The Impending Conflict
“And a
writer in the Religious Telescope testified: “We have never witnessed such a
general declension of religion as at the present. Truly, the church should
awake, and search into the cause of this affliction; for as an affliction
everyone that loves Zion must view it. When we call to mind how ‘few and far
between’ cases of true conversion are, and the almost unparalleled impertinence
and hardness of sinners, we almost involuntarily exclaim, ‘Has God forgotten to
be gracious? or, Is the door of mercy closed?’”{GC
377.2}
Such a
condition never exists without cause in the church itself. The spiritual darkness which falls upon nations, upon
churches and individuals, is due, not to an arbitrary withdrawal of the succors
of divine grace on the part of God, but to neglect or rejection of divine light
on the part of men. A striking illustration of this truth is presented in the
history of the Jewish people in the time of Christ. By their devotion to the world and forgetfulness of God
and His word, their understanding had become darkened, their hearts earthly and
sensual. Thus they were in ignorance concerning Messiah’s advent, and in their
pride and unbelief they rejected the Redeemer. God did not even then cut off
the Jewish nation from a knowledge of, or a
participation in, the blessings of salvation. But
those who rejected the truth lost all desire for the gift of Heaven. They had
“put darkness for light, and light for darkness,” until the light which was in
them became darkness; and how great was that darkness!”
{GC 377.3}
Great Controversy, 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. {GC 582.1}
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.
{GC 582.2}
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. 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. {GC 582.3}
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. {GC 583.1}
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? {GC 584.1}
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. {GC 584.2}
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, 585the 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. {GC 584.3}
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. {GC 585.1}
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 586attentions 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. {GC 585.2}
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. {GC 586.1}
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 587consciousness 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. {GC 586.2}
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 588which 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. {GC 587.1}
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. {GC
588.1}
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. {GC 588.2}
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 for the conversion of the world and the ushering in of the
long-expected millennium. {GC 588.3}
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. {GC 589.1}
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. {GC 589.2}
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 590tornadoes 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.
{GC 589.3}
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. {GC 590.1}
The miracle-working power
manifested through spiritualism 591will 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. {GC 590.2}
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. {GC 591.1}
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. {GC 591.2}
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. {GC 592.1}
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. {GC 592.2}
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. {GC 592.3}