PITCHFORKS are one of the many tools used on a farm. They have sharp points and if used carelessly they can cause injury. A family of boys was visiting at the John Fuhrer farm near Salem, Oregon. The farm had a fine barn, one which was especially attractive to city boys as visitors.
After dinner one day, the boys asked to be excused from the table, and hardly taking time to thank Mrs. Fuhrer, they ran out to the barn to play hide and seek. Walter Fuhrer ran ahead followed by his guests, With Butch, the youngest boy, trailing behind.
Inside the barn it was getting dark, for evening was coming on. In the darkness Butch stumbled. As he fell, there was a sharp stab of pain in his hand. A pitchfork had been carelessly left lying on the floor, and one of the points had gone right through his hand.
Butch got his hand off the fork and ran back to the house to his mother. Mr. Fuhrer, seeing the injury, quickly wrapped Butch’s wound up with some medication. A dreadful disease can result from a wound like that but God was kind in not letting it develop. Butch’s injury healed nicely but he never forgot that accident.
Some folks think about pitchforks when they hear about Satan. Perhaps they have seen pictures showing Satan with a forked tail and holding a pitchfork in his hand. But the only things we really know about Satan are what God tells us in the Bible, and it says nothing like that. Rather it tells us that Satan was once a beautiful angel, but he sinned against God in a most awful way and he became wicked in all his ways.
Satan may try to frighten you and tell you that if you take Jesus as your Saviour you will have no friends and you will have no pleasures. But this is not true. Satan is a liar (John 8:4444Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it. (John 8:44)). Jesus is the best friend you could ever have for “while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” Rom. 5:88But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. (Romans 5:8). If you take Jesus as your Saviour you will find you have a host of friends in all those who have been saved in the same way.
Perhaps people think they must escape from Satan who is pursuing them with a pitchfork to cast them into hell. But this is not the case. Lost sinners will be cast into hell, it is true, but this will be because of their sins, not because Satan caught them. Revelation, chapter 20, tells us what is going to happen, both to Satan and to lost sinners. It is most solemn to read what God says there: “The devil that deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone... and shall be tormented day and night forever... And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire.”
ML-12/30/1962