SATANIC CONTROL by H. Melvill

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Jul 16, 1902

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 28, No. 29.

SATANIC CONTROL.

By H. Melvill

WE are indeed well aware that it is not the devil who destroys man. It must be man who destroys himself. The devil can do nothing against us, except as we afford him opportunity, yielding ourselves to his suggestions, and allowing him to lead us captive at his will. But it may at length come to pass, if we persist in walking as children of disobedience, that we quite expel from our breast the Spirit of God, whose strivings have been resisted, and whose admonitions have been despised, and enthrone in His stead that spirit of evil whose longing and whose labor it is to make us share his own ruin. And then is there as clear a demoniacal possession as when the man was cast into the fire or water through the fearful energies of the indwelling fiend.

Let us not too hastily conclude that there is nothing in our days at all analogous to those demoniacal possessions of which so frequent mention is made in the Gospel. When the apostle speaks of the devil as “working in the children of disobedience,” he uses the same word which is elsewhere used of the operations of the Holy Ghost, that Divine Agent who dwelleth in believers, residing in them as a permanent monitor, renewing their nature, and preparing them for glory. So that St. Paul ascribes to the devil, as acting in the children of disobedience, that very same energy which he ascribes to God’s Spirit, as acting in the disciples of Jesus. And whatever, therefore, the degree in which we consider good men as possessed by the Holy Ghost, in that very same degree must we consider abandoned and reprobate men as possessed by Satan and his angels. There must be as much of direct influence, as much of the surrender of the man to the dominion set up within himself, in the one case as in the other. In neither have we right to say that free agency is interfered with, much less destroyed; but in both there is the willing submission to the dictates of another, and that other so identified with the man himself that he is actually bound by the being obeyed.

There is, then, no doubt that the devil is an enemy to be dreaded and resisted; but we thank God for the assertion that there is to break a day on our creation when the malignant adversary shall be bound, and spoiled of his power to assail.—H. Melvill, Penny Pulpit, No. 1838.