We are approaching the end of this earth's history, and Satan is working as never before. He is striving to act as director of the Christian world. With an intensity that is marvelous he is working with his lying wonders. Satan is represented as walking about as a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour. He desires to embrace the whole world in his confederacy. Hiding his deformity under the garb of Christianity, he assumes the attributes of a Christian, and claims to be Christ Himself.—Manuscript Releases 8:346 (1901). The Word of God declares that when it suits the enemy's purpose, he will through his agencies manifest so great a power under a pretense of Christianity that, “if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect” [Matthew 24:24].—Manuscript 125, 1901. As the spirits will profess faith in the Bible and manifest respect for the institutions of the church, their work will be accepted as a manifestation of divine power.—The Great Controversy, 588 (1911). The strongest bulwark of vice in our world is not the iniquitous life of the abandoned sinner or the degraded outcast; it is that life which otherwise appears virtuous, honorable, and noble, but in which one sin is fostered, one vice indulged.... Genius, talent, sympathy, even generous and kindly deeds, may thus become decoys of Satan to entice souls over the precipice of ruin.