.the Word of God, have failed to appreciate and use it.
He says,-“For
this cause God will send them strong
delusion [a working deception], that they may believe
n lie: that they may all be condemned, who believed
not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness
[doctrInal or practIcal].”-2Thes. 2: 11, 12.
We shall not be at all surprised if some later mani-
festations of the powers of darkness, transformed to
appear as the angels of light and progress, shall be
much more specious aad delusive than anything yet
attempted. We do well to remember the Apostle’s
Words,-“We
wrestle not with flesh and blood, but
with princely powers of darkness, with the spiritual
things of the evil one.”-Eph.6: 12.
In 1842, six years before “modem Spiritism” be-
gan to operate, Edward Bickersteth, a servant of God
and student of his Word, wrote,-
“Looking at the signs of the times, and the long
negleA and unnatural denial of all angelic ministration
or spiritual influence, and at the express predictions of
false Christs, and false prophets, who shall show signs
and wonders, in so much that it wen possible they should
deceive the very elect, and that when men remceive not the
love of
the truth that they might be saved, for this cause
God shall send them strong delusion, that they shall be-
lieve a lie; I cannot but think there is a painful pros-
pect of a SUDDEN RECOIL and religious revulsion from
the present unbelief and misbelief, to an unnatural and
undisdnguishing CREDULITY. “
Satan is the inspirer and supporter of every Anti-
Christ; and as he led those who had pleasure in error
rather than the truth to the organization of the great
Anti-Christ, Papacy, symbolically the “beast” of Rev.13, and as he is now operating to produce a Protestant
“image of the beast” with life, which will cooperate