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The Impending Conflict, Part 4
Satan’s Use of Natural Disasters & Spiritualism
Satan works through the elements also to
garner his harvest of unprepared souls. He has studied the secrets of the
laboratories of nature, and he uses all his power to control the elements as far
as God allows. When he was suffered to afflict Job, how quickly flocks and
herds, servants, houses, children, were swept away, one trouble succeeding
another as in a moment. It is God that shields His creatures and hedges them in
from the power of the destroyer. But the Christian world have shown contempt for
the law of Jehovah; and the Lord will do just what He has declared that He
would—He will withdraw His blessings from the earth and remove His protecting
care from those who are rebelling against His law and teaching and forcing
others to do the same. Satan has control of all whom God does not especially
guard. He will favor and prosper some in order to further his own designs, and
he will bring trouble upon others and lead men to believe that it is God who is
afflicting them.
While appearing to the children of men as a
great physician who can heal all their maladies, he will bring disease and
disaster, until populous cities are reduced to ruin and desolation. Even now he
is at work. In accidents and calamities by sea and by land, in great
conflagrations, in fierce tornadoes and terrific hailstorms, in tempests,
floods, cyclones, tidal waves, and earthquakes, in every place and in a thousand
forms, Satan is exercising his power. He sweeps away the ripening harvest, and
famine and distress follow. He imparts to the air a deadly taint, and thousands
perish by the pestilence. These visitations are to become more and more frequent
and disastrous. Destruction will be upon both man and beast. “The earth mourns
and fades away,” “the haughty people . . . languish. The earth is also
defiled under its inhabitants, because they have transgressed the laws, changed
the ordinance, broken the everlasting covenant.” Isaiah 24:4, 5.
And then the great deceiver will persuade
men that those who serve God are causing these evils. The class that have
provoked the displeasure of Heaven will charge all their troubles upon those
whose obedience to God’s commandments is a perpetual reproof to transgressors.
It will be declared that men are offending God by the violation of the Sunday
sabbath; that this sin has brought calamities which will not cease until Sunday
observance shall be strictly enforced; and that those who present the claims of
the fourth commandment, thus destroying reverence for Sunday, are troublers of
the people, preventing their restoration to divine favor and temporal
prosperity. Thus the accusation urged of old against the servant of God will be
repeated and upon grounds equally well established: “Then it happened, when Ahab
saw Elijah, that Ahab said to him, ‘Is that you, O troubler of Israel?’ And he
answered, ‘I have not troubled Israel, but you and your father’s house have, in
that you have forsaken the commandments of the Lord and have followed the
Baals.’ ” 1 Kings 18:17, 18.
As the wrath of the people shall be excited by false charges, they will pursue a
course toward God’s ambassadors very similar to that which apostate Israel
pursued toward Elijah.
The miracle-working power manifested through
spiritualism will exert its influence against those who choose to obey God
rather than men. Communications from the spirits will declare that God has sent
them to convince the rejecters of Sunday of their error, affirming that the laws
of the land should be obeyed as the law of God. They will lament the great
wickedness in the world and second the testimony of religious teachers that the
degraded state of morals is caused by the desecration of Sunday. Great will be
the indignation excited against all who refuse to accept their testimony.
Sabbath-keepers Denounced as Enemies of Law and Order
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Satan’s policy in this final conflict with
God’s people is the same that he employed in the opening of the great
controversy in heaven. He professed to be seeking to promote the stability of
the divine government, while secretly bending every effort to secure its
overthrow. And the very work which he was thus endeavoring to accomplish he
charged upon the loyal angels. The same policy of deception has marked the
history of the Roman Church. It has professed to act as the vicegerent of
Heaven, while seeking to exalt itself above God and to change His law. Under the
rule of Rome, those who suffered death for their fidelity to the gospel were
denounced as evildoers; they were declared to be in league with Satan; and every
possible means was employed to cover them with reproach, to cause them to appear
in the eyes of the people and even to themselves as the vilest of criminals. So
it will be now. While Satan seeks to destroy those who honor God’s law, he will
cause them to be accused as lawbreakers, as men who are dishonoring God and
bringing judgments upon the world.
God never forces the will or the conscience;
but Satan’s constant resort—to gain control of those whom he cannot otherwise
seduce—is compulsion by cruelty. Through fear or force he endeavors to rule the
conscience and to secure homage to himself. To accomplish this, he works through
both religious and secular authorities, moving them to the enforcement of human
laws in defiance of the law of God.
Those who honor the Bible Sabbath will be
denounced as enemies of law and order, as breaking down the moral restraints of
society, causing anarchy and corruption, and calling down the judgments of God
upon the earth. Their conscientious scruples will be pronounced obstinacy,
stubbornness, and contempt of authority. They will be accused of disaffection
toward the government. Ministers who deny the obligation of the divine law will
present from the pulpit the duty of yielding obedience to the civil authorities
as ordained of God. In legislative halls and courts of justice, commandment
keepers will be misrepresented and condemned. A false coloring will be given to
their words; the worst construction will be put upon their motives.
As the Protestant churches reject the clear,
Scriptural arguments in defense of God’s law, they will long to silence those
whose faith they cannot overthrow by the Bible. Though they blind their own eyes
to the fact, they are now adopting a course which will lead to the persecution
of those who conscientiously refuse to do what the rest of the Christian world
are doing, and acknowledge the claims of the papal sabbath.
The dignitaries of church and state will
unite to bribe, persuade, or compel all classes to honor the Sunday. The lack of
divine authority will be supplied by oppressive enactments. Political corruption
is destroying love of justice and regard for truth; and even in free America,
rulers and legislators, in order to secure public favor, will yield to the
popular demand for a law enforcing Sunday observance. Liberty of conscience,
which has cost so great a sacrifice, will no longer be respected. In the
soon-coming conflict we shall see exemplified the prophet’s words: “The dragon
was enraged with the woman, and he went to make war with the rest of her
offspring, who keep the commandments of God and have the testimony of Jesus
Christ.” Revelation 12:17.
The Great
Controversy, pp. 589-592
All Scriptures are quoted from the New
King James Version, including those originally quoted by Ellen White from the
King James Version.—Editors
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