The Nations Are Angry

It’s 2:14 in the morning, and you can’t sleep.

The phone lights your face in the dark. You tell yourself you’ll check one thing, just one, and then you’ll put it down. But the feed has other plans. A tanker burns off the coast of Oman. Missiles streak over a narrow strip of water that most people couldn’t find on a map a year ago and now can’t stop hearing about. In Ukraine, bombs fall on a school where families had gone to hide, and a rescuer’s voice cracks as he reads out how many are still missing. A video shows a queue of cars stretching past a gas station, then past the next block, then out of frame.

Prices up. Markets down. Another ceasefire, another collapse. Hackers trigger false nuclear alerts. Freezers in supermarkets overheat because someone, somewhere, broke into the system.

You scroll. You scroll some more. And somewhere around 2:30, a quiet question surfaces that you’d never say out loud at the dinner table:

Is this how it ends?

If you’ve asked that question this year, you’re not alone. You’re not crazy. And you’re not without an answer.

The year the world held its breath

Let’s name what we’re living through, plainly.

On February 28, 2026, the United States and Israel launched a massive air war against Iran. Within days, traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow channel that carries a huge share of the world’s oil, had all but stopped. Analysts have called it the largest supply disruption the global oil market has ever seen. Ceasefires came and went. Talks were held and failed. A blockade rose, fell and rose again. This very week, missiles have again been exchanged over the strait, and a merchant ship off Oman was struck, killing a sailor who had simply gone to sea to feed his family.

The shock didn’t stay in the Gulf. In March, the Philippines declared a national energy emergency. Slovenia began rationing fuel. Egypt dimmed its street lights and closed its shops early. Sri Lanka moved to a four-day work week because people couldn’t afford to drive to the office. Fertilizer prices climbed, because a third of the world’s urea passes through that same strait, and economists warned that what starts at the pump ends at the dinner table.

Meanwhile, the war in Ukraine grinds on. Sudan bleeds. Yemen counts its dead in the thousands. An Ebola epidemic spreads across parts of Africa. Bolivia has declared an emergency ahead of a strong El Niño. Cybercriminals have stolen billions.

If you feel like the ground under the world is moving, it’s because, in a very real sense, it is.

Jesus once described a moment in history with words that could be a caption for 2026:

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; Men’s hearts failing them for fear, and for looking after those things which are coming on the earth: for the powers of heaven shall be shaken.
Luke 21:25–26

Distress of nations, with perplexity. Perplexity: the condition of not knowing what to do next. Is there a better one-word summary of the evening news?

But here’s what most people miss. Jesus didn’t say those words to frighten His friends. Two verses later, He tells them what to do when they see it all happening. We’ll get there. Hold on.

A book that saw the shape of it

In 1888, a woman named Ellen G. White published a book called The Great Controversy. She revised it in 1911. She had very little formal schooling. She was not a politician, an economist or a military strategist. She never heard of the Strait of Hormuz, never saw an oil tanker, never imagined a drone.

And yet, more than a century later, people keep pulling her book off the shelf at moments exactly like this one, and finding that its pages read uncomfortably like this morning’s headlines.

The Great Controversy is not a book of predictions about particular countries or dates. It’s something deeper and, in a way, more unsettling. It pulls back the curtain on the story behind history. Its claim is that everything we see, every war, every revival, every act of cruelty and every act of courage, is part of one long conflict between two kingdoms: the kingdom of Christ, built on self-giving love, and the kingdom of Satan, built on self-seeking power.

In its introduction, she wrote this about the end of that conflict:

In the great final conflict, Satan will employ the same policy, manifest the same spirit, and work for the same end, as in all preceding ages. That which has been, will be, except that the coming struggle will be marked with a terrible intensity such as the world has never witnessed.
Ellen G. White, The Great Controversy, Introduction

The same spirit, but with terrible intensity. Keep that phrase in mind as we walk through some of the most striking passages in the book. Not to scare you. To show you that none of this has caught heaven by surprise, and that the same book that describes the storm describes the sunrise even more vividly.

“Satan delights in war”

Tucked into a chapter called “The Impending Conflict” is a passage that stops readers cold every time a new war breaks out:

Satan delights in war; for it excites the worst passions of the soul, and then sweeps into eternity its victims steeped in vice and blood. It is his object to incite the nations to war against one another; for he can thus divert the minds of the people from the work of preparation to stand in the day of God.
The Great Controversy, “The Impending Conflict”

Read that last sentence again, slowly. For he can thus divert the minds of the people.

