Angels and Demons

fascinated with angels and therefore I wrote a book on them one of the best ways of learning about something is to write a book about it just as you learn more on the teachers side of the desk and whoever did on the students side but I don't know how to teach my own books because if it's worth saying I should have put it in the book and if it's not worth saying I shouldn't say it so the only thing I can do is assume that there's a lot of stuff that I should have said that's not in the book and to say it this book has 100 questions about angels I'll just pick about 10 or 20 and say something about them and the first question is how come there's so many books about angels now for the last 20 or 30 years there's been more books about angels than in the previous 100 why is that well there's psychological explanations or sociological explanations but I think the most obvious explanation is more angels are showing themselves now than they did before now I'm not a historian or any kind of expert on history but the little I know about history tells me that there are times of crisis when one age is ending and another is beginning like the fall of Rome and the rise of the church or like the Renaissance and the Reformation when one ERA let's say the ancient passes and another the medieval begins or when that new era becomes old and another begins which happened and about five hundred years ago and I think we're living through that kind of a time today and that's why during those times there are more miracles more martyrs and more angels those three things seem to go together and in the last century there have been more martyrs than in the previous 19 all put together there have been more marian appearances more miracles in more angel sightings now i think many of the so-called angel sightings are fakes and many of the books on angels are fakes but not all of them and if you're interested in actual stories about people who meet angels I would recommend the books by John Webster Anderson who was a good sound Catholic lady and has done research on all these stories and she's very responsible don't read the National Enquirer or anything coming out of the Washington DC so the fact that angels seem to be appearing today is on the one hand a cause for rejoicing wonderful God is sending his messengers but on the other hand it's a cause for worry because he sends angels only where they're needed where the battle is heating up and the battle seems to be heating up today I think the world is getting more and more decadent and more and more desperately wicked and in response the church is getting stronger and holier God is preparing an antidote for the poisons that he sees in the world and we are his antidotes and so are the Angels we're also naturally fascinated with angels at any time because they're different we're fascinated with angels the same way work fascinated with superheroes like Superman or aliens like et extraterrestrials well the angels are the real extraterrestrials they're not fictional they're real when I teach about angels and once in a while I teach a whole course on angels and demons one of the questions I ask my students in a questionnaire just to find out where they're coming from is how interested are you in angels and all of them say they're quite interested that's why they're the course but another question I ask is how interested are you in animals and I find there's a definite correlation between their answers to those two questions and it's not what you would expect you might expect that those who are more spiritually minded are interested in angels but not animals and those who are more materially or biologically or bodily minded are interested in animals but not angels not just the opposite the definite tendency to be more interested in both of those things together or neither of them and I think that's because some people have very curious open minds and they're interested in things that are surprisingly different especially intelligence in non-human forms and there is animal intelligence in fact animals are much more intelligent than most people think and they aren't human but sometimes they get pretty close and angels are also intelligent but they're not human angels are not human souls without human bodies none of us will ever become an angel angels there are different species as different from us as the animals are and some people are fascinating things that are different and surprising and some people aren't some people like things are familiar and comfortable and don't like their minds to be expanded and surprised so if you're interested in angels congratulations but unfortunately nobody is an expert on angels there are people who are experts on animals we understand them pretty well in fact we understand them much better than they understand us well I suspect that that's about the same as with the angels they understand us much better than we understand them in fact I suspect that we understand angels about as well as our dogs and cats understand us and maybe they have the same sort of attitude towards us as we have towards our dogs or cats they love us and they care for us but we're pets we're vastly inferior to angels they're incredibly superior to us in knowledge in will in power they're much closer to God by Nature and once you realize that it becomes astonishing that God chose to unite himself with us he never became an angel but he became a human being and that he chose to share his very divine life his divine nature with us in Christ the hypostatic union between the human nature of Christ and the divine nature of Christ not only never goes away because the