Who Are The Seventh Day Baptists?

I pray that I get to be a seventh day Baptist.

Hebrews 4:4-11
(4) For he spake in a certain place of the seventh day on this wise, And God did rest the seventh day from all his works.
(5) And in this place again, If they shall enter into my rest.
(6) Seeing therefore it remaineth that some must enter therein, and they to whom it was first preached entered not in because of unbelief:
(7) Again, he limiteth a certain day, saying in David, Today, after so long a time; as it is said, Today if ye will hear his voice, harden not your hearts.
(8) For if Joshua had given them rest, then would he not afterward have spoken of another day.
(9) There remaineth therefore a rest to the people of God.
(10) For he that is entered into his rest, he also hath ceased from his own works, as God did from his.
(11) Let us labor therefore to enter into that rest, lest any man fall after the same example of unbelief.

 

Hello Iveyleaguer,

There are a few of us Seventh Day Baptists on the BB, the main Seventh Day Baptist website is -
http://www.seventhdaybaptist.org/

The Seventh Day Baptists are one of the founding groups of Baptists, going back to 1630 in England when they were founded. Yet they did not choose their name, it was a label given by others. Being as the Roman Catholic Church was predominant, and the Church of England still followed a number of their tenants, the Seventh Day Baptists along with the Quakers and the Open Brethren broke away from the organised denominations of the time. The Seventh Day Baptists disagreed with the then teaching that the Sabbath was on Sunday as was a popular teaching, resultingly they met on the Saturday, thus being given the label Seventh Day Baptists.

There are various texts in the Bible of the early church assembling on the Sabbath Acts 13:42 is one good example.

Yet the Seventh Day Baptist have maintained right from the start that we are an Evanglical Christian church along with the other denominations that God has called to be a part of the body of Christ. In Australia our halls are freely given on Sundays to other Evangelical Churches to further evangalism, in fact the SDB for a long time has shared ministers with various other Baptist denominations, ministering both on the Saturday and the Sunday.

What I like about the Seventh Day Baptist Church is they really seem to try to model themselves on the Early Church, people are encouraged to use there God given gifts in the congregation, and there is a real focus on Bible Study to prove the doctrines that we hold dear as Baptists. I can not speak more highly of the church. So much so that I am studying at nights at an evangelical non denominational Bible College so that I can be ordained into the ministry of the Seventh Day Baptist Church.

 

There is no Christian Sabbath.

Ex 31:13 Speak thou also unto the children of Israel , saying, Verily my sabbaths ye shall keep: for it is a sign between me and you throughout your generations; that ye may know that I am the LORD that doth sanctify you.
Ex 31:17 It is a sign between me and the children of Israel for ever : for in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, and on the seventh day he rested, and was refreshed.

A Christian Sabbath is blasphemy.

Mt 12:39 But he answered and said unto them, An evil and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign; and there shall no sign be given to it, but the sign of the prophet Jonas:

We enter into his rest the minute we believe. They entered not in because of unbelief. Heb 4 is a reference to the millinium. Sorry, Constantine and the Sabbatarians are BOTH wrong.

Ga 3:28 There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.
Col 3:11 Where there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, Barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free: but Christ is all, and in all.

After the rapture God will go back to dealing with the Jews. The body of Christ will be complete, and the seventieth week of Daniel will start where it left off.

 

The sabbath was a sign given to those who the Lord redeemed out of Egypt. Consider Ex. 31.

Edited to remove insult.

[ February 14, 2005, 09:23 AM: Message edited by: rsr ]

 

Ivey,

There is a whole lot there I would want an explanation on including:
~We believe that the gift of Sabbath rest is an experience of God's eternal presence with His people.
~freedom of thought under the guidance of the Holy Spirit.
~Every member of the church has the right to participate in the decision making process of the church.
~We believe that Jesus Christ, in His life and teachings as recorded in the Bible, is the supreme interpreter of God's will for mankind.
~We believe that mankind was created in the image of God and is therefore the noblest work of creation We believe that human beings have moral responsibility and are created to enjoy both divine and human fellowship as children of God.
~We believe that sin is disobedience to God and failure to live according to His will. Because of sin all people have separated themselves from God. We believe that because we are sinners, we are in need of a Savior.
~We believe in baptism by immersion as a symbol of death to sin, a pledge to a new life in Him.
~We believe that the Lord's Supper commemorates the suffering and death of our Redeemer until He comes, and is a symbol of union in Christ and a pledge of renewed allegiance to our risen Lord.

Overall, my quick observation is that the primacy this group places on the Sabbath is in my view unbalanced at best. You could chose so many doctrines as the primary charactaristic to describe a church (virgin birth,crucifixion, etc.) why the Sabbath so central?

I believe based on reading their information that its because that they perceive themselves somehow to be the unique people of God. The key quote for this is "To be without a covenant is to be without a church." So in other words, all of our churches without covenants are not true churches.

The whole idea of this type of covenant in my view is flawed. Men are covenant breakers, not keepers. To make a covenant to do all those things for God is ridiculous and equates to law keeping, which we are free from. God does not want us to measure sprituality by how well we keep the rules we invent, although it sure makes us feel better to have clearly defined rules.

"Covenant" sounds like such a cool biblical word but it just means promise. So, what I'm finding throughout this literature is a whole lot of promises these guys are making to God. I don't see that in scripture.

As believers, we are free from the letter of the law. We still keep God's moral laws as best we can to maintain fellowship, not relationship. Our relationship is settled, but we can be "closer" to God in the sense of submitting to His control and being aware of His presence more acutely.

They are right that the Sabbath is Saturday, but we are not obligated to keep the Sabbath. For something to be normative in the church today it should be not only practiced by the apostles but expounded on in the epistles. The early church did meet once a week on Sunday, the Lord's day, but that was not the sabbath. The early church did not keep the jewish Sabbath.

I can even tell you that these people do not keep the sabbath the way the Jews did or do. I have an orthodox jewish rabbi as a father in law, he won't get in a car or turn on a light during Shavice. Very different from what these guys do I'm sure. If they want to keep the law they may as well go all the way.

 

I would not say that we are "unbalanced" in meeting on Saturday, Recall that the history of the church was that the mainstream churches were meeting on Sunday and calling the Sunday the Sabbath which it is not. Yes that teaching has been dropped from most groups today, yet that is the History of the Seventh Day Baptist Church. The name was given to us by others not by ourselves!

I can tell you quite openly that the Seventh Day Baptist Church has never ever percieved themselves to be some type of "Unique People of God". That is a total misrepresentation and there is no way any Seventh Day Baptist group would ever take part in some type of heretical teaching like that.

Seventh Day Baptists are called by God just like the other Christian denominations are, we emphasise the Baptist Distinctives, the Nicean Creed and the Trinity. We are more than happy to give any other Christian church full use of our halls and even preachers that they might evangalise and build strong Sunday Churches, or any other day of the week churches for that matter!

Seventh Day Baptists have a long history scince 1630, many respected Christian Writers have fellowshipped with us in that time. Our goal at present is to be the most evangelical Chrisitan church on the planet. If any other denominations would like to compete with us for that title, we would encourage them on and help them to do it!

 

Sorry Ben. I wasn't trying to insult you personally. Let me say publicly that I'm not familiar with the 7th Day Baptists other than what I read yesterday and that my observations are just my first pass opinion based on where I sit.

I'm sure the testimony of your denomination speaks for itself and my observations won't change almost 500 years of history.