FRIDAY MORNING MANNA
Biblical Numerology: NUMBER FIVE Part VI
‘For what can war but endless war still breed?’
JOHN MILTON, Sonnets: To Lord Fairfax
THE NEW TESTAMENT SAYS:
“Where do wars and fights come from among you? Do they not come from your desires for pleasure that war in your members? You lust and do not have. You murder and covet and cannot obtain. You fight and war. Yet you do not have because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask amiss, that you may spend it on your pleasures. Adulterers and adulteresses! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Whoever therefore wants to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.” James 4: 1-4, N.K.J.V. Read 1 John 2: 15-17 also!
What a time to be alive today being a part and participants in what the ancient prophets were mere vicarious participants and spectators of in visions of earth’s frenzied activities in the last days! The unprecedented national and global play and counterplay of events are not a simple dichotomy but a part of the prophesied larger babel, meaning, confusion, the root word of Babylon, mankind’s final abomination. On one hand prosperity gospel purveyors are having their last hurrah mesmerizing their votaries into deeper spiritual slumber so near the midnight of earth’s probation with their best-selling “peace-and-safety” messages (1 Thess. 5: 3; Jer. 10: 21; 23: 1, 2). On the other hand, the conspiracy spin-masters continue weaving together sensational colorful strands of alleged facts and outright fiction that continue trapping the gullible.
America is a special object of end-time prophecy. We take a parenthetical break in our progressive features on numerology to address certain aspects of the rapidly-evolving scenario in America, the changes being introduced to its founding principles and national character, its position in the global stage, and its strained relations towards its perceived national enemies, including former allies in past wars and conflicts.
Who is real Mastermind Behind all Wars, Conflicts, Disasters, and Calamities? (From Vol 4, Spirit of Prophecy by Ellen G. White, 1884 ed., pp. 407-8): .
“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 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 elementsas far as God allows. When he was suffered [allowed] to afflict Job [see book of Job in the OT], 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 has shown contempt for the law of Jehovah [particularly the fourth commandment]; and the Lord does just what He has declared that He would do, He withdraws His blessings from the earth, and removes 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, he will bring trouble upon others, and lead men to 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 [tsunamis], and earthquakes, in every place and in a thousand forms, is Satan 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 the inhabitants of the world. The beasts of the field will groan and the earth will languish [Rom. 8: 22].
The Climax of all these Evils: —“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 the faithful few whom the Lord has sent to them with messages of warning and reproof. It will be declared that the nation is offending God by the violation of theSunday-Sabbath, that this sin has brought calamities which will not cease until Sundayobservance shall be strictly enforced, and that those who present the claims of the fourth commandment, thus destroying reverence for Sunday, are troublers of the nation, preventing its 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 [apostate king of the ten northern tribes of Israel] saw Elijah [the Tishbite prophet of God, only the second man translated to heaven without tasting death; the first was Enoch, seventh patriarch from Adam], 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.
“As the wrath of the people shall be exalted by false charges, they will pursue a course towards God’s ambassadors very similar to that which apostate Israel pursued towards Elijah.
Spiritualism: Satan’s Agency of Deception in Open War against God’s Law. – “The theory of the immortality of the soul was one of those false doctrines that Rome, borrowing from paganism, incorporated into the religion of Christendom. Martin Luther classed it with the ‘monstrous fables that form part of the Roman dunghill of decretals. ’(Petavel, E. ‘ ‘The Problem of Immortality,’ p. 255 (ed. 1892). Commenting on the words of Solomon in Ecclesiastes, that the dead know not anything,, the Reformer says: ‘Another place proving that the dead have no . . . .feeling. There is, saith he, no duty, no science, no knowledge, no wisdom there. Solomon judgeth that the dead are asleep, and feel nothing at all. For the dead lie there, accounting neither days nor years, but when they are awaked, they shall seem to have slept scarce one minute.’ (Luther’s “Expositions of Solomon’s Booke Called Ecclesiastes,’ p. 152 (ed. 1573, London).” – Ibid, Great Controversy, 1911 ed., p. 549.
