Temptation has many masks, but only two faces. It may present itself in innumerable guises, but basically they can all be resolved into two appeals: pleasure in matter or pain in matter. Great wisdom is required to pierce through a possibly attractive presentation of evil and great strength—to resist its blandishments. But the exercise of such wisdom and strength will develop latent power and equip one with the spiritual armament necessary to subjugate disease and death.
There is a deeply significant and powerful spiritual counterfact eternally available to free one from each mesmeric suggestion of matter's desirability, substantiality, or power. Nowhere is there found a more potent example of this than in Christ Jesus' disposal of the three temptations that came to him in the wilderness, recorded in the fourth chapter of the Gospel of Matthew. It was necessary that the Master's dominant power over evil be tested and developed before he was found worthy and capable of carrying the revealed Word of God to a waiting world. After forty days in the wilderness, he dealt instantly and uncompromisingly with each temptation as it came to thought.
The first insidious suggestion was in the guise of physical hunger, for he had eaten nothing during that period of trial. What could be more natural than to satisfy his hunger? And since nothing was immediately available, why should he not exercise his God-derived power by producing bread from the numerous stones that lay about? But he vigorously rejected the argument by denying the latent error which it cloaked: that life is dependent upon matter for sustenance and continuance.
