Table of Contents
|
|
Chapter 36
The Impending Conflict
FROM the very beginning of the great controversy in heaven it has been Satan's purpose to
overthrow the law of God. It was to accomplish this that he entered upon his rebellion
against the Creator, and though he was cast out of heaven he has continued the same
warfare upon the earth. To deceive men, and thus lead them to transgress God's law, is the
object which he has steadfastly pursued. Whether this be accomplished by casting aside the
law altogether, or by rejecting one of its precepts, the result will be ultimately the
same. He that offends "in one point," manifests contempt for the whole law; his
influence and example are on the side of transgression; he becomes "guilty of
all." James 2:10.
In seeking to cast contempt upon the divine statutes, Satan has perverted the doctrines of
the Bible, and errors have thus become incorporated into the faith of thousands who
profess to believe the Scriptures. The last great conflict between truth and error is but
the final struggle of the long-standing controversy concerning the law of God. Upon this
battle we are now entering--a battle between the laws of men and the precepts of Jehovah,
between the religion of the Bible and the religion of fable and tradition.
The agencies which will unite against truth and righteousness in this contest are now
actively at work. God's holy word, which has been handed down to us at such a cost of
Page 583
suffering and blood, is but little valued. The Bible is within the reach of all, but there
are few who really accept it as the guide of life. Infidelity prevails to an alarming
extent, not in the world merely, but in the church. Many have come to deny doctrines which
are the very pillars of the Christian faith. The great facts of creation as presented by
the inspired writers, the fall of man, the atonement, and the perpetuity of the law of
God, are practically rejected, either wholly or in part, by a large share of the
professedly Christian world. Thousands who pride themselves upon their wisdom and
independence regard it as an evidence of weakness to place implicit confidence in the
Bible; they think it a proof of superior talent and learning to cavil at the Scriptures
and to spiritualize and explain away their most important truths. Many ministers are
teaching their people, and many professors and teachers are instructing their students,
that the law of God has been changed or abrogated; and those who regard its requirements
as still valid, to be literally obeyed, are thought to be deserving only of ridicule or
contempt.
In rejecting the truth, men reject its Author. In trampling upon the law of God, they deny
the authority of the Law-giver. It is as easy to make an idol of false doctrines and
theories as to fashion an idol of wood or stone. By misrepresenting the attributes of God,
Satan leads men to conceive of Him in a false character. With many, a philosophical idol
is enthroned in the place of Jehovah; while the living God, as He is revealed in His word,
in Christ, and in the works of creation, is worshiped by but few. Thousands deify nature
while they deny the God of nature. Though in a different form, idolatry exists in the
Christian world today as verily as it existed among ancient Israel in the days of Elijah.
The god of many professedly wise men, of philosophers, poets, politicians,
journalists--the god of polished fashionable circles, of many colleges and universities,
even of some theological institutions--is little better than Baal, the sun-god of
Phoenicia.
Page 584
No error accepted by the Christian world strikes more boldly against the authority of
Heaven, none is more directly opposed to the dictates of reason, none is more pernicious
in its results, than the modern doctrine, so rapidly gaining ground, that God's law is no
longer binding upon men. Every nation has its laws, which command respect and obedience;
no government could exist without them; and can it be conceived that the Creator of the
heavens and the earth has no law to govern the beings He has made? Suppose that prominent
ministers were publicly to teach that the statutes which govern their land and protect the
rights of its citizens were not obligatory--that they restricted the liberties of the
people, and therefore ought not to be obeyed; how long would such men be tolerated in the
pulpit? But is it a graver offense to disregard the laws of states and nations than to
trample upon those divine precepts which are the foundation of all government?
It would be far more consistent for nations to abolish their statutes, and permit the
people to do as they please, than for the Ruler of the universe to annul His law, and
leave the world without a standard to condemn the guilty or justify the obedient. Would we
know the result of making void the law of God? The experiment has been tried. Terrible
were the scenes enacted in France when atheism became the controlling power. It was then
demonstrated to the world that to throw off the restraints which God has imposed is to
accept the rule of the cruelest of tyrants. When the standard of righteousness is set
aside, the way is open for the prince of evil to establish his power in the earth.
