Not So Subtle Anymore

This post is part of the General Conference Odyssey. This week covers the Priesthood session of the October 2000 conference.

While I was growing up in the 1960's and 1970's (I graduated from high school in 1975 for reference) we were taught in church that Satan was very subtle and we needed the power of discernment to see and understand his wilily ways. Now, several generations later Satan is about as subtle as a foghorn, easily heard and seen.

Bishop Richard C. Edgley, First Counselor in the Presiding Bishopric, titled his talk "Satan's Bag of Snipes". 

. . . there is another 'snipe hunt' going on all around us, and we may be the naive victims. It is not a practical joke, and it will not end with a good laugh and a little warm fellowship. Satan is the great deceiver, liar and enemy to all that is good, including our happiness and our well-being. His great desire is to thwart our Heavenly Father's plan of happiness and make us 'miserable like unto himself' (2 Ne. 2:27). Being the very author and perpetrator of deceit, he in effect would invite us to join him in his snipe hunt, to fill our bags with excitement, fun, popularity, and the so-called 'good life'. But his promises are as illusionary as the nonexistent snipe. What he really offers are lies, misery, spiritual degradation, and loss of self-worth.

 

The latest news from Nashville, Tennessee bears this out. Following Satan's lies brings nothing but misery to the individual as well as many others who are innocent.

We've been given eternal truths by which we can discern Satan's lies in The Family, A Proclamation to the World. We don't have to wonder what is right and wrong. We don't have to go along with what Babylon teaches.

Bishop Edgley concluded with this stirring testimony:

Because of His priesthood, we are empowered. We are royalty. And we have the power to discern between Satan's snipes and God's true principles of happiness. Because we know who we are and because we are endowed with the Holy Spirit and empowered with His priesthood, we have the power to just say no. "No, Satan, I will not be a victim of your deceitful, vicious, and often deadly snipe hunt." I testify that 'wickedness never was happiness' (Alma 41:10) and wickedness never will be happiness. I further testify that happiness and self-worth will come only from living the principles of Him who created the plan of happiness.

 

What a blessing to have modern seers, prophets and revelators to guide us in these latter-days.