Chapter 10—The Chains of Hell
With evil’s dark net spread over the world, the unsuspecting are “taken in their pit and [brought] with chains unto the land of Egypt” (Ezekiel 19:4), the material world that keeps us from God’s holy realm. Chains can link things physically or through ideas, causes, or events. Chains include all that binds, enslaves, or constrains. Some Hebrew translations call it the pit, while its Latin root represents a hunting net or snare. Darkness, confusion, lies, and sin “are the very handcuffs, and chains, and shackles, and fetters of hell” (D&C 123:8) that cause us to “go stumbling backward, to be broken, trapped, and captured” (Isaiah 28:13, HCSB). Flattery, misguided beliefs, and smooth words keep men complacent so Satan can “grasp them with his awful chains” (2 Nephi 28:22). Satan “had a great chain in his hand and it veiled the whole face of the earth with darkness; and he looked up and laughed, and his angels rejoiced” (Moses 7:26) over the ruined souls.
Satan uses erring but persuasive leaders like Zeezrom, who seek to “stir up the people” against God’s word “for the sole purpose to get gain” and “destroy that which was good” (Alma 11:20–21). Because it is “a very subtle plan,” many follow the erring leader. “This was a snare of the adversary which he has laid to catch this people, that he might bring you into subjection unto him, that he might encircle you about with his chains, that he might chain you down to everlasting destruction, according to the power of his captivity” (Alma 12:6, 4).
The battle for souls is very intense and alarmingly real. Because wickedness exists at all levels, we must constantly be on guard. We are not just fighting against low-ranking soldiers, but against “rulers” and “authorities” whose ways and beliefs diminish light (Ephesians 6:12, NIV). “We wrestle against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places” (KJV).
Jezebel
The church at Thyatira is given a stern warning because of its interaction with Jezebel, who “calleth herself a prophetess” but “seduced my servants to commit fornication” (Revelation 2:20). Thyatira was wealthy and progressive, known for its trade guilds and scarlet and purple dyed cloth. Thyatira, which had multiple temples where its Jews practiced a perverse form of worship, represents all who are “indulgent towards errors which corrupted Christianity.”
Though ritually devout, Thyatira was under Satan’s power. So strong was his grasp that many could not conceive that he had a hold on their works. Only those who “treasureth up my word shall not be deceived” (JST Matthew 24:39) so we are to hold fast to the doctrine as God revealed it.
Thyatira was rebuked for the same idolatry that made Israel sin centuries before under Queen Jezebel, the notorious counterpart of King Ahab, ruler of Israel in 9th-century b.c. Together they misled the chosen people and wickedness became the norm. Jezebel’s name indicates negated glory. She is exalted by Baal, not God, so He has
a few things against thee because thou sufferest that woman Jezebel, which calleth herself a prophetess, to teach and to seduce my servants to commit fornication . . . I gave her space to repent of her fornication and she repented not. Behold, I will cast her into a bed, and them that commit adultery with her into great tribulation, except they repent of their deeds.
And I will kill her children with death; and all the churches shall know that I am he which searcheth the reins and hearts: and I will give unto every one of you according to your works. But unto you I say, and unto the rest in Thyatira, as many as have not this doctrine, and which have not known the depths of Satan, as they speak; I will put upon you none other burden. But that which ye have already hold fast till I come. (Revelation 2:20–25)With ruthless ambition and an insatiable appetite for power, Queen Jezebel is the embodiment of evil, a type for Babylon. Although Jezebel “calleth herself” a prophetess, the Lord does not acknowledge it. Her ways corrupted and divided the nation, bringing a cultural revolution that threatened their salvation. Jezebel’s radical ideas, backed by the power of the throne, eradicated and replaced Israel’s faith with a new age of morality that was, more accurately, immorality. Her liberal views were a cloak for darkness. She was a leading advocate in the war against Israel’s true and living God. Because her ‘children’ perpetuate these false teachings, they will destroyed.
Jezebel’s husband, King Ahab, was a capable but compromising leader, and for this he would fall. He was morally weak and distracted by materialism. Although raised to worship the God of Abraham, Ahab had no conversion or conviction when it came to defending Israel’s true God. His tolerance and enthusiasm for cultural, spiritual, and political change corrupted the Israelite nation more than ever before. “There was none like unto Ahab, which did sell himself to work wickedness in the sight of the Lord, whom Jezebel his wife stirred up. And he did very abominably” (1 Kings 21:25–26). He supported building a temple to Baal within the land of promise. The nation’s foundation was weakened, redefined, and overturned during his rule. “Ahab did more to provoke the Lord God of Israel to anger than all the kings of Israel” before him (1 Kings 16:33).
