#324 Father Ripperger - The Signs of Diabolical Influence in America

27:09Head over to superpower.com and use code SRS for$20 off your$199 Superpower membership. And after you sign up, they'll ask you how you heard about Superpower. Tell them The Sean Ryan Show sent you to support the show. Why are we so important to God? I mean, everything he created is for us, to protect us. Right. Ultimately because... To live off of, I mean, everything. We, it seems that human beings, we're everything to him. Yeah. Why? Why us? Why are we so important? Why does He love us so much?

27:52Father Chad Ripperger:I think there's two reasons. One is because we're made in His image. And that image, the theological tradition is very clear, is because we have intelligence and free will. So He made us that way to be like Him in that regard. Because His choice to create us was purely free. He didn't have to, but He made it. So when he created us, in fact, St. Augustine makes the observation that one of the greatest signs of God's omnipotence is the ability to create something and sustain it in being, and even sustain its acts in being, that has the ability to choose between different goods. And this isn't determined to one thing.

28:31Father Chad Ripperger:That's a sign of omnipotence. And so in us is his image and the manifestation of his glory. So, if you read the theologians, especially like Thomas Aquinas, he makes the observation that because God is goodness itself, the proper object of God's love and will is Himself, because He's goodness itself. The difference is, is we aren't goodness itself, and so for us to make ourselves our own objects of our own love basically is disorder, because we're only good because we are somehow participate in His good. Okay. But when He creates us, it's called the principle of redundance. The good redounds to us.

29:13Father Chad Ripperger:And so we are good in many ways, by virtue of the fact that we manifest intelligence and will, we can make choices, we can become virtuous. And so as a result of that, He sees the good in us, and then that's why He loves us, because we're like Him. And so His love for us, and even when he shows his love for us, is directly proportionate to how much we're like him.

29:50What was before everything? What was before angels? What was before us? What was before? Was there always good and evil? Or was there just good?

30:06Father Chad Ripperger:There was just good. Because there was just God. The difficulty with saying what was before us is the fact that we're transposing time on God. So there's actually three states that beings exist in. There's what's called eternity, which has neither a beginning or an end. And there's no sequence of events. It's just the eternal now. That's what God is in. And so God actually sees what you're doing now, what you did in the past, what you're going to do in the future. He sees whether you make it to heaven. He sees all of that at the same instance, because there's no beginning or end with Him. And so in a certain sense, there's no before or after with God.

30:45Father Chad Ripperger:So God, who was in eternity, if we want to put it from our perspective, before He created us, even though even that's not entirely accurate, But God always existed. So in God, whose goodness itself, there was only good. Then he creates the angels into what's called the Avum, which has a beginning, but it has no end. And so the angels will always exist. When we die and go to heaven, we enter into the Avum, because it will never end. So we'll either be in heaven or we'll be in hell for all eternity. So there's that. In this life, when he created us, He created us in time, which is kind of a law or a structure which regulates the passage of matter through motion, is basically the way the philosophers talk about it.

31:33Father Chad Ripperger:But it has a beginning, and it will have an end at the final judgment. Okay. So before God created the angels and us, He always was. And so there was only good. When He created the angels, He created them in a state of innocence and a state of perfection, and also what's called the state of grace, that there was in their natures or substance, a qualitative reflection of him, a participation in his divine nature is how St. Paul describes it. But he created them in that state of perfection. And then some of them, through their free choice, chose to reject that, and that's when evil first entered.

32:12Father Chad Ripperger:How many angels are there? Do we know? We don't know the exact number, obviously, but we We know they're in the order of billions. And the reason we know that is because it is—in theology, we have various degrees of certainty about theological propositions. So for example, that Christ is God, we know is part of divine revelation, so it's absolutely certain. But then there's some other things like this particular question of whether each person has their own guardian angel is called theologically certain. It's not divinely revealed, but there's indicators in Scripture for it. And then also just through the church's tradition and our experience of the church, we know that each person was created for their own guardian angel.

33:00Father Chad Ripperger:So if that's the case, then that being the case. The number of human beings that's generally speculated to have lived is in about 20 billion. So we know just in—and there's nine hierarchies, there's, sorry, nine choirs of angels. Of the lowest rank is the angels, and each one of us got a guardian angel. So that means just in that lowest rank, just one subset is 20 billion. But there's more angels that also were given other jobs. And so it's literally in the billions. As you go up the hierarchy, it becomes less and less number of angels in each one of the choirs. But we know that there are literally billions The fascinating thing is, according to St.

33:45Father Chad Ripperger:Thomas Aquinas, but then also to which he bases it off, Suge of Dionysius' writings in the early church, very early church, within the first one or two centuries of the church, that that entire hierarchy of angels was created instantaneously all at once. Instantaneously. Instantaneously all at once. So unlike human beings, which God creates our souls, and there's more of us that are created over time, The whole nine choirs were all of them created instantaneously at once. Were our souls all created at once? No. They're created at the time of your conception. So their souls created and infused in you at the time of your conception.

34:29Father Chad Ripperger:So human beings, there's an ongoing creation and relationship to their souls. But angels, the totality of them were created all at once. How long before humans were there angels? Do we know that? The fathers of the church say that when He created this totality of the angels, then He immediately after that began the creation. In the creation account in Genesis, He began the creation. So He first, you know, creates the light and things like that. So you have that first day. It follows immediately upon that. And then human beings follow after that.

35:06Can we talk about the hierarchy?

35:08Father Chad Ripperger:Sure. What is the hierarchy? So the angels were created in a hierarchic structure, and there's nine choirs broken into what they call ranks. So there's three ranks. So it's kind of like almost like a military in that sense. The very top rank is made of the seraphim, which is the very top. And each angel is its own species. And as an exorcist dealing with fallen angels, their personalities are so distinct, much more distinct than human personalities. And so you do get a sense of that they're each specifically different. Part of that has to do with human beings and also with other animals. A species is different because of the fact that there's something about them called the specific difference that makes this species different from another one.

36:02Father Chad Ripperger:That's called the specific difference. With human beings, we don't have a difference. You and I don't. We're not specifically different. We're both, and in fact, in human beings, the specific difference is rationality. You and I are both rational. We know we're out of the same species. What makes us different is what we call accidental qualities. So the fact that you're, you know, a bit taller than I am, a bit bigger build, et cetera. You have different facial structure, et cetera. Your race is a little bit different than mine, et cetera. So those different qualities make us different as human beings.

36:33Father Chad Ripperger:Angels don't have that. They don't have, so it's matter specifically, bodies. It's the fact that I have this body and you have that body, which makes us different as human beings, even though by different in the sense of you're one human being and I'm one human being, but we're both of the same species. Okay, because angels don't have bodies, as a result of that, their specific difference is in their nature, which we can talk about that, because that itself is fascinating. In fact, we can get to that in relationship to their fall, because it plays a key role in their fall of some of them. But that basically means that every single angel is specifically different.

37:11Father Chad Ripperger:They're as different as, say, a grasshopper is from a cow. That's how different they are. And their difference, so their each is different. So those differences are then grouped into nine separate kind of categories, and that's the choir. And what makes one angel different from another is how intelligent they are. So the very top angel is far more intelligent, and so he can understand things much more universally, much more broadly, and also to much greater depth than the one that's all the way at the bottom, even though the lowest angel is far more intelligent than us. Nevertheless, there's this hierarchy, and it's based on intelligence.

37:53Father Chad Ripperger:An important point of that also means that their will is proportionate to how intelligent they are. So they have a stronger will based upon how intelligent they are. This is why in hell there's still a hierarchy based upon how strong of a will that they actually have. So Satan has the strongest will because he was from the cherubim, which is the second. So the top rank is the seraphim. And St. Thomas Aquinas says that their primary function and role was to simply love God. Their whole reason for being was to love Him. What exactly does that look like? What is that? If you were a seraphim, what is your daily?

38:30Father Chad Ripperger:Yeah, so your holy, because he creates each angel with its own natural law, its own natural set of inclinations. So just as us, so for example, when a human being gets married, we have a natural inclination to marry. When they get married, there's a joy that they have in the marriage, right? From being married, if it's a good marriage, of course. Or we have a natural inclination to eat, so when we eat, we feel satisfied, et cetera. So they get a fulfillment in just fulfilling the role or their tasks for which they were created, which is their nature. So for them, for the seraphim, it literally means just sitting around and contemplating God for all eternity, just contemplating and then loving Him at the various facets of His goodness.

39:12Father Chad Ripperger:because God is infinite. And even the angelic and the angelic intellects are limited. It means that for all eternity, they can be looking at a variety of different facets in God and driving joy and love and loving God, seeing that goodness in him for all eternity. And it's never exhausted. And that's what it is for us when we get to heaven, once we get to see God face to face for all eternity will be learning something new about him and the delight that we'll get out of that will bring. So for them, when they see those good things in God, they're naturally inclined to love him from that perspective.

39:49Father Chad Ripperger:Would a human being ever have interaction with a seraphim? Yes, they can at times. Not necessarily in this life. St. Thomas says that their interaction with us is fairly limited and has to do with the scope. So the top rank deals with God. So the seraphim their job is to love God. The cherubim, their perfections that God gave them was to know God, to know the various aspects of God. That's why if you look at the patterns of the psychology of Satan, formerly Lucifer, part of Lucifer 2, which we can talk about, his psychological patterns are that of a cherubim, which is what St. Thomas talks about.

40:29Father Chad Ripperger:And the reason being is because for him, everything revolves around knowledge of beauty ultimately, which is what he was created for. But then, and seeing, contemplating that beauty in God. And then the next one is the thrones. So the thrones, their job is to take that knowledge about God and what His will is, and then propagate that knowledge down through the middle rank. And so the middle rank is actually, their job is administrative. So as an exorcist, even when you get demons that have fallen, they're from that middle rank, you rarely see them. because their job, that middle rank, is really about governance of those below them and making sure everything is done right.

