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In my experience, it was the opposite of bullying. It was a chance for kids willing to put in the work to be recognized for it.
Obama took that away. He called it protection. It was the opposite.
https://x.com/johnkonrad/status/2052021183353168273
Joshua Charles @JoshuaTCharles - The Egyptian sorcerers who confronted Moses were able to transform a wooden staff into a serpent.
That was not by the power of God. And it certainly wasn’t by an ordinary human power.
It was an effect with a particular cause: namely, human and demonic will. Cooperating. Commingled.
Demons are “natural” creatures, meaning, they are part of nature. They are NOT supernatural. Only God is supernatural. But because of the power of their angelic intellects (which are far superior to ours), they possess a knowledge of nature no human being can ever hope to match.
This knowledge gives them great power over the forces of nature, IF God permits them to exercise it, since—particularly since the Incarnation, death, and Resurrection of Christ—their actions are strictly limited by God, who through the blood of His son purchased the full rights to man and his fallen nature, which He then brought back to spiritual life through grace.
We are assured by Scripture that Satan and his minions will be restrained by Christ’s redemptive work in the first century (Apoc. 20:1-3)—allowing the building up of the Church on earth and in heaven (Apoc. 20:4-6)—but they will no longer be restrained sometime near the end (Apoc. 20:7-10), followed by the Day of Judgment (Apoc. 20:11-15).
We are also assured in numerous places in Scripture—particularly by Christ in His teachings on the binding of the “strong man”—that when once a previously bound demonic force is unleashed, it comes back WORSE than before (apostasy is always far worse than simple unbelief).
Before Christ, the “strong man” transformed a wooden staff into a serpent. Then Christ bound him. The result was the transformation of Egypt itself into a fortress of the Catholic Faith. Magic and sorcery were severely weakened. The atmosphere was cleared of demonic entities (as St. Athanasius observed in “Incarnation of the Word”). The demonic oracles went silent. Pagan altars fell. Catholic altars rose. The sign of the cross, the Eucharist, the sacraments, sacramentals, relics of the saints, and the priesthood pushed back the forces of demonism and idolatry that had dominated the majority of the earth since ancient times. The result was the dramatic conversion of the chief of pagan empires, and the spread of the Catholic Faith to the most remote parts of the earth—even despite the sins, failures, and corruptions that from time to time infected the Church’s priests and laity.
But at some point, Christ will once more loose the “strong man” on earth, and we can be assured that what results next will be far worse than a staff being transformed into a serpent.
As in, “with all power and with pretended signs and wonders” (2 Thess. 2:9) worse.
That is not to make you afraid. It is to make you aware of what we know by the testimony of the Scriptures and our Fathers is both possible, and assured.
Even as this loosing takes place, the Church Triumphant is bigger and more populated than ever before. The moment it receives a new soul in a state of grace, it will NEVER get any smaller. The bounds of its empire never cease to expand. And as the fortunes of the Church Militant dip into catastrophe, the Church Triumphant will be at Her greatest and most resplendent, all the more ready to descend to inaugurate the New Heavens and the New Earth under the eternal reign of Christ the King—fully God, and fully man (to the great chagrin of the fallen “non-human intelligence”).
https://x.com/JoshuaTCharles/status/2051854098572759352
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