DECEPTION

 

“The Book of Mormon exposes the enemies of Christ. It confounds false doctrines and….fortifies the humble followers of Christ against the evil designs, strategies, and doctrines of the devil in our day. The type of apostates in the Book of Mormon are similar to the type we have today.

“God, with his infinite foreknowledge, so molded the Book of Mormon that we might see the error and know how to combat false educational, political, religious, and philosophical concepts of our time.” 

-          President Ezra Taft Benson (in CR April 1975, p 94-95)

Twelve years earlier President Benson gave us the formula through which we could identify deception (in CR Oct 1963, p 16-17):

1.     What do the standard works say about it?

2.     What do the latter-day presidents of the Church have to say on the subject… Particularly the living President?

3.     The test of the Holy Ghost…this test can only be fully effective if one’s channels of communication with God are clean and virtuous and uncluttered with sin.

The third reminds me of President Nelson saying that in the last days we will not be able to survive spiritually without the constant guidance of the Holy Ghost.

Nephi went one step further and advised us to feast upon the words of Christ because the words of Christ will tell us all things what we should do because the words of Christ are administered by the power of the Holy Ghost (2 Nephi 32:3).

The Holy Ghost is the most important element of the abovementioned formula. The words of Christ are relative to both the standard works and the prophets of the Church but the Holy Ghost provides the confirmation of these words and testifies of their truth.

The Church has a dual purpose: to administer the saving ordinances of the Gospel and to instruct and protect the elect of God from the ideologies of the world hence the administrative structure of prophets, seers and revelators.

Deception has only one outcome:  spiritual bondage from which we might never recover. Truth offers us freedom here and now and in the world to come. Falsehood enslaves us now and forever. The war continues, the battleground is here, one person offers us captivity and one person offers us freedom. We know who is who.

And ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free…… (John 8:32)

- CATHRYNE ALLEN 

(Art: Set My Spirit Free by Greg Collins)