Heritage Foundation Intensifies its Calls for Sunday Rest

By Pastor Aubrey Duncan

The books of Daniel and Revelation foretell of the rise of America as a bastion of civil and religious liberties. They portray a territory that would arise as a consequence of the Protestant Reformation of the 15th and 16th centuries. Sadly, those prophetic utterings also predict that that nation would eventually resort back to the despotic bowels of religious intolerance and civil repression. It’s almost 250 years since its official beginnings, and the swing of the pendulum is in full display.

While pundits are pontificating, analysts are analyzing, and the people are wondering, the ancient, all-time best seller called the Holy Bible gives the only answers to what is truly transpiring before our eyes. America, and by extension the world, is making the transition from striving for individual rights and liberties to the implementation of worldwide despotism, tyranny, and oppression such as was never before seen in the annals of human civilization.

John the Revelator, banished to the ragged, desolate Mount of Patmos, penned these words: “And I beheld another beast coming up out of the earth; and he had two horns like a lamb, and he spake as a dragon. And he exerciseth all the power of the first beast before him, and causeth the earth and them which dwell therein to worship the first beast, whose deadly wound was healed. (Revelation 13:11, 12).

The prophet Daniel, in his prophetic vision of the empires that would rule the world and have an impact on God’s plans for the salvation of human souls, says of the beasts that he envisioned, “These great beasts, which are four, are four kings, which shall arise out of the earth” (Daniel 7:17). Obviously, kings have kingdoms. God’s prophet, therefore, was not referring to individuals, but rather to political entities. The four beasts he foretold of are now a matter of documented secular history. They were Babylon, Medio Persia, Greece, and Imperial Rome. Out of Imperial Rome rose the Roman Papacy from which the Protestants fled and established the United States of America.

Therefore, the two beasts referred to by John the Revelator are, first, Roman Catholicism, and second, the United States of America. No one can deny that we are living in the moment of intriguing interplay between these two superpowers, the mightiest military machinery of all recorded history and the greatest ecclesiastical behemoth in the history of the nations. John foretold that their intermingling represents a significant chapter in the Drama of the Ages.

On both the religious and political platforms we can see the coalescing of Catholicism and Americanism. For example, the six Supreme Court justices that voted to make Donald Trump a monarch, if not Roman Catholic by profession, are all connected to the Heritage Foundation, a Roman Catholic institution operating under the guise of a “conservative” political advocacy agency. Its president, Kevin Roberts of Opus Dei, a Catholic organization dedicated to the establishment of Papal power around the world, is the chief architect of Project 2025. This is the blueprint for the destruction of the American experiment. This project is now well on its way to accomplishing its goals and objectives. We are experiencing it live and in living color everyday.

This same Heritage Foundation has intensified its push for Sunday sacredness. This time, it has released a document calling for Sunday sacredness as a requirement for stronger, more productive families. In the document, Saving America by Saving the Family: A Foundation for the Next 250 Years, we discover on pages 38 and 39 of the newly released document, under the section, “Support for a Uniform Day of Rest”:

• “Support for a Uniform Day of Rest—As zoning laws allow a community to determine where one can operate certain businesses, “blue laws” reflect the local judgments as to when one can operate certain businesses. In the case of McGowan v. Maryland (1961), the Supreme Court held by an eight-to-one vote that Sunday-closing laws that include the purpose of providing a uniform day of rest are constitutional and can accommodate the fact that the majority of people who take a day of rest for religious reasons do so on Sundays. Massachusetts, for example, requires that “every employer of labor engaged in carrying on any manufacturing, mechanical, or mercantile establishment or workshop…shall allow every person…at least twenty-four consecutive hours of rest…in every seven consecutive days.” [1]

• “A uniform day of rest that limits commercial activity can provide temporal boundaries that help communities to set aside time for religious observance, family gatherings, outdoor activities, and rest. A stable base of research shows that these practices correlate with better mental health, stronger social bonds, and more stable family structures.” [1]

• “With the advent of on-demand delivery, shopping can be shifted easily and conveniently to other days of the week. By restoring a common rhythm of rest and reflection, community rest laws could help to reverse the trend toward ‘spiritual homelessness’ and foster the social habits necessary for communities to cohere and flourish.” [1]

• “Despite today’s on-demand culture, the U.S. Postal Service does not deliver regular mail on Sundays, most organized youth sports avoid Sunday competitions, and most banks are closed on Sundays. The ever-popular Chick-Fil-A chain closes its restaurants on Sundays for the benefit of its workers and their families. Where new, planned communities or transitioning communities form, they should consider adding rest days as part of their master plans for balanced and thriving community life.” [1]

Papal Authority Over the Nations Reaffirmed

Even as the Heritage Foundation released its document focusing on the family and insisting on Sunday sacredness, Pope Leo was addressing the ambassadors to the Vatican of 184 countries. His speech, drawing heavily upon St. Augustine’s work, ‘City of God,’ reminded his guests, even if ever so subtly, that his church still holds authority over the nations represented.

