Virtue is voluntary obedience to truth.

Virtue is characterized by consistently following specific principles, rules, and standards of morality.

Virtue generally implies a combination of goodness, integrity, sexual purity, self-discipline, and honor.

Philosophically, increasing virtue is to move from chaos to creation. It is to willingly be intelligently governed by the goodness of light and truth as one increases in light and truth. As we increase in virtue, we increase our functional intelligence in doing good for the benefit of everyone. As we increase in virtue, we advance toward fulfilling the full measure of our creation.

Virtue is empowerment. Imparting virtue is the act of intelligent creation. The virtuous are empowered to impart goodness, healing, and light.

The qualitative properties of virtue are multidimensional, meaning, they are manifest in multiple ways. Virtue can be transmitted as pure knowledge or intelligence. It can also be transmitted as radiant energy, or through channels or bonds of kinetic energy, enabling intrinsic communication, healing, increased ability, and intelligent creation. The Light of Christ is the cosmic manifestation of God’s virtue and glory.

One’s degree and unique variety of virtues is sometimes called glory.

Glory is a function of light and truth being used to promote goodness or positive value. As we increase in light, truth, and goodness, we also increase in virtue and glory. Inversely, as we decrease in light, truth, and goodness, we also decrease in virtue and glory. God desires that we all increase in virtue and glory so that we might become even as He is.

On the scale of understanding, we find that human standards of virtue are finite. They imply following static lists of rules. Whereas God’s virtue is not finite; it is infinite and eternal. God does not follow static lists of rules. Rather, God’s character and behavior are defined by His intelligence, eternal principles, and by informed wisdom. Wise adherence to these principles keeps Him in compliance with divine eternal law.

In opposition to virtue, we find Satan.

Satan and his followers reject virtue. They believe that happiness can and ought to be found in other ways. And so, they reject the principles, laws, and commandments that must be followed to increase virtue and to find greater peace and happiness. They very much desire to find happiness in other ways, in the ways of sin.

Satan and his followers reject the informed wisdom of God. God’s wisdom is informed by His supreme intelligence. God’s laws and commandments are calculated to increase happiness, virtue, and glory according to the informed wisdom of God’s supreme intelligence. But Satan and his followers do not care. They want what they want, and they want to get what they want by doing things their way, which ignores the fundamental and unchangeable laws of cause and effect. They ignore the realities of pragmatic and cohesive truth. The laws, realities, and truths they ignore are explained later.

Suffice it to say, happiness and virtue can only be increased by living the gospel of Jesus Christ. Living the gospel of Jesus Christ enables adherence to the laws and commandments of God which enable an increase in happiness and virtue. The higher the laws you are willing and able to abide by, the more you will increase in virtue, and the more peace and happiness and joy will be yours.

Satan and his followers exist in opposition to the laws and commandments of God. They exist in opposition to the nature of happiness. They exist in opposition to divinely informed wisdom and virtue. Therefore, they take upon themselves the nature of misery and endless woe. And as they say, misery loves company. And so, they devote all their time and energies to fighting against God, rebelling against God, and proselyting their version of happiness, or fake happiness, as best they can. Therefore, they exist under the bondage of sin, without law, being a law unto themselves.

Those who perpetually exist under the bondage of sin are those who are without law because they abide not the law of God which is known unto them.

“For as many as have sinned without law shall also perish without law; and as many as have sinned in the law shall be judged by the law.”[1]

Ignorance of the law does not recompense mercy to the degree that you can be saved without law. Without law, you remain static and must remain damned in ignorance until such time as the law can be learned and obeyed; while those who have the law, who know the law, but who willingly violate the law, are emphatically judged and condemned by the law.

Those who are without law,[2] who heed not the laws of God, either ignorantly or overtly, cannot be sanctified, or elevated by law; in other words, they cannot be rewarded or receive the fruits of obedience to those laws they have broken. Likewise, those who are with sin, who know the law and who break the law, must be held accountable to the law, and suffer accordingly. Otherwise, there is no law. A law cannot exist and be in force if just blessings and consequences relative to that law are not firmly in place.

