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The National Sunday Bill
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August 15 - The National Sunday Bill

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[The lamblike beast] exercises all the authority of the first beast in its presence, and makes the earth and its inhabitants worship the first beast, whose mortal wound was healed. Rev. 13:12, RSV.

The high-water mark in the Sunday issue came on May 21, 1888, when New Hampshire's senator H. L. Blair introduced a bill into the United States Senate for the promotion of the observance of "the Lord's day" "as a day of religious worship."

Blair's national Sunday bill was the first such legislation to go before Congress since the establishment of the Adventist movement in the 1840s. Four days later he submitted a proposed amendment to the United States Constitution that would Christianize the nation's public school system.

Seventh-day Adventists did not miss the prophetic significance of the Blair bills. The eschatological excitement of the Sunday law movement served as one factor contributing to heightened tensions in the period leading up to the 1888 General Conference session.

That eschatological crisis created an emotional atmosphere directly related to two other issues that would surface at the Minneapolis meetings. The first concerned the interpretation of prophecy-especially in the book of Daniel. The second involved the kind of righteousness needed for salvation. That second issue would bring the function of God's law in the plan of salvation into focus as Adventists struggled over its role in the book of Galatians.

It is impossible to understand the high emotional pitch of the participants at the 1888 meetings without grasping the fact that Adventists felt, because of the Sunday crisis, that they already faced the end of time.

S. N. Haskell wrote shortly before the beginning of the session that their liberty as Sabbath observers would quickly be taken away, and that they might soon be bearing their testimony in courts and prisons.

With that in mind, it is not difficult to see why some of the Adventists leaders reacted violently and emotionally when Jones and Waggoner began to question the validity of aspects of the denomination's interpretation of prophecy and its theology of the law. Such questions, they reasoned, threatened the very core of Adventist identity in a time of utmost crisis.

Reacting and overreacting to issues are often close neighbors.

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May the Lord help us to not only know the difference but to practice the healthier way in both our life in the church and in our private lives.
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