Word: tempters
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...traced a plumb, straight line, perpendicular to the sky. Then he said, "Those 40 days I spent alone, starving by the Dead Sea, Satan himself showed up only three times. My worries were mainly snakes and rocks and no sign of water. But the final time I saw the Tempter, he came in the clothes and body of Joseph, the man who married my mother and raised me--not a bad man but hard on us all. Joseph had died just before I went to join the Baptist, and his last words to me were 'Stay gone, fool!' But though...
...scorpions even harder than it already is. On the other hand he has an iron will. Starved and dangerously dehydrated, he resists the tantalizing bribes of food and water that Musa dangles in front of the keyhole opening in the cliff face where Jesus fasts and prays. Crace's tempter, then, is not a flapping, sulfurous devil, only a man whose demons and unactivated angels are part of his nature...
...grant that humans can be tools of the devil, let's remember he's our tool as well. As the majestic adversary in Paradise Lost or the heavy-metal party animal, Satan may be a capable tempter. But not until he falls into human hands is the Old Enemy put to his most sinister uses...