A while back I posted a series of videos on the topic of overcoming temptation. You can watch the playlist here. A kind soul decided to transcribe the videos, which I am posting below in case anyone would rather read than watch. I won't be taking the time to proofread or format the content, so it's offered as-is. The videos are meant to be stream of conscience, and I have to reserve my time for book writing. Enjoy!
On a related note, here is a playlist about repentance.
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Part 1
Once I was praying and it was a normal day and God surprised me. When I pray, I expect to be heard and that's not because of who I am, but it's because I know something about who God is; it's only because of that. Still, I get surprised when sometimes I ask questions and I think he's going to take a long time to answer them or in the past I've asked for things I think are huge and I expect it's going to take time for him to work that request, not because of limitations in Him, but he's putting water through some really sturdy rock, and it takes time to work through because of us and sometimes he just busts something out that's so valuable, the value is impossible to convey externally or at least I would struggle to even start. In the spirit of that I would like to share with you something that I consider to be tremendously valuable and this is out of nowhere because no one said anything to me no one asked for this but this is in my heart today and I want to share it. I have not prepared a text, I have a few bullets and maybe I'll look up scriptures as I talk, I'm just looking at scriptures as they occur to me, to write this would take me a very long time and so to speak it if you give me permission to be more sloppy with it, I can get it to you faster and we'll count on the Holy Ghost to carry it into your heart and expound it in ways that you need to hear and highlights the things that are most useful to you and I pray that God does that and I know He will. So this video is -and it's probably going to be a series- it's probably best called "How to Conquer Temptation", but specifically I'm going to be talking about Satan. There's a lot to say about this, and I'll elaborate on it in books, but it's going to take a while and I want to get this to you now so you don't have to wait. So we'll start in the Garden of Eden -very shallowly that is a deep topic- but we read in Genesis 3:14, "And the LORD God said unto the serpent, Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life:”
So what is this curse about; what is this dust? Well if you look up that word in Hebrew, it's the same word used to describe what Adam's body was made out of; so here's the long story short: Satan and all of his minions they feed off of us; they feed off of us in our mortal state.
How so? Well at least in two ways. One is our bodies; we are given by God the grand gift of agency of choosing whether to listen to Him or not, whether to obey Him or not. And what happens is, when we disobey Him, our bodies are structured such that when we turn away from the light, we admit darkness. You're always influenced by the one or the other, there's no neutral. In everything you do, in every moment, you're either orienting yourself towards greater light or orienting yourself towards greater darkness, and you can flip flop between, but that's the way it goes. So when you orient yourself towards greater darkness, you make your body a refuge; you make your body a refuge for demonic spirits and what you provide to them is a shield, a shield from the light. The light is in and through all things. There is only one Creation in all of God's creation that can choose so fully to admit or dispel light and that's us. When we dispel it, we're not actually diminishing it at all, because it's from God and it can't be overcome. What we're doing is turning down our perception of it and the degree to which we are quickened by it or actuated by it, and in doing that we make our bodies a shield from the light.
So why does that matter for these demons, why did Jesus describe people as 'well furnished dwellings' for these demons (that was when he was talking about casting out devils)? They go around seeking places they can hide; they're like rodents. I filled up a field a little while ago and there's this big giant something or other and it took off out of the field as I was tilling it up, because he wanted to find another place to hide; he had a really good place and I destroyed it, so it ran off to a lesser place. Demons aren't dumb. They will find the best place that's open to them and in this case, as far as the shield goes, that's the person who turns away from the greatest light. The more God attempts to show you (the more you turn away from it) the greater refuge you become for the demons. For demons light is like salt on a slug, and I'm going to tell you exactly why that is. Everything in creation; all power comes through faith. This is a shocker for people who haven't heard it before or maybe don't believe it. The power of demons also comes through faith.
And you say, Well how can that be? How can you have faith in what's evil? This could be a really deep topic, but just imagine it like this: When you ascend in power and glory you grow towards God. When you turn away from God, you don't just immediately drop down like an equalizer on a stereo when the sound stops, you keep the high water mark. Just as there's a process to come up higher -and you do not come up higher immediately and you do not go lower immediately- there's a process to come down. There's a process of exaltation; there's a process of abasement. You can only acquire power through obedience to God and faith in God. You lose power when that faith is overcome and inasmuch as it is overcome. What I've just given you is exactly how Satan is overcome in this process of creation. I haven't explained that in detail, but I just gave you the key. Demons feed on your wickedness and the way you feed them through your disobedience to God is that you strengthen the reasons they have, to believe what they believe. If you have read Through Faith you understand that faith, in part, is what you believe, but it's also the reasons you have to believe those things. This idea that faith is like something other than rational belief is a very harmful idea. It blocks people from a great deal of power they would otherwise have. Satan has beliefs. Chief among them, somewhere at the top, is the idea that there is a better way than God's way and he's had this since the beginning. Embracing that idea kicked off the fall -his fall- and his fall is still a process that's undergoing. As you cruise through time, there are more and more evidences that his belief is wrong. The best example of this, the highest impact example so far, has been the mortal ministry of Jesus Christ. It wasn't just His temptation in the wilderness where He defeated Satan, He had several battles with Satan -His entire life was one of those battles- His time in Gethsemane was one of those battles, His time on the cross was one of those battles, the time in the wilderness was one. With each successive victory, Jesus weakened Satan permanently. How did he do it? Not with a sword, but through faith, and that's the same way we fight Satan. We do it in our scope, He did it in His, and we follow His example where we stand, and through it we come up to where He stands, which is wonderful.
