The early 19th century.
The "puritan" concept of Sabbath was rather standard amongst American Christians at that time. For them Sunday was the Sabbath.

Puritans were very serious about living the Christian life, as well as believing in Christ our Savior.
They held the ten commandments in high esteem as being God's law.

While Catholics called Sunday the "Lord's Day" and generally admitted that the Sabbath of scripture was Saturday but it was mainly for the Jews; the Puritans, on the other hand believed and taught that Sunday WAS the Sabbath and needed to be strictly kept as one of the commandments.

Read any 19th century Puritan writings and you find the word "Sabbath" mentioned often, yet they were referring to Sunday.

This was also a problem in the Tongan Islands back then in the early years. The Tongan constitution had a law that everyone needed to regard the Sabbath. However, by Sabbath they understood Sunday, the English missionaries (who came from a Puritan background which freely interchanged the words Sabbath and Sunday) had the word "Sabbath" used in the constitution.

This made it easy for Adventist missionaries to keep the "Sabbath" along with the Sunday keepers, and even today some argue that they are all keeping the "Sabbath" even though the calendar says its Sunday.

Not sure why you think "the day the missionaries gave them" has any relevance to what the truth is. Could missionaries be wrong? What if they were Sunday keeping missionaries, should the people continue keeping the day Sunday keeping missionaries gave them even if they later came to know the 7th day Sabbath is the truth?

They WERE Sunday keeping missionaries from England who helped King George Tupou frame the Tongan constitution back in 1875. For them the "Sabbath" was the day after Saturday, and the day BEFORE Monday. It is not the Biblical Sabbath, it is Sunday. It establishes a Sabbath day on Sunday during which no trade or professional or commercial undertakings are to be pursued. The Constitutional law of Tonga has a Sunday law, and the Adventists decided to make the nautical dateline (for ships at sea) their own private international dateline, and ignored the fact that Tonga remained on the same side of the dateline as new Zealand and Australia. This allowed them to call Sunday (which all the other denominations regarded) as their Sabbath as well.

Of course back in 1900 their was a lot of foreign pressure on the Islands to switch to the western hemisphere, Samoa did switch, but has now gone back to eastern hemisphere time.


Though there was a lot of talk of lining things up with the nautical date line back around 1900, it is not the same as the IDL, and never has been.

And yes, Adventist continue keeping Sunday in the Tongan Islands, ignoring the IDL and deifying the 180th meridian, to this day.

And now it has spread to Samoa, and a couple other Island countries in the South Pacific as well.


EGW wrote concerning the arguments over the day line:



That seems plain enough to me --
To use the arguments over the date line to get Adventists to keep Sunday, she says is "a snare of satan" and that it's impossible (for Adventists) to claim the other churches are right in keeping Sunday and those keeping Saturday are wrong. To do so would make the whole Adventist message a mockery.

Pretty serious statement.

180th meridian? Have you ever looked at the IDL? Who sets the Date Line? International agreement, right? Did you also know that the International Standard ISO 8601 the week starts on Monday, making Sunday the 7th day? How about the Arctic or Antarctic regions? Do you believe that those Samoa are trying to go against God, or are they honestly trying to follow their Lord? Why condemn them?

The "day line theory" that EGW was talking about is not the IDL.

You are right, the "day line theory" EGW was talking about is not the IDL. She's talking about any "theory" about the day line that disregards the accepted IDL and causes Adventists to worship on Sunday thinking that is the right day, while those who worship on the day BEFORE Sunday are treated as being all wrong.

As far as "condemning", it is the "Saturday Adventist" in Samoa that were condemned, shunned, and harassed by their former brethren and church leaders.

Personally, (and I'm not alone) I see what took place in Samoa as a foretaste of what Saturday Sabbitarians will face in the future.

If there is anyone who thinks there is a divine vertical meridian, they do not really understand the issue. The thought is you go 180 degrees from somewhere and that is the divine end of day? If so, and if the day ends and begins with sunset, and if visibility of sunset is similar to visibility of the new moon, then consider the following:
https://moonsighting.com/visibility.html

It is not vertical but parabolic!

While some Adventists over there may indeed be honest, and some may be honestly ignorant of the issue, I believe the majority are either intentionally ignorant refusing to research the issue themselves, or are justifying escaping "Sabbath keeping hardship".

Who sets the Date Line?

Adventists who wish to keep Sunday?

The majority Sunday keeping Adventists receive favorably the arguments the church leadership tells them to believe. Respect for "men of the cloth" is still very high in their culture. When the decision to make Sunday holy, comes down from the division leaders, through to the mission leaders and they come and present their reasoning to prepare the people to chose Sunday, -- well -- most feel it is God leading.

But is it?

The issue in Samoa may have been sent to awaken the Adventists in Tonga to return and finally stop worshipping on Sunday and embrace the true Seventh-day Sabbath which begins at Sunset Friday and ends at sunset Saturday everywhere in the world.

In the first place I would say "Let the Samoans worry about what the Samoans do."

Second, I have come to realize what an enormous distraction the Saturday/Sunday "issue" is. While at one time I stanchly defended Saturday keeping, I have come to realize that it is really a non-issue. Additionally, Saturday keepers are unable to articulate the reasons people keep Sunday. They are content to claim "It's not in the Bible" and leave it at that. So they don't actually KNOW why others keep Sunday.

There is actually more support for Sunday worship than for the IJ, or Trinity doctrine. You just don't know what it is and refuse to examine the issue from the point of view of sincere, Spirit-led Christians.

True that Sunday keepers have build a huge maze of "reasons" for keeping Sunday. Until you study the context of their "support" passages, it can sound quite convincing. But the fact remains, there is NO Biblical support for Sunday to replace the 7th day Sabbath.