- 25 - He, too, had nothing to gain by telling the people how the Redemption was to be accomplished. It was his duty only to proclaim to them that the hour of their deliverance was near, that they must strive to make themselves worthy of the gift, and that it was he, whom God had sent as their Saviour. For his part, he had to beware of succumbing to the Powers of Darkness. They left no stone unturned to induce him to forsake his God and to abandon his Divine mission.. Like Moses, Christ had to guard against being vanquished by the foe he had come to conquer. If he could hold out in his entrenchments against the assaults of Evil, it was for God to determine how the defence could be turned into a successful attack. For obviously, as a mortal, Christ could not wage an offensive campaign against spirits. The most that mortals can do is to defend themselves against the attacks of the Evil Powers when these attempts to lead them astray by means of insinuations, temptation and intimidation, through apparitions, or with the aid of human agents. Hence Christ could advance for an attack upon Satan only as a spirit, and only after his earthly death. Not until then could it be said of him that ‘he had descended to hell.’ As I have told you, the possibility existed that Christ, the man, could have been overcome by Satan. Had this happened, the Prince of Hell would have numbered also the first Son of God among his vassals. In that event, God would have brought about the incarnation of another of the highest of the celestial princes to accomplish the work of Redemption that, because of human infirmities, His first-born Son had failed to perform. You shudder at the thought that Christ could have succumbed to Satan’s attacks. And yet this is a fact. You mortals do not even faintly appreciate the love of your Heavenly Father, who did not spare His firstborn, but Who, for your sake, risked losing him as He had lost His second son. You also cannot picture to yourselves how dreadful the battle was that Christ was forced to wage against all of hell, in order that you might be redeemed. The least of the devils can bring about your defection from God in a very few moments. The victory is his, for the offering of a handful of money, earthly fame, or sensual pleasures. – But Christ, your oldest brother, was assailed by all of hell’s forces, led by Lucifer himself, not just once and for a few instants only, but again and again throughout the whole span of his human life. Column after column of those sinister warriors advanced, day in, day out, upon the Son of Man, resorting at last to the most fiendish physical torments, until their victim bled to death upon the Cross. He died, indeed, in human body, but did not waver in his loyalty to God. Satan had proved powerless against him, yet he, against whom the full forces of hell were marshalled, was as human as you are, and was in every way like you. This, then, is the true picture of the Redeemer, and such was the way his mission of Redemption was to be carried out. Like Moses, who first had to make himself known to the Israelites as Divinely sent to save them and who had to prove his claim by means of miracles, Christ owed it to the people to tell them who he was and what mission he had to fulfill. And he, too, had to give credence to his mission of Redemption through miracles.
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