That is the eye-opening part. According to this book, war is not only a tragedy. It’s a distraction. The enemy of God and humanity doesn’t only want bodies; he wants attention. He wants your mind so full of fear, outrage and endless updates that there’s no room left for the questions that matter most: Who am I? Who made me? Am I ready to meet Him? Am I loving the people in front of me?

Think about your own year. How many hours have you spent watching the news, and how many have you spent in prayer? How many arguments about the war have you had, compared to conversations about the God who weeps over war?

That’s not meant as a guilt trip. It’s an invitation to notice the trap, so you can step out of it. The missiles over the Gulf are real. But the most important battle of 2026 isn’t being fought in the Strait of Hormuz. It’s being fought in the space between your eyes and your heart.

And notice something else: Ellen White doesn’t blame God for war. She doesn’t say God sends it as punishment or entertainment. She says plainly that the one who delights in war is the enemy. The God of the Bible is the one who promises a day when “they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more” (Isaiah 2:4).

If you’ve ever looked at a photo of a bombed-out school and felt sick, that sickness is not weakness. It’s the image of God in you, recoiling from what was never His plan.

“By sea and by land”

The same chapter goes on. What she wrote next could almost be a summary of the global fallout from this year’s war:

Even now he is at work. In accidents and calamities by sea and by land, in great conflagrations, in fierce tornadoes and terrific hail-storms, 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, “The Impending Conflict”

Calamities by sea: burning tankers and a strangled shipping lane. Calamities by land: fuel queues, failed harvests, cities rationing power. Famine and distress follow: aid agencies warning that a fuel war becomes a food war. A deadly taint in the air, and pestilence: we’ve lived through a pandemic in recent memory, and outbreaks still flare.

And the line that rings truest of all: more and more frequent and disastrous. It’s not your imagination that the crises seem to be stacking up. They are. Each one barely ends before the next begins.

But there’s a sentence just before that passage, easy to skip, that may be the most freeing thing you read today. Ellen White writes that the enemy “will bring trouble upon others, and lead men to believe that it is God who is afflicting them.”

Let that land.

If you’ve lost something this year, a job, a home, a loved one, your sense of safety, you may have wondered whether God was punishing you. Whether He’d turned His back. Whether He’s even there.

The Great Controversy says, in effect: that thought is part of the attack. The pain is real. But the accusation that God doesn’t care is a lie. The God revealed in Jesus is not the author of your suffering. He is the One who stepped into it, wore a crown of thorns, and rose again to end it forever.

The hand that holds back the dark

So if evil is so active, why hasn’t the world already fallen apart completely?

The very first chapter of The Great Controversy answers that question with one of the most beautiful and overlooked ideas in the whole book:

We cannot know how much we owe to Christ for the peace and protection which we enjoy. It is the restraining power of God that prevents mankind from passing fully under the control of Satan.
The Great Controversy, “The Destruction of Jerusalem”

Think about that the next time you pour a glass of clean water. The next time your child gets home safely. The next time a ceasefire holds for one more night, or a nurse in a crowded hospital somehow finds the strength for one more shift. It is the restraining power of God.

We tend to notice the cracks in the dam. We rarely notice the dam itself. But this book insists that every ordinary, peaceful hour you’ve ever lived is a gift held in place by a loving hand. The headlines show us what the world looks like where that restraint is resisted. They don’t show us the countless disasters that never happened, the wars that were never started, the hearts quietly turned toward peace.

Jesus said, “Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God” (Matthew 5:9). Every diplomat who refuses to give up, every soldier who chooses mercy, every neighbour who shares fuel or food with someone in need is a small, living sign that God has not let go of this world.

The tears on the Mount of Olives

To understand why The Great Controversy talks about the end of the world at all, you have to start where the book starts: with Jesus, crying.

The opening scene is breathtaking. It’s the week before His crucifixion. Crowds are waving palm branches. People are shouting His name. It’s the happiest parade Jerusalem has seen in years. And then, at the top of the Mount of Olives, Jesus stops, looks out over the gleaming city, and breaks down.

