Yes Padraig, I find this beautiful as well. I believe this is why SO MANY of the saints craved suffering, begged God for suffering. They knew anything they suffered came from God's Hands.
I would be afraid. My own prayer is to leave it all in Our Lady's hands. She knows how little I am and how frail.
Yes, but it's consequential, like with the gravity example I posted above. They happen by the will of God because the Universe was ordered by His will. That doesn't mean that God wanted to kill that man on that day but that he permitted it within the laws that He'd already established. Again, I'm not saying that He doesn't will poverty as something instructional, or even as a good in itself, but that God doesn't will moral evil. God transcends goodness, but moral evil is, by definition, willful withholding of that which is good for another (depending on their status). God always, always, always gives us everything we truly need, whether we realize it or not.
See what the Catechism says I am on cell phone and can’t link But it was God’s permissive will We have many doctors of the Church But one catechism God can allow things to happen
My brother, God has already fixed the year, the month, the day, the hour, and the moment when I and you are to leave this earth and go into eternity; but the time is unknown to us. - Preparation for Death - St. Alphonsus De Liguori 303 The witness of Scripture is unanimous that the solicitude of divine providence is concrete and immediate; God cares for all, from the least things to the great events of the world and its history. the sacred books powerfully affirm God's absolute sovereignty over the course of events: "Our God is in the heavens; he does whatever he pleases."162 and so it is with Christ, "who opens and no one shall shut, who shuts and no one opens".163 As the book of Proverbs states: "Many are the plans in the mind of a man, but it is the purpose of the LORD that will be established."164 304 And so we see the Holy Spirit, the principal author of Sacred Scripture, often attributing actions to God without mentioning any secondary causes. This is not a "primitive mode of speech", but a profound way of recalling God's primacy and absolute Lordship over history and the world,165 and so of educating his people to trust in him. the prayer of the Psalms is the great school of this trust.166 306 God is the sovereign master of his plan. But to carry it out he also makes use of his creatures' co-operation... For God grants his creatures not only their existence, but also the dignity of acting on their own, of being causes and principles for each other, and thus of co-operating in the accomplishment of his plan. 307 To human beings God even gives the power of freely sharing in his providence by entrusting them with the responsibility of "subduing" the earth and having dominion over it.168 God thus enables men to be intelligent and free causes in order to complete the work of creation, to perfect its harmony for their own good and that of their neighbours. Though often unconscious collaborators with God's will, they can also enter deliberately into the divine plan by their actions, their prayers and their sufferings.169 They then fully become "God's fellow workers" and co-workers for his kingdom.170 308 The truth that God is at work in all the actions of his creatures is inseparable from faith in God the Creator. God is the first cause who operates in and through secondary causes: "For God is at work in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure."171 Far from diminishing the creature's dignity, this truth enhances it. Drawn from nothingness by God's power, wisdom and goodness, it can do nothing if it is cut off from its origin, for "without a Creator the creature vanishes."172 Still less can a creature attain its ultimate end without the help of God's grace.173 309 If God the Father almighty, the Creator of the ordered and good world, cares for all his creatures, why does evil exist? To this question, as pressing as it is unavoidable and as painful as it is mysterious, no quick answer will suffice. Only Christian faith as a whole constitutes the answer to this question: the goodness of creation, the drama of sin and the patient love of God who comes to meet man by his covenants, the redemptive Incarnation of his Son, his gift of the Spirit, his gathering of the Church, the power of the sacraments and his call to a blessed life to which free creatures are invited to consent in advance, but from which, by a terrible mystery, they can also turn away in advance. There is not a single aspect of the Christian message that is not in part an answer to the question of evil. 310 But why did God not create a world so perfect that