How does this apply to your life in any way whatsoever? When you fight Satan, what you're doing is you are robbing him of evidence that his belief is true. There are macro level impacts and examples of this and there are micro level impacts and examples of this in all of creation. If you read in revelation that there's a quota of martyrs that have to die in loving the Lord more than they love their lives, that quota is part of this body of evidence. It's an argument that's irrefutable once it's closed and it's all part of the process of stripping Satan of his power and of diminishing the wicked and exalting the righteous. That's all of creation and that's the point. That's the macro level. On a micro level, every single time you choose one influence or the other, you're either making yourself a more comfortable place for demons or making yourself a more painful place for demons. You're either becoming salt, which improves sacrifices or kills slugs - see demons are the slugs- you invite angels, you dismiss demons. The other way, when you admit darkness into your life, in any way, no matter how small, you're opening the door to a greater demonic presence in your life...I shouldn't say presence in your life. By embracing the light, you're also inviting demonic presence in your life, but it will be externally as you do battle with greater and greater members of Satan's kingdom. On the other hand, you're admitting them inside of you and then you're also becoming more and more of a stooge, a little Manchurian, for him to to puppet and attack other people through. This is another key: as you become more righteous, the absolute last thing a demon is going to do is try to inhabit you. That would be the dumbest thing they could ever do. They will run from you -the minor ones- but as you go up the scale (you will deal with ones that go up the scale) they won't try to attack you directly. Satan didn't come to Jesus in the wilderness and try to possess Him. He was external and he was trying to tempt him externally; that was early [in His ministry] Throughout His ministry, He continued to be tempted by Satan. Satan went away, but his influence didn't, his temptation did not. It's not like he magically ended; Jesus leveled up right then, but the game was still going. How did subsequent temptations come? through other people. As you ascend more of those will be through people closest to you. He will use the people closest to you to cause you harm, because he can't get to you, but he can get to them. This is why -this is another potentially, very complicated thing- but this is why as you ascend, this is one of many reasons why you're going to suffer more and and that's because you can stop demons. I'm going to give you the tool to stop demons from messing with you directly right here and from this point on it's up to you whether you do those things and they will leave you alone in that form, but what you cannot stop is them messing with you through other people. The more you do these things I'm telling you, the more they're going to do that, but it's a much better place to be, because you're doing God's work and you're crushing the serpent with everything you do and everything you are. You can't make Satan stronger with the sins that you do. The reason for that is all power comes from God. All you're doing is submitting to his waning, decaying power. You're just joining a team that's basically already lost, but you can make him weaker. YOU. It doesn't matter who you are, and how nothing you are, how meaningless your life is; whatever you think it is. YOU PERSONALLY, you can make Satan weaker and I'm going to tell you how.
Let's transition to Satan being like a lion. We read in the New testament,1 Peter 5:8 "Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour..." Before we talk about the lion part, let's talk about the adversary part. One of Satan's chief tools in tempting you, is persuading you that somehow your interests are his interests or that somehow he actually has something to offer you. In reality, everything he offers you is less than what God offers you, and in fact it's probably less than what God has already given you. Going back to Jesus's temptation in the wilderness, think about when the devil took him up into 'a high mountain apart' -that means something- but let's skip that for now. Let's pretend it's a literal high mountain, which it wasn't, and he's showing Him the kingdoms of the earth -and that's one way you can tell it's not a literal high mountain because you can't see the whole earth from one mountain that's on earth- and he says all of these are mine to give and I will give you them if you worship me. That's a paraphrase from my memory so don't quote me on that, but that's the idea. It's interesting to see how Jesus responds to that in Matthew 4, "All these things I will give thee if thou wilt fall down and worship me." then Jesus sayeth unto him, "Get thee hence Satan for it is written thou shalt worship the Lord thy God and him only shalt thou serve." This is crazy interesting. When Satan does something, he can't do something without teaching you something about what he knows and what his strategy is, and the same thing with God. Everything God does tells you something about Him. When Jesus replies this way, you can ask this cloud of questions like, Why did he say this? What are the other things He could have said? What would I have said? What would I have done? How can I investigate the gap and move towards Him? This is not an exception to that. What would you have said if Satan took you into a high mountain and said, 'I have all the kingdoms of the world they're mine and I'll give them to you if you worship me'? The reason I got onto this tangent is: Anything he offers you might not be his to give and it's probably less than what God has already given you, but it's certainly less than what God could give you. God's interesting. You could go through and analyze the difference between God and Satan on everything and it's very fruitful. Satan says, 'I'll give you exactly what you want' God doesn't say that. He says, 'I might give you exactly what you want, but if I do, it will be after I offer you something far better, and I will do everything I can to persuade you it's far better, but I'll only give you something less when you absolutely cut yourself off from something better'. What a difference. Satan says, 'I will give you all these things if you worship me'. God says, You receive everything I have through worshiping me. It's not a 'do this' and I will give you 'that', It's, 'The only way you can really have this, is to become this way, and here's how you become this way'. True worship is just living as you sincerely believe God would in your place. It's incremental. It's a cycle and it just keeps going towards Him. More could be said about that, but here's the thing. Jesus didn't come to earth to get all the kingdoms of the world. He's not interested in that. He had much more than that before He came here; He had everything before He came here. He let go of everything, not to get less than everything, but to give EVERYTHING to us and that's why He was there. Interestingly, He doesn't even bother going into all this with Satan because Satan doesn't deserve His time. Frequently we're in conversations with people and they're feigning sincerity, but they don't care. When someone asks you how you're doing, do they really care? Sometimes they do, but very rarely. It's what you say when you don't care. Jesus was not about to go for something less than what He came to do and He certainly wasn't about to submit to someone less than who He came from, the Father. He said, ʻNo, I'm here to worship the Father.ʻ
Peter is talking about lions, he says, "Be sober, be vigilant, because your adversary the devil..." and he is your adversary. He is not interested in the things you're interested in. He's interested in one thing, which is maximizing your misery. God is interested in one thing which is maximizing your joy and the devil's interested in maximizing your pain and your misery, let's just say misery. 'Be sober...' At least twice in my life, I don't remember the occasion, but someone close to me was cracking jokes and they cracked a joke about Satan and you know sometimes I feel like one of my dogs -if you mess with a husky too much they'll just bite you, or if a puppy's irritating them, they just turn and bite them- and I think people feel that way when I turn and bite them, but on one occasion someone said to Him, 'Lord why don't you stop these people from praising you?' and He said, If I did, the stones will cry out. In the gospel plan there's a whole lot of waiting, not hiding, but biding your time. He does this with Himself chiefly, but all of His servants are on this too. Abraham wandered in the promised land; he didn't inherit it during his life, and that's because it's all part of the plan. He needed to not inherit it during his life; there are reasons and there are reasons why the Israelites were in Egypt for many hundred years and then they came back. There's reasons for all this stuff. For all time periods there are reasons. When the spirit impels sharpness, and I'm not talking about people that are just weak and frustrated. When that fire comes into someone and God says, 'I know you don't want to say this, but if you don't say this I have to recede from you, because I would say this' and you say 'Okay Lord' and you say it, and you know full well what people are thinking and what they're going to feel but you have to do it because it's the only way they can be exposed to what they would get from God if they had the relationship with Him that you do. That's how you become that bridge for the "electrical arc". So someone is cracking a joke about Satan. This has happened at least twice in my life and both times the spirit said the same thing and so I said to them what God said to me. He said, 'If you knew who you're joking about you would not be joking about him. You've never met Satan, but I have, and if you'd met him, you wouldn't be joking around about him.' That's what I think of when I see Peter saying be sober.
