Is A Sunday Law Coming?
I have been following FAF from a distance but try to keep up-to-date with all the news and events. I continue to pray for all of you and love the podcast each week.
I was hoping you could help me with finding a good discussion or article on the Adventist topic of Sunday law. I have been gently helping a cousin come out of Adventism as the Holy Spirit continues to open his eyes to all the falsehoods. He recently sent me the article from Doug Bachelor with the title: “Ukraine Crisis Drives New Appeals For Sunday Law”. You may have already seen it on Facebook.
My cousin sent me this text, “Wish I understood the rebuttal to that better.”
Any assistance would be greatly appreciated, and thanks again for your continued dedication to FAF. You continue to bless so many folks around the world, including me!
—VIA EMAIL
Response: First, thank you for your continuing prayers.
As usual, Adventists use every world crisis they can to create an argument that Sunday laws are coming. This article, which was posted on Doug Batchelor’s Facebook page on March 20, 2022, has been stirring Adventists to fear a Sunday law:
UKRAINE CRISIS DRIVES NEW APPEALS FOR SUNDAY LAWS
With fuel costs soaring since Russia invaded Ukraine, the International Energy Agency is urging, among other things, a Sunday driving reduction laws. Not surprising….Little by little:
The Switzerland Times—March 18, 2022
The International Energy Agency has set out a 10-point plan to cut global demand for oil by 2.7 million barrels per day.
Governments have been urged to consider introducing “car free Sundays” in big cities and mandating home working at least three days a week to stop the looming crunch in oil supply making the cost of living crisis even worse.
The International Energy Agency, the Paris-based group that advises governments around the world on energy policy, today set out a ten point plan to “reduce the pain caused by high oil prices” by cutting demand for fuel.
Suggestions include reducing the speed limit on motorways by 10km per hour, banning cars from large cities on Sundays, increasing home working and ride sharing, and cutting back on business travel. The IEA said the policies could help cut demand for oil by 2.7 million barrels per day within the next four months.
The suggestions, which will remind some of the three day week adopted by Britain in the 1970s, come against a backdrop of looming bans on Russian oil imports in the US, UK and EU. The IEA said earlier this week that 3 million barrels a day could be lost from the global market come April in what is likely to be the ”biggest supply crisis in decades”.
It said today: “Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has thrown global commodity markets into turmoil.”
The imposition of the idea that this “car-free Sunday” is a first step in a coming mandate to keep Sunday holy is imposing an Adventist idea onto a proposal to implement an environmental control. Adventists have been using this technique for decades. There is no hint in this proposal that the issue revolves around Sunday as a holy day. While it is suggesting that Sunday is a day on which many people might be persuaded not to drive because it is not a work day, it is not suggesting that a car-free Sunday will be a tool to persuade people to worship on Sunday or to honor it as a holy day.
On the contrary, a car-free Sunday would prohibit thousands of people from being able to get to church! Yet because Sunday has been named as a possible “car-free day”, Adventists impose their unique eschatology onto the story and create fear among their members.
If we look objectively as this story, however, the ideas presented suggest the opposite of the Adventist scenario. By making it impossible for most Christians to get to church on Sunday, the effects of such a law would be to suppress the body of Christ from meeting together in the ways they normally meet. It would impose new hardships on Christians who would have to find new ways to gather together to encourage and support one another. It would have the OPPOSITE effect of an Adventist-defined “Sunday law”; it would eliminate Sunday as a day of corporate, public worship!
A mandate such as the one proposed in this article would enforce stay-at-home orders on more days than Sundays. Rather than being the much-feared Sunday-law, such a mandate would result in widespread control over large numbers of people—much larger numbers than the Adventist membership.
Also, nowhere in the Bible is a day of worship even hinted at being the mark of those who are saved or those who are lost. On the contrary, the seal of those who are saved is the Holy Spirit (Eph. 1:12, 13; 4:30). The Sabbath is NEVER defined as the seal of God; Only EGW says that it is. Sunday is NEVER described as a false day of worship or as the mark of the beast. For Adventists to read seventh-day worship and first-day worship into the supposed Three Angels’ Messages of Revelation 14:6–11 is to superimpose EGW onto the Bible. If read in context, using normal rules of grammar and vocabulary, such an idea cannot be found in this passage!
People are saved or lost on the basis of one thing only: belief in the Lord Jesus Christ, or unbelief. For example, Jesus said in John 3:18: “He who believes in Him is not judged; he who does not believe has been judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.”
And again, John 3:36 says, “He who believes in the Son has eternal life; but he who does not obey the Son will not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him.”
Adventists may argue that obeying Jesus means keeping the law, but that is never what Jesus said. In fact, in John 6:29 Jesus specifically stated the work of God a person is to do: “This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He has sent.”
