Angels in the Final Crisis
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safe.” There were others who had been led to this retreat. The heavenly
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messenger said, “The time of trouble has come as a thief in the night,
as the Lord warned you it would come.”—
Maranatha, 270
.
Satan’s Personation After the Close of Probation
The wrath of Satan increases as his time grows short, and his
work of deceit and destruction reaches its culmination in the time of
trouble. God’s long-suffering has ended. The world has rejected His
mercy, despised His love, and trampled upon His law. The wicked
have passed the boundary of their probation, and the Lord withdraws
His protection, and leaves them to the mercy of the leader they have
chosen....
As the crowning act in the great drama of deception, Satan himself
will attempt to personate Christ. The church has long professed to look
to the Saviour’s advent as the consummation of her hopes. Now the
great deceiver will make it appear that Christ has come. In different
parts of the earth, Satan will manifest himself among men as a majestic
being of dazzling brightness, resembling the description of the Son of
God given by John in the Revelation. The glory that surrounds him is
unsurpassed by anything that mortal eyes have yet beheld. The shout
of triumph rings out upon the air, “Christ has come! Christ has come!”
The people prostrate themselves in adoration before him, while
he lifts up his hands, and pronounces a blessing upon them, as Christ
blessed His disciples when He was personally upon the earth. His
voice is soft and subdued, yet full of melody. In gentle, compassionate
tones he presents some of the same gracious, heavenly truths which
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the Saviour uttered; he heals the diseases of the people, and then, in his
assumed character of Christ, he claims to have changed the Sabbath
to Sunday, and commands all to hallow the day which he has blessed.
He declares that those who persist in keeping holy the seventh day
are blaspheming his name by refusing to listen to his angels sent to
them with light and truth. This is the strong, almost overmastering
delusion.—
The Spirit of Prophecy 4:441, 442
.
Satan sees that he is about to lose his case. He cannot sweep in
the whole world. He makes one last desperate effort to overcome the
faithful by deception. He does this in personating Christ. He clothes
himself with the garments of royalty which have been accurately de-