Nehor's Teaching

It’s very interesting to see why so many people started to believe Nehor when he taught priestcrafts among the Nephites.  Alma 1:5 tells us that “he did teach these things so much that many did believe on his words.”  It was not that his arguments were convincing or that what he was teaching reflected truth that made it so people believed him.  It was at least in part because of the repetition of his ideas that people started to believe him.  Satan doesn’t have truth on his side so he can’t simply let his arguments speak for themselves in order to convince us, so one of his tactics is to repeat false ideas so much that they become accepted.  I think we see this a little in his encounter with Moses.  Moses had just seen God, and the devil came to him saying, “Moses, son of man, worship me” (Moses 1:12).  Moses in great wisdom and by the power of the Spirit rebuked Satan for the next six verses in the account, and how did the deceiver respond?  He simply repeated himself louder: “I am the Only Begotten, worship me” (Moses 1:19).  Moses started to fear but called upon God and commanded Satan to leave.  He again just got more obnoxious and “cried with a loud voice, with weeping, and wailing, and gnashing of teeth” until finally he was cast out (Moses 1:22).  He could not argue truth with Moses so he simply got louder and louder telling Moses to worship him.  In our own day there are certain philosophies of men that go against the teachings and commandments of the Lord that never would have been accepted by the general public a couple generations back.  But in our own day they are repeated so often—and sometimes so vigorously—that those of the rising generation simply accept the new moral standards as truth.  We have to guard against the teachings of the world that are accepted not because of their truthfulness but because of their prevalence.