9 April 2018 | A group that traces its roots to the Adventist Church recently took out controversial ads in three different national newspapers.

The Eternal Gospel Church, founded in 1992 by Seventh-day Adventists, published ads in The Washington Times, USA Today and Diario Las Americas. They were published from Wednesday, March 28 through Friday, March 30.

The ads stressed the obligation of the seventh-day Sabbath, and that a decision of whether to worship on the seventh day or a counterfeit Sabbath would be forced upon the general population. The ads identified the Antichrist as the Roman Catholic pope. They listed dozens of biblical proof texts to bolster their claims.

PR Newswire states that the church has been putting ads in newspapers across the United States for the past 26 years. In its website the Florida-based church display photographs of its similarly controversial billboard ads.

Explaining the reasons for placing ads, the church’s senior pastor, Raphael Perez, has claimed that sin is increasing in the world and that Sunday keeping is “being placed over the sacredness of the seventh-day Sabbath” under the influence of the pope. Perez warned that enforced Sunday worship is coming and will be the Mark of the Beast bringing the world to eternal ruin. He sees the separation of church and state deteriorating in the United States, opening the way for civil laws to mandate such worship.

The Eternal Gospel Church was first known as the Eternal Gospel Seventh-day Adventist Church. A federal trademark lawsuit between the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists and Pastor Raphael Perez led to a settlement that forced the group to drop the words “Seventh-day Adventist” from their name.

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