"...because your adversary the devil is a roaring lion walketh about seeking whom he may devour." A roaring lion is no joke. Have you ever been face to face with a lion? I have, in reality, not a vision. I'm saying at a zoo, in a different country, where they don't care so much about lawsuits or whatever, so chain link fence, me, adult male lion, and he wasn't walking around roaring, he was laying down, clearly irritated that he was in a cage and very tired of being in a cage and boringly he had his eyes closed and he just roared a little bit and I'm telling you it was one of the most spiritual, real life, day-to-day life experiences I've ever had. On that list is jumping out of airplanes and airborne school and some other weird things that people would not think of as spiritual experiences, but I could have been in the Sistine chapel, staring up. For me, it touched something that's very deep and very old and a roaring line is not a joke. There's something about that noise; it goes right through you. I can only imagine being in a field in a primitive situation and you hear that and all you have is a stick, so good luck to you my friend. How is the devil like this? Lions they're kind of lazy, but they only attack weak things if they have a choice. Predators tend to not be too dumb and they'll focus their efforts on what yields the greatest result and they're able to do this crazy probability, even bears do this. If you put down a board with nails in it and a bear steps on it, there's some kind of weird bear math going on in their head where they say, 'The expected utility of what I thought I was going to get is no longer worth it and I'm just going to walk away and never come back'. This is how Satan works and all of his minions. They're strategic, they're not idiots. Lions pray on what is weak, so if you're weak you're making yourself a target. If you're strong, you also make yourself a target, but you make yourself a target in a different way and it can actually -I'm going to say it, I'm going to say it quoting myself from before; I'm not making light of a very serious situation but- it's kind of a game once you know what you're doing and once you've paid the price to know what you can about God. It doesn't become a game because of you. It becomes a game as you get to know who God is and just how little of a threat Satan really is to God. This isn't my opinion only. If you read Isaiah, you will read that there will come a time when the whole world looks at Satan and says, 'Is this really him? This is the guy everyone was afraid of?' and that's at the conclusion of his descent. That's kind of cheating. Once the puzzle is solved everybody knows the answer.
Jesus says to Peter, paraphrasing take caution because Satan wants to sift you as wheat and I don't really like that that phrasing because I don't know if you've ever sifted wheat. I just almost got divorced because I planted tons of rye, and that's a joke but I always joke about the divorce meter and my wife has this meter on her head and when I take things too far, I can see this look on her face and I back down cuz I just don't want to start world war 3. I have a lot of experience sifting not wheat, but rye, it's the same structure. The first time you pour the raw beaten stuff, a whole ton of chaff blows off and you look down and the pile that's on the ground is a lot cleaner than it was and then it's kind of diminishing returns. You hope for the wind blowing and you just keep going and you know you're done when what you pour out, and what the wind blows through, is the same as what you started with. When the finished product hit by the biggest wind is exactly what you started with, you're done. There's another verse somewhere that talks about the idea of God wanting to get this wheat out of the sort of raw planted and then there's the wheat and the tares and all these other things, but this is a really important idea. Satan doesn't sift you as wheat, he sifts you as chaff. He wants to get rid of you. God wants to purify you. You know you're done refining precious metal when what you get out of it, is what you started with. There's nothing you can subject it to, to change it.
I'm telling you extraordinarily valuable things right now to understand God and what he's calling you to in life, what we're here for. Satan doesn't want to sift you as wheat, he wants to sift you out of the wheat, into the chaff. He wants to overcome you. He wants that wind, which is designed to purify the wheat, he wants it to blow you away. How do you overcome that? Be the wheat. The reason wheat doesn't blow away is it's heavier, way heavier than the chaff. Chaff is super light and it makes great bedding for chickens. It blows away with the wind. The wheat or the rye, it falls through, so be heavier. Make your character greater than it is.
How do you do this? Now we're transitioning into how exactly you resist him. There's another piece of advice from Peter, same chapter, this is the very next verse, "...whom resist steadfast in the faith..'" and he gave some advice that I don't think is particularly helpful, but we'll go with this 'resist steadfast in the faith' and then James talks about if you resist the devil he will flee from you. People try that without power and without efficacy, because what they think they can do is just postpone him and say, ʻWell if I postpone action he'll leave me alone.ʻ Resisting does not mean postponing. Resisting him does not mean ignoring him. I'll say it again, resisting him does not mean ignoring him. I told you there's two influences in life: there's light and there's dark, and it's a gradient. You're either going one way or the other, there's no such thing as neutral. Nothing is neutral, NOTHING. Resisting him is not trying to stay in the middle, because the middle doesn't exist. There's a Rush song that says, 'If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.' It's true. Truth in strange places.
