Religious Liberty and the Division Principle (Tim Rumsey)

 

Forces Meeting Head to Head (Parts 1 & 2) - Pastor Bill Hughes

Forces Meeting Head to Head pt 1: The Players - Pastor Bill Hughes

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Forces Meeting Head to Head pt 2 Islam in End -Time Prophecy - Pastor Bill Hughes

Sunday Rest Proposal Raises Troubling Religious Liberty Concerns

A response by the North American Division of Seventh-day Adventists

January 18, 2026

Columbia, Maryland.



A proposal by a Washington, D.C.-based advocacy organization to legally recognize and enforce a “uniform day of rest” represents a disturbing disregard for the religious freedom of all Americans. The Heritage Foundation’s document, “Saving America by Saving the Family,” calls for states and local municipalities to restrict commercial activities on Sunday as a way to promote spiritual engagement and provide a regular day of relaxation for American workers.

Seventh-day Adventists believe all people have been created in God’s image with the freedom to worship according to the dictates of their conscience. For more than 160 years, the Church has forcefully advocated against any form of Sunday law. Adventists have always understood these laws — whether at a local, state, or federal level — as attempts to compel conscience, even when they are defended on pretextual secular grounds such as promoting the health of communities and families.

This new proposal for a “uniform day of rest” is irreconcilable with America’s rich heritage of protecting the religious freedom of all its citizens, regardless of their religious beliefs or nonbelief. It represents a dangerous desire to use state power to advance religious objectives. Restricting commercial activities on Sunday also raises serious practical concerns for members of those faiths that do not worship on Sunday, including Seventh-day Adventists and Orthodox Jews.

Sunday laws run counter to the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which preserves religious freedom for all Americans by requiring the government to remain neutral between different religious faiths. Our church leaders in the North American Division and the union conferences will continue to uphold the banner of truth and religious liberty, firmly opposing this proposal and any similar measures.

Copyright © 2026 North American Division Corporation of Seventh-day Adventists

Source

Support for a Uniform Day of Rest (from The Heritage Foundation Special Report)

In order to demonstrate a fulfillment of prophecy before our eyes we directly focus on the part that mentions Sunday Rest of this exhaustive report.

  

Saving America by Saving the Family: A Foundation for the Next 250 Years

January 8, 2026 Over an hour read Download Report


Authors:Roger Severino, Jay Richards, PhD, Emma Waters, Delano Squires, Rachel Sheffield and Robert Rector

Summary

To end America’s family crisis, policymakers and civic leaders should treat restoring the family home as a matter of justice, driven by two truths. The first is that all children have a right to the affection and protection of the man and woman who created them. The second is that the ideal environment in which to exercise this right is in a loving and stable home with their married biological parents. In contrast, the default in American culture today is to put the desires of adults over the needs of children. Children are too often called to sacrifice what is due to them—the presence of their mom and dad under the same roof for the entirety of their childhood.

Key Takeaways

1. The family is the foundation of civilization, and marriage—the committed union of one man and one woman—is its cornerstone. It is the seedbed of self-government.
2. The question that will determine the course of America’s future is: What happens to a nation when its citizens largely stop having children and eschew marriage?
3. The only way for America to thrive in the future is to rebuild the family—which can only happen with a societal commitment to revive the institution of marriage.

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Support for a Uniform Day of Rest. As zoning laws allow a community to determine where one can operate certain businesses, “blue laws” reflect the local judgments as to when one can operate certain businesses. In the case of McGowan v. Maryland (1961), the Supreme Court held by an eight-to-one vote that Sunday-closings laws that include the purpose of providing a uniform day of rest are constitutional and can accommodate the fact that the majority of people who take a day of rest for religious reasons do so on Sundays. Massachusetts, for example, requires that “every employer of labor engaged in carrying on any manufacturing, mechanical or mercantile establishment or workshop...shall allow every person...at least twenty-four consecutive hours of rest...in every seven consecutive days.”140

Day-of-rest laws limiting commercial activity are usually found in less densely populated counties, although restrictions on alcohol sales are more widespread. Though greatly diminished, blue laws persist in some form in close to 28 states.141

A uniform day of rest that limits commercial activity can provide temporal boundaries that help communities to set aside time for religious observance, family gatherings, outdoor activities, and rest. A stable base of research shows that these practices correlate with better mental health, stronger social bonds, and more stable family structures.142

With the advent of on-demand delivery, shopping can be shifted easily and conveniently to other days of the week. By restoring a common rhythm of rest and reflection, community rest laws could help to reverse the trend toward “spiritual homelessness” and foster the social habits necessary for communities to cohere and flourish.