no evil could exist in it? With infinite power God could always create something better.174 But with infinite wisdom and goodness God freely willed to create a world "in a state of journeying" towards its ultimate perfection. In God's plan this process of becoming involves the appearance of certain beings and the disappearance of others, the existence of the more perfect alongside the less perfect, both constructive and destructive forces of nature. With physical good there exists also physical evil as long as creation has not reached perfection.175 311 Angels and men, as intelligent and free creatures, have to journey toward their ultimate destinies by their free choice and preferential love. They can therefore go astray. Indeed, they have sinned. Thus has moral evil, incommensurably more harmful than physical evil, entered the world. God is in no way, directly or indirectly, the cause of moral evil.176 He permits it, however, because he respects the freedom of his creatures and, mysteriously, knows how to derive good from it: (MY NOTE: SEE BELOW FOR EXPLANATION OF THIS SENTENCE) For almighty God. . ., because he is supremely good, would never allow any evil whatsoever to exist in his works if he were not so all-powerful and good as to cause good to emerge from evil itself.177 CONTINUED>>>
Continued... 312 In time we can discover that God in his almighty providence can bring a good from the consequences of an evil, even a moral evil, caused by his creatures: "It was not you", said Joseph to his brothers, "who sent me here, but God. . . You meant evil against me; but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive."178 From the greatest moral evil ever committed - the rejection and murder of God's only Son, caused by the sins of all men - God, by his grace that "abounded all the more",179 brought the greatest of goods: the glorification of Christ and our redemption. But for all that, evil never becomes a good. 313 "We know that in everything God works for good for those who love him."180 The constant witness of the saints confirms this truth: St. Catherine of Siena said to "those who are scandalized and rebel against what happens to them": "Everything comes from love, all is ordained for the salvation of man, God does nothing without this goal in mind."181 St. Thomas More, shortly before his martyrdom, consoled his daughter: "Nothing can come but that that God wills. and I make me very sure that whatsoever that be, seem it never so bad in sight, it shall indeed be the best."182 Dame Julian of Norwich: "Here I was taught by the grace of God that I should steadfastly keep me in the faith... and that at the same time I should take my stand on and earnestly believe in what our Lord shewed in this time - that 'all manner (of) thing shall be well.'"183 314 We firmly believe that God is master of the world and of its history. But the ways of his providence are often unknown to us. Only at the end, when our partial knowledge ceases, when we see God "face to face",184 will we fully know the ways by which - even through the dramas of evil and sin - God has guided his creation to that definitive sabbath rest185 for which he created heaven and earth. (I provide this excerpt below to help explain the difference between God's will in an action perceived evil, and the moral evil itself that the CCC refers to in 311) "However, you will perhaps now say, there is sinfulness in all these actions. How then can God will them and take part in them if He is all-holy and can have nothing in common with sin? God indeed is not and cannot be the author of sin. But it must be remembered that in every sin there are two parts to be distinguished, one natural and the other moral. Thus, in the action of the man you think you have a grievance against there is, for example, the movement of the arm that strikes you or the tongue that offends you, and the movement of the will that turns aside from right reason and the law of God. The physical action of the arm or the tongue, like all natural things, is quite good in itself and there is nothing to prevent its being produced with and by God's cooperation. What is evil, what God could not cooperate with, is the sinful intention which the will of man contributes to the act. When a man walks with a crippled leg the movement he makes comes both from the soul and the leg, but the defect which causes him to walk badly is only in the leg. In the same way all evil actions must be attributed to God and to man in so far as they are natural, physical acts, but they can be attributed only to the will of man in so far as they are sinful and blameworthy. If then someone strikes you or slanders you, as the movement of the arm or tongue is in no way a sin, God