So how do you actually resist him? You resist him by becoming stronger; that's sort of the long term tech and then there's a short term thing that you do in the moment.
How do you become stronger in the long term? You get stronger by recognizing that you're strength is in and from your shepherd. You're a sheep, Satan's a lion, and Jesus is your shepherd. He's my shepherd, He's your shepherd, He's The Shepherd. The thing about a shepherd is... Sheep don't have weapons, but they do have a shepherd and the shepherd has weapons, but He can only protect you through you listening to Him. Paul talked about how there's no affliction that comes to man unless God gives you the strength to overcome it, or the opportunity to escape it, and Nephi says that every commandment God gives we have the power to obey. He doesn't give you a command that you don't have the power to obey, which means: if an idea comes to you and it seems like it's showing you what God will do in your place, you can guarantee without a doubt that you also have the capacity to obey that, no matter how hard it seems.
One tactic Satan uses, is he tries to tell you that, 'What's been revealed to you is the fullness of the immortal God. How could anyone live up to that?' That couldn't be farther from the truth. You can't handle the fullness of the eternal God. That's why you're here and not with Him. That's why He doesn't appear to you all the time. That's why angels don't come to you everyday. That's why you don't have billowing revelations on your mind every moment of the day. If you could take that, your life will be a lot different than it is. What exactly are you getting when you have this idea of, 'I should say something nice to this person I've never met before, because the spirit has shown me that they're having a really hard time' or 'Here's a piece of trash on the ground; I didn't put it there but I can sure pick it up' or 'You know I could try a little harder at work and I know no one's gonna notice and I'll get paid the same either way, but I'm really not doing my best' or whatever it is... That's God, that's His voice to you, and you get to choose which way you're going to go. He can only protect you if you listen to Him and He will do everything He can to guide you in the paths of safety and peace, but He can't force that on you. It's better to say, 'not that he can't' but the whole reason He did all this was to give you opportunities that you can't have if He's forcing you. He's not going to violate this massive gift He's given to all of us, in terms of opportunity, just to force you into a little temporary comfort, and at the expense of everything greater.
Part 2
He can only protect you if you listen to Him. There's a lot of really great scriptures about a hen gathering her chicks and protecting those chicks. Baby chickens will run out from a hen all the time. There could be a lot of them and the hen is just in a perpetual state of hysteria. She'll gather up these chicks as best she can all the time, because they're always going out, want to escape, she's got to rope them in. Until they get big and get some sense, as much sense as chickens can get. If you're not under his wings, He can't protect you. That's why He says, 'look to me in every thought; doubt not, fear not.' That is the key and we're going to explore that a little.
When Satan came to Moses, and gave him a very hard time, Moses struggled with that until he made his focus God. I'm going to give you a practical take on that. The world will talk about 'worshiping God' and 'praising God', and it's easy to use those words and never connect your soul to your action. If you want to praise God, worship Him in spirit and in truth. In other words, say what you really believe and do what you really believe. In the moment, when demonic forces mess with you, that's not the time to develop your faith, that's the time that your faith is going to be tested. Casting out demons with much prayer and fasting; you can't do the much prayer and fasting in the moment it's needed. This has to be the next thing in your really solid trajectory in life and supposing you've lived your life that way -which it's kind of like planting fruit trees...the best time to do it was seven years ago- the next best time is today. In the spring that's the next best time; in the spring of your soul is every day, so the time is now to make changes.
If you know about changes you need to make, find out what that looks like on the basis of today, and you do that part, for today, right now. Live your life like that all the time. As you do that, what's going to happen is -when Satan or his minions come to you- your defense will be as follows: You will think about how good God is, not how you wish He was, but how you know He is. You will recount all of the good things that He has ever done, for the world, and especially for you. Every time you say one of those things, you think about what that means; about how you're going to live your life today, tomorrow, and until you die. You mean it when you say, 'I'm going to live according to all I know for the rest of my life.' If you do that, and if you can mean it when you do it, I promise you that the demons will flee from you. They will flee from you like a lion chasing a flock of sheep. When you do this, the word gets out about you. These demons they want nothing more than to be on the other side of town from wherever you are. When you go into places with that light in you, they will know who you are and they will stand up and sometimes they will flee from you. When Enoch preached, and he was doing his mission among the people, people fled from his presence. They couldn't stand in his presence; they trembled in his presence. Everyone's influenced one way or the other; most people are on the wrong side of that coin, if you haven't figured it out and it's a shocker when you do, but it's true.
Demons are strategic. Their strategy is to stay quiet as long as they can. Their best strategy is that their host doesn't know about them. Satan is a parasite and all of his followers are parasites. They have no power of themselves; all they have is what they've stolen or what they've retained so far from what they had before, that was gained in the right way. They want to stay on their host as long as they can and they're not going to kill their host, unless that's the only way they can can thrive. It works just like a parasite. A parasite doesn't think about this, but they come into being and propagate through strategies that keep them alive the longest. These satanic forces are just trying to minimize their pain and they do that by feeding on you. They're going to take the strategy that maximizes their imagined outcome. You can hurt them by making it harder for them to imagine a positive outcome, which is harming their faith through your faith; they have faith against what's true and you have faith for what's true. You can fight them that way, but you can also increase the pain and you do this by a conscientious and sustained life, a devotion to God, such that when the time comes, and you need it, you can recount your honest feelings towards Him, and what you honestly have done in your life, what you're doing now, what you're going to do. You can cry out to Him in faithful allegiance and it will repel these forces. You will get a name for yourself. Like the the demon said, 'Jesus I know and Paul I know, but who are you?' You'll get on the list and what happens when you get on the list, I have to warn you about, you become a target in other ways. You're not a target as a sanctuary for demons, as most people are, but you become a target for interpersonal attack.