Despite today’s on-demand culture, the U.S. Postal Service does not deliver regular mail on Sundays, most organized youth sports avoid Sunday competitions, and most banks are closed on Sundays. The ever-popular Chick-Fil-A chain closes its restaurants on Sundays for the benefit of its workers and their families. Where new, planned communities or transitioning communities form, they should consider adding rest days as part of their master plans for balanced and thriving community life.

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Project 2025 Bingo: An update

Analysis Mara Richards Bim | December 30, 2025

With the current administration’s effort to “flood the zone” and obfuscate their illegal and immoral shenanigans, one would be forgiven for forgetting the origins of what has become known as Project 2025.

Project 2025, technically called “The Mandate for Leadership,” was released in time for the 2024 election. It was a policy document created by the Heritage Foundation that offered the next Republican president a blueprint to enact from Day One.

The document was so deeply troubling that Donald Trump infamously distanced himself from it, saying he’d never read it and had no interest in it. Yet, within days of his reelection, he hired the key architects of the plan to hold positions of power within his administration — chief among them Russell Vought.

The plan was and remains so troubling for so many because it advocates not for smaller government but for a larger government used like a sledgehammer to bend the will of the people toward the autocratic vision of a few.

“It’s time to revisit Project 2025 and see what was (and wasn’t) on our Bingo cards.”

Heritage President Goes Scorched Earth on Globalist Elites at WEF

Tucker Carlson Mocks Herd Mentality In Address Delivered Three Days Befo...

James Carafano: Amnesty Proposal Gets "Everything Exactly Wrong"

Statements


Feb 15, 2018


The Heritage Foundation's Dr. James Carafano, vice president of the Davis Institute for National Security and Foreign Policy, released the following statement Thursday regarding the policy implications of the "Immigration Opportunity and Security Act:"

“Compromise is not about getting everything exactly wrong. Unfortunately, that is exactly what the misnamed ‘Immigration Opportunity and Security Act’ does. Amnesties are bad immigration policy –they undermine the rule of law and create a magnet for further illegal migration.

“This legislation would likely result in a greater amnesty than the 1986 amnesty, which created a massive stimulus for further illegal border crossing and unlawful presence. This act offers toothless border security and internal enforcement promises, and fails to address key public safety issues, like sanctuary cities. What weak promises are made offer little hope for improvement, however, as we all know both parties have shown no hesitance in breaking promises of future enforcement time and time again.

“It is far past time to put teeth into existing enforcement measures, secure our southern border, end chain migration and diversity visa programs, and take a meaningful step to restoring Americans’ faith in the rule of law.”

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Lawyers: Private parks should sue Obama administration for forcing them to close

4:22 PM 10/03/2013


Michael Bastasch

During the government shutdown, the Obama administration has forced the closure of privately owned parks, stoking calls from lawyers for park owners to take legal action against the federal government.

“As a lawyer who once worked for the government, I assume there is no legal authority for this because these private tourist attractions were not shut down in prior ‘government shutdowns,’ even under Bill Clinton, who understood how to play political hardball,” Hans Bader, senior attorney at the Competitive Enterprise Institute wrote in an email.

A lawyer with the conservative Heritage Foundation said that the Obama administration’s actions were likely illegal and that business owners forced to close shop should sue.

“They should immediately file a lawsuit and seek a temporary injunction against the government,” said Former Justice Department lawyer Hans Von Spakovsky.

Terry Pell, of the Center for Individual Rights and former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Education for Civil Rights, said that the government had only “a sliver of a justification in each case,” but that a judge could rule against the government under the Administrative Procedure Act.

Pell added that newspaper could sue under the Freedom of Information Act to get “WH [White House] emails to [the] park agency.”

It was reported that the parking lot of the privately-owned Mount Vernon, the home of George Washington, was blocked off by National Park Service officials, but the barricades were removed after numerous complaints.

Also, Virginia’s historic Claude Moore Colonial Farm was also closed by the National Park Service, despite not being financially supported by the Service or using any agency personnel. And despite the fact that the park remained open during the Clinton era government shutdown.

