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Selected Messages Book 1
In the wilderness of temptation Christ was without food forty days.
Moses had, on especial occasions, been thus long without food. But
he felt not the pangs of hunger. He was not tempted and harassed by a
vile and powerful foe, as was the Son of God. He was elevated above
the human. He was especially sustained by the glory of God which
enshrouded him.
Terrible Effects of Sin Upon Man
Satan had succeeded so well in deceiving the angels of God, and
in the fall of noble Adam, that he thought that in Christ’s humiliation
he should be successful in overcoming Him. He looked with pleased
exultation upon the result of his temptations and the increase of sin in
the continued 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 had led to ruin multitudes of all ages,
countries, and classes. He had, by his power, controlled cities and
nations until their sin provoked the wrath of God to destroy them by
fire, water, earthquakes, sword, famine, and pestilence. By his subtlety
and untiring efforts he had controlled the appetite and excited and
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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
dignified Adam in Eden.
At the first advent of Christ, Satan had brought man down from
his original, exalted purity, and had dimmed the fine gold with sin. He
had transformed the man, created to be a sovereign in Eden, to a slave
in the earth, groaning under the curse of sin. The halo of glory, which
God had given holy Adam, covering 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 through vain
philosophy to question and finally to disbelieve in divine revelation
and the existence of God. He could look abroad upon a world of moral
wretchedness, and a race exposed to the wrath of a sin-avenging God,