(Essay on deception by SMSmith, posted in installments, from last to first; #5 of 7. © 2002)
(*2 Ne. 28:22; **(Alma 30:53; see also 2 Ne. 28:5-6)
Nephi warned of this deception: “And behold, others he flattereth away, and telleth them there is no hell; and he saith unto them: I am no devil, for there is none—and thus he whispereth in their ears, until he grasps them with his awful chains, from whence there is no deliverance” (2 Ne. 28:22).
Korihor succumbed to a parallel deception when he confessed: “But behold, the devil hath deceived me; for he appeared unto me in the form of an angel, and said unto me: Go and reclaim this people, for they have all gone astray after an unknown God. And he said unto me: There is no God; yea, and he taught me that which I should say. And I have taught his words; and I taught them because they were pleasing unto the carnal mind; and I taught them, even until I had much success, insomuch that I verily believed that they were true;” (Alma 30:53).
What better way to obscure sin than to mock the idea of a lawgiver, a tempter, and even a lawbreaker. Without a God in heaven or laws defining right and wrong, then “whatsoever a man did was no crime” (Alma 30:17), and thus he was free to pursue happiness in whatever manner he might devise. This great deception is revealed in the words of Samuel the Lamanite: “ye have sought all the days of your lives for that which ye could not obtain; and ye have sought for happiness in doing iniquity, which thing is contrary to the nature of that righteousness which is in our great and Eternal Head” (Hel. 13:38; see also Alma 41:10).
No person who discounts the reality of the archenemy of every good thing (Moro. 7:12, 17; Alma 34:49) will endure for the First Presidency of an earlier day described Satan thus: “He is working under such perfect disguise that many do not recognize either him or his methods. There is no crime he would not commit, no debauchery he would not set up, no plague he would not send, no heart he would not break, no life he would not take, no soul he would not destroy. He comes as a thief in the night; he is a wolf in sheep’s clothing” (Messages of the First Presidency, comp. James R. Clark, 6 vols., Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1965–75, 6:179, as quoted by James E. Faust, “The Great Imitator,” Ensign, Nov. 1987, 34).
