Sunday’s Appeal to the Government
Sunday's Appeal to the Government.—It is said that the clergymen of Muskogee, I. T., have appealed to the United States Government to have Sunday baseball and other amusements on that day prohibited. The appeal went even to Washington, because the United States district attorney had not taken action in the matter. But the local official explained that "the question of Sunday amusements had been brought to the attention of the grand jury, but was not given attention for want of time." So the government noted in prophecy as having "horns like a lamb, and he spake as a dragon" (Rev. 13:11), is really taking cognizance of the "mark" of the beast (or power) whose image it is to set up, and whose worship it is to enforce. Surely the word of the Lord can not fail. And the so-called ministers of the Gospel are urging on the completion of the terrible persecutions that must inevitably accompany the enforcement of religion by the power of the government. The distinguishing feature of the "first beast" (verse 12), described in the beginning of Revelation 13, is church and state union, and compulsory Sunday observance was the beginning of the persecutions that arose under the first union of the Christian Church with the state. The Dark Ages followed as a logical sequence, and the same cause will produce a like effect again.