C. F. Wimberly

“ Jesus cannot only defeat Satan, but He can destroy the “works of the devil”—one of which is the alien principle of our nature. “For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that He might destroy the works of the Devil.” The life, death, and resurrection of Jesus—the God-Man—is an everlasting Atonement and a propitiation for sin. Sin is the Rubicon of our battle; once we solve, in all its fullness, the problem of sin, we rob Satan of his fulcrum power. ”

“ Business and public men dread the boycott. Behind the boycott is our “adversary, the Devil.”
But the bluff and boycott by no means mark the limit when the self-assumed rights and privileges of the lion are questioned. Few can rise above the threat and intimidation; but the roaring activities of the boss will not always suffice. The lion in corrupt politics, in evil traffics, in priestly bigotry and intolerance, will not hesitate to stab, shoot, or burn to get rid of an offensive opposer. ”

“ We do not believe the Enemy has abandoned his old profession: an evil spirit despises a disembodied state; if people are fortified and shielded against his entrance—then the swine. As cold air whistles and roars about every crack and cranny, entering in from all directions, so evil spirits—Devil and demons—press their entrance into the soul. ”

“ There are no facts touching his habitat, food, passions, ambitions, weaknesses, yearnings, etc.—whether in the realm of body, mind or spirit—but the cunning trapper of the pit is more minutely acquainted than man is acquainted with himself.
If guileless and unsuspecting men and women were the only victims, the situation would not be so serious; not that one soul is of more value than another, but the facts are: no one seems to be capable of discovering his hidden snares. ”

“ We want carefully to note the full significance of hatred; then place beside it the one who hates—yes, as no other being in all the universe can hate. He is the father of haters; the tragedies of all kinds, filling the world with terror, because of murders, bomb explosions, incendiaries, poisonings, are but the scattered rays reflected and deflected from this full orb of hate as he revolves in his sphere of darkness. ”

“ An artist once painted a picture of the human tongue in a way to represent his conception of how the “tongue of slander” should appear. It was long, coiled like a serpent, tapering at the end into a barbed spear point; from each of the papilla, scarcely visible, was a needle point, from which oozed a green, slimy poison. The slandering tongue is “a fire, a world of iniquity—it defileth the whole body—it is set on fire of hell.”
The slanderer is no respecter of persons; he rakes and scrapes the uttermost parts of the earth for victims: king and peasant, rich and poor, priest and prophet ”

“ What then may we conclude from the most mysterious tragedy on earth?
Satan always scores a victory when a neighbourhood is shocked by the news of a suicide; the victory is direct and indirect. If the victim is prepared or unprepared, sane or insane, the crime can somehow never be forgiven. A strange demoralizing influence is always felt; a feeling of horror and depression. If the victim is pious, and many, many are the most devout in the church, do they forfeit their salvation by the felo de se? ”

“ As God’s method of saving the world is by the foolishness of preaching, what better agency of opposition could be launched than preaching? Nothing. Far stronger is the expulsive than the opposing power. The most dangerous poison in the world is the kind that hides its death in a cup of sweetness; a child eats a sugar-coated pill and never recovers. Hell is peopled by the multitudes who have drunk at the Devil’s fountain of soothing, satisfying poison. ”

“ Whence comes all this preaching about righteousness which places the crown on man, and robs the Cross of its glory? The righteousness being sounded in double diapason and angelus keys is the righteousness of the Devil. Bear in mind it is Righteousness, and a high type of it, he demands; he wants the offering of Cain to cover up all the needs of the soul—cheat the blood of its merit—insult God, and lead the race through a bowery of flowers, fruits, and music on to its ruin. Anything to cheat the depositum of the Gospel—that which gives a title to heaven—the precious Blood. ”

“ When we consider the Diabolus character—his strength and opportunity, whereby he visits his vengeance upon a weak, susceptible race, we can readily understand that his make-up would be far from complete without a continuous outflow of slander. But his courage and audacity stand out in glaring relief when we find him an Accuser. It does not require large intelligence or bravery to be a slanderer—only baseness of character—but to be an accuser, face to face with false charges, especially in the presence of One who has power over all things, reveals an impudent bravery that dazes the judgment. ”

“ The real pathos of war remains unnoticed by the chroniclers and correspondents; it is found in the heart suffering of the dying in the trenches; the black pall that settles over the homes made desolate by the news from the front.
The saddest stories of life will never be told; they are the voiceless agonies and smothered sobs from [Pg 85] victims of human treachery and deceit. Millions are shambling on their weary way, waiting for the end, whose hearts are dead and buried in graves of misplaced confidence. ”