But Queen Jezebel was more evil than Ahab. She killed for gain, “cut off” and “slew the prophets of the Lord,” encouraged witchcraft, entertained corrupt priests, and took peace from the land. Ahab and Jezebel were archenemies of Elijah, a righteous proclaimer of God’s way. When rebuked for his evil ways, Ahab ironically charged Elijah as being the “troubler of Israel” (1 Kings 18:17–18, ESV). In a nation that had redefined right and wrong, Elijah’s ‘crime’ was remaining faithful to the Lord’s way, refusing to compromise, and standing as a witness of their wickedness and apostasy.
Jezebel’s priests famously challenged Elijah in a great showdown of priesthood power. When Elijah’s God emerged victorious and the evil priests of Baal were slain, Jezebel vowed to kill Elijah using words similar to a covenant penalty: “So let the gods do to me, and more also, if I make not thy life as the life of one of them by tomorrow about this time” (1 Kings 19:2). Mocking God and swearing in vain assured her demise, as it will all who do “not keep the terms of the covenant that they made before me” (Jeremiah 34:18, ESV). Elijah prophesied Jezebel would suffer a fate worse than what she desired for him—dogs would eat her so completely that she would not be recognizable. Jezebel’s gruesome death foreshadows latter-day events when flesh of the wicked and Babylon are devoured. It is significant that Babylon, the mother of abominations, is arrayed in purple and scarlet, the same colors of Thyatira’s famous dyes.
I saw a woman sit on a scarlet beast that was covered with blasphemous names and had seven heads and ten horns. The woman was dressed in purple and scarlet, and was glittering with gold, precious stones and pearls. She held a golden cup in her hand, filled with abominable things and the filth of her adulteries.
The name written on her forehead was a mystery: Babylon the Great, the Mother of [Harlots] and of the Abominations of the Earth. I saw that the woman was drunk with the blood of God’s holy people, the blood of those who bore testimony [of] Jesus. (Revelation 17:3–6, NIV)Fear of death or tribulation fuels Babylon’s power over people, causing the weak to succumb and support the abominations. Through fear, antichrists can be brought to power to commit the most heinous atrocities against humanity and true Christianity. Those who will not submit to their evil political, religious, social, or economic agendas may be murdered ‘for the good of society,’ according to this perverse way of thinking. Advocates of this new age reform, a counterfeit Zion, believe people must conform or be killed.
Although they justify it, their self-serving, oppressive, and forceful works to rid the world of believers is authored by Satan himself. It has happened before. Nephites who did “worship God in spirit and in truth, the true and the living God” were murdered (Alma 43:10), as were many apostles and Christians throughout history.
Many proofs abound to show that some similar system [to destroy believers] will yet be revived. None can be imagined which would more quickly and universally take hold upon the world and unite all communities—and even the worst of characters—by making all, thus, to become religious, and yet able to degrade and gratify the instincts of human nature under the guise of religion. Nor can we conceive any form of corruption which would mark off the people of God more effectually, and cause them to be separated from the abounding wickedness around them . . . The awful character of the Antichrist’s great universal system of religion, which even God plagues . . . will call down the yet greater judgments.Jezebel personified wickedness but there was a righteous woman in Thyatira too. Meaning ‘beautiful’ or ‘noble one,’ Lydia, the first European convert, exemplifies the spiritual transformation possible from believing God and obeying His every word. Once a “seller of purple,” Lydia demonstrates that the willing can leave Babylon to receive God’s grace. She “whose heart the Lord opened” recognized truth, “attended unto the things” His gospel required, and truly “worshipped God” (Acts 16:14). Not ashamed to confess Christ in a land of idolatry and worldliness, she opened her home to God’s servants and faithfully kept the Sabbath. Lydia was a powerful influence for good at a time of great evil.
The contrast between Thyatira’s false prophetess Jezebel and the spiritually converted Lydia reminds us of the power of women to seduce for evil or persuade toward truth. Since women have an essential role in God’s work, we must expect Satan to employ them also. Women can, and should, receive a personal and sure witness of Christ. Mary Magdalene was first to declare the truthful testimony that she had seen the risen Christ (John 20:11–18) although His disciples “believed not” her testimony at first (Mark 16:11). While many may not recognize the role of women in His great and marvelous work, ignorance or unbelief does not rescind women’s opportunity, privilege, and responsibility to personally witness and testify of His divinity.