can very well be, and actually is, the author of it; for existence and movement in man not less than in any other creature proceed not from himself but from God, who acts in him and by him. For in Him says St. Paul, we live and move and have our being. As for the malice of the intention, it proceeds entirely from man and in it alone is the sinfulness in which God has no share but which He yet permits in order not to interfere with our freedom of will. Moreover, when God co-operates with the person who attacks or robs you, He doubtless intends to deprive you of health or goods because you are making a wrong use of them and they will be harmful to your soul. But He does not intend that the attacker or robber take them from you by a sin. That is the part of human malice, not God's design. An example may make the matter clearer. A criminal is condemned to death by fair trial. But the executioner happens to be a personal enemy of his, and instead of carrying out the judge's sentence as a duty, he does so in a spirit of hate and revenge. Obviously the judge has no share in the executioner's sin. The will and intention of the judge is not that this sin should be committed, but that justice should take its course and the criminal be punished. In the same way God has no share at all in the wickedness of the man who strikes or robs you. That is something particular to the man himself. God, as we have said, wishes to make you see your own faults, to humble you, deprive you of what you possess, in order to free you from vice and lead you to virtue, but this good and merciful design, which He could carry out in numerous other ways without sin being involved, has nothing in common with the sin of the man who acts as His instrument. CONTINUED
continued.. And in fact it is not this man's evil intention or sin that causes you to suffer, humiliates or impoverishes you, but the loss of your well being, your good name or your possessions. The sin harms only the person who is guilty of it. This is the way we ought to separate the good from the evil in events of this kind, and distinguish what God operates through men from what men add to the act by their own will." - Trustful Surrender to Divine Providence by Fr Jean Baptiste Saint-Jure (1588-1657) and Blessed Claude De La Columbiere (the confessor of St. Margaret Mary Alacoque,) ------ extract from The Knowledge and Love of Our Lord Jesus Christ (the constant companion during the life of St. John Vianney.) I hope this helps to explain things. Please read it slowly and carefully. I've only been responding because this is something I've experienced in my own life, and it has given me much peace. I have experienced humiliations, poverty, embarrassments, slander, ill-will, hatred from others, etc. My dad was just diagnosed with stage 4 cancer and himself believes that this was sent from God. My husband is on the verge of agnosticism and I very greatly fear for his salvation, and it is only because of my complete trust in Our Blessed Mother from the St. Louis de Montfort Consecration to Jesus through Mary that I cling to hope that she will save him at the end. I use to be a very controlling, proud person, and God used others to strike me down and completely and publicly humiliate me in a manner which changed my life forever. I can see God's hand in this in retrospect, certainly not at the time. I have been able to forgive a particular person who publicly slandered me (on several occasions) because I came to the realization that God was using her as an instrument of humiliating me to curb my pride and that she was really not to blame. It is not my business to judge her evil intention in the matter, which helped me understand the judge not commandment of Christ - something I've always struggled with because, of course, we should judge the sin but not the sinner. I'm sorry to everyone for this long sidebar on Divine Providence that does not belong to this thread. I apologize for prolonging it, and submit to someone else having the last word, as this is really all I can say on the matter. Peace
All I'm trying to say is what St. Thomas Aquinas wrote here : “God is not the author of evil, because He is not the cause of tending to non-being.” (S.T., Ia, 49, 2.) I agree with most of what you're posting, but this is nonsense : "Moreover, when God co-operates with the person who attacks or robs you, He doubtless intends to deprive you of health or goods because you are making a wrong use of them and they will be harmful to your soul." Was Christ making wrong use of his robe as He was stripped of it? I think we're slightly at cross purposes with what our understanding of evil is, but, regardless, thank you for this talk, it's been edifying.