41:14Father Chad Ripperger:So it's basically middle management type of thing. And God created three different choirs for that. So you have the thrones, principalities, powers, and dominations, which are in the middle. And then below that, then, is the lowest choir of them, and their jobs are the Fush soldiers. So the top rank contemplates God, the thrones tell him this is what God's will is. That governance process, the commands and stuff are propagated down through the middle ranks, and then you have the lowest rank that actually executes them. And so that lower ranks, which also includes archangels and angels, that lower ranks, their job is to actually execute.

41:54Father Chad Ripperger:So those angels are the ones that we will actually have interaction with, more than likely. God's special forces. Yes, exactly. Can angels advance in rank? No. Because their rank in the hierarchy is fixed. Well, let me back up just a bit. How high you are in heaven in that hierarchy is directly proportionate to how holy you are. Human beings can actually take the place of fallen angels up through that rank by becoming holy, very holy, and then they can get a position that would be higher in the ranks in relationship to that. So, for example, it is the tradition of the Catholic Church to believe that Our Lady underneath Christ, that underneath Christ, the first one is Our Lady, that underneath them are the apostles.

42:47Father Chad Ripperger:and then also St. Joseph, St. John the Baptist, there's kind of a debate of who's on the top of that, then the apostles, and then the seraphim. So they're even above, the apostles are even above the seraphim. Oh, wow. And then other saints, because they become holy, take the place of different locations. I actually have a case I'm working on right now that part of the reason this woman's case is dragging out is because she has to reach a level of holiness, which she's getting there. She has to reach a level of holiness to take the place of one of the possessors. that had fallen. So, human beings can actually take that.

43:20Father Chad Ripperger:Okay, so what does that mean? Human beings, because in this life we can perform actions that merit and therefore increase and raise our place in heaven, we can actually get a higher place in heaven than some of the angels. But the angels, their holiness is directly proportionate to their nature. It's fixed. They can't merit anything. And so, that's why they have one choice, and then if they make that choice, their rank in heaven becomes fixed based upon that amount of holiness that they have. So a human can become an angel, or they can go to the top? Yeah, they don't become an angel. They get into the ranks.

43:58Father Chad Ripperger:They go up through the ranks or through the choirs in the sense of they become holier than an angel, and therefore, they get their amount of holiness that they have would exceed those angels that are below them. And so they're above them in the command structure in heaven, the authority structure in heaven. I've heard, and I may have this wrong, is there, is there, will God pick 300 humans for the end times to bat, to do his battle against evil? Um, I've heard that theory, but I have not seen the evidence to back it up. Okay. So it could be, we'll, we'll, we'll find out. There's certain things we know about the end, like John, that, uh, that, uh, St.

44:37Father Chad Ripperger:Elijah and St. Enoch are going to return, that type of thing. So let's talk about the fall. Okay. What happened? So when the angels were created, so the whole hierarchy of angels is created at once. Now, the way angels know things is the exact opposite of the way we know things. The way we know something is we have to come in contact with a thing we have to work with for a little while, then eventually we kind of gain a more abstract knowledge of it, and eventually we can kind of have a universal knowledge of the thing. So it takes us a while to actually get to the point where we fully understand something.

45:13Father Chad Ripperger:And so, and we even see this even when we wake up. You know, we wake up, it takes us a while to get fully functioning. And even when we're going to make a choice, a lot of times we have to go through a series of steps to kind of consider various things before we make the choice. Okay. That's because our knowledge comes through the senses. We have to be in contact with something, and then from that we can actually know something about it. And we can also infer knowledge based upon that, about other things that we don't necessarily see, et cetera. Okay. With angels, their knowledge is infused by God.

45:43Father Chad Ripperger:That's their mode of knowing, St. Thomas says. So at the first instance of their creation, God did two things. The first is, in addition to creating them and creating them in this state of grace and state of perfection, he also infused in them the knowledge of all of the essences of created things. And basically what that means is, they know exactly what a human being is, they know what dogs are, cats are, They know the natures of these things. Whereas human beings take a while to finally fully understand those things, they immediately exhaust everything there is to know about those just by thinking about them to the degree of their intelligence.

46:18Father Chad Ripperger:And infinite knowledge. It's not infinite because it's still limited because they're limited, but it's they instantaneously understand everything that could be known about that thing to the degree of their intelligence. Instantaneously. They don't have to think things through. Okay, so that's when it comes to the natures of things. But that's distinct. That kind of knowledge of things is distinct from knowing this thing is going to happen at this point in time. Those are called particulars. So, the ones are kind of called universal knowledge of things. The particulars are infused in them as they actually occur by God.

46:53Father Chad Ripperger:So, for example, the angels and the demons know what we are talking about as we talk about it because it's infused in their minds. So, for example, if they want to know what's going on in another room. They just have to think about that room, and then boom, they can see immediately what's actually there. Okay. When they were created, they were created into an act of knowing because they instantaneously exhaust what there is to know. And in that act of knowing, they learned a few things. One, who they are. They instantaneously saw their own nature and their specific difference. They actually understood by that fact that God had given them an assigned task.

47:32Father Chad Ripperger:And that assigned task that He had given to them is who they are. It's their very nature of who they are. Then, which we'll talk about what that means in the fall, plus they were given knowledge of all the other angels, because it's all infused. They give the knowledge of all the other angels and their assigned tasks. They were also given knowledge that God was eventually going to become incarnate through Jesus Christ, and that there were going to be certain human beings. Those who were created guardian angels were given knowledge of the person that they were going to have to guard and to protect and certain aspects of that person's life, because they would actually be told, this is the person you're going to be protecting, and this is God's will for him in certain respects.

48:17Father Chad Ripperger:They didn't know all of it, but they knew a lot of it. So they understood who they are, who the other angels are, what their assigned task was, what they're, these other particular things. And then they also knew who God was. And they also, St. Thomas says, were infused with faith, hope, and charity. So they actually knew that God, the second person of the Trinity, was going to become incarnate. And we actually know that from Scripture, that they were given that knowledge in the very beginning. Because when Christ first shows up on the scene, they're like, is this the guy? Is this the guy? Is this guy?

48:49Father Chad Ripperger:And then once they see He's doing miracles and He's doing all this other stuff and the nature of His teaching, and they realized this is the guy. He's the only Christ could explain who this guy, you know, because we were told that he was going to become incarnate, okay? So they knew that Christ was going to become incarnate, and they also knew that God was going to create human beings, et cetera. But they also knew God. They had a perfect knowledge of God. They had knowledge that he was triune because of their faith, that God showed them that he was triune, that there's God's Son, God the Holy Spirit, and God the Father, that he was trained.

49:25Father Chad Ripperger:All of that they saw in an instant. Wow. So they saw all of that. And the resulting factor of that, they saw that intellectually. The natural response of the will, St. Thomas says, when they saw that was the light, the beauty of it, the magnificent, the grandeur of it was just so magnificent that they just, they were taken by it in their first instance. And so their first experience in their will wasn't their first choice because it was something which the will just naturally gravitated for towards because it was so beautiful. That's in their first instance of their creation. Because remember, they're in the Avon, which has a sequence of events.

50:06Father Chad Ripperger:So that's their first instance. Because they saw that, in that same thing, they also saw if they were faithful, they would get to see God face to face and be happy for all eternity. But if they rejected God, they would be damned in hell and miserable for all eternity. So they knew what the punishment was going to be like. They have absolute clarity about that. It's not like human beings where sometimes it's a little hazy for us. It was absolutely clear. The second instance is then, in the second instance, St. Thomas says, they looked at intellectually, they could see the temptations, what all the other angels were going through.

50:47Father Chad Ripperger:Every single intelligent being in order to be in the presence of God has to go through a test. And the test that the angels had is they were created with a set of perfections, but they could see higher perfections above them. And they could see that having those perfections would be actually a really good thing. But in order to have that perfection, they would have to reject their assigned task because it's not part of their nature. It's part of something else. And so when they saw that perfection, that's at that point that they had to perform an act of sacrifice. They either had to sacrifice the desire for that perfection that they saw that they would like to have in order to remain faithful to the task that God had told that they had to do.

51:35Father Chad Ripperger:And so, but if they were faithful to that task, what they would get is the beatific vision, which is above any perfection that they could possibly have. And so that was their actual test. So that created jealousy. Uh, in a sense, not in the sense that they had, they didn't have those kinds of emotions that we have, but they saw that perfection and what it would be like to have it would be a wonderful thing. But they had to be willing to sacrifice that lesser created good to ultimately end up seeing God face to face, which is the greatest of the highest good, the greater good. And we can kind of return to it, because that's the same problem we have with human beings.

52:12Father Chad Ripperger:It's the same thing we live out every single day. But we have to sacrifice every single day in order to achieve the greater good. But they saw that greater good. So that's what they saw intellectually. So they even saw Satan's temptation, or Lucifer's temptation, and they knew that if they chose to reject their assigned task and choose to just desire this thing, they were never going to get it, but just to desire it, then they knew they would be under Satan. So they saw that whole complexity, and then they made their choice. And so with them, they're very different from us than human beings are.

52:50Father Chad Ripperger:the reason God has mercy on human beings is because we're stupid. No, it's true. We, as human beings, we make decisions, and then, you know, afterwards, we're like, well, that was a mistake. I shouldn't have done that. And that's why God has mercy on us. So if we're sorry for it, God will actually, you know, have mercy for us. But with the angels, they're not stupid. They know exactly what they're doing, and they know the full ramifications of it. So when they make their choice, their choice is all in, and their will becomes completely fixed on that choice, whether it's good or bad. And this is why even in session, demons will say, yeah, it was a bad choice, but I'd still do it again, because their wills become fixed in that.

53:32Father Chad Ripperger:So they make their choice. And then the third instance, St. Thomas says, is because unlike human beings, we can make stupid choices, but then we can kind of start getting our act together later. God gives us time to work through that process. And then at a certain point when we die, it becomes fixed, and then He either condemns us or He brings us into heaven. So for us, it takes us time to work out our salvation, as St. Paul says. You know, fear and trembling work out your salvation, so it takes us time. Whereas the angels, it's a one-shot deal. And so once they make that choice, their will becomes completely fixed.