Ascension was not the undoing of the Incarnation Christ kept his human body and soul forever but he shares it with us we are members of his body not just recipients of His grace not just recipients of his wisdom other other religious figures and founders and sages and saints and philosophers tried to save us with their mind they said this is my mind Solomon Socrates Buddha Jesus saved us by saying this is my body so he came all the way down into these rational animals with his very nature I didn't do that with angels one of the tests probably the major test the angels were given that determined whether they were good angels or fallen angels was a test of pride the same for how the devil fell is pride because a pure spirit can't be tempted with lust or greed or most of the temptations that were tempted with but he certainly can be tempted with pride if you're number two you might resent not being number one as Rodney Dangerfield says if you're looking out from one number one you're going to probably step in some number to another version of the temptation that was given to the Angels the test that was given to the Angels which is in some of the Eastern Church Fathers and it's also in the Quran was that at the moment of their creation God revealed to the angels that he was going to create human beings and that the angels would be the servants of human beings and that they had to guard us or vastly inferior to him and of the Christian version it was added that God revealed to the angels that he had planned to become incarnate as one of these human beings and some of the angels said no that's that's that's terrible that's ridiculous they were proud they rebelled because they lack humility humility is the opposite of pride and that's a spiritual choice most sins are mixed most sins that human beings are subject to temptation to our physical as well as spiritual but but pride is purely spiritual and so is humility all those express materially it's an attitude a fundamental attitude of letting God be God and accepting your status is number two or less and therefore sin Agustin when speaking of the virtues said the four cardinal virtues which everybody knows from Plato and the Old Testament on they go way back namely wisdom and courage and self-control and justice these are terribly important sit Agustin but to my mind the four cardinal virtues the ones you start with our humility humility humility and humility because humility doesn't mean having a low opinion of yourself it means have an accurate opinion of yourself I'm not God I'm number two and some of the angels that did know that and we keep saying no to that in fact in every sin we violate the first commandment worship God alone we're we're hearing ourselves we want to correct God no god I want to do it my way I think the song that everybody sings in hell as they enter hell is the not result I did it my way whereas the song everybody sings as they enter Heaven is God's way is the best way well we know I think about as little about the Angels as our pets know about us that's still precious but it's not much so there are no angel experts so in my book there's very little as original most of it I get from the Bible the church fathers and st. Thomas Aquinas who was called the angelic doctor not only because he so resembled an angel but because he was an expert on angels people who are skeptical of an Angels usually say angelology is not a science science has nothing to do with angels I'll take science instead of theology any day you can prove itself so angels seem to many people to be unscientific and it's truth angels are unscientific and so is love and so is beauty and so is holiness science is a wonderful thing but science is like laser light it concentrates the light in a very small area so that it can penetrate through mysteries as lasers penetrate through even steel and that's very precious but something is sacrificed you start with ordinary consciousness which is like a floodlight which shows you the big picture and then you narrow that to a spotlight and then you now have that further to laser light and that's the scientific method well that's fine but there's a lot of stuff outside that narrow little beam in fact all the stuff that's the most important is outside that narrow little beam so of course angels are unscientific and so is almost anything else that's important scientific method can prove very strongly and conclusively a few unimportant things but all the many important things no it can't in fact science can't even prove validity of science there's no proof by the scientific method alone that all proof comes by the scientific method alone so when you hear somebody claim science has disproved the supernatural or angels please get scientific for a minute and ask that person okay which science did that what was the experiment that proved that who did it and where and they'll never be able answer that question in general the whole the whole story of science replacing religion the so-called war between science and religion it's a fake it's a lie there is no such war there's not a single casualty no science in history has ever disproved any single theological dogma ever okay how important are angels can you be a Christian without believed believing in angels can you be a Catholic without believing in angels well angels are not the center of our faith but the Bible clearly teaches that there are angels there on almost every page of the Bible especially the important ones Christ very clearly taught that there are angels and demons so if there are no angels and no demons and the Bible lies in Christ lies and we don't have any divine authority any more