By Corazon Damo-Santiago – October 8, 2017 | Excerpted from the Business Mirror
This is a two part series, the second section can be read here
Demons or evils exist, not only in stories or movies. The exorcists of the Catholic Church will proclaim that they do. Scriptural imagery depicted them as black, grotesque figures with horns, tails, red, fiery eyes and with claws in black tights.
The scriptures simply describe them as “roaring lions seeking people to devour.”
But their existence is a defined dogma, from the Fourth Lateran Council as “by nature spirits created by God, so originally good, but fell into sin of their own free will and are eternally damned.” The Catechism of the Catholic Church repeated this description.
War in heaven
There was a war in heaven, “passionate, intense, terrifying war of wills, of minds,” said in Revelations 12:7-8.
Lucifer, the greatest of all angels, rebelled. One-third of the angels, according to an old tradition rebelled with Lucifer.
The war, in Christian version, as narrated by Peter Kreeft in Angels and Demons, started when God shared his plan to create man and incarnate himself as man—in Jesus.
Lucifer could not accept an “undignified plan to bow to a God of flesh and blood.”
“I will not serve.”
So he was banished from heaven. Saint Augustine said, “It is irrevocable choice and not God’s divine mercy that made the angels’ sin unforgivable.”
So Lucifer, the Light Bearer, became Satan, the accuser, and all his followers were thrown down to the Earth, according to Revelations 12:7-9.
An angel in disguise
That Lucifer is on Earth, 24/7, should be of utmost concern to anyone who values his spirituality. For, he is an adversary, like a roaring lion to lead one to sin (1 Peter 5:8), a tempter to induce those who preach about God (1 Thessalonians 3:5), a deceiver mouthing clever lies (2 Corinthians 11:3), a hinderer to prevent visits to those who share the faith (1 Thessalonians 2:18), keeps mind in the dark about God’s goodness (2 Corinthians 4:4) and a spiritual power who control people who follow the world’s evil ways (2 Ephesians 2:2).
God speaks in silence and in a world drowned by noise, warning men about the wiles of the Evil One. Jesus warning man whom to fear said: “Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot afterward do anything worse…. Fear God who has the authority into hell” (Luke 12:4-5).
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This is a two part series, the second section can be read here
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