“For the first time in 40 years, the National Park Service (NPS) has finally succeeded in closing the Farm down to the public. In previous budget dramas, the Farm has always been exempted since the NPS provides no staff or resources to operate the Farm,” the farm’s managing director Anna Eberly said in an email to the park’s mailing list.

“The first casualty of this arbitrary action was the McLean Chamber of Commerce who were having a large annual event at the Pavilion on Tuesday evening,” Eberly added. “The NPS sent the Park Police over to remove the Pavilion’s staff and Chamber volunteers from the property while they were trying to set up for their event. Fortunately, the Chamber has friends and they were able to move to another location and salvage what was left of their party. You do have to wonder about the wisdom of an organization that would use staff they don’t have the money to pay to evict visitors from a park site that operates without costing them any money.”

The Washington Times reports that privately operated businesses on federal lands outside of the Washington, DC area have also been forced to close their doors.

Arizona businessman Warren Meyer wrote to his congressman that the campground he runs on federal lands was ordered to close despite receiving no federal funding.

“Yesterday, as in all past government shutdowns, the Department of Agriculture and US Forest Service confirmed we would stay open during the government shutdown… However, today, we have been told by senior member of the US Forest Service and Department of Agriculture that people ‘above the department’, which I presume means the White House, plan to order the Forest Service to needlessly and illegally close all private operations,” Meyer wrote on Wednesday.

“In the ‘government shutdown,’ the government is apparently shutting down many privately-run facilities that have never been shut down in any previous government shut-down, just to inflict political pain — privately-run tourist operations that cost the government nothing to allow open, but cost a lot to shut down,” Bader wrote.

“Private tourist attractions that do not need to be shut down in any government shutdown (and generate tax revenue for the federal government, as well as jobs for the public). This is grotesque political theater,” he added.

Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.
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Source: http://dailycaller.com/2013/10/03/lawyers-private-parks-should-sue-obama-admin-for-forcing-them-to-close/#ixzz2glSsImhv
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Study: Immigration overhaul will cost $6.3 trillion

Alan Gomez, USA TODAY5:30 p.m. EDT May 6, 2013

Shunning criticism that its report is politically motivated, Heritage Foundation President Jim DeMint says the "Gang of Eight" amnesty plan would not bring in enough tax revenue to make economic sense.



(Photo: Evan Vucci, AP)

STORY HIGHLIGHTS
Report was panned by Democrats
Critics say the federal deficit could be reduced by $2.5 trillion if 11 million gain legal status
Senate's "Gang of Eight" is set for a week of committee hearings analyzing its immigration bill

The conservative Heritage Foundation estimates that a sweeping immigration plan being pushed by a bipartisan group of senators will cost the country $6.3 trillion over the next 50 years, a figure they hope persuades Republicans to oppose the effort.

Through their use of government services, their reliance on welfare benefits and their eventual use of Social Security, Medicare and benefits through President Obama's health care law, the report found that the nation's 11 million unauthorized immigrants would receive $9.4 trillion in benefits and services, but pay only $3.1 trillion in taxes.

"Amnesty consists of a very, very large burden that will be placed on the U.S. taxpayer and huge deficits at a point that the country is already going bankrupt," said Robert Rector, a Heritage Foundation researcher who co-authored the report.

The report, released Monday, was panned by Democrats and others who say it did not factor in the many economic benefits that will come with legalizing the nation's unauthorized immigrants.

Douglas Holtz-Eakin, former director of the Congressional Budget Office who served as the chief economic policy adviser to Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., during his 2008 presidential run, said the study gives a "narrow, incomplete" look at the economic picture for immigrants. McCain is among the "Gang of Eight" senators who are supporting the immigration legislation.

Holtz-Eakin said the Heritage study does not consider the ability of unauthorized immigrants to advance in the workplace and earn more money — in turn, paying more taxes — if they are placed in a legal status.

He said high rates of entrepreneurship among immigrant communities result in new businesses and new job opportunities for themselves and American workers. When that is taken into consideration, legalizing the people living here illegally would lead to a $2.5 trillionreduction in the federal deficit, an April report by Holtz-Eakin said.

