Did Lucifer have a mentor?

[mikbone]

I know that this is way out in the esoteric realm but the concept has tickled my brain on a few occasions.

A few lines from the temple narrative seem to infer as such.

Lucifer’s arguments and plan / political platform appears rehearsed.

And Korhior’s excuse (Alma 30:53) seems to be a recurrent theme of the darkside.

If the KFD suggests an eternal regression of Gods.  Is it not reasonable to infer the same goes for the opposing team?

If so, it might help to recognize why God wants to condition us forever against sin.  And to impress upon us the importance of the Law of Obedience.

Edited November 29, 2023 by mikbone

[JohnsonJones]

5 hours ago, mikbone said:

I know that this is way out in the esoteric realm but the concept has tickled my brain on a few occasions.

A few lines from the temple narrative seem to infer as such.

Lucifer’s arguments and plan / political platform appears rehearsed.

And Korhior’s excuse (Alma 30:53) seems to be a recurrent theme of the darkside.

If the KFD suggests an eternal regression of Gods.  It is not reasonable to infer the same goes for the opposing team?

If so, it might help to recognize why God wants to condition us forever against sin.  And to impress upon us the importance of the Law of Obedience.

That's a scary thought.

I don't know.

It's VERY possible that, since it is one eternal round, that this is a predictable pattern.

Just like they say History repeats itself (not so much an exact replica, but themes and ideas tend to be circular at times), it could be there is a pattern to how things go to the point it may even be predicatable.

It may be that with as many children as our Father has, that inevitably some of them will choose to fight against the first estate and thus become the enemies to their own families. 

Whether they need mentors to help them or they do it themselves...I don't know.

At this time it's probably not important for us to know.

But, I could see it as a pattern that happens to families to a certain extent, and that because it is predictable, this pattern is utilized as an accepted control (or something that will occur as a fact rather than a theory or question) and as a tool to aid in the salvation and exaltation of those that do not rebel.

[Carborendum]

7 hours ago, mikbone said:

Did Lucifer have a mentor?

No.  It would not have been necessary.

Entropy, my friend, is an eternal principle.  It takes nothing to go down.  It takes power to go up.

[laronius]

I still can't understand how Lucifer and all of his followers thought they actually had a chance at winning the war in heaven. So clearly there are things about the state of our premortal existence we just don't know. But I do think the law of opposition, in order to foster agency, was alive and well over there all throughout our journey from intelligences to spirit beings. So I guess it's possible that there were others who had previously rebelled. But that goes back to my first point.

Satan mentor: "Hey Lucifer, if you rebel against God there is great honor within your grasp. I can show you how"

Lucifer: "But you failed in your rebellion and so did ever other Satan in eternity."

Satan mentor: "Urrr, ummm, nevermind that. I'm sure you'll be different."

Lucifer: "Okay, sounds good."

[CV75]

9 hours ago, mikbone said:

I know that this is way out in the esoteric realm but the concept has tickled my brain on a few occasions.

A few lines from the temple narrative seem to infer as such.

Lucifer’s arguments and plan / political platform appears rehearsed.

And Korhior’s excuse (Alma 30:53) seems to be a recurrent theme of the darkside.

If the KFD suggests an eternal regression of Gods.  It is not reasonable to infer the same goes for the opposing team?

If so, it might help to recognize why God wants to condition us forever against sin.  And to impress upon us the importance of the Law of Obedience.

Maybe not so much a mentor per se as observing the repeating pattern that is part of the fabric of existence. As we observe, we make choices, and he made his.

However, his umbrage at a perceived misjustice indicates that he perceived a wrinkle in the pattern, so it seems he was, characteristically, acting from a very selfishly independent and parochial basis. Not the personality type for following a mentor! He probably thought he was innovatively improving things!

[zil2]

9 hours ago, mikbone said:

A few lines from the temple narrative seem to infer as such.

Or just that he has observed.  Or he was lying.  Or even that we knew those things pre-mortally.  We have no reason to believe that we interacted with anyone outside God's sphere (vertically or laterally).

9 hours ago, mikbone said:

If the KFD suggests an eternal regression of Gods.

Could you quote something or explain further?  I don't recall anything that talks about Gods returning to former or less developed state.  Progression, yes, but regression?  (Or are you using a StupidPhone that automatically uncorrected whatever you were typing?)

IMO, the various options for the mechanics of Lucifer and this mentor finding one another and meeting (none of which could have happened without God's knowledge) seem far fetched to me.  More likely, Lucifer was just full of himself.

Edited November 29, 2023 by zil2

[zil2]

56 minutes ago, laronius said:

I still can't understand how Lucifer and all of his followers thought they actually had a chance at winning the war in heaven. So clearly there are things about the state of our premortal existence we just don't know. But I do think the law of opposition, in order to foster agency, was alive and well over there all throughout our journey from intelligences to spirit beings. So I guess it's possible that there were others who had previously rebelled. But that goes back to my first point.

Satan mentor: "Hey Lucifer, if you rebel against God there is great honor within your grasp. I can show you how"

Lucifer: "But you failed in your rebellion and so did ever other Satan in eternity."

