Are You An Angel From God or Satan?

Are You An Angel From God or Satan?

I keep telling myself that I will have time to write my next blog.  These past few weeks have bene long. Non stop work for the past 5 weeks, and I still have 2 more weeks before I hope to get a break.  I am currently sitting in a Premium Class seat as I travel for work and thought I would use my time for the next few hours to write this blog post. 

This latest idea for this blog post came to me as I was thinking about my Seminary days in high school.  Believe it or not, I was taught in Mormon Seminary how to determine if a Spirit that appears to you is from God or from the Devil, aka Satan.  Remember from a previous blog post that a person can go to Mormon Seminary in high school, 9^th grade all the way through 12^th grade.  Where I come from, this is a class you can sign up for during the regular school day.  Its like a class that gets you out of school.  Makes for a great place to sleep and if you are lucky enough to get the class before or after lunch, you can have an extra long lunch break, or if it’s the last class you have during the day, well….. you can go home early.  The public school system calls this Release Time.  Meaning, when you go to your Seminary class, you are not the schools responsibility.  You are the responsibility of the Mormon Educational System.  If you don’t go to Seminary, you won’t be turned in to the principal. 

So back to what I was taught in High School about determining if a spirit manifests itself to me is from God or from Satan.  This topic was talked about as we discussed Joseph Smith and his visit from the spirit, Angel Moroni.   Moroni is the Angel that Joseph Smith claimed visited him multiple times before he told Joseph Smith where to find the gold plates that would later be translated into the Book of Mormon.  (In a previous blog post, you can read about the gold plates and how Joseph Smith “translated” the gold plates written in Egyptian by staring at a rock in his hat.)

I was taught that if a spirit manifests itself to you, that you are to extend your hand and aske the spirit to shake your hand.  If the spirit is from God, then the spirit will reach out and shake your hand.  If the spirit shakes your hand, it will feel as if you are shaking a mans hand in the flesh and you will know that the spirit is from God and a good spirit.  If the spirit is evil and from the Devil, the spirit will shake your hand and you won’t feel anything.

So that is it.  I have never heard or been taught this phenomenon since my Seminary days.  I have also never researched this teaching since I have never heard this more than once.   My Seminary teacher never showed any reference to this, so if anyone has any scriptural reference to this, please email me at thejudgedmormon@gmail.com 

Being Mormon most of my life and going through 4 years of Mormon Seminary, you learn a lot of weird things.  Many teachings come from the Prophets and we are taught that anything the modern Prophets say, is as if God is saying it himself to you. 

Now I do believe the words of the Prophets to be Gods word, however……  Mormon Prophets have said many things that I do not believe to be from God.  The Mormon church history is dark and Mormon leaders do not like to talk about the past history of it’s church.  There was racism, lies, deceit, perversions.  Very dark history that is never talked about or taught to Mormon followers.

Addition:  Thank you to the individual who emailed me the Section 129 in the Doctrine and Covenants that talks of this very teaching I learned.  Very short section, only 9 verses.  Whether this is true or not, I don’t know.  Joseph Smith gave us the Doctrine and Covenants and he was not the most upstanding individual or honest individual.  Take this teaching and decide for yourself if it’s something you believe or not.

Remember to contact me directly at thejudgedmormon@gmail.com