Sunday Laws
83
Sabbath commandment the great Lawgiver identifies Himself as the
Creator of the heavens and the earth.—
Selected Messages 3:392
(1891).
“Verily My Sabbaths ye shall keep,” the Lord says, “for it is a sign
between Me and you throughout your generations; that ye may know
that I am the Lord that doth sanctify you” (
Exodus 31:13
). Some will
seek to place obstacles in the way of Sabbath observance, saying, “You
do not know what day is the Sabbath,” but they seem to understand
when Sunday comes, and have manifested great zeal in making laws
compelling its observance.—
The Kress Collection, 148
(1900).
[125]
The Sunday-Law Movement in the 1880s
[
For helpful background information and more extensive E. G.
White quotations, see
Selected Messages 3:380-402
, and
Testimonies
for the Church 5:711-718
.] We have been looking many years for a
Sunday law to be enacted in our land, and now that the movement is
right upon us, we ask, What are our people going to do in the matter?
... We should especially seek God for grace and power to be given His
people now. God lives, and we do not believe that the time has fully
come when He would have our liberties restricted.
The prophet saw “four angels standing on the four corners of the
earth, holding the four winds of the earth, that the wind should not
blow on the earth, nor on the sea, nor on any tree.” Another angel,
ascending from the east, cried to them, saying, “Hurt not the earth,
neither the sea, nor the trees, till we have sealed the servants of our
God in their foreheads.” This points out the work we now have to
do, which is to cry to God for the angels to hold the four winds until
missionaries shall be sent to all parts of the world, and shall have
proclaimed the warning against disobeying the law of Jehovah.—
The
Review and Herald Extra, December 11, 1888
.
Sunday-Law Advocates Do Not Realize What They Are Doing
The Sunday movement is now making its way in darkness. The
leaders are concealing the true issue, and many who unite in the move-
ment do not themselves see whither the undercurrent is tending....
[126]
They are working in blindness. They do not see that if a Protestant
government sacrifices the principles that have made them a free, in-
dependent nation, and through legislation brings into the Constitution