In this essay, I will detail a few of the major ways I believe Satan influences us. This certainly isn’t a comprehensive list, but hopefully it will help my reader throughout spiritual warfare.

The Flesh

The basic idea behind overcoming the flesh is that we want our personalities and spirit to be controlling our flesh, rather than the flesh controlling our spirit. To do this requires overcoming addictions and fleshly compulsions, which I discuss at great length in Overcoming Addictions.

The spirit of the flesh is like unto the hedonistic spirit, because if we are only flesh then there is nothing holy about us, and it makes sense to try to maximally stimulate our bodies for happiness. This contrasts to the more eternal perspective, which is that we have a purpose for being on earth beyond simply pleasuring ourselves, and if we forget this purpose and turn towards our lusts, then we are wasting our eternal potential.

Satan tries to trick us into believing that our bodies control us or that the preferences of our bodies are the same as the preferences of our spirits, and thus that if our body really wants us to do something then we have no choice but to give in. This is of course false – our bodies are separate from our spirits, and our spirits have free agency and the ability to choose.

Satan also tries to trick us into thinking that our compulsions will never go away so we may as well give in to them. Again false! Compulsions and intrusive thoughts do go away and eventually are completely forgotten after enough abstinence.

Ultimately, allowing the flesh and lust to take over our personalities and control what we do is a low intelligence way to live life. We are smarter than this, we just often don’t realize it, because Satan tries to convince us that we are the same as our flesh or that our flesh is more powerful than it really is.

Ted Bundy

One of the problems with pornography is that it leads people to become obsessed with increasingly hardcore porn, thus leading to a change in character such that the subject becomes sadistically gratified from abuse and control.

For example, according to the final interview with Ted Bundy before his execution (here), Bundy’s murders were motivated by a desire to fulfil sexual fantasies. According to his own testimony, he started off with softcore pornography as a child, but then moved further towards hardcore as softcore became less satisfying. Eventually, even hardcore porn no longer was satisfying, and so he felt compelled to act out the violent sexual acts for himself – he knew what he was doing was wrong, but the sexual compulsion was so strong that he felt like he was almost possessed – thus, leading to his string of murders. According to Bundy, similar stories are held by most other violent criminals:

“I’ve lived in prison for a long time now, and I’ve met a lot of men who are motivated to commit violence. Without exception, every one of them was deeply involved in pornography – deeply consumed by the addiction. The F.B.I.’s own study on serial homicide shows that the most common interest among serial killers is pornographers. It’s true.”

Bundy closes by pleading with society to end pornography and graphic scenes in movies to prevent other people from becoming murderers like himself.

Teachings of Paul

As Paul teaches, we are in a war between our flesh and the spirit, and thus for us to choose the kingdom of God we must learn to put the spirit over the flesh.

Galatians 5
16 This I say then, Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh.
17 For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh: and these are contrary the one to the other: so that ye cannot do the things that ye would.
18 But if ye be led of the Spirit, ye are not under the law.
19 Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these; Adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness,
20 Idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies,
21 Envyings, murders, drunkenness, revellings, and such like: of the which I tell you before, as I have also told you in time past, that they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God.
22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith,
23 Meekness, temperance: against such there is no law.
24 And they that are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts.
25 If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit.

Media and Technology

Unfortunately, much of modern media – such as YouTube, video games, social media, reading the news (if you are me), TV, etc. – has been used by Satan to help corrupt our culture and take away our discipline. If Paul were alive today, I suspect he would have added that our spirits are also in a war against the technology around us (beyond just the idea that our spirits war our flesh). So, just a tip: ChatGPT is not your friend, so don’t have conversations with it or pretend like it is a person. Similarly, influencers and YouTubers are also not your friends – though they might appear friendly on camera, to them they are only doing their job which is tiring, and on the inside they no doubt are wishing they could stop putting on the mask.

