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Verse:He withdrew about a stone’s throw beyond them, knelt down and prayed, “Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done.” An angel from heaven appeared to him and strengthened him. —Luke 22:41–43, NIV
Christ’s earthly ministry was ending, and He would soon face His cruel death on the cross. In the Garden of Gethsemane, He fought one of His most dramatic battles against the hosts of evil. The Signs of the Times issue for June 3, 1897, carried Ellen White’s touching article “Gethsemane.” Prayerfully, reflect on the following quotations from that article: It was here that the mysterious cup trembled in Christ’s hand.
Here the destiny of a lost world hung in the balance.
Should he refuse to stand as man’s surety? Satan encircled his humanity with a horror of great darkness, tempting him to think that God had forsaken him... The worlds unfallen and the heavenly angels watched with intense interest as the conflict drew to its close. Satan and his confederacy of evil, the legions of apostasy, watched intently this great crisis in the work of redemption. The powers of good and evil waited to see what answer would come to Christ’s thrice-repeated prayer.
In this awful crisis, when everything was at stake, when the mysterious cup trembled in the hand of the Sufferer, the heavens opened, a light shone forth amid the stormy darkness of the crisis hour, and an angel who stands in the presence of God, occupying the position from which Satan fell, came to the side of Christ.
What message did he bring?... Did he tell him that he need not drink the bitter cup, that he need not bear the guilt of man? The angel did not come to take the cup from Christ’s hand, but to strengthen him to drink it, with the assurance of the Father’s love. He came to give power to the divine-human Suppliant. He pointed him to the open heavens, telling him of the souls that would be saved as the result of his sufferings... He assured him that his Father is greater and more powerful than Satan, that his death would result in the utter discomfiture of Satan, and that the kingdom of this world would be given to the saints of the Most High. He told him that he would see of the travail of his soul, and be satisfied, for he would see a multitude of the redeemed, saved, eternally saved.