Thank you DivineMercy for the above reflections of the saints! I think it highlights the importance of the cross! I have a taped presentation of Joey Lomingino and his wife Marilynn when they were here in Australia [probably over 30 years ago] and Marilynn says in her beautiful presentation..... "A cross is a cross, and that means that it hurts! otherwise it wouldn't be a cross!" And I think this prayer sums it up.... Eternal Father, in whom mercy is endless and the treasury of compassion inexhaustible! Look kindly upon us and increase Your mercy in us, So that in difficult moments we may not despair nor become despondent, But with great confidence submit ourselves to Your holy will, Which is Love and Mercy itself. Amen
St Alphonsus is so holy and so wise and so well worth reading. In the case of the saints we see very often that they do have knowledge of their coming deaths, to the exact hour and minute and make preparations accordingly. Even sometimes animals such as dogs appear to have knowledge that they are about to die. I have my own theory that we all in our deepest self have a deep inner knowledge of the time and hour and manner of our own departing. We also have a deep inner knowledge of how close or far away from God we will are and our own Eternal destination. In addition to thsi if you look at people around you it is possible to see that each soul burns with its own light. By that I mean each soul has an energy or fire or life within them to a greater or lesser degree. Some people grab life with both hands and roar, so to speak some just take tiny nibbles.For instance a soul that has only little energy will conform to anything and anyone, but souls with great energy tend to be rebels. Donald Trump is a good case in point he burns with a huge fire, like him or loath him. Another soul who burnt was Pope John Paul of Jon F Kennedy. I do not mean holiness, I mean the fire of life itself. I remember the head master in school a wise De La Salle brother told me that it was only ever the pupils who caused him trouble that ever amounted to anything. I think there is a lot of truth to this. St Al mentions evil and its mystery. I happened to glance at the family bible today and it was turned to the Book of Proverbs and the reading said much about organised groups of evil people like, say the Mafia , or Mexican Cartels or the Islamist devils. Shun Evil Counsel 8 My son, hear the instruction of your father, And do not forsake the law of your mother; 9 For they will be a graceful ornament on your head, And chains about your neck. 10 My son, if sinners entice you, Do not consent. 11 If they say, “Come with us, Let us lie in wait to shed blood; Let us lurk secretly for the innocent without cause; 12 Let us swallow them alive like c]">[c]Sheol, And whole, like those who go down to the Pit; 13 We shall find all kinds of precious d]">[d]possessions, We shall fill our houses with e]">[e]spoil; 14 Cast in your lot among us, Let us all have one purse”— 15 My son, do not walk in the way with them, Keep your foot from their path; 16 For their feet run to evil, And they make haste to shed blood. 17 Surely, in f]">[f]vain the net is spread In the sight of any g]">[g]bird; 18 But they lie in wait for their own blood, They lurk secretly for their own lives. 19 So are the ways of everyone who is greedy for gain; It takes away the life of its owners. Don Corleone in the , 'God Father' ,was such a good example of this. He has brim full of life force and roared like a lion through life. A Great Leader. But he was snared in his own wickedness. As Jesus said , 'he who lives by the sword dies like the sword'.
Not too sure just where to put this but the topic has been discussed here as well as in other threads on the forum. This is a very interesting and informative and rational interview with a psychiatrist who believes in demons/possession, etc. Towards the end of the article there are hints of just how active the demons are today when you read such recent news about what is being spewed forth out of the likes of Tom Arnold or Peter Fonda....both the perverted type filth and the direction towards those either dear to the President who is attempting to turn this country back to God and to his foundational goals or towards those who support him. In general though the kinds of "language" spewing forth from those truly possessed isn't that different from those in the media now who seem to have sold their souls in order to support evil persons in authority or evil systems that have finally been exposed. This article was linked to today at Spirit Daily: Psychiatrist believes demonic possession and exorcism is real Dr Richard Gallagher, a New York psychiatrist and professor and devout Catholic, first consulted on a demonic case when he was approached by a priest 25 years ago. Daily Mail By: Sheila Flynn He's heard the voices speak in ancient Greek. He's heard them speak in