In general, I think it is bad to combine entertainment that has multiple senses – such as simultaneous audio and visual – because it is hypnotizing (not that I am perfect at avoiding this type of media). This is because when there are too many signals and stimulations coming to the brain, they drown out normal thoughts, thus making it even more difficult to resist. Video games are like a super charged version of this in that they are also interactive, thus making them very entrancing and dangerous

Similarly, tech companies have learned that humans are more easily distracted by making many small time sacrifices rather than a singular large time sacrifice. Specifically, YouTube shorts, TikTok and any place generally with an infinite scrolls is very deceptive and manipulative and should be avoided. Social media algorithms add onto this a fear of missing out – thus compelling us to scroll – and therefore we must be very careful with these technologies.

For me, I have found that downloading music to my computer (with python!) has helped me stop being so reliant on YouTube, as well as installing extensions which block YouTube shorts and recommended videos.

Escapism

The great thing about technology is that it can very effectively distract us sufficiently to forget about our present lives. This escapism entertains by offering the illusion that we are entering new worlds. Which is precisely why escapism and technology is so dangerous – it is dangerous to allow your mind to be sufficiently hypnotized so as to forget the present state. I’m not saying necessarily here that we should abandon technology, but I do think that technologies that are too immersive should definitely be avoided. Ultimately, the goal of life is not to stimulate our mind with fancies, but rather to do and become according to God’s will to therefore fulfill our potential for the eternities.

Mind Altering Technology

There appears to be technology being developed designed to be able to influence our thoughts and emotions, which I would say falls among the tools that Satan uses (or is about to use) against us.

Get Up n Glow discusses these technologies a bit in this video: Antichrist technology. Here is a screenshot from the video of a list of various patents used for these technologies.

And here is a direct link to the spreadsheet.

In my view, sometimes people can get a little bit too obsessed with these technologies and start blaming every intrusive thought on them, when sometimes humans also just naturally have intrusive or negative thoughts. So, be wary of all of this and remain prayerful and discerning.

The Cares of The World

I think the internet makes it very easy for ourselves to immerse ourselves into a culture and start internalizing that culture and obsessing over it, even though it isn’t directly relevant. For me, this is manifested as an interest in geo-politics, even though I have no way to influence politics, but for others, this might be manifested as an interest in sports or celebrities or even just hobbies.

Basically, the world is like a casino, covered in flashing lights and full of stimulating music, designed to draw our attention for the maximal amount of time and distract us from the eternal perspective (sometimes by distracting us with lusts and dreams, while other times frightening us with fear and doom). While we can’t totally escape the world, sometimes it is better to disconnect from social media or just media in general in order to focus more on God, family, and the things that matter to you.

If we aren’t able to do this, the world will start to work on us by distracting us with games– such as getting maximally rich or maximally popular or getting revenge – which don’t matter in the eternities and bring us away from God.

Rod of Iron Dream

The dream of the iron leading to the tree of life found in 1 Nephi 8 and 1 Nephi 11 relates to all this: To summarize the dream, Nephi was placed in a field  where he held an iron rod which led horizontally a distance to the tree of life. Many people were with him in the field, and the goal was to follow the iron rod all the way to the tree. However, this became difficult when fog rolled in – thus obscuring the tree and requiring people to have faith that the iron rod would lead to the tree. Moreover, many other paths led off from the path of the iron rod, and there also was a “great and spacious building” full of people who mocked those pursuing the path of the iron rod.

The symbolism was that the iron rod represents the commandments of God and the tree represented the love of God – thus our following the iron rod represents our mortal journey following the commandments. Consequently, alternate paths represented false paths and religions Satan would like us to take, and the great and spacious building represented how the seemingly successful people of the world will mock us for our journey to God and try to shame and distract us away from said journey.

This explanation isn’t comprehensive, so for further details just read the chapters.

But my point is that a major way Satan influences us is through the people around us and the culture that we observe every day. He tries to use these people and institutions to convince us to care about temporal things over spiritual things, and to convince us that following the gospel doesn’t bring happiness. Ultimately, it seems like his goal is to entirely replace the role of religion and scripture with the word of secular persons so that he has complete control over our moral code.