God’s counsel to Thyatira is important today because the battle between Elijah’s pure worship and Jezebel’s destructive counterfeit continues to fight ferociously for our souls. Satan “goeth up and down, to and fro in the earth, seeking to destroy the souls of men” (D&C 10:27).
Those who successfully navigate “the deep things of Satan” are given power over the nations. “He that overcometh and keepeth my works unto the end, to him will I give power over the nations. And he shall rule them with a rod of iron . . . and I will give him the morning star” (Revelation 2:26, 28). Obtaining this power is the ultimate desire of Satan, Jezebel, and the whore Babylon.
“Shake Off the Awful Chains”
Satan desperately wants to destroy truth and righteousness so we will remain in his chains. To escape his grasp, we must arm ourselves “with the same mind” (1 Peter 4:1) as God—that abhors sin and understands the divine, but impurity keeps us from it. “If impurity does not overcome the mind, also Beliar will not overcome you” (Testament of Reuben 4:11). “Impurity is a destruction to the soul, separating it from God and bringing it near to the idols because it deceives the mind and the understanding, and leads down young men to the underworld before their time. For impurity has destroyed many people . . . It makes him an object of reproach and laughter with Beliar and the sons of men” (Testament of Reuben 4:6–7). Those with hard hearts “yielded [them]selves to become subjects to the devil” (Alma 5:16-20), bound by his awful chains.
He that will not harden his heart, to him is given the greater portion of the word, until it is given unto him to know the mysteries of God until he know them in full. And they that will harden their hearts, to them is given the lesser portion of the word until they know nothing concerning his mysteries; and then they are taken captive by the devil and led by his will down to destruction. Now this is what is meant by the chains of hell. (Alma 12:10–11)The key to loosen chains—transforming repentance and receiving knowledge from God—begins as we accept the difficult reality that we have been ensnared. “We and our fathers before us have sinned and done wickedly in walking [contrary to] truth and righteousness.” It is hard to accept that what we once believed to be a firm foundation may not be so solid after all, but that does not absolve us of our serious responsibility to find truth. The repentant “shall be delivered from all the snares of Belial.” God accepts broken hearts and contrite spirits that awake “from the sleep of hell” (2 Nephi 1:13) and cry, “Woe unto us, that we have sinned!” (Lamentations 5:16).
O that ye would awake; awake from a deep sleep, yea, even from the sleep of hell, and shake off the awful chains by which ye are bound, which are the chains which bind the children of men, that they are carried away captive down to the eternal gulf of misery and woe. Awake, my sons; put on the armor of righteousness. Shake off the chains with which ye are bound, and come forth out of obscurity, and arise from the dust. (2 Nephi 1:13, 23)To obscure is to darken, cloud, or make less intelligible or glorious. Its etymology represents vagueness, confusion, uncertainty, and absence of light. That God asks, “Who shall stand?” when He appears implies no one can remain asleep and receive exaltation. “Ungodly men shall not stand in judgment” (Barnabas 11:7) but the righteous “rose and stood” and were “established.”
We cannot awake until we accept truth. “Awake . . . and Christ shall give thee light” (Ephesians 5:14). He “changed their hearts; yea, he awakened them out of a deep sleep and they awoke unto God. Behold they were in the midst of darkness. Nevertheless their souls were illuminated by the light of the everlasting word; yea, they were encircled about by the bands of death, and the chains of hell, and an everlasting destruction did await them . . . What is the cause of being loosed from the bands of death, yea, and also the chains of hell?” The answer: “According to his faith there was a mighty change wrought in his heart” (Alma 5:7, 10, 12).
We are also asked, “Who may abide the day of His coming?” (Malachi 3:2–3). The wise who “have received the truth, and have taken the Holy Spirit for their guide, and have not been deceived . . . shall abide the day” but “he that is not purified shall not” (D&C 45:57, 38:8).
Behold, the residue of the wicked have I kept in chains of darkness until the judgment of the great day, which shall come at the end of the earth; and even so will I cause the wicked to be kept that will not hear my voice but harden their hearts, and wo, wo, wo, is their doom. (D&C 38:5–6)“Woe shall come unto the inhabitants of the earth if they will not hearken unto my words” (D&C 5:5). And so “the kingdom of the devil must shake, and they which belong to it must needs be stirred up unto repentance” to break “his everlasting chains” (2 Nephi 28:19). That He can loose us “from the chains of hell” is “reason to praise him forever” (Alma 26:14), so “examine your deeds and turn to God in repentance.”
Turn away from your sins; shake off the chains of him that would bind you fast. Come unto that God who is the rock of your salvation. (2 Nephi 9:45)
For footnotes and references, click HERE.