Latin. Dr Richard Gallagher says they converse in Chinese, Spanish, French; that they're wildly smart and manipulative. The voices and the languages come out of people, he says, but they're not actually human. They're demons. They're real, and so is evil, he says. Demonic possession exists, and he has seen it firsthand. "They're fallen angels," Dr Gallagher tells DailyMail.com. "This is what I literally believe. They're extremely bright; they're much brighter than humans. They've been around for millennia – so they speak all languages. "I've heard them speak Chinese; I've heard them speak ancient Greek, which I studied," says the former Princeton Classics major. "I've certainly heard them speak and understand Latin." The spirits do it, the psychiatrist says, "probably to freak you out or to show off – to boast." The most striking thing about Dr Gallagher, before he starts to describe demons, is his imposing 6'5 frame as the psychiatry professor stands in the doorway of his office in suburban New York. He is reservedly polite in the small space, where greeting cards sit on a table and family photos adorn a window ledge, and he beckons to a low couch adjacent to a desk laden with files and papers. The window is bookended by shelves of psychiatry and medical journals and books. In his 60s, Dr Gallagher's long limbs are clad in a blue blazer and khakis. He is extremely guarded about his own details, saying only that he has "a family" and siblings – he estimates he's treated 25,000 patients over the years. Not one who walked through his door was actually possessed. Instead, the cases he's seen of possession and "oppression" – which is different and involves demons harassing an individual rather than taking control of them, he says – have all been referred to him, usually by exorcists. He's not even sure how it started a quarter century ago. "I didn't volunteer, particularly, to get involved in this stuff, evaluating people for possession, demonic attacks," says the New York native, who has written a forthcoming book about the subject and his experiences called Demonic Foes: Experiences of a Psychiatrist in the World of Exorcism. "I was just asked to do it, and maybe people thought I was open-minded or whatever. Probably people knew that I was a practicing Catholic, but I never volunteered for it – and, you know, slowly, I just began [to be thought of as] sort of an expert." The first case he saw involved a victim of "oppression," a Hispanic housewife and mother from the American West who was being assailed by demons. She was an incredibly devout and charitable Catholic, Dr Gallagher tells DailyMail.com, but that exact holiness can sometimes open the door for an attack by evil. "She and her husband both swore that she would be lying in bed, and all of a sudden, she would have the feeling of being assaulted by evil spirits, and bruises would appear on her body – so I needed to do a medical workup," Dr Gallagher says. "I needed to make sure she didn't have some clotting difficulty or something like that. I needed to asses her psychiatrically. "She appeared to a very wonderful, devout, charitable person," he says, calling this woman and her husband "salt of the earth people." "I just came to believe their story, and I can't say I knew a lot at the time about cases which a lot of people, including myself, tend to call a case of 'oppression.'" He explains: "In possession, an evil spirit controls that person, takes them over – whereas with oppression (people use different terms for it, some people use the term "vexation") … that indicates an attack by an evil spirit on an individual, but the evil spirit can't or doesn't take over their personality. "It's not random at all; there's almost always a discernible cause. The most common cause … is someone has turned to evil or the occult. And paradoxically, it's often when they try to get away from that the demonic world feels they have a hold on that person. That person may have actually even promised themselves to Satan or some kind of evil, and then they, in a sense, they're getting punished for trying to move out of that. That's the most common reason people get attacked." He adds: "A lot of it depends on their internal intention. Are they kind of really, really committed to the occult, as opposed to just kind of playing around with a Ouija board? "There are a couple of other categories of people who can get attacked – very holy people. And there are many stories of saintly people throughout history that had demonic' problems," he says. When it came to the middle-aged housewife from the West, he says he believes she was oppressed by evil 'precisely because she was so holy and was doing incredibly charitable work with people. "I think she was attacked because the demon didn't like her level of sanctity." He says: "All her medical tests were negative; her bloodwork was all normal. She didn't appear to have any