What’s more pernicious is that if our religious leaders aren’t actually from God, but instead are appointed by man, then Satan can also use these people to mislead us (as he did in many cases to try to get us to take the covid vaccines).

Which is all to say that we must remain separate from the world, and not be carried away by the madness of crowds as much as possible.

James 4:4
4 Ye adulterers and adulteresses, know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God.

Fear / Distracting Yourself

One tactic of the adversary is to prompt such a great feeling of anxiety in us that we feel like the only way we can survive and stay sane is by distracting ourselves away from reality. Procrastination – the induced result of this – is usually the worst option, because it is almost always better to at least try to do something about our fears (even if an attempt fails), then to not try at all and instead stick our heads in the sand. Usually, we are induced to enter a state of procrastination when our fear of a necessary task is much higher than would be rational, which is why people usually recommend breaking up tasks into smaller chunks because as you start the smaller chunks you realize that your fear was misplaced.

I don’t have all the answers for this, but I also think that we can remedy procrastination by having faith that God will deliver us, and having faith that there is a purpose to the tribulations we see in life.

In my view, procrastination often carries with it a certain degree of hypnosis – you don’t do something because you think you can’t do something because you haven’t done it before. This is dumb, so awake from your spiritual slumber! Similarly, (for me) I have noticed myself continuing to hold out spending time on dumb activities rather than doing the procrastinated task because I am hoping there was a reason for me doing the dumb thing. In other words, I am afraid to stop doing the dumb activity because that would be a painful admission that all of the time spent on it was a waste. Again, this is dumb, so awake from spiritual slumber.

Sometimes overcoming procrastination simply requires a certain amount of grit to accept the hard, cold reality. Yes, sometimes the things procrastinated are painful, but part of having character is to learn to accept loss. Luckily, usually our fears are greatly inflated. But the better way to cope with these types of things is to have an eternal perspective: to let the promise of the eternities outshine anything in this mortal life, and to have faith in God.

Another way of having grit is to learn acceptance: to accept that your heart might be broken, but that you must do something anyway since living life requires heartbreak. Accept that eventually everything good must go away to make room for the new; and remember that all must be forgotten including the bad.

Finally, learning to turn outwards away from self also can help procrastination. Instead of focusing on how you feel about something, focus what you can do to help others and what you can do to follow God. Turn away from focusing on your own personal success to rather focusing on what you feel God’s plan is for you. Instead of focusing on your problems, focus on the things for which you are grateful. This should all cultivate the eternal perspective that nothing on earth truly matters unless it brings us closer or further away from God, and thus that we should be willing to accept every trial because they fade to nothing compared to the eternities (easier said than done, I know). This eternal perspective should include the acceptance that we can’t have the good without the bad, that we came to earth to experience opposition and tribulation, that hard things make us stronger, and that sometimes tribulations can bring us to God and open new doors. Have faith that God still has a plan for you even if you don’t know what it is! Let God’s light replace fear and respond to challenges with increased praise to the Lord! And trust that God gives us weakness so that his glory can be seen in turning weak things into strong things (Ether 12:27)!

Also, sometimes simply changing our environment can help with procrastination, meaning we should remove distractions and renew our focus on God through prayer and scripture study.

• Pray for assistance and protection so that we need not fear.
• Pray to be grateful for trials.
• Pray to not be tempted with procrastination.
• Pray for comfort.
• Pray that the spirit of fear be lifted and replaced with seeing our fears as opportunities.
• Pray for guidance so that you don’t need to fear the unknown.
• Pray that God will consecrate our efforts so that even the small and simple things we do make a difference.
• Pray that you will spiritually wake up.
• Pray to have our hearts changed to not be focused on dark things but rather on light, so that our entire selves can be filled with joy, hope, and peace.
• Pray to have an eternal perspective, to turn towards others, uplifting things, and to the eternities.

Please forgive me, I know these tips are very much inadequate.

