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 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 , Satan is exercising his power . He sweeps away the ripening harvest , and famine and distress follow . 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 both man and beast . " The earth mourneth and fadeth 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 .
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 .
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