Doug Tales 55: Fallen Angel

To conquer spiritual evil requires knowing correctly who and what our enemy truly is, as well as who and what our God is. Doug Mendenhall diligently sought to understand and overcome the opposition we face here, and shares some of his observations in Conquering Spiritual Evil, Volume Two (2020) on pages 38-39:

There is an ancient document called the “Discourse on Abbaton”… It talks about this fallen god and what the Father had done to him. I’m going to quote part of it here. There are several translations, but this has been my favorite:

“And when My Father saw his great pride, and that his wickedness and his evil-doing were complete, He commanded all the armies of heaven, saying, ‘Remove the writing [which is] in the hand of the proud one, strip ye off his armour, and cast ye him down upon the earth, for his time hath come. For he is the greatest of them all, he is the head over them, and is like a king, and he commandeth them as the general of an army [commandeth his] soldiers; he is the head over them, and their names are written in his hand.’ Thus is it with this cunning one, and the [names of the] angels were written in his hand. And all the angels gathered to him, and they did not wish to remove the writing from his hand. And My Father commanded them to bring a sharp reaping-knife, and to stab him therewith on this side and on that, right through his body to the vertebrae of his shoulders, and he was unable to hold himself up. And straightway My Father commanded a mighty Cherubim, and he smote him, and cast him down from heaven upon the earth, because of pride, and he broke his wings and his ribs and made him helpless, and those whom he had brought with him became devils with him.”

This is part of a letter by Timothy, Archbishop of Alexandria copied around 380 A.D. It describes some of the penalties which were done to Satan. In the past we would find three of these in the LDS temple endowment, but they were taken out of the endowment in 1990. I was shown this by one of the two individuals I know that are redeemed. It was pointed out to me that that before the changes were “dropped,” there were three penalties shown in the endowment. The fourth one was not given. I was told that Satan would have received all four penalties. When I asked what the fourth one was, I was told to go ask our Father.

I did and was told to do an internet search for “drawn and quartered.” After reading about what this involved I understood what the four penalties were. The reader is invited to do their own research…

This fact makes this planet extremely hard, yet we all chose to come here. Because it is hard, we knew the growth here could be exponential in our progression to become like our Heavenly Parents. Even a short time here is worth the effort since the opposition here is unlike any we have experienced anywhere else. Being within the extreme evil on this planet even for a short time—even five minutes—will influence and teach our mind, spirit and body more than an eternal round on any other planet. The opportunity for growth here really is exponential.