other medical or psychiatric illness … She just did not appear to be a psychiatrically troubled person at all. "She had children, she had a normal family – and so I remember, when the priest said to me: 'Dr Gallagher, that's what I thought, but we wanted to make sure that we checked her out medically,' I said, 'Well, Father, you know I'm pretty sceptical.' And he said, 'That's the type of person we wanted.' "So then he continued to send me things; he and his colleague, who was an ex-Marine, who had also become a prominent exorcist … I actually became very good friends with them. They're both deceased now, but I miss them terribly." Before that first case – and his relationship with exorcists and the demonic world – he says he was unaware of the intricacies of possession and oppression. He grew up a devout Catholic, one of five children born to an Irish-American lawyer and his homemaker wife. Dr Gallagher attended weekly Mass with his family and studied at renowned Catholic high school Regis in New York City before being accepted to Princeton. "I didn't know what I wanted to be,v he says. "I probably wanted to become a lawyer, a professor or something. I did like helping people, you know – so when I was at Princeton I had a number of roommates who were pre-med, and I just got interested, intrigued by the idea of becoming a doctor. And I've also read a lot in my life, so I got interested in psychoanalytic ideas, and it just kind of dawned on me that helping people, as well as becoming a professor, would be interesting if I did it as a professor of psychiatry. So that's what I decided to do." He laughs: "I'm the black sheep who became a psychiatrist in an Irish Catholic family." Following Princeton, he played semi-professional basketball in France and taught English at a French high school. Then he trained as a resident in psychiatry at the Yale University School of Medicine, and he is currently on the faculty at New York Medical College and Columbia University Psychoanalytic Institute for Training and Research. It was as his career progressed, however, that his acquaintance with the world of evil spirits intensified. He says he's seen about four cases a year, though he's heard of hundreds more, especially at meetings of the Europe-based International Association of Exorcists. (cont'd below)
(Cont'd from above): He mentions the case of another US housewife, though he does not specify her location. This woman – he gives her the pseudonym of Catherine - "as a teenager had dabbled in satanic rituals, and she had kind of promised herself, in some fairly foolish way, to evil spirits," he says. "She did a few grisly things, which I'm not going to go into, but she also, with a couple of friends, they did minor satanic rituals and she became possessed. "She was certainly violent when the evil spirit took over, and she had a variety of signs of possession. It took multiple, multiple people to hold her down during exorcism." He adds: "She had a very odd symptom, which is similar to a case in the gospels, where she selectively couldn't hear certain things … If you said to her: 'Catherine, did you go to the store today?' Shey'd say 'yes'. 'What'd you buy?' 'Meat and potatoes.' If you said, 'Catherine, did you go to church today?' She would say, '"What?' 'Catherine, did you go to church or did you pray today?' 'Did I what?' "Her sense of hearing was blocked. So we had the bright idea – I was with a fellow psychiatrist, we were assessing her – and we had the bright idea, why don't we write it on a piece of paper? "So we wrote it on a piece of paper: What did you do this morning? And she said, 'Well, I drove the car to the gas station, I had to fill up the gas tank.' 'Catherine, did you pray today? Did you go to church?' and hold it up on a piece of paper. "Do you know what she said to me? She said, 'Dr Gallagher, why are you doing this?' I said, 'What do you mean?' 'Why are you showing me a blank piece of paper?' "Now the obvious motive there was to prevent her from being able to talk about anything spiritual, get the help that she needed, get the solace and spiritual support she needed." The evil spirits take hold of people, he says, because they truly hate God and humans. "We have the ability to love and turn to God; they don't. They made their choices, and they hate the image of God in human beings," he says. "They truly seem to hate human beings. I mean, not only do they want to destroy us spiritually, alienate us from God, but they seem to take almost a sadistic pleasure in destroying us as creatures who can still turn to God, to their enemy, creatures who can also still love, which they don't seem capable of anymore. They've rejected the whole idea of goodness and love in a kind of perverted way." He says the demons exhibit extraordinary powers such as personal knowledge and near clairvoyance. On one occasion, a demon told him how his mother had died – ovarian