Category: Old Sabbath Sentinel Articles

A Worthy Mission- the BSA

Leave a comment

By Dr. Royce Mitchell

(This article appeared in the Jan-Feb 2024 edition)

As everyone undoubtedly knows who is familiar with the Bible Sabbath Association (BSA), we have just finished the Association’s quadrennial election process for its governing Board. The new Board of Directors as well as the outgoing Directors have all been notified. Soon, we will begin the process of moving the BSA forward for another 4 years of service to the people of God.

As the new board prepares to take up the reins of governance, it might be fitting to rehearse the purpose and goals of the BSA for all of the members and readers. To do so, a rehearsal of the mission given to us by our Savior would seem to also be in order, providing us with a framework for our BSA mission.

Before ascending to heaven to take up His rightful place at the right hand of the Father, Jesus gave a commission to His disciples. Many people use the following scriptures to form the basis of a “Great Commission.”

In Mat 28:18-20 we read the following: “And Jesus came and spoke to them, saying, All authority is given to Me in Heaven and in earth. Therefore go and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things, whatever I commanded you. And, behold, I am with you all the days until the end of the world.”

Much mischief has been done through the misapplication of that scripture. However, I’ll leave that for another time. What should be focused on is another scripture which is truly the mission Christ gave to His disciples when He walked the earth. That commission can be found in Joh 13:34-35: “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. As I have loved you, you should also love one another. By this all shall know that you are My disciples, if you have love toward one another.”

Jesus expanded on the idea through another statement that He made to His disciples in Joh 15:12-14 “This is My commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. You are My friends if you do whatever I command you.”

The command then is that to show our love for God and our fellow man, we ought to be willing to lay our lives down for one another. Too often that idea is taken to the extreme that Christ had to take it so that we had access to salvation, and to the Father, through Him. And, if the truth is to be told, there have been times in the past where that ultimate sacrifice was required of some of the brethren.

But—and this is your author’s opinion—Jesus was not indicating that unless our love was so strong such that we submitted to martyrdom then we don’t love Him and are not His disciples. If we take the rest of scriptures into consideration, including the Decalogue, it becomes easy to see that any way we set aside part of our lives to help others, especially the brethren, we are in effect laying that
part of our lives down for them.

Your new Board of Directors for the BSA have generously decided to lay down a part of their lives for the purpose of causing the BSA to be a tool of unity in the Spirit. They are sacrificing a part of their lives to reach across corporate barriers in an effort to have all of God’s Children see the many ways that we see things alike, just as past boards have done for the brethren.

The outgoing Board, under the leadership of Kelly McDonald, made great strides in this effort to bring fellowship to the many differing groups of brethren who have in common the keeping of God’s Sabbaths and the desire to promote Jesus as the Messiah. We who will serve on the incoming board ask that everyone pray that we are able to build on the great foundation laid by our past leadership on the Board.

To accomplish one part of our commission, we at the BSA have been, and will continue to be, promoting the keeping of God’s Sabbaths. The world at large claims it worships Jesus but refuses to accept what He said to us all. He told us, “… It is written, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God.’” Mat 4:4.

The churches of the majority teach that we don’t need to keep God’s Sabbaths, but those words are God breathed! While not having repeated every commandment specifically in the New Covenant, Jesus did have this to say about them. When the rich young man came to Him and asked what good thing He could do to enter into life, Jesus responded thusly, “And He said to him, Why do you
call Me good? There is none good but one, that is, God. But if you want to enter into life, keep the commandments. He said to Him, Which? Jesus said, You shall not
murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal, you shall not bear false witness, honor your father and mother, and, you shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Mat 19:17-19.

Jesus repeated those parts of the Commandments that related to how to love our neighbors as ourselves, one of the two Great Commandments. In another place Jesus explained that loving our neighbors as ourselves would not just be refraining from killing another, but to even refrain from hating them. Shouldn’t that include ALL Sabbath keepers as well?

He also tied the Commandments all together when He dealt with the young expert in the Mosaic Law who tested Jesus with a question. In Mat 22:36 we read: “Master, which is the great commandment in the Law?

“ Jesus said to him, You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the first and great commandment.

“And the second is like it, You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.”

If the final six commandments apply to loving our neighbors as ourselves, then the first four must apply to loving the Lord our God with our hearts, souls and minds!

