SUNDAY SERMONS
By Cordell and Janice Vail
13 July 2003
A weekly email gospel message for the descendents of Ammon and Winona Vail
Satan's Paper Brick Walls Of Deception
While I was a student at BYU I had a very vivid dream. I dreamed that I was the engineer of a locomotive. The dream seemed so real while I was having it. I dreamed that I was riding along the railroad tracks in the locomotive where I was sitting on my little chair at the side of the locomotive where I could look out the side window windshield that let me see down the track so I could see if there was any danger or obstructions on the tracks ahead.
As we raced along, I saw what looked like a brick wall across the tracks ahead. It was very big and I could see that if we hit it, the whole train would be destroyed. On the locomotive instrument panels that were in front of me I had gauges that were like a radar. They looked down the track too and told me if there were any obstructions on the tracks. As I saw the brick wall coming I looked at the gauges and they said "ALL CLEAR", but I could see the brick wall coming with my eyes. As I saw the locomotive approaching the brick wall, I started hearing a very loud voice calling to me, "JUMP... JUMP OFF THE TRAIN OR YOU ARE GOING TO DIE." I was very tempted to jump off the train so I would not die. But the gauges all said that the track was clear.
In all my training as a train engineer they always told us to depend on the gauges more than what we actually saw with our eyes. They taught us that the gauges would be right even if what we saw disagreed with them.
The brick wall drew closer very rapidly and the voice kept saying to me "JUMP.. JUMP.. or you are going to die". The wall was coming, but the gauges said the track was all clear. As we got to the wall, one last time the voice screamed in terror in my ears, "JUMP... JUMP.. or you are going to die". But I decided that I would follow the gauges and so I just closed my eyes and let the train hit the big brick wall.
When the train hit the brick wall, I heard a ripping sound of paper. When I opened my eyes again the track was all clear just as the gauges had said and I realized that someone had just painted a "paper brick wall" and put it across the track to deceive me.
I was so startled that I woke up from the dream. I immediately realized the symbolism of the dream. In this life many times, Satan (the voice in the dream) puts up paper walls of deception in our lives and then he tries to tell us that we should do things that are not right based on our judgment from our perception of those paper walls and it seems so real or so important at the time in our life that we are tempted to follow his voice. He calls out to us and tries to make us panic and follow him rather than what we know is right. He even makes things seem to appear as what they are not (the paper brick wall) to convince us to follow his voice. But the Holy Ghost and the living prophets (the gauges on the locomotive), are never wrong. They can always be depended on to be correct in our lives. The Holy Ghost and the living prophets are never wrong. When we are doing things that are contrary to what the Holy Ghost is telling us or contrary to the teachings of the living prophets, even when we have some voice telling us in our mind we are an exception or it is OK for us to do that, we will find we are always wrong later.
Sometimes it is so very, very hard to follow the prompting of the Holy Ghost or the words of the living prophets. Satan's voice sounds so convincing in our minds and the deceptions he puts in our lives to get us to do things that we know are not right are made to seem right. If those things were not enticing or enjoyable they would not be tempting. The "Paper Brick Walls" that Satan puts up in our lives can look so real sometimes. They can be things that are so enticing that we jump off the train of righteousness. But the Holy Ghost and the counsel of the living prophets, like the gauges on the train, are never wrong. And if we follow the prompting of the Holy Ghost and the teachings of the living prophets we will never make a mistake.