"Now there is a little time left you. Will you work? Will you repent? Or will you die all unready, worshiping money, glorying in your riches, and forgetting God and heaven? No faint struggle or feeble efforts will wean your affections from the world. Jesus will help you. In every earnest effort you make, He will be near you and bless your endeavors. You must make earnest efforts or you will be lost. I warn you not to delay one moment, but commence just now. You have long disgraced the Christian name by your covetousness and small dealing. Now you may honor it by working in an opposite direction and by letting all see that there is a power in the truth of God to transform human nature. You may, in the strength of God, save your soul if you will. 3T 550.1"
"No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon."
EGW's warning against worshiping money and forgetting God echoes the core message of Matthew 6:24, which states that one cannot serve both God and mammon. Both passages highlight the conflict between worldly possessions and spiritual devotion.
"You have a work to do which you should begin at once. Satan will stand by your side, as he did by the side of Christ in the wilderness of temptation, to overcome you with reasonings, to pervert your judgment, and to paralyze your sense of right and equity. If you do justice in one instance, you must not wait for Satan to overpower your good impulses by his reasoning. You have so long been controlled by selfishness and covetousness that you cannot trust yourself. I do not want you to lose heaven. I have been shown the selfish acts of your life, your close scheming and figuring, your bartering, and the advantage which you have taken of your brethren and fellow men. God has every instance written in the book. Will you pray to Him to enlighten your mind to see where you have overreached, and then will you repent and redeem the past? 3T 550.2"
"Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil. And when he had fasted forty days and forty nights, he was afterward an hungred. And when the tempter came to him, he said, If thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread. But he answered and said, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God. Then the devil taketh him up into the holy city, and setteth him on a pinnacle of the temple, And saith unto him, If thou be the Son of God, cast thyself down: for it is written, He shall give his angels charge concerning thee: and in their hands they shall bear thee up, lest at any time thou dash thy foot against a stone. Jesus said unto him, It is written again, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God. Again, the devil taketh him up into an exceeding high mountain, and sheweth him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them; And saith unto him, All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me. Then saith Jesus unto him, Get thee hence, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve. Then the devil leaveth him, and, behold, angels came and ministered unto him."
EGW draws a parallel between Satan's temptation of Christ in the wilderness and Satan's attempts to influence Brother P's decisions regarding wealth. The mention of Satan's 'reasonings' and attempts to 'pervert judgment' directly alludes to the methods used in the temptation narrative.