Your cousin’s question about how to answer this story as a harbinger of a Sunday-law scenario is seeing this report through an Adventist lens. No one will be saved or lost on the basis of keeping a day or not keeping a day. In fact, a holy day is not part of a saved person’s “salvation package”. Jesus alone is the issue. Adventists needs to deal with the Lord Jesus and abandon the scenarios of a last-day prophet who added to Scripture and required works of the law in order to be saved.
Even IF there were to be a Sunday-law—and it is unlikely that such a thing will occur—it will not mean keeping Sabbath is the mark of the saved. It will only mean that another level of control is being exerted on large swaths of the world’s population. The REAL issue is this: have you believed in Jesus and trusted Him alone? The fear of a Sunday-law is a distraction that keeps people from seeing the real issue: the finished work of the Lord Jesus and the need to believe in Him alone.
Does Sin Threaten Our Salvation?
Sin in a Christian’s life can be a dilemma:
Q: Is sinning OK?
A: Well, no, sin is bad and breaks our fellowship with God and others.
Q: Does the Holy Spirit enable us to not give in to temptation?
A: Yes, so in some ways is seems possible to not sin.
Q: Do Christians sin?
A: Yes, but we shouldn’t, and the Holy Spirit enables us to not sin.
Q: So why do we keep on sinning?
A: We know that we can’t be perfect this side of heaven, but it still kind-of seems like it’s possible (in some ways) not to sin. Experience tells me otherwise, but my ideal obedience says that it “should” be possible, so when I do sin, it’s because I didn’t trust the Lord and love Him enough.
Sometimes I get stuck between Romans 7 and 8.
Q: Am I going to sin this side of heaven?
A: Yes.
Q: So is it OK for me to sin?
A: No.
So how do we ever get to a place where we are OK with our walk with Jesus? I knowing He enables me not to sin, but He somehow “gives allowance” when I do sin, yet He does not give me license to sin and therefore take advantage of grace and “trample the Son of God”?
—VIA EMAIL
Response: Romans 7 addresses the law of sin that still resides in the “members” of the body after being born again. 1 Corinthians 5 has Paul addressing a brother who had indulged in apparently a long-term sin of sleeping with his father’s wife. Paul said he and the church would join in spirit and turn the man over to Satan—apparently meaning putting him out of the fellowship of the body of Christ—“so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord”.
It is not sinful acts which causes us to be lost; it is the lack of spiritual LIFE. Our sins flow from our dead-in-sin spirits which define our natural state. Adventists have no idea of the new birth; they do not believe in a human immaterial spirit separate from the body which is by nature dead in sin. Thus they can only conceive of salvation being on the basis of obedience.
In reality, when we believe, we want to serve the Lord, and even though we are capable of sinning still, the Holy Spirit does not leave us in our sin but convicts us or, as in the case of 1 Corinthians 5, sends the brothers to deal with us in order to bring us to repentance. If a person does NOT come to repentance, it is most likely he was never born again but was one of the bad soils—weedy or rocky—which never matured the gospel plant and bore fruit.
I have come to think of it this way. I don’t have to ponder my sin in the way I did before being born again. I am more aware of my temptations now than I used to be; I’m more aware of my inner duplicity and self-protection and indulgence. But now, instead of fighting with sin, when I am tempted I actually do have the opportunity to take a moment and ask the Lord to show me how to take the next step. Instead of acting from my inner demons or wounds or fears, my new birth gives me the ability to pause and ask Him to lead me in that moment.
I don’t always do this well, but the Lord convicts me and shows me how I need to trust Him. The focus for me now is trusting Jesus and asking Him to keep me faithful instead of focussing on my sin and fighting with it. Since we have the Holy Spirit dwelling in us, His power is with us and gently reminds us to look to Him before reacting or acting. And if we fail, we have an advocate in heaven: the Lord Jesus who has already forgive our sins, whose blood has already purchased us as believers from death.
He disciplines us now, but that discipline is about spiritual growth, not about salvation. If we are truly born again, He is faithful to complete what He began in us. Even our sanctification is His work. We learn to trust Him and to keep our eyes on Him.
Documentation, please?
Lately I have been listening to some of the past podcasts. I went through the 28 Fundamental Beliefs for the second time and learned even more the second time around.
I just finished one where you interviewed Carolyn Ratzlaff and I have a question. She mentioned that during their journey out, they felt profound betrayal when they realized that the Adventist leadership itself does not believe in the investigative judgment. My question is, how did they learn that? Is there something one, or more, of them wrote that says that? Or did Dale learn that in conversation with them? I would be quite interested to know just how that hypocrisy came out.
Thanks again for your work in helping us deprogram.
—VIA EMAIL
Response: Dale tells the whole story with names in his book Truth Led Me Out. It is all online on our ProclamationMagazine.com site, and you can also buy the hard copy here. He is detailed and names names. It’s an amazing story!
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