Chapter 36 : The Impending Conflict - Its Causes

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 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. [583]

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

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 Lawgiver. 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 Phenicia.

No error accepted by the Christian world strikes more boldly

[584] 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, the multitudes eagerly accept the delusions of Satan. They [585]

give the rein to lust, and practice the sins which have called down

judgments upon the heathen.

Those who teach the people to lightly regard 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 flood-gates 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 frame-work

of social life, seems to be a tottering mass, ready to fall to ruin.

[586] The vilest of criminals, when thrown into prison for their offenses,

are often made the recipients of gifts and 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 [587]

to the papal error of natural immortality and man’s 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, 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 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

[589] will alike accept the form of godliness without the power, and they

will see in this union a grand movement 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 [590]

work. In accidents and calamities by sea and by land, in great conflagrations,

in fierce tornadoes and terrific hail-storms, 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.

[591] 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.

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 Romish 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

evil-doers; 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 law-breakers, 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 en- [592]

emies 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.]