Picture: Adobe Stock – Von Paco
Despite All Satanic Distortions
By Ellen White
From the very beginning, it was Satan’s cunning plan to cause people to forget God. In this way, he hoped to draw them to his side. He worked hard to distort God’s character so that people would have a false idea of Him—believing the Creator to be like the evil prince himself: tyrannical, harsh, and unforgiving. Then, people would fear, avoid, and even hate Him. Satan hoped that those he deceived would become so confused that they would erase God from their minds. He could then blot out God’s image in humanity and imprint his own. He would fill people with his own spirit and make them captives of his will.
Satan led Eve into sin by misrepresenting God’s character and sowing distrust in Him… Even the covenant people—those whom God had chosen to preserve the knowledge of Him—had strayed so far that they completely misunderstood His nature.
Jesus is the Answer
Jesus came to reveal God to the world as a God of love, a God full of mercy, kindness, and compassion. The dense darkness with which Satan had shrouded the throne of God had to vanish when the Savior of the world revealed the Father to humanity once again as the Light of Life… Jesus said of Himself that He was sent to represent the Father. In the dignity of His being, His mercy, heartfelt compassion, love, and goodness, He stands before us as the embodiment of divine perfection, the “image of the invisible God” (Colossians 1:15).
God Gives Us His Son
The apostle writes: “God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself” (2 Corinthians 5:19). Only by contemplating the great plan of redemption can we truly appreciate God’s character. The act of creation was a demonstration of His love—but it is in the gift of salvation for a guilty, lost world that His boundless love and compassion are most clearly revealed. “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16). In this, God’s law is upheld, His justice affirmed, and yet forgiveness is offered to the sinner. The most precious gift Heaven could bestow was given so that God might “be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus” (Romans 3:26). This gift lifts humanity from sin and degradation and makes them children of God.
God Adopts Us
Paul says, “You received the Spirit of adoption, by whom we cry out, ‘Abba, Father!’” (Romans 8:15). “See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God!” (1 John 3:1). What love, what incomparable love, that we—once sinners and strangers—are brought back to God and made part of His family!… And the Son of God “is not ashamed to call them brothers and sisters” (Hebrews 2:11)…
True Parental Love
All the love that has flowed through human hearts from generation to generation, all the springs of kindness ever stirred in humanity, are but tiny streams compared to the boundless ocean of God’s infinite, inexhaustible love. Words cannot express it… Even eternity will not fully unveil the love of God as revealed in giving His Son to die for the world. Yet as we study Scripture and contemplate the life of Jesus and the plan of salvation, these grand themes will become clearer to us. We will experience the blessing Paul longed for the church in Ephesus: that “the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give to you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him” (Ephesians 1:17)…
Satan’s Countermeasures
Satan is constantly seeking ways to occupy the human mind with things that hinder the knowledge of God. He tries to captivate our thoughts with distractions… that cloud our minds and discourage our hearts. Many focus on the wickedness around them, the apostasy, and the flaws they see everywhere. They talk about these things until their hearts are heavy and full of doubt. They dwell on Satan’s schemes and their discouraging experiences, while losing sight of the power of the heavenly Father and His matchless love. That’s exactly what Satan wants!…
Unshakable Trust
Our hope lies in continually strengthening ourselves with the assurance that Jesus is our righteousness. Let us confidently rest on this foundation—it will never fail. Instead of meditating on Satan’s darkness and fearing his power, let us open our hearts to receive light from Jesus and reflect it into the world! In doing so, we proclaim that He is stronger than Satan and that His arm supports all who trust Him… Yes, disappointments will come. Tribulations are to be expected. But we may place everything—great and small—into God’s hands.
Knowing God Personally
The Christian’s task in this life is to represent Jesus to the world and to reveal Him in our lives and character… But if our thoughts are consumed with gloom and sorrow, and we are preoccupied with darkness and evil around us, how can we represent Jesus? How can our witness draw others to Him? We must know God and the power of His love—as revealed in Jesus—through personal experience. Therefore, let us study the Bible earnestly and prayerfully! Then, our understanding will be enlightened by the Holy Spirit, and our hearts will overflow with trust, hope, and ceaseless praise to God…
Let us “fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith” (Hebrews 12:2). Then our minds will become clearer, our faith stronger, and our hope more steadfast. We will become so absorbed in His purity, His beauty, and the sacrifice He made to reconcile us with God, that we will no longer speak of doubts and discouragements.
Understanding God
The revelation of God’s love, mercy, and goodness, and the work of the Holy Spirit on our hearts… bind us to Jesus by faith, allowing us to understand His character clearly and thereby unmask Satan’s masterful deceptions…
The Pictures in the Halls of Our Memory
By beholding, we are changed. As we reflect on the love of God and our Savior, meditate on the perfection of His divine character, and by faith make Christ’s righteousness our own, we are transformed into the same image. So let us not gather all the unpleasant images—wrongdoing, corruption, disappointments, proofs of Satanic power—and hang them in the halls of our memory, speaking of them and mourning over them until our hearts are completely discouraged…
Joyful Pictures
The Lord has given us far brighter, more joyful images. Let us gather the comforting assurances of His love like precious treasures and dwell on them constantly: how God’s Son left His Father’s throne, clothed His divinity in humanity to save us from Satan’s power; how He triumphed for us, opened Heaven, gave us access to the audience chamber where the Godhead reveals its glory; how He lifted fallen humanity from the pit of destruction caused by sin; how we are once again connected to the infinite God; and how we, clothed in Christ’s righteousness, are lifted to His throne after passing the divine test by trusting our Redeemer. These are the pictures God wants to place in the chambers of our hearts. And while “we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen,” we will affirm that “our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all” (2 Corinthians 4:18,17).
The Final Battle
Directly ahead of us lies the final battle of the great controversy, where Satan will work “with all power and signs and lying wonders” (2 Thessalonians 2:9) to misrepresent God’s character, seeking “if possible, even to deceive the elect” (Mark 13:22). If ever a people needed increasing light from heaven, it is those whom God has called in this dangerous time to uphold His holy law and vindicate His character before the world… Never was the church more in need of the experience described in Paul’s letter to the Colossians, and never has God been more eager to bless His people with it: “For this reason we also, since the day we heard it, do not cease to pray for you, and to ask that you may be filled with the knowledge of His will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding; that you may walk worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing Him, being fruitful in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God.” (Colossians 1:10)
Excerpted and adapted from: Ellen White, Testimonies for the Church, Vol. 5, pp. 737–746; cf. Zeugnisse, Vol. 5, pp. 769–778.
