How do Seventh Day Adventists view Seventh Day Baptists?

[Sojourner]

What is the view of the General Conference of the Seventh Day Adventist Church on the denomination called the Seventh Day Baptist Church? Does the SDA have any contact with Seventh Day Baptists?

And personally I guess, what is your own personal view of this denomination?

Interestingly in study I have learned that the group called the Millerites who later became the Seventh Day Adventist Church actually worshipped on Sunday until a lady called Rachel Oakes debated the Sabbath teaching with Frederick Wheeler who pastored the Millerite congregation, eventually Wheeler was convinced by Rachel Oakes that the Sabbath was factual in Scripture and they formed the first Seventh Day Adventist congregation from the Millerite movement. Many Millerites eventually followed and some did not.

I know that Ellen G White is followed heavily within the SDA, is Rachel Oakes taught about also? Was she not used in a similar way to Ellen White by God in terms of bringing the truth of the Sabbath to the Millerite movement and beginning the SDA denomination?

[Johann]

About 50 years ago I was the pastor of the Seventh-day Adventist Church in Freetown, Sierra Leone while also teaching Bible at our secondary school in that area.

Our organist was a Seventh-day Baptist who worshiped with us because there was no other Sabbath keeping church in town. Although she did not share certain of our beliefs, mainly the Spirit of Prophecy, the state of the dead, we had the common faith in Jesus Christ, and the Sabbath, which to her seemed sufficient that we could worship together. I do not recall her ever bringing up any of our disagreements in Sabbath school, although they were just mentioned during a visit in her in home. So she felt at home with us and listened to our preaching which included our peculiar views.

Ellen White and Rachel Oaks Preston were among the influential women at the beginning of our church. It is too bad the enemy of truth managed to introduce this male headship theory which was borrowed from the Babylonian churches, trying to make it sound Biblical, to wrest the early influence of women in our church.

[olger]

I got some friends among them. Decent folks.

Like to see them let go of the 'eternal torment' doctrine.

`oG

[BobRyan]

What is the view of the General Conference of the Seventh Day Adventist Church on the denomination called the Seventh Day Baptist Church? Does the SDA have any contact with Seventh Day Baptists?

We tend to hold them in high regard and will mention a woman by the name of "Rachel Oaks" when the subject of Seventh-day Baptists comes up. She is a highly respected SDB in SDA history that helped to turn this church from being a Sunday-keeping Adventist church - and into a Seventh-day Sabbath keeping denomination.

in Christ,

Bob

[ClubV12]

Now Johann, respectfully, some of us believe male headship started with Adam and has always been in place. That does not detract at all from encouraging and recognizing the ability of women to serve in many capacities and even excell the ministry of men in some circumstances.

The Sabbath doctrine and how it was not only established, but matured over a period of years is a great study! Lots of intense discussion among the pioneers over how and when it should be kept.

Like many doctrinal points, it underwent some changes as the early believers grew in their understanding. All though, the Sabbath itself was accepted with little question once it was introduced.

[Planey]

...male headship started with Adam and has always been in place. That does not detract at all from encouraging and recognizing the ability of women to serve in many capacities and even excel the ministry of men in some circumstances.

Yep, as long as they remember their place, eh?

Graeme

[debbym]

Quote:

It is too bad the enemy of truth managed to introduce this male headship theory which was borrowed from the Babylonian churches, trying to make it sound Biblical, to wrest the early influence of women in our church.

Quote:

the history of the exclusion of women from ordination.

http://ncronline.org/news/women-religious/meaning-ordination-and-how-women-were-gradually-excluded

To quote Cardinal Yves Congar, the French Dominican theologian who died in 1995 at age 91, "Ordination encompassed at the same time election as its starting point and consecration as its term. But instead of signifying, as happened from the beginning of the 12th century, the ceremony in which an individual received a power henceforth possessed in such a way that it could never be lost, the words ordinare, ordinari, ordinatio signified the fact of being designated and consecrated to take up a certain place, or better a certain function, ordo, in the community and at its service." Ordination did not give a person, for instance, the irrevocable and portable power of consecrating the bread and wine, or of leading the liturgy, but rather a particular community would charge a person to play a leadership role within that community (and only within that community) and he or she would lead the liturgy because of the leadership role they played within the community. So any leader of a community would be expected to lead the liturgy.