“ In our discussion of the Devil’s theology we shall not, at the present, touch upon the theories and vile imaginations of demon-possessed men, but the finer phases of truth, beautifully presented by his apostles with a show of orthodox reasonableness. By the term Devil’s theology—doctrines—we do not mean his beliefs—get the distinction—but what he wants us to believe. He is every whit orthodox; he believes the Old Book; he does not indorse the new theology, or the so-called higher learning, only as it may be turned to his advantage. ”

“ The winds of the Arabian desert not only produce death, but rapid decomposition of the body; so doth slander destroy every virtue of human character. The cloven-hoof slanderer, like the filthy worm, leaves behind a trail of offal and stench though his pathway wind through a bower of earth’s sweetest flowers. ”

“ The Devil was a murderer from the beginning of human history; his first bloodshed was fratricide—growing out of religious jealousy. He is the father of murder and murderers. This crime, provoked or unprovoked, is monstrous; the passions that incite it were born in the pit. Then what may be said of self-murder: suicide? It is the most fearful, unnatural, abnormal of all forms of demise. Every impulse of reason and judgment revolts at the thought. The Master Himself drew back from death; the Book says death is an enemy. ”

“ If Satan has been conquered, and Jesus is yet contending with him for world-wide supremacy—why the almost universal triumph of evil? Why is true righteousness at such a discount? Why are the fighters failing and falling all around us? If these questions cannot be answered with a degree of sound reasoning, the whole problem of life, Bible, God, Atonement, Gospel are in a hopeless tangle. A Chinese puzzle does not compare with a riddle of everything worth while, visible and invisible. ”

“ But—there is victory, complete, overwhelming victory for every one who fights; but bear in mind it must be a fighter. There is one Name which never fails to reverberate from the Throne of God to the cavernous pits of darkness; this Name shakes loose the grip, untangles the web of all the allied powers of the Prince of Night. Satan is mighty, Jesus is almighty; he met his Waterloo. Jesus was never defeated. ”

“ One of the grave dangers of to-day is that Satan is no longer regarded as a Personality. Even among those whose faith is founded on the word of God, the idea of an orthodox devil smacks of superstition and an exploded hoax from the Dark Ages. “Let us hear the love side of the gospel; away with this devil and hell business—it’s too dreadful,” they declare. His real existence and personality are ridiculed in many pulpits and lecture platforms. When these ideas become common among the people who think, a wide open field remains for him to work unmolested. ”

“ The nature and character of a lie may best be understood, and we can get the estimate God places on it, by carefully studying the damages it wrought. Eden was lost, God’s favour lost, peace and plenty lost, innocence lost; humiliation, fear, banishment, toil, sweat, suffering and death took the place of Eden’s pristine glories.
Nothing so reveals the depths to which Lucifer had fallen—and his great intelligence, losing none of its acumen, exercised in a way fitting to his depravity of character, as the launching of a lie. ”

“ When the Rapture shall have taken place, Satan will have undisputed dominion; then shall the “Man of Sin” appear, setting himself up as God—to be worshipped. His reign will be the Great Tribulation; all the influences of righteousness will, for the time, be removed—the earth will reek in corruption and bloodshed. It is implied that, so terrible will be this time, divine intervention must necessarily shorten the Tribulation, else no flesh will be left on the earth. The Great Tribulation will be the climax of the Devil’s rule on earth. ”

“ Hence this handmaiden of the Devil has now become one of the most gigantic trusts on earth, blooming out into commercial, political, and industrial proportions. The whole business lives and moves and has its being on misery and bloodshed on one side of the counter; loot and plunder, coupled with an insane lust for gold, on the other side of the counter. ”

“ If the personality of Satan can be successfully consigned to the religious junk pile, our Bible is at once thrown into a jumble of contradictions and inconsistencies. The result will be even worse than our enemies claim for it now. One of the late recognized writers on the Old Testament says: “The Old Testament is no longer considered valuable among scholars as a sacred oracle, but it is valuable in that it is the history of a people.” If the Devil is a Myth, our Bible can be nothing better than historical chaos. ”

“ This is the strong gospel referred to; the gospel that fires the masses with hate and prejudice against the only means of human redemption. Yes, he preaches, preaches, preaches, and from every nook and corner; ten messengers to one preaching the Christ; his preachers support themselves, and touch the highways and byways; his lines are gone out into all the earth, circumscribing sea and land. The Devil gets an intelligent hearing. He has a long catalogue of doctrines, but he does not believe a single one of them. We should be wise enough to eliminate them from our creed also. ”

