CENTRAL POINT, Ore. — After more than a year of emotion-inciting display, a controversial billboard proclaiming the pope to be the Antichrist is no longer visible, having been taken down by its sponsor and replaced with a new message regarding days of worship.
Larry Weathers, the Oregon barber responsible for posting the ad, says the media company that owns the space decided to honor a commitment to the Catholic League to remove the message once its term had expired. The contract ended in May, but it wasn’t until last week that the pope placard was removed.
“We’re happy with the result to a certain extent,” said Patrick Scully, director of communications for the New York-based Catholic League. “It’s a victory for more civilized discourse.”
The original billboard on Interstate 5 just north of Medford, Ore., that sparked the outrage read: “The POPE Is The ANTICHRIST, Free Proof,” and provided a website address for more information.
As reported previously by WorldNetDaily, its display had prompted death threats, a national debate over free speech, a Catholic effort to put up a competing message, and a call by Fox News Channel host Bill O’Reilly to take the sign down.
In its place, a new message is now on display, still taking issue with the papacy but in a more subtle way.
It reads, “Saturday, the 7th day – God’s SABBATH vs. Sunday worship – the MARK of Rome, read Matthew 15:9.” At the bottom, the word “anti-christ” is mentioned only as part of the same website address to get a free book on the issue, but there’s no literal mention of the pope, the papacy or the Roman Catholic Church.
 New billboard doesn’t mention pope outright (WND photo) |
“Is this billboard the same message? You bet!” said Weathers. “This billboard is not pointing the finger at the pope; it is uncovering the biggest deception in religion history.”
That deception, he claims, has to do with the papacy’s changing of God’s law regarding the fourth of the Ten Commandments.
“Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labor, and do all thy work: But the seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work. …” is how the King James version of the Bible records the mandate in the 20th chapter of Exodus.
The word sabbath comes from the Hebrew root word “shabbat,” meaning to rest, cease or desist. Scholars say the word in Scripture not only refers to the weekly day of rest, but also the annual festivals of God such as Passover and Day of Atonement. It additionally refers to a sabbatical year, and it’s the term denoting one week.
The phrase “first day of the week” occurs eight times in the King James translation of the New Testament, mostly dealing with the circumstances of Jesus’ resurrection.
In the lexicon of modern society, the debate over which day is holy – that is, set apart to God – goes unresolved by the editors of Webster’s New World College Dictionary. While the first definition of sabbath calls it “the seventh day of the week (Saturday), set aside for rest and worship and observed as such by Jews (from Friday sunset to Saturday sunset) and some Christian denominations,” its second meaning defines it as “Sunday as the usual Christian day of rest and worship.”
Weathers is part of The Rogue Valley Historic Seventh-day Adventists, which is not connected to, and is shunned by, the more well-known Seventh-day Adventists. He says the papacy altered God’s instruction, doing away with Saturday sabbath-keeping, and instead enforcing Sunday – the first day of the week – as holy.
In May 1998, Pope John Paul II issued an apostolic letter on the subject, entitled Dies Domini (The Lord’s Day). In it, the pontiff refers to the origins of Sunday-keeping.
“In the weekly reckoning of time Sunday recalls the day of Christ’s Resurrection,” writes the pope. “It is Easter which returns week by week, celebrating Christ’s victory over sin and death, the fulfillment in him of the first creation and the dawn of ‘the new creation.'”
“Saying ‘the pope is the Antichrist’ is just insulting and ridiculing,” said Scully of the Catholic League. His group lobbied to have Weathers’ first billboard removed and to erect its own competing ad, but after learning of the new sign’s message, he now considers the matter closed.
“We can live with this,” he said. “This falls under the free speech of theological differences as opposed to ridiculing and insulting differences.”
Weathers insists he only has love for Catholic people and is simply instructing them on what is stated in the Bible and what has happened in history. He also says the current sexual scandal rocking the Church is just a symptom of deeper flaws.
“The whole thing with priests and pedophiles should have woke people up,” he says, “that something is rotten in Rome, that something so ‘holy’ was so rotten-stinking.”
Previous stories:
Catholics to ‘wage war’ over Antichrist sign
O’Reilly: Take down Antichrist sign
Antichrist billboard to get competition?
Antichrist sign sparks free-speech holy war
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WND Staff