalog that's the Ten Commandments

and have observed the day handed down by the Heathen and papist that's shorted for for Catholics instead of the day

sanctu Sanctified by Jehovah so then they humble themselves before God and mourn over their past transgressions so

that's the seventh day part that not only uh are the Ten Commandments still binding in this way that you must

literally uh Keep Saturday but this is in fact the holiest part of the Ten Commandments okay so I've mentioned her

a lot so who is she who is Ellen White for seventh day Adventists and so if you're watching the video version she is

the one uh the well the one woman in this picture uh she's there depicted with her husband who was also an ex-

millerite and their children and according to the 7th Day Adventist Church's website in the

article who was LG white they point out she was only 17 at the time of the great disappointment but she became inspired

by a message from God just a couple months after the great disappointment she was encouraged that

what they'd learned about Jesus's literal return was indeed correct but setting a date for it was an error now

in 2015 the general conference session of the seventh Adventists uh met in San Antonio and they thanked God for his

continuing presence and spirit VAR spiritual gifts among his people particularly for the prophetic guidance

we've received through the life and Ministry of Ellen G white and then they reaffirm their conviction that her

writings are divinely inspired now they want to be clear that they don't replace the Bible they uplift

they say the normative character of scripture and correct inaccurate interpretations of it derived from

tradition human reason personal experience in modern culture but notice this is important because there can be

things that are not in the Bible at all that sth Adventists will believe have been divinely revealed to Ellen gold

white and that makes it a lot harder as a non-adventist to debate these things because they're appealing to a a kind of

vague Spiritual Authority because they don't just say this is another Testament of Jesus Christ the way Mormons do it's

a little more ambiguous what her standing is so with that I want to turn to the

second half of what I'm doing in this video which is what does Ellen White Claim about Sunday worship remember this

is a woman who's allegedly the messenger of God she's allegedly prophetic her writings are allegedly divinely inspired

what does she have to say about where Sunday worship comes from well she claims it's the production of an

apostate Christendom Sunday is a child of the papacy exalted by the Christian world above the sacred day of God's rest

in no case are God's people to pay it homage pretty strong words but notice the historical claim there that the

papacy is where we get Sunday worship now that's going to be important because on the Adventist website now they claim

that papacy doesn't exist until the 6th century and admit that they see Sunday Worship in the mid1 100s now we're going

to see the Sunday worship is actually even older than that but that is an important difference that Adventists

today present a a historical claim that is simply incompatible with the idea that Sunday is a child of the

papacy but this is something that Ellen White absolutely believed in and reiterated throughout her life in

another work entitled Darkness Before Dawn she uh quotes Revelation 138 uh about worshiping the Beast and

says that in both the Old and the new world the papacy will receive homage and the honor paid to the Sunday institution

that rests solely upon the authority of the Roman Church in other words if you're a Catholic Orthodox Protestant

whoever you are when you go to mass or when you go to C Temple or when you go to whatever your local church on a

Sunday you according to White are actually worshiping the Beast because it's by the Pope's Authority that the

Ten Commandments have been nullified and Saturday was replaced by Sunday and so even if you thought you were worshiping

God you were actually worshiping the pope again a big claim in the great controversy maybe the most famous of her

books probably the most important uh she claims that Satan working through unconsecrated leaders of the church

tampered with the fourth Commandment and that he tried to set aside the ancient Sabbath day which God had blessed and

Sanctified and in its dead to exalt the festival observed by the Heathen as a venerable day of the sun now I want to

pause on this because this is another important part of Ellen gold White's claims which is that the move from

Saturday to Sunday worship happens number one because of the Pope and number two as an accommodation to

paganism because this is the day sun worship happened and that was a very popular very widespread theory for a

long time and not many scholars today that I know of still hold that theory because we actually have the writings of

old pagans and we realize they didn't have weekly Sunday worship of the Sun that just wasn't what it was we actually

know which days on the calendar were set aside for the worship of the sun on the Roman Calendar and they weren't well

first of all they weren't weekly there were various days throughout the year uh but secondly they weren't tied to Sunday

so it's true the day Sunday was named after the Sun not the son God but just named after the

son just as Saturday is named after Saturn who was a God you know so you can do that game with any day of

the week because the days of the week in English are coming from an old Roman Calendar that was dedicated to different

gods Sunday is actually the one that you can argue maybe isn't dedicated to a god Saturday certainly is because we know

Saturn was worshiped but the sun had this more ambiguous role now I actually did an

episode on that uh back at Christmas time looking at whether Christmas was a pagan origin because those same

arguments you hear trotted out then so I'm not going to rehash all of that right now but just realize that this