“ As an apostle of sunshine his mission is to flood the world with light, and he does it; but observe—it is his light; it neither warms nor illuminates, but for spectacular purposes it answers every demand. ”

“ Our land is deluged with crime, without respect to person or place; its blight touches all circles from the slum to the four hundred. Wealth and poverty, culture and ignorance, fame and obscurity, suffer alike from this Pandora Box scourge. The march of history—the pilgrimage of the race, has enjoyed but little respite from tears and blood. Those who strive to maintain a standard of purity, righteousness, and honour, are beset by strange, powerful, intangible influences, from the cradle to [Pg 12] the grave. ”

“ It is offering self-righteousness rather than seeking the righteousness of God. The bloody offering of Abel suggested suffering, punishment, death, judgment—but it honoured God. Modern righteousness scoffs at the Abel offerings by hanging a wreath of flowers on the Cross, bearing a perfumed tag, “With sympathy.” It is Cain setting up business in town once more. A sacrificial propitiation for sin is unnecessary when we have “inherent goodness.” The modern righteousness contends that each man has self-redemptive qualities; all he needs is a chance. Salvation is not internal, but external. ”

“ Sin is a disease, and the whole man, body, mind, and spirit, is more or less affected therefrom; but it is, in particular, a soul malady, going deeper than human remedies can reach, whether social or medicinal.
To cure this soul disease the race has sought eagerly from the day Cain and Abel built their altars. All the ramifications of civilization have had one all-absorbing desire: a readjustment of something fundamentally wrong within. This fight for an atonement with the Creator has been a long, heart-sore pilgrimage ”

“ His chief aspiration is to flood the land with bogus treatments which not only fail to cure, but they preempt the disease-infected spots so as to prevent the introduction of the genuine remedy.
The quack doctor is, no doubt, pleased when an imaginary cure has been wrought by his wares; but Satan is filled with wrath if some of his formulas strike deeper than he anticipated, and a soul emerges from darkness unto light. This, however, does not often occur; he is too cunning to advertise to a hungry, sin-sick world that which will bring permanent relief. ”

“ In the same degree, deny it as we will, our religion ceases to be a religion of faith. Then, on the other hand, the history of Christendom from the beginning, without an exception, proves the second horn to the dilemma: as we lose the spiritual afflatus, we become ceremonial. Upon this reef of rocks our Church is crashing to-day. We see only the material; we have a mania for statistics, figures. Our Sunday-schools seek organization, grades, banners, honour rolls, numbers. Great schools are pushed with enthusiasm by unconverted officers and teachers. ”

“ Most of history is a record of man’s inhumanity to man, but historians deal with these dark pages only on the higher levels. The greatest suffering, the bitterest cries of anguish, the deepest wails of despair are in the lowlands of human life: down where its pathos can never be known. The darkest tragedies of war are lost by the gallant heroism of some officer ”

“ Who but a chronic faultfinder could object to this upward move, so obvious now in all directions? The world is getting kinder, more sympathetic, more charitable; creed lines are dissolving like snow under an April sun; sectarian prejudice is dying under the withering frown of new ideals. ”

“ The world is attracted by things that are bright, beautiful, cheerful; anything that hides the sombre side of life, throws a mystic veil over its realities, and helps us to forget—whether it be books, music, lectures, or the nonentities of society—outweigh all else in the casting of accounts and in forming comparative estimates.
[Pg 42] If Satan were allowed to pose for a full sized picture of himself, just as he wishes to be seen by the children of this generation, no portrait painter could produce a specimen of rarer beauty ”

“ He makes special mention of the sand hornet: “He is the greatest villain that flies, and is built for a professional murderer. He carries two keen scimitars, besides a deadly poisoned poniard, and is armed throughout with a coat of mail. He lives a life of tyranny and feeds on blood.”
Every drop of water is swarming with hideous creatures which, if sufficiently magnified, would be frightful beyond description; the air we breathe is surcharged with death: infecting organisms which, if the system in the slightest degree becomes unable to eliminate them, bring on dreadful diseases. ”

“ In demon possession the fight is on the inside; in demon oppression the fight is on the outside. In the one, Satan controls the man: body, mind and soul; in the other, he depresses, afflicts the man: body, mind, and soul. In the one, the victim is the incarnation of evil; in the other the victim is generally the purest and holiest of men and women.
The Devil or demons may be ejected by the power of the Holy Ghost, but the hellish enterprise is never given up; all the engineering of the pit is utilized to keep ransomed souls out of the kingdom. ”