Satan's Temptations

Hugh Nibley made this interesting comment about God and Satan: “God does not fight Satan: a word from him and Satan is silenced and banished.  There is no contest there; in fact we are expressly told that all the power which Satan enjoys here on earth is granted him by God.  ‘We will allow Satan, our common enemy, to try man and to tempt him.’  It is man’s strength that is being tested—not God’s” (from Nibley on the Timely and the Timeless, p. 288).  That makes perfect sense but it is easy to forget.   God is not frantically trying to win the war between good and evil like England desperately fought to ward off a German invasion of the island in WWII; rather, God has full power to stop Satan and He will when that time comes.  But Satan is serving God’s purposes in allowing us the opportunity to be fully tempted and tried and stretched while here on earth.  We have no need to fear Satan but only to fear our own bad choices that we might make because of Satan’s temptations. 

Many scriptures do warn us of the power that Satan exercises over the people of the earth, though.  In the early days of the world the posterity of Adam succumbed to temptation and “loved Satan more than God” (Moses 5:13).  Nephi wrote that in the last days Satan would “rage in the hearts of the children of men, and stir them up to anger against that which is good” (2 Nephi 28:20).  The prophet Enoch saw in vision this chilling description of Satan (which likely could be applied to many different dispensations): “And he beheld Satan; and he had a great chain in his hand, and it veiled the whole face of the earth with darkness; and he looked up and laughed, and his angels rejoiced” (Moses 7:26).  In Moses’s encounter with the devil we have this somewhat frightening description of the adversary: “Satan cried with a loud voice, and ranted upon the earth, and commanded, saying: I am the Only Begotten, worship me.”  This caused even Moses who had seen God “to fear exceedingly” and “he saw the bitterness of hell” (Moses 1:19-20).  Joseph Smith’s own experience in the Sacred Grove was not too different when in his attempt to do good he was “seized upon by some power which entirely overcame [him]” such that he couldn’t speak any more.  It was so bad that he thought he was “doomed to sudden destruction” (JSH 1:15).  All of these scriptures serve as reminders that Satan is real and that he will seek to stop us from seeking God and doing that which is good.  But he can do nothing detrimental of any permanence to us unless we will it.  Brigham Young put it this way: “Do you know that it is the eleventh hour of the reign of Satan on the earth? Jesus is coming to reign, and all you who fear and tremble because of your enemies, cease to fear them, and learn to fear to offend God, fear to transgress his laws, fear to do any evil to your brother, or to any being upon the earth, and do not fear Satan and his power, nor those who have only power to slay the body, for God will preserve his people.”  We have no need to fear the devil; we have only ourselves and the misuse of our agency to fear.  Satan could not overcome Moses or Joseph Smith because they, through their agency, would not “cease to call upon God” (Moses 1:18).  With that same determination ourselves, there is nothing Satan can do to stop us from following the Lord and ultimately returning to His presence.