THE EVIL SPIRIT | AdventAI

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Jul 8, 1889

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 15, No. 26.

THE EVIL SPIRIT.

No man can deny that God has created other orders of rational beings besides men; or that some of those orders have fallen; or that a purely spiritual being can have influence over human minds. The New Testament teaches the existence of angels and devils. It teaches this almost as plainly as it teaches the existence of God. It would require nearly as much violence to language if we should interpret the Scriptures so as to exclude from them the recognition of good and evil spirits, as it would to exclude the recognition of God. Man, in his original state, and in his true nature, before the apostasy, is never represented as originally evil; it comes to him first from without. There is an outward force which holds sway over humanity, and which must be destroyed. Man fell being tempted by the serpent, elsewhere called that old serpent, the devil. The first prediction concerning the Messiah is, that he, the seed of the woman, should bruise the serpent's head. When Christ came, he recognized the existence of devils, and assumed to cast them out. He spoke of an individual as their leader, whom he called the devil, and the prince of this world; and of his associates, as the angels of the devil, as demons, and the powers of darkness.—Selected.