Terrible Effects of Sin upon Man
Satan had succeeded so well in deceiving the angels of God and in
ruining noble Adam that he thought he should be successful in over-
coming Christ in His humiliation. He looked with pleased exultation
upon the result of his temptations, and the increase of sin in the con-
tinued transgression of God’s law for more than four thousand years.
He had worked the ruin of our first parents, and brought sin and death
into the world, and led to ruin multitudes of all ages, countries, and
classes. By his power he had controlled cities and nations until their sin
provoked the wrath of God to destroy them by fire, water, earthquakes,
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sword, famine, and pestilence. By his subtility and untiring efforts he
had controlled the appetite and excited and strengthened the passions
to so fearful a degree that he had defaced and almost obliterated the
image of God in man. His physical and moral dignity were in so great
a degree destroyed that he bore but a faint resemblance in character
and noble perfection of form to the dignified Adam in Eden.
At the first advent of Christ, Satan had brought man down from
his original exalted purity and had dimmed that golden character with
sin. The man whom God had created a sovereign in Eden, he had
transformed into a slave in the earth groaning under the curse of sin.
The halo of glory, which God had given holy Adam to cover him as a
garment, departed from him after his transgression. The light of God’s
glory could not cover disobedience and sin. In the place of health and
plenitude of blessings, poverty, sickness, and suffering of every type
were to be the portion of the children of Adam.
Satan had through his seductive power led men to vain philosophy,
to question and finally disbelieve the divine revelation and the existence
of God. He looked abroad upon a world of moral wretchedness and a
race exposed to the wrath of a sin-avenging God with fiendish triumph
that he had been so successful in darkening the pathway of so many,
and had led them to transgress the law of God. He clothed sin with
pleasing attractions to secure the ruin of many.
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