“National Sunday Law” is a book I received in the mail and it said 39. 2 million were in print. So with that many printed, I thought I would quickly read through it. It is printed by the Orthodox Christian Church publication ministry called New Life Publications and Marcussen is a Seventh-Day Adventist minister (researched after reading the book).

The book describes a warning to Christians to return to Sabbath worship and escape from the Catholic Church. While Marcussen uses Scripture for his arguments, he lacks a big picture of how to put Scripture together and to realize there are dispensations to which passages of Scripture apply. He uses passages from both the Old and New Testament to provide text proofs for his arguments and unfortunately distorts the real intents for today and the future.

Marcussen seeks to identify the beast the false prophet with the United States and the Catholic Church, respectively. I appreciate several of his comparisons, but his final interpretation has too many holes. End times can be difficult to precisely interpret, but his method of analysis creates more questions that he answers. He also says the “mark” of the beast is Sunday worship, which was ‘instituted by the Catholic Church, not the New Testament.’ He declares the 1260 days of the Tribulation refers to the 1260 years that the Catholic Church controlled power from 538 A.D. to 1798 A.D. While the passages he uses to support the time difference do equate the day with a year, he is out of context.

He believes Christians should follow the Old Testament Law, because, he says, it was never done away with. While the Law provided great ceremonial and moral laws, it was put aside when the Lord Jesus fulfilled it and we entered the Church Age and live under grace and the Law of Christ. I can never understand how some theologians will say that we should keep the Law, but they do not keep sacrificing lambs. Like most of their interpretations, they pick and choose from Scripture in order to substantiate their theology.

A day is reckoning is coming and he says that there will be a National Sunday Law of worship. Those who worship on Saturday will be persecuted and even removed. His arguments were found empty.

I believe he truly loves the Lord Jesus and wants to honor Him. Marcussen never gives the gospel, but it seems that he would say salvation would be found in obedience to the Law, not humble faith trusting in the finished work of the Lord Jesus on the cross. I enjoyed the book as it provides a challenge for my own theology and questions that must be answered using a Literal historico-grammatical method of interpretation. The challenge is not digging to find answers to the questions raised, but in discipling people to the Lord Jesus and helping them multiply through discipleship in the grace of God.