Help in Finding an Article

[filovirus]

About ten year ago I read a paper about one of the early leaders of the church making a calculation about how many devils were on the earth based off of a "third part" that were cast from heaven.

I am hoping the community can point me in the right direction, as I can no longer find the article. I appreciate any help.

Thanks

[Calm]

I remember hearing someone make a claim that there were so many devils that were available to tempt and otherwise harass each of us based on the same idea, but I am clueless as to where I heard it save it was before I was married iirc. 
 

Is that the kind of idea that you are thinking of?

Edited March 10, 2022 by Calm

[Robert F. Smith]

Sounds like something Parley Pratt might have done.  After all, he wrote a piece of fiction about Joseph Smith and the Devil, which ended with Joseph toasting the Devil with a beer:

Quote

Here is to his Satanic Majesty; may he be driven from the earth and be forced to put to sea in a stone canoe with an iron paddle, and may the canoe sink, and a shark swallow the canoe and its royal freight and an alligator swallow the shark and may the alligator be bound in the northwest corner of hell, the door be locked, key lost, and a blind man hunting for it.   http://mldb.byu.edu/pppratdi.htm

 

[filovirus]

5 minutes ago, Calm said:

I remember hearing someone make a claim that there were so many devils that were available to tempt and otherwise harass each of us based on the same idea, but I am clueless as to where I heard it save it was before I was married iirc. 
 

Is that the kind of idea that you are thinking of?

That is exactly what I was thinking of. I want to say I read the article from Sunstone, but I could be way off.

[filovirus]

5 minutes ago, Robert F. Smith said:

Sounds like something Parley Pratt might have done.  After all, he wrote a piece of fiction about Joseph Smith and the Devil, which ended with Joseph toasting the Devil with a beer:

 

It may have been Parley, as I was thinking of a Pratt, but I have googled him, Orson Pratt, and even Orson Hyde with no avail.

[Calm]

I don’t have time to read through this seeing if the reference is there, but it looks like it might refer to it or have references in its footnotes you could check if you are really invested in finding the reference. 
 

[Calm]

Another possibility 

https://www.jstor.org/stable/23292679

[filovirus]

Found it!!!  Orson Pratt. Journal of Discourses, Vol 13, Discourse 10 “Revelations and Manifestations of God and of Wicked Spirits”

We may form some little calculation of the vast numbers thus thrown out of Heaven, when we consider that they were one-third of all the spirits that were born, intended for this creation. Only two-thirds kept their first estate, and they have the great privilege of coming here to this creation and taking bodies of flesh and bones, tabernacles wherein their spirits may dwell, to prepare themselves for a more glorious state of existence hereafter. If, then, only two-thirds of the hosts of Heaven are to come to our earth to tabernacle in the flesh, we may form some idea of the vast number who fell. Already our earth has teemed for six thousand years with numberless millions of human beings whose spirits existed before the foundation of the world. Those who now exist probably number one thousand or twelve hundred millions. Twelve hundred millions of spirits now dwelling in mortal flesh! Think of the immense numbers who must have preceded us and the myriads who are to come! These are the two-thirds who kept their first estate. Their numbers, probably, cannot be less than two hundred thousand millions, leaving, as an approximate estimate, one hundred thousand millions of rebellious spirits or devils who were cast out from Heaven and banished to this creation, having no privilege of fleshly tabernacles.

Thanks for helping.