March-May 1999 The Sabbath Sentinel

Adversaries of the Sabbath

The strongest foes of Messianic believers have been those once in our ranks who have become turn coats. From Judas Iscariot to today, our deadliest enemies have often been our former friends and guides (see Psalm 55).

Consider these recent Sabbath adversaries:

• Pastor John Cowell , after thirteen years of promoting the Sabbath in England, abandoned it. His book, The Snare Broken, written in 1677, caused considerable disturbances among Sabbatarian Churches in England. As Don Sanford, Seventh Day Baptist historian writes, "When a person rejects the Sabbath after having spend years championing it, the effect can be devastating," (A Choosing People: The History of Seventh Day Baptists, page 48.)
• D.M. Canright left the Seventh-Day Adventists in the 1880s, and wrote against them and the Sabbath in his 1889 book, Seventh-day Adventism Renounced.
• Dr. Ernest Martin, Chairman of the Department of Theology at Herbert Armstrong's Ambassador College, left the Worldwide Church of God in 1974, drawing ten thousand or more members with him to abandon the Sabbath. His theological concepts formed the basis for Joseph Tkach's doctrinal rejection of the Sabbath in the mid-1990s.
• Dale Ratzlaff, following the lead of his earlier Australian mentor Robert Brinsmead, left the SDA Church and continues to conduct a ministry aimed at combating what he terms are "the errors of legalism and false religion." His 1989 book, Sabbath in Crisis, was used by Tkach to argue for the abolition of the Sabbath.

The arguments presented by these men should neither be avoided, nor feared, by Sabbath-keepers. Does your Sabbath conviction stand up under crossfire?

TSS

March - May 1999 The Sabbath Sentinel