Ellen gold white is assuming that this move from Saturday to Sunday worship is to accommodate paganism which

presupposes pagans were doing Sunday worship which they do not appear to be now there might be some conflicting

evidence I'd be happy to get into that kind of discussion I'm sure there were times when worship happened on Sunday

there's a lot of different Pagan groups doing a lot of different things and and a lot of them have different calendars

but nevertheless okay so then she says and this is important this change from

Saturday to Sunday was not at first attempted openly in the first centuries the true Sabbath had been kept by all

Christians now that is the most important claim and that's what I want to really investigate she says they were

jealous for the honor of God believing that his law is immutable they zealously guarded the sacredness of its precepts

with great subtlety Satan work through his agents to bring about his object so is it true that for the first

Century's plural we find the true Sabbath being kept by all Christians which for her means Saturday and the

answer is going to be no we get into all the evidence for that and then she says that the attention of the people might

be called to the Sunday it was made a festival in honor of the resurrection of Christ religious Services were held upon

it it was regarded as a day of recreation the Sabbath being still sacredly

observed so she's going to say yeah yeah sure you do find Christians worshiping Christ on Sunday but she says they're

still keeping the Sabbath so these are the key claims number one Sunday worship is evil apostate and compromise with

paganism number two it was instituted in the fourth Century by Constantine and the pope she doesn't actually say what

century but she does point to Constantine uh as being kind of an influential figure and when she uh when

she has the language about the venerable day of the Sun that is from Constantine when he has religious

Proclamation like basically giving a day off on Sunday and then remember they claim that

in the first centuries Christian worship is on Saturday not Sunday or at least that Christians are observing the

Sabbath and so while as I mentioned the Adventist Church itself seems to distant itself from the these historic claims

you will still find plenty of people who appear to be Adventists who who claim this stuff and still say oh yeah this is

Constantine this is you know the later papacy all this to to explain where Sunday worship comes from so for

instance did you know that you can search your Bible from Genesis to Revelation and you won't find one

scripture in the entire Bible where God both blesses and sanctifies the first day of the week which we know as Sunday

to be set as side as some special day for Holy observance so why is it that the majority of the Christian World

religiously observes Sunday the first day of the week as some type of holy day well it's because in the year 321 ad

Constantine the Great the emperor of the Roman Empire and a Roman Catholic convert seeking to heal the division

within his Empire between paganism and Christianity he made it decree that all the inhabitants of Rome were to rest on

the venerable day of the sun which is the first first day of the week Sunday and this is the origin of the human

authority behind the institution of Sunday as a holy day as opposed to God's true Bible Sabbath day which is the

seventh day which we know as Saturday and whether you like it or not the truth is the truth so yeah again that's a

claim in a nutshell uh and you can see it's even more specific there it doesn't just say fourth Century 3:21 we have

these very specific claims about when Sunday worship was instituted and now question question is well is any of that

really true what did Christians before Constantine do in in the way of worship did they treat Sunday as their holy day

or did they treat Saturday and fortunately there are a lot of really good books on this from reputable

Scholars so for instance uh Prof or Dr Valerie alikin I mean Professor too the earliest history of the Christian

Gathering origin development and content of the Christian gathering in the first to third centuries he's looking at just

that like what did Christian worship look like in the first 2 and third Century that's up to 299 so all of this

is happening before Constantine what was Christian worship like and what does he say well he says

Christians began to hold periodical Gatherings not later than the middle of the first century so not later than 20

years after the death of Jesus in so far as the sources allow any inference the periodical Gatherings of Christians took

place on Sundays they could be held at various locations although most took place in private houses now he's a

scholar and he qualifies his work appropriate there are times where they don't tell us what day they get together

so for instance in the work of Plenty when he's investigating the Christians he mentions they get together weekly he

doesn't tell us what day of the week they get together but when we have evidence that evidence always points in

the same direction that the Christians get together on Sunday now I don't expect you to just take my word for it

just like I hope you're not just taking the Adventist word for it blind ly instead I'm going to show you the

early Christians in their own words and what I'm going to do is start around the year 200 and work my way back to the

time of the Bible and so I'll go kind of quickly during the early ones because you may not care St Clement of