54:05Father Chad Ripperger:And so St. Thomas says, in the third instance, then God levies judgment. Just like all human beings have to go before Christ and He judges us, all of them were judged by the second person of the Trinity as to what their condemnation would actually be or their reward in heaven. And so they're immediately damned or they're immediately taken into heaven and seen God immediately. How do we know this? I mean, some of this is not in the Bible, correct? Some of it, parts of it are not, but parts of it actually have to do with two forms of knowledge that the church has. The first is saints who have had mystical experiences and also just the general working out theologically of how these things actually work.

54:52Father Chad Ripperger:The second component has to do with the collective experience of exorcists for 2 ,000 years, because my experience as an exorcist is not any different from the exorcists in the first century AD. And so, how demons talk and what their psychology is and what they end up revealing is consistent throughout those 2 ,000 years. So, it's all of that kind of taken together. So, it's theological reasoning. So, if you read St. Thomas, it's all based on theological reasoning, but it's also based on a lot of scripture, but then also the mystical experiences, but then also just the church's collective experience in actually dealing with them.

55:28Father Chad Ripperger:It's recorded information through time. Exactly.

55:33Let's go back into the fall.

55:35Father Chad Ripperger:OK. Did they all fall at one time? Yeah, it's all done at the instant. They all fall in that second instance. What did that look like? Do we know? Well, scripture, the description in the book of Revelation is, you know, I saw Satan fall like lightning. So it was just boom, everything shifted and changed instantaneously in the experiences and the lives of the angels. So either the angels that did the good, that chose to do their assigned task, their will became fixed in the good. And then of course, they got to see God right away, but then the angels, they fell. And according to the fathers of the church, and it's actually true, by the way, in session, I've told demons, I command you to consider, to weaken them.

56:22Father Chad Ripperger:I command you to consider your first instance of delight that you had." Because that, when they felt that joy and that delight that they had, crushes them now because it's so painful for them to consider how joyful it was in that moment. So, you actually see these things kind of paying out. But they also will, some of them will actually, under certain circumstances, God will compel them to reveal what their judgment that they underwent by God. And so you find out what those actual things actually are in relationship to it. So it's this massive shift and like lightning falling. Did angels from every rank structure fall?

57:08Father Chad Ripperger:We know from the lowest eight ranks that there were ones that fell from those. There is some debate about whether one fell from the seraphim or not. Thomas Aquinas says they didn't. A majority of the theologians said that from that top rank, they didn't fall. But it was just the ones from cherubim on down. Because there was nothing to look up to other than God. Basically. And for St. Thomas, it was that they saw God, And their first inclination was to love him that they couldn't. It was because of the strength of their charity or love for God that they just did what he asked. Are there still angels falling today?

57:57Father Chad Ripperger:No. So that all the angels, since there's no more creation of any angels, and since they all went through the first three instances together, none of them are falling now. So they don't. It's not like you have an angel that ends up later falling. Do we have numbers on each side? According to the interpretation of the fathers, based upon what's in the book of Revelation, there's a reference where the dragon sweeps a third of the stars down by his tail. That has been interpreted universally by the patristics, that is, the fathers of the church, and also the theologians throughout time, as referring to a third of the angels fell.

58:34Father Chad Ripperger:Can angels redeem themselves? No. Demons, I mean. Yeah. Once their will becomes fixed and evil, it's irreparable. It can never change. Do you think they regret it? You know, it reminds me of a politician. You'll remember who this is. When he said, I did not have sex with that woman, so-and-so. He regretted getting caught. He didn't regret the action. And it's the same thing with them. They have remorse in the sense of it bothers them, and they hate themselves for it, and they're sad about the fact that they committed to sin and that they're going to be damned for all eternity and suffer for all eternity, but they would still do it again.

59:20Father Chad Ripperger:In fact, I had a demon actually say that, so I said, commanded him, because I was trying to weaken this guy. I said, so let me get this straight. By the way, when I put it colloquially in the interview, it's very structured. I'm saying, I command you to tell me X, Y, and Z. But I just said, so let me get this straight. You were created to have the beatific vision, yes. And you were created with this phenomenal perfection and the ability to see this, yes. And you saw that beauty in the first instance, yes. And you knew that if you were faithful, you would enjoy these things, yes. And you knew if you weren't faithful that you would suffer this and this, yeah.

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1:01:25That's R-O-K-A dot com and use code SRS. Did God know that was going to happen? Did God know the fall would happen? Yes, because he's outside of time. Why did he allow the fall? Is the fall ultimately the test of the human being?

1:01:47Father Chad Ripperger:Well, we are all tested. Because they're the ones that influence our mind, correct? Let me ask you this. Would you want to be around someone who you forced to love you? No. No. You want someone who wants to love you and chooses it on their own. It's the same with God. God created us with free will, and in order to have that free will, he allows us, a certain percentage of people to fall, both human beings and angels, to fall. and reject with him for the greater good, which is those who are faithful, who voluntarily chose to love him.

1:02:26Father Chad Ripperger:How did they gain access to our mind? Okay, so the basic way it works is their very nature is designed, their wills are structured in such a way that they can move matter by their nature. And so that means that they can move things within us because part of our brain, our intellect, is material. Not all of it, but part of it is actually material. the brain, basically. And so they can actually act upon it. Let's go back to human sacrifice a little bit. I mean, spent a couple days here. We talked about my past experiences. We've done some serious work here, and I've realized that the battle is in your mind for your soul.

1:03:13That's right. And I mean, Christ himself was human sacrifice. That's right. And so if the battle is within your mind and demons have access to your mind and angels have access to your mind, suicide is a human sacrifice, abortion is a human sacrifice, going to war is human sacrifice. All these, I mean, all these, everything seems to come down to human sacrifice. That's right. Why is the human sacrifice so important? What does it represent? What, what, why is it happening?

1:03:52Father Chad Ripperger:Thomas Aquinas makes an observation, which is right along what you were saying. He said, the ultimate thing that God wants from every intelligent creature, so this would include angels and men, he said the ultimate thing that he wants from every intelligent creature is the sacrifice of his will, that is ours, to his will, to God's will. And the reason being has to do with this. So, I'll explain the theological structure of it, and then I'm going to talk about a case I had that all revolved specifically around sacrifice. So in every sacrifice, there's three components. We learned God taught us what sacrifice was in the Old Testament.

1:04:34Father Chad Ripperger:So with the Jews, he said, this is exactly how you're supposed to do it. So in relationship to God, sacrifice which we offered to him has to follow a very distinctive structure because if any one of these elements are missing, it's not a true sacrifice. And so he said, this is exactly how you're supposed to do it. Christ himself also said, when he did the first mass, the holy sacrifice of the mass on Monday, Thursday, he said, do this in commemoration of me. So he's being very specific about how they're supposed to do it. And that's because if we don't, human beings are stupid, and we're going to mess it up.

1:05:13Father Chad Ripperger:So the first component of a sacrifice is offertory. Basically, what the offertory is, it's a setting apart of what I'm offering to God apart from me, apart from profane or sacred or profane use. And that has two components. The first is there has to be some good that I have that I'm willing to be separated from. This was the line of demarcation between the sacrifice of Abel and the sacrifice of Cain. Abel gave the best that he had, and so he retained nothing for himself in that process. Whereas Cain kept the best for himself and gave God a sacrifice of something that was good, but not his best.

1:05:55Father Chad Ripperger:And as a result of that, the second part of it is, So you have to be willing to be separated from the particular good, and you have to be willing to give it to God. In that very process, you are actually achieving the greater good. Okay, that is a key element of sacrifice, that in us being willing to be separated from the lesser good and giving it to God, a greater good is accomplished. And just in that process itself, we become better as human beings just in that offering of it to Him. And so, but there has to be that perfect willing to detach from that lesser good in order to, for the greater good.

1:06:36Father Chad Ripperger:So let me give you an example. The guy who goes off to war, the lesser good, ironically, is his own life. The greatest, he's willing to offer his life for what? For our good, the common good of the country. And in that process, the greater good that he achieves in that, the excellence that he achieves in that is perfection and justice. And as a result of that, he gets honor. So that honor is one of the greatest things that human beings can achieve. It's better to die in honor than to die in dishonor, for example. And so he has to be willing to give up his own life for the sake of achieving the greater good.

1:07:14Father Chad Ripperger:So that offertory component is really key. So you have to be willing to give the lesser good in order to achieve the greater good. That's the first element. The second thing is there is the slaying of the victim. So if you look at Christ, let's back up in Christ, his offertory was, not my will, but thine be done. So he did it at the Mount Olives. He was willing to offer up his own life for the sake of the greater good was our salvation. And so he was willing to offer that up. And so that's why he told God, not my will, but thine be done. Okay, so that's the offertory. Then there's the slaying of the victim.

1:07:48Father Chad Ripperger:So in Christ's case, that's the passion and death of our Lord. And then the last part of it is the consummation. You actually, the victim has to be completely consumed in the process. Because if it's not, then there's still something we're retaining for ourselves. So the person has to be willing to completely die to themselves entirely. And how do we know that Christ did that? Well, he himself even said it right before he died, consummatimist. It is consummated. What did that actually mean? It meant that, and the saint, or Isaiah talks about this, St. Paul also talks about it, that the Messiah had to go through a series of sufferings in order to merit for us what was necessary for the perfection in all aspects of our lives.

1:08:36Father Chad Ripperger:And so he was, for example, the reason he wore the crown of thorns is in order to undo Adam's sin in relationship to eating the fruit when he should not have, and then God gave him the punishment of you have to work in thorns and in pain. So Christ's suffering was to undo all of that. Okay. So the sacrifice then basically means that in the end, the reason God wants sacrifice from all of us is because he wants for us to achieve the greater good and not be satisfied with the lesser good. He wants, that's a call to the greater good. Okay, that being said, so I had this case where it kept revolving around Our Lady under the title of Mirror of Justice.