The Two Great Doctrinal Errors and the Threefold Union. GC 1911, p. 588:
“Through the two great errors, the immortality of the soul and Sunday sacredness, Satan will bring the people under his deceptions. 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 the 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 three-fold union, this country will follow in the steps of Rome in trampling upon the rights of conscience [the very First Amendment of the Bill of Rights of the U.S. Constitution! Notice the no longer-subtle confluence and common trajectory and overlapping of the political and religious issues and institutions of the most powerful modern nation in the New World that once upheld with highest regard the separation of church and state powers as the fundamental law and civil liberty as dependent on it!]
“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 interest in the institutions of the Church, their work will be accepted as 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 [2 Tim. 3: 5], and they will see in this union a grand movement for the conversion of the world, and theushering in of the long-expected millennium!
“The miracle-working power manifested through Spiritualism will exert its influence against those who choose to obey God rather than men [Acts 5: 29]. Messages will come from the spirits declaring that God has sent them to inform the rejecters of Sunday that they are in error, and that the laws of the land should be obeyed as the law of God. [NOTE: This was tried in 1888 with the introduction to Congress of the Breckenridge and Blair Sunday law bills]. They will lament the great wickedness in the world, and second the testimony of religious teachers, that the degraded state of morals is caused by the desecration of Sunday. Great will be the indignation excited against all who refuse to accept their testimony.
“Those who honor the Bible Sabbath will be denounced as enemies of law and order, as breaking down the moral restraints of society, causing anarchy and corruption, and calling down the judgments of God upon the earth. Their conscientious scruples will be pronounced obstinacy, stubbornness, and contempt of authority. They will be accused of disaffection toward government. Ministers who deny the obligation of the divine law will present from the pulpit the duty of yielding obedience to the civil authorities as ordained of God. In legislative halls and courts of justice,commandment-keepers will be censured and misrepresented. A false coloring will be given to their words; the worst possible construction will be put upon their motives.
“The Protestant churches have rejected the clear, scriptural arguments in defense of God’s law, and they long to stop the mouths of those whose faith they cannot overthrow by the Bible. Though they blind their own eyes to the fact, they are now adopting a course which will lead to the persecution of those who conscientiously refuse to do what the rest of the Christian world are doing, and acknowledging the claims of the papal sabbath.
“The dignitaries of Church and State will unite to bribe, persuade, or compel all classes to honor Sunday. The lack of divine authority will be supplied by oppressive enactments. Political corruption is destroying love of justice and regard for truth, and in order to secure public favor, legislators will yield to the popular demand for a law enforcing Sunday observance. Liberty of conscience, which has cost this nation so great a sacrifice, will no longer be respected.
“In the soon-coming conflict we shall see exemplified the prophet’s words: ‘And the dragon was wroth with the woman [true church], and went to make war with the remnant of her seed, which keep the commandments of God, and have the testimony of Jesus Christ.’ Rev. 12: 17.
“Our land is in jeopardy. [Not because of Islamic extremism, terrorists, Russia, Syria, Iran, or North Korea.] The time is drawing on when its legislators shall so abjure the principles of Protestantism as to give countenance to Romish apostasy. The people for whom God has so marvelously wrought, strengthening them to throw off the galling yoke of popery, will, by a national act give vigor to the corrupt faith of Rome, and thus arouse the tyranny which only waits for a touch to start again into cruelty and despotism.
“With rapid steps are we already approaching this period. [Here’s the unmistakable sign]: When Protestant churches shall seek the support of the secular power, thus following the example of that apostate church, for opposing which their ancestors endured the fiercest persecution, then will there be a national apostasy which will end only in national ruin.”- Ibid, Vol. 4, Spirit of Prophecy, Conflict of the Ages Series, 1884 ed. pp. 407-410. Pacific Press Publishing Asso., Mt. View CA .
(To be continued next week)