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TOPIC: Gordon, Samuel Dickey - Quiet Talks About the Tempter (Other Topics in this Collection)
SUBJECT: 095. The "Angel-of-Light" Disguise
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The "Angel-of-Light" Disguise
The tempter has a third way of hiding his approach to us. It is so strange and bold as to make it seem almost blasphemous even to repeat it. He hides behind God! That is to say, he pretends to be God's own messenger. Paul's way of saying it is that he "fashioneth himself into an angel of light." (2Co_11:14.) The boldness and subtlety of this reveals the desperateness of the tempter. It reveals, too, the reality and desperateness of the fight that is on. It is a real fight; no mere make-believe.
The tempter will come to us under pretence of being God's messenger, or of being God Himself. That is to say, he will, for example, quote some bit of God's Word, so thinking to make us think it is God who is speaking. It is true that the quotation is quite apt to be a misquotation, or a partial quotation, or a bit taken quite out of its setting, and so away from its true meaning. But it is also true that these quotations of his are accepted by great numbers, who do not recognize the personality of the quoter.
Then, in addition to this is the other method of clothing his suggestions in religious phraseology. There is an intermingling of enough that is true and good with what is bad and not true, as to give the impression that all is good. The impression he seeks to give is that it is God Himself who is talking to us, and so the impression that in adopting and following his suggestion we are really doing the thing God wants done. This may be called the religious temptation. It is his favourite way of approach to earnest, godly people.
It is most interesting that he used this disguise with our Lord. In the Wilderness he preached the Gospel of trust in God. He said, "Cast Thyself down. Trust God. He has said He will give His angels charge over Thee, and in their hands they shall bear thee up lest thou dash thy foot against a stone." Was ever preaching more plausible in sound! And was a bit of God's Word ever more pushed out of its meaning in application!
Yet the recognition of this guise is really not difficult. For in it the tempter is always suggesting something a little extreme. The method is really to make some extreme or unwarranted application of what the Word teaches. And this, be it keenly noted, is one of the sure touchstones by which to test his temptations, as we shall see a little later.
It may help to look at a few of his favourite temptations under this disguise. We are taught in Scripture to yield glad submission to God's will for our lives. There has been much preaching of this blessed truth of late years. And many have sought to make this the controlling purpose in their lives.
The tempter's perversion of this is that we are to yield to whatever comes to us, as being the will of God for us. Under that disguise he would lead us to accept as God's will much that he himself—the tempter—sends. The true spirit of submission is an intelligent discerning of what God's will for us is, and then a glad acceptance of it. The tempter's counterfeit is that we should blindly accept whatever comes, as being God's will because it has come. So he would get us to accept his own doings under the supposition that we are yielding to God's will.
There is a vast amount of misfortune, and disease, and mental depression that is so accepted. Whereas if there were a prayerful discerning of what is God's will, and what is not, much that comes would be steadily resisted, as an evil thing, in our Lord Jesus' Name, and so deliverance would come from it. The Master's word to "watch" as well as "pray," if used more faithfully and intelligently, would help greatly. We would find freedom from much that has mistakenly been accepted as from God.