cancer. That evil spirit also knew "how 15 other people's parents died, too. It wasn't just me." On another occasion, a demon told him exactly what a priest was wearing though the clergyman was nowhere near Dr Gallagher and the possessed person speaking. In a different case, Gallagher was also personally addressed. "I had a demon say to me: 'How's that book going? It won't do any good' … that's when I was first thinking of writing a book. So I've had demons come and they've said they hate me, but again, I think they hate all Christians … they certainly put more of their energy in saying how they hate the exorcist. That's their real target, not me." He tells another story of a woman in her 30s, a member of a Satanist cult who was thinking about leaving – which is when the evil spirits took over her body. This woman "was in the back of a car once, and I was with the exorcist, and she went into a trance," he says. 'She was unequivocally possessed … and I heard her in the back seat of the car. "She came out with some vile stuff – 'Leave her alone you f*****g priest', that sort of thing, and this went on for about five minutes. Then she came out; she had no remembrance of it at all." He continues: "I never went to her exorcisms, because I was busy … but the priest would invite me to come to the exorcism. It wasn't around here. And I'm on the telephone line, this is a landline, with the priest at the time, and he says, "You know, Rich, can you make this exorcism session?" And then, during that phone conversation – and this woman was hundreds of miles away … that same voice came in on the phone and it said "Leave her alone, leave her alone, you f*****g priest. She's ours, she's not yours." And I did hear that. That was creepy." He says that, despite his work and beliefs regarding demons and possession, he has 'never felt particularly harassed or discriminated against, because Americans tend to be kind of a tolerant, pluralistic people. "In the larger society, it's not a fringe belief," he says. "This is actually a mainstream belief. Opinion polls show that probably about 60 percent and upwards – probably about 70 percent of America – believe in the devil, and the majority of Americans … believe in evil spirits and demons have some ability to directly attack human beings. "People will sometimes say to me, 'How do you feel about talking about a fringe belief?' I say, 'It's not a fringe belief.' I'm more mainstream than skeptics. The other thing about skeptics is, the extreme skeptics, they've never seen a case. "They come up with all kinds of cockamamie theories … they say, 'Well, you know, this person heard Latin babbled as a kid.' But it's kind of absurd. The demon is speaking fluent Latin and is understanding fluent Latin, and many of these people are not even Catholic, didn't even go to church as a kid." He adds: "I understand believing in evil spirits is not a very comforting belief, and it has implications that, you know, we don't want to accept. Having said that – and there's plenty of alternate theories; I don't think that those theories usually hold water – and when you've seen some of these cases, you realize that this is clearly not something that could be explained by psychopathology or trickery or anything like that." And, despite having witnessed evil and his interactions with demons, he says he's not particularly worried that they'll come after the psychiatrist himself; he's bolstered by his faith and the faith of others. "I have a lot of people praying for me," he says. "I'm not seeing the devil everywhere," he explains, adding: "I always tell people it's an equal mistake to see the devil everywhere as to deny the devil exists." https://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=12074449
http://valentina-sydneyseer.com.au/2018/06/ Valentina Papagna migrated to Sydney, Australia in 1955 from Slovenia after experiencing difficult times in her early years. In 1988 two years after the sudden death of her husband, Valentina began to receive visions and messages from our Lord Jesus and Mary our Blessed Mother. From this time on her life changed from being an average Catholic to one more devout. Month: June 2018 17/06/2018 Events that will soon happen in the World While I was praying my morning prayers, the angel appeared to me and greeted me by saying, “I am the Angel of the Lord. He sent me to reveal to you the events that will happen in the world very soon.” He continued, “I have to tell you there will be a very big earthquake. It will be the biggest ever earthquake and it will happen in China. This will happen very, very soon and from now on, until September this year there will be many calamities in the world.” “God is offended too much by humanity in the world. Pray, that God will be merciful to the many souls that will die in these calamities and disasters.” I said to the angel, “Oh the poor people. I feel so sorry for them.” The