The Great Controversy The Great Controversy | Page 535

of life, he would have lived forever, and thus sin would have been
immortalized. But cherubim and a flaming sword kept “the way of the
tree of life” (Genesis 3:24), and not one of the family of Adam has
been permitted to pass that barrier and partake of the life-giving fruit.
Therefore there is not an immortal sinner.
But after the Fall, Satan bade his angels make a special effort to
inculcate the belief in man’s natural immortality; and having induced
the people to receive this error, they were to lead them on to conclude
that the sinner would live in eternal misery. Now the prince of darkness,
working through his agents, represents God as a revengeful tyrant,
declaring that He plunges into hell all those who do not please Him, and
causes them ever to feel His wrath; and that while they suffer unutterable
anguish and writhe in the eternal flames, their Creator looks down upon
them with satisfaction.
Thus the archfiend clothes with his own attributes the Creator and
Benefactor of mankind. Cruelty is satanic. God is love; and all that He
created was pure, holy, and lovely, until sin was brought in by the first
great rebel. Satan himself is the enemy who tempts man to sin, and then
destroys him if he can; and when he has made sure of his victim, then
he exults in the ruin he has wrought. If permitted, he would sweep the
entire race into his net. Were it not for the interposition of divine power,
not one son or daughter of Adam would escape.
Satan is seeking to overcome men today, as he overcame our first
parents, by shaking their confidence in their Creator and leading them
to doubt the wisdom of His government and the justice of His laws.
Satan and his emissaries represent God as even worse than themselves,
in order to justify their own malignity and rebellion. The great deceiver
endeavors to shift his own horrible cruelty of character upon our
heavenly Father, that he may cause himself to appear as one greatly
wronged by his expulsion from heaven because he would not submit
to so unjust a governor. He presents before

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