On February 7, 2026, the day before Super Bowl LV, the Marietta Times published an article claiming that Sunday sports are a form of Baal worship that prevents people from attending church. The article also spoke favorably of the era when Blue Laws restricted commerce on Sundays in order to make room for worship and argued that their absence has contributed to declining church attendance. In doing so, the Marietta Times is promoting the same growing narrative that argues that church attendance is declining due to the abundance of activities available on Sundays.
The article expressed the following:
• “Today, a multitude of activities compete with church attendance. Just 50 or 60 years ago, most businesses closed on Sunday because of ‘Blue Laws,’ sometimes called ‘Sunday closing laws,’ that regulated activities in deference to religious traditions that designated Sunday as a day of worship. But for many stores and restaurants today, Sunday will be the busiest day of the week. Youth activities are now commonly scheduled for Sundays, prompting author Jim Elliff to pen an article entitled, ‘When Ball becomes Baal,’ a not-so-subtle reference to the idolatry of ancient Israel.” [1]
• “Each of us needs to be in the worship assembly, and each of us needs the other to be there, too. On our own, the Devil breaks us too easily. He’s a roaring lion looking for folks to devour.” [1]
The message is unmistakable: communities will function better when Sunday is protected by law. The solution implied by the modern media is to restore society by limiting sports, shopping, and other activities that have made Sunday the busiest day of the week. By invoking phrases such as “When Ball Becomes Baal,” the so-called desecration of Sunday is elevated to the level of idolatry. Once Sunday commerce is labeled as idolatry, restrictions on that day become justified and necessary. This reflects the mindset of a growing segment of Christian nationalists and others who seek to re-establish Sunday as a uniform day of rest.
Because Sunday activity is increasingly portrayed as a cause of family breakdown and moral decline, churches are turning to government to enforce laws that would close businesses, restrict commerce, and limit other activities on that day in order to encourage church attendance. Prophecy warns that enforced worship does not begin with persecution but with moral appeals and social pressure—before ultimately ending in coercion. Whenever civil power is employed to accomplish what the church cannot achieve through persuasion alone, the law becomes the mechanism by which Sunday observance is imposed.
“Yet this very class put forth the claim that the fast-spreading corruption is largely attributable to the desecration of the so-called ‘Christian Sabbath,’ and that the enforcement of Sunday observance would greatly improve the morals of society. This claim is especially urged in America, where the doctrine of the true Sabbath has been most widely preached” (Great Controversy, p. 587).
Source
[1] https://www.mariettatimes.com/life/features/2026/02/each-of-us-needs-to-be-in-the-worship-assembly/
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Just like Jesus taught, if the world will not do what the church thinks it should, then make laws to force the world to obey the church. That is why He gave Peter the power that He did, so that the church could force the world to worship God on Sundays and enforce other religious dogma upon the unconvinced and or unwilling.
Those silly legalistic seventh day Sabbath keepers who keep telling people they should keep God’s Sabbath by faith in His word, just don’t understand the nature of the real gospel, which is to be forced upon the world of course. Cause everyone knows that forcing people to keep a holy day against their will is not legalism, but asking them to do so by faith in God’s word is.
It is no surprise that such mentality should develop as professed truth, where another present professed truth is that a man is a woman if he says so, and a woman is a man if she says so. Go figure.
2Th 2:1 Now we beseech you, brethren, by the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, and by our gathering together unto him, 2 That ye be not soon shaken in mind, or be troubled, neither by spirit, nor by word, nor by letter as from us, as that the day of Christ is at hand. 3 Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition; 4 Who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped; so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God, shewing himself that he is God. 5 Remember ye not, that, when I was yet with you, I told you these things? 6 And now ye know what withholdeth that he might be revealed in his time. 7 For the mystery of iniquity doth already work: only he who now letteth will let, until he be taken out of the way. 8 And then shall that Wicked be revealed, whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of his mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of his coming: 9 Even him, whose coming is after the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders, 10 And with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish; BECAUSE THEY RECEIVED NOT THE LOVE OF THE TRUTH, THAT THEY MIGHT BE SAVED. 11 AND FOR THIS CAUSE GOD SHALL SEND THEM STRONG DELUSION, THAT THEY SHOULD BELIEVE A LIE: 12 That they all might all be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness.