Not in a Single Encounter

I appreciate the insight that Elder Talmage shared about the adversary as he wrote about the temptations of Jesus in the wilderness.  He said, “It is not to be supposed that Christ’s victorious emergence from the dark clouds of the three specified temptations exempted Him from further assaults by Satan, or insured Him against later trials of faith, trust, and endurance….  This victory over the devil and his wiles, this triumph over the cravings of the flesh, the harassing doubts of the mind, the suggested reaching out for fame and material wealth, were great but not final successes in the struggle between Jesus, the embodied God, and Satan, the fallen angel of light.”  Luke specifically mentioned that Satan “departed from him for a season,” suggesting indeed that Satan would continue to tempt the Savior and try to get Him to fall (Luke 4:13).  Elder Talmage suggested the application for us in this lesson: “It is not given to the rest of us, nor was it given to Jesus, to meet the foe, to fight and overcome in a single encounter, once for all time. The strife between the immortal spirit and the flesh, between the offspring of God on the one hand, the world and the devil on the other, is persistent through life.”

Probably the most obvious example of one who successfully defeated the adversary once but failed to sufficiently guard against later attacks in the scriptures is David.  He is the example par excellence of overcoming the adversary, saying boldly to Goliath when no other Israelite would face him, “Thou comest to me with a sword, and with a spear, and with a shield: but I come to thee in the name of the Lord of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel, whom thou hast defied” (1 Samuel 17:45).  He overcame this powerful adversary by his great faith and trust in the Lord, but unfortunately it was not his last battle—he did not defeat him in this “single encounter, once for all time.”  The adversary came to him in a much different form late in David’s life, and he did not bring forth the same faith to resist evil at that day.  He succumbed to temptation, violating the two most serious of the ten commandments.  His earlier spiritual victory against Goliath did not protect him when he let his guard down.  The lesson for us is that our battles with temptation and the adversary will never be over in this life—we must “watch and pray always, lest [we] be tempted by the devil, and [we] be led away captive by him” (3 Nephi 18:15).

               Elder Holland suggested like Elder Talmage that the adversary will continue in his attempts to tempt us as he taught about the story of Moses and his encounter with Satan recorded in Moses 1.  After Moses had successfully “called upon God” and “received strength” he was able to command the adversary to leave, and “Satan cried with a loud voice, with weeping, and wailing, and gnashing of teeth; and he departed hence” (Moses 1:21-22).  Elder Holland added that Satan was “always to come again, we can be sure, but always to be defeated by the God of glory—always.”  We can never let our guard down no matter how many times we may feel that we have successfully overcome temptation or trials.  No matter what stage of life we are in we must “Pray always, that [we] may come off conqueror; yea, that [we] may conquer Satan, and that [we] may escape the hands of the servants of Satan that do uphold his work” (D&C 10:5).