Denominations have differing views about religious holidays

Q: Do Seventh-day Adventists and Jehovah’s Witnesses celebrate Christmas and Easter? I’ve heard they don’t. Dana, Oklahoma City

A: While the Seventh-day Adventist and Jehovah’s Witness faiths both give special emphasis to the Second Coming of Christ, they are different denominations with separate histories and discrete practices.

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Seventh-day Adventists arose from the Adventist or “Millerite movement after the Great Disappointment of 1844. William Miller, a self-made, itinerant preacher, had used the Book of Daniel to predict Jesus Christ would return Oct. 22, 1844, and cleanse the Earth. When that event failed to occur, most Baptists, Methodists, Presbyterians and others who had joined the interfaith cause became disillusioned and left the movement.

A sizable group remained, however, and some of those people eventually formed the Seventh-day Adventist Church. The new church taught that Miller had misunderstood Daniel’s prophecy. Jesus had actually moved within heaven from the Holy Place to the Most Holy Place on the date Miller predicted, according to Seventh-day Adventist teaching.

Seventh-day Adventists continue to await Christ’s Second Coming on Earth but join many other Christian denominations in saying the time and date of that event are unknown. The church often refers to that anticipated day as “the Christmas yet to come.

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Seventh-day Adventists do not find instruction in the Bible to celebrate either Christmas or Easter as distinct holy days. Believers are free to celebrate Christmas and Easter if they choose, and many do. But the church does not feel obliged to recognize those days. Seventh-day Adventists who celebrate Christmas are expected to avoid the materialism seen in many people’s remembrance of the day.

Seventh-day Adventists find biblical direction only to keep the weekly Sabbath, so that is the only holy day in the church’s calendar. Seventh-day Adventists observe the Sabbath on Saturday, the sixth day of the week, in keeping with the Fourth Commandment, while most Christian denominations have changed to Sunday as recognition of Christ’s resurrection on a Sunday.

Jehovah’s Witnesses made themselves known in America a generation after the institution of the Seventh-day Adventist Church.

During Reconstruction, Charles Taze Russell taught that Christ’s Second Coming began invisibly in 1874. Russell predicted a 40-year “harvest of the righteous that would lead to the beginning of the end of the world as people had known it.

When World War I commenced in Europe during 1914, Russellites as they were called until 1931 when the group took the name Jehovah’s Witnesses found proof of Russell’s teaching. Subsequent wars and a view that the world is disintegrating in evil has solidified the faith’s beliefs.

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Russell corrected what he saw as mistakes in previous Bible translations with development of his New World Translation. He also wrote “Scripture Studies to help believers understand what they read in the Bible. Russell’s translation and “Scripture Studies are Jehovah’s Witnesses’ revered texts today.

A major difference between Jehovah’s Witnesses and most other New Testament denominations is the Witnesses’ rejection of the teaching of the Holy Trinity. That teaching holds that God the Creator, Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit are three persons in one God. Jehovah’s Witnesses agree the three persons exist but insist that only the first is God.

Jehovah’s Witnesses understand Jesus as the “first creation of God and thus truly the Son of God, but not God. The Holy Spirit is a force sent to intervene on God’s behalf, according to the faith’s beliefs.

Because they find no continuing direction in the Bible to observe religious holidays, Jehovah’s Witnesses do not celebrate Christmas, Easter or any other special religious holiday except the Memorial of Christ’s Death. On this day, which comes during the Jewish Passover and Christian Easter season, Jehovah’s Witnesses share bread and wine as directed by the Gospel accounts of the Lord’s Supper.

Andrew Tevington, a graduate of Tulsa’s Phillips Theological Seminary, is an assistant pastor at the United Methodist Church of the Servant in Oklahoma City. His column will appear twice monthly in the Religion section. To contact him, e-mail revtev@prodigy.net.

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