La Nación is a major daily newspaper based in Paraguay’s capital city, Asunción. On July 21, 2024, La Nación published an article by Mariosvaldo Florentino urging people to reclaim Sunday as the Lord’s Day—a day of rest, family time, and community involvement. That is the message that is currently being actively promoted in various locations around the world in an effort to persuade people to take action to revive Sunday rest. This is just another example of how the secular media, which exerts significant influence on society by shaping public opinion and culture, is engaging in a campaign to promote the papal mark of apostasy.
La Nación published the following:
• “Jesus invited the disciples to rest. Rest is part of God’s law. It serves to renew our strength and our energy. Kingdom workers also have the duty to rest.” [1]
• “Authentic Christian spirituality demands that we accept rest as a sacred principle. We must certainly collaborate with all our strength, we must give everything we have, but without ever thinking that we are the only ones responsible for making things work.” [1]
• “We must recover Sunday as the Lord’s day, a day of prayer and rest; a day to be with family, to participate in the community; a day to spend time with life, with friendship, with a walk, with the contemplation of some beauty. Those who never rest, even if they are doing only good things, have not yet understood who the true driving force of Christian spirituality is and may be a victim of themselves. They have not yet handed the helm over to Jesus. The Lord sends us on a mission, but He warns us that sacred rest is also part of it.” [1]
When the mainstream media begins to promote Sunday as the Lord’s Day, it sets a dangerous precedent. The media, acting as a conduit for church interests, will lead to the erosion of a free press in public life. This advocacy can sway public opinion and policy in favor of religious groups, undermining the separation of church and state. Such a development is problematic in pluralistic societies where multiple religions and belief systems coexist.
Sunday laws are coming back, and these regulations will aim to restrict our conduct on Sunday. This is intended to persuade people to attend church on Sundays because, according to proponents, they are necessary to uphold morals and order in society. Sunday rest by law conflicts with God’s moral law, which requires us to rest on His seventh-day Sabbath, or Saturday. Additionally, God’s law designates Sunday as a working day:
“False religion will be exalted. The first day of the week, a common working day, possessing no sanctity whatever, will be set up as was the image at Babylon. All nations and tongues and peoples will be commanded to worship this spurious Sabbath [Sunday]. This is Satan’s plan to make of no account the day instituted by God, and given to the world as a memorial of creation.” (Bible Commentary, Vol. 7 p. 976).
“God’s memorial, the seventh-day Sabbath, the sign of His work in creating the world, has been displaced by the man of sin. God’s people have a special work to do in repairing the breach that has been made in His law; and the nearer we approach the end, the more urgent this work becomes. All who love God will show that they bear His sign by keeping His commandments” (Testimonies, vol. 6, p. 265).
“The Sunday movement is now making its way in darkness. The leaders are concealing the true issue, and many who unite in the movement do not themselves see whither the undercurrent is tending. Its professions are mild and apparently Christian, but when it shall speak it will reveal the spirit of the dragon. It is our duty to do all in our power to avert the threatened danger. We should endeavor to disarm prejudice by placing ourselves in a proper light before the people. We should bring before them the real question at issue, thus interposing the most effectual protest against measures to restrict liberty of conscience” (Testimonies, vol. 5, p. 452).
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Nowhere in the article does the author say they are calling for legislation of Sunday as a mandatory day of rest nor that society as a whole should stand up and do so. This is a minister who is encouraging Christians to honor “the Lord’s Day” and to stop being passive about their obligations as Christians. I hear similar statements all the time from SDA pastors about the Sabbath. This is hardly a “call from a major newspaper” to insist upon laws to keep Sunday as a holy day.