2 Nephi 2:16
"Wherefore, the Lord God gave unto man that he should act for himself. Wherefore, man could not act for himself save it should be that he was enticed by the one or the other."
and
Doctrine & Covenants 29:39-40
"And it must needs be that the devil should tempt the children of men, or they could not be agents unto themselves; for if they never should have bitter they could not know the sweet—
Wherefore, it came to pass that the devil tempted Adam, and he partook of the forbidden fruit and transgressed the commandment, wherein he became subject to the will of the devil, because he yielded unto temptation."
Obviously, the devil was necessary for the Fall which was necessary for the Atonement.
S0 - did we have to have a devil too? Would the natural man be temptation and enticement enough? Would Eve have partaken of the fruit without the serpent? Was Satan punished for playing a necessary role? I'm not saying he didn't deserve it.....
And sorrry about not being totally consistant with this. Should have called it weekly contemplations!
Now my brain is mush! I gave a lesson in my laurels class today about resisting sin. We were talking about the influence of Satan. One of the girls raised her hand and said something to the effect of "Satan is tricky but Heavenly Father is trickier." I don't know exactly what she was trying to get at but I think that Heavenly Father knew before he even presented the plan that Satan would rebel. Doesn't he know all? (This thought can spiral out into many other deep thoughts that are hard to wrap my head around). I think it was necessary to have a Satan in the plan, would the natural man even be a natural man without the temptation? Eve was free to make a choice but would she even be suseptable to the temptation if Lucifer wouldn't have brought it to her attention in the first place? This is more questions to add to your questions than it is an answer.
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