I explained this before; they can embed in you, but once you stop them from coming into you, they're going to try to harm you through other people. There's two facets I want to tell you about with this. When you walk into a room -this is a normal situation in life, totally normal place, whatever the setting may be, work, grocery store, family reunion, it doesn't matter, you will walk into a place that's not your normal environ[ment] like your safe place, your abode- you'll go into this place that's not tempered by your presence, and you will see reactions in people from your mere presence; they will be uncomfortable. You don't have to say a thing, they might not even know you're there, their backs might be to you. You'll walk into a room, you'll see people shuffle, you'll see people get frustrated, you'll see people get up and leave, and then if they know that you're there, you'll see them do things to you, or say things about you, and it really doesn't matter how infrequently this happens, that won't really affect it, although you can get used to the presence of light just as you can get used to the absence of it, and desensitized to both. You will catch lower demons by surprise just like I did with that vole [rodent] whose whole environment got destroyed by my tiller quickly because it's a big tiller and I was flying around on my tractor and he just darted because I took him by surprise and he said, 'oh shoot I had a good thing going here. I am out of here because that tiller is going to kill me' and you can do that to the lesser demons as you ascend. The bigger ones; they're going to come for you because you're a challenge, like hunters go for the animals with the extra antlers and the big ones that are hard to catch; you have to go way out in the mountains to get them. There are demons like that too and they'll come for you. This is one of those things -like if you're a fighter and you're undefeated you just made yourself a target because everybody wants to be the first guy to knock you out- and you really need to be careful with that. Once you begin this journey, it's a journey you can't stop. You just have to keep getting better. As you learn more about God, you come up higher in the demons you meet, because God doesn't expose us to situations we can't handle, so you come up higher as you become capable.
Part 3
As you ascend you'll meet darker demons, demons with more power and you'll also meet greater beings of light. They didn't come before, because you didn't have the capacity to withstand -I should say, to contend- with their presence; to withstand the challenge it would be to accept the gravity of light that they bring, but now you can and this is why Daniel entertained Gabriel, and Mary entertained Gabriel, and Elizabeth entertained Gabriel, but other people don't. If Gabriel came to Daniel and almost killed him what would he do to someone who's way less than Daniel? You'll get more light from them and they'll help you withstand greater darkness. If you look in [KJV] Zechariah 3, you see the story of Joshua who is a righteous priest and Satan was messing with him, but angelic beings came to him and rebuked Satan and took care of him. When you're doing your best, God sends reinforcements. Jesus said during his trial he said, 'Don't you know if I ask My Father, He'll send a legion of angels?', and there's a purpose in [this example of] them not coming. In your case, don't forget that He can -and there will be cases where He will- send angels on your behalf and they'll fight your battles, because you won't have enough [light] to do it yourself. Pay attention, because that's going to happen; not just when you're on your knees asking for it, but especially when you're not. God always offers greater blessings, with opportunities for greater faith, and the more obvious it is, the less the blessings can be. All things come through faith. Be aware. Watch and pray for God to send help into your life because he's going to, and if you miss it, it's on you. It's a thing He can do, and there aren't substitutes; that's the way.
Let me tell you how you can hurt these beings. We talked about getting into human attacks and then we talked about possession kind of attacks; it's easier just to say internal versus external. This is how you fight off internal attacks: Macro: you live your life the way you should. Micro: in the moment when they come at you -there's a scene in a movie called The Untouchables- this guy Sean Connery he's a real knuckle-bruiser kind of guy and they're fighting the mob and it's a scene where he talks about escalating the attack, 'If they do this we're going to do that and if they do that we're going to do this', and again, truth in strange places. When the devil comes after you, God gives you power to make it hurt. You make that demon regret it, not because you're hot stuff, but because you serve God. God has overcome all things and He gives you the power to do what I'm telling you and how I'm telling you. So do it. Make them regret it. How do you do that in the micro? When they come after you, and you feel a spirit of heaviness, or you have [or] experience thoughts that are suggesting you to do things that aren't who you are, or you experience impulses to not do good things that you would otherwise do, -you just want to take it easy, you want to do this, you want to do that, you don't want to do this, you don't want to do that- I'll tell you how you fight back: You get up. You think of the greatest good you can do right now, and you go and you do that thing. And then, as soon as you're done, you think, 'What is the greatest good I can do right now?', and you go and you do that thing. People are overcome because their first reaction is to drop to their knees and beg for God to take this away. Stop asking for God to take away the very path He's giving you to greater things. Don't ask Him to hurt you. It's contrary to his nature to deprive His children of the good that He has to give. Ask Him how you can use it for your good. Do good. Think. Use your brain. Ignore your feelings for a minute and how you feel. Don't think about feeling good, think about doing good. And I don't care if you're so overcome that you barely have strength to stand or even if you're crawling on the ground. Do the best good that you can think of that is right in front of you. If you just have to straighten a mess that's literally right in front of you, do it. The second you do this, the light comes, and then it comes stronger, and then it comes stronger. What happens is that as the influence of that demon wanes on you and the influence of God increases, you're going to forget what was going on. You're going to get lost in the good that you were doing. Let's say that doesn't happen in the moment, or after a day, or after a week. Don't stop. Just keep doing the best that you can imagine and eventually what's going to happen is the clouds will dissipate, and that internal temptation goes away. Long term, the way they lose the ability to get you internally, is through God telling you, teaching you hard things. He reveals the truth to you and that typically doesn't happen in a moment and there are a whole lot of restrictions that we place on God in His attempts to try to get us this. It's one of the critical things we're here to gain.
