The voice of Michael on the banks of the Susquehanna, detecting the devil when he appeared as an angel of light! (D&C 128:20)
We have no details of this story beyond this brief reference, but apparently the devil appeared as an angel of light and was unmasked by the voice of a genuine angel of light, Michael.
This corresponds very closely to the story of the Satanic Verses, which has appeared in recent syncs. Muhammad, as the story goes, originally included in the Quran verses referring in positive terms to certain pre-Islamic goddesses, believing that like the rest of the Quran these verses had been revealed by the angel Gabriel. Later Gabriel himself set him straight, saying that those verses had actually been revealed by Satan.
Both stories could be summarized thus:
"That Being that seemed to be an angel was actually a satanic impostor.""How do you know?""An angel told me, and you can trust what angels say."
This raises the obvious question: If some angels are impostors, how do you know the second angel wasn't an impostor?
It comes down to a personal judgment call about who to trust. There's really no other way. I discussed this in my 2021 post "Who or what is the ultimate spiritual authority? (a Mormon perspective)."
5 comments:
I think for any angel to be credible in accusing some other angel as being false, there must be some king of "unmasking" as you put it, or exposing, and that this unmasking must be discernible and understandable. I suppose even after the unmasking things still rely on personal judgment, and which spirits (or books?) we "listeth to obey" (Alma 3:26-27).
Meaning, I think it is a bit more than just a he said/ she said game that is played.
Further, I think perhaps the biggest takeaway is to recognize that we may be fooled, and that this fooling may have been going on for quite some time, and be willing to modify or change our beliefs if evidence is ever presented that it would be prudent for us to do so.
In writing of Thuringwethil yesterday, I thought of a scene from Harry Potter. It is from "Prisoner of Azkaban". Thuringwethil is a shapeshifter, and I thought that perhaps for some coming to the realization that they have been fooled by a being like her would be akin to Ron Weasley finding out that his beloved family pet has actually been Peter Pettigrew the entire time. I mean the shock and disbelief would be extraordinary, and just as we see in the scene, Ron refuses to believe it. Personal judgment fails him in that moment, despite some initial evidence being presented that it is a possibility (the Marauders Map doesn't lie, Scabbers is missing a toe like Pettigrew, etc.) . He needs a more concrete unmasking to finally see that his family has really been duped and hosting an evil dude in the form of a pet rat.
Harry, who was not as close to the pet rat as Ron, starts to add up the evidence and see that it is possible what Sirius Black claims is true. In this case, his lack of personal attachment makes him a bit more open to the possibility. And personal attachment is going to blind us to some things.
But Harry had had his own personal judgment compromised throughout the film with respect to Black for a host of reasons. Again, an unmasking and revealing was required for him to see Black differently.
Here is the part of the scene with Ron's disbelief, Harry putting together the dots, and Pettigrew ultimately unmasked. It doesn't have the earlier part of the scene with Harry's confrontation with Black, but you get the point:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kwXcHq28m1E
My own guess, for what it's worth, is that Thuringwethil ties in somehow to at least one Being in your communications claiming to be "Joan". The timing of her emergence on your blog, some of the things you unknowingly referenced or wrote in those Joan posts, and other evidence suggests this is at least a possibility.
A couple examples of Joan being referenced with "Shadow" and "Dark Secrets" below... remember that Thuringwethil's name means "Woman of the Secret/ Hidden Shadow".
A post tying to Joan to Shadow ("Shadowed by Death"):
https://narrowdesert.blogspot.com/2021/11/shadowed-by-jeanne.html
Another suggesting that Joan has a Dark Secret ("Joan looked like a typical girl, but she had a dark secret").
Just a couple I saw in briefly scanning as I searched to see when Joan became a larger presence on your blog. I am sure there are many others like this with the Dark or Shadow reference. For example, there is your frequent comparing of Joan D'Arc with Joan Dark or Dark Joan. Building on this, as you mention, the real-life Joan was accused of being a Witch, and as referenced in my comments yesterday, Thuringwethil's daughters were specifically called Witches - like their mother - in the confrontation with Izilba.
The 2020/2021 timing on you blog also matches up well with my own imposter. A female presence - at least one of them, but my guess is multiple, perhaps both good and bad - began "speaking" through my writing in early 2021. By May 2021, I suspected that at least one of these women were not good, and stopped writing full stop. As mentioned in my comment yesterday in reference to the "She is gone. The other. No more tricks", in July 2021 a woman was ultimately expelled from my mind, or so it seems. I mentioned that I don't remember her name, but I believed at the time her name started with a "J" (though I would have no idea what the J stood for, whether a Joan or not).
Anyway, there is a chance that during that same time, she was also engaged with you, and still is to some extent.
I know you would probably think of that with the same delight that Ron thought about Scabbers being Pettigrew, but just putting it out there as something to consider. And it's just a guess on my part - I obviously don't know, and just looking at various clues in piecing together my own riddles.
In principle, I’m open to reevaluating anything. In practice, it’s hard to imagine what could convince me to reclassify that overwhelmingly good and holy presence as some vampire out of Tolkien. Certainly it would take a lot more than a few syncs about her name sounding like “dark.”
Of course I don’t expect my direct experience of that Being’s goodness to carry any weight with anyone else, so I’m not offended or surprised by your speculations.
I have been mostly checked out of sync land for a few weeks now (and will likely remain so) and so I am very much not in tune with the full context here. But I happened to catch a line of this post in my RSS feed and I can't resist. I've been thinking about this topic a lot lately bc I'm reading LotR and Frodo comes to a pretty wild conclusion after he leaves the fellowship with Sam. Lost in the mountains he says it's clear he cannot find his own way to Mordor and must have a guide but he openly wonders whether it will be Good or Evil that will lead him there. He tried following Good but they either did not know the way or did not communicate it to him before the fellowship broke. In a stunning turn, Frodo willingly took an UNholy spirit as his guide (Gollum). Frodo of course knew this was dangerous and he was under no false idea that Gollum was Good but even so, Frodo took him for his guide. Doing so was a complete shock to others. Sam was wholly against it. Faramir was flabbergasted and practically begged Frodo not to follow Gollum any longer. He did, and he conquered. And almost Frodo converted Gollum from his evil ways.
That's not to say you should do the same per se but the Father's work is called "strange" and maybe Gollum's example was not the last time Evil would undo its own ends by being followed by someone Good.
At any rate, I now return from whence I came -- to my self-imposed sync exile.
The way you write about her, I'm under no impression that anything I could say that would make you think otherwise. My comment was less to convince you and more to document my own guess and how I am putting puzzle pieces together. The repeated references to Dark was just one interesting aspect to me. We will see how it all ages.
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