so even though angels are not at the center of our faith they're part of an essential package deal and if they're not true if they're only myths and the church has been teaching error about them and she's not what she claims to be and also the Bible and in that case she may be in error about any other issue many people don't realize that divine revelation is a package deal it's not a cafeteria where you can pick one dish without the other here is the cargo that we are entrusted with to teach the world about and and our master said it's all of a piece and you can start throwing little pieces of the cargo overboard because you don't like it that assumes that you have the authority to choose what is to be thrown overboard and what is to be delivered intact for instance almost everybody instinctively liked the idea that god is love it's true it's precious it's profound but it's also comforting everybody likes it almost nobody who is saying like the divine revelation that says there is an eternal hell and you could lose your only hope and joy forever and ever if you like the doctrine of Hell there's something wrong with you have to be reluctant to accept it but you have to accept it it is part of the same package deal it stands on exactly the same basis as the most popular doctors like God is love how do you know that God is love does history prove it that your conscience prove it conscience is hard as nails does the pure logic prove it of course not what proves it Christ proves it but suppose he's wrong well he's not wrong about that but he's wrong about hell oh well if he's wrong about one thing you can be wrong about anything it's a package deal and angels are part of the package deal but we can't imagine an angel when we do we usually imagine them with wings and halos and so on but they're pure spirits they don't have wings wings are physical they don't have physical halos those are simply symbols or pictures about angels our mythic and symbolic they may be true symbols but they're only symbolic the halo symbolizes light and intelligence and angels are supremely intelligent but if you had a camera you couldn't take a picture of an angel they're not physical light and they can move instantly from one place to another in fact angels are very much like subatomic particles according to quantum physics when you move an electron from one orbit to another within an atom you discover to your amazement that it takes no time at all to pass through that space and at no time do you find the electron anywhere else except on the first orbit or on the second orbit you'll never find it anywhere in between so the rules of time and space are transcended when you get to subatomic particles I don't fully understand that either I'm not a physicist but it's true well that's how angels work they can move instantly from one place to another without ever appearing in between in time or space now we can't imagine that and we can't imagine of your spirit we can only imagine things that we've sensed or could sense things made of matter that are spread out in space you can imagine a woman you can imagine a man you cannot imagine human nature which makes a man and a woman equally human you can abstract human nature from men and women but when you imagine a human being it has to be either male or female so you can't imagine angels and you can't see them well then how come so many people have seen them well for one of two reasons angels can influence your mind and they can appear in a vision or a dream but if you had a camera set up the camera wouldn't reveal anything there they're still pure spirits they're not influencing your body over your mind a second way angels can appear is they can assume bodies in the Bible this is how they usually appear the three angels that appear to Abraham ate his food in fact in I think the Talmud it says that that great compendium of Jewish practical and theoretical lore it says if you're visited by an angel and you wonder whether it was only a vision or whether the angel by God's permission assumed an apparently human body you can tell which it is by offering the angel food now angels always respect hospitality and therefore they will eat some of your food after the angel leaves see if any food is missing if not it was only a vision if so it had a body I love Jews they're so practical Jesus appeared appealed to that principle after the resurrection in the upper room when the disciples said it's a spirit it's a ghost in Jesus that I'll prove I'm not a ghost got any food here they gave him some food he ate it it disappeared it was real so angels can perform physical deeds and even physical miracles especially because God sometimes allows them to assume physical bodies and they're usually disguises a verse in Hebrews says be sure to exercise hospitality to strangers because many have entertained angels unaware that homeless bum who is asking for a handout at your backdoor that might be an angel Wow so even though you can't imagine them in their own being as your spirits they usually come down to our level and assume bodies and there they're better at disguises than we are I mean our kids sometimes disguise themselves as angels or demons on Halloween nobody is fooled by that but we are fooled by angels angels are like animals different than us because they're only one thing angels are mere spirits they don't have bodies at all by nature and animals do not have immortal souls they have animal life and animal intelligence but it's not spiritual so we human race are the only thing on reality that is both spiritual and physical so we're the smartest animal and the stupidest angel we're weird uh Pascal that