Truth is successive. It usually takes time to lay out; sometimes it takes experience. A lot of times it takes sorrow and pain to learn, to lose the value that's false that you hold on things, and to gain the value that's true or gain the correct magnitude of value; Get things in their right priority place in your life. It takes time and it usually involves hard truths that you probably aren't ready to hear just yet. In the macro, you exercise your faith and then you make a place to have greater trust in God and to have less fear in life. The more you overcome it's like a snowball where you're just capable of more and more and more and more. That's the pathway to Him giving you what... He can't just magically tell you directly right this second. That's the internal. What about the external? Here we have people who almost never realize they're stooges of Satan and we have you, who sees what's going on and knows what's going on (because I told you and now you're informed and now you're empowered). The seat of decision in this person is in the person, but the voice telling them what to do, what they do, that's the demon. It could be very very deep inside them, like a lifetime of false ideas or behaviors or patterns.
How do you fight that? The way you fight this is you overcome evil with good. You can't adequately answer that question without delving completely into how to teach the gospel, which isn't really about the gospel at all, but how to teach.
How do you persuade people? The deep end of this is really really really really deep. It's reason, it's persuasion, it's intelligence, it's wisdom, it's all these things. I'm gonna stay in the shallow end. The good news is you're probably not here anyway, I'm not saying you're not intelligent or wise, but this is all successive. You got to go through the shallows, before you go deeper; you can't just dive in because you'll be overcome. Let's just stick to the shallows and the shallow is you love them. You love them with all your heart, might, mind, and strength. When they punch you, you say, 'God please forgive them, there's no way they understand what they're doing' and you turn the other cheek and when they hit you again, you turn back, and when this keeps going for long enough and you're laying on the ground, one of two things is going to happen. Their heart will be overcome by the clarity and intensity of the signal of God's love that you're showing them through suffering for their benefit, or God will remove them, or God will remove you. If you quit before that happens, you can't do so without turning away a tremendous gift that God has given you in great love. I wish I could say that when you get through something like this, the more you do this, you accumulate treasures in heaven. [thought cut off by video abruptly stopping]
Part 4
You look back on and you accumulate these experiences as treasures in heaven where you know in whom the God you have served, not from a 'I derive strength from trusting in God perspective' because you can say that and mean that, but from a 'Lord I did what I did, knowing that that's what you wanted me to do, and it gives me joy and strength, and peace, and comfort.' All of those things are true and in that day you will feel those things -that day being the resurrection and thereafter- but I have to say in my perspective that it just fills me with sadness; not that they turned away from light, but that I didn't have the opportunity to do more for them because I would have.
I want to share with you something that is very valuable which is the following information: When Jesus was hanging on the cross and He said, 'It's finished' at least one massive piece of what He meant was that He had gotten to the point in his mind and his heart that he was willing to hang there on the cross in the massive physical pain he was feeling in the moment, but also in the even greater indescribable spiritual pain that he was feeling in the moment. He was willing to sit there forever, to hang there forever, if that's what the Father wanted. As we approach closer to that spirit, we will embrace opportunities to suffer visibly and invisibly for the benefit of those who hate us and who hate the God whose love we have felt and whose love we're trying to demonstrate to the world, who has not recognized it. In short, if you want to fight demons, the way to do that is to be like Jesus.
I've given you some specific ways of how to do this and I forewarn you, because God never releases information without it coming with accountability. So I hope and pray that you use this information wisely and that you apply it in your life, because I promise you that as we approach the end days, the demons are going to be given greater license to deceive, and to tempt, and to harm. God will respond by revealing greater light, but those tools don't need to be recognized or used. We retain our power of agency to recognize and value them and use them, or to cast them aside as things of naught. I counsel you to take these things seriously and to talk to God about them and to use them for the purposes for which they're created.
Part 5
So it's supposed to be a four part series, but there's a key part that I need to underscore. I have pulled up about a half dozen scriptures, let's see which ones I use. Here's the bottom line up front: Jesus has already overcome the world, but all things are not yet subject to Him; those are two different things.
What does this have to do with temptation? I think that the knee-jerk reaction when you're going through something, is to pray and ask God to take you out of it, and I think it's much much better to pray and ask Him to show you the way to overcome it. Those aren't the same things. Jesus has overcome the world already, but the whole world is not subject to Him. Another way of putting that is, He's already won; the war is already decided. The only question is, Who's coming with Him and to what extent? That's really important to understand. Everything we do here is just answering that question for us and for whomever we help. That's it. Who's coming with Him and to what extent? In John 16:33 He said, "In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world." So when demons attack or any of the less weird sounding ways of phrasing that -and occurrences where the same sort of thing is happening- anytime you're in a tough spot, you should remember that Jesus has already won. The only question is, Who's coming with Him?
Now in practical terms, How do you do that? In essence, the idea [that I said before] was, if you pray, and in your prayer what you're doing is you're trying to focus on 'What do I really believe about God?' and 'How have I really lived my life?' and 'Am I in line with everything that I think I believe, sincerely?' 'Do I really do this at a deep level, at a private level, at a consonant level, and if so, what right does that grant me to lean on the Lord?' That's a very different approach than praying and saying, 'God take this from me.' Let's see if we can unfold this further. First off, some confusion. Paul says in Ephesians 1, "God hath put all things under His feet and gave Him (the Son, Christ) to be the Head over all things." Okay. But then later he says in Hebrews 2:8, talking about Jesus and about the Father putting Him in this place, He says, "Thou hast put all things in subjection under His feet." The Father has put all things in subjection under the Lord's feet. "For in that He put all in subjection under Him, He left nothing that is not put under Him." That jives with what we've seen so far, but he adds, "But now we see not yet all things put under Him." Okay, so which is it? The point to make here is that being appointed as the head of all things, is not the same as having all things you're the head of recognizing that you're their head. When the angels sound their trumpets, not for the first time, but in a later time, they will reveal all things pertaining to the thousand years that they oversaw. When the angel appointed to oversee the time during which the Lord lived blows his trumpet, included in what he reveals will be all the details of the Lord's mortal ministry, and that information will cause every knee to bow and every tongue to confess, which is not just to say, but also to completely believe that He is the Christ, which at once dispels the myth that just believing -even if you're sincere- believing that Jesus is the Christ, will save you. It's not enough. The question is, 'What does it change about you?' because if you don't get to that point until then, then what He did, what He sacrificed of Himself; it's not going to help you very much beyond granting the resurrection that you already will have received. What's Paul talking about when he says, "...that not yet all things are put under Him."