Therefore, since in no place have we ever seen God-breathed words stating that we need no longer obey ALL of God’s Commandments, then we must default to Christ’s admonition to live by every God-breathed word. We can’t rationalize around those words of God like so many do who want to keep their own traditions rather than doing what God has asked us to do.

If we do try to rationalize around God’s spoken words then we will be among those Christ described here: “Not everyone who says to Me, Lord! Lord! shall enter the kingdom of Heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in Heaven. Many will say to Me in that day, Lord! Lord! Did we not prophesy in Your name, and through Your name throw out demons, and through Your name do many wonderful works? And then I will say to them I never knew you! Depart from Me, those working lawlessness!” Mat 7:21-23.

These blind-leading-the-blind preachers of the world are teaching people to rebel against God, to hate His Sabbaths, and to continue in sin in the name of Jesus. That is not the message that Christ brought to the world and it is likewise the antithesis of the message that the BSA is promoting.

Moreover, they ignore the plain words of Jesus wherein He says that all of those who claim to have been doing great works in His Name will be turned away as strangers who are unknown to Him. One would think that such an admonition would be enough for those “teachers” to stop teaching the lie and instead to teach what God has to say!

Jesus told us all to love. That is the great commission given to us. He explained to us that loving God and our fellow man so much that we would never consider trespassing against either should be the goal for every minute of our lives.

Summing up, preaching and teaching Jesus as our Savior necessarily means speaking the words that He spoke, teaching the concepts that He taught. That has been one of the goals of the BSA—part of its Mission Statement if you will—for over 75 years. Jesus wants us to have unity in the Spirit—unity with Him and with the Father. We can’t have unity if we are always focusing on what makes
us different from one another. Indeed, that focus is a divisive one and we know who the author of division is; it certainly did not come from the mouth of God.

Instead, as we have been teaching at the BSA for many decades, we need to focus on loving one another. When we love one another we are to do so as Christ loves us. When we love we overlook things that bring discord between us; it becomes much easier to see each other as God sees us. And, after all, should that not be part of our goals individually, also?

To do this great work, however, we need many hands. This small team can be your hands and the hands of God to accomplish this ministry, but hands need a body to direct them to accomplish the will of God. We need writers, donations and prayers! Won’t you join with us in this
worthy goal?

View the Jan-Feb 2024 edition at https://biblesabbath.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/SabbSent0124_Proof.pdf

To learn more about the BSA, visit http://biblesabbath.org

A Brief History of the Seventh-day Adventist Church

Leave a comment

A Brief History of the Seventh-day Adventist Church

“Organized in 1863, the Seventh-day Adventist Church has its doctrinal roots in the “Advent Awakening” movement of the 1840s. Hundreds of thousands of Christians became convinced from their study of Bible prophecy that Christ would soon return. This re-awakening of a neglected biblical belief occurred in many countries, with a major focus in North America.

After the “great disappointment” of their hopes in 1844, these “advent believers” broke up into a number of different groups. One group, studying their Bibles for increased understanding, recognized the seventh day Sabbath (Saturday) as the day of worship. This group, which included Ellen and James White and Joseph Bates, became the nucleus of the church congregations that chose the name “Seventh-day Adventist Church” and organized in Battle Creek, Michigan, with 125 churches and 3,500 members.

A small nucleus of “Adventists” began to grow ― mainly in the New England states of America, where William Miller’s Advent movement had begun. Ellen G. White, a mere teenager at the time of the “Great Disappointment,” of 1844 grew into a gifted author, speaker, and administrator, who would become and remain the trusted spiritual counselor of the Adventist family for more than seventy years until her death in 1915. Her counsels and messages to believers and church leaders shaped the form and progress of the church, while its beliefs have remained totally Bible-based.

In 1860 at Battle Creek Michigan, the loosely knit congregations of Adventists chose the name Seventhday Adventist and in 1863 formally organized a church body with a membership of 3,500. At first work was largely confined to North America until 1874 when the Church’s first missionary, J. N. Andrews, was sent to Switzerland. Africa was penetrated briefly in 1879 when Dr. H. P. Ribton, an early convert in Italy, moved to Egypt and opened a school, but the project ended when riots broke out in the vicinity.

