Sunday Law Activities by Editor

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Feb 23, 1915

Sunday Law Activities

By Editor

We can count on it, in these times, that whenever a legislature meets—either state or national—then invariably a Sunday law of some kind or other will be introduced. There is a growing sentiment that among the things needed to cure the social ills of this time is a "one-day-in-seven rest law." Oregon and California—to mention only a few of the states—have laws of this kind before their legislatures at the present time. The good sense of the legislators in both of these states, however, seems to have placed these bills to one side—at least for the present.

It is a rule which has but very few exceptions, that the church people are the ones responsible for the introduction of this class of legislation. And these church people claim to have the Bible as the foundation of their faith and practice. But why do they not study the Bible enough to learn that it nowhere teaches that Sunday is a sacred day? Why do they not learn, from the divine Book, that the seventh day, commonly called Saturday, is the only weekly Sabbath recognized by Jehovah and commanded to be observed?

And if our good friends who are so vigorously pushing the enactment of Sunday laws would call to mind some of the facts of history, they would remember that the universal Sunday law of Constantine was the preface to the Dark Ages. Constantine has been denominated the "first Christian emperor."

Previous to his time, it had been the rule that Christians were persecuted by the pagan world when persecuted at all, the principal exception being the persecutions that were inflicted by the Jewish church in places where it had sufficient power to do so. But after Constantine began to favor Christianity and to enact laws designed to support it, the world beholds the spectacle of professing Christians persecuting other professing Christians to the death.

The individual who has read the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth chapters of Revelation, as well as other portions of that book, must have been impressed with the fact that God predicts a great religious controversy right at the very close of time. He issues a thrilling warning against "the beast" and his "image" and his "worship"; and on the other hand, the beast and his image, according to this prophecy, demand worship, and threaten with the death penalty those who will not submit. This condition must be brought about through the enactment of religious laws. Persecution does not stand upon any other foundation than religious laws and the decrees of despotic monarchs.

History has ever showed a tendency to repeat itself; and since God has taken pains to predict so carefully, through His word, this religious despotism, it is well for those who believe the sacred Book to think carefully before they favor legislation that introduced the persecution of the Dark Ages.