, 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 hail-storms, 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."(1025)

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."(1026) 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 lamen