The Daily News is a secular newspaper published in Newport News, Virginia, which covers the lower and middle peninsulas of Tidewater, Virginia. On July 30, 2023, Pastor Art Wright of Williamsburg Baptist Church published an article in the Daily News titled “Slowing down and finding true Sabbath rest,” in which he advocated for the idea of recapturing the Sabbath experience in a time when most people lead chaotic, busy lives. According to him, the Sabbath offers “life-giving rest,” and we are not “machines” that can function without a break.
These are important points, as we know that rest is essential for maintaining physical, mental, and emotional health. The only problem is that he is using Sunday, an unbiblical day of the week, to implement the biblical principles of rest. This is how the wine of Babylon is spread, as truth is mingled with error. The article said, in part:
• “Barbara Brown Taylor, reminiscing about her own childhood, suggests that the commandment might as well have been, ‘Remember the Sabbath day and keep it boring.’ She says Sunday was a day where you couldn’t wear blue jeans, play cards, ride bikes or go to the movies. All you could do was go to church in the morning, sit at home bored, and then go back to church again later in the day.” [1]
• “Rest is such a necessary and vital part of being human, and yet so many of us find ourselves hustling through life at a chaotic and blistering pace, simply trying to make ends meet and check all the boxes off on our ‘to do’ list before collapsing into bed at the end of the day.” [1]
• “What if we could recapture the idea of Sabbath as a quality of time rather than simply a set of specific and restrictive rules to follow one day each week? What if we could reclaim the original impulse within Sabbath: restorative, life-giving rest?” [1]
• “Life should begin in sacred rest and leisure, and then proceed outward in intentional ways, shaping our engagement with the world with a profound sense of divine purpose.” [1]
• “Remember this: you are not a machine. But we run the risk of feeling like one if we don’t slow down and find ways to experience Sabbath rest in our lives.” [1]
• “My hope and prayer is that each of us will find and experience true Sabbath rest this week. May it be so.” [1]
Once again, we see how the churches are using the mainstream media to advance their teachings about Sunday. Baptist Pastor Art Wright used the secular press to spread the message throughout his community that Sunday is going to save us all. Naturally, he approached this topic from the perspective that rest is essential to preserving our lives. Who would go against that kind of apparent sound logic? God does, and He disputes every man-made reasoning that contradicts His commandments. And He has warned us that one of Satan’s strategies for deceiving the masses is to combine truth (biblical rest) with error (Sunday).
“Here the temperance work, one of the most prominent and important of moral reforms, is often combined with the Sunday movement, and the advocates of the latter represent themselves as laboring to promote the highest interest of society; and those who refuse to unite with them are denounced as the enemies of temperance and reform. But the fact that a movement to establish error is connected with a work which is in itself good, is not an argument in favor of the error. We may disguise poison by mingling it with wholesome food, but we do not change its nature. On the contrary, it is rendered more dangerous, as it is more likely to be taken unawares. It is one of Satan’s devices to combine with falsehood just enough truth to give it plausibility. The leaders of the Sunday movement may advocate reforms which the people need, principles which are in harmony with the Bible, yet while there is with these a requirement which is contrary to God’s law, his servants cannot unite with them. Nothing can justify them in setting aside the commandments of God for the precepts of men” (Great Controversy, p. 587).
Wouldn’t observing the day that God has expressly commanded in His word be infinitely better? Would it make sense to keep the Sabbath of the Lord, our God? Our Creator rested from His labor on the seventh day and blessed and sanctified that day as the true day of rest for all of mankind. God established the seven-day weekly cycle and designated Saturday as a day of rest in His moral law. Why would the Christian world ignore the day that God so plainly commanded while honoring Sunday, a day that was never sanctioned by Him, Christ, the prophets, or the disciples?
Sources
[1] https://www.dailypress.com/2023/07/30/faith-values-slowing-down-and-finding-true-sabbath-rest/
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The pastor of the Seventh-day Adventist Church in that town should write a rebuttal letter to the editor of that newspaper. If for no other reason, to see if they will publish it! Even a church member could write the same type of letter. I hope they do.
I was listening to a christian station on the radio yesterday, and they were talking about memorizing scripture. The lady that was talking was a pastor’s wife. She had some very good ideas. She went on and on about how we should be learning scripture so that we can carry it with us wherever we go. I am amazed at how people can love the Bible so much, and yet, still miss the 4th commandment completely! Boggles the mind.