FRIDAY MORNING MANNA November 15, 2013
Nathaniel Fajardo Email:[email protected]
Are We Preparing for the Latter Rain?– Part V
Resilient, patient, long-suffering, hospitable, hard-working, resourceful, religious, and forgiving to a fault as a people, “pliant as a bamboo, ” as the Filipino literary art critic and poet I. V. Mallari described in his essay, the Filipinos in the Philippines are still sifting through the horror that Typhoon Haiyan, or Yolanda (as known in the Philippines), left in its devastating wake exactly a week after our Christian Roman Catholic brethren celebrated their All Saints Day, November 1, All Souls Day the next day (their solemn feast commemorating those who died and are now in Purgatory). Halloween, celebrated by most other Christians, is the eve or vigil of All Saints Day.
If the death toll of more than 10,000 in Tacloban alone, provincial capital of Leyte Island, turns out to be correct, Haiyan would be the deadliest natural disaster ever recorded in the Philippines, packing record-breaking winds of 170 mph and causing tsunami-like storm surge to rise as high as 20 feet.
The November 10 AP report used words Filipinos and most Philippine-born U. S. citizens are familiar with—typhoon season– except for this killer typhoon: “The Philippines is annually buffeted by tropical storms and typhoons, which are called hurricanes or cyclones elsewhere in the planet. . . . Many rake the islands with fierce winds and powerful waves each year, and the archipelago’s exposed eastern seaboard often bears the brunt. Even by the standards of the Philippines, however, Haiyan is a catastrophe of epic proportions and has shocked the impoverished and densely populated nation of 96 million people.”
Philippine Interior Secretary Mar Roxas said in the early hours: “All systems, all vestiges of modern living—communications, power, —all are down. There is no way to communicate to people.” Alfred Romualdez, nephew of the former first lady Imelda Marcos, Tacloban city’s mayor, who survived and had to be rescued from the roof of his house, said:” “The devastation is . . . . I don’t have the words for it.”
The world response, from the UN, America, its allies and all groups, religious or civic, big or small, is heart-warming. Gut-wrenching calamities of this magnitude still reveal that the Holy Spirit is still working with those who hearts are not fully hardened with sin. Let us do all we can to help, in addition to our prayers that the corrupt, vulture-like officials will not take advantage of the situation. Christ said. “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these My brethren, ye have done it unto Me.” Matt. 25: 40. “Every temptation resisted, every evil overcome, every word of tender pity expressed, is faithfully chronicled [in the book of remembrance]. And every act of sacrifice, every suffering, and sorrow endured for Christ’s sake, is recorded. Says the psalmist: ‘Thou tallest my wanderings: put Thou my tears into Thy bottle: are they not in Thy book?’ Psalm 56: 8.” (GC 481).
Those who deny the Biblical account of creation will reject the truth of the plan of salvation and remain ignorant of the true nature of the great controversy between Christ and Satan and the work of the latter to deceive, cause pain, suffering, sorrow, disease, war, desolation, and death upon mankind. Many believe that such catastrophes are merely the result of global warming and are reversible by “save the earth programs.” Modern-day soothsayers call such “mere capricious outbursts and tantrums of mother nature.” Still others say we are entering another “ice age,” etc. But those who have been prayerfully studying Bible prophecy know that such epic “natural disasters” will increase in frequency, scope, magnitude, and ferocity regardless of all noble attempts to use cutting edge science and technology to try to track, pre-empt, or even prevent them. Why? These calamities are part of the God’s appointed agencies and harbingers to awaken mankind to repentance and be prepared for the rapidly-approaching (1) final test of the mark of the beast, Revelation 13 and 14 (2) the time of trouble such as never was, Rev. 7: 1-8; Dan. 12: 1, 2, and more specially, for God’s people, (3) the promised latter rain of the Holy Spirit, empowering the glorious final loud cry of the fourth angel of Revelation 18!
We quote vital passages written back in 1884 by the pen of inspiration that daily are becoming more urgent. We must expect more catastrophes of these nature to occur one after another other until it reaches its prophesied climax, which will come as an overwhelming surprise to many who thought it would be caused by a mankind-ending atomic or hydrogen bomb war between superpowers of the earth or by a giant asteroid hitting the earth, or an invasion by extraterrestrials, etc.—but not the final controversy over God’s law! Notice:
“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, on trouble succeeding another as in a moment. It is God that shields His creatures and hedges them in from the destroyer [Satan]. But the Christian world have shown contempt for the law of Jehovah; and the Lord will do just what He 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 [Satan] 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. [Isaiah 24: 4, 5 quoted].
“And then the great deceiver will persuade me 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 are 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 till 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: ‘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 has followed Baalim.’ 1 Kings 18: 17, 18. As the wrath of the people shall be excited by false charges, they will pursue a course very similar to that which apostate Israel pursued toward Elijah [the second man translated to heaven without tasting death].” – E. G. White, The Great Controversy, (1911 ed.), pp. 589, 590.
This means the final Pentecost in the Latter Rain is coming soon! “Under the figure of the early and latter rain, that falls in the Eastern lands at seedtime and harvest, the Hebrew prophets [as we quoted in last Friday’s November 8 issue] foretold the bestowal of spiritual grace in extraordinary measure upon God’s church. The outpouring of the Spirit in the days of the apostles was the beginning of the early or former rain, and glorious was the result. . . . . But near the close of earth’s harvest, a special bestowal of spiritual grace is promised to prepare the church for the coming of the Son of man. This outpouring of the Spirit is likened to the falling of the latter rain.”- E. G. White, Acts of the Apostles, pp. 54, 55.
“The great work of the gospel is not to close with less manifestation of the power of God than marked its opening. The prophecies fulfilled in the outpouring of the former rain at the opening of the gospel are again to be fulfilled in the latter rain at its close . . . . Servants of God, with their faces lighted up and shining forth with holy consecration, will hasten from place to place to proclaim the message from heaven. By thousands of voices, all over the earth, the warning will be given. Miracles will be wrought, the sick will be healed, and signs and wonders will follow the believers [who are sealed and alive at that time]. Satan also works with lying wonders, even
bringing down fire from heaven in the sight of men. (See Rev. 13: 13). Thus the inhabitants of the earth will be brought to take their [final] stand.
“The message will be carried not so much by arguments as by the deep conviction of the Spirit of God. The arguments have been presented. The seed has been sown, and now it will spring up and bear fruit . . . . Now the rays of light penetrate everywhere, the truth is seen in its clearness, and the honest children of God [who are still in spiritual Babylon] sever the bands which have held them. Family connections, church relations, are powerless to stay them now. Truth is more precious than all besides. Notwithstanding the agencies combined against the truth, a large number take their stand on the Lord’s side.” – Great Controversy,, pp. 611-12. (To be continued next week)