Wednesday, July 28, 2021

J. Reuben Clark, “Satan’s Deception: Judas Iscariot”

 

Satan works in the world in various and devious ways. He assimilates so many good things and covers them so well that they look like truth instead of error. I often reflect upon poor Judas Iscariot, and that the basis of his trouble was gold. It was not gold for himself; it was gold for the group for some good purpose such as feeding the poor. Nor did he, I am sure, when he began his negotiations with the plotters, have any thought that the Master would suffer by what he was doing. I am sure that Satan called his attention the great miracles of the Savior: He had walked upon the water; He had healed the sick; He had raised the dead; at Nazareth, He had passed out through the crowd that would slay Him, and escaped unharmed. He had done the same again in Jerusalem when they thought to take His life; the raising of Lazarus had been but a short time before, and how could he assume that the Saviour would not again deliver Himself and he, Judas, have the thirty pieces of silver for the use of the Twelve.

 

Thus did Satan work in his mind, and that I am reasonably accurate in my assumption, is shown by the fact that when the Savior, moving along the road which God had laid down before for Him to follow, passed onward through His trials before Pilate and Herod, and then journeyed on to the cross, Judas took back his thirty pieces of silver and attempted to save the life of the Savior. Thus Satan, I repeat, disgusted his method of fraud. He makes error look like the truth. He makes unrighteousness look like righteousness, so much so that he well nigh leads astray the elect themselves. (Priesthood Session, October 1934, in David H. Yarn, Jr., ed., J. Reuben Clark: Selected Papers [Provo: Brigham Young University Press, 1984], 203-4)