A Spectacular Forecast

For good measure let us take one more statement that Mrs. White made in an article published in the The Signs of the Times, April 21, 1890. We quote in part:WBEGW 98.2

“The tempest is coming, and we must get ready for its fury by having repentance toward God and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ. The Lord will arise to shake terribly the earth. We shall see troubles on all sides. Thousands of ships will be hurled into the depths of the sea. Navies will go down, and human lives will be sacrificed by millions. Fires will break out unexpectedly, and no human effort will be able to quench them. The palaces of earth will be swept away in the fury of the flames.”—Reprinted in Messages to Young People, 89.WBEGW 98.3

What a picture to present of the years lying just ahead of 1890! How utterly fantastic, preposterous, and impossible—to employ only a few often-used adjectives—did such words sound to all the wise round about! No intellectual would believe those words, no diplomat, no educator, and few of the clergy. But in the midst of World War I that came relatively soon afterward, Mrs. White’s words sounded like a sad commentary on the world tragedy. Literally thousands of ships were hurled into the depths of the sea and navies did go down, and “the palaces of earth” were destroyed.WBEGW 98.4

In her later years Mrs. White wrote ever more graphically of the days ahead right up to the coming of the Lord. Have the events unfolding in these recent decades given us any reason to believe other than that the world is in an increasingly desperate state? Are not the scientists the most frightened men of all?WBEGW 99.1

Let us look at one more category of forecasts that Mrs. White made. They are found most graphically presented and in greatest detail in her book, The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan, a book which with the exception of secondary and technical editing and certain notes prepared under her direction in 1911, found essentially its present text form in 1888. In the latter part of that book a picture is drawn of an apostate Protestantism in the United States uniting to enforce some of its religious beliefs on the country, and then of Protestantism reaching across an erstwhile gulf to take the hand of Roman Catholicism. Presenting a detailed picture of this would carry our story here to too great lengths. We note only two important points. When Mrs. White wrote those forecasts there was no kind of unity in Protestantism, either in America or anywhere else. Protestants were bitterly discordant. And as to reaching across a gulf to engage in any kind of fellowship with Rome, the idea would have sounded utterly fanciful.WBEGW 99.2

But not so today. The twentieth century has produced some marvelous changes in the religious world. There has developed what is known as the ecumenical movement. There is a very great deal of unity in Protestantism in America today, and that unity seems to be steadily increasing. Indeed, the ecumenical movement has spread over all Christendom. And as to any Protestant group reaching across the gulf to Rome, what more remarkable developments do we have than the increasing conversations between Protestant and Catholic clergy, climaxed so dramatically in 1962, in the pope’s invitation to certain Protestant leaders to attend the Second Vatican Council at Rome as unofficial observers.WBEGW 100.1

We repeat, no one at the time Mrs. White wrote her book, The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan, would have dreamed of these twentieth-century developments. But these developments are before our eyes today.WBEGW 100.2

Now it is true that Mrs. White’s labors and writings are not focused on predictions in most instances, but her limited number of breathtaking forecasts seem only increasingly impressive as we now look back over the years. And not the least of their impressiveness is this, that they strengthen the conviction that must arise in the heart of any nonprejudiced examiner of the evidence, that Mrs. White was guided by a light beyond this world. That light could have come only from God, for it is only God who knows the future.WBEGW 100.3