Giving up / Nihilism

Satan often tempts us to fail by giving us a sense of doom that nothing we try will succeed anyway, so there is no point in trying and instead we should spare the effort and give up. Similarly, Satan also can tempt us into a having a sense of apathy towards the future, which can be very demotivating. Thus, these feelings essentially force us to choose between progress or stagnation, and choose between life and death. When this feeling of doom comes, I think the best course of action is to renew devotion towards God through prayer and scripture study. However, the sobering reminder that “usually, things can get a lot worse” can be motivating to start trying to at least salvage a situation.

The other thing that can help in such times of darkness is to learn to forgive yourself for mistakes. Satan sometimes tries to make us feel so condemned that returning back to God is hopeless, so we might as well give up trying to follow God. But this denies the grace and power of God – Christ atoned for our sins – not just the sins of everyone else, but also *your* sins. Thus, if we sincerely strive to follow Him, then God will be merciful and provide a way for us to escape temptation.

Ephesians 2:1–6
1 And you hath he quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins;
2 Wherein in time past ye walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience:
3 Among whom also we all had our conversation in times past in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind; and were by nature the children of wrath, even as others.
4 But God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us,
5 Even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ, (by grace ye are saved;)
6 And hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus:

Philippians 3:13–14
13 Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before,
14 I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.

Hebrews 12:1-2
1 Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us,
2 Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God.

1 Corinthians 10:12-13
12 Wherefore let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall.
13 There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man: but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it.

Philosophies of Man

Lack of Accountability

The main lie taught by Satan is that there is no God nor accountability in the next life for our actions. This of course naturally leads to an increase in general lawless behavior, as well as cultivates the idea that “might makes right”, and that our only purpose in this world is to seek pleasure. Thus, let us reflect on our inevitable judgement from God and ponder the depths of the word “eternity”, so that we may be motivated not by the things of this world but rather the things above.

Legalism

Another lie is that we are permitted to exploit loopholes in the moral code in order to do things that would otherwise be illegal. This therefore permits things like leading people on and tricking them, exploiting people in vulnerable situations, or retaining lost property that didn’t originally belong to you. In other words, Satan wants us to believe that “the law” starts and ends with the legalistic text of the law, and that there is not a higher “spiritual law” that you can break even if what you did on earth was technically allowed.

This error will of course cost during the final judgement. But it also is reflective of an overall incorrect view of our purpose in life: namely, we came to earth to learn and grow and become more like Christ; we did not come to earth to simply gratify ourselves according to our own might and ability to deceive others.

Do No Harm

Satan teaches that whatever we do is right as long as we do no harm to others. But of course from the eternal perspective this is wrong – our goal isn’t simply to not hurt others, but rather to help fulfill our divine potential and complete the mission God has for us.

One specific problem with this ideology relates to the issue of drugs and pornography – yes, they might not hurt others initially, but they do hurt your soul – which could potentially eternally impact you – so they are wrong. And of course, both drugs and porn alter our character and the way we treat others, thus eventually leading us to also hurt others.

Which all then relates to governance: from a secular perspective, I can see why libertarians would want to legalize all types of drugs and degeneracy. But from an eternal perspective, things like fentanyl and meth are bringing millions of people to hell, since they take away free agency and ability to think, and since they alter our personalities. Ironically, if you purely wanted to just “maximize freedom”, you would certainly ban these drugs, because the small increase in freedom granted by allowing a person to “try out” a drug is vastly and overwhelmingly dwarfed by the loss of freedom to that person once they become addicted and lose much of their free agency and freedom of thought.

Love and Tolerance

I believe Satan has been using a false version of love to corrupt how people see the world and religion. True love involves a real desire to help another person, not just make them feel good about themselves, but also to help them as a person to learn, grow, and overcome mistakes. Thus, as Christians, when we have a friend who is sinning, our goal should be to lovingly help them to stop sinning so as to bring them back into the fold and help save their soul. However, according to this new corrupted view of tolerance and love, this would be the wrong thing to do, and the right thing to do would be to “accept” this person as who they are without trying to change them.

This lie has sadly led many down the path of the new age.

James 5:20
20 Let him know, that he which converteth the sinner from the error of his way shall save a soul from death, and shall hide a multitude of sins.

