When It Will Succeed by Editor

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Mountain View, California · Mar 15, 1905

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 31, No. 11.

When It Will Succeed

By Editor

When It Will Succeed.—Enforced Sunday observance has been sought in this country through various pretexts and schemes: (1) As a religious measure, (2) through an educational scheme; (3) as a sanitary measure; (4) as a temperance proposition; (5) as an auxiliary to the interests of the laboring class in the conflict with capital; (6) as a means of squelching the truth concerning the true Sabbath of the Lord. The latter has been an underlying purpose on the part of the adversary all through. While none of these pretexts or purposes have fully succeeded, they have all, in connection with politics, had a certain degree of effect.

But when will success crown the effort? Answer—When it comes to the front as a full-fledged political scheme, backed by a united Romanism and apostate Protestantism; and the time is not far ahead. How was the Sunday institution first launched into the realm of law?—As a political measure, pure and simple. How did it get into the Christian Church? As a political scheme to curry favor with the state. How did it become an element of persecution?—First, as a political means of continuing said favor of the state, and, second, as a political measure by which the state catered to the victorious political church.

So, as of yore, Sunday's full victory must come as a political institution, with a religious pretense behind it. And so says the prophecy: “And I beheld another beast coming up out of the earth [the United States]; and he had two horns like a lamb [at first], and he [afterward] spake as a dragon. And he exerciseth all the power of the first beast [Rome] before him [or in his presence], and causeth the earth and them which dwell therein to worship the first beast, whose deadly wound was healed.” Rev. 13:11, 12. Study the whole chapter, and see “Marvel of Nations,” published at this office. 324 pp.; cloth, $1.25; cloth gilt, $1.50.