Students of the Bible are familiar with Jesus' temptation in the wilderness. They recall how the devil tempted him to make the stones bread to satisfy his hunger, suggested that if he was truly the Son of God, he could throw himself from the pinnacle of the temple and prove the protecting power of God, and then offered him the kingdoms of the world if he would fall down and worship him. But to all these satanic suggestions of willful mortal mind Jesus yielded not an iota.
Just prior to this wilderness experience Jesus had been baptized of John, at which time, it is related, the Spirit of God came upon Jesus, and he heard a voice saying that he was God's beloved Son. Yet when he came from his baptism filled with the divine Spirit, the Master was faced with evidence of what seemed to be a different status, presented in the temptations of the devil, or material sense.
Was Spirit responsible for the devil tempting Jesus? No. Does God, the loving Father, place His beloved son in jeopardy with evil? This is not in accord with the Scriptures or with divine Science. God does not use evil with which to test man's loyalty to divine Principle. The Bible tells us in the second epistle of Peter (2:9), "The Lord knoweth how to deliver the godly out of temptations." The temptations were beliefs of the carnal mind, animal magnetism, suggesting that the Master follow the line of matter instead of Spirit. Error would thus attempt to restrict and destroy his mission of overcoming evil, disease, and death.
