God's Role in Today's Disasters

Historically, Adventists have always taught that the punishment of the Revelation trumpets were to be to aimed to a large degree at Islam. I can remember in my younger days that the church taught that the trumpets would be disasters and plagues with mercy, where the last plagues would have no mercy. I really have seen nothing that changes my mind. Today, as we see these type of activities taking place, I hear people talking about happenstance, time and chance (Eccl 9:11), and just plain uncommon occurrences which are becoming common, but nowhere do I hear people talking about the trumpets.

I remember Uriah Smith's Daniel and Revelation predicting judgments against Islam. The fifth trumpet in all our commentaries includes judgment on Islam. Ellen White wrote about this: GC pg 658 on the bottomless pit as Islam, and in Home Missionary of Sept 1, 1892 she accredited the darkness and the smoke of the pit to Islam, even to the extend of specific punishments against their ungodly teachings. There is much more but that is enough to see the point. Thus, the question for now is simple; do we believe the trumpets are continuing, even reoccurring, to bring about the end of time, or do other explanations obscure our teaching? If we can see the trumpets in all of this, then of course, we can see God's role in today's disasters.

"An Exhaustive Ellen G White Commentary on Revelation" pages 761-767.

There are many Adventists authors mentioned here and their comments on Mohammedanism, Moslem and Islam. Actually, any Adventist commentary on Revelation 8 & 9 has much to say on the Moslem world. Examples would be Thiele, Outline Studies of Revelation, page 168; Paulien, Decoding Revelation's Trumpets, page 386, La-Rondelle, How to Understand End-time Principals, page 182. We could go on, Ford, Maxwell, Stefanovic, and all contributors to the symposiums from the last 4 decades. But the Moslems were not singled out exclusively, for much attention is given to apostate Israel and Church. But the emphasis of our commentaries was on the Moslem world. J N Loughborough on page 128 of "the Great Second Advent" put it this way; "The Fifth trumpet presents the rise of Mohammedanism with its cloud of errors. but especially the period of five months---". This dealt directly with the Ottoman Empire Steve mentioned. Those errors have not been changed and are rampant today. On page 762 in the EGW commentary, EGW is quoted as agreeing; "Mohammedanism has its converts in many lands, and its advocates deny the divinity of Christ--" and then she cries out for men who will demonstrate and teach the gospel. I personally have no 'hatred' for any Moslem, but a yearning for their acceptance of our Lord, and a prayer for them to discontinue their slaughter of 'infidels'.

Gus Foster Gus Foster