Satan mentor: "Urrr, ummm, nevermind that. I'm sure you'll be different."

Lucifer: "Okay, sounds good."

  This does make the mentor seem less likely and the arrogant child more likely.

[mikbone]

29 minutes ago, zil2 said:

Could you quote something or explain further?  I don't recall anything that talks about Gods returning to former or less developed state.

Not regression to a less glorified state.

Regression in that God the Father had a Father and so on….

“If Abraham reasoned thus— if Jesus Christ was the son of God, and John discovered that God the Father of Jesus Christ had a Father, you may suppose that he had a Father also. Where was there ever a son without a father? and where was there ever a father without first being a son? Whenever did a tree or anything spring into existence without a progenitor?”

https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/history-1838-1856-volume-f-1-1-may-1844-8-august-1844/109

Edited November 29, 2023 by mikbone

[zil2]

1 minute ago, mikbone said:

Not regression to a less glorified state.

Regression in that God the Father had a Father and so on….

OK.  Regression doesn't seem like the right word (even if it is), but got it.

[NeuroTypical]

11 hours ago, mikbone said:

It is not reasonable to infer the same goes for the opposing team?

[Traveler]

There are a lot of things that we do not know about our pre-existence.  There is an event horizon that prevents us from empirically knowing or discovering anything about our pre-existence.  I see our pre-existence connected to the origins of our solar system and even the universe.  In science there are event horizons that have generated a great deal of speculation.  The most famous of these scientific speculations is the Big Bang Theory.  Astrophysicists have hung a great deal of their ideas of the origin of things based on the Big Bang Theory and with a little more information from the James Webb telescope are now left trying to piece back together something that makes sense.

Lucifer is an enigma to me.  I am unable to make sense of him from the bits and pieces that we are given in revelation.  Part of my problem has to do with the relationship between our Father in Heaven and Lucifer (including his followers).  Our Father in Heaven would have known such intelligence would rebel.  The term perdition means a state of total and complete ruin.  Why would our Father give spiritual birth and life to any intelligence that would ruin themselves – complete ruin of their intelligence light and spiritual truth and justice?  Though I have some ideas – it is all speculation. 

I would love to discuss such speculations – but oddly speculations are the most difficult things to discuss it would seem, without offending someone.  If anyone is interested – and it would appear from the presentation of this post that my brilliant and respected friend @mikbone (perhaps others) are up to a challenge.

 

The Traveler

[zil2]

5 minutes ago, Traveler said:

Our Father in Heaven would have known such intelligence would rebel.  The term perdition means a state of total and complete ruin.  Why would our Father give spiritual birth and life to any intelligence that would ruin themselves – complete ruin of their intelligence light and spiritual truth and justice?  Though I have some ideas – it is all speculation. 

Eternal Individuals Idea

We were not forced into mortal life.  A plan for our progression was presented and we were allowed to accept it (and become mortal) or reject it (and never progress beyond being a spirit being).  Is it not reasonable to believe that something similar happened when we were intelligences (assuming intelligences are sentient individuals, which is an assumption)?  That is, we were presented with a plan for our progression and we had the chance to accept it (and become spirit children of God) or reject it (and remain intelligences).

IMO, Joseph Smith's teachings suggest this idea (eternal individuality).  If this is the case, then God allowed each individual to decide for themselves the path they would follow and offered only the opportunity, without dictating the outcome.

Alternate Idea

If we were not sentient before becoming spirit children of God, if we were either non-sentient individuals, or "intelligence" is a substance or resource or energy type or whatever one wants to call it (just not individuals and not sentient*), then your question is more difficult to answer:

• either spirit children start out as unknowns (but that would require God to not know something, which kinda ruins everything)
• or God knew he was creating Lucifer (and all he would become) - and Lucifer was God's willful creation, not just enabling an intelligence to progress according to its own choices (IMO, this is seriously problematic).  This idea (God creating Lucifer knowing he would become Satan) is a similar (but not identical) question to why Christ called Judas to the twelve, knowing Judas would betray him.

Variation on Alternate Idea

*The idea of a sentient mass of intelligence from which a portion is drawn in the creation of a sentient spirit child is also an interesting notion, but one with absolutely no scriptural foundation.  It's very "science fiction"-like.  An "intelligence-being" that can generate / output unending "intelligence-ingredient" needed in the formation of spirit children.  What determines the amount / quality / attributes drawn, or is it a fixed value and everyone gets exactly the same?    Might be fun to write a story, but I don't see it fitting well into what we already know.

[Emmanuel Goldstein]

We operate on the sense of time. In eternity Past, Present, and Future do not exist. There most likely were beings like Lucifer in eternity, they are his followers. It is most likely that Lucifer is the ultimate evil in existence. As intellectually interesting as these questions may be, I try to listen the warning from Nietze:

"He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you." - Nietzsche (Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future (1886), Chapter IV. Apophthegms and Interludes, §146).

[JohnsonJones]

On 11/29/2023 at 7:27 AM, laronius said:

I still can't understand how Lucifer and all of his followers thought they actually had a chance at winning the war in heaven. So clearly there are things about the state of our premortal existence we just don't know. But I do think the law of opposition, in order to foster agency, was alive and well over there all throughout our journey from intelligences to spirit beings. So I guess it's possible that there were others who had previously rebelled. But that goes back to my first point.

