Chapter 7—Great Distress Coming, and God’s People
Not Prepared For It
I saw greater distress in the land than we have yet witnessed. I
heard groans and cries of distress. I saw large companies in active
battle. I heard the booming of the cannon, the clash of arms, the
hand-to- hand fight. I heard the groans and prayers of the dying. The
ground was covered with the wounded and the dead. I saw desolate,
despairing families, and pinching want in many dwellings. I saw that
even now many families are suffering want, but this will increase. The
faces of many families looked haggard, pale, and pinched with hunger.
I was shown that the people of God should be closely united in the
bonds of Christian fellowship and love. God alone can be our shield
and strength in this time of our national calamities.
The people of God should awake. Their opportunities to spread
the truth should be improved, for they will not thus last long. I was
shown distress, and perplexity, and famine, in the land; and Satan is
now seeking to hold God’s people in a state of inactivity, to keep them
from acting their part in spreading the truth, and that they may be at
last weighed in the balance and found wanting.
I saw that God’s people must take warning and discern the signs
of the times. The signs of Christ’s coming are too plain to be doubted;
and in view of these things every one who professes the truth should
be living preachers. God calls upon all to awake; preachers and people
must awake. All Heaven is astir. The scenes of this earth’s history are
fast closing. We are amid the perils of the last days. Greater perils
are before us, and yet we are not awake. This lack of activity and
earnestness in the cause of God is dreadful. This death-stupor is from
Satan. He controls the minds of unconsecrated Sabbath-keepers, and
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leads them to be jealous of each other, fault-finding, and censorious. It
is Satan’s special work to divide hearts, that the influence, strength, and
labor, of God’s servants may be kept among unconsecrated Sabbath-
keepers, and precious time be occupied to settle little differences,
which should be spent in proclaiming to unbelievers the truth.
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