great early modern Christian apologist says that we are like blades of grass that can think we're we grow up in the morning and then we die in the evening and we're no more than a little blade of grass but we should think amazing and we're so weak and so tiny physically that it takes only a little germ to kill us but when the universe kills us as it always does we can still think and we're nobler than our Slayer which is ultimately the whole universe so when you're killed by the universe you can still smile as a I'm superior to you because I can think about you and you can't think about me that reminds me of one of the things CS Lewis said in 1941 after he had published the Screwtape Letters and became famous Time magazine ran an article on him and he was on the front page and one of the questions the interviewer asked was you're a Christian and you believe in God and heaven and the immortal soul well you're engaged in a great war right now with Nazi Germany and Germany seems to be winning and there is a rumor that has a new weapon he's working on this with his scientist it's called an atom bomb and if he gets that weapon one single atom bomb can destroy an entire civilization now what if that happens and what if you as an Englishman see that atom bomb falling from a German plane on London and you realize that millions of people will die and Germany will win the world and all your best friends will be die will be dead and you too will be dead in let's say five seconds you have five seconds just to think one single thought what would the last thought of your life be and Lewis said I look at that bomb I'd stick my tongue out at it and I would say who you're only a bomb I'm an immortal soul that's good he's right the skeptic will say wait a minute if there are souls are dependent on bodies when the body dies the soul dies too because look you can't sink without a brain so thinking is what the brain does and once the brain dies thinking ends that's it how can you believe in an immortal soul lot of materialists argued that way and we do know enough about brain chemistry to know how dependent our thinking is on the brain man just wrote that if I give you a blow to the head that alters your thinking or even stops it all together and it's even drove that I can electrically stimulate different parts of the brain and cause you to see things that aren't there that doesn't mean you can't think without a brain in fact you can and there's even scientific proof that you can millions of people have thought without a brain in out-of-body experiences or near-death experiences which are very common somewhere between 10 and 20 million Americans have had experiences of thinking without a brain while their brains were in brain death and they came back and when they came back they related things they were out of their bodies and they saw things happening and sometimes those things can be empirically verified there is in fact a whole building in the university of connecticut in Storrs Connecticut devoted to a scientific study of out-of-body experiences now the brain is the usual instrument of thought but you can think with that one because once you die your brain is still there what's not working anymore why well the brain is like a computer and when the person at the computer dies the computer isn't do anything anymore and the person who is at the computer which is the brain and really the whole brain and body and nervous system when it's gone it's gone brains still there great users not we usually think of angels in our very inadequate way as something less than human because they don't have bodies and that's true they can't smell the wonderful smell of steak on the barbecue grill and they can't see unless they assume bodies with human eyes the beauty of colors that God has put into our world and it could be that the Fallen Angels were jealous or envious of us as having bodies that might have been part of their temptation who knows but we usually think of angels as less than us we usually think of angels as human minds without human bodies now when you die and you lose your body that's a genuine loss the soul is still there but the soul doesn't have a body anymore therefore it can't have any more sense experiences you can't smell steak on the barbie after you die until you get a resurrection body so that's a loss and that loss of the whole physical dimension is a terrible loss that's why death is a tragedy and you're not completely human until you get your resurrection body your new body we're destined for bodies so we think that angels are like human souls without human bodies wrong because you lose something of your unique personality when you lose your body but angels already have unique personalities in fact angels have more distinctive and more individual and more unique personalities than we have so much so that now here's a very difficult idea but it comes from st. Thomas Aquinas so much so that angel each individual angel is a separate species in other words st. Michael the Archangel and Saint Gabriel the Archangel are not different like laddie and lassie they're different like dog and cat because the more spiritual you are the more of a personality you have dogs are more like us than worms and therefore they have more distinctive personality and we're more like angels and dogs are that's why we have distinctive personalities because there's far more possibilities for spiritual differences in personalities than for material differences think of all the ways that your body can suffer pain or experience pleasure not too many now think of all the ways in which your spirit can feel physical spiritual pain or spiritual