Satan mentor: "Hey Lucifer, if you rebel against God there is great honor within your grasp. I can show you how"

Lucifer: "But you failed in your rebellion and so did ever other Satan in eternity."

Satan mentor: "Urrr, ummm, nevermind that. I'm sure you'll be different."

Lucifer: "Okay, sounds good."

Nothing I say in this post is doctrine...most of it is just posting on how it may have been.

When Lucifer first tried to gain power it was not through an act of war, but an attempt at deception.  His deception was to try to fool his father and everyone else.  The idea was that the plan as put forth didn't need to happen, that if he were given the power to do so, he could save everyone instead.  The hidden purpose of this was to gain the ultimate power and glory for himself to rule over everyone else.

The Lord and our Father saw through this plan.   First, the adversaries plan, in effect would prevent everyone else from attaining celestial glory.  It would not be possible under his plan.  He could save people from outer darkness, but his plan precluded the ability to give them everything.  The plan of salvation does not promise to give everyone exaltation, only that it is POSSIBLE.  It also saves almost everyone from outer darkness as well, just not 100% as Lucifer promised.  The fact that the adversaries plan prevents us from being joint heirs is a massive flaw in the plan.

Secondly, it was obvious that because of how he positioned himself, Lucifer would be the only one to gain that type of power that our Father has, and in essence be able to try to fight him on a much greater level once his deception was revealed.  His plan was not to actually save anyone, but to get power enough to overthrow his father and then rule over everything else.

His deception was revealed and then the war began.  It is a war for our souls and as such, it is whether the children of our Father will choose to follow the Adversary or our Father and his Son.  We are given our free agency to choose. 

The Adversary knows that with the power that he has been granted, even though it is immense, he cannot overthrow our Father.  There is no way for him to win in the end.  He fights, because it has already been decided.  If he cannot win, he will take as many of us as it is possible and if he cannot drag us down with him, he will try to do all he can to diminish what we can accomplish, or barring that, make our lives as miserable as possible. 

It's like the Japanese at the end of World War 2.  They knew they had no chance of winning at that point.  Why didn't they surrender?  Because it was not in their nature to do so at that point.  They would rather DIE than surrender.  In fact, even as the Emperor decided to surrender, there were the generals that tried to assassinate him to prevent that, because they would rather die than accept surrender.

The adversary knows he has lost...but he is still going to do what damage he can to the rest of his family because that is his nature.

Edited December 3, 2023 by JohnsonJones

[Traveler]

I would like to put forward some ideas to the forum – hopefully I will have some input – Hopefully critical input.  I will target my ideas toward the principle of Agency.  I believe that in order for agency to be valid that the outcomes of any and all possibilities MUST be known.  I do not believe that that agency can exist or function in ignorance at any level.  It is my conclusion that Satan, will full knowledge of what he was doing determined that he would rather rule in outer darkness (Hell) than exist in heaven with anyone more powerful and able to control anything than him – including The Father.

I believe that there are two conflicting principles concerning those in “outer darkness”.   Though Satan is not the most powerful being that can exert influence over the realm of outer darkness Satan has control and rule of all beings and is able to dismiss all agency of those in outer darkness.

There is an extra bonus for Satan.  He acquired great power over all those that opposed him in the first estate (pre-existence) so therefore he delighted in tempting us do to all manner of evil and as consequence have to endure suffering, pain, sorrow, discouragement and unhappiness.  I have speculated (not to be doctrine) that Satan hates evil (what we often define as evil) and desired to destroy agency to prevent evil from causing him, as the possible Messiah, to have to suffer (because of agency being allowed).  Please note that Satan is incapable of love so I theorize that he has no problem with allowing and causing suffering, pain, sorrow and so on – thinking that if possible he would inflict even more punishments and never allow repentance. 

I theorize these things because it is the only sense that I can make that Lucifer could fall and that the heavens would weep for him.  I do not believe anyone convinced him or taught him but that he figured out his opposition towards G-d all on his own.

 

The Traveler

[mikbone]

1 hour ago, Traveler said:

I believe that there are two conflicting principles concerning those in “outer darkness”.   Though Satan is not the most powerful being that can exert influence over the realm of outer darkness Satan has control and rule of all beings and is able to dismiss all agency of those in outer darkness.

Moses 5: 23-24 implies that Cain will rule over Satan.

I don’t tend to do much speculation about Lucifer.

He only has as much power as we are willing to give him.

Isaiah 14: 15-16 to me reads that once we see Lucifer bound and imprisoned.  We will see him for his real self and will not be terribly impressed.

[askandanswer]

An alternative view

The successful operation of the Plan of Salvation is predicated on the existence of someone/something fulfilling the role that Satan is now fulfilling. He is being far more diligent in his stewardship than any mortal has ever been. We grow through overcoming opposition, and a great deal of that opposition comes from opposing Satan. So perhaps we should all be grateful that he is working so hard and is so good at what he does. It is helping all of us become better.