- 21 - as Christ proclaimed himself to be, to be endowed with Divine power sufficient to prevent so ignominious an end at the hands of his enemies. If he failed to prevent this, his teachings would be condemned along with him. That was Satan’s reasoning. Christ now knew who he was, as well as the nature of his great task, but before he began to carry it out, also his powers of resistance had to be tested, as had been those of all who had previously served God as His instruments. He had to prove himself equal to the task of his momentous, farreaching mission. It was to this end that a spirit of God led him into the wilderness. Here it was that he was called upon to face a terrible attack on the part of the Powers of Hell. No helper or supporter stood by him. No word of human consolation from his mother, his brothers or sisters, or his friends could reach him here, at the very time when, torn by the conflict within his soul, he yearned for the sympathy and support of a friendly human heart. All this was denied him in the wilderness. Instead, he heard the howling of wild beasts, and his clairvoyant eyes saw shapes from hell, ceaselessly coming and going before him. He could hear them enticing, promising, threatening. Every form of temptation to which man is susceptible was employed against this Son of Man, for Satan has his specialists in every field of evil. • Among them were spirits of despondence and timidity, and spirits of doubt, seeking to shake his belief in himself as the Son of God, and in his Divinely assigned mission, and to drive him to despair. • Again, there appeared spirits of hatred, intent upon embittering him against a God who would drive him into the desert to suffer so. • There also came spirits of a life of pleasure, drawing the most enticing pictures of human ease and enjoyment in contrast to the dreary desert about him. • All the spirits, however, came in the shape of angels of light and pretended to be his friends. These seducing spirits were skilfully assigned to the parts they played. The ablest of them were the spirits of doubt, which appeared upon the scene again and again. How, argued they, could any God send His firstborn Son into a desert to suffer hunger and unspeakable torture of the soul? Was not, after all, everything that he had heard from the allegedly good spirits, was not the utterance of the Baptist, was not the voice of God that spoke to him by the Jordan merely part of a great delusion or the pronouncement of the Evil One? Was not, therefore, his being the Son of God a great hallucination to which he had fallen victim? This was the point upon which hell centred its main attack. • Thereby seeking to destroy within this Son of Man his conviction that he was the Son of God. Once this end had been accomplished, Satan would have won the battle, for whoever loses faith in his mission casts it aside of his own accord. For 40 days and 40 nights this remorseless persecution was continued against a victim who stood defenceless and helpless, trembling in every limb from the agitation of his soul and from physical misery, brought on by hunger and sleeplessness. The desert offered no nourishment; Christ fasted indeed, not voluntarily, but because there was no food. Nothing but sand and rock, as far as the eye could see.
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