Alexandria in a work called the strata uh claims that Plato was speaking prophetically about the Lord's day when

he referred to the eth day in the Republic now I think that this illusion is a stretch that clet is making but the

important thing to note there is that there's something called the Lord's day and that is the 8th day the eth day of

the week meaning you've got seven days of creation then you have the eighth day so day one of creation creation of the

world Sunday you have the six days of creation through Friday the seventh day is the original Sabbath and then you

have the Eighth Day Resurrection Day Resurrection Sunday Easter Sunday this notion of the Eighth Day being the new

day of Christian worship that they're not just going back to the first day to the order of creation they're doing that

but they're also going to the eth day meaning Resurrection Day later writers will actually develop this even more in

saying there's a trinitarian theology to this that Christians worship on Sunday for three reasons number one because God

the father created the world on Sunday number two because God the son is resurrected on Sunday number three

because God the Holy Spirit distends at Pentecost on Sunday but Clement is just referring to the Lord's day and making

clear that the day so that's all we need to show there that clearly there's something called the Lord's day and it

is on Sunday Justin Martyr is much clearer 20 years earlier in the first apology he's writing this against the

pagans and he's explaining to the Roman emperor that on the day called Sunday all who live in cities or in the country

gather together in one place and then he explains kind of what Christian worship looks like that the uh biblical readings

are read that there's preaching that there's gathering for the Eucharist uh that there's prayers and Thanksgiving

people say amen there's UK Eucharistic distribution there's a gathering for those who are absent and bringing

communion to the sick there's the Gathering of the collection and so you you see very

clearly he's describing the early Christian liturgy in fact he spend several chapters doing this I'm giving

kind of the trunked version but he's explicit that is on the day called Sunday and then he says it again he says

Sunday is the day on which we all hold our common assembly because it is first day on which God having WR a change in

the darkness and matter made the world and Jesus Christ Our Savior on the same day rose from the dead so there it is he

doesn't talk about Pentecost he doesn't talk about the Holy Spirit but he talks about the other two thirds of that

explanation that's in 160 way before Ellen White claimed Christians were worshiping on

Sunday and then he also says uh for he was crucified on the day before that of Saturn Saturday you'll notice like

Justin realizes Saturday has a pagan name and on the day after that of Saturn which is the day of the sun having

appeared to his Apostles and disciples he taught them these things which we have submitted to you also for your

consideration so the idea that this is a compromise with paganism is just clearly not true the reason they're worshiping

on Sunday is the reasons that he gave this is when God created the world and this is when Christ rose from the dead

10 years before that in dialogue with trio trio now so remember in first apology he's wri to a pagan audience

dialogue with Trio he's wri to a Jewish audience because Trio is Jewish and he asks him well is there anything that

we're accused of other than this that we live not after the law and are not circumcised In the Flesh as your

forefathers were and do not observe the sabbaths as you do he says are our lives and Customs also slandered among you

like in other words those three things will cop you yeah sure we don't keep the Mosaic law we don't inquire circumcision

and we don't keep the Jewish sabbaths that's really important because someone defending the Adventist view might say

well sure they might have had the Christian day of worship but they also kept the Sabbath and Justin's like no we

don't we don't do that anymore and in fact he goes on to distinguish those from the false

accusations like that Christians are cannibals uh that they engage in promiscuity and he explains that just as

there was no need of circumcision before Abraham or the observance of Sabbath's feasts and sacrifices before Moses no

more is there need of them now according to the will of God that according the will of God Jesus Christ the son of God

has been born without sin of a virgin sprung from the stalk of Abraham that is think about Paul's argument in Romans

that if Abraham could be saved by faith without the Mosaic law then clearly the Mosaic law wasn't inherently necessary

for salvation and therefore also a gentile could be saved that's what Paul's saying in

Romans and this is the same argument Justin Marr is making that yeah that's true about the Mosaic law and likewise

about things like the sabbaths so then in the D this is now that I think is fairly clear evidence in the D

uh this is variously dated to sometime in the first century like maybe during the lifetime of the Apostles some of the

dates run to the early second century so there's controversy there it would be great if it was super abundantly obvious

that yes this was while the apostles were living but while I think that to be the case I don't want to push the

evidence further than it goes in the D says every Lord's Day gather yourselves together break bread and give

Thanksgiving after having confessed your transgressions that your sacrifice may be

pure okay again very clear evidence maybe the clearest evidence is

even earlier than the Justin certainly St Ignatius of Antioch the First bishop of Antioch he was a disciple of the

Apostle John uh writes to the magnesians the Christians not the El and he talks he says this look look this is a lengthy

like Paul line kind of sentence everything you see on the screen there is one long sentence but he's referring