Alex Nowrasteh, an immigration policy analyst at the Cato Institute, said the Heritage report also does not consider that legalizing unauthorized immigrants would lead to increases in how much they're paid, which in turn would raise the wage rates of American workers. He also said the work of low-skilled immigrants boosts productivity of American businesses.

Jim DeMint, former South Carolina senator and Heritage's president, said Monday that only a small percentage of the 11 million people slated for legalization have the education or work skills to become a net addition to the tax rolls. He compared the immigration bill to the 2010 Affordable Care Act, which he said was supposed to reduce the federal deficit by $132 billion over 10 years but will increase health care costs instead.

DeMint dismissed criticism of the report as politically motivated. He said the report clearly illustrates that the government would have to increase its debt, or taxes, to cover the massive economic losses of the Senate's immigration plan and would further lower wages of low-skilled American workers.

"It's clear a number of people in Washington who might benefit from an amnesty, as well as a number of people in Congress, do not want to consider the cost," DeMint said Monday. "No sensible-thinking person could read this study and conclude that over 50 years that this could possibly have a positive economic impact."

The report comes as the Senate's "Gang of Eight" prepares for a week of Senate committee hearings analyzing its immigration bill. The Congressional Joint Economic Committee will begin hearings on the economic impact of immigration on Tuesday, and the Senate's Commerce Committee will hold a similar hearing on Wednesday.

The study is an update of a 2007 Heritage Foundation study by Rector that estimated the cost then of legalizing unauthorized immigrants at $2.6 trillion. At that time, it was used as part of a successful effort by conservatives to strike down attempts to overhaul the nation's immigration efforts.

Haley Barbour, the Republican former governor of Mississippi, described the report as a "political document."

"This study is designed to try to scare conservative Republicans into thinking the cost here is going to be so gigantic that you can't possibly be for it," said Barbour, a member of a task force with the Bipartisan Policy Center that supports the bill.

But Sen. David Vitter, R-La., said the $6.3 trillion price tag should disqualify the "Gang of Eight" proposal from passage.

"Our federal debt severely threatens our economy as it is now," he said. "The last thing we should be doing is granting amnesty to illegal immigrants, giving them all the taxpayer funded benefits and advantages of citizenship, while completely turning our back on enforcement."

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Heritage: White House in 'Amateur Hour'

Thursday, 05 May 2011 02:56 PM

By David A. Patten

The Obama administration’s handling of the aftermath of the operation to kill Osama bin Laden has devolved into “amateur hour,” Heritage Foundation expert Dr. James Jay Carafano tells Newsmax.

Although Carafano praised the Seal Team Six operation that initially took out bin Laden, the administration’s conflicting accounts of the operation have been counterproductive, he said.

Carafano told Newsmax Wednesday that it’s been “total amateur hour” since President Barack Obama’s announced bin Laden’s death.

Initially, said Carafano, White House Homeland Security adviser John Brennan appeared to be clever by portraying bin Laden as hiding behind one of his wives and using her as a human shield.

“It was a great line, but if it’s not true, the damage to your credibility makes you look amateurish,” he said. “Not to have your facts straight is just inexcusable.”

The administration has modified its account of the kill mission several times. It now appears that no firefight occurred, and that the al-Qaida mastermind was not armed when the Seals took him down.

A woman who rushed toward the Seals was shot in the leg, but not killed. And there is no indication that bin Laden used her for cover.

“I just thought it was stunning and unbelievable, that they would give out details and then say they may or may not have been accurate -- unbelievable amateur hour,” Carafano told Newsmax.

“Legitimacy is everything in a war of ideas,” he added.

Carafano, a 25-year U.S. Army veteran who is considered one of the nation’s leading experts in defense and homeland security, agrees with the administration’s decision not to release the grisly images of bin Laden’s corpse. Extremists could use the images to try to make bin Laden appear to be a martyr, he said.

“We should be doing everything possible to delegitimize, and denigrate, and humiliate the ‘legend’ of bin Laden,” Carafano said. “And nothing should be done that could glorify or enhance his stature.”

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EMP: The Next Weapon of Massive Destruction?

