Fashionable Laws

Fashions may come and go, but psychology still rules how we dress.

Karen Pine, a research psychologist, shares how our clothes impact how we feel about ourselves in her book Mind What You Wear. For instance, people who dress like the boss are more likely to be promoted quicker. Women are twice as likely to wear jeans when depressed than when happy. She also discovered that patients put more trust in a doctor who wears a white coat.

Some people apparently view the seventh-day Sabbath as a changing fashion. They don’t think twice about how God’s holy day was “changed” by humans from Saturday to Sunday. The Bible predicted how this would happen through an earthly power that would “intend to change times and law” (Daniel 7:25).

The origin of Sunday observance as a Christian institution had its origin in “the mystery of lawlessness” (2 Thessalonians 2:7), which was already at work when Paul wrote. Daniel’s vision revealed that a little horn power, represented as “a beast rising up out of the sea” (Revelation 13:1), “was given a mouth speaking great things and blasphemies” (verse 5).

Only one power within Christianity has claimed the prerogative to change times and laws. Around ad 1400, Petrus de Ancharano claimed that “the pope can modify divine law, since his power is not of man, but of God, and he acts in the place of God upon earth, with the fullest power of binding and losing his sheep.”

John Eck, a defender of the Catholic religion, demonstrated this assertion when attacking Martin Luther during the Reformation. He challenged Luther on the observance of Sunday instead of the Bible Sabbath and claimed “the church has changed the Sabbath into Sunday on its own authority, on which you [Luther] have no Scripture.”

God’s law is not like changing fashions. David wrote, “The entirety of Your word is truth, and every one of Your righteous judgments endures forever” (Psalm 119:160).

Apply It:

Think of an outdated clothing fashion. How is God’s law unlike changing styles of clothing?

Dig Deeper:

Daniel 7:23–27; Matthew 7:24–29; Revelation 13:1–10

Key Bible Texts

For the mystery of iniquity doth already work: only he who now letteth will let, until he be taken out of the way. (2 Thessalonians 2:7 KJV)