The Hour of Darkness Approaches
Immediately after Jesus was baptized in the Jordan River and anointed by God as the promised Messiah he was promptly led by the holy spirit into the wilderness in order to be tempted by the Devil.
But that was just the beginning. After having failed to tempt Jesus into an act of disloyalty to Jehovah the gospel writer Luke noted that the Devil concluded the temptation, only “until another convenient time.” Some time later Jesus exposed his tempter as the wicked ruler of the world, the father of the lie and the original manslayer – charging his fellow Jews as being those desirous of doing the will of the wicked one.
On the night he was arrested in the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus told his captors that it was their hour and the authority of darkness – meaning that Jehovah had removed his protection from Christ in order to allow the wicked one to test him to the limit. If you recall, on several occasions during his ministry the murderous Jews tried to kill Jesus, but could not. On other occasions the leaders wanted to have Christ destroyed but they were in fear of those who accepted him as a man of God. But all impediments to his destruction were swept away on that fateful Passover.
Jesus forewarned Peter that Satan had also demanded to have them, the apostles, in order to sift them as wheat, and by extension, everyone who has been called into the kingdom of Christ. That would include Jehovah's Witnesses today, would it not?
