The National
Sunday Law - Revisited
What will cause seven
billion people
to worship the beast?
Revelation 13:8
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Even though the
Supreme Court does not acknowledge
the sacredness of Sunday, it
justifies Sunday blue lawsfor the
same reason that legislators
justified Sunday blue laws in the
South after the Civil War. The
justification was that everyone
benefits from a common day of rest. I
have wondered if the Supreme Court
would have reached the same
conclusion if the state of Maryland
had selected Tuesday as a common day
of rest.
Why
Seventh-day Adventists Anticipate a
National Sunday Law
For the past 145
years, Seventh-day Adventists (SDAs)
in the United States have anticipated
the enactment of a national Sunday
law, and to a great extent, they
believe this event will initiate a
worldwide “time of
trouble.” They also believe
“the time of trouble” will
end with the outpouring of the seven
last plagues and the appearing of
Jesus. To understand the origin of
this anticipation and their keen
interest in a national Sunday law, a
short review on the prophetic beliefs
of SDAs is necessary.
Many of the pioneers
who would later form the SDA Church
grew up within the Puritan influence
that permeated New England
Protestantism during the nineteenth
century. Most Protestants living in
the Unites States were gratified by
the news that the pope had been
imprisoned and no longer had papal
authority over Europe (1798). In
1831, William Miller, a licensed
Baptist evangelist from New York,
concluded that the Lord would return
“around 1843.” (Later, he
corrected the date to 1844.) Based on
his preaching, a movement (largely
centered in New England) attracted
between 50,000 and 100,000 of his
followers. After the bitter failure
of the Millerite Movement in 1844,
prophetic interest within
Protestantism generally waned.
However, a tenacious group of
Millerites went back to the Bible to
see why Jesus had not appeared in
1844. After twenty years of regional
conferences and various camp meetings
to determine Bible truth, a group of
people organized a new church body in
Michigan and named it the Seventh-day
Adventist Church. The year was 1863
and the War Between the States was
raging.
SDAs believe they are
the heirs of the Protestant
Reformation that began centuries
earlier in Europe. Like the Puritans
before them, they believe it is
divinely appointed duty to point out
the heresies that originated within
Catholicism by teaching Bible truth.
To this end, SDAs believe that a time
is coming when everyone in the United
States (and ultimately the whole
world) will be forced to recognize
Sunday as a holy Day. Once a national
Sunday law is enacted in the United
States, SDAs believe that all who
obey the forth commandment will be
persecuted for refusing to recognize
the sacredness of the first day of
the week. In some cases, they believe
there will be torture and even death.1
SDAs arrive at this conclusion
in four steps:
Step
1 – The Catholic Church Is the
Beast in Revelation 13:1
SDAs
believe the Roman Catholic Church is
the beast mentioned in Revelation 13.2
Since the Bible states this
beast will make war on God’s
saints and impose false worship on
the world (Revelation 13:5-8), SDAs
conclude the Roman Catholic Church
(the beast) will someday wage war
against those who observe God’s
seventh day Sabbath.3
Step
2 – The Mark of the Beast Is
Sunday Observance
SDAs
teach that the Roman Catholic Church
altered the Ten Commandments by
eliminating the second commandment.
