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Coming Conflict
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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
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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 has shown contempt for the law of Jehovah;
and the Lord does just what he has declared that he would do, he
withdraws his blessings from the earth, and removes 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 work. In accidents and calamities by sea and by land, in
great conflagrations, in fierce tornadoes and terrific hailstorms, in
tempests, floods, cyclones, tidal waves, and earthquakes, in every
place and in a thousand forms, is Satan exercising his power. He
sweeps away the ripening harvest, and famine and distress follow.
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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 the inhabitants of the world.
The beasts of the field will groan, and the earth will languish.
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 the faithful
few whom the Lord has sent to them with messages of warning
and reproof. It will be declared that the nation is offending God
by the violation of the Sunday-Sabbath, that this sin has brought
calamities which will not cease until Sunday observance shall be