angel replied, “Do not lament for the people. Always say, ‘let God’s Will be done’. God is already offended too much. He has to wake up humanity.” Later that morning I attended Holy Mass at St Patrick’s Cathedral in Parramatta. After receiving Holy Communion I knelt down in my pew, when suddenly our Lord Jesus appeared and stood right in front of me. He said, “My child, be at peace. What you have heard from the angel this morning is bound to happen. Let nothing disturb you, no matter what happens. You are united to Me. That is the most important thing, that you are united to Me. Keep spreading My messages and be courageous.” This message is for all of us to read and not to have fear of any kind but to have faith in our Lord Jesus and to be united to Him. He will take care of all of us. We love You and we thank You Lord Jesus, please protect Your people. Revelation 11:13 The Witnesses Killed and Raised …12And the witnesses heard a loud voice from heaven saying, “Come up here.” And they went up to heaven in a cloud as their enemies watched them. 13And in that hour there was a great earthquake, and a tenth of the city collapsed. Seven thousand were killed in the quake, and the rest were terrified and gave glory to the God of heaven. 14The second woe has passed. Behold, the third woe is coming quickly.…
An angry and erratic Erdogan is on the cusp of becoming more powerful than ever ....... Fifteen years after Mr Erdogan first took over as prime minister of Turkey, he appears on the cusp of an election victory under a new constitutional framework that would make him powerful than ever. To critics at home and abroad, Mr Erdogan’s power is growing at a time when he is angrier and more erratic than ever: refusing to accept even mild criticism of his rule, cut off from Turkey’s economic reality, and blaming unseen enemies for his country’s problems. “Erodgan lives in an echo chamber that he has created,” said Soner Cagaptay, author of The New Sultan, a biography of Mr Erdogan. “And he’s in there with the 40 million Turks who support him and all of his political advisers.” The new presidential system will mean Mr Erdogan’s own temperament is more central than ever to Turkey’s governance, as neither ministers nor parliament will have much standing to constrain him. His unpredictable anger has been most sharply on display in his recent struggle against rising inflation and the falling value of the Turkish lira, which has lost around 20 per cent of its value against the dollar in the last six months. Mr Erdogan has lashed out against a shadowy international “interest rate lobby”, which he says is determined to strangle Turkey’s economic growth by hiking interest rates. He has hinted he might seize control of the country’s central bank after the election in response. The comments have alarmed foreign investors, many of whom see Mr Erdogan’s instinct to grab power as a destabilising trend in Turkey. “Turkey is not like Russia or Iran because we don’t have natural resources,” said Behlul Ozkan, associate professor at Marmara University. “This is Erdgoan’s dilemma: he can’t move to a fully authoritarian system without losing the Western investment that he needs.” MORE: https://www.yahoo.com/news/angry-erratic-erdogan-cusp-becoming-080000736.html
Valentina Papagna of Sydney, Australia (December 31, 2015), "This morning while I was praying and making my morning offerings, the angel of the Lord appeared to me and said, 'You pray for good intentions that God will bless the world in the coming year, and give peace and reconciliation to the world. See how the weather patterns have changed everywhere in the world. People notice it is unseasonable weather and they wonder why these disasters keep happening and keep coming, such as the cyclones, hurricanes, and even the floods in England. "People are still blind. God is trying to tell them something. There is one disaster that will have to come which will be the worst one. As in the time of Moses when he parted the sea and the people could walk through to the other side, two great walls of water were created to the left and to the right." In that instant I was given a vision of Moses parting the sea. "The angel continued, 'The wall of water that will come now won't be parted as in the time of Moses, but will be a massive wall of water, rising to huge heights. It will flood many inhabited areas, and will be worse than anything that has come before.' "The angel showed me a vision of the surging wall of seawater, as high as tall buildings, flooding and destroying densely inhabited areas somewhere in the world. In that moment I was so shocked and frightened at what I saw, that I didn't think to ask the angel in which part of the world this disaster would happen. "The angel said, 'Tell people to pray. Tell them this is very serious. Tell them to change their lives and to stop offending God. He is so offended by humanity."
