"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, 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 have
shown contempt for the law of Jehovah; and the Lord will do just what He has
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 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." The Great Controversy p.589,590 E.G.W.
And there shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars; and upon
the earth distress of nations, with perplexity; the sea and the waves roaring;
Luke 21:25
and there shall be earthquakes in divers places, and there shall be famines and
troubles: these are the beginnings of sorrows.
Mark 13:8