Wherever the divine precepts are rejected, sin ceases to appear sinful or righteousness
desirable. Those who refuse to submit to the government of God are wholly unfitted to
govern themselves. Through their pernicious teachings the spirit of insubordination is
implanted in the hearts of children and youth, who are naturally impatient of control; and
a lawless, licentious state of society results. While scoffing at the credulity of those
who obey the requirements of God,
Page 585
the multitudes eagerly accept the delusions of Satan. They give the rein to lust and
practice the sins which have called down judgments upon the heathen.
Those who teach the people to regard lightly the commandments of God sow disobedience to
reap disobedience. Let the restraint imposed by the divine law be wholly cast aside, and
human laws would soon be disregarded. Because God forbids dishonest practices, coveting,
lying, and defrauding, men are ready to trample upon His statutes as a hindrance to their
worldly prosperity; but the results of banishing these precepts would be such as they do
not anticipate. If the law were not binding, why should any fear to transgress? Property
would no longer be safe. Men would obtain their neighbor's possessions by violence, and
the strongest would become richest. Life itself would not be respected. The marriage vow
would no longer stand as a sacred bulwark to protect the family. He who had the power,
would, if he desired, take his neighbor's wife by violence. The fifth commandment would be
set aside with the fourth. Children would not shrink from taking the life of their parents
if by so doing they could obtain the desire of their corrupt hearts. The civilized world
would become a horde of robbers and assassins; and peace, rest, and happiness would be
banished from the earth.
Already the doctrine that men are released from obedience to God's requirements has
weakened the force of moral obligation and opened the floodgates of iniquity upon the
world. Lawlessness, dissipation, and corruption are sweeping in upon us like an
overwhelming tide. In the family, Satan is at work. His banner waves, even in professedly
Christian households. There is envy, evil surmising, hypocrisy, estrangement, emulation,
strife, betrayal of sacred trusts, indulgence of lust. The whole system of religious
principles and doctrines, which should form the foundation and framework of social life,
seems to be a tottering mass, ready to fall to ruin. The vilest of criminals, when thrown
into prison for their offenses, are often made the recipients of gifts and
Page 586
attentions as if they had attained an enviable distinction. Great publicity is given to
their character and crimes. The press publishes the revolting details of vice, thus
initiating others into the practice of fraud, robbery, and murder; and Satan exults in the
success of his hellish schemes. The infatuation of vice, the wanton taking of life, the
terrible increase of intemperance and iniquity of every order and degree, should arouse
all who fear God, to inquire what can be done to stay the tide of evil.
Courts of justice are corrupt. Rulers are actuated by desire for gain and love of sensual
pleasure. Intemperance has beclouded the faculties of many so that Satan has almost
complete control of them. Jurists are perverted, bribed, deluded. Drunkenness and revelry,
passion, envy, dishonesty of every sort, are represented among those who administer the
laws. "Justice standeth afar off: for truth is fallen in the street, and equity
cannot enter." Isaiah 59:14.
The iniquity and spiritual darkness that prevailed under the supremacy of Rome were the
inevitable result of her suppression of the Scriptures; but where is to be found the cause
of the widespread infidelity, the rejection of the law of God, and the consequent
corruption, under the full blaze of gospel light in an age of religious freedom? Now that
Satan can no longer keep the world under his control by withholding the Scriptures, he
resorts to other means to accomplish the same object. To destroy faith in the Bible serves
his purpose as well as to destroy the Bible itself. By introducing the belief that God's
law is not binding, he as effectually leads men to transgress as if they were wholly
ignorant of its precepts. And now, as in former ages, he has worked through the church to
further his designs. The religious organizations of the day have refused to listen to
unpopular truths plainly brought to view in the Scriptures, and in combating them they
have adopted interpretations and taken positions which have sown broadcast the seeds of
skepticism. Clinging to the papal error of natural immortality and man's
Page 587
consciousness in death, they have rejected the only defense against the delusions of
spiritualism. The doctrine of eternal torment has led many to disbelieve the Bible. And as
the claims of the fourth commandment are urged upon the people, it is found that the
observance of the seventh-day Sabbath is enjoined; and as the only way to free themselves
from a duty which they are unwilling to perform, many popular teachers declare that the
law of God is no longer binding. Thus they cast away the law and the Sabbath together. As
the work of Sabbath reform extends, this rejection of the divine law to avoid the claims
of the fourth commandment will become well-nigh universal. The teachings of religious
leaders have opened the door to infidelity, to spiritualism, and to contempt for God's
holy law; and upon these leaders rests a fearful responsibility for the iniquity that
exists in the Christian world.
