Impending Conflict
491
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.
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.
The line of distinction between professed Christians and the un-
godly 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 sweep-
ing 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
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the ushering in of the long-expected millennium.
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. Intem-
perance 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.
Satan works through the elements also to garner his harvest of
unprepared souls. He has studied the secrets of the laboratories of