According to them, satan was condemn to crowl in the ground and eat dust all the days of his life. Some say he became a serpent... Never understood that idea or what they believe it really happened to him. Also, are serpents evil to mormons?

Let's see how well I remember this. They believe that Lucifer and Jesus were two powerful spirit sons in the pre-existent life before we came to this earth.

Heavenly Father (God) asked his sons to put forth their plans for the other spirit children, to help them to return to Him (God) some day.

Lucifer laid out his plan where everyone would be forced to obey all of the commandments, so that not one soul would be lost.

Jesus put forth his plan, where people would be given their agency to choose right from wrong. Heavenly Father chose Jesus' plan.

Lucifer was angry, so he gathered up his followers. There was a war in Heaven and Lucifer, who became then known as Satan, and 1/3 of the hosts of Heaven were cast down to the earth.

Satan and his spirit followers are very real to the Mormons. They see them as constantly trying to deceive them and thwart God's plan for them.

I don't think they consider Lucifer to have been an actual serpent. They see him more as a fallen spirit man, who will never be able to progress any further than what he is now.

yeah, I was thinking that god must be a chump, able to turn satan into a snake, but then tell humans after that that satan is powerful and evil--those two things don't jibe.

then I realized that genesis only says satan used a serpent as his "vessel" to do his dirty work; god's still a chump of course for blaming the snake when it was the devil that that did the "body snatch."

If you're wondering about his supposed abilities and methods of operation, I've done a little studying, and this is a very underdeveloped are of lds doctrine. There are some contradictory statements about his methods (surprising, I know).

edit

If you're *also* wondering...

The Jesus satan story never made sense to me.

If God already knew what he wanted, why did he pit his sons against each other?

Why didn't he just tell them what he wanted, and then give them each a calling?

Did his sons know that one of them would be banished forever? If so, why didn't they just present the plan they knew he wanted?

His son's were supposed to just guess, with so much at stake? God is one crappy father.

Satan bosses you around in the temple and you obey.

God used Satan in the garden to tempt Adam and Eve to fall, which is a good thing, not a bad thing. The Book of Mormon says that Adam and Eve would have remained as innocent children, and never had procreated children, if it we not for the devil doing God's will to tempt them and send them on their path of death and then resurrection life.

In the preearth life, Satan argued that we should all be saved, and no one lost. Jesus said we should choose to obey God by free will and that we should not be "forced" to obey God's commandments.

The Pearl of Great Price states that Satan's objective was to destroy the agency (free will) of man.

It's a very strange theology, and it is why most "Christians" reject Mormonism, because no such ideas are found in the Bible about the devil.

In short, the Book of Mormon and Mormonism actually turns the devil into a good guy hero or sorts. He probably likes all the attention he gets from the wacky theology. Maybe he's the author of it?

Please keep in mind that theology (and by extension "doctrines" regaarding Satan and everything else) properly belong in the realm of psychology. So when you ask about this or that teaching about Satan, you are really asking what it is that Mormons fear the most from a psychological standpoint. In a way the answer is different for every Mormon. There are, however, some broad generallities. Most Mormons are deathly afraid of a challenge to their sense of self. That is why they are so identified with political conservatism, which is the maintenance of the current social power structure (of which they are of course in charge). Religion gives them a method whereby they can embody everything they dislike or fear into the form of a supernatural being whom everybody else in the whole world is obliged to join with them in fighting.

Oh, yeah, and I forgot a part. One reason that God chose Jesus' plan was because Jesus wanted to give the glory to his father. But Lucifer wanted the glory all to himself.

This is out of the Bible. See Genesis 3:14.

The teaching in Gensis 3 is to explain how Satan produces sin and death in the garden. The serpent will have his head crushed, which is God's promise to send Jesus to reverse the sin in the garden.

At least this is what I remember. . .

The Mormons do read the Bible, even though it isn't as important to them as the Book of Mormon. And Joseph Smith plagiarized a lot of stuff for his so-called scriptures straight from the Bible.

is he's all about destroying the Mormon church, because he's mad that Heavenly Father chose Jesus' plan instead of his. He's not trying to get your soul for purposes of eternal torment, like other Satans. He'll mess you up and you'll be eternally sorry, but with Mormon Satan you're more a means to the end of destroying an institution. He's jealous that you have a body and he doesn't, and he might try to get into your body, but it's not really personal. That and the fact that you don't have to spend eternity with him unless you're bad enough to go to Outer Darkness--which is very unlikely--makes him a lot less scary than other Satans, imo.

Sure, Mormon Satan is into eight or nine of every ten things in the world and is therefore super hard to avoid, but he's just a man without a body. He's also your big brother, so even if you do have to join him in Outer Darkness, he's prolly just gonna sit there and tease you and call you names and stuff. He can't beat you up because neither of you will have bodies.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/25/2013 10:28AM by munchybotaz.

I go with the psychological explanation. It says a lot about why Mormons are so committed to making sure everyone believes with them. These doctrines about Satan are patently ridiculous. If anyone within a family were to say, "Mom, Dad, this is silly," (Mia's points are well-taken) who could defend them?

This attachment to the body flies in the face of centuries of Christian teaching. Okay, centuries of Christian teaching went to far in the self-loathing department, but just spinning it around so the teaching is: body, no body, body, no body; is not transcendent. It's schizophrenic. There's a store in Orem called Sexy, Modest. What in the world is anyone supposed to make of that? It's crazy. But, since so much of Mormonism is word salad, words that sound good but mean nothing, what is one more absurdity thrown on the plate?

but having met the guy, I know about the only thing he does now is harbor a deep loathing for the Chicago Cubs.

don't believe me? check the standings.

other than that he's pretty chill. Just don't call him Satan. He really hates that.

How's he feel about ferrets?

According to kolobianism, Lucifer is an integral player in the drama of mortal life. He's playing a role, nothing more. He's not actually evil and wasn't literally cast out of god's presence.

You can see this is true by reading Job 1:6. Lucifer holds court with god at his throne with other angels. They have regular old "whatcha been upto?" conversations and then they gamble a little bit on whether people like Job will stay faithful or not when put to the test.

Then god literally gives Lucifer powers to destroy things that Job happens to enjoy, like his family. This is how Lucifer is able to say in the temple that his apron is a symbol of his power & priesthoods, because he gets his power from god just like Thomas Monson.

It's a play. A drama. Lucifer does his part and jesus does his.

That's how I always understood it. Now I realize it's all bullshit...

The "war in heaven" never made a bit of sense to me. God is supposed to be omnipotent, but he can't even control his boy Stan?? What's up with that?? Yes, the whole thing is a
mythology, as is Adam and Eve and all other screwy bible stories. The whole thing is an attempt to explain us and the world from the viewpoint of a bunch of primitive minds. The BOM is also fiction made up by a bunch of imaginative early 19th century crackpots.

For me that goes the same for the atonement and Christ, that's made-up too. Nothing Adam did has anything to do with me! I was not tainted by anyone else's sin, and I don't want any other man to suffer for my acts.. Even if the silly idea were possible that someone could have done that for me 2000 years before I was a twinkle in dear old dad's eye.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/25/2013 11:34AM by rationalguy.