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 ungodly 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 sweeping 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 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 . Intemperance 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 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 have shown contempt for the law of Jehovah ; and the Lord will do just what He has declared that He would--He will withdraw His blessings from the earth and remove 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 favour 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 , Satan is exercising his power . He sweeps away the ripening
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