PREDICTIONS CONCERNING SUNDAY LAWS

In “Testimonies,” volume 5, page 451, printed in 1885, is a statement as to how Sunday laws would be passed in the United States. It reads: “To secure popularity and patronage, legislators will yield to the demand for a Sunday law.”PGGC 88.2

Now, let us see how this has already been done. In 1892 a demand was made of Congress to prohibit the opening on Sunday of the world’s fair, which was to be in Chicago, Illinois, from May to October of that year. Such a law was passed July 19, 1892, under just such a pressure as above predicted. And be it remembered that this is the first time that the United States Congress ever legislated on the Sabbath question.PGGC 88.3

The churches sent in immense lists of names, and petitions, and telegrams, not only petitioning Congress, but kindly (?) informing the congressmen “that we do hereby pledge ourselves and each other, that we will, from this time henceforth, refuse to vote for or support for any office or position of trust, any member of Congress, either senator or representative, who shall vote for any further aid of any kind for the world’s fair except on conditions named in these resolutions.” The conditions were that the fair should be closed on Sunday.PGGC 89.1

As a sample of the talk on the floors of Congress, when the bill was passed, read the following: “I should like to see the disclaimer put in white and black and proposed by the Congress of the United States. Write it. How would you write it? ... Word it, if you dare; advocate it, if you dare; how many who voted for it would ever come back here again?—None, I hope. You endanger yourselves by opposing it.” Thus we see how that testimony, given in 1885, has been and is being fulfilled.PGGC 89.2