Cayman News: Sunday Trading Restrictions are Arbitrary and Discriminatory and Must be Repealed

Loop News is self-described as the number one news source in the Caribbean and their news market covers Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, Barbados, Haiti, Cayman, and St Lucia. [1] On June 27, 2022, Loop News published an article denouncing the Cayman Islands’ restrictive Sunday closing laws as arbitrary and discriminatory and has called for them to be repealed. Every now and then, you will see a news report that gets it right. Not everyone is just repeating what the majority is saying and doing, simply because it is the most convenient course of action. We praise God for this. Loop News published the following about the situation in the Cayman Islands:

• The Sunday Trading Act seems arbitrary because it randomly chooses Sunday as a “prohibited day” for trading. Even if Sunday is not arbitrary and the justification is that it is a day of worship, then it is discriminatory because not everyone worships on a Sunday. To be fair therefore, Saturday should also be a prohibited day for trading since people also worship on a Saturday. [2]

• In addition, you will be liable on summary conviction to a fine of five hundred dollars for a first conviction and to a fine of one thousand dollars or to imprisonment for six months for a second or subsequent conviction. [2]

• Rather than have Sunday as an arbitrary, random day for businesses to cease trading, the Sunday Trading Act should either be repealed in its entirety or amended substantially to reduce “prohibited days” of trading. [2]

They got this story 100% correct. All Sunday closing laws require everyone, regardless of their religious affiliation, to observe Sunday as the day of rest on the so-called Christian Sabbath. No one is entitled to act in accordance with their conscience. And if lawmakers can control religious beliefs, there is no telling what may come in the future in terms of enforcing church creeds and dogmas.

Many will try to claim that Sunday rest laws are not religious. However, all of the historical evidence refutes this false claim. In 321, Emperor Constantine passed the first Sunday law in the Roman Empire and established Sunday as the official day of rest. Constantine’s decree revealed a religious context:

“On the venerable Day of the Sun let the magistrates and people residing in cities rest, and let all workshops be closed” (Codex Justinianus, III.12.2).

The phrase “venerable day of the Sun” shows that Sunday was already being worshiped and given a special status in Rome. Sunday was named after the pagan Roman god “Sol Invictus,” or the “Unconquered Sun.” Sunday was a day of sun worship in the ancient Roman Empire. The Roman Church incorporated this into Christianity as well. The Catholic Church then began telling everyone to rest on Sunday and keep this day holy. During the Council of Laodicea (363 AD), the Catholic Church condemned anyone who didn’t keep Sunday but instead rested on Saturday. Notice what they declared:

“Christians must not judaize by resting on the Sabbath, but must work on that day, rather honoring the Lord’s Day; and, if they can, resting then as Christians. But if any shall be found to be judaizers, let them be anathema from Christ” (Council of Laodicea, Canon 29). [3]

Not long after, Rome began using the strong arm of the state to persecute all those who disobeyed the church’s decrees. People were forced to give allegiance to a man-made tradition above the word of God. This already happened once during the Dark Ages. The world will once again be compelled to accept the mark of papal Rome during the mark of the beast crisis, which will be triggered by all of these current “Sunday rest” proposals. The point of contention will be between Sunday, the mark of Roman apostasy, and Saturday, the seventh-day Sabbath, the seal of the living God.

“The enforcement of Sundaykeeping on the part of Protestant churches is an enforcement of the worship of the papacy—of the beast. Those who, understanding the claims of the fourth commandment, choose to observe the false instead of the true Sabbath are thereby paying homage to that power by which alone it is commanded. But in the very act of enforcing a religious duty by secular power, the churches would themselves form an image to the beast; hence the enforcement of Sundaykeeping in the United States would be an enforcement of the worship of the beast and his image” (Great Controversy, p. 448).

Sources

[1] https://cayman.loopnews.com/content/about-us-2

[2] https://cayman.loopnews.com/content/sunday-trading-act-random-and-arbitrary-should-be-repealed

[3] https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3806.htm