The law we are all held most accountable to are the promptings communicated to us by the voice of God, by the Light of Christ, through conscience. The Light of Christ is the law by which all things are governed. We reject this law at our own eternal peril.

Satan’s big beef with the laws of God is that he and his followers want very much to sin, party hard, follow their natural passions, lose control, and live lives of selfishness and riotous living, without suffering the natural negative consequences. This was always their desire. Consequently, they oppose God’s laws; they oppose virtue, they oppose the established rules of morality; and they oppose moral agency, which is that we must continuously choose between good and evil.

Rather, they desire to be laws unto themselves. They desire to be autonomous creatures of nature, free to follow their passions, and to seek pleasure and happiness as they may, without adverse consequences. To do this, their ambition has been and still is to dethrone God and replace him with tyrants who will impose order in the universe through sheer force and despotic rule, but who will otherwise allow everyone to follow their passions as they may. For them, this sounds pretty awesome if it means they can sin and pursue the pleasures of sin without limits, being ruled only by tyrants who promise to generally leave them alone. And, as we all know, we can always trust a tyrant, right?

So, in an effort to justify and promote his anti-God and anti-virtue designs, Satan seeks to discredit and destroy everything God has taught, promised, or established, or close to it.

From the very beginning, Satan has desired to be a would-be Savior and deliverer, “that not one soul should be lost.”[3] From before the creation of the world, he has sought to dethrone God and make the universe a haven for demons and devils, which seems like heaven to them, but would be the worst kind of hell for everyone else.

As such, it would quickly become a universe of chaos, without order, without the light or intelligence of God to manage things. What they do not seem to realize is that under such conditions, everything and everyone would revert to utter chaos, de-created, dysfunctional, and utterly obliterated, stripped down to their basic raw particles.

Satan, who was called Lucifer, has promised, on his word of honor, that in exchange for the honor and power of God, he will make everyone’s wildest dreams come true, just like Pedro in the movie Napoleon Dynamite. Rather laughable, really, but unfortunately, an astonishing number of people have bought into it. Evidently, most people will choose to believe what they want to believe, even in blatant denial of what should be a completely obvious reality.

It is no accident that Satan has been called “a liar from the beginning.” His whispers and his promises are all laced with half-truths and lies that seem so sweet to those caught in the trap of his deceit.

Satan’s followers always pose as virtuous, caring, altruistic, and benevolent servants of the people; but they are in fact greedy, hateful, dishonest, and malevolent slaves of sin.

Satan’s arguments always come in the guise of promoting some higher good. He appears as an angel of light, the embodiment of righteousness, conveying the most profound wisdom, preaching equality and social justice, and always warning us of the most urgent need to act now by supporting him. In this way, he and his agents gain trust, pervert knowledge, demoralize virtue, and slowly, carefully deceive many and lead them down to hell.

As I consider the various establishments of our day, including the political, religious, educational, medical, corporate, and other leading institutions, I see organizations rife with satanic deception and influence. Like Satan, they all come in the guise of virtuously promoting some higher good. By design, they appear in the public eye as beacons of light and truth, the embodiment of righteousness, conveying the most profound wisdom, preaching equality and social justice, and always warning us of some urgent need. In this way, they seek to gain our trust, pervert our knowledge, demoralize our virtue, and slowly, carefully, deceive us, captivate us, and lead us carefully down the path of destruction into the nethermost pits of hell.

Given the choice, between light and darkness, happiness or misery, joyful salvation, or the pains of the damned in hell, the wiser choice should be obvious.

---

[1] New Testament | Romans 2:12

[2] Doctrine and Covenants 76:71 – 72

[3] Doctrine and Covenants 29:36, Moses 4:1 (Similar to Jor El’s line in Man of Steel: “You can saver her, Kal. You can save all of them.”)

Click here for Table of Contents

.