pleasure far greater even more intense because if you're in great spiritual pain and despair to the things you very often spontaneously do are banging your head against the wall and pull your hair out those are two very painful experiences why are you giving yourself more pain when you're in that extreme spiritual pain of despair because the physical pain distracts you from the far worse spiritual pain which is why some of the Saints and mystics say that they don't believe that this material fire in hell because that wouldn't make it so bad it would distract you from the spiritual agony that's far greater so angels have real personalities that's why they're good guardians for us if they were all the same they couldn't deal with the difference between Peter and James and John but they can they understand those differences okay so each of us has an angel jesus essa' were assigned guardian angels every every child says Jesus when they asked the when the disciple site don't bother Jesus with children and Jews and Jesus but the children come unto me because they're angels even now are contemplating the face of the Father in heaven so each of them has a guardian angel who is in heaven on earth in the same nine Angels combine locate like padre pio so each of us has one and they're unique and each one is assigned to you at conception and he never leaves you never sleeps guard you guide you helps you fight spiritual warfare with you invisibly because demons are also invisible and although this is not defined dogma it's very reasonable it is defined dogma they chose has their own individual guardian angel it's not defined dogma but a common opinion that each of us also has assigned by Satan a tempting demon and that angel and that demon are fighting at every moment of your life so the picture of an angel whispering in one ear and a demon whispering in the other air is pretty accurate fortunately the third person involved there the angel votes for you and the demon votes against you a new cast the deciding vote because you decide who to listen to the the beginning of holiness the beginning of the life of being a saint starts with the mind who do you listen to here in two weeks April 15 you're going to fill out your tax form and almost anybody with any mind at all can figure out ways to lie and cheat on the tax form and rub the government of some of their taxes and that's what one of the demons wants to do and the angel says you know thou shalt not steal and what do you do well maybe you succumb and maybe you don't what decides whether you're going to sin or not your mind who do you listen to if you listen to that angel you'll gradually see the beauty of holiness and if you listen instead to the demon and say shut up to the angel you'll be influenced by all the stuff you can buy and all the temporary pleasures you can get out of Saint Paul says in one of those evils be sure to bring every thought into captivity to Christ it starts with thought that's why st. Benedict commenting on Psalm 137 that beautiful Psalm that that tender Psalm which begins with by the waters of Babylon there we sat down and wept when we remembered Zion it's about the Jewish exiles in Babylon and it ends with these terrifying words o Babylon destroyer blessed be he who seizes your little infants and dashes their brains out against the curbstone what how can you pray that open Turk says that's easy it's symbolic Babylon symbolizes hell the devil's kingdom and these little Babylonian babies symbolize evil thoughts and that's where all evil begins so have no mercy on those little bastards kill them write our warfare the Bible tells us is not against flesh and blood our enemies we have enemies the word enemies is used thousands of times in the Bible but our enemies are not human beings our enemies are not the ACLU or Planned Parenthood or atheists or Muslim terrorists our enemies or demons principalities and powers now we have individual enemies each of us but we also have collective enemies so angels must be somehow involved in social issues and political issues as well as individual issues are angels involved in politics yes according to the Bible huh each nation has an angel Saint Michael is the angel for Israel that's in Isaiah I don't think political parties have angels if so they're doing a pretty lousy job but yes just as morality is both individual and social it's a seamless web so the spiritual warfare between angels and demons is social and political as well as individual you can't omit either one another question I'm just jumping from one to another what's the length of angels what do angels do well they think but they don't think like we do we think step by step we solve problems by saying ok that's the problem and now what's the way to the solution this is the way all right let me walk that way let me gather the data and perform experiments and whatnot and now finally I got the solution all right now let's go to the next problem they don't do it that way they just have insights they read the mind of God they have limited but real mental telepathy with God and they see the truth as a kind of a reflection from God's mind something like that happens in our experience sometimes an insight just pops into your mind you have no idea where it comes from and that's not I think a supernatural miracle that's natural every human mind has that ability to simply oh yes ah ha d ah ha experience everybody who has done any kind of artistic or scientific or or theological work or writing knows that oh yeah they're dizzy where does that come from I think it came from angels so when we speak of inspiration we're talking reality but God is the source