Stirring up to Anger

In the Book of Mormon, a few years before the widespread and massive destruction occurred at the Lord's death, the Nephite civilization had become very divided.

When a conspiracy to overthrow the government occurred, with judges conspiring together to take away freedom and establish a king, the end result was the country diving into many "tribes." The previously established order and government broke down. Those who had their king ended up going to another part of the land because all the tribes were against them, and blamed them for what happened.

But the tribes did not like each other. Even with that dislike, they still had strict rules pertaining to inter-tribe interaction. So, they had some peace in that there were not widespread wars between the many tribes.

This is an example of what I've said that people are generally good, in that they want was is just and good. Most people don't want to be at war with others, even if they look, act, or believe differently. The people may not be obeying all of God's commandments, but they recognize the importance of society-affecting rules like not stealing, or murdering.

But there are those who desire power and control who will take the differences between people and fan those differences into fears and hate, and then into anger. They will numb the feelings of good and respect towards others, and blind people to not see what is good in others. They will spark the fears, fan it into flames of hate, and ignite it into explosions of anger. When they can control these intense emotions, they will guide them towards the end of controlling the people.

In the scriptures this is often described as "stirring hearts up to anger" which is an effective analogy.

If you think of fear, hate, and anger as being negative emotions, then in a fluid situation these would have negative buoyancy and would sink. Left alone they would not cause problems on the surface.

So let's compare that to a body of water.

If a storm stirs up the water, then the muck that has sunk to the bottom can be brought up to the surface to be tossed around.

There are even some drinks that have dregs at the bottom and when you drink the fluid, you don't drink the nasty parts at the bottom. But if the drink gets stirred up, then all the dregs are mixed in and even come to the surface, which makes the drink not as pleasant.

Satan is definitely doing all he can to stir up the hearts of the people to anger because he knows the negative potential it can have on our society and civilization.