THE UNITED STATES IN PROPHECY
By Uriah Smith
HE DOETH GREAT WONDERS.—CONTINUED. MIRACLES are of two kinds, true and false, just as we have a true Christ and false christs, true prophets and false prophets, and true apostles and false apostles. By a false miracle, we mean not a pretended miracle, which is no miracle at all, but a real miracle, a supernatural performance, wrought in the interest of falsehood for the purpose of deceiving the people, or of proving a lie. The miracles performed by the two-horned beast of Rev. 13, are real miracles, but are wrought for the purpose of deception. The prophecy does not read that he deceived the people by means of the miracles which he claimed that he was able to perform, or which he pretended to do; but which he had power to do. They, therefore, fall far short of the prophecy who suppose that the great wonders wrought by this power were fulfilled by Napoleon when he told the Mussulmans that he could command a fiery chariot to come down from Heaven, but never did it, or by the pretended miracles of the Romish church, which are only shams, mere tricks played off by ungodly and designing priests upon their ignorant and superstitious dupes. Miracles, or wonders, such as are to be wrought by the two-horned beast, and withal, as we think, the very ones referred to in the prophecy, are mentioned by Paul in 2 Thess. 2:9, 10. Speaking of the second coming of Christ, he says, “Whose coming is after [kata, at the time of, 2 Tim. 4:1] the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders, and with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish, because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved.” These are no slight-of-hand performances, but such a working of Satan as the world has never before seen. To work with all power and signs and lying wonders, is certainly to do a real and an astounding work, but one which is designed to prove a lie. Again, the Saviour, predicting events to occur just before his second coming, says, “For there shall arise false christs and false prophets, and shall show great signs and wonders, insomuch that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect.” Here again, are wonders foretold, wrought for the purpose of deception, so powerful that, were it possible, even the very elect would be deceived by them. Thus we have a series of prophecies setting forth the development, in the last days, of a wonder-working power, manifested to a startling and unprecedented degree, in the interests of falsehood and error. All refer to one and the same thing. The earthly government, with which it was to be especially connected, is that represented by the two-horned beast, or false prophet. The agency lying back of the outward manifestations was to be Satanic, the spirits of devils. The prophecy calls for such a work as this in our own country at the present time. Do we behold anything like it? Read the answer in the lamentation of the prophet: “Woe to the inhabitants of the earth and of the sea! for the devil is come down unto you, having great wrath, because he knoweth that he hath but a short time.” Stand aghast, O Earth! Tremble, ye people, but be not deceived. The huge specter of evil confronts us, as the prophet declared. Satan is loosed. From the depth of Tartarus, myriads of demons swarm over the land. The prince of darkness manifests himself as never before, and, stealing a word from the vocabulary of Heaven to designate his work, he calls it—Spiritualism. 1. Does spiritualism, then, bear these marks of Satanic agency? (1) The spirits which communicate claim to be the spirits of our departed friends. But the Bible, in the most explicit terms, assures us that the dead are wholly inactive and unconscious till the resurrection; that the dead know not anything; Eccl. 9:5; that every operation of the mind has ceased; Ps. 146:4; that every emotion of the heart is suspended; Eccl. 9:6; and that there is neither work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave, where they lie. Eccl. 9:10. Whatever intelligence, therefore, comes to us professing to be one of our dead friends, comes claiming to be what, from the word of God, we know he is not. But angels of God do not lie; therefore these are not the good angels. Spirits of devils will lie; this is their work; and these are the credentials which at the very outset they hand us. (2) The doctrines which they teach are from the lowest and foulest depths of the pit of lies. They deny God. They deny Christ. They deny the atonement. They deny the Bible. They deny the existence of sin, and all distinction between right and wrong. They deny the sacredness of the marriage covenant; and, interspersing their utterances with the most horrid blasphemies against God and his Son, and everything that is lovely, and good, and pure, they give the freest license to every propensity to sin, and to every carnal and fleshly lust. Tell us not that these things, openly taught under the garb of religion, and backed up by supernatural sights and sounds, are anything less than Satan’s master-piece. 