1:09:24Father Chad Ripperger:Now, the reason that the Mirror of Justice, the reason that was so key and the reason it had a correlation to sacrifice is because of the fact that under the virtue of justice is the virtue of religion. So justice is where I render someone their due. So if I say, hey, go mow my lawn, I'll pay you 50 bucks. If you mow the lawn, in justice, I have to give you 50 bucks. Okay. Underneath that is the virtue of religion where we render God is due. Okay. What did God do for us? He creates this, he keeps him being. Everything that we do, can do, all of that, he caused. And so literally there is nothing in us to which we don't owe back to him.

1:10:01Father Chad Ripperger:So ultimately, we have to render ourselves in perfection before him. That's our goal. Okay.

1:10:09Father Chad Ripperger:Okay, so that being the case, then, in relationship to justice, underneath justice is the virtue of religion. Underneath the virtue of religion are four acts. But one of those acts is to offer sacrifice to God because that sacrifice is doing what? Giving the best that we have. So, as I mentioned, we have to render back to Him everything, what is perfect. Well, what do we do in order to show that as a sign? we render back to him the best in us, the thing that we love the most, we have to give back to him. And so that's what he's ultimately looking for. Now, by the way, it doesn't mean that in that process when we give it to him that he doesn't reward us or that he doesn't take care of the thing that we offer to him, etc.

1:10:49Father Chad Ripperger:It just means that that's what he wants us to give it to him. Okay. In this case, so anytime this demon would manifest when I was saying mass, because we'd start the sessions with a mass. Anytime the demon would manifest, it's because God had told him he had to tell me something. So during this mass, Beelzebub is the title, which is another name for Satan. He manifests during mass. I finished mass, and then, OK. So then we start the sessions. As soon as Beelzebub manifested, I said to him, he told me, he told you you had to tell me something, didn't he? He was so angry that he could not even look at me.

1:11:30Father Chad Ripperger:He was so angry. So then I said to him, shut up. You are not permitted to talk. Now, there's a reason I did that. One is, is because I don't want him telling me based upon when he thinks it's time. He has to realize I'm the guy in charge. And a lot of that is just to maintain the authority structure, because they're constantly trying to get into the driver's seat. The second thing is, is it's normal spiritual warfare. This is a stout adversary. And so just as we would in normal warfare, you would just bomb them for a while first to soften up the situation. Then you'd send in the ground troops.

1:12:03Father Chad Ripperger:He's the same way. If you try and ask him the question right off the bat, he's going to hold tight, and you're not going to get anywhere. So you don't want to send the troops in first. You want to bomb him first. So what I did is I basically punished him for 45 minutes. And at the end of that 45 minutes, I said to him, I said, you have something you have to tell me? And he said, he told me I have to tell you my nature. Now, what that means is his assigned, We already knew what his assigned task was. It was to enlighten both Our Lady and our minds. Lucifer's original assigned task. The reason he was called Lucifer is because that means, comes from the Latin words, luke ferre, which means to bear light.

1:12:41Father Chad Ripperger:His job was to enlighten our minds to get us to see the necessity and the good in offering sacrifice. That was his original assigned task. And so when he told me, he told me I have to tell you my nature. I said, let's hear it. Now, when they chose to reject their assigned task, you have to remember that's who they are. And that meant that in their choice, it was a perfect act of self-hatred. And they refused to do that function that God had told them to. So what they chose then is the opposite of that assigned task. And so what he does is to thwart sacrifice. But this is where it becomes key. He just looks at me deadpan, which is an indicator he's probably telling me the truth.

1:13:27Father Chad Ripperger:And as we started unpacking it later, theologically realized this is probably true. Because some people will say, well, demons lie all the time, but not always. Sometimes they're compelled to tell the truth. And he said, I convince people. So this is part of the cherubim. He's part of the cherubim, which is an intellectual function. He says, I convince people. So in us, it's an intellectual conviction that he puts in our minds. I convince people that they cannot be separated from the particular good. Okay. That's, and so I stood back and I said, that's a whopper. Because he knew, I knew the structure of sacrifice.

1:14:10Father Chad Ripperger:Remember, in Offitory, you have to be willing to be separated from a particular good in order to give it to God. And that means when he convinces people, I can't be separated from this thing, that's how he subverts the remainder part of the sacrifice where we're willing to die to ourself all the way to the end. And so he knew that's, so I realized that's how he ended sacrifice. And then he just looks at me and says, it's how I took Adam and Eve out. That's how I'm taking your church out. It's how I took your government out. He said, it's at the root of every sin and every defect that every human being has.

1:14:43Father Chad Ripperger:and later he said it's the cause of mediocrity in every single human being, which is absolutely true. Because in virtue, when we're striving for virtue, which is the greater good to perfect ourselves in some particular aspect, which is the greater good, we have to be willing to be separated from certain things. Just take temperance. If I want to gain temperance to master the virtue of fasting, for example, I have to be willing to put aside the lesser good of the pleasure I get out of food in order to achieve this greater good. Makes sense. When do they gain access to our minds? We talk about the innocence of children and the pure love that they can give us.

1:15:26Yeah. And then at some point in time, everybody loses it.

1:15:31Father Chad Ripperger:That's right. It's ultimately when God allows it. So in the spiritual warfare, there's kind of a misunderstanding. People have this idea that demons get you just to maraud and do whatever they want. When St. Peter said, be sober and watchful, for the lion goes around seeking someone to devour, it doesn't mean he gets to hammer anybody he wants. It means he's constantly watching us. That's the going around. He's constantly watching to see where the weaknesses are and where he could take us out, and then he might test or probe. And if God lets him go in, then he goes in. But it means that the spiritual warfare, the entire battlefield is completely controlled by Christ.

1:16:17Father Chad Ripperger:So even the demons can't do anything in relationship to us unless Christ gives them permission. So Christ is the one who allows them access at certain points. And the reason he allows us access to us is to test us. Will you sacrifice for me? Is it through flaws in the world, like pornography? Yeah. I mean, kids are saying pornography at age eight. Yeah. Probably earlier. Yeah, that's it. So he'll use those as me. And then that creates some type of a desire. That's right. A disordered desire for it. Yeah. Part of it also has to do with the fact that demons can actually use that to inspire other people to expose other people or kids or something like that to things that are evil.

1:17:04Father Chad Ripperger:I've actually had a case where the demons would drive people around this woman in order to victimize her. So they can actually, that type of thing can happen. But it's not that common. Usually what they'll do is they'll use other people to introduce bad things into the person's life. And then the person, because of fallen human nature, we have a proclivity towards, like, let's just take pornography. we have a proclivity towards what we call concupiscence, which is a desire for pleasure that's immoderate and disordered. And so, if we don't do things, and this is where parental formation and virtue and getting them the sacraments and things like that aids the children in being faithful to that so that they can actually combat that particular aspect of our fall or original sin that we kind of inherited as a result of that, then what the demons do is they can play on that disordered inclinations that we have and then start just driving it.

1:17:58Do you think that successful exorcisms could be miracles? I mean, and the reason I ask is we, we talked about the last several weeks of my life and some of the things that I've experienced here that I don't want to go into yet, maybe, maybe at another time, but, you know, with, with, with, with what i did experience and how real it was in the end no matter how terrifying it was it only strengthened my faith in christ and god and the holy spirit immensely yeah immensely one

1:18:36Father Chad Ripperger:of the things that you learn as an exorcist is what christ said you you know he said count it's gives time to the apostles, count yourself as useless instruments. When you're as an exorcist, you can pray and pray and pray until the cows come home. But if Christ doesn't step in and actually cause liberation, nothing happens. Demons have actually said to me, he says, you can't make me do anything, which is actually true. As a human being, I can't make any demon do anything. But then my retort to them is, but he can. And so he uses us as instruments to basically afflict the demon, to punish him to a certain point.

1:19:08Father Chad Ripperger:And then it's at that point that Christ steps in and Christ causes the liberation. So one time I was asked in a public venue, how many people have you liberated? And I said, none. But I've been in the presence of liberations where Christ, and I've done my work as an exorcist, and then Christ is the one who liberates. And so that liberation is both an act of mercy, but also one of the things that people very often don't quite understand about this thing, possession is the worst thing. Actually, Possession is not the worst thing. The worst thing is sin, mortal sin specifically, where you've committed such a grave sin that you're under the power of the demons from a legal point of view.

1:19:48Father Chad Ripperger:Whereas possession is not necessarily the worst thing. In fact, possession, especially if it kind of protracts for any length of time, it actually, the people become holier through the battle, through the struggle. It's like a guy who goes off to, you know, there's a big difference between a soldier who's never seen combat and one who has. And so this is the, and it was the guy who's seen the combat. He's much more fashioned, much more honed than the guy that maybe went through a lot of good training and could be a good shoulder, but he just didn't have that opportunity. Well, it's the same thing here.

1:20:18Father Chad Ripperger:When people go through just the brutal battle and that type of thing, the amount of sacrifice and self-denial and everything that they have to go through, and the virtue that they have to achieve in order to conquer this thing is quite admirable.

1:20:34Father Chad Ripperger:Do angels have access to our mind? They do. God permitting. What does that look like? So the angels can do actually two things in relationship to us. The first is they can put an image in our imagination and even put a perspective on that image, just as the demons can do the same thing. So the demons can not only just put an image in your imagination, because we get these, you get thoughts, where did this come from, right? But they can even put a perspective on like, this would be really good, right? And this is why sometimes people will come to me like normal men, normal heterosexual men will come to me and they'll say, I had this bizarre experience where I was in this situation and I had this thought of pedophilia and I had this kind of inclination of the good.

1:21:21Father Chad Ripperger:I said, well, that's not your junk, right? That's not you. Demons can make anything look appealing. One exorcist contacted me recently, because he had kind of gone through that type of thing. He was working with this one woman who, by any stretch of the imagination, was not good-looking whatsoever. But when she walked in the door during one of the sessions, the demon skewed his perceptions and his relationship to it. And he said he looked at her, and he felt this inclination, like she's just beautiful. And then he realized intellectually, he was like, that ain't true. And so he just stopped, did some prayers, broke it.