Yet this very class put forth the claim that the fast-spreading corruption is largely
attributable to the desecration of the so-called "Christian sabbath," and that
the enforcement of Sunday observance would greatly improve the morals of society. This
claim is especially urged in America, where the doctrine of the true Sabbath has been most
widely preached. Here the temperance work, one of the most prominent and important of
moral reforms, is often combined with the Sunday movement, and the advocates of the latter
represent themselves as laboring to promote the highest interest of society; and those who
refuse to unite with them are denounced as the enemies of temperance and reform. But the
fact that a movement to establish error is connected with a work which is in itself good,
is not an argument in favor of the error. We may disguise poison by mingling it with
wholesome food, but we do not change its nature. On the contrary, it is rendered more
dangerous, as it is more likely to be taken unawares. It is one of Satan's devices to
combine with falsehood just enough truth to give it plausibility. The leaders of the
Sunday movement may advocate reforms
Page 588
which the people need, principles which are in harmony with the Bible; yet while there is
with these a requirement which is contrary to God's law, His servants cannot unite with
them. Nothing can justify them in setting aside the commandments of God for the precepts
of men.
Through the two great errors, the immortality of the soul and Sunday sacredness, Satan
will bring the people under his deceptions. While the former lays the foundation of
spiritualism, the latter creates a bond of sympathy with Rome. The Protestants of the
United States will be foremost in stretching their hands across the gulf to grasp the hand
of spiritualism; they will reach over the abyss to clasp hands with the Roman power; and
under the influence of this threefold union, this country will follow in the steps of Rome
in trampling on the rights of conscience.
As spiritualism more closely imitates the nominal Christianity of the day, it has greater
power to deceive and ensnare. Satan himself is converted, after the modern order of
things. He will appear in the character of an angel of light. Through the agency of
spiritualism, miracles will be wrought,the sick will be healed, and many undeniable
wonders will be performed. And as the spirits will profess faith in the Bible, and
manifest respect for the institutions of the church, their work will be accepted as a
manifestation of divine power.
The line of distinction between professed Christians and the ungodly is now hardly
distinguishable. Church members love what the world loves and are ready to join with them,
and Satan determines to unite them in one body and thus strengthen his cause by sweeping
all into the ranks of spiritualism. Papists, who boast of miracles as a certain sign of
the true church, will be readily deceived by this wonder-working power; and Protestants,
having cast away the shield of truth, will also be deluded. Papists, Protestants, and
worldlings will alike accept the form of godliness without the power, and they will see in
this union a grand movement
Page 589
for the conversion of the world and the ushering in of the long-expected millennium.
Through spiritualism, Satan appears as a benefactor of the race, healing the diseases of
the people, and professing to present a new and more exalted system of religious faith;
but at the same time he works as a destroyer. His temptations are leading multitudes to
ruin. Intemperance dethrones reason; sensual indulgence, strife, and bloodshed follow.
Satan delights in war, for it excites the worst passions of the soul and then sweeps into
eternity its victims steeped in vice and blood. It is his object to incite the nations to
war against one another, for he can thus divert the minds of the people from the work of
preparation to stand in the day of God.
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
Page 590
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 mourneth and fadeth away," "the haughty people . . . do languish. The
earth also is defiled under the inhabitants thereof; 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:
"And it came to pass, when Ahab saw Elijah, that Ahab said unto him, Art thou he that
troubleth Israel? And he answered, I have not troubled Israel; but thou, and thy father's
house, in that ye have forsaken the commandments of the Lord, and thou hast followed
Baalim." 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
Page 591
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.
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.
Page 592
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 wroth with the woman, and
went to make war with the remnant of her seed, which keep the commandments of God, and
have the testimony of Jesus Christ." Revelation 12:17.
Previous Chapter l Table
Contents l Next Chapter
|
|
