Seventh-day Adventists affirm that the biblical Sabbath falls on the seventh day, Saturday, and that Christians are called to keep it holy as a day of rest and worship. They hold that the fourth commandment, resting on God's rest at creation, was never abrogated and that the common Christian observance of Sunday arose later by human authority rather than divine command. The Sabbath, kept from Friday sunset to Saturday sunset, is thus for Adventists a standing sign of loyalty to God's commandments and of trust in him as Creator.
Sabbath-keeping entered the Adventist movement through Joseph Bates, who was converted to the practice by Seventh Day Baptists and in turn persuaded Ellen G. White and her husband James White around 1846, in the aftermath of the Great Disappointment of 22 October 1844, when followers of William Miller's prediction of Christ's imminent return found the date pass without event.
Ellen White's subsequent visions, which the church regards as the gift of prophecy rather than a source ranking above scripture, reinforced the Sabbath's importance and helped organise the fledgling movement, formally constituted as the Seventh-day Adventist Church in 1863, around the conviction that the fourth commandment (Exodus 20:8 to 11) remained binding.