I'll zoom in on part of it he's referring to those who were brought up in the Ancient Order of things he means

here Jewish Christians who have come to the possession of a new hope no longer observing the Sabbath but living in the

observance of the Lord's Day on which also our life has sprung up again by him and by his death so that's making it

very clear it's no longer Saturday Sabbath worship it's now Sunday Christian

worship and that brings us to the biblical evidence in Revelation chapter 1 uh St John writes about how he was in

in the spirit on the Lord's day now Adventists who don't critically examine this kind of historical evidence

will claim oh the Lord's day here must be Saturday because in Isaiah God refers to the Sabbath as his holy day but the

phrase the Lord's day only ever refers to Sunday when you see it used by Christian

writers and there's a bunch of references as we just saw this is just some of them there are even references

from like crazy heretical groups like The gnostics and even they understand that the Lord's Day refers to Sunday

they may not agree with the physical Resurrection but even they get that the Lord's day is Sunday so for Adventists

today to come along and oh no no no the Lord's Day in Revelation 1 means Saturday you would have to imagine that

John writing maybe 15 17 years before Ignatius doesn't know what the Lord's day is going to mean and uses a phrase

that will be completely misunderstood for 1800 years

because this is one of the clearest passages shows that yeah there is such a thing as the Lord's day during the life

from the apostles ackn knowed by the Apostle that's evidence this isn't some post-apostolic

invention that the Lord's day is not we abandoned the teaching of the Apostles and started our own thing no because up

to this point you could listen to all those guys and say okay sure Ellen gold white doesn't know what she's talking

about maybe she's a false prophet but how do we know that Christian worship should be on Sunday instead of Saturday

and it's like well because this idea of the Lord's day being the center of worship that Lord's day thing this is

something they're making up after the apostles the Apostle John refers to the Lord's day he treats it as a given in

Revelation chapter 1 we also have these other references that don't use the phrase Lord's day but refer to Christian

Gatherings on the first day of the week that is Sunday so for instance in 1 Corinthians 16 St Paul calls for a

gathering a collection he says on the first day of every week each of you is to put something aside and store it up

as he may Prosper so that contributions need not be made made when I come so the collection for the poor happens on the

first day of the week now we know from Justin Martyr that these collections happened during the Christian worship

that it Happ during the Liturgy in the same way that you pass around in the tithe

collection today now I've seen Adventists try to explain this away and say all this

proves is that the The Collection happened on Sunday it doesn't prove the worship happened on Sunday that's

technically true but it's a weak argument to imagine that Paul knew they were getting together on Saturday

already didn't have the collection gathered then and instead insisted for some reason the collection happen every

Sunday that doesn't make sense I mean that's fundraising 101 you don't hold your fundraiser on a day people aren't

going to be at church you don't pass the tith basket around every Monday for instance why because you're not going to

get very much money you pass it around when everybody's together when the congregation is gathered so if it's true

that is indirect evidence but I think it's pretty clear indirect evidence a little clearer that Christian

worship is happening is in Acts 20:7 which says on the first day of the week when we were gathered together to break

bread Paul talked with them intending to depart on tomorrow and he prolonged his speech until midnight now that's

important because we know from acts for instance acts 242 that the breaking of the bread is how St Luke speaks of the

Christian liturgy and remember also the did when it's talking about coming together

says every Lord's Day gather yourselves together and break bread so all of that seems to point to a pretty coherent

cohesive uh set of evidence that all points in the same direction that the early Christians did

not view themselves bound to keep the Sabbath on Saturday and instead viewed themselves as bound of observing the

Lords did that Christ was the Fulfillment of all of these things and in

fact uh Justin mortyr uh says actually don't have it right in front of me but he he says if we didn't understand why

Christ came we would keep the Sabbath as well and it's a pretty Punchy kind of line because he's saying Jesus is the

Fulfillment of all of these things and it's something to bear in mind because the risk here is that we fall into a

kind of legalism of thinking we're still Bound by the Mosaic law uh and I understand because in the Ten

Commandments people expect we have to keep this literally that's a misreading of the Ten

Commandments and we know that in part because of the practice of the Apostles and the early

Christians but the last Point here is even if you discre everything I've just said even if you think all of the early

Christians were wrong that John either wasn't or shouldn't have been worshiping on the Lord's day uh that all of that

stuff happening on the first day in Acts it looks like worship isn't really that the collection on the on the first day

of the week is just not related to worship fine you can take all of that stuff but you would still have to

acknowledge that when Ellen gold white claims that for centuries all the Christians were

keeping wor keeping the Sabbath and not doing Sunday worship she is completely wrong and I think that's enough to prove

that she is a false propheus and if you are an Adventist who thinks that's not the case I would love to hear what your

reasoning is but besides the question of whether do you think we should prepare for the imminent return for Christ

besides the question whether we you think we should worship on Saturday why should any of us trust Ellen White

when she makes numerous historical claims like this one that have been repeatedly shown to be demonstrably

false for Sheamus popri I'm Joe hhm God bless you thank you for listening to Shameless popery a production of the

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