SATAN CAUGHT IN HIS OWN TRAP
By P. T. M.
OVER and over again in the world's history has God taken Satan's plans and worked His own purposes out of them. And more than that, the devil has never yet got ahead of God. He has never planned a thing, in all his work of deception, but that God has outwitted him, if I may use the term, in that thing. The devil started that scheme of sending Joseph down into Egypt. He thought he was rid of Joseph all right. Then he started a famine in Canaan, and thought he would starve the boys. But after he got everything just as he wanted it, God took those two things,—the sin of the brothers in sending Joseph down into Egypt, and the famine in Canaan,—and made the Hebrew people out of them. When it came to the crucifixion of Christ, the devil had everything just as he wanted it. He had the Jews in the greatest apostasy they had ever been in; and he had Judas Iscariot, his own special representative, in the college of the apostles. But that thing which seemed to the devil like the biggest victory he ever gained was the very thing that put him out of business for all time. There is coming a time when the devil will say, Those commandment keepers must get off the earth. Then God will say, That is true, and I am going to take them off before you are ready to have them go. If we will only trust fully in God, He will take some of the worst schemes of the devil, and turn them into the greatest blessings for His people. I say again that Satan has never yet outwitted God in a single plan that he has laid. P. T. M.