The Devil and His Methods (Continued)
The battle of Gethsemane opened on Thursday night in an upper room in Jerusalem. It commenced by one-twelfth of
Christ's body guard being captured by a bribe of twenty dollars. The real battle opened Thursday evening near midnight. He set Peter, James and John on picket duty inside the garden in a stone's throw of His redoubt; the eight disciples He commissioned as the outer watch. The battle of Gethsemane was fierce when Jesus fell on His face and prayed saying, "O, my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will but as thou wilt." Jesus then summoned His human reinforcements, but alas, “Human sympathy is comforting but helpless." The second time amid legions of Devils and the curse of a world's sin, He sought His body guard; the second time they were asleep. But Jesus won. "And there appeared an angel unto him from heaven, strengthening him." The angel took Jesus in his arms and wiped the death sweat and blood from His face and comforted Him. This is one time it seems He was made "A little lower than the angels." The second battle completed;
the Devil defeated. -H. W. Hodge.
THE DEVIL IS rarely seen in his movements and methods. He has rare tact in getting others to do his work and execute his plans.
His methods are to blind, to put a veil on the evil results and all the sad consequences of sin. He so blinds that the evil cannot be seen. So with the keen-eyed David, brave, true and clear-eyed for God, yet Satan blinded him completely to the treachery, infamy and murder in Uriah's case. So sinners are held by him in unbelief. He puts out their eyes to all the light and glory of the Shining Sun of Righteousness. “In whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them."
The power of the devil extends to the mind. He can influence the mind, insinuate thoughts, suggest purposes, excite the imagination, inflame the passions, stir the appetites, kindle the fleshy fires, awaken old habits, and fan old dead flames or light new ones. The artless purity of Eve he beguiled. He entered into the half traitorous Judas and possessed him fully, and made his half-formed treason full and his treachery immortal in its infancy. He was in the private council of Ananias and Sapphira, a party of their fraud, and suggested their lying plan to deceive the apostles. His access to the mind is evident in that he snatches away the divine seed implanted by holy lips in the soil of the heart as taught in the Parable of the Sower.
In Corinthians the devil is called “the god of this world.” “The god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them." The devil uses this world as a veil to shut out the truth of God, the light of His glorious Gospel, and to close the eyes of faith to all the discoveries in the unseen and eternal.
The antagonism between the children of the world possessed by Satan, and the children of God possessed by God, is set forth by John. “Ye are of God, little children, and have overcome them; because greater is he that is in you, than he that is in the world. They are of the world; therefore speak they of the world, and the world heareth them. We are of God; he that knoweth God heareth us; he that is not of God heareth not us. Hereby know we the spirit of truth and the spirit of error."
Who is in us? God. Who is in the children of the world? The devil. Our faith, our hope and our final triumph are in the truth of the Word of God. “Greater is he that is in us than he that is in the world."
Satan perverts the things which are truly works of God and misemploys miracles to obscure God's glory. The devil often tries to break the soul down and reduce it to despair. He tells us to discourage us that we shall never succeed. The way is too hard and narrow and the burden too heavy.
He takes advantage of weak and distracted nerves, and suggests fears. Grace is hid from the sight, shortcomings are magnified and infirmities are classed as gross sins. Sometimes the fear of death is used by Satan to quench the fire of faith, and the grave becomes something awful. He darkens the future. Heaven and God will be out of sight, hidden by a thick veil of to-morrow's cares, trials and needs. The imaginary disasters, failures and evils of tomorrow are powerful weapons in Satan's hand. He suggests that the Lord is a hard master, and that His promises will fail. He works on the remaining corruption in the heart, and raises a great storm in the soul.