The first non-Protestant Christian country entered was Russia, where an Adventist minister went in 1886. On October 20, 1890, the schooner Pitcairn was launched at San Francisco and was soon engaged in carrying missionaries to the Pacific Islands. Seventh-day Adventist workers first entered non-Christian countries in 1894 ― Gold Coast (Ghana), West Africa, and Matabeleland, South Africa. The same year saw missionaries entering South America, and in 1896 there were representatives in Japan.

The Health Reform Institute, later known as the Battle Creek Sanitarium, opened its doors in 1866, and missionary society work was organized on a statewide basis in 1870. The first of the Church’s worldwide network of schools was established in 1872, and 1877 saw the formation of statewide Sabbath school associations. In 1903, the denominational headquarters was moved from Battle Creek, Michigan, to Washington, D.C., and in 1989 to Silver Spring, Maryland, where it continues to form the nerve center of ever-expanding work.

Other early Adventists of note include John Harvey Kellogg, inventor of the “cornflake” developed by his brother Will and pioneer of the Battle Creek Sanitarium; Joseph Bates, retired sea captain and first leader of an Adventist administration; Uriah Smith, prolific author and inventor, and editor of the church’s paper for almost 50 years.

Adventist missionaries began work outside of North America in 1864, and ten years later J. N. Andrews was sent to Switzerland as the denomination’s first official missionary. In 1894 church operations commenced in Africa (Ghana and South Africa). Missionaries also arrived in South America in 1894, and in Japan in 1896. The church now operates in 205 countries worldwide.

The publication and distribution of literature were also major factors in the growth of the Advent movement. The Advent Review and Sabbath Herald (now the Adventist Review), general church paper, was launched in Paris, Maine, in 1850; the Youth’s Instructor in Rochester, New York, in 1852; and the Signs of the Times in Oakland, California, in 1874. The first denominational publishing house at Battle Creek, Michigan, began operating in 1855 and was duly incorporated in 1861 under the name of Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association.

Adventists have a desire to reach people for Christ. One result of this desire to touch lives for God is that Adventists have built thousands of schools around the world. It also means that Seventh-day Adventist physicians and medical institutions serve individual needs in more than 98 countries, giving the highest possible quality of personal care whenever people hurt. These physicians, nurses, therapists, and other medical workers have dedicated their lives to providing physical healing so that each person can live the best possible life. Using modern medical knowledge and carefully developed skills, these workers touch thousands of lives each day, bringing healing and hope into families around the world.

Schools, hospitals, clinics, and health food factories are just one small corner of the Seventh-day Adventist commitment to improving lives. There is much more:

  1. Wherever disaster strikes, ADRA, the Adventist Development and Relief Agency, joins hands with other organizations to provide clean water, food, clothing, housing, and care.
  2. Adventist publishing houses produce inspirational books, textbooks, Bible commentaries, health books, and dozens of specialized magazines in scores of languages each month. These are then delivered to millions of homes around the world, providing quality reading and information that improves lives.

    3. Local Adventist churches serve their communities by providing recreational and social activities for children and teenagers, vocational and evening education programs for adults, and spiritual programming and health clinics for all.

    4. On a worldwide scale, the church’s mission activities are exemplified in the Global Mission Initiative―to reach the unreached peoples of the world for Christ.

    5. Summer camps offer all sorts of activities, from horseback riding and water skiing to crafts and dozens of other youth activities in country environments in which children feel safe and loved. These activities are combined with a witness for God’s message to make people whole―physically, mentally, socially, and spiritually.

    6. Use of modern technology also describes Adventist commitment to mission and presence in the society with messages of “Good News.” Numerous radio studios dot the Adventist broadcasting map around the globe. The same goes for production of television and other media programs. The church’s interest is best exemplified in a satellite broadcast system with more than 14,000 down-link sites, and the television 24/7 global broadcasting network for homes, the Hope Channel.

    Too often it’s easy to see all of this as just activities of the institutions and organizations of the church. But the Seventh-day Adventist Church is far more than its organizational structure and institutions. The Adventist Church is people, individual members who have caught a vision and who have chosen to live out that vision for Christ, as His hands of hope.

Growth from the early days has been dramatic. From the small group meeting in 1846 and the  organization of the church with 3,500 believers, Seventh-day Adventists now number approximately 17 million worldwide.

