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Testimonies on Sexual Behavior, Adultery, and Divorce
our advantage, if resisted. The bounds are placed where Satan cannot
pass. He may prepare the furnace that consumes the dross, but instead
of injury, it can only bring forth the gold of the character, purer, upon
higher vantage ground than before the trial.
At Baal-peor—The crime that brought the judgments of God upon
Israel was that of licentiousness. The forwardness of women to entrap
souls did not end at Baal-peor. Notwithstanding the punishment that
followed the sinners in Israel, the same crime was repeated many times.
Satan was most active in seeking to make Israel’s overthrow complete.
[84]
Balak by the advice of Balaam laid the snare. Israel would have bravely
met their enemies in battle, and resisted them, and come off conquerors;
but when women invited their attention and sought their company and
beguiled them by their charms, they did not resist temptations. They
were invited to idolatrous feasts, and their indulgence in wine further
beclouded their dazed minds.
The power of self-control, their allegiance to God’s law, was not
preserved. Their senses were so beclouded with wine, and their unholy
passions had such full sway, overpowering every barrier, that they
invited temptation, even to the attending of these idolatrous feasts.
Those who had never flinched in battle, who were brave men, did
not barricade their souls to resist temptation to indulge their basest
passions. Idolatry and licentiousness went together. They first defiled
their conscience by lewdness, and then departed from God still further
by idolatry, thus showing contempt for the God of Israel.
Satan’s Repetitious Plots—Near the close of this earth’s history
Satan will work with all his powers in the same manner and with the
same temptations wherewith he tempted ancient Israel just before their
entering the land of promise. He will lay snares for those who claim to
keep the commandments of God, and who are almost on the borders of
the heavenly Canaan. He will use his powers to their utmost in order
to entrap souls, and to take God’s professed people upon their weakest
points. Those who have not brought the lower passions into subjection
to the higher powers of their being, those who have allowed their minds
to flow in a channel of carnal indulgence of the baser passions, Satan
is determined to destroy with his temptations—to pollute their souls
with licentiousness.
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He is not aiming especially at the lower and less important marks,
but he makes use of his snares through those whom he can enlist as his