1:21:57Father Chad Ripperger:And then when he looked at her again, he says, ugly as sin, right? So the point being is they can get that perspective. The angels can also do the same thing because perceptions are either incongruity with reality or they're not. For example, let's just take transgenderism. People's perceptions about who they are may or may not be. If you're a normal heterosexual male, you say, hey, I'm a male, and this is my, well, then my perceptions are incongruity with reality. But if I'm some dude who thinks he's a woman, your perceptions aren't incongruity with reality. And so demons are constantly trying to put perspectives on it that either exaggerate or skew or falsify your perception of reality, whereas the good angels can actually do the opposite.

1:22:41Father Chad Ripperger:They can put perspectives on the imagination so that you get a greater perception of this is the truth of the matter. This is the reality of it. So one of the ways that you'll notice that is you'll get a bit of clarity in a situation. All of a sudden, you'll see a perspective and realize, okay, that's how this is actually done. The one thing that angels can do, which demons never do, is the angels can then, so there's three parts of our intellect. I'm not going to go into all three, but there's two parts that I want to talk about. The first is the brain. That's the image part. And they can put a perspective.

1:23:13Father Chad Ripperger:They can affect that. But then there's a part of our intellect that's entirely immaterial. And the reason we know that, for example, is when we die, then people in heaven, you know, you hear about these with people who actually die and they actually go through a judgment and they might see Christ and that type of thing. Their intellect is functioning independently of their body. So we know there's a part of the intellect that's in part of that. There's also certain operations that we perform, like the ability to self-reflect upon ourselves, that we know that there's a part of our intellect that's purely immaterial, that can function independently of matter.

1:23:46Father Chad Ripperger:This is why animals, even apes, don't have that same kind of self-reflection. Even when they see themselves in the mirror, it's kind of a fascination to them, but that's all at the level of the material. But we're as human beings, we have this. But the angels can actually, that immaterial part of us has the ability to make judgments about things, that something's right or true or that type of thing. How do we know that? We can have, I'll give you an example. a guy, his wife, when he first gets married, his perspective on her is she's wonderful, she's lovely, I love her, she's such a great wife, she's beautiful, etc.

1:24:22Father Chad Ripperger:And his intellectual judgment is the same as that. But then what can happen is that over the course of the marriage, bad things happen. And so his perspective on her begins to change, and then also does his judgment changes. But he can make a choice to change his judgment about that. Like if he starts thinking his wife is really bad and nasty, she may or may not be, he can start making a choice of, you know what, I'm going to start, I'm not going to judge her that she's that bad. I think she's ultimately a woman of goodwill. It's just that I'm suffering a relationship to it. That means I got to shore up stuff on my part.

1:24:56Father Chad Ripperger:So I can make a judgment or I can make a choice to start looking at her, judging her differently. So that's one of the things. Okay, why is that important? because angels can strengthen. It's called illumination. They can illuminate the mind, that immaterial part, so that when we make that act of judgment, we see it with much greater clarity and strength and depth. And so they can enlighten our minds. And so you can ask them, you know, give me good images and then help me to see, help me to enlighten my mind in relationship to it. The fathers of the church actually say it was the angels who taught the Greeks philosophy, people like Aristotle and Plato.

1:25:35Father Chad Ripperger:And that's why there's such a radical shift in their philosophy from the materialists to Plato and then to Aristotle. What rank structure of the angels is putting images and clarity into our mind? Primarily those of the rank of angel, the very lowest. The guardian angel? The guardian angels. Archangels? The archangels can at times. They can also do it as well. It depends. There are certain people, according to the fathers of the church, that their stature in life is so important that God intends for their particular life that He actually will assign angels that are higher in the hierarchy. Because what rank or how high in the hierarchy of angels your angel is is directly proportioned to how important you're supposed to be in human history, they say.

1:26:26Father Chad Ripperger:And so, but there are certain people that God will actually assign an archangel to guard them at least while they're fulfilling that role. So like people in positions of political power are generally considered that. Priests, bishops, that type of thing are given a guardian angel, an archangel in order for relationship to that. If there's a particular function that they're going to play in relationship to us as a human being that's extremely important, they come from the rank of archangels. So Gabriel, Michael, Raphael were considered part of the Archangel. Let's take a quick break. I'm excited to introduce to you the newest member of my family.

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1:28:41It's incredibly durable, and on top of that, I can check his location in real time. send voice commands directly to the caller, and track his activity through the day. I use Spot On so Stanley gets the freedom to run and explore, and I get the peace of mind knowing he's safe. Let your dog roam with Spot On. Go to spotonfence.com slash SRS and use code SRS for$50 off the Nova collar. That's spotonfence.com slash SRS and use code SRS for$50 off. All right, Father Ripperter, we got a hot question for you. Okay. So I want to understand why is Christianity the only religion in the world that is acceptable to disparage?

1:29:37Father Chad Ripperger:Well, Satan is the prince of this world. And it's pretty clear, at least it seems to me, but it's pretty clear, I think, to a lot of people that Satan and the demons are gaining much greater ascendancy over the world. And as they influence the world more and more, they will use people and they will use the things of this world in order to go after the one religion that they know is true. I often tell people that, you know, in heaven, the demons actually, because the fact that Christ was going to become incarnate, and they actually watched Christ preach revelation, they know it perfectly. And so as a result of that, and they know that he was the Messiah that was about to come, that he was going to be the one that was incarnate.

1:30:23Father Chad Ripperger:So they know, not from faith anymore, because they lost their faith, but they know just by deductive reason that this is the true religion. All other religions have human beings who started them, whereas Christ, who's God, is the only one who started this religion, and they saw it. And so they know the rest of the other religions don't wash.

1:30:48Father Chad Ripperger:As the demons gain greater and greater control over the world and as evil becomes more and more in place, there's two factors that come into play. The first is that demons move people to punish the Christians, which we saw in administrations even in this country where they were going after the Christians. And then you'd look at these people and you can tell these people were not leaving good lives, that were persecuting the Christians. So the demons will inspire the people to go after the Christians. We also see this in relationship to certain religions attacking the Christians in different countries and that type of thing.

1:31:20Father Chad Ripperger:So you see that. But the other part of the dynamic has to do with the fact that St. Thomas talks about it in a question in the Summa, but there's a structure to how human beings go from pursuing and seeing the good to actually pursuing things that are evil. And it basically goes, it's a process in which we have natural inclinations to things that are good. And so, for example, he says, he gives the example, a guy recognizes that fornication is immoral, right? So he recognizes that. But then Bessie Sue walks in, and she's just gorgeous. And so he ends up falling with Bessie Sue, and St. Thomas says he thinks that it's, you know, he kind of gives in a lot of, it's okay in this one instance.

1:31:59Father Chad Ripperger:And then, but he keeps hanging around Bessie Sue, so he keeps falling with her, and eventually he starts thinking that, well, fornication isn't wrong, you know. And then, as he keeps fornicating, then what he actually thinks is that, well, no, fornication's actually a good thing. And then what happens next? Well, people who tell me fornication's bad, they're evil people because I know fornication's good. That is the exact progression we actually saw in this country. The greatest generation knew that fornication was immoral, but they started fornicating behind the scenes. And that's where the fornication really started.

1:32:31Father Chad Ripperger:And how do we know? Because when the hippie generation started the fornication openly, they didn't stop them. Because, hey, well, can't tell them. We did that because we did it, right? So it goes from, no, they can't do it, but they fell from time to time to, okay, now they were openly doing it. Then by the time you get to the 80s and 90s, you should live with your girlfriend before you get married, which is a good thing, right? Because you should fornicate to find out if it's going to work. And then what's the last thing? Now you have people who, when you say, hey, you need to be chased. The guys need to stop doing this.

1:33:00Father Chad Ripperger:They get attacked. And so in addition to the demons driving this, now you have people whose lives are so disordered that what they see as good is bad. And what it is actually they see as bad is actually good. And so they see, and this is why we actually see Christ mention this, he says there will come a time when they will actually believe that by eradicating the people who follow him, eradicating they're actually doing the will of God. I mean, it's interesting. You know, I mean, I think all religions have been persecuted at one point or another through time. Yeah. If you talk bad about Islam, you're a bigot.

1:33:41Right. If you, I mean, that's the same with multiple religions. If you talk about Judaism, you'll be ostracized from everything. That's right. It is the ultimate no-no. Correct. And I don't understand, I mean, why are Christians accepting this? You know, in all the other religions, you know, you see this righteous anger. That's right. You know, if their religion or their people are disparaged. Right. With Christianity, I'm guilty of it too. We let it slide. Why is that?

1:34:26Father Chad Ripperger:I think we let it slide because— Are we conditioned? Yes, I think that's it. We're conditioned to actually believe that when Christ said, turn the other cheek, that we just let people get away with whatever they want. And that's not actually the case. you basically, when he said he turned the other cheek, or, you know, you have to forgive even those who do those bad things. Yeah, you have to forgive them. But that doesn't mean that you extend the effects of that forgiveness to them, because that might be bad for them, St. Thomas says. And so, for example, he says, you know, you should have charity.

1:34:59Father Chad Ripperger:You should have love of God and love of neighbor for the sake of God for everybody. But that doesn't mean that I'm going to necessarily show the effects of that love to somebody, because then it would confirm them in their sin, and it's actually going to be bad for them. And so what's happened is, is Christians have gone to excess and just thinking, oh, you know, we just have to let people walk all over us. And that's not what Christ was saying. In fact, we have an obligation to fight for and to protect the glory of Christ himself, Christ the King. We have an obligation to fight for him. And the fact that we actually don't do that is based upon this kind of this effeminate unwillingness to battle because we think we're just being charitable or we're trying to be Christian and be merciful.

1:35:39Father Chad Ripperger:Look, sometimes being merciful to somebody is actually bad for them. And so we have to... God is going to be merciful when we meet those conditions, always. But in relationship to us as human beings, we can't extend the mercy to people if they're doing evil and harm and offending God. I mean, do you think this is just going to continue to get worse? I do. What can people do? I mean, in your mind or your idea, how do Christians defend their faith? I mean, it's being ripped out of government. This country was found on Christianity. It's being ripped out of schools. Many people are offended if you even bring it up in school.

