Doug Tales 35: Just as Wide

One of the principles of natural law relates to Rhythm, and that everything flows in and out in rhythm. There is opposition in all things. God allows the pendulum to swing in both directions. Doug Mendenhall discusses these principles in Conquering Spiritual Evil, Volume One (2012), on pages 35-36:

I once had the opportunity to have a three-hour lunch with a Seventy from my Church. After telling him of our experiences, the only advice he offered me was, “I need to let you know that as wide as heaven opens to you and your family, hell will open just as wide.” We had learned the truth of that statement during the three years prior to our lunch together. Hell indeed had opened just as wide. After a while it just came to be expected. Later when we started to do the Ezekiel Seminars about Christ, we could determine how spiritual the seminar would be by the amount of opposition my family and the speakers experienced the week or two before. It got to be a running joke among us after a while. “Wow, this one must be good because we sure are going through hell to get there.”

Does the “darkest abyss” that Joseph said we need to “contemplate and search into” go as deep and as dark as the Celestial Kingdom is high and full of light? Do we really need to contemplate and search them in order to understand their opposite nature and be able to dwell there? Apparently it does, at least according to the scriptures and the Prophet Joseph. Brigham Young even weighed in with his opinion: “So when individuals are blessed with visions, revelations, and great manifestations, look out, then the devil is nigh you, and you will be tempted in proportion to the vision, revelation, or manifestation you have received. Hence thousands, when they are off their guard, give way to the severe temptations which come upon them, and behold they are gone.” (Journal of Discourses 3:206)