Doug Tales 58: Tendrils Up From Hell

What do curses look like spiritually, the kind of curses that come on a person who trusts in people over trusting in God? The scriptural term is “trusting in the arm of flesh.” Doug Mendenhall shared how such curses appear as twisting, slender tendrils which twine around and climb up a person’s body while growing up from hell onto the person. (Such dark spiritual tendrils can become the beginnings of “Cords and Bonds” mentioned in last week’s Doug Tales 57 blog post, March 14, 2022.)

Doug’s remarks about tendrils up from hell are recorded and can be listened to on this blog at “Talks” (August 19, 2019). This excerpt is from a transcript printed at the end of Conquering Spiritual Evil Blog Posts 2017-2019 (2020), on pages 336-338:

When our kids reach 21, our stewardship is over and they belong to the Lord. They’re always His kids. We only have stewardship for a while. Women have stewardship over their sons and daughters, and the boys until they turn 12. Then it reverts to the father. When they all turn 21, they’re the Lord’s. They are no longer your children – they belong to Him. Have we been in their life? Are we trying to control their lives? If you are, then you have a problem. It’s called taking their agency away, then you get cursed.

That’s one of the things Denise wanted me to talk about. Holy cow, there you go. We’ll start out with that. She said, “Dad, do you know what curses look like?” I go, “What are you talking about?” She goes, “Curses – that’s when you trust in the arm of flesh.”

• Jeremiah 17:5: “Thus saith the LORD; Cursed be the man that trusteth in man, and maketh flesh his arm, and whose heart departeth from the LORD.”

• D&C 1:19: “The weak things of the world shall come forth and break down the mighty and strong ones, that man should not counsel his fellow man, neither trust in the arm of flesh.”

• 2 Nephi 28:31: “Cursed is he that putteth his trust in man, or maketh flesh his arm, or shall hearken unto the precepts of men, save their precepts shall be given by the power of the Holy Ghost.”

I said, “So what does that look like?” You see, we did the book Conquering Spiritual Evil, Volume One, and these other books, and they’re experiential books. We aren’t allowed to write stuff unless we experience it. People come up to me and ask, “When is the next book going to be out?” I go, “We’re about twenty-two, twenty-three chapters into it, and it depends on when the next awful experiences happen.”

What does that curse look like? Denise said, “Dark tendrils come up from hell, and attach to the person. They’re not strong at first. They start at the feet and go up the body. They are not strong at first, meaning it’s like you take a piece of yarn, and you break it easily. Then you take and attach another and another strand, and you can break it still. You get forty or fifty strands, and you can’t break it. The tendrils come out of hell and attach to your feet, and they’re going up your body the more you keep trusting in the arm of flesh. They become very strong, so they can’t be broken. Your aura changes and becomes a darker color. A dark mist will surround you. The sighted will look at you and your aura will be darker. Eventually, the darkness will be around you and they can hardly see through it.”

That’s what the curse looks like when you trust in the arm of flesh. That’s what Denise sees, and she sees it a lot. Not just with LDS, but with Catholics, all different religions, all different government entities. Kitten talked about it, it doesn’t have to be just a religion. If you’re putting your trust and faith in a government entity, or a government, an institution, then you’re not trusting in God. If you’re putting your trust in fifteen guys in downtown Salt Lake, you’re not trusting in God.

What would that look like right now? I talked to Denise about this. My friend Kitten over here, she’s seen it all the time. A guy from my ward, a not very bright guy, he let me teach the elders quorum. I was falling asleep. One time, the elders quorum president, a good man that I really loved, he got up at the end of class and started talking about sacred cows. He said, “We need to follow the prophet, no matter what we do, we need to do what the man says, and we will be fine.” Wait, wait, these scriptures we just read “Cursed is he that putteth his trust in man.” Last time I checked, the LDS leaders were men.

Who do you put your trust in? She said, “only the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, nobody else.” You don’t trust what is said here today. You go to the Lord and you get verification on everything. (Don’t drive to 151 South State just to check that out. Ask the Lord. Maybe He doesn’t want you to check it out.)

Later, my friend came over that night to my house for some reason. (Nobody comes to my house after church.) We got talking about the lesson. He mentioned what he said. I said, “You know that was wrong. You testified in front of those men that they should trust in flesh.” And he said, “Yes, I know, I shouldn’t have done that.” He knew what he said was wrong. So what does that do to you? Does it make the curse immediate and even worse? Absolutely.

Now it’s three years later and after I don’t know how many rounds of chemotherapy. They opened him up, he was full of cancer. They bagged him, whatever that’s called, when you get a colostrum bag. He went through chemo, and made sure it was all done. But when they reattached the intestines to the bag, in order to do that, they found he’s full of cancer again. I saw him on the Fourth of July, and at first I didn’t recognize him. I didn’t know what to say. He happened to be outside on the street with his wife, and I happened to have my friend Kitten in the car. She looked at him and said, “Wow, if he would just repent of what he said.”

Do you get how important not trusting flesh is? That’s in your scriptures folks. He put it in the Book of Mormon, Doctrine & Covenants, and the Old Testament. There’s no excuse. No excuse. My friend admitted it. He knew it was wrong when he said it. All he needs to do is go back to that quorum and say, I was wrong, do not trust in the arm of flesh. I don’t care what the songs say. I don’t care what they testify. God says you don’t. That’s what my daughter wanted to get across today, one of the main things. Because she sees in everybody how many of us have tendrils because we trust flesh. If you trust her, you’re going to get tendrils coming out of hell because she’s flesh.

Can we go now? You should not take blindly anything that’s said here today. These precepts were given by the power of the Holy Ghost. You should get on your knees and ask in all humility without any preconceived notions or ideas if it’s true or not, of Him, the Lord Jesus Christ, or not. That goes for anywhere, any organization, with any human being. Hopefully you only came here today because He told you to. Not because you’re curious and you want to see a freak show (me being the freak). You asked, and He said yes. Otherwise, why are you here? You don’t go to something like this, you don’t go to any seminar or workshop unless you get down on your knees and you ask Him, “Is this something You desire me to go to today, that will benefit me and my life today?”

We used to have long conversations about blind trust when people would show up at our house for years for the “oracle of the week show.” People would show up and they’d just want to talk to the oracle. They wanted to ask about their life questions. Back in the early days, Denise was scared of all of you. She would say what the Lord told her to say, and many times He’d have her say, “Yes, yes, yes,” to whatever you asked. Then, they would leave, and she’d say, “Why don’t they go to Christ?” I’d say, “Why don’t you tell them that?” She said, “Because He didn’t want me to. He wanted them to do it wrong until they figure it out.”

Time is short. You’re being told now.

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Postscript: Doug Mendenhall started this blog exactly five years ago, on March 21, 2017. In his first blog entry, called “Since This Is My First Post…”, Doug emphasizes turning to our Savior to combat whatever problems we have. Whether it’s trusting in flesh or anything else, the way to overcome and conquer the spiritual evil in our lives is repentance and faith in Jesus Christ. The following excerpt from that blog post is reprinted in Conquering Spiritual Evil Blog Posts 2017-2019 (2020) on page 3:

How many of us suffer from ailments that might be caused by such things?  Did not the Lord Jesus Christ cast off entities and people were healed?  Why would it be any different now days?  Sometimes it just requires the strong faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, fasting, and proper authority.  Those are key elements any time we are facing darkness or evil.