1:36:26However, all these other ideologies, we're forced to comply with LGBTQ, Islam, Judea, all of them. All of them. They're all accepted except Christianity.

1:36:41Father Chad Ripperger:I think there's two things. The first thing is that a lot of Christians don't know their faith well. And so a lot of times they get mopped up, and a lot of times they don't fight. Or if they do fight, they fight badly because they don't know what they're doing. They don't know how to disarm these people. I'm thinking of a particular bishop in his interview with Ben Shapiro. I'm like, man, that was a missed opportunity, because he really could have set the record straight on a few things. So in addition to they have to know what they're talking about and have to know this stuff, they also have to know the other religions to know where they're wrong, and to be able to see this.

1:37:12Father Chad Ripperger:And also these other ideologies, they have to know why these things are actually bad. But then the second part of it is they just have to man up. You know, they just basically have to say, okay, look it. But, you know, there's two things that I think that people have to do in relationship to that is they have to be willing to suffer other people's, you know, chaffing at them and et cetera. It reminds me of the allegory of the cave in Plato where the people in the cave see these projections and think that's reality. And that's not even reality. Reality is outside. So the guy tried to drag him outside and they're chaffing with him the whole way they're dragging him outside.

1:37:43Father Chad Ripperger:And even if they get outside and they see the truth, they want to go back to this, right? It's the same kind of a thing that you see here. They're going to chaff at you. So you just have to stay the course and be willing to tell the truth. The second thing is we have to be willing to wield the axe. And by that I mean we have to be willing to clear the deck. We have to start telling people, oh, I'm offended by that. I don't care. I'm more concerned that you know the truth than your emotions are hurt. We have to stop allowing people to follow their emotions. We have to stop following our own emotions in relationship.

1:38:12Father Chad Ripperger:We have to be willing to follow reason. And it doesn't mean you go around just being obnoxious. But it means that we have to be willing to fight with people. And if they just say, well, I'm offended, well, you know, it's tough. That's just life. That's just reality. If you want to know the truth, you're willing to follow the truth. And the other side of it is the hypocrisy of it all. We have to recognize that when we give in to these people, we're giving in to their hypocrisy. Because these people say, well, you're offensive to me. What you believe is offensive to me. Well, so is what you believe is offensive to me, and I think it's offensive to God.

1:38:45Father Chad Ripperger:So we just have to say, OK, well, then what we have to do is we have to be willing to fight the truth, fight for the truth, be willing to take the beating for it in order to actually achieve what's... in order to clear the deck. Now, there's one reason why I tell people they have to be willing to do this. Have you ever noticed that nobody will talk about something, nobody will say anything, until one guy gets up there and says, this is a bunch of bunk, and here's why. He makes it safe for everybody else. Yes, he breaks the ice. I know a couple guys like that. Yeah, yeah. But it breaks the ice, and then from there, it becomes a legitimate topic of discussion, and people can actually start talking about it.

1:39:28Father Chad Ripperger:But that's what we have to be willing to do. We have to be willing to break the ice or wield the action in relationship to this, because once the truth gets out there, then it starts dispelling the darkness, and people start seeing it, and people that are normally of goodwill will start signing off to it and say, yeah, I actually believe that. So, I mean, we actually see this even, you know, just recently, even just politically, you were never allowed to talk or mention Christianity or whatsoever. But now once it's done to talk about, now a lot of people are talking about it. So it's that one guy's got to break the ice.

1:39:55Father Chad Ripperger:And so people have to be willing to be that one guy. But I tell guys, you may or may not be that guy. You have to make sure, A, that you have the virtue to do it to sustain the beating. And you also have to be the guy that knows what he's talking about. And don't presume you know. You got to really know. I appreciate that. Yeah. So if you're willing to find the truth and follow the truth, then you should be willing to defend the truth. That's right. Break the ice no matter what the consequences. That's right. Personal cost. To go back to one of the points is, you know, you have to be willing to be separated from the lesser good in order to pursue the greater good.

1:40:31Father Chad Ripperger:Guys have to be willing to take the beating, to be separated from the comfort and the adulation of other people. They have to be willing to be separated from that in order to pursue the good, regardless of the personal cost, which is the greater good. Can we communicate with angels? Yes, we can. How would we do that? So I think before I answer that, let me answer how actual angels communicate with monks themselves. So basically the way it works is, because they don't have bodies, we communicate because I think of something, I make a set of sounds, and then you hear the sounds, and then you interpret it based upon that.

1:41:08Father Chad Ripperger:So it's a physical kind of communication. But because they don't have bodies, that means that their communication is purely intellectual. So it's a kind of a telepathy. And so the way that that works is one angel thinks of the other angel and thinks himself, I want to communicate with that particular angel. Now, if you remember what I was saying earlier, God infuses the particular things as they're happening in the minds of the angels as they're happening. And so the angel that's infused in the other angel's mind that angel so-and-so wants to communicate with you, then if his, just like with us, we can either listen to somebody or not, he can, if he moves, he uses his will to turn towards that angel in his mind, then all that angel has to do is start, then he can start communicating what he wants to directly with them.

1:41:58Father Chad Ripperger:Okay. So that basically means that they can use their mind to communicate with them. That's not any different from the very nature of prayer. In fact, the definition of prayer is lifting the mind and heart to God, so we're actually directing our mind to Him. And then when we do that, and then through our prayer that we communicate with Him what we want, then when we do that, so obviously God knows all our thoughts anyway, but that's how we actually communicate with God, is just by directing our thoughts to Him directly and communicating him with our thoughts. We can do it verbally as well. Is verbally stronger than thought?

1:42:34Father Chad Ripperger:Yeah, it is in the sense that it's better for us. And so God tends to—it doesn't mean that God doesn't listen to the mental prayers, or even if you're talking to the angels. I mean, did you—I'm sorry, did you just say God does not listen to mental prayers? No, he does. He does. He listens to them. But a lot of times, when we vocalize it, It helps our faculties become more focused, and it's a stronger prayer as a result. And so that's why a lot of times—there's also certain kinds of prayers he just wants done vocally anyway. And because he made us as human beings and made us with the ability to communicate in that fashion, he also wants us to do that from time to time.

1:43:13Father Chad Ripperger:On the other hand, there's also certain kinds of prayer that you want to be entirely mental. Okay. With the angels, then what we do is it's the same kind of a mechanism that they have. It's just that under certain circumstances, they are permitted to communicate directly to us so that we hear their thoughts, but that's extremely rare. But if we direct our thoughts to them, the same mechanism occurs. So if I direct my thoughts, say, to my guardian angel and ask him to do something, in fact, I can tell a story behind that. But if I mentally think of my guardian angel and tell him, hey, I want you to do X, Y, or Z, then it's the same mechanism it was with the angels.

1:43:56Father Chad Ripperger:That's infused in his mind that I want to talk to him. And then when he turns his mind to me, he hears my thoughts. Otherwise, he can't get access to my thoughts. He can cause things in me, but he can't read them. He can't know what I'm thinking unless either he's causing it or he can kind of decipher Frittenhang's probably thinking about X like you can with your wife, you know? You can figure out what she's thinking just by how she's reacting. But they actually can hear our thoughts in that actual process. So to give an example, I had a case where the woman was possessed. I was in an airport.

1:44:34Father Chad Ripperger:I was just about to get onto the plane. I was in line at the gate, and the woman I was working with calls me, and she was possessed. And she calls me, and she says, hey, I'm pinned, and I can't move. And so, which they had done to her before. And then she hands the phone to the assistants, because any time I do a session, there's always lay assistants that are present. And they said, yeah, they took the phone, they said, yeah, we can't budge her, we can't move her. And I'm like, well, I'm standing, I'm literally handing the stewardess or whatever, the gate woman, my boarding pass. And I just said, well, I can't do it now.

1:45:10Father Chad Ripperger:My flight's only about an hour, I'll call you in about an hour. And so then I hung up. And then I just mentally said to the guardian angel of my priesthood, go and help her. And then I just got onto the plane. An hour flight later, I get off the plane. And then I call her back, and I said, are you still pinned? She says, yes, I'm still pinned. So then I just said a couple of binding prayers. Boom, the demon let loose for right away. And then she just hangs up on me. And she says, I got to go. She hangs up. About five minutes later, she calls back and she says, well, the reason I hung up is because I hadn't been to the bathroom in five hours.

1:45:47Father Chad Ripperger:I'm like, okay, that's fair enough. And then she said, and by the way, did you send the guardian angel of your priesthood to me? And I said, yeah, how did you know? He said he appeared to me and held my hand during this whole episode. So the fact that I was able to mentally communicate that with my guardian angel is an indicator that they can hear our thoughts. And so we can start, we can ask them. The way that our guardian angels work is their involvement in our life is based on two things. One, what God tells them to do. Hey, you need to do this, this, this, or this. Or I don't want you to protect them under this circumstance because I want them to go through this test.

1:46:23Father Chad Ripperger:Or I want them to suffer this for the sake of their soul or whatever the case is. So, God communicates that to them. But the primary way that they get involved in our lives is by our asking them. So the more we ask them and the more we invoke their intersection and working in our lives, the more they become involved. And so sometimes people will say, well, my guardian angel doesn't do anything. I'm like, well, how much do you communicate with the guy? So if you communicate with him every single day, then you'll find that they'll be actually more involved in your life. Now, sometimes people will say, well, how do I know my guardian angel is even involved in my life?

1:46:59Father Chad Ripperger:And it's very simple. because they love God and they see his divine plan and relationship to us as human beings, they know that God's will is for us to live a normal life where we get to make free choices. That's what God wants for us. And that means that when our guardian angel is active, it means he's protecting us so that there's nothing trying to skew us or block us or do those things would cause our bad choices, or causing problems or difficulties in our lives. That's how you actually know. So in other words, the more natural our life seems, that's actually an indicator the more the angels are actually involved.

