Again, who is the Devil?

In my very first blog post back in 2019 I mused about the identity of the Devil in this reimagined world. When I recently took up blogging again last year I turned a few of my earliest posts into Draft mode, mostly because I felt like having a fresh start, but also because I had evolved significantly in my thinking since some of those early posts.

However I can’t remember a good reason for not leaving that first post up so I have just re-published it since it fits the theme of this post.

A few weeks back we were reading as a family and came across what I thought was a curious statement by King Benjamin:

O my people, beware lest there shall arise contentions among you! And ye list to obey the evil spirit, which was spoken of by my father Mosiah.

What caught my attention is Benjamin seems to refer to a *specific* evil spirit, one that his father Mosiah had taught about. I thought this was odd phrasing since the Devil is referenced many times in Nephi’s writings, ergo, it’s highly unlikely Mosiah I (as a reminder, Benjamin’s father and son were both named Mosiah) was the source of knowledge of the Devil amongst the Nephites of Benjamin’s time.

In other words, why didn’t Benjamin just say “the devil” or “the evil spirit which was spoken of by…” the Brass Plates/Lehi/Nephi/a bunch of other people. He references an evil spirit spoken of by Mosiah I specifically.

Adding to the intrigue, Benjamin later says this:

Neither will ye suffer that [your children] transgress the laws of God, and fight and quarrel one with another, and serve the Devil, who is the master of sin, or which is the evil spirit which hath been spoken of by our fathers, he being an enemy to all righteousness.

In this case, Benjamin does exactly what I would expect, referencing *the* Devil, naming him as the evil spirit that their fathers spoke about. But this seems to be in contrast to a specific evil spirit revealed by Mosiah I who is not the Devil but is still nonetheless a notable evil spirit of which the people had better beware!

There is one other reference to devils and evil spirits by Benjamin:

And [Christ] shall cast out devils, or the evil spirits which dwell in the hearts of the children of men.

This seems also to be another contrast since he is speaking in plurals. There are, in other words, many devils and many evil spirits even if there is one Devil and one important-enough-to-be-aware-of evil spirit that Mosiah I spoke about. It recalls a scene from one of my favorite movies in which a man named Everett teaches his friends what he’s heard about the Devil but a boy named Tommy corrects him:

I only include that clip for laughs and because I like that movie so much.

All of this has me wondering again who is the Devil exactly. Bill has made a pretty good case that the Devil of our world is Saruman, which I think fits for a lot of reasons. He has also built in room for Ungoliant as another Devil, maybe even something like the Final Boss Devil who works mischief in “high places”.

If Bill is correct that the Promised Land of the BoM is not on our earth at all but another land mass out in space, then from the standpoint of the Lehites, I suppose Melkor the Morgoth could be the “evil spirit which hath been spoken of by our fathers” — the OG Devil whose influence has been reckoned to have infected all of Arda even to this day. That influence won’t be done away until this world is burned and remade apparently. But he himself is not here. As for the specific evil spirit Mosiah I taught about, I wondered if that refers to Ungoliant. She clearly has some connection to the Promised Land because of what we see occur there when Jesus dies: primeval darkness or Unlight.

But alas, Benjamin explicitly refers to “that spirit” as “him”:

O my people, beware lest there shall arise contentions among you! And ye list to obey the evil spirit, which was spoken of by my father Mosiah. For behold, there is a Wo! pronounced upon him who listeth to obey that spirit; For if he listeth to obey him, and remaineth and dieth in his sins, the same drinketh damnation to his own soul!

For he receiveth for his wages an everlasting punishment, having transgressed the law of God, contrary to his own knowledge.

So maybe the “him” is Saruman. I doubt it, since he is the god-devil of this world and somehow I doubt he can pull double time both here and there. Likely Saruman is bound here anyway.

None of this may be very important but I do wonder if when those Gentiles finally do reach the Promised Land to scatter the Lehites if it’s “that spirit” Mosiah I spoke of that they will be swayed by and later find themselves in need of repenting for having served him, for there is a Wo! pronounced upon any who do. Therefore, understanding the nature or perhaps identity of “that spirit” could come in handy.

I suspect “that spirit” has something to do with polygamy since it was that sin chiefly that resulted in the Nephites losing the original lands of their inheritance. It would track with Mosiah I trying to understand how it all happened and perhaps learning a mystery from God of some specific evil spirit tied to the Promised Land who would lead the righteous into those forbidden paths. The fact that polygamy reared its ugly head amongst the Jaredites and that it quickly came back amongst the people of king Noah not long after Zeniff led them back to the lands of Nephite inheritance perhaps backs up this idea.

So Gentiles, when you do go, beware that evil spirit spoken of by Mosiah!