not only of all matter by banging out the Big Bang 13.7 billion years ago he's also the source of all truth all light Agustin calls a divine illumination our minds are just as dependent on God as our bodies are and even our painful human process of gradually moving from a premise to a conclusion or from a problem to a solution although that depends on our will and our courage and our intelligence still the power to do it the light that God gives to our mind that comes from God so we should thank him for those mental powers and the insights that sometimes come probably from angels just as well as we thank him for our food now I'm glad this is a men's conference because I think I'm not going to get in trouble by what I say next but I would if there were mixed company I think women are a lot better at this than men constantly my wife and I realized that were Mars and Venus we have do two very different communication systems and it's very hard to to shift gears because constantly I will I will say something and I was going to say a second thing and then a third thing and that was going to prove the third thing and my wife will skip the second step altogether and go right to the third thing I'm like an ant crawling along the ground and she's like an eagle jumping through the air I think that's standard that's normal that's probably why women see angels more often than men then report them more often and then write about them more often because there are more reporters and writers who are men than women but I don't have scientific proof of this but from my at least amateur gathering of angel stories it seems that women are more prone to see angels than men and I suspect that women also tend to have more mystical experiences than men why because their minds are more contemplative and open hours are more active and rational in fact there was a faculty meeting at Harvard University about 20 years ago where the president Larry Summers who was a very intelligent man and well-liked at Harvard and a certified liberal raised the question that got him fired he said we are attracting too few women into the hard sciences women at Harvard tend to go into the humanities more than the sciences and within the sciences they tend to go into psychology or sociology much more than physics or math now we need to solve that problem we need to create equality liberals are very big on equality equality is more important than quality so in order to find out what's the source of the problem why we're not attracting enough women into the hard sciences we need to look at the problem first what's the cause why aren't we attracting women to hard sciences well there are many possible theories he said as a scientist myself I think we should go through them one by one and talk about all of them and we should take them in a chronological order so we should start with the the traditionalist view which I myself don't believe he said and probably nobody in this audience does either but at least we should think about it namely that there is some sort of any difference between the masculine mind and the feminine mind that the fact that throughout history women tend to be better at one thing and then at another thing is due to human nature rather than just what you teach at Harvard or your environment and he said I don't believe that myself but the majority of people in the past did so let's let's look at that and try to refute that theory first before we go on to more modern theories that's only said half the audience left the radical feminists who dominated Harvard and they went into the Board of Trustees and they demanded Larry Summers resignation and he got fired it was the only president in the history of art who ever got fired and his sin was suggesting that we even think about this traditional idea that says that innate difference between men and women so we went to Washington any work for Obama and he was well-liked there now you're not allowed to think that but obviously this is every three men and women God says so that's why he made us different our bodies are certainly different or our minds totally divorced from our bodies are we ghosts haunting houses the only difference between us is the houses not the ghosts that's ridiculous of course there's a feminine mind and of course women do some things better than we are and of course we do some things better than they are and of course men are superior to women vastly superior to women at being men and equally they're vastly superior to us at being women and that makes life interesting and confusing and politically incorrect but it's God's idea thank you God that weren't you when you were your best ideas you know the real story of how God invented men and women the book of Genesis isn't false but it's got a sort of backward because he created Eve first and he said to Eve you lonely she said yep and God said well I got a solution for you it's called a man what's a man city of all you'll love him he's a knight in shining armor and he's told argh and handsome and he'll be great in bed and opens junk stunk stuck a jar lids for you and you'll fall in love with him that sounds too good to be true said he is there a catch oh yeah there's always a catch said God what's the catch that Eve well because thank God the catch is he's going to have a really big ego so we're all going to have to pretend that I created him first the other half of that bad joke is God created Adam first and said are your lonely and Adam said yes and God said I got a surprise for you and Adam said what is it God said it's a woman and said what's a woman got that a woman is my masterpiece most beautiful thing in the universe