1:47:41Father Chad Ripperger:Sometimes we'll get indication like, oh no, that was pretty, my guardian angel had to be protecting me in that particular set of situations. But that's not too common. But whereas, and the way we know that that's how they work is that demons are the opposite. Everything they do is contrary to our nature. It tries to darken our intellect, make it harder for us to make good choices. They mess with everything in our lives. They try and mess everything up rather than just letting us live a normal life.

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1:49:35It's the only one you've got. Do you think most human beings can differentiate the difference between a communication from an angel and a demon?

1:49:50Father Chad Ripperger:No. And the reason I say that is I think there's some things that are pretty overt, and sometimes people know, okay, yeah, I think that was my guardian angel. I mean, I think that there's some on the more kind of extreme kind of levels. But I think that most people's even understanding of what is good and bad and how the angels even communicate with us and how the demons are involved in our lives, there's so much confusion out there and so little understanding of this thing that people actually believe that, you know, oh, I have these amorous feelings for this person. It must be my guardian angel.

1:50:23Father Chad Ripperger:No, demons can give amorous feelings for people. So you have to be careful about that. Whereas the demons are never going to give you inclinations to want to love God more, to be more virtuous and things like that. So there are principles of discernment about how you can kind of sort these things out, but I don't think most people know them. I had a, I think I had a encounter with an angel several years ago that I think that's what honestly led me to Christ. Yeah. And it is the only other time in my life where I really felt that there was a true battle for my soul happening in real time. Right.

1:51:04And it was a very dark part of my life. And I basically come to the, I just, I had this intuitive feeling in my heart that I was, I was, transgenderism was really bothering me at the time. and a lot of other things that were going on in the world, and I felt like maybe I was one of the only people speaking out about it. And it was just running rampant through the country. And so I had this internal battle in my head happening. And basically it was me convincing myself that maybe I'm wrong here. You know, maybe I feel like I'm the only one speaking out against it. I feel like maybe I should just surrender.

1:51:54What's the point? Why fight this? Why speak out against it? Why do any of that? Because everybody appears to be for the celebrities that I respected. Started speaking out for it. people I never would have expected speaking out about drag shows in front of toddlers, you know, and all these things. And these are people that I never would have expected to do this. And then one week later, after they announced that they're all for this, they get a massive TV show deal. And so I think I know what that is. But at the time, I didn't see that deal. And so I felt like I was surrendering my soul to evil.

1:52:45And I was just like, why even? Who cares? Just give up. And I'd gotten to that point where I was almost there. We had walked into this. My wife and I had walked into this place we were vacationing in Sedona, Arizona. And we walked through the gate guards. You know, there was armed guards there that were arming the property or guarding the property. And I'd seen, I'd been there for a week, I'd seen all these guys, a lot of them watch the show, they'd say hi, you know. And this was the last night I was there and I walked through the gate and there's this older gentleman in there. I think he said he was in Air Force Vietnam vet or something.

1:53:31And he started trying to talk to me. I didn't want to talk to him. I was, like I just told you, I was in a pretty dark place. And my wife stopped to talk to him. I had never seen this guy. I've been there for a week. I pay attention to security because of my background. I had never seen this guy at all, ever. And so I'm kind of posturing, like I don't want to talk to him, looking at him over my shoulder. My wife stops. I turn and I square up to him. He immediately read my mind from front to back. And he said, I only really remember the first thing that he said because it scared me that he was inside my head.

1:54:18And he said, you don't need to worry about all this transgenderism going on with the kids and just humans in general. That's not your battle. And then he went on and he started talking about, he said something about China. because China was really in my head because that was when the spy balloons traversed the United States. Right. From Washington to Florida or South Carolina or wherever. And he started going into that. And I just looked at this guy in the eyes and I was like, how are you inside of my head? And then a whole series of other events happened within minutes right after that. And that's basically what saved my soul and brought me to Christ.

1:55:03Right. And so what I want to ask you, is there a possibility that that was my guardian angel or maybe an archangel? Yes, it can be, actually.

1:55:15Father Chad Ripperger:Usually when you see those kinds of experiences which are not normally explained, one of the other things that you'll notice is you'll never be able to find that guy again. Nope. Yeah. So that's one of that. That's actually one of the indicators. It's a very similar story to a priest who the first pastor I was under, he had to go to anoint somebody in a building. And when he got there, this six-foot, big, burly police officer was there and said, you can't go in there, Father. And he just says, well, I have to. I've got to anoint. He says, no, you can't go in. Leave. And so the priest walks around the corner and then says, no, I got to go do it.

1:55:52Father Chad Ripperger:So he turns back around. That police officer was nowhere to be found. He asked the police department. They'd never had any of that guy on there. But while he had walked around the corner and came back, two people were shot in the building. So that it's the same kind of a thing. They'll, they sometimes intervene in such dramatic ways in order to correct our path so that we don't end up going down the wrong path. Why don't they do this more often? Why didn't they do this to the celebrity? Well, part of it has to do with... Or maybe they did. And maybe they did, yeah. I think some of it is also how much involvement do we want to get them in our lives?

1:56:35Father Chad Ripperger:I mean, if the guardian angel was a period, would they even listen to him? So it's largely a matter of, as I mentioned, there's certain things that God tells them that the guardian angel is what they need to do. But God's will for us is for us to get them involved in our lives.

1:56:57You know, I've also heard that if you're in the presence of an angel, it's terrifying would be the wrong word, but it is just an overpowering sensation that no human being could fathom. Is there any truth to that?

1:57:17Father Chad Ripperger:There might be certain experiences of people historically that would account for those kinds of things. But generally speaking, angels aren't that overt, and they tend to be much more subtle, and they're in our presence. I mean, your guardian angel is watching you all the time, and to keep watch over you. And from time to time, putting those thoughts in your mind and that type of thing to help guide you and that type of thing, so they have a lot of presence to us that's not going to be that dramatic. Do you have any other examples of human beings encountering angels? I mean, we hear, you know, miraculous things with car wrecks, and the car's been lifted off a body or that saved them.

1:58:02Father Chad Ripperger:Yeah, I mean, I've heard those kinds of stories, too. Another story that a priest friend of mine had a parishioner who, she was very elderly, and so there was a woman who was like 17 who would take her to Mass every day. But the 17-year-old didn't have her driver's license, and the 80-year-old woman did. But she was very elderly, so they went to Mass, and when they came back out, the elderly woman says, I can't, I just can't hardly move my arms. We're going to have to pray to St. Raphael to come and to drive the car for us. So the older woman literally said a prayer to St. Raphael. The next thing you know, the car starts up, turns, and then goes all the way to their house, shuts off.

1:58:49Father Chad Ripperger:There was, I'll admit that when I was younger, I was not the best kind of an individual. So one time I got pretty schnockered, right? I can see that. Yeah. So this was long before I got my act together, but I got pretty schnockered. I was at this friend of mine's house, which lived about 20 miles from where my parents lived. and um i mean i was on the verge of blacking out got in my truck started driving home then i mean all i remember is getting in the truck and telling him no i'm gonna be all right i'd start driving away the next thing i remember is pulling into my house my parents house i'm convinced that was my guardian angel because i i there's no way i mean i literally blacked out for that little distance.

1:59:40Father Chad Ripperger:Wow. Yeah. So they do, I mean, it tells you, you know, those of us who are trying to be good have had bad pasts sometimes too, but you just have to make sure that you're trying to do everything you can to get the angels, your guardian angels especially, but all the angels too, involved in your life. And there's not just our own personal guardian angels. There's guardian angels of families, towns, countries, churches, those types of things. And so corporations of a certain size, there's just God created a number of angels. And so you can also pray to the guardian angels of your children. Hey, make sure that Johnny, you know, clue Johnny in to do this, that, and everything.

2:00:20Father Chad Ripperger:And that empowers them to actually be able to go and do that more frequently. I mean, actually, I have another example that just popped in my head. I mean, several years ago, over a decade ago, I had a suicide attempt. And same thing. I was hammered, blacked out, don't remember how I got home. And reclined my, I don't remember doing this, I reclined my seat in my garage with the car running. Yeah.

2:00:52And when I woke up in the morning, I woke up in my room, my entire, I lived in a townhome. And my entire townhome smelled like gasoline or some type of fuel. Woke up, ran downstairs, saw my pistol on the couch, a pistol that I don't carry every day. So I think maybe there was two attempts, or I was thinking about doing it twice. Right. Because I would have never accessed that pistol, especially at 3 or 4 o 'clock in the morning when I've just tied on on. Right. I go out to my garage, and the door handle was a little bit like the door was a little hot to the touch. I thought, holy shit, there's a fire in there or something.

2:01:44And I opened the door, but before I opened the door, I made the decision that if I open the door, I'm probably going to get blown to smithereens because all the fresh oxygen is going to rush in. Oh, yeah. blow me away. So I made that three times, I think I made the decision to die, to kill myself. I went in the garage and I saw my Audi with the seat reclined back and the car was still running and it was so hot in there that the gas tank melted and the gas tank was leaking. It was a slow drip but it was dripping fire out of the gas tank onto the exhaust muffler whoa

2:02:39yeah i shouldn't be here yeah and that's just one example do you think that was a guardian angel was that god that intervened yeah a lot of times they'll actually do that so um yeah they'll do it

2:02:54Father Chad Ripperger:Speaking of cars, I had an experience once while I was driving. I was driving my truck to go out to the seminary to teach a course, and there was a car here and one here, and then I was behind it. And an ambulance comes on the other side, so this car right in the front just locks up the brakes and stops right in the middle. It's like a 40-mile-an-hour zone, just stops right in the middle. So the guy in front of him just manages to stop before I get it. But by the time I hit the brakes, I'm looking at the back of this guy's thing, like, I am just going to plow into the back of this guy's truck, right?

