"In the annals of human history the growth of nations, the rise and fall of empires, appear as dependent on the will and prowess of man. The shaping of events seems, to a great degree, to be deter mined by his power, ambition, or caprice. But in the word of God the curtain is drawn aside, and we behold, behind, above, and through all the play and counter-play of human interests and power and passions, the agencies of the all-merciful One, silently, patiently working out the counsels of His own will." --Education, p. 173 (1903).
"When the word of the prophet shall come to pass, then shall the prophet be known, that the Lord hath truly sent him" (Jer. 28:9).
Consider the following forecasts made by Ellen G. White and their fulfillment:
The World on the Verge of a Stupendous Crisis
Forecast:
The present is a time of overwhelming inter est to all living. Rulers and statesmen, men who occupy positions of trust and authority, thinking men and women of all classes, have their attention fixed upon the events taking place about us. They are watching the strained, rest less relations that exist among the nations. They observe the intensity that is taking possession of every earthly element, and they recognize that something great and decisive is about to take place--that the world is on the verge of a stupendous crisis. --Education, p. 179 (1903).
Fulfillment: Since World War II people have had their attention fixed upon the exciting events transpiring about us as if another great crisis were impending. Attention is fixed upon the struggle in Vietnam, the Arab-Israeli conflict, upon Washington, Paris, Berlin, Moscow, Korea, Cuba; upon strikes; lootings; air, water, and food pollution; demonstrations in our cities; violence on campuses; bombings and riots; and the tidal wave of crime sweeping over the land. This is truly a time of "over whelming interest" to all living.
Restraining the Winds
Forecast:
Angels are now restraining the winds of strife, that they may not blow until the world shall be warned of its coming doom; but a storm is gathering, ready to burst upon the earth; and when God shall bid His angels loose the winds, there will be such a scene of strife as no pen can picture. --Ibid., pp. 179, 180 (1903).
Fulfillment: In the passing years since World War II mankind has become involved in one war after another. The miracle is that a third global war and the horrors implied by nuclear attack have not occurred. Any one of the following crises could have triggered an international eruption: Korea, Suez, Cuba, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos. In each case we might ask, Why did not an international war break out? Why has not the involvement of the great world powers in these struggles, especially Vietnam, resulted in World War III? Prophecy explains the miracle. The angels are now restraining the winds of strife that they should not blow upon the earth until God's servants are sealed. "The most High" still rules "in the kingdom of men" (Dan. 4:25). But how long will the divine restraint and patience continue?
Anarchy and Riots
Forecast:
Anarchy is seeking to sweep away all law, not only divine, but human. The centralizing of wealth and power; the vast combinations for the enriching of the few at the expense of the many; the combinations of the poorer classes for the defense of their interests and claims; the spirit of unrest, of riot and bloodshed; the world-wide dissemination of the same teachings that led to the French Revolution all are tending to involve the whole world in a struggle similar to that which convulsed France. --Ibid., p. 228 (1903).
Fulfillment: Think of this prophecy against the background of international conspiracy and revolution a split world with East meeting West in the battle of ideologies and the real wars in Vietnam and the Middle East. What will the end be?
The prophecy of a convulsed world resulting from anarchy is in process of fulfillment. Few people today take seriously the dimension of danger. But society today is on the verge of dramatic changes.
The Move to the Cities
Forecast:
It is Satan's purpose to attract men and women to the cities, and to gain his object he invents every kind of novelty and amusement, every kind of excitement. And the cities of the earth today are becoming as were the cities before the Flood. Selected Messages, book 2, p. 355 (1908).
Fulfillment: The plan for city populations in the future envisions gigantic cities and megalopolises in the United States, for example, Chipitts, reaching from Chicago to Pittsburg; Boswash, Boston to Washington, D.C.; Sansan, San Francisco to San Diego with 44 per cent of the United States population in these three giant complexes.
Only ten cities in the world had populations in excess of one million persons in 1900. More than 60 did in 1962. Sick Cities, p. 17.
By 1980, over 90 percent of the American people will be living in urban areas. The figure in 1920 was exactly 51.2 percent. In 1962 it was just under 70 percent. Five metropolitan areas accounted for 20 percent of the nation's total population in 1960. One out of every five Americans then lived in either greater New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, or Detroit. --Ibid., p. 16.
