How Did We Miss The Sunday Law While Watching For It?January 14, 2026
Joanna de Bruyn
By the end of this article, one question should remain: how did General Conference leadership concede ground on Sunday laws years ago, without the church noticing?
In mid-November 2025, Fulcrum7 reported that nine faithful SDAs sent a letter to the General Conference (GC) administration requesting a meeting by mid-December 2025 to discuss ending the church’s consultative status with the United Nations (UN).
This request was urgent, reflecting the seriousness of the times. Over the past five years, religious liberty has been steadily eroded, bringing the world to the edge of the enforcement of the universal Sunday law.
Many SDAs have been lulled into a false sense of security and do not see the importance or the urgent need to depart from the consultative relationship between the church and the UN. Many have been lulled into thinking that Sunday laws are off in the distance, and when that happens, then they will respond to the crises.
The reality is that in 1921 the League of Nations, through the International Labor Office (ILO), introduced a universal weekly rest convention (No. 14), which many member nations ratified. This weekly rest was to be observed according to the customs and traditions of each nation.
[1] For a large percentage of countries, this resulted in Sunday becoming the mandated day of rest.
[2] These conventions were later adopted by the United Nations when it was formed and it absorbed the ILO into its structure.
In 1957, the UN expanded this framework by passing another weekly rest convention (No. 106), extending the mandated rest to a wider range of occupations. This further strengthened the principle of a universal weekly rest across member states.
[3]Questionnaires sent to member nations in the 1920s and again in the 1950s revealed that many had already mandated Sunday rest. Enforcement often included fines or penalties for Sunday trade, such as requiring employers to pay higher wages or provide compensatory time off. In many countries, the rest period began on Saturday afternoon and continued through Sunday, with additional compensation required for any work performed during that time.
[4],
[5]As recently as 2013, the ILO was advising member states on how to make Sunday rest more explicit in national legislation. It is clear that the international legal framework is already in place to implement a Sunday worship law.
[6]Laws alone are not enough; society must also be conditioned to accept not just Sunday rest laws, but Sunday worship laws. The past five years have shown that political powers, media, and social engineers can shape public opinion to the point where the majority will demand such laws if they believe it will bring peace, health, or moral improvement. As recent history shows (2020-2022), many were willing to comply with mandated experimental therapies to preserve social acceptance, personal security, and the appearance of loving their neighbour, even when they weren’t convinced of the health benefits.
The reader may ask, what about religious liberty? Won’t the Seventh-day Adventist Church administration manage to defend religious liberty?