Let's go to Jesus again and we're going to jump to Luke 20. I really like this little passage. This is funny to me; it's super serious, but I find it humorous when the Lord plays with people, like my cat does mice, and I think that's relevant to the story because you need to understand what's really going on here. We don't really matter, but the Lord has already won this battle and he won it by defeating Satan. The question isn't whether Satan is stronger than you, because he is; there's no question that he is. The question is, 'Who are you going to submit yourself to?' You get to pick, and you get the power to pick from God, not Satan, so he can't take that away from you. The question is not whether he can flash his power to you, and freak you out, and scare you; who cares about that? You turn on the lights and it gets brighter, so what's the surprise here? That's a weird analogy, but you turn off the lights and it gets darker; no surprise right? The question is, What are you going to do about it? You already know where you're going and you're real comfortable in the place you live. You don't really need the lights on; you know where to walk. If you trust in God and you've lived your life that way, the question is not whether Satan is stronger than you or not. It's completely irrelevant. I will note, I didn't look up scriptures for this, but Jesus said, 'don't fear those who can harm your body, fear those who can harm your soul.' Here's a secret. He doesn't have power to do that, only you do. God didn't give him power to do that. You have to pick. He doesn't give Satan power to harm your soul. You have to give Satan power to harm your soul, so let him hurt your body, let him hurt your feelings. Just tie yourself up to Jesus like you're on a ship in a big storm and you're tying yourself to the mast and just go with it. Luke 20 -getting back to the cat and mouse- these Pharisees are fooling with Jesus (so they think) and they're trying to trip Him up and ask Him this question and then He gives them this rock solid answer and one of them then says, 'Master thou hast well said'. I can see this video in my head of this guy [saying], 'We're toast. There's nothing we can say now and we don't believe in Him still, but he just stole all of our weapons and there's nothing we can do.' I'm in verse 40, Luke 20, "And after that, they durst not ask Him any question at all." If you do the right thing, this happens all the time. People realize that they're messing with a higher power. Not you, not me, but who we serve. I'll say they back off. It doesn't mean they don't come again, but every time they come, they regret it. That's the power that He has. That's not what we want. We want them to get it, not to regret it, but to get it and some do. Verse 41, So Jesus turns the tables, He says, "How say they that Christ is David's son and David himself saith in the Book of Psalms, 'the Lord said unto my Lord sit down on my right hand till I make thine enemies thy footstool' David therefore called him Lord how is he then his son?" This is cryptic Old English, but in plain terms He said, 'Why do you all believe that Christ will be a descendant of David because David said in Psalms that the Lord said to my Lord sit on my right hand till I make your enemies your footstool.' So how could David have called him Lord, if the Lord is his son. It says, "Then in the audience of all the people he said unto his disciples, 'Beware of the scribes which desire to walk in long robes, and love greetings in the markets, and the highest seats in the synagogues, and the chief rooms at feast which devour widows houses, and for show make long prayers; the same shall receive greater damnation.'" In front of a crowd, He throws down and challenges these guys who started the fight -they challenged him- and He turns the tables, asks them a question that they absolutely should have known the answer to, and they're silent because they don't know the answer. If they did know the answer, they weren't confident enough in it to say it in front of Jesus, because they thought He would tear them to shreds, and he would have. Plus, if they had the right answer, they only would have affirmed who He was, and how He was, and that everyone should believe in Him. That's the funny thing about the truth. The truth will always support God's cause, even if it's not obvious that that's what's happening. Because they can't answer, in addition to some really harsh things, He says, 'Why would anyone believe these fools? They don't even know the simplest of things that they purport to know, that they would have to know if they are who they say they are.' This is good stuff. This is how teachers of the gospel should be. I told one of my sons once -he was walking around, his mouth was writing checks that his accomplishments in life could not cash- I took him aside and I said, 'Look, everything you're saying happens to be true that I've heard, but you need to understand that just because something is true, it doesn't mean you have a right to say it. You have to earn the right to say certain things, because otherwise you can't say them with the sincerity that needs to back them in order to make a persuasive argument.' This is completely relevant to the topic.
Those certain "vagabond jews" who went around casting out devils in "the name of Jesus" -they might have done it in the name of Paul, but the points the same either way- and they said, 'Paul we know and Jesus we know, but who are you?' and then they attacked them. You need that backing. You have to pay a price, in order to get the thing that you seek, and that's true of all things. Even though the gospel is free; it's free like government money is free, someone is paying for it. Even if that someone, is someone else, there is a cost and you receiving it; it's not automatic and you have to seek after and receive...you have to perceive, receive, and do it, and share it with others. Back to verse 43. The Psalm, I think Psalm 103, that Jesus is quoting here he says till I make thine enemies thy footstool... so why would the Father tell the Son, 'Sit on my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool'. What does that mean? Enemies is pretty clear. Footstool, you have to look up the word. It doesn't mean something you put your feet up on; that is one of the meanings, but that's not what was intended here. A better rendering would be, 'until the people who oppose you recognize your goodness to such an extent that they submit to you with their whole heart and their full capability'. Neither the Father nor the Son came to damn anyone. The Father didn't send the Son to damn anyone. He sent the Son to save people. Jesus said, in John 10 I believe, 'I come to give life and more abundantly' in other places he says things like, 'my work and my glory is to bring to pass [the immortality and] eternal life [of man]'. It's resurrection, and not just to live again, but to live better than you did before. That's the purpose of everything that He does and so His purpose is not to squish His enemies. His purpose is to help everyone, including his enemies, to recognize and receive more value than they otherwise would. Why hasn't that happened yet? This is Jesus in Doctrine and Covenants 63:59, He says, "Behold, I am from above and my power lieth beneath." That's a very important sentence. "I am over all, and in all, and through all, and search all things, and the day cometh that all things shall be subject unto me." Another witness that the day has not yet come when all things are subject unto Him, and I just explained why.
