The existence, personality and power of Satan are awful facts and of immense significance today.
"Take a good long look at your master," a gospel preacher warned his hearers recently. Multitudes are blindly serving the devil without giving a thought to the payoff, which surely comes. The wages of sin have never been reduced! "The wages of sin is death." Rom. 6:2323For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. (Romans 6:23).
The true character of the devil, and his sinister designs on the guilty slaves of sin, are portrayed in the following story. It is an old parable, but worth repeating: A certain tyrant sent for one of his subjects and said to him, "What is your employment?"
"I am a blacksmith."
"Go home," he said, "and make me a chain of such length."
He went home; it occupied him several months and he had no wages all the while he was making the chain, only the trouble and pain of making it. Then he brought it to the monarch, who said,
"Go and make it twice as long." He gave him nothing to do it with, but sent him away.
Again he worked on and made it twice as long.
He brought it again, and the monarch said, "Go and make it longer still."
Each time he brought it, there was nothing but the command to make it longer still.
And when he brought it up at last, the tyrant said to his officers: "Take it and bind him hand and foot forever." Charles Haddon Spurgeon when using this story in a gospel address added: "Here is your meditation for tonight, ye servants of the devil. He is using you to make that chain; and make it longer still."
How helpless, how hopeless is the condition of all who serve Satan, the god and prince of this world! Is there no deliverance? Yes, thank God, there is One and only One who is able to break the chains of sin and set the captive free. It is Jesus Christ the Lord. Have you confessed Him as your own?
His blood can make the vilest clean
And set the captive free.
End