Moreover, the Catholic Church has
tried to change the holiness of
God’s seventh day Sabbath from
Saturday to Sunday.4 SDAs
interpret these actions as blasphemy
and this blasphemy is regarded as the
mark (as a trademark) of the Catholic
Church’s presumed authority.1
Therefore, SDAs conclude
that the mark of the beast is Sunday
observance and this mark of papal
authority will be imposed on everyone
when a Sunday law is enacted. This
anticipated law, they teach, will
require everyone to respect Sunday as
a holy day.2
Step
3 – The Second Beast in
Revelation 13 Is the United States
SDAs
teach that the second beast in
Revelation 13 is the United States.3
They believe the Roman Catholic
Church and the United States
government will “Join
hands” in the future to enact a
national Sunday law.4
United, these two superpowers will
impose a universal
Sunday law on every nation. The
church’s prophet, Ellen White
(1827-1915), wrote: “As America,
the land of religious liberty, shall
unite with the papacy in forcing the
conscience and compelling men to
honor the [Catholic Church’s]
false Sabbath, the people of every
country on the globe will be led to
follow her example.”5 She
also wrote: “The decree
enforcing the worship of this day
[Sunday] is to go forth to all the
world… Trail and persecution
will come to all who, in obedience to
the fourth commandment, refuse to
worship this false Sabbath.”6
Step
4 – A National Sunday Law in the
United States Signals the End of the
World
SDAs
teach that the enactment of a
national Sunday law in the United
States will usher in a worldwide
“time of trouble.” They
believe that God will test the world
through persecution to see who will
honor Rome’s false Sabbath and
receive the mark of the beast. They
believe God’s saints must resist
a Sunday law by standing firm in
their faith and obeying the fourth
commandment which declares the
seventh day of the week holy.1
What
Will Trigger a National Sunday Law?
Here
is the mystery. What will cause the
United States Congress to enact a
national Sunday law? What will cause
Protestants and Catholics to
“join hands” and eliminate
religious freedoms in the United
States? Will the 1961 Supreme Court
decision favoring Maryland’s blue
laws provide a loophole around the
First Amendment that eliminates
religious freedom? Will the Unites
states and the Catholic Church
someday impose a universal
Sunday law on all 194 nations of
the world containing seven billion
people?
The
recent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq
prove that the outcome of war is hard
to predict. The United States has
sacrificed thousands of lives in
Iraq. It has spent trillions of
dollars and invested six long years
setting up a fledgling democracy in a
tiny country of only twenty-five
million people. (For comparison, the
state of California has a population
of thirty-six million.) If
establishing freedom (a democracy) in
tiny Iraq has been deadly, expensive,
and lengthy, how will the United
States and the Catholic Church impose
the holiness of Sunday on billions of
devout Moslems, Hindus, Jews, Pagans,
and Communists? This is a valid
question and it deserves a biblically
reasoned answer. Many SDAs are also
asking this question because today,
93% of SDA Church members live
outside the United States.2
What
Is the Next Prophetic Event?
Revelation
13:1-8 clearly indicates that worship
will someday become a hotly debated
topic all over the world, but what
will trigger this conflict? What
event should Christians anticipate?
What will cause the United States
to negate the First Amendment and
enact a national Sunday law? What
will trigger the enactment of a
national Sunday law in communist
countries like China, North Korea,
and Russia? What will cancel Sharia
law and trigger the enactment of
Sunday laws in large Islamic
populations found in Indonesia,
Egypt, Iran, and Saudia Arabia? What
will trigger a national Sunday law in
the Jewish state of Israel where
conservatives insist on observing the
seventh day of the week? What will
cause seven hundred million Hindus in
India to worship the God of
Christians on Sunday? Today, the
total of all Christian religions of
the world is a mere 25% of the
world’s seven billion people.
So, how is a universal Sunday law
possible?
Ironically,
SDAs claim to have a prophetic end
time message for the whole world, but
they have little or nothing to say to
the world about coming events because
(a) their eschatology is essentially
limited to events occurring within
the United states, and (b) they
insist that most of Revelation has
already been fulfilled. Fortunately,
they believe that Revelation 13:8 is
future, “All inhabitants of the
earth will worship the
beast…” but they have no
idea how this will happen? What will
cause the entire world to worship the
beast?
According
to the book of Revelation, a national
Sunday law in the United States is
not the next prophetic event, and
a national Sunday law in the United
States is not the signal event
that marks the commencement of the
Great Tribulation for the whole
world! SDAs are watching and waiting
for a national Sunday law to usher in
the final days of Earth’s
history, and unfortunately, they are
sitting at the wrong bus stop. Like
the rest of the world (and the ten
virgins), the SDA Church will be
caught by surprise. It is time to
wake up and become serious students
of God’s Word.
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