2. Spiritualism answers accurately to the prophecy in the exhibition of great signs and wonders. Among its many achievements these may be mentioned: Various articles have been transported from place to place by spirits alone. Beautiful music has been produced, independently of human agency, with and without the aid of visible instruments. Many well-attested cases of healing have been presented. Persons have been carried through the air by the spirits in the presence of many others. Tables have been suspended in the air with several persons upon them. And, finally, spirits have represented themselves in bodily form and talked with an audible voice. A writer in the Spiritual Clarion speaks as follows of the manner in which spiritualism has arisen, and the astounding progress it has made:— “This revelation has been with a power, a might, that, if divested of its almost universal benevolence, had been a terror to the very soul; the hair of the very bravest had stood on end, and his chilled blood had crept back upon his heart at the sights and sounds of its inexplicable phenomena. It comes with foretokening, with warning. It has been, from the very first, its own best prophet, and step by step it has foretold the progress it would make. It comes, too, most triumphant. No faith before it ever took so victorious a stand in its infancy. It has swept like a hurricane of fire through the land, compelling faith from the baffled scoffer and the most determined doubter.” 3. Spiritualism answers to the prophecy in that it had its origin in our own country, thus connecting its wonders with the work of the two-horned beast. Commencing in Hydesville, N. Y., in the family of Mr. John D. Fox, in the latter part of March, 1848, it spread with incredible rapidity through all the States. The estimates of the number of spiritualists in this country at the present time, only thirty-two short years from its commencement, though differing somewhat from each other, are nevertheless such as to show that the progress of spiritualism has been without a parallel. Thus, Judge Edmonds puts the number at five or six millions (5,000,000 or 6,000,000); Hepworth Dixon, three millions (3,000,000); A. J. Davis, four millions, two hundred and thirty thousand (4,230,000); Warren Chase, eight millions (8,000,000); and the Roman Catholic Council at Baltimore, between ten and eleven millions (10,000,000 to 11,000,000). Of those who have become its devotees, Judge Edmonds said as long ago as 1853:— “Besides the undistinguished multitude, there are many now of high standing and talent ranked among them—doctors, lawyers, and clergymen, in great numbers, a Protestant bishop, the learned and reverend president of a college, judges of our higher courts, members of Congress, foreign ambassadors, and ex-members of the United States Senate.” This statement was written more than twenty-five years since; and from that time to this, the work of the spirits has been steadily progressing, and spreading among all classes of people. And from this nation spiritualism has gone abroad into all the earth. Queen Victoria is almost an insane devotee of the new philosophy. The late Emperor and Empress of France, and the Emperor and Grand Dukes of Russia are all said to have sought to these spirits for knowledge. Thus it is working its way to the potentates of the earth, and is fast preparing to accomplish its real mission, which is, by deceiving the world with its miracles, to gather the nations to the battle of the great day of God Almighty. Here we pause. Let this work go on a little longer, as it has been going, and as it is still going, and what a scene is before us! Having seen so much fulfilled, we cannot now draw back and deny the remainder. And so we look for the onward march of this last great wonder-working deception, till that is accomplished which in the days of Elijah was a test between Jehovah and Baal, and fire is brought down from heaven to earth in the sight of men. Then will be the hour of the power of darkness, the hour of temptation that is coming upon all the world to try them that dwell upon the earth. Rev. 3:10. Then all will be swept from their anchorage by the strong current of delusion, except those whom it is not possible to deceive—the elect of God. And still the world sleeps on, while Satan, with lightning fingers and hellish energy, weaves over them his last fatal snare. It is time some mighty move was made to waken the world and rouse the church to the dangers we are in. It is time every honest heart should learn that the only safeguard against the great deception, whose incipient and even well-advanced workings we already behold before our eyes, is to make the truths of God’s holy and immutable word our shield and buckler.