The following passages will show how familiarly and frequently Sunday treats of the devil:
"DEVIL" PASSAGES
The devil isn't anybody's fool. You can bank on that. Plenty of folks will tell you there isn't any devil—that he is just a figure of speech; a poetic personification of the sin in our natures. People who say that—and especially all the time-serving, hypocritical ministers who say it—are liars. They are calling the Holy Bible a lie. I'll believe the Bible before I'll believe a lot of time-serving, societyfied, tea-drinking, smirking preachers. No, sir! You take God's word for it, there is a devil, and a big one, too.
Oh, but the devil is a smooth guy! He always was, and he is now. He is right on his job all the time, winter and summer. Just as he appeared to Christ in the wilderness, he is right in this tabernacle now, trying to make you sinners indifferent to Christ's sacrifice for your salvation. When the invitation is given, and you start to get up, and then settle back into your seat, and say, "I guess I don't want to give way to a temporary impulse," that's the real, genuine, blazing-eyed, cloven-hoofed, forked-tailed old devil, hanging to your coat tail. He knows all your weaknesses, and how to appeal to them.
He knows about you and how you have spent sixty dollars in the last two years for tobacco, to make your home and the streets filthy, and that you haven't bought your wife a new dress in two years, because you "can't afford it"; and he knows about you, and the time and money you spend on fool hats and card parties, doing what you call "getting into society," while your husband is being driven away from home by badly cooked meals, and your children are running on the streets, learning to be hoodlums.
And he knows about you, too, sir, and what you get when you go back of the drug-store prescription counter to "buy medicine for your sick baby." And he knows about you and the lie you told about the girl across the street, because she is sweeter and truer than you are, and the boys go to see her and keep away from you, you miserable thrower of slime, dug out of your own heart of envy—yes, indeed, the devil knows all about you.
When the revival comes along and the Church of God gets busy, you will always find the devil gets busy, too. Whenever you find somebody that don't believe in the devil you can bank on it that he has a devil in him bigger than a woodchuck. When the Holy Spirit descended at Pentecost the devil didn't do a thing but go around and say that these fellows were drunk, and Peter got up and made him mad by saying that it was too early in the day. It was but the third hour. They had sense in those days; it was unreasonable to find them drunk at the third hour of the day. But now the fools sit up all night to booze.
When you rush forward in God's work, the devil begins to rush against you. There was a rustic farmer walking through Lincoln Park and he saw the sign, "Beware of pickpockets."
"What do they want to put up a fool sign like that? Everybody looks honest to me." He reached for his watch to see what time it was and found it was gone. The pickpockets always get in the pockets of those who think there are no pickpockets around. Whenever you believe there is a devil around, you can keep him out, but if you say there isn't, he'll get you sure.
The Bible says there is a devil; you say there is no devil. Who knows the most, God or you? Jesus met a real foe, a personal devil. Reject it or deny it as you may. If there is no devil, why do you cuss instead of pray? Why do you lie instead of telling the truth? Why don't you kiss your wife instead of cursing her? You have just got the devil in you, that is all.