Choosing Earthly Treasure
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for your Creator and for the souls for whom Christ died. The God of
this world has blinded your eyes so that eternal things are not valued.
In the wilderness of temptation Christ met the great leading temp-
tations that would assail man. There He encountered, singlehanded,
the wily, subtle foe, and overcame him. The first great temptation was
upon appetite; the second, presumption; the third, love of the world.
Satan has overcome his millions by tempting them to the indulgence
of appetite. Through the gratification of the taste, the nervous system
becomes excited and the brain power enfeebled, making it impossible
to think calmly or rationally. The mind is unbalanced. Its higher,
nobler faculties are perverted to serve animal lust, and the sacred,
eternal interests are not regarded. When this object is gained, Satan
can come with his two other leading temptations and find ready access.
His manifold temptations grow out of these three great leading points.
Presumption is a common temptation, and as Satan assails men
with this, he obtains the victory nine times out of ten. Those who
profess to be followers of Christ, and claim by their faith to be enlisted
in the warfare against all evil in their nature, frequently plunge without
thought into temptations from which it would require a miracle to bring
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them forth unsullied. Meditation and prayer would have preserved
them and led them to shun the critical, dangerous position in which
they placed themselves when they gave Satan the advantage over them.
The promises of God are not for us rashly to claim while we rush on
recklessly into danger, violating the laws of nature and disregarding
prudence and the judgment with which God has endowed us. This is
the most flagrant presumption.
The thrones and kingdoms of the world and the glory of them were
offered to Christ if He would only bow down to Satan. Never will
man be tried with temptations as powerful as those which assailed
Christ. Satan came with worldly honor, wealth, and the pleasures
of life, and presented them in the most attractive light to allure and
deceive. “All these things,” said he to Christ, “will I give Thee, if Thou
wilt fall down and worship me.” Christ repelled the wily foe and came
off victor.
Satan has better success in approaching man. All this money,
this gain, this land, this power, these honors and riches, will I give
thee—for what? His conditions generally are, that integrity shall be
yielded, conscientiousness blunted, and selfishness indulged. Through