And when he was come near, he beheld the city, and wept over it, Saying, If thou hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy day, the things which belong unto thy peace! but now they are hid from thine eyes.
Luke 19:41–42

Ellen White describes it like this:

Amid the universal rejoicing of the triumphal entry, while palm branches waved, while glad hosannas awoke the echoes of the hills, and thousands of voices declared Him king, the world’s Redeemer was overwhelmed with a sudden and mysterious sorrow.
The Great Controversy, “The Destruction of Jerusalem”

Jesus could see what was coming. Within forty years, Roman armies would surround Jerusalem and the city would be destroyed. And His tears were not for Himself. They were for the people He loved, people who were about to walk into catastrophe.

Then the book makes a startling turn. It says that what happened to Jerusalem was a preview:

The Saviour’s prophecy concerning the visitation of judgments upon Jerusalem is to have another fulfilment, of which that terrible desolation was but a faint shadow.
The Great Controversy, “The Destruction of Jerusalem”

That sounds terrifying, until you read what happened to the people who listened to Jesus.

“Not one”

Jesus had given His followers a specific warning. When they saw Jerusalem surrounded by armies, they were to leave. Don’t go back for your coat. Don’t wait to see how things turn out. Go.

Decades later, it happened exactly as He said. The Roman general Cestius surrounded the city, then, unexpectedly, pulled back. In that brief window, the believers remembered the warning, and they fled. When the armies returned and the city fell in one of the most horrific sieges in ancient history, they were already safe.

Ellen White summarizes it in a single, stunning sentence:

Not one Christian perished in the destruction of Jerusalem.
The Great Controversy, “The Destruction of Jerusalem”

Not one.

Here’s what that means for you, sitting with your phone at 2 a.m.: God’s warnings are not threats. They are rescue plans. Jesus didn’t warn His friends because He wanted them afraid. He warned them because He wanted every single one of them to live. And every single one of them did.

That’s the heart behind the Bible’s talk about the end of the world. It’s not a horror story. It’s a love letter with directions home.

The real battlefield

If you’ve heard people talk about the “end times,” you’ve probably heard all kinds of wild charts and confident predictions. Every new war, every new leader, gets plugged into a prophetic puzzle. Some of it is sincere. Much of it is fear dressed up as faith.

The Great Controversy does something different, and it may surprise you. It says the final conflict of earth’s history won’t ultimately be about oil, borders or missiles. It will be about something far more personal: who you trust, and who you worship.

None but those who have fortified the mind with the truths of the Bible will stand through the last great conflict. To every soul will come the searching test, Shall I obey God rather than men?
The Great Controversy, “The Scriptures a Safeguard”

To every soul. Not just to presidents and generals. To you. To me. The great question at the end of history is the same question the apostles answered when they were threatened for speaking about Jesus: “We ought to obey God rather than men” (Acts 5:29).

This is why the book insists that the safest place in a dangerous world is not a bunker but a Bible. The person who knows God’s voice can’t easily be fooled by other voices, no matter how loud they get or how frightening the headlines become.

And the book warns that the final years will be an age of breathtaking deception. Remember those hacked nuclear alerts? The deepfakes that make anyone appear to say anything? We already live in a world where you can’t always trust your own eyes. The Great Controversy says the deception will go further still, all the way to the most audacious counterfeit imaginable:

As the crowning act in the great drama of deception, Satan himself will personate Christ.
The Great Controversy, “The Time of Trouble”

That sounds like the plot of a thriller. But it’s built on Jesus’ own warning: “If any man shall say unto you, Lo, here is Christ, or there; believe it not” (Matthew 24:23). And here’s the beautiful, practical safeguard the book offers. The real return of Jesus cannot be faked, because it will not happen in one place, on one screen, for one audience:

For as the lightning cometh out of the east, and shineth even unto the west; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.
Matthew 24:27

Ellen White adds, simply:

This coming, there is no possibility of counterfeiting. It will be universally known—witnessed by the whole world.
The Great Controversy, “The Time of Trouble”

You will not need a news alert to know when Jesus comes. You will not need an expert to explain it. “Behold, he cometh with clouds; and every eye shall see him” (Revelation 1:7). Every eye.

So if anyone ever tells you the Messiah has arrived in some city, on some stage, through some livestream, you can smile, put the phone down, and go back to sleep. When He comes, the whole sky will tell you.

A word of caution, in love

Let’s be careful here, because this is where many people go wrong.

