Satan as a Detective by Jos. Clarke

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Oct 27, 1874

Satan as a Detective.

By Jos. Clarke

Good and bad men are often employed by the government as detectives; some permanently—some temporarily. Often it happens that innocent people have, by unfortunate circumstances, become the victims of unfounded suspicion; and it sometimes happens that such persons are proved by tests known to the detective department. If the suspected party is proof against these annoying tests, he is let alone, and supposed to be innocent of complicity with, or commission of, crime.

Satan is the accuser of God's people. He loves to be a self-constituted detective. He loves to place baits before the people of God, to entice them from the paths of purity, humility, and self-denial. Then when he succeeds, as he often does, he takes malicious pleasure in exposing the weakness of the victim of his fiendish arts.

Did you ever think of this, when you are enticed away from God, to seek happiness from forbidden sources, that Satan is desiring to show to God and his angels, that you are a hypocrite, after all your fine talk, and loud professions? Think of this, when appetite clamors, or carnality urges to sin against God, that the evil angels are playing detective against you; and in the end you will find it earnest work, and not child's play.

For the future safety of Christ's kingdom, no false ones will be permitted to enter there. God is willing that all should be thoroughly proved if they are true or not, to the cause of goodness, and purity, and truth. Satan lays the bait, and sets the trap; but it depends upon you individually, whether he springs it upon you.

We cannot sin lightly. God is not trifling with us. Let us not dare to trifle with him. The reforms of the day will be found to be no jest nor flourish of words.

As a detective, Satan excels, but he does it not for the right, or for the truth. A good detective, witnesses the fall of the victim, with pain; but Satan views it with fiendish pleasure. As an eagle pounces upon his prey, and eagerly takes possession, so does Satan.

A losing game the sinner plays with the sly and wily foe. The poor sinner eagerly seeks to find pleasure in satisfying appetite, and in the train of this sin come the carnal affections and passions. Then the enemy triumphs while the victim sleeps on in the stupor of spiritual decay and apostasy. Jos. CLARKE.