Howbeit in vain do they worship me,
teaching for doctrines the commandments of men.
Matthew 7:7
"MercatorNet is an Australia-based publication that is directed by a Roman Catholic editor.
They have adopted the widely shared belief that the repeal of the Blue
Laws has led to death and despair. There are forces at work to inflame
public interest and excitement about Sunday laws.
And here we have another group of journalists who are reiterating this
call right now.
On January 18, 2023, MercatorNet published an article
titled “Gimme that old time religion: Did it Protect Americans from
Deaths of Despair?” in which it stated that the repeal of the Blue Laws
caused people to die early.
The following was published by MercatorNet:
“The dechristianization of society is hard to assess and
harder to predict. But we can ask: is this good news or bad news?
According to a research paper released last week by the National Bureau
of Economic Research, a prominent think tank in Cambridge,
Massachusetts, it is bad news. It is, in fact, literally deadly.”
“In an original and thought-provoking use of statistics,
the researchers examined deaths of despair after American states
repealed their ‘blue laws’. These were laws which banned commerce on Sundays so that people could observe the Sabbath by attending church services and spending more time with their families.
Regulations varied from state to state, but typically the sale of
alcohol was restricted or banned and department stores were closed. Many
of the repeals took place in the 1980s.”
“What happened as a result? They report that: We find that for
middle-aged Americans, the repeal of blue laws had a 5- to
10-percentage-point impact on weekly attendance of religious services
and increased the rate of deaths of despair by 2 deaths per 100,000
people. Applying these results to the decline in religion at the end of
the century suggests that this decline could be responsible for a
reasonably large share of the initial rise in deaths of despair.”
“Those who applaud the decline of religion in the public square in
the US should be careful what they wish for. Church attendance protects
some vulnerable people from social isolation, introversion, alienation
and even death.”
“The law of unintended consequences is always at work. We have all
experienced this with the Covid lockdowns. Back in the 1980s, repealing
the blue laws was meant to make life more convenient. For most people,
it did. But for an unlucky few, it turned their lives upside down. It
even killed them.”
There you have it.
Repealing the Blue Laws has killed people. It has
brought despair, turned lives upside down, caused church attendance to
decline, and led to social isolation, alienation, and death.
This
situation is threatening everyone on the planet.
For those who are alive
today, death and despair are an inescapable truth, we are being told.
We are on the road to extinction. Until we bring back Sunday rest by
law, society will continue to deteriorate, and more people will die in
despair.
This is not the rambling of a small group of people. This is being
promoted by the so-called experts, and the media is disseminating their
argument all over the world. In fact, inspiration predicts that this is
what will happen in these last days:" AdventMessemger