The Sacred Grove and God's Decoy

I've always thought God would make a great chess player. Take for instance His assault on Egypt while freeing the Israelites from bondage. How did He get the Egyptians to abandon reason and charge mindlessly into the parted Red Sea? Well, He started small. When Moses first approached Pharaoh, he performed a small miracle by transforming his staff into a serpent. This is a trick we could watch a magician perform today, and still consider it an impressive illusion. At first, Moses' miracles were easily copied by Pharaoh's magicians. Thus, by gradually using greater and greater miracles, God allowed the Egyptians to feel in control all the while, and for Pharaoh's heart to be hardened. In the end, it was probably this enduring feeling that Moses and the Israelites were just within reach, that caused Pharaoh to blunder so badly and send his troops to their final demise.

In chess, a decoy is an unguarded piece that is used to draw the enemy's attack, thereby extending him into a position of weakness. Usually it's a good idea to use a small piece, since sacrificing something like a queen or rook is likely to be viewed with some level of suspicion. In essence, God played a seemingly unprotected pawn, a fourteen year old boy, into the sacred grove, and Satan took the bait. Now taking a pawn is no significant victory in the game of chess, but when you're up against a superior opponent you have to take what you can get, and besides, pawns always have the potential to become something greater later in the game :)

But as we know, Satan's attack failed and God delivered and visited the boy Joseph Smith. The question is why. Why was Satan's attack necessary to put him into a position of weakness? Imagine if you will, that the adversary's attack had never occurred, and all we had was a faith promoting story about a boy praying in a grove and receiving a visit from God. No dark being, no mists of darkness, no binding of Joseph's tongue. This would have allowed Satan to maintain a position of strength, since it could have been argued that Joseph was actually visited by the devil disguised as God (see 2 Corinthians 11:14). However, we learn from Jesus in Matthew 12:25-26 that every kingdom divided against itself is laid to waste, and if Satan casts out himself, he is divided.

Since Satan played his hand, we can safely say there were two players involved in the sacred grove. And since neither was or is divided, and God is too strong to have been pushed away and impersonated by Satan, this puts the adversary in a position of weakness. Logically it only makes sense that Joseph's account is true: he was delivered and visited by God the Father and His Son Jesus Christ!