A. Jan Marcussen National Sunday Law. Okeene, OK: New Life Publications, 2007. This book was sent to many people in our community. Though I was ready to ignore it altogether, several people have expressed concern over the booklet so I will try to respond in brief to its claims.
A booklet of this nature is very difficult to review for several reasons. First and foremost, the writing itself seems intended to inflame. It’s difficult to find thesis statements, lucid arguments, and logical support for those arguments. However, as nearly as I can understand it, Marcussen identifies the Roman Catholic Church as the Antichrist. He asserts that the United States government is in collusion with the Roman Catholic Church to require everybody to worship on Sunday rather than from sundown Friday until sundown Saturday. While Marcussen does not say that setting Sunday aside for a celebration of the day of resurrection is wrong, he does say that God's blessings only come fully to people who keep the entirety of God's Law, which he identifies as being centered on the observance of the Sabbath.
Aside from some obviously glaring problems, such as the lack of evidence that the United States government has an interest in encouragement of Christian worship on any day at all, there are numerous problems with the way Marcussen uses his sources of information. For instance, he ties the recent increase in imposing a death sentence to a law which existed in Virginia in the early 1600s which required attendance at Sunday church services, implying that there is a requirement under the current constitution that Sunday be observed as the Sabbath and that our government is likely to execute people who do not do so. Not only are death sentences in this country very rare and limited to capital crimes, the constitution of the United States was created nearly 200 years after the law cited was present in one of the colonial settlements. We are not under that jurisdiction in any way.
What concerns me more is the fact that Marcussen plays fast and loose with the Scriptures. He leaps from one location to another without considering the context of any of the texts he is using. He also makes doctrine rest on Revelation, Ezekiel, and Daniel without considering the fact that all those books were among those disputed in their acceptance as canonical writings and which theologians throughout history have considered dangerous as the "sedes doctrinae" - the "seat of doctrine" upon which one would place the foundation for interpretation of other passages. These texts are best interpreted in light of the books which were more universally accepted as canonical.
A final concern is that Marcussen asserts that he keeps the entire Law of God and therefore receives God's blessing. This flies in the face of any responsible interpretation of Romans, Galatians, or James, in which we see that not only do we all fail to keep God's Law but if we bind ourselves to the Law of God to receive God's favor we become liable to keep it all perfectly. We have departed from grace.
Marcussen's arguments are scattered, logically unsound, and do not show any regard for the whole message of Scripture, that Christ crucified for sinners is our only hope in this life and in eternity. Jesus' forgiving love is applied to us through Word and Sacraments, enabling us to be saved by grace, through faith, not by any works of our own. Teachers who suggest otherwise are dangerous. May the Lord call them to repentance so they can see the mercy of God as well.
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