As the quotation from Congar indicated, only in the 12th and 13th centuries did theologians and canonists devise, after lengthy debates, another definition of ordination. According to this definition -- and it is the one with which we are most familiar today -- ordination granted the recipient not a position within a community, but a power that a person can exercise in any community. The central power that ordination granted was the power to consecrate the bread and wine at the altar, and so, over time, ordination was considered to include only those orders that served at the altar, that is, the orders of priest, deacon and subdeacon. All of the other earlier orders were no longer considered to be orders at all.

As a part of this redefinition, women were excluded from all the orders including that of priest, deacon and subdeacon. In fact, it was taught and believed, and still is, that women never performed any of the roles now limited to those three orders. Under the older definition of order, however, women played several liturgical and administrative roles now reserved to deacons, priests and bishops. Evidence from the fourth through the 11th centuries indicates that a few women led liturgies with the approval of at least some bishops. The best surviving example of this is a stone carving dated between the fourth and sixth centuries and found near Poitiers, France; it commemorates that "Martia the priest [presbytera] made the offering together with Olybrius and Nepos." Scholars who have studied the carving agree that this inscription refers to Martia as a minister who celebrated the Eucharist along with two men, Olybrius and Nepos. That the practice continued is witnessed in a letter of Pope Gelasius I from 494 that admonished bishops who confirmed women to minister at the altar. Pope Zachary also condemned the practice of allowing women to serve at the altar. The Council of Paris in 829 made it extremely clear that it was the bishops who were allowing women to minister at the altar. Women certainly did distribute Communion in the 10th, 11th and perhaps the 12th centuries. Texts for these services exist in two manuscripts of this period.

All of this changed over roughly a hundred-year period between the end of the 11th century and the beginning of the 13th. For many different cultural reasons, women were gradually excluded from ordination. First, many roles in the church ceased to be considered as ordained -- most importantly, abbots and abbesses. Powerful women in religious orders went from being ordained to laity. Second, canon lawyers and then theologians began to debate whether women could be ordained to the priesthood or diaconate. Several canonists argued, for instance, that women had once been ordained to the diaconate but now no longer were. By the end of the 12th century, arguments were put forward that women had never been "really" ordained despite references in canon law to the contrary. Finally, by the beginning of the 13th century, canonists and theologians argued that women had never been and could never be ordained since they were physically, mentally and spiritually inferior to men. One Franciscan theologian, Duns Scotus (1266-1308), took a different approach. Women were the equal of men in all ways, but since Jesus had never ordained women, the church could not do so. This is, of course, the position of the magisterium in the present.

Little has changed, then, in the theology of ordination since the 13th century, when the church structure we have now was first solidified. The official teaching on the ordination of women dates from about a hundred years later.

[joeb]

Wow. Does this issue have to dominate every thread in existence, even ones with non-SDA's asking questions about our church? Nice way to witness is all I can say....

[M. T. Cross]

Wow. Does this issue have to dominate every thread in existence, even ones with non-SDA's asking questions about our church? Nice way to witness is all I can say....

Its one of the hot 3 Joeb

Womens Ordination

Spiritual Formation

and

Gay Marriage

Oddly enough, love and compassion, kindness and hope, a closer personal walk with your God (my God, the other guy/ladies God) are never really a hot topic. Not a lot of controversy and things to fight about with those I guess.

[ClubV12]

The "hot three"? I thought that was Revelation 14.

[Kevin H]

The "hot three"? I thought that was Revelation 14.