GREAT AND ABOMINABLE

And it came to pass that I saw among the nations of the Gentiles the formation of a great church.  And the angel said unto me: Behold the formation of a church which is most abominable above all other churches, which slayeth the saints of God, yea, and tortureth them and bindeth them down, and yoketh them with a yoke of iron, and bringeth them down into captivity. And it came to pass that I beheld this great and abominable church; and I saw the devil that he was the founder of it. (1 Nephi 13:4-6)

When I was growing up, I believed that the great and abominable church was the Catholic church. Now that I am older and more mature, I believe that the great and abominable is actually any group, whether religious, political, financial, or social, that leads people away from Jesus Christ or which offers some substitute form of salvation. This could include religious groups, Fascism, Communism, and those who deny there is any God. One could compare this church of Satan to the Whore of Babylon found in the Book of Revelation. In the Navajo language, the word for evil translates as the way to make money. Satan has his hands in so many things that his great and abominable church can be found almost everywhere.

After Jesus' Apostles were martyred, the Church He'd organized began to falter.  Seeds of apostasy were already being sown.  The Epistles of the Apostles already referenced dangerous trends in false doctrine.  The Judaizers felt that men should be held to the Law of Moses, including such rites as circumcision.  The Greeks believed that all matter was unclean and, therefore, Jesus could not have had a material body because He was God. The Gnostics under Simon Magus believed in a fallacious genealogy the lifted Magus and his followers higher than Jesus.  People began to worship angels and made other people (i.e., Mary, Jesus' mother and other "saints") mediators between mankind and God when only the Savior is our mediator with the Father.

These false traditions continued as the Church drifted away from its pure roots.  In 325 A.D., the Roman Emperor of the East, Constantine, desired to reunite the eastern and western empires under on leader. He knew that he would have to bring together the disparate sects within Christianity to create one universal Christian Church. He invited all known bishops to a council in what is now modern-day Turkey. While there were more 1,000 bishops in the church, fewer than 200 came to the council. None of these men had any priesthood authority.  Instead of divine revelation, the council relied on voting to decide points of doctrine.  Such false concepts such as the Trinity, infant baptism, deification of Mary, the concept of the Immaculate conception. Most damaging was the character of God.  They took away His body, His manhood, His fatherhood and left the church with a "god" who was 3 gods in 1 god, unknowable, incomprehensible, without body, parts, and passions, large enough to fill the universe but small enough to live in your heart. Like a wolf in sheep's clothing, the apostate ideas were not only taught in the Universal church but they continued through the millennia to those churches that broke away during the Reformation.

Other groups inspired by Satan include the Fascist and Communist movements. According to https://www.enotes.com:

The basic principles of fascism are nationalism and complete state control of society. All people must have the same ideas and the same values. There is no room for diversity.  Is any person or groups of person refuse to comply they are eliminated.  The Nazi's took it a step further to recognize superior and inferior races.

Communism is both an economic and a political system. In theory it sounds like Utopia where everyone is equal. In actual practice, it has failed everywhere it has been implemented. Both of these systems deny the importance of the individual and give precedence to the state.  They also do not recognize the concept that equal does not mean same.  It is no  coincidence that Satan's plan was to take away the agency of man as do these groups who govern by fear and force.  All are equal in value, yet still unique and individual. Jesus Christ saves us as individuals - one soul at a time.

One final note before I sign off and that has to do with the global economy.  The Book of Revelation refers to it as Babylon and the Apostle Paul told Timothy that the love of money is the root of all evil -not money, but the love of money. I like this image because it is easy to see the comparison between Satan's love-of-money tree and God's Tree of Life

The Lord blesses His children with the things of the earth.  We are told to love people and use things.  Satan's idea is to love things and use people.

How do we recognize the difference?  If something leads you closer to Jesus Christ, then cleave to it.  If something leads you away from Jesus Christ, avoid it.  It is the Great and Abominable.

©January 2020, Dr. Kathleen Rawlings Buntin Danielson