Nobody knows the date. Jesus was crystal clear: “But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only” (Matthew 24:36). Anyone who claims this particular war is the final war, or that the world will end on a certain day, is claiming to know more than the angels. Don’t trust them.

Jesus also said, “Ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars: see that ye be not troubled: for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet” (Matthew 24:6).

See that ye be not troubled. That’s not a suggestion to stop caring. It’s an invitation to stop panicking. The wars are a sign that this world is broken and that its story is heading somewhere. They are not a reason to live in terror. The point of prophecy is never to make us anxious about when. It’s to make us ready, peacefully and joyfully ready, for Who.

Not abandoned in the storm

Here’s what surprises first-time readers of The Great Controversy more than anything. The chapters about the hardest times in earth’s history are some of the most tender in the entire book.

Yes, Ellen White believed God’s people would face difficulty before the end. The Bible itself speaks of “a time of trouble, such as never was since there was a nation even to that same time” (Daniel 12:1). But notice how that same verse ends: “and at that time thy people shall be delivered.”

And listen to how she describes God’s care in those days:

The people of God will not be free from suffering; but while persecuted and distressed, while they endure privation, and suffer for want of food, they will not be left to perish. That God who cared for Elijah, will not pass by one of His self-sacrificing children. He who numbers the hairs of their head, will care for them; and in time of famine they shall be satisfied.
The Great Controversy, “The Time of Trouble”

If you’ve been worried about rising prices, empty shelves or what next year will bring, read that again. They will not be left to perish. The same God who fed Elijah by a brook in a famine knows your grocery bill. He knows your rent. He knows the exact number of hairs on your head, and He hasn’t lost count.

And then there’s this passage, which might be the most comforting thing ever written about the darkest night of human history:

Could men see with heavenly vision, they would behold companies of angels that excel in strength stationed about those who have kept the word of Christ’s patience. With sympathizing tenderness, angels have witnessed their distress, and have heard their prayers.
The Great Controversy, “The Time of Trouble”

Companies of angels. Stationed. With sympathizing tenderness.

You may be lying awake tonight feeling completely alone with your fears. But if heaven opened your eyes the way it once opened the eyes of Elisha’s frightened servant (2 Kings 6:17), you might see that your room is far more crowded than you think.

Even prison, she wrote, cannot separate a trusting heart from God:

Though enemies may thrust them into prison, yet dungeon walls cannot cut off the communication between their souls and Christ.
The Great Controversy, “The Time of Trouble”

No blockade can close that strait. No hacker can cut that line. No war can jam that signal.

The faith that waits

Some of the hardest words in the book are also the most honest. Ellen White never pretended that faith makes life easy:

The season of distress and anguish before us will require a faith that can endure weariness, delay, and hunger,—a faith that will not faint, though severely tried.
The Great Controversy, “The Time of Trouble”

Weariness. Delay. Hunger. If you’ve prayed this year and the answer hasn’t come yet, if the war hasn’t ended, the job hasn’t returned, the diagnosis hasn’t changed, you know exactly what she means.

But she also writes that even the delay has a purpose: “The very delay, so painful to them, is the best answer to their petitions.” Waiting grows something in us that easy answers never could: patience, trust, a faith with deep roots.

And here’s the promise that follows: “The end will come more quickly than men expect.”

The night is long. It is not endless.

Then: the small black cloud

Now we come to the part of The Great Controversy that makes grown men weep. After the long night, Ellen White describes the morning, and she describes it like someone who has seen it:

Soon there appears in the east a small black cloud, about half the size of a man’s hand. It is the cloud which surrounds the Saviour, and which seems in the distance to be shrouded in darkness. The people of God know this to be the sign of the Son of man. In solemn silence they gaze upon it as it draws nearer the earth, becoming lighter and more glorious, until it is a great white cloud, its base a glory like consuming fire, and above it the rainbow of the covenant.
The Great Controversy, “God’s People Delivered”

Imagine it. After all the smoke of burning tankers and bombed-out cities, a different kind of cloud. Small at first, so small you could almost miss it. Then growing, brightening, until the whole sky is filled with light. And above it, a rainbow: the oldest sign of God’s promise never to give up on this world.