Out of the Metropolitan Areas
Forecast:
"Out of the cities; out of the cities!" this is the message the Lord has been giving me. Country Living, p. 32 (1906).
It is time for our people to take their families from the cities into more retired localities, else many of the youth, and many also of those older in years, will be ensnared and taken by the enemy. --Testimonies, vol. 8, p. 101 (1903).
Fulfillment: Many Seventh-day Adventists and non-Seventh-day Adventists sense that the city is no place to rear families; the move is to suburban areas. Inner cities are losing large numbers of residents in some places particularly in the United States while many suburban areas are expand ing rapidly.
Youth and Drugs
Forecast:
On every side, Satan seeks to entice the youth into the path of perdition. . . . They become addicted to the use of wine and alcohol, tobacco and opium, and go from one stage of debasement to another. They are slaves to appetite. Counsel which they once respected, they learn to despise. They put on swaggering airs, and boast of liberty when they are the servants of corruption. They mean by liberty that they are slaves to selfishness, debased appetite, and licentiousness. --Temperance, p. 274 (1891).
Fulfillment: Today's youth are on the march, seeking to discover a meaningful identity and existence in an often chaotic and contradictory world. Many are succeeding, many are not. The march is sometimes loud and violent; the marchers, at times, drunk with liquor and hard drugs. There is self-deception with judgment in reverse gear. Example: Devotees of a cult of hippies; headquarters, a large city in the western U.S.A. One leader's "flattery, fear and sex lured his girls into a sisterhood of exploitation." Life, Dec. 19, 1969. The gang has been tied to the murder of twenty persons by unofficial police sources. These included a prominent actress and six others. The commune was sex-and-drug oriented. The youth lived under the "magic" spell of their leader who was himself under the spell of hallucinatory drugs.
Certain crimes are associated largely with youth in their teens. This is a cause of concern for millions of people, among them many thinking, high-minded youth.
To meet the crisis with crime the U.S. Government will spend billions in the next few years. Other countries are also moving in on criminals. All the world should be grateful that the majority of youth are not represented by youthful criminals but are law abiding and motivated by high ideals.
Crime and God's Judgment
Forecast:
Transgression has almost reached its limit. Confusion fills the world, and a great terror is soon to come upon human beings. The end is very near. Testimonies, vol. 8, p. 28 (1904). (See page 50.)
I am bidden to declare the message that cities full of transgression, and sinful in the extreme, will be destroyed by earthquakes, by fire, by flood. . . . Calamities will come calamities most awful, most unexpected; and these destructions will follow one after another. --Evangelism, p. 27.
In the calamities that are now befalling immense buildings and large portions of cities God is showing us what will come upon the whole earth. --Testimonies, vol. 7, p. 83 (1902).
Fulfillment: Mrs. White particularly marked out the "display of selfishness, the misuse of power, the cruelty, and the force used to cause men to unite with confederacies and unions binding themselves up in bundles for the burning of the great fires of the last days all these are the working of Satanic agencies." --Evangelism, p. 26.
Never in the history of the world have we been in a time of such fever and tumult. Billy Graham, the well-known evangelist, refers to these happenings as judgments of God.
It is because of the fact that the cities are full of transgression and sinful in the extreme that terrible fires, floods, and earthquakes come. God permits the protecting angels to withdraw their hands of protection and the fallen angels with demonic fury stir the worst passions in human hearts. Arson, pillage, looting, murder, mayhem, assault, and theft follow.
Revivals in the Churches
Forecast:
In many of the revivals which have occurred during the last half century, the same influences have been at work, to a greater or less degree, that will be manifest in the more extensive movements of the future. There is an emotional excitement, a mingling of the true with the false, that is well adapted to mislead. Yet none need be deceived. In the light of God's word it is not difficult to determine the nature of these movements. --The Great Controversy, p. 464 (1888).
Fulfillment: At the dawn of the seventies the Christian churches seem to be in a death-like state. Revival is needed, but any thing but revival is the order of the day.
A Gallup Poll published on March 5 announced that 75 per cent of those Americans questioned felt that religion was losing its influence in national life.—US. News & World Report, March 23, 1970, p. 43.
Disillusioned and bewildered over their role in church and society, men and women today are leaving the clergy and religious orders by the thousands. —Ibid., p. 46.
