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Patriarchs and Prophets
transgressed God’s law, their defense departed from them. When
the people of God are faithful to His commandments, “there is no
enchantment against Jacob, neither is there any divination against
Israel.” Hence all the power and wily arts of Satan are exerted to seduce
them into sin. If those who profess to be the depositaries of God’s law
become transgressors of its precepts, they separate themselves from
God, and they will be unable to stand before their enemies.
The Israelites, who could not be overcome by the arms or by the
enchantments of Midian, fell a prey to her harlots. Such is the power
that woman, enlisted in the service of Satan, has exerted to entrap
and destroy souls. “She hath cast down many wounded: yea, many
strong men have been slain by her.”
Proverbs 7:26
. It was thus that
the children of Seth were seduced from their integrity, and the holy
seed became corrupt. It was thus that Joseph was tempted. Thus
Samson betrayed his strength, the defense of Israel, into the hands of
the Philistines. Here David stumbled. And Solomon, the wisest of
kings, who had thrice been called the beloved of his God, became a
slave of passion, and sacrificed his integrity to the same bewitching
power.
“Now all these things happened unto them for ensamples: and they
are written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the world are
come. Wherefore let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he
fall.”
1 Corinthians 10:11, 12
. Satan well knows the material with
which he has to deal in the human heart. He knows—for he has studied
with fiendish intensity for thousands of years—the points most easily
assailed in every character; and through successive generations he has
wrought to overthrow the strongest men, princes in Israel, by the same
temptations that were so successful at Baalpeor. All along through the
ages there are strewn wrecks of character that have been stranded upon
the rocks of sensual indulgence. As we approach the close of time,
as the people of God stand upon the borders of the heavenly Canaan,
Satan will, as of old, redouble his efforts to prevent them from entering
the goodly land. He lays his snares for every soul. It is not the ignorant
and uncultured merely that need to be guarded; he will prepare his
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temptations for those in the highest positions, in the most holy office;
if he can lead them to pollute their souls, he can through them destroy
many. And he employs the same agents now as he employed three
thousand years ago. By worldly friendships, by the charms of beauty,