By Mark Thompson/Washington Monday, Mar. 29, 2010

From left: Ed Kashi / Corbis; Corbis

If America needs a new threat around which to organize its defenses, try this one: Bad guys explode nuclear weapons miles above U.S. soil, sending out an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) that fries the electronic guts of everything in America. The nation's financial and transportation systems collapse; hospitals and the Internet go dark, water and electrical grids freeze, and runaway Toyotas with electronic throttles are finally brought to a stop. "The EMP resulting from the blast would cause widespread damage, devastating the economy and resulting in the deaths of millions of Americans," the hawkish Heritage Foundation warned last week, launching a call on Congress to establish an "EMP Recognition Day."

Maybe it's America's frontier heritage, moving west and constantly facing new bands of Indians, this nation has always seemed to have an exaggerated awareness of potential threats. The Cold War gave us warnings of missile- and bombers "gaps", later found to be largely mirages, that were supposedly leaving U.S. citizens vulnerable to Soviet attack. Fear of the supposed Soviet missile advantage spurred President Ronald Reagan's "Star Wars" initiative, and the $100 billion Washington has spent preparing to counter incoming enemy missiles even as the Soviet Union disappeared. Then, 9/11 put us in the crosshairs of Islamic terrorists, calling into being a mushrooming homeland-security-industrial complex. All very well, warn the sentinels at the Heritage Foundation, but what about the EMP threat? (Watch TIME's video "Homeland Security Tradeshow.")

"Despite repeated warnings, Congress has taken virtually no action to prepare or protect against an EMP attack," write the Heritage Foundation's Jena Baker McNeill and James Jay Carafano. "In order to facilitate a national discussion regarding the EMP threat, Congress should establish March 23 as EMP Recognition Day" — not coincidentally, that's the date of Reagan's famous 1983 speech launching his missile-defense initiative. Leaving aside the contradiction of urging Congress to concentrate attention and resources on a threat that most in Washington consider an infinitesimal probability, the whole notion seems rooted in some visceral need for foes with diabolical destructive abilities. There's something almost pathetic about cowering in the shadow of such a threat, instead of shrugging it off with the resilience that was typical on the American frontier. (Read "Scrapping the Missile Shield: Militarily Sound.")

As its own contribution to "EMP Recognition Day," the Heritage Foundation — sounding more like the Green Party than the conservative think tank that it is — urges lawmakers to shut down congressional cafeterias, walk to work, shut off their BlackBerries and turn off the lights. "If Congress took these four steps for one day," the Heritage Foundation says, "all members would understand the magnitude of the dangers posed by an EMP attack." (They'll also be slimmer, healthier and more mellow.)

To blunt the impact of an EMP strike, those most alarmed by the threat want the U.S. military to shield its key electronics, and for vital elements of civilian society to do the same. Like taxes and health care, the debate over the EMP threat is polarizing. "More fear mongering to garner more $$$ for The Big War Machine," opines one poster on Wired's Danger Room blog. Another skeptic asks: "Do they have a flying carpet that could go that high?" But EMP-threat true believers won't be deterred. "Detonating a nuke on the ground would leave cities in shambles and radioactive for years to come," one points out. "If they had any plot to reuse the invaded land, they would most likely go for an EMP approach." (Read "Radioactive Assassination — Top 10 Inept Terrorist Plots.")

Rep. Roscoe Bartlett, a Maryland Republican with a background in engineering, is EMP's Chicken Little. "We're going to be attacked where we are the weakest," the 83-year old lawmaker told the Navy's top officer at a recent House Armed Services Committee hearing. "How much fighting capability would remain if you had an EMP lay down of 100 kilovolts per liter, which is about half of what the Russian generals told the EMP commission [created by Bartlett himself six years ago] "the Soviets had developed and the Russians had available?" (The admiral said he'd have to check).

Unfortunately, the Pentagon thinks a threat is a terrible thing to waste. So, the Navy has begun studying how to protect its fleet from such an attack. "A nuclear device detonated at an altitude in excess of 40 miles generates High Altitude Electromagnetic Pulse (HEMP), which is the focus of the U.S. Navy program," a recent Pentagon report says. Doing nothing, it warns, poses a risk "at the highest level." Hemp and high? You can't say the Navy doesn't have a sense of humor.

Read a brief history of missile defense.

See TIME's Pictures of the Week.

Source: : http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1976224,00.html?xid=rss-topstories&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+time%2Ftopstories+%28TIME%3A+Top+Stories%29&utm_content=Google+Feedfetcher#ixzz0jdCczPyR

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