How preposterous, but true! Saul offers his supreme act of disobedience as proof of full and complete compliance with the command of God through the prophet Samuel. In his spiritually blinded state he now took wrong for right, and felt aggrieved that Samuel should take exception to what he personally considered— and what in a sense was—a very great victory (see PP 629).

 Only a perverse, obdurate heart would attempt to pawn off disobedience as obedience. By making this claim Saul gave evidence of how far he had wandered from the pathway of right. It was when Eve “saw” that the fruit of the forbidden tree was “good for food, ... pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise” that “she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat” (Gen. 3:6). It is when a person convinces himself that what God has clearly marked as moral poison is desirable for the table of more abundant living that he forswears allegiance to God and swears allegiance to the devil. When what God has said is all wrong appears to be all right, a man may know that he has set foot on forbidden ground, and is without protection against the hypnotic allurements of the tempter. He has blinded his own spiritual eyesight and hardened his own heart (see Eph. 4:30; see on Ex. 4:21).

 Christ warned His disciples that “the time cometh, that whosoever killeth you will think that he doeth God service” (John 16:2). From the days of the early church (Acts 26:9-11; cf. 1 Tim. 1:13) to the present, the most severe persecutions against the servants of God have been waged in the name of religion. After the close of probation evil men will continue the forms of religion with apparent zeal for God (GC 615). It is the devil’s cleverest device so to camouflage error that it passes for truth. For this reason the True Witness to the Laodiceans, in whose time the master counterfeiter will put forth his most successful efforts, counsels them to make use of spiritual “eyesalve” that they may “see” (Rev. 3:18) their own true condition, that they may distinguish between truth and error, that they may discern the wiles of Satan and shun them, that they may detect sin and abhor it, and that they may see the truth and obey it (5T 233). Otherwise, like the Jews of Christ’s time, they will be found accepting as doctrine the commandments of men (see Matt. 15:9).