Samuel Rutherford says: "Oh, if our faith could ride out against the high and proud waves and winds when our sea seemeth all on fire! Oh, how oft do I let my grips go. I am put to swimming and half sinking. I find the devil hath the advantage of the ground in this battle, for he fighteth in known ground in our corruption. However matters go, it is our happiness to win new grounds daily in Christ's love, and to purchase a new piece of it daily, and to add conquest to conquest, till our Lord Jesus and we be so near each other that Satan shall not draw a straw or a thread betwixt us."
He tempts to evil tempers, to hasty words, to impatience and to carnal reasoning, which is his powerful ally in our minds. Back to Christ. More of His Spirit-renewed and thorough self-dedication, and in darting prayers upward by an uplifted eye and heart-thus will we be able to resist and conquer the great adversary of our souls.
One of the most intelligent and God-honoured among the saintliest of saints wrote: “I have keen inward sufferings, what are termed the bufferings of Satan. Horror at times has taken hold of me. I felt much, but feared more."
The devil may tempt us to think too meanly of ourselves as Moses did, and too highly of ourselves as Peter did. In one sense, we cannot think too meanly of ourselves, but in another we can. He persuades us that we are so poor and weak we can do nothing, and so we are weakened in faith and broken in effort. But his master method is to fill us with self, self-importance and self-ability, and then not only is faith weakened, but destroyed. Our efforts and doings may increase in number and vain show, but the seal of self and Satan are on them all.
John Wesley notes: “I preached at eight on that delicate device of Satan to destroy the whole religion of the heart. The telling Christians not to regard frames or feelings, but to live by naked faith, is in plain terms, not to regard either love, joy, peace or any other fruit of the Spirit; not to regard whether they feel them or the reverse; whether their souls be in a heavenly or hellish frame. Satan's method with some is to make them rely too much on frames and feelings. With others he deals the reverse and urges them to discard all frames and feelings."
Many anxious errors sprang up with the rank growth in Wesley's day, and he pruned and trimmed with a master's hand. Naked faith is often nothing but a sapless, arid, fruitless, unconscious thing, and brings an arid, fruitless, unconscious salvation with it, if it brings salvation at all.
Whatever may be his method, how numberless his devices, the words of his conqueror to us are these: “Behold, I give unto you power to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy; and nothing shall by any means hurt you." Of this text, Miss Havergal writes: “Why, this is grand-power over all the power of the enemy. Just where he is strongest there they shall prevail. Not over the very center of his power, not over his power here and there, nor now and then, but over all his power. And Jesus said, Is not that enough to go into battle with? The devil's brain is prolific in plans. He has many ways of doing many things. Perhaps he has many ways of doing each thing. With him nothing is stereotyped. He never runs in ruts. Fruitful, diverse and ever fresh, is his way of doing things. Indirect, disingenuous, insidious and graceful are his plans. He acts by artifice and always by guile. His plans by Bible statement are “wiles." The original word means to follow up or investigate by method and settled plan. It is not a bad word but one of order, arrangement and methods, conceived and executed. But when the word gets into the devil's hand it is defined by his dictionary. It receives a strong tincture, a deep colouring of cunning and trickery.
Sometimes Satan comes disrobed of his heavenly garments, a thorn, sharp and pointed and painful, a poisoned thorn, a thorn that rankles and stays, a thorn that cannot be extracted by prayer, which retrieves all other ills. The saints who have seen most of heaven are often decreed to see most of hell. Saints who have the fullest and most transporting revelation of God, often have the saddest experience of Satan.
Paul's thorn was as much to Paul as his abundance of revelations. His thorn made him more a saint than his vision of the third heavens. Satan only lifted him higher by keeping him lower.
Satan may come to us in his own native character, the thorn breeder and piercer. He may put in us thorns which no prayer power can extract. Thorns which will poison and pain, but the thorn will enrich grace, increase and mature humility and make infirmities strong and glorious. Satan's thorns will clothe necessities with richest attire, change distresses and persecutions into divinest pleasures, make room for God's greatest power in us and on us, make the lowest point of spiritual depression the highest point of vision, and make strength out of weakness and wealth out of poverty.