(this article is from the March–April 2013 edition of the Sabbath Sentinel, pages 19-20)

To read the rest of this magazine, click this link: https://biblesabbath.org/media/TSS_2013_Mar-Apr–560.pdf

Sabbath – In a Larger Context

Leave a comment

Sabbath – In a Larger Context

By Steve Brightbill

“Without a doubt, man needs rest – and on a regular, weekly basis. That’s why God created the Sabbath in the first place. But the weekly Sabbath is but a part of a larger picture.

As God prepared the Israelites for entering the Promised Land, He provided a comprehensive set of laws and instructions which was to guide their worship, conduct, and their relationship with Him. Many of these laws and regulations are detailed in the book of Leviticus. Chapter 25 speaks of a Sabbatical Year and a Year of Jubilee.

The sabbatical year was a year of rest for the land itself. “But in the seventh year the land is to have a sabbath of rest, a sabbath to the Lord. Do not sow your fields or prune your vineyards” (verse 4). As explained later in verses 20 and 21, the sixth year would produce three years of abundance, which would be…”

(this article is an excerpt from the June 1990 edition of the Sabbath Sentinel)

To read the rest of this article, which starts on page 13, click this link:

https://biblesabbath.org/media/June-1990-tss_398.PDF

Judge Ye Not What is Right?

Leave a comment

Judge Ye Not What is Right?

 by Richard Rives

“Each week I provide a video commentary entitled Biblical Christianity — “Just the Facts.” By way of my commentaries I provide indisputable evidence that while many aspects of contemporary Christianity are found among the traditions of paganism, they cannot be found in the Bible.

I tell people that we should keep the Ten Commandments, and that the combination of pagan precepts with the worship of the biblical Creator is in violation of the first four commandments which tell us how to love the LORD.

I tell people that while we are saved by grace through faith, sin is still defined as the transgression of the law — that the wages of willful and unrepentant sin is still death — and that we must not practice sin.

Some people just don’t like the idea of having rules by which we must abide; and, as you can imagine, I receive a great deal of criticism. Why am I criticized? Not for presenting information that is false, but for presenting factual evidence that they do not like…”

(this article is an excerpt from the March–April 2013 edition of the Sabbath Sentinel)

To read the rest of this article, which starts on page 14, click this link:

https://biblesabbath.org/media/TSS_2013_Mar-Apr–560.pdf

The Sabbath Rest

Leave a comment

The Sabbath Rest

by John T. Klassek

“Scientists predict that in approximately four billion years’ time, the sun will run out of the hydrogen that fuels it. As a result of the enormous gravitational pull inward, it will begin to collapse in on itself. The sun will then reach a point of critical mass, whereupon it will expand to become a red giant, and in doing so destroy not only the earth but the entire solar system.

The Bible also predicts that one day the earth will be destroyed by fire. God says that beyond that there will be a new heaven and new earth.

What does this have to do with the Sabbath? It’s all about time.

The weekly Sabbath rest is more than just a reminder that as physical humans we’re bound by constraints of space and time. It’s about holiness, it’s about REST, and it’s about being at one with God.

When this earth, as we know it, no longer exists, neither will the current parameters of days and nights, weeks, months or the years that help govern our passage through time….”

(this article is an excerpt from the March–April 2012 edition of the Sabbath Sentinel)

To read the rest of this article, which starts on page 12, click this link: https://biblesabbath.org/media/TSSMarchApril2012.pdf

In the Days of Noah

Leave a comment

In the Days of Noah

by David Rives

In biblical history we learn that there came a time when wickedness filled the land. Even so, there was a righteous man who found grace in God’s sight. He was given instructions on the building of a ship which would preserve the lives of everyone on board. God revealed that He would send a flood to destroy everything that was not sealed in the ship.

Noah built the ark as commanded, and prepared for the coming flood, while the rest of the world continued as they were, too caught up in their daily lives.

The deluge that came wiped the earth clean, and after the waters had receded, the ark was opened, and life began anew.

We read that God “spared not the old world, but saved Noah…a preacher of righteousness, bringing in the flood upon the world of the ungodly” (2 Peter 2:5).

(this article is an excerpt from the Jan-Feb 2013 edition of the Sabbath Sentinel)

To read the rest of this article, which starts on page 19, click this link: https://biblesabbath.org/media/TSS_2013_Jan-Feb_LowResProof2.pdf