Difference between 7th Day Adventists and Baptists (Christianity)

 

The 7^th Day Adventists is a Christian church group. One fact that makes them different is that they have church on Saturday. They have church on Saturday because they believe that Saturday is the Sabbath, or the 7^th day of the Judeo Christian week. It only has a worldwide population of about 15 million people, but it is still very ethnically and culturally diverse. Currently, there is not anyone making significant changes to the church today.

The Seventh Day Adventist’s founding was a slow process. The 7^th Day Adventist Church was founded around 1844 by a man named William Miller, a Baptist preacher from Low Hampton, New York. The Adventist group started in the United States during the Second Great Awakening. It became a separate church group with Miller’s theory of Daniel 8:14. He thought that he could judge when the date of Christ’s return would be by using the Bible verse Daniel 8:14. According to Miller, Jesus Christ would return to the earth on October 22^nd, 1844. But, when Christ didn’t return to the Earth, many people who had followed Miller had left him to go back to their old churches. This became known as the “Great Disappointment”. Miller was then seen as a false prophet by his former followers. He also realized that he had contradicted scripture because it says in the Bible that only God knows the true day that Christ will return to Earth. But after a vision of Adventist Hiram Edson, the Adventists began to believe that October 22^nd was not the second coming of Christ, but rather the day that Christ entered the “Most Holy Place”. Then, an understanding known as the Investigative Judgment came into play over the next few years along with the help of a few individuals. Some of which were J. N. Loughborough, Uriah Smith, and James and Ellen G. White. Uriah Smith and J. N. Loughborough first brought in the idea that a judgment had began when Christ had entered the “Most Holy Place”. James White was the first one to use the words investigative judgment. He stated in his magazine the Review and Herald that an “investigative judgment” was taking place in Heaven and that all the believer’s lives would be judged and reviewed by God. This doctrine/belief was further explained in chapter 28 of Ellen Whites book The Great Controversy. The main bible verses that Adventists quote to support their Investigative Judgment are Daniel 7:9-10; 1 Peter 4:17; and Revelation 14:6, 7; 20:12.

Compared to other Denominations, the 7^thDay Adventists haven’t had very many splits or schisms. But one main offshoot is the Davidian 7^th Day Adventists. This branch of 7^th Day Adventists was started by Victor Houteff. It was formed because Victor had gotten excommunicated for incorporating some new ideas into a book called The Sheppard's Rod. This branch wasn’t actually formed until after Houteff’s death when Benjamin L. Roden took over. Houteff had started a movement that led to the creation of the Davidian branch. Also, the term Davidian refers to the restoration of the Davidic kingdom. The largest schism in Adventist history was over the Glacier View Controversy of 1980. This was where Dr. Desmond Ford wrote against the churches views on the investigative judgment in his 900 page paper. It is called the Glacier View Controversy because there were meetings held in Glacier View Ranch, Colorado, to discuss Dr. Desmond’s paper. It ended up with Dr. Desmond losing his teaching and ministering credentials, and many Adventists leaving the Church. One last small split in the church was the split into the group of the SDA Kinship International. This is a group of people who have completely separated from the church because they are gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transexuals.