you'll fall madly in love with her and she'll be great in bed and she'll fall in love with you and she'll adore you and she'll she'll follow you and she'll help you and she'll never criticize you engine liveries in at you and Adam said that sounds too good to be true is there a catch God saw you as a catch there's a price to pay right oh yeah as a price how much of a price that Adam oh that's going to cost you an arm and a leg and said what can I get for a rib surprisingly men laugh at one half of that joke more than women do God's got a sense of humor how could he not if I were the president of a seminary I wouldn't allow anybody to be a priest until they had gone to the zoo stared at the face of an ostrich and written an essay and God sent to humor I think angels have a sense of humor too they have to because God does well that raises the interesting theological question are there female angels well if female means biologically female of course not there are no male angels either but wait a minute is there masculinity and femininity in angels well I think so I'm not sure are there then angels that are more feminine than masculine I think so but I'm not sure well wait a minute does that go all the way up into God well look God is the inventor of not just human biological bodies which are either male or female but also human spiritual Souls which are masculine or feminine there is such a thing as the masculine mind of the feminine mind and the inventor of something has to possess and fully know that something before he invents it so I think that all the unique qualities of femininity as well as masculinity are present in God because the image of God according to the Bible is not just men but men and woman male and female is the image of God why then in the scriptures is God always he and not she and the answer to that question is very clear from the Saints and mystics because God impregnates us we don't impregnate him he comes into us and gives us new life as a man does to a woman so that's a privileged image but that doesn't mean that God who invented women as well as men doesn't have all the unique qualities of the feminine spirit as well as the masculine spirit so I think that's true of angels too but I'm not sure the church has never defined that oh dear I've taken 15 minutes already and there's very little time for Q&A well let me just add one thing that's very practical since some of the angels are evil and fallen and demons and since they tempt you they can't by the way force you they can tempt you but even angels can't force you your will is free nobody in the history of the world has ever been possessed by a demon without their will without doing something foolish like playing with a Ouija board but they can oppress you they can harm you they can get at your imagination although they can't get to your free will or your mind and the same with angels you can reveal your mind to an angel you can pray to your guardian angel and they're not deaf but they can't force you against your will if you want to hide secrets from an angel you can do that you can't do it from God but you can hide secrets from an angel and demons cannot read your mind or influence your will all they can do is temperature imagination what can you do to help fight this spiritual war because life is war well one of the things you can do with regard to angels is to pray every day to your guardian angel I hope you still do this most of us did it as children angel prayer angel of God my guardian dear to whom God's love commits me here ever this day be at my side to light and rule to guard and guide very simple prayer takes 10 seconds angels take you very seriously as God does much more seriously than you take yourself a whole increased once was talking about prayer I'll never forget what he said he said everything's in the Lord's Prayer but when you when you pray the Lord's Prayer be sure that you put a duck in to it he said after you say I will be done if you really mean it you'll duck cuddles I consider it is like holy med and then there's also the Saint Michael the Archangel prayer which is the prayer that pope leo xiii was given when near the end of the 19th century he had a prophetic vision of the coming century of war and sorrow and martyrdom and in this vision God gave the devil the choice of one century in which to do his worst work and the devil chose the 20th and the Pope saw that horror and way into a swoon they thought he was dead and he woke and said well this is the prayer that God has given me to get us through that century and you know the prayer Saint Michael Archangel defend us in battle be our protection against the wickedness and snares of the devil may God rebuke him we humbly pray and do thou Prince of the heavenly hosts by the power of God thrust into hell Satan and all the evil spirits who roam through the world seeking the ruin of souls that prayer was prayed at the end of every low mass throughout the Catholic world until the media hijacked Vatican 2 and that was stopped in the 60s and you know what happened to the sixties so I think it would be helpful to go back to that prayer finally pray to Mary the devil fears her more than any other creature even more than any other angel because she's the queen of angels and she's the one who who conquered the serpent who seduced the first Eve she's the second Eve and she even conquered the horrors of the modern world in in Mexico where one-third of all the children were sacrificed to demons Our Lady of Guadalupe a miracle 5 million conversions in America 1/3 of our conceived children are sacrificed I suspect to the same demon and the church has given us Mary as