SATAN | AdventAI

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Oct 3, 1865

SATAN.

Many think Satan a figure of speech; and alas! they that think so have received instructions from that very Satan whose personality and existence they thus explain away. But there is no doubt that there is an archangel fallen, possessed of all the subtlety of the serpent, all the ferocity of the lion; a being so sunk and fallen, that our ruin is his only delight, our destruction his only trade; and the incidental gleams of joy that pass athwart his countenance, or that electrify his spirit, rise from the success he attains in ruining and destroying souls. I know not a more awful proof of Satan’s power than that he can penetrate the depths of the heart, speak to the conscience, persuade without words, enchain without links, and drag a captive at his chariot-wheels the very man that boasts he is free, and never was the slave of any. Are we holy men, with new hearts, touched, and thereby transformed, by the Spirit of God? Speculations about prophecy will not serve us. Satan knows more about the Apocalypse than all the commentators from the Christian era to this day. pp. 164, 180.