Paul described the same moment:

For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord.
1 Thessalonians 4:16–17

The dead in Christ shall rise first. This is the part of the blessed hope that heals the deepest wounds. Ellen White pictures Jesus looking out over the graves of everyone who ever trusted Him:

Amid the reeling of the earth, the flash of lightning, and the roar of thunder, the voice of the Son of God calls forth the sleeping saints. He looks upon the graves of the righteous, then raising His hands to heaven He cries, “Awake, awake, awake, ye that sleep in the dust, and arise!”
The Great Controversy, “God’s People Delivered”

And then comes a sentence that, if you’ve ever lost someone, may be impossible to read without tears:

Little children are borne by holy angels to their mothers’ arms. Friends long separated by death are united, nevermore to part, and with songs of gladness ascend together to the city of God.
The Great Controversy, “God’s People Delivered”

Think of the mothers in Zaporizhzhia this week. Think of the parents in Gaza, in Sudan, in Yemen, in Iran and Israel, in every place where war has taken children from the arms that loved them. Think of your own empty chair, your own unfinished goodbye.

Little children are borne by holy angels to their mothers’ arms.

This is not wishful thinking invented to soften grief. It’s the ending God Himself promised. War is cruel, but it does not get the final word. Death is real, but it is not the last chapter. Every tear has been counted, and every one will be wiped away (Revelation 21:4).

The controversy ended

The Great Controversy is a long book. It walks through centuries of courage and cruelty, through the fall of Jerusalem, the faith of the Reformers, and the turmoil of the last days. But it ends, after more than six hundred pages, in a hush of pure joy. These are its final words:

The great controversy is ended. Sin and sinners are no more. The entire universe is clean. One pulse of harmony and gladness beats through the vast creation. From Him who created all, flow life and light and gladness, throughout the realms of illimitable space. From the minutest atom to the greatest world, all things, animate and inanimate, in their unshadowed beauty and perfect joy, declare that God is love.
The Great Controversy, “The Controversy Ended”

God is love. After everything, after every war and every grief and every sleepless 2 a.m., that is the conclusion. Not “God is power.” Not “God is wrath.” God is love.

And just before that, there’s a detail so tender it’s easy to miss. In the made-new world, every trace of sin and suffering is gone. Except one:

One reminder alone remains: our Redeemer will ever bear the marks of His crucifixion.
The Great Controversy, “The Controversy Ended”

The only scars left in the universe will be on the hands of Jesus. He keeps them forever, so that none of us will ever doubt how much we were loved.

What to do tonight

So what do you do with all of this, right now, with the war still raging and the prices still climbing and the news still waiting on your lock screen?

Remember those words Jesus spoke about “distress of nations, with perplexity”? Here is what He said two verses later:

And when these things begin to come to pass, then look up, and lift up your heads; for your redemption draweth nigh.
Luke 21:28

Look up. Not down at the feed. Up.

Here are a few simple ways to do that:

Put the phone down earlier. Staying informed is good. Being consumed is not. Choose a time each evening when the news stops and peace begins. Remember: distraction is one of the enemy’s oldest strategies.
Fortify your mind. Read one passage of Scripture before you read one headline. Start with Psalm 46, John 14, or Revelation 21. Let God’s voice be the first and last you hear each day.
Pray for the people in the headlines. For the sailors, the soldiers, the refugees, the families in shelters, and the leaders who hold so many lives in their hands. Prayer turns fear into love.
Be a peacemaker where you are. Share what you have. Check on the neighbour who’s struggling. Speak gently online. Every act of kindness is a small rebellion against the kingdom that delights in war.
Hold on to the ending. When fear rises, say it out loud if you have to: This is not the end of the story. Jesus is coming. Love wins.

God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore will not we fear, though the earth be removed, and though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea.
Psalm 46:1–2

It’s late. The world is loud. The nations are angry, just as the Bible said they would be (Revelation 11:18).

But somewhere beyond the smoke and the sirens and the scrolling, a small cloud is waiting on the horizon of history. It will grow brighter. It will fill the sky. And on that morning, every child will be home, every tear will be dried, and every person who longed for Him will hear the voice that says, Awake.

Until then, Jesus says to you what He said to His friends on the night before His own darkest hour:

These things I have spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.
John 16:33

Be of good cheer. Morning is coming.

Quotations from The Great Controversy are from the 1911 edition (public domain), which you can read in full at egwwritings.org. Scripture is from the King James Version. News details are drawn from public reporting through early November 2026.