[Role-playing & Virtual Worlds]

I agree with "Watchful." I was just looking up that talk. :) Elder Bednar talks about Second Life directly in it, so it could give you some insight.

Here's a link CES Fireside 2009 - Bednar

[How Does The Church Deal With Bad Spirits?]

As a general rule of thumb, nearly everyone who has evil spirits come into their home are people who deserve it, because of their choices. As a missionary, sometimes it was a scary thing. There are two particular experiences I remember pretty clearly, one of which was practicing witchcraft in their home, and the other of which was a preacher whose mission was to destroy the missionary work going on in Utah. The preacher's stance, tone of voice, and the appearance of his eyes were in a way that I had never before seen in my life, and I could tell that a bad spirit was in him. I never had a time where I felt prompted to cast the spirits away or to perform an exercism, though, because they were so stuck in their ways that the spirits would have returned later.

I hadn't read this yet when I made my last post. I'm basically just saying the same thing: I disagree.

I'm sure if one IS choosing evil practices, evil spirits could be present. I'm not trying to say you must have been wrong in your experiences.

But I've also heard there hasn't yet been an apostle who didn't deal with evil spirits when he was called.

I'm not trying to circulate gossip or speculation: I simply think your claim is false. Perhaps mainly because a person very close to me, when they were becoming more and more spiritual and before making one of the biggest, most righteous decisions of their life, was possessed and had to have their father and a brother cast it out.

They had things in their past that they weren't proud of, but they didn't have these struggles when they were making those wrong choices in the past. The struggle with the evil spirit came when they were growing more and more spiritually.

[How Does The Church Deal With Bad Spirits?]

Evil canott exsist when good spirit is abundant; it can and does try; but when we excersise our power of prayer in the name of Jesus Christ, evil canott stay; sometimes things do get carried away in our minds too, i,ve had this happen before and it seems very,very, real; dont dwell on it; thats what satan wants you to do; keep yourself spiritual and you wont have a problem.:)

I think I slightly dis-agree with what you're saying. I suppose I got out of your comment evil only comes when you're being unrighteous.

I think we need to remember the more spiritual you are, the harder Satan will work on you.

I do agree, however, that we do often have the power to cast out Satan. We know from the scriptures, God will never allow more to happen to us than we can bear. I think that includes He will always provide a way for us to get rid of an evil spirit, whether it's getting rid of it ourselves, the ability to call someone with greater authority, etc.

And absolutely, I agree we should live as righteously as possible! But that one's a given. It can mean successfully helping others when they are past helping themselves, when influenced by an evil spirit.