In the meantime, the question is, What do you do about it? In the same passage he says, "Behold, I am Alpha and Omega, even Jesus Christ. Wherefore, let all men beware how they take my name in their lips for behold verily I say that many there be who are under this condemnation who used the name of the Lord and use it in vain having not authority. Remember those guys going around trying to cast out devils in the name of Jesus? How can you tell if you're on the right track or not? If the devil's turn and rend you, you're probably not on the right track. Something's wrong because that shouldn't happen. The topic of the video is overcoming temptation. If you're still struggling, something's wrong How do you overcome all things in and through Christ, who has already overcome things? You become subject to Him, voluntarily, before you have to become subject to Him because you don't have a choice, because it's the last day and you're being shown how much of an idiot you are, how many times He reached out and you swatted His hand away. The way to overcome it, is to voluntarily submit to Him. How do you do that? You use the name of the Lord and you don't do it in vain. In the briefest terms -this is a long topic- the name of the Lord is the character of God. If you seek, find, adopt, and live the name of the Lord -that's a process, it's an incremental process- as you do that, you will encounter all He is, and all He has. That includes power over the devil and anyone that follows the devil. What is that power really? I'm not going to explain it but I'll point you in the right direction. "Behold, I am from above and my power lieth beneath." I'll tell you what the power is not. Jesus died on the cross. He had power over His own life, but He did not escape His own death voluntarily. When he said, 'Don't fear those who can harm you physically, fear those who can harm you spiritually' In other words, yourself; fear yourself. Don't fear Satan, or anyone else. Fear you, because you're the one who can mess this up, they can't. Encountering His power doesn't mean that you're going to be spared hard things. It means that you will have the ability to overcome them. What that means is the name of Christ is the character of Christ. You can live in such a way and obtain tools such that, nothing that can happen on this planet, NOTHING, can shake you from the character of God that you possess and included in that is absolute complete confidence and peace; 'peace I give you, not as the world gives, I give to you'. That's what He said, and this is that peace. It's only found in and through God, to the extent that you have discovered, received, and become, like He is. I am laying out bombshell truths here. These are massively more valuable than their vehicle, and I really hope that you watch this video many times and pull these out and study them. They will be laid out for you in greater detail over time. The way faith works is the more evidence you have for something and the more plainly it's laid out, the less the possible blessings you can obtain through living it. That's just the way it works and I'm throwing that one out there too, that one's a real gem. If you have ears to hear and you have the faith to jump on these things early, you'll be all the more better off later.
Let's reaffirm this. I'm looking at three other scriptures. Doctrine and Covenants 88:41. "He being God, comprehendeth all things, and all things are before Him, and all things are round about Him, and He is above all things and in all things, and is through all things, and is round about all things, and all things are by Him, and of Him, even God, forever and ever. This is the way it is, this is the way it's always been, this is the way it has to be, and if you want to be like that in any way, you have to be like that in some way. It is an enormous fallacy; you can pray to God and you can ask Him to take away the thing that you're going through. You can do that and He is mighty to save. He's also mighty to fortify. In my opinion, that is an infinitely better thing. So if you want him to transmit his glory to you, that's not going to work, because in Isaiah He says He doesn't give His glory to other people, but He provides the way for you to become like He is, and that's how you obtain his glory to the extent that you will. He can exert influence on other things to change the situation that you're in, but that's not the same as giving you His glory though. And honestly, are you asking for a good thing if you ask for that, because he sent it to you for a reason, it wasn't just to take you out of it. If you go and read the man born blind in John 9, Jesus says that people say, 'Why was this man born blind? Is he the sinner or his parents?' and Jesus says neither, it's for the glory of God that he was born blind. Then Jesus heals him, but He doesn't take the blindness away, so much as He gives the man a path through which he can retain all the goodness that he got from the blindness, after it served its purpose. Having been born blind, he sees better than anyone around him because he knows who Jesus is, where they couldn't exercise the very basic reasoning required and simplest honesty to recognize Him. Transmit glory? That's not how to do it. God doesn't move. You go to Him. If you want more of what He is, eclipse Him. Live exactly how you see Him living in your life, through all the things you've learned about Him, and all of the experiences you've had with Him. That model that you've built of what would the ideal man be or woman? Be that person all the time, no exceptions. That sounds like a really high bar to people, but the thing is, as daunting as it seems and overwhelming as it seems, it's not being like God. Our understanding of how He is, is so limited. It's incomplete and in a lot of ways it's incorrect, but that is the way, that IS the way. As you do that, what happens is as you move to align with Him from where you are, how it seems, He will reveal more of himself to you. He's not going to do that very extensively, until you move, and inasmuch as you move towards Him, He'll give you more. That's how it goes, forever.
Next time you're in a tough spot just remember: the battle is not yours to win, it's already won. Satan will try to get you to feel that way and to think that way, but that is because it's to his advantage, because he can squish you if you're thinking like that. You need to understand that your strength lies in aligning with Jesus. He's the one that has overcome all things. There will come a day where He subjects all things to Himself. That's a huge key to understand the end times events. If you turn to Him, and you seek Him with all of your heart, might, mind, and strength, and you implement fully in your life absolutely everything you sincerely believe about Him, and you open your eyes to what you have not paid attention to around you that testifies of Him, and things and in people, and you gobble up every single resource you can find that in some way teaches you more about Him -I'm not saying prioritizing books and people over the spirit; I'm saying feed the furnace of your spirit with the things He's put right under your nose, but always keep the connection with Him directly supreme- if you do that, He absolutely will lead you along to greener pastures.