When the devil had finished every test, he departed from Him until an opportune time. Though the other Gospels record only three temptations, the Gospel according to Luke 4 : 2 declares that Jesus was led by the Spirit in the wilderness "Where for forty days He was tempted by the devil". Though the devil persevered with all His wiles and allurements, he was nevertheless doubtful of the identity of the Son of God, for on the first occasion he says, "If You are the Son of God" Lk 4 : 3. All his temptations were severely rebuked by Christ, for He quoted the Scripture by saying, "for it is written". But the devil too, in his pride and insolence quoted the Scripture to the Son of God.
It can be surmised, that throughout His public life the tempter was at the heels of our Saviour, waiting for that "opportune time", especially at the great miracle of the loaves and fishes, when the crowds wanted to make him king and and at his triumphant entry into Jerusalem with the crowds virtually at His feet shouting Hossanahs. "Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord." On all such occasions, He withdrew by Himself to a lonely mountain top and prayed throughout the night to His Heavenly Father and came down in the morning "full of power" and immediately left with His disciples to the other side away from the tempter.
The moment Satan was waiting for came when Jesus entered into His agony in the Garden of Gethsemane. Though he originally tempted Jesus with fame, power, glory and riches, he now makes Jesus visualize a vast sea of horenduous and inhuman torture brought about by the scourging with barbed whips, a crown of vicious thorns pressed tight on His head, the whip lashes of the Roman soldiers on the tortuous road to Calvary and his hands and feet nailed to the cross and lifted up between two criminals.
The sight of all these horrors and the heinousness and gravity of sin which He had taken upon Himself in His great love of humanity, was so intense that He was crushed beneath that loathsome weight and falling prostate before His Heavenly Father, His body was bathed in a sweet of blood. That dark starless night in Gethsemane, was literally the dark night of His soul when He implored His Father,"If it be possible let this chalice pass away from me." But in the intensity of His suffering, He prayed the more earnestly and fervently and was filled by the power of Holy Spirit to go through with this crushing ordeal. In deep prayer Jesus overcome this last temptation. Satan was finally vanquished by the power of prayer.
Through His own bitter experience Jesus exhorts His followers, "Pray that you may not come into the time of trial", but persevere unto the very end to behold "the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living" - Psalm 27 : 13
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