He remarked, “The ‘City of God’ does not propose a political program. Instead, it offers valuable reflections on fundamental issues concerning social and political life, such as the search for a more just and peaceful coexistence among peoples. Augustine also warns of the grave dangers to political life arising from false representations of history, excessive nationalism, and the distortion of the ideal of the political leader.”

Leo called “City of God,” written in the fifth century, highly relevant to the present time, marked by widespread migration and the “profound readjustment of geopolitical balances and cultural paradigms.”

It has been a long-standing doctrine of the Catholic Church that it rules by two swords, the temporal and spiritual. In the papal bull Unam Sanctam of 1302, Boniface III formalized the most extreme version of this doctrine, asserting that the temporal power must be subordinate to the spiritual power and that the Pope has the right to judge and establish earthly rulers. The ambassadors, undoubtedly, got the message, which will be taken back to their respective leaders.

That message will most likely be highly welcomed in America, as the Heritage Foundation and the broader Religious Right ecosystem advocate for that very state of affairs. For example, Pastor Doug Wilson, who hails from Moscow, Idaho, is a prominent figure in the Christian nationalist movement. He recently opened a branch of his Christ Church in Washington, D.C. Wilson asserts that planting a church in the nation’s capital is part of his plan to make America a Christian nation. His Christian theocratic views are neither modest nor obscure. He emphatically exclaimed in a televised interview with Pamela Brown of CNN on August 7, 2024, “I’d like to see the town be a Christian town. I’d like to see the state be a Christian state. I’d like to see the nation be a Christian nation. I’d like to see the world be a Christian world.”

Wilson asserts that planting a church in Washington, DC, is part of his plan to make America Christian. He continued, “So, every society is theocratic. The only question is, who’s Theo? In a secular democracy, it would be Demos, the people. In a Christian republic, it’d be Christ.” Wilson & Co. firmly believe and are advocating for a system where God is the ultimate source of power, often exercised by clergy or religious officials whose laws derive from sacred texts. He sees himself as one of that clergy chosen to make America Christian.

What Wilson and his right-wing religious zealots do not understand is that they are fulfilling a role long foretold by the ancient prophets Daniel and John. They are bringing to pass the prophecy that America will repudiate every principle of its constitution and republican form of government, particularly its first amendment, which offers the protection of civil and religious liberties. John the Revelator portrays Wilson’s movement as the formation of the image of the first beast, Roman Catholicism. Says John, ”And he had power to give life unto the image of the beast, that the image of the beast should both speak, and cause that as many as would not worship the image of the beast should be killed” (Revelation 13:15).

In the movements such as Doug Wilson’s crusade and the Heritage Foundation’s push to establish religious dogmas and practices central to the laws of the land, perilous times will ensue. Liberty of conscience will be trampled upon, and dissenters of church/state sanctioned decrees will be severely persecuted. At the pinnacle of that list of dictates is Sunday sacredness. It’s a central pillar of both Project 2025 and the latest, Saving America by Saving the Family.

The Church of Rome boasts, “Perhaps the boldest thing, the most revolutionary change the church ever did happened in the first century. The holy day, the Sabbath, was changed to Sunday…not from any directions noted in Scriptures, but from the church’s sense of its own power … People who think that the Scriptures should be the sole authority, should logically become Seventh-day Adventists, and keep Saturday holy” (Saint Catherine Catholic Church Sentinel, May 21, 1995).

One famous Seventh-day Adventist Bible commentator counseled, “But Romanism as a system is no more in harmony with the gospel of Christ now than at any former period in her history. The Protestant churches are in great darkness, or they would discern the signs of the times. The Roman Church is far-reaching in her plans and modes of operation. She is employing every device to extend her influence and increase her power in preparation for a fierce and determined conflict to regain control of the world, to re-establish persecution, and to undo all that Protestantism has done” (Ellen G. White, The Great Controversy, pg. 565).

She also forewarned, “When the leading churches of the United States, uniting upon such points of doctrine as are held by them in common, shall influence the state to enforce their decrees and to sustain their institutions, then Protestant America will have formed an image of the Roman hierarchy, and the infliction of civil penalties upon dissenters will inevitably result” (ibid. 445).

The objective of the Heritage Foundation is not to preserve the American experiment. Neither is it a champion of civil and religious liberty. Its record speaks for itself: the control of a Supreme Court that delivers a monarchy, thus enthroning a submissive king who engineers the dismantling of the precepts of civil and religious liberties. This will ultimately lead to the Papal church’s spiritual sword ruling over the land. In the process they have found willing partners in the Doug Wilsons of America and their Christian Nationalist movement. That’s why their latest proposition matters very much.

Their ultimate imposition of Sunday sacredness challenges the followers of Jesus Christ to make the decision of whom they will serve, their Creator or the man of sin.

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/documents/e647459c-259a-4fea-bc1b-5cb0dfe196b2.pdf

About: Follow Pastor Aubrey Duncan at his Unfolding Prophecy Page.