Alma 29:9
9 I know that which the Lord hath commanded me, and I glory in it. I do not glory of myself, but I glory in that which the Lord hath commanded me; yea, and this is my glory, that perhaps I may be an instrument in the hands of God to bring some soul to repentance; and this is my joy.

The other problem with this ideology is that it leads people to believe that God will be OK with their mistakes because God loves everyone. This is again incorrect, because our God is also a God of justice, and so our decisions on earth really will have an influence in the world to come. Yes, God does forgive people – but forgiveness usually requires repentance and seeking Jesus, and repentance and seeking Jesus usually requires action and a change of character – so if your character doesn’t change and you die in your sins without any true repentance, then your position in the eternities will be impacted by the degree of sin to which you lived your life. Sadly, I think this ideology has hurt millions people with respect to their position in the eternities. I discuss and substantiate all of this more in Hyper-Grace is Wrong and Following the Commandments / Works Matter.

2 Nephi 28
8 And there shall also be many which shall say: Eat, drink, and be merry; nevertheless, fear God—he will justify in committing a little sin; yea, lie a little, take the advantage of one because of his words, dig a pit for thy neighbor; there is no harm in this; and do all these things, for tomorrow we die; and if it so be that we are guilty, God will beat us with a few stripes, and at last we shall be saved in the kingdom of God.
9 Yea, and there shall be many which shall teach after this manner, false and vain and foolish doctrines, and shall be puffed up in their hearts, and shall seek deep to hide their counsels from the Lord; and their works shall be in the dark.
…21 And others will he pacify, and lull them away into carnal security, that they will say: All is well in Zion; yea, Zion prospereth, all is well—and thus the devil cheateth their souls, and leadeth them away carefully down to hell.
22 And behold, others he flattereth away, and telleth them there is no hell; and he saith unto them: I am no devil, for there is none—and thus he whispereth in their ears, until he grasps them with his awful chains, from whence there is no deliverance.

Truth and Morality are Relative

Satan teaches that truth and morality are relative. This is because he is trying to confuse us, to make us more willing to accept that his servants aren’t necessarily lying and being immoral, thus leading us to do likewise. This relates to accountability, in that this doctrine teaches that you aren’t accountable to the truth. This also relates to false love, in that if everything is actually not immoral or wrong or evil or dishonest, then this incentivizes the idea that to judge others is an archetypal sin.

Of course, as Jesus teaches, we aren’t supposed to condemn others in our eyes. But that isn’t because there is no condemnation, but rather because it is God who condemns not man. In other words, this doesn’t contradict or negate our great commission to teach others to repent and follow the commandments.

Mark 6:11-12
11 And whosoever shall not receive you, nor hear you, when ye depart thence, shake off the dust under your feet for a testimony against them. Verily I say unto you, It shall be more tolerable for Sodom and Gomorrha in the day of judgment, than for that city.
12 And they went out, and preached that men should repent.

Matthew 28:19–20
19 ¶ Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost:
20 Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world. Amen.

Luke 24:46–47
46 And said unto them, Thus it is written, and thus it behoved Christ to suffer, and to rise from the dead the third day:
47 And that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in his name among all nations, beginning at Jerusalem.

Unfairness and Scarcity

The final big temptation from Satan is the idea that just because other people or reality in general has been unfair to us permits us to be unfair to others. I think this is often used to justify theft – the criminal thinks that the world was unfair to him in some way – and uses this to permit his stealing from people who are more successful than himself.

I can see why this temptation is appealing, but in my view it is again failing to see the eternal perspective: namely, that we are deliberately put into positions of unfairness and scarcity while on this earth in order to test us to see if we still hold true to our moral principles.

1 Peter 1:6-7
6 Wherein ye greatly rejoice, though now for a season, if need be, ye are in heaviness through manifold temptations:
7 That the trial of your faith, being much more precious than of gold that perisheth, though it be tried with fire, might be found unto praise and honour and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ:

Romans 5:3-5
3 And not only so, but we glory in tribulations also: knowing that tribulation worketh patience;
4 And patience, experience; and experience, hope:
5 And hope maketh not ashamed; because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us.