“Strive to enter in at the strait gate: for many, I say unto you, will seek to enter in, and shall not be able” (Luke 13:24 KJV). “Wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leads to destruction, and many there be which go in there: because strait is the gate, and narrow the way, which leads unto life, and few there be that find it” (Matthew 7:13, literal translation).
We see in these words of Jesus that we have a part in the great struggle for everlasting life. We must respond to the work of the Holy Spirit and we must struggle to break all connection with the powers of darkness. Every evil that is connected to us allows Satan an avenue with which to approach and tempt us.
At the close of His life Jesus entered into a great struggle in the garden of Gethsemane.
“Christ’s last great struggle with the power of darkness should ever be kept fresh in the minds of all who believe in Him as the propitiation for the sins of the world. God would have us study the lesson taught by the experience of the children of Israel, when they were bitten by serpents. Those bitten were directed to look at the brazen serpent which had been uplifted in the camp, and those who looked in faith lived. Today we are standing in a position similar to that of the children of Israel. As we look upon the world in its moral defilement, we see the poisonous serpents abroad, ready to sting us to death. To the cross of Calvary, bearing a dying Saviour, we must look. ‘As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up’ (John 3:14). Only the Lamb of God can take away our sins. We should think more of this than we do. Our eternal interests demand that we show faith in Christ.” The Review and Herald, November 4, 1902.
Just as Jesus entered into a great struggle with the powers of darkness at the end of His earthly sojourn, in these last days there is a great struggle before us such as the world has never seen. Earthly powers will engage in a last great struggle to destroy those who keep God’s law: “It is on the law of God that the last great struggle of the controversy between Christ and His angels and Satan and his angels will come, and it will be decisive for all the world. This is the hour of temptation to God’s people; but Daniel saw them delivered out of it, every one whose name is written in the Lamb’s book of life.” The Signs of the Times, January 17, 1884.