selek, Thank you for the reply and for the welcome. Interesting concepts that you share here, and I must admit that I've never considered or come across some of them -- the notion that Satan is a dupe, a patsy, a D.A., really on the Lord's side, etc. I can assure you that Satan is certainly not on the Lord's side -- quite the opposite, in fact. Satan is, shall we say, "hell-bent" on our total and complete misery and destruction. The Lord is a Builder while Satan is a destroyer. Not many people, myself included, like the idea that someone is out to destroy them: destroy their happiness, their resolve and commitment, their family, their virtue, their integrity, their strength, and in short, their very soul. This is not fun to think about, and I can see why some would like to soften the blows and suggest that he can't really be that bad, can he? Someone else above said it best when they quoted 2 Nephi 28:22 (link): "...I am no devil, for there is none..." Yeah, right. As for "variant interpretations of Scripture", this thing ought not to be. We both know that the Good Lord doesn't give scriptures for variant interpretations (link). I guess I'm going on a few assumptions here, firstly that this is forum for LDS believers (and not necessarily Christians at large, which is fine; I'm just not sure about the demographics of the audience), and secondly, that reference to "canonized scriptures" means canonized LDS scriptures. My apologies about assuming anything (you know what they say about assuming...) -- I didn't mean to be the new guy, bursting into the room with pistols drawn, only to find that it was the wrong room..... Someday, we will take a squinty, narrow look at this man Satan and effectively say, "So, this(link) is the man that made the earth tremble and caused kingdoms to shake, etc. Wow, look at him now. What a loser." Actually, I believe this doctrine is very much black and white...... Peace, Steele
