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Darkness Before Dawn
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
.
The Cause of Evil Falsely Identified
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.
The miracle-working power manifested through spiritualism will
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.
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