One estimate circulated rather widely is that at least 3,000 Protestant ministers, or 1 percent of the total, are leaving the vocation each year, and perhaps 2,500 Roman Catholic clergymen, or 4 percent of all priests in the U.S., are dropping out annually. Thousands of nuns are leaving the religious life. --Ibid.
Many modern church leaders have urged involvement in social and political actions and reforms.
An outspoken radical, the Rev. James D. Watson, became moderator of the New York City presbytery of the United Presbyterian Church. He summed up his view of the church's mission as follows:
"I see the ministry in terms of social action, not in terms of preaching or the rest of the nonsense we went through years ago. In our day, we are more concerned about man than God. God can take care of himself." Ibid., p. 44.
More and more the way is being prepared for reaction and for the emotional revivals of which Ellen White prophesied. The involvement of liberal churches in social, political, and secular life may presage a sort of emotional "renaissance." In a new book, Feast of Fools, the author, a prominent clergyman, praises mysticism, myth-making, ritual, and festivity. "We need a renaissance of the spirit, and there are signs that it is coming," he said. He referred to "seminarians and college students [who] browse through bookshelves loaded with explanations of Oriental mysticism, witchcraft, demonology, sainthood, Pentecostalism, astrology and 'sensitivity training.' "
Mysticism is an existentialist religion with or without drugs. As expressed by an Eastern coed: "Religion can be experienced simply by going into a forest." More than a few clergymen extolled last year's [1969] Woodstock Festival, where drug-taking was commonplace, as a "religious experience," and one group of Catholics worked out a "marijuana liturgy" or "pot Mass." 17.5. News & World Report, March 23, 1970, p. 45.
Many are involved in this type of sen sationalism and the way is being prepared for a religion of feeling and ecstasy, of ecstatic tongues, and miraculous healings for the acceptance by the masses of the miracle-working power of Satan and the deception of spiritism.
Spiritism
Forecast:
Little by little he [Satan] has prepared the way for his masterpiece of deception in the development of spiritualism. He has not yet reached the full accomplishment of his de signs; but it will be reached in the last remnant of time. --The Great Controversy, p. 561 (1888).
I saw the rapidity with which this delusion [spiritism] was spreading. A train of cars was shown me, going with the speed of lightning. The angel bade me look carefully. I fixed my eyes upon the train. It seemed that the whole world was on board. Then he showed me the conductor, a fair, stately person, whom all the passengers looked up to and reverenced. I was perplexed and asked my attending angel who it was. He said, "It is Satan. He is the conductor, in the form of an angel of light. He has taken the world captive. They are given over to strong delusions, to believe a lie that they may be damned. His agent, the highest in order next to him, is the engineer, and others of his agents are employed in different offices as he may need them, and they are all going with lightning speed to perdition." Early Writings, p. 263 (1858).
Fulfillment: These nineteenth-century predictions foretold spiritism's rapid acceptance. Today spiritism is spreading with the speed of wildfire. "The veils are falling between the two worlds" "the world of the visible and invisible," said one observer. Spiritism has saturated the Christian churches. There is great faith in the "potencies of the Psychic." Adherents from all professions and walks of life number in the millions. As to its religious garb, an official publication of the spiritists blasphemously declares:
Spiritualism, with its signs, wonders, visions and healing gifts was the religion of the Apostles; of the post-apostolic fathers, and the primitive Christians. --Centennial Book of Modern Spiritualism in America, p. 115.
In the final wicked harmony of apostate Protestantism and Rome we shall see most of the world swept into the ranks of the spiritists.
Except those who are kept by the power of God, through faith in His word, the whole world will be swept into the ranks of this delusion. The people are fast being lulled to a fatal security, to be awakened only by the outpouring of the wrath of God. The Great Controversy, p. 562 (1888).
The Church Will Not Fall
The hope of the church today is grounded in the Word of God, not in miracles and sensational experiences. And the church will triumph not fail.
Satan will work his miracles to deceive; he will set up his power as supreme. The church may appear as about to fall, but it does not fall. It remains, while the sinners in Zion will be sifted out the chaff separated from the precious wheat. --Selected Messages, book 2, p. 380 (1886).
I am encouraged and blessed as I realize that the God of Israel is still guiding His people, and that He will continue to be with them, even to the end. —Ibid., p. 406 (1913).
The exhibits provided in this article not only pinpoint the prophetic insights of the Spirit of Prophecy but also the seriousness of the times and the need for revival and reform.
