Mississippi Newspaper: “Help us Love and Honor You Especially on Your Holy day, Sunday”

The Picayune Item is a daily newspaper published in Picayune, Mississippi, that serves Pearl River and Hancock Counties. The Picayune Item published an article titled “Let Us Keep the Sabbath Day Holy” on Friday, October 7, 2022. The article cited a number of Bible verses that refer to the Seventh-day Sabbath but were applied to Sunday. For instance, the article stated:

“For many people, Sunday is just a day off work and a time to do whatever they wish to do at the time.  Many people miss so many wonderful blessings by not attending worship services.  Genesis 2:3 tells us, ‘And God blessed the seventh day and made it holy’.” [1]

According to the article, worshiping God on Sunday not only honors God but also strengthens our relationships with our family and friends:

“Worshiping God not only helps us love and honor God, but it helps us love others as well.  When we worship God, we find true joy, and we can share this joy with our families and our friends.” [1]

The article ended with a prayer for the community and a plea to God to help us keep Sunday holy.

“Prayer:  Thank you, Lord, for giving us joy the world cannot give.  Help us love and honor You especially on your Holy day, Sunday.” [1]

Here we see another example of the media attempting to persuade the public that Sunday is a divine institution by reinterpreting scriptures that refer to the seventh-day Sabbath, Saturday, and applying them to Sunday. It’s amazing how people will take scriptures that command us to keep the seventh day holy and use them to justify keeping the first day of the week holy. That is a misuse and distortion of God’s word. How can you take a major biblical event, which states that God rested and blessed the seventh day of Creation (Genesis 2:1-3), and apply that to Sunday? You’d have to be drunk to misinterpret the Bible in that way.

The truth is that they are drunk on the wine of Babylon. Of course, the purpose of this article was to establish Sunday as a divine institution. Sabbath rest is a divine institution, but it’s difficult to see how anyone can demonstrate Sunday observance by quoting Bible passages that only apply to the seventh day. The seventh day of the week, Saturday, is inextricably linked to God’s moral law. The Ten Commandments apply to everyone. And when men feel compelled to defend Sunday by referring to it as the day of rest described in the Fourth Commandment (Exodus 20:8-11), they are acting directly contrary to the clearest words of Scripture. They do so without any guidance or authority from God’s word.

An equally dangerous deception is the notion that Sunday rest is also a civil duty that must be observed in order to preserve the economy, the environment, and the family. They are incorrect on both sides of the debate. There is no moral or biblical justification for Sunday rest. And there is no civil or legal obligation to rest on Sunday either. It is a deception to advocate for Sunday rest as a legal requirement and call it both religious and civil.

Any proponent of Sunday laws who claims that they only require observance of that day as a civil institution is deceiving. If they only see the observance of the day as a civil institution, why do they always attribute it to God, support it with Scripture, and advocate its observance as a duty to God? From beginning to end, their arguments demonstrate that the true goal of the Sunday-law movement is to control civil power for religious purposes. They always show that Sunday has a religious dimension whenever they argue that it is a civil obligation. And the call for civil enforcement of the Sunday-Sabbath is really a call for the enforcement of man-made religious observances chosen by the church.

That is why Pope Francis, in his climate encyclical, attempts to connect Sunday rest to the Eucharist and the Holy Scriptures:

“On Sunday, our participation in the Eucharist has special importance. Sunday, like the Jewish Sabbath, is meant to be a day which heals our relationships with God, with ourselves, with others and with the world. Sunday is the day of the Resurrection, the ‘first day’ of the new creation, whose first fruits are the Lord’s risen humanity, the pledge of the final transfiguration of all created reality. It also proclaims ‘man’s eternal rest in God’ …  The law of weekly rest forbade work on the seventh day, ‘so that your ox and your donkey may have rest, and the son of your maidservant, and the stranger, may be refreshed’ (Ex 23:12). Rest opens our eyes to the larger picture and gives us renewed sensitivity to the rights of others. And so the day of rest, centred on the Eucharist, sheds it light on the whole week, and motivates us to greater concern for nature and the poor.” (Laudato Si’ Section #237).

So whatever arguments are used: (1) Sunday is the day of rest for the working class and is necessary for their health and prosperity; (2) Sunday is the day of rest for the environment and is necessary to reduce greenhouse gases; (3) Sunday is a religious day of worship and is necessary to honor God – they are all following in the footsteps of Constantine, who decreed the first Sunday law through political scheming. The gospel of Christ does not need political preachers and corrupt politicians to defend the faith. However, because Sunday rest by law has nothing to do with the faith of Jesus and everything to do with the mark of the beast, these political machinations will only worsen in the coming days.

“The enemies of God’s law have leagued together to crush out independent judgment in matters of religious faith, and to control the consciences of men. They are determined to put an end to the long-continued controversy concerning the Sabbath, to prohibit all further spread of the truth upon this point, and to secure the exaltation of Sunday, in the very face of the injunction of the fourth commandment. The people of God will recognize human government as an ordinance of divine appointment, and will by precept and example teach obedience to it as a sacred duty so long as its authority is exercised within its legitimate sphere. But when its claims conflict with the claims of God, we must choose to obey God rather than men. The word of God must be recognized and obeyed as an authority above that of all human legislation. ‘Thus saith the Lord,’ is not to be set aside for a Thus saith the Church or the State. The crown of Christ is to be uplifted above all the diadems of earthly potentates.” (Manuscript 100, 1893).

To contact the Picayune Item, Dan Phelan, the publisher and president, can be reached at the following email address: dan.phelan@picayuneitem.com

Sources

[1] https://www.picayuneitem.com/2022/10/let-us-keep-the-sabbath-day-holy/