as the patroness of the Americas she's gonna win this war she's not afraid of the devil he's afraid of her I've left only a few minutes for questions I'm sorry but let's take some questions now yeah oh that's not true at all I think most ghost stories are silly but as a Christian I think you should believe in the very strong probability of ghosts because ghosts are simply human souls without human bodies souls whose bodies have died now if you're still so attached to this world and so confused that you think you belong still in this world I think it's quite possible that your spirit still associates with let's say the house you lived in because the haunted house I think most ghosts come from purgatory because most ghosts are sort of sad and they're working out some sort of purgatorial problem maybe some ghosts come from Hell and try to deceive you so I think we should be very wary and some ghosts come from heaven some of them are bright spirits that give messages from God now there's a lot of fake ghost stories in all three levels so you got to discern but I think we should keep our mind open to the possibility this there's so many apparently authentic stories about ghosts or spirits from apparently trustable people I think it's very foolish to close our mind to the possibility but frankly nobody knows for sure dr. Craig you mentioned that Thomas Aquinas is an expert on angels and then you also mentioned earlier that there really are no experts on angels I'm assuming you mean like alive today or maybe Thomas Aquinas is the only one he's the closest how did he become an expert on angels God gives you a special grace and all you do is you open yourself to it and you don't tell god what grace to give or what specialty to have you just are open to it and God just prepared him as a chosen vessel ya know they make one choice at the moment of their creation in complete knowledge so they're totally responsible for it and they're not tempted and they're not led by anything else so there's no excuses so with the whole of their being they make a choice that determines their eternal destiny so no angel will ever fall and no demon will ever repent Yes Doctor the the Bible seems to describe a different kind of angel in the ones you're talking about I recall in the book of Genesis there was angels the word felt had lust for the people women on on earth and created a race of giants sort of in the early Genesis chapters is yet something that was just kind of incidental or there's something else going on well if if the first thing you said is true namely the Bible speaks differently about angels than I do then I'm wrong the Bible is right but I don't think there's a contradiction there because in Genesis 6 it says some of the sons of God which probably means angels by the way the term son of God in the singular is reserved for Christ alone but the term sons of God usually means angels in the Old Testament mated with the daughters of men seduced women can angels do that well if they can assume bodies they can does God allow demons to assume body possibly now the church has never definitively pronounced on that our different interpretations of that maybe in this case sons of God means good people humans not angels maybe it's not a bodily impregnation and maybe these giants on the earth were not beings that came from this unnatural union between fallen angels and earthly women and certainly that doesn't happen anymore this was before the flood so I just don't know doctors are very mysterious passage not gonna have a question for you as people are continuing to be born or their angels still being created today no angels are not still being created today but there's plenty of angels to go around because the guardian angels are the lowest of the the choirs of angels and there's one guardian angel for everybody and that's billions and the plenty of others I don't think angels are recirculated I don't think your guardian angel was once somebody else's but I'm not sure of that either but God takes care of the math that's beyond my paygrade hi dr. Quinlan I have a philosophical question for you is there any reason to believe that Socrates and Plato were intuitive when they spoke of the diamond that influenced Socrates has thought and how they were describing various painted spirits like arrows and so forth well Socrates speaking of his diamond or spirit gives him credit for leading him out of error and even leading him to martyrdom and I take Socrates very seriously and I think Plato Socrates is the real Socrates because he circulated those writings during the lifetime of those who knew Socrates or he couldn't get away with big lies so I think very likely that was all experienced I don't think it was an angel because it didn't it didn't come with any messages from God it wasn't a prophet and it didn't take a human appearance or any other appearance but it was definitely a source of divine inspiration and it's its result was great good Socrates as a martyr to the truth so I think that was the Holy Spirit in the Bible the Spirit is described as working in very mysterious ways and and God through his spirit works on Minds the whole point of the Holy Spirit is is to get inside you so kind of a good haunting so good reading face I'm not sure but I think it's very likely I would be very very surprised not to see Socrates in heaven but who knows well thanks [Applause] you

Channel: hbgdiocese

Views: 51,515

Rating: 4.825726 out of 5

Keywords: Angels, Demons, Catholic, Faith, Diocese of Harrisburg, Men's Confernce, Dr Peter Kreeft

Id: bcqhwKQ0EFg

Length: 60min 38sec (3638 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 16 2017