2:03:30Father Chad Ripperger:And so I had my hands on there. It was not me. Literally, all of a sudden, the wheel just goes. I go right between these posts, go right between the posts, and then literally the wheel just goes. It goes right between the posts, back down, around those two, and right back up onto the road, and I'm driving. I'm like, yeah, OK. I need hazardous duty pay. But the point being is that I think that was my guardian angel. Wow. I mean, even in more examples, I mean, I've stepped on unexploded HE high explosive ordinance in Afghanistan that stepped on it. I took a picture of it because I was like, holy shit, I should be dead.

2:04:16I just stepped on UXO HEDP round. and it didn't blow. And there's an example, my friend Eddie Penny. I mean, he had an intuitive thought injected into his brain on a target in Afghanistan. Something told him, I can't remember the exact story, but something told him, don't go over there. Two seconds later, the entire building is leveled. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

2:04:42Father Chad Ripperger:Yeah, in fact, that's part of the fact that they can put that kind of stuff into our imaginations. A lot of times we can talk about the fact that they actually can protect us spiritually, or protect us physically from these particular things that happen to us. They can also protect us spiritually by putting in our minds, you know, you really probably should avoid that particular person. I'm not suggesting that people should just be following their emotions and things like that, but the angels can actually protect us spiritually, you know, even sometimes from ourselves, protect us from the wrong kinds of people.

2:05:18Father Chad Ripperger:The other thing that I find fascinating about the angels, which is something which I actually use from time to time, is this is based upon the inversion of it. So I'll tell the inversion of it and then talk about why we know that angels do it. So demons can actually do this same mechanism, which is because they can affect our imagination, They can, the demons can actually block people by affecting their imagination from focusing on things that you would normally think that they would focus on. This is how, like in our government, you can have people who are engaging in bad behavior for decades, or even years, but just for decades.

2:05:59Father Chad Ripperger:And nobody even pays hardly any attention to it. Like, why didn't anybody notice that? And that's because the demons can actually affect that. They said Hitler had this phenomenal ability to, at the very last second, shift and change his schedule and just say, okay, I'm not going to, you know, we're going to go over here. All of a sudden, boom, they would change it. There was actually a president here in the United States in recent past, he said, had the same phenomenon, that he would just all of a sudden change his schedule out of the blue. And then they would find out there was an attempt on his life that was going to occur.

2:06:39Father Chad Ripperger:Wow. So the demons can actually influence people that way too, but they can also block our ability to focus on stuff that, you know, why hasn't anybody talked about this particular kind of fraud in the government when it's this rampant, you know, that type of thing. And so they can actually do that. Well, the same kind of mechanism, so they can keep people hidden. And so the same kind of mechanism the actual angels can do. So one of the things I often recommend to people who are really trying to really forge the good and do a lot of good in the culture and that type of thing is ask either Our Lady to send her angels down, but ask your guardian angel or the angels to keep you hidden from the wrong kinds of people.

2:07:24Father Chad Ripperger:And it has a phenomenally good effect. Because it'll keep, so what will happen is the type, And it's even a mechanism I teach. Sometimes I'll teach people who run major corporations. And they'll complain to me, like, we just keep getting the wrong kinds of people in. They just keep coming in, and they cause all this damage. I said, well, ask the gangels to keep your corporation hidden from them. But at the same time, ask them to keep it known to the people that need to know. So they can actually affect other people to where they don't, in society, I'm going to go work for Sean. And then they come in and cause you all this damage.

2:07:57Father Chad Ripperger:You can actually keep those kinds of people away. Or the types of people that could cause you harm or whatever the case is, just ask Our Lady, keep me hidden from them. I do it in relationship to certain people just to keep me hidden so that I don't have this to, and it's been, Our Lady's been very good to that, because, but the angels are the ones that kind of execute that process.

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2:09:45Do we have any idea of what their realm looks like? I mean, they seem the majority, I mean, almost all the time invisible to us. I mean, you know, so do we have any idea of what their realm, what their perspective of this realm looks like? And how do they transfer realms? How do they, are they in another dimension that coincides with this dimension? I mean, if you're driving down the road and you go, your car goes off and an invisible thing throws your car back on the road. Are they transferring from one dimension to the other in a split second? I mean, what does it look like?

2:10:30Father Chad Ripperger:Yeah, that's actually a good question. They're not in another dimension because a dimension is a physical thing and they're not physical. They don't have bodies. They can actually move physical things just with their minds. You know, so it's a form of telekinesis type of thing, but they can have it. And so, in fact, it's actually, there's a lot of theological speculation by certain theologians throughout history that originally Adam and Eve had the power of telekinesis, and then God restricted it to our bodies. Because when we make a choice, I can make a choice to think about something different, and that means that I'm using my will, which is an immaterial thing, to move my body, right?

2:11:04Father Chad Ripperger:So we do have some ability to do that. And they also think that the saints have that capacity as well to do that God-permitting. Okay, so all that being said, but basically what it means is that because they don't have any bodies, but in their minds, they see all the stuff that's actually going on. Now, their experience of seeing, see, for us, physical things have a much stronger impression on us because that's the way God just kind of designed us. Whereas with the angels, when they think of a concept, it's far more intense of an experience than we get even of a physical thing. And so they see those things with great clarity, and then their wills, they can actually move.

2:11:49Father Chad Ripperger:Then if they want to affect us in some way and God permits it, just by their wills, they can actually move it. It's like a form of telekinesis, but they can just move it, God permitting, so they can apply their will to actually move those particular things. Can they see our demons? Yes. They see everything that is going on in the spiritual world. Can the demons see them? Yes, they can. Do they communicate? Not usually. Although once in a while, they will. And it's usually a one-way form of communication, where the angels are telling the demons, knock it off, you can't do this, you can't do that.

2:12:28Father Chad Ripperger:Because even if the other angels, the lower angels know there's no point trying to communicate with them, because they're not going to listen, because they're following the will of God. The only time that that seems to be different is in cases that protract of possession. There's six stages of liberation. In the stage, stage six is actual liberation. Stage five is called the ascendancy phase. And there's a part of that phase. It's in four parts. And there's a part of that phase called the saints phase. And basically, sorry, there's the saints phase so that sometimes the saints will actually show up.

2:13:05Father Chad Ripperger:I don't see them, but the person who's possessed sees the saints, et cetera. But then there's another part called the bargaining phase. And basically, that's just before the saints phase. And the bargaining phase is the demons know they're losing. They're going to get there. They've lost. And so from time to time, the person who's possessed will actually see the interchange. And so it's very similar to the kind of like the interchange that Pope Leo saw of Satan approaching God and asking him, give me a hundred years, right? So it's a bargaining kind of a thing. So the demon will actually approach Christ because they know he's the guy that's got all the power.

2:13:50Father Chad Ripperger:He said it, all power on heaven and earth is given to me. So they know he's the guy. They can't do anything without asking. So they'll actually go to him and ask, give me this power, give me this permission to do X, Y, and Z. And he most always says no, but the person who's possessed will see that interchange. So that's about the only time that I've recognized that they'll communicate with, you know, either the saints or Christ or whatever the case is. That's when that communication goes that direction. But otherwise, it's just a one-way communication. Oh, good. I've never really realized the power of prayer until the last couple weeks when I did another episode on this, but we've been talking about it all week, my last psychedelic experience.

2:14:35And I said some of your deliverance prayers and had intuitive experiences of demons leaving my body. And some of the things we experienced yesterday here were extremely profound.

2:14:58What is the power of the rosary?

2:15:03Father Chad Ripperger:Well, historically, St. Padre Pugh used to refer to it as the weapon, especially in spiritual warfare. But it was basically, the rosary was a sacramental It was given to a particular saint in order so that those who would pray the rosary, that specific structure of prayer that God wanted people to start saying, it was given by a lady to a particular saint, was given to them as a way of, if you continually say this, then it's going to bring about the intention for which you're going to say the rosary. For example, the Battle of Lepanto. So the Turks are there, and they're basically, they're the Christians, the Catholics are outnumbered significantly in Lepanto.

2:15:48Father Chad Ripperger:And so at a certain point, Pius V orders that all the Christians start praying the rosary for the intention of the Christians to conquer the Turks. And you have to remember, it was like 10 or 20 to 1, kind of outnumbered kind of a situation. So they literally, a large part of Christendom, and even the soldiers at Lepanto started saying the rosary, asking Our Lady to invoke, or invoking her, you know, intercession to conquer the Turks. They just destroyed the Turks in the process. So the point being is that the rosary is one of those particular things that a number of the saints have said. For example, if there's a particular vice you're trying to overcome in your life, start saying the rosary every day for that intention, and pretty quick it'll go away.

2:16:37Father Chad Ripperger:And so it's one of those sacramentals that was given to the church, which has a pretty profound impact. So would you say the rosary, should there always be an intention behind it? Yeah, you want to offer it up for some intention. You know, like, for example, given your state in life, you could offer it up for the spiritual well-being of your wife, your children, or whatever, for your protection, or if there's particular problems you're dealing with in your corporation, or whatever the case is you can pray for, or they need to start ameliorating those for the rosary for that intention. What are some other tools, prayers, tools that people can use for spiritual warfare?

2:17:15I mean, we talked about, at the beginning of this, we had brought up the UFO disclosure alien narrative and the possibility that the U.S. government is trying to disprove the Bible and steal faith from people and destroy Christianity. We talked a lot about the battle in your mind and for your soul. I mean, what are things that people can do outside of voting?

2:17:48Father Chad Ripperger:Voting, yeah. As some friends of mine always say, which we've kind of seen even in this last election and when the election's going forward, is, you know, because, I mean, I think people should vote, but this idea that you're going to solve the problem by voting. So their phrase is, we just have to vote harder, right? Well, that's just not going to ultimately change, because this is a spiritual battle. The main thing for people to remember, at least in reality, so there's different categories of things that people can actually make use of, but the primary thing is prayer. And Christ actually laid out, he said it in such a way to explicate a very specific kind of principle or a mechanics of how the spiritual life actually works.

2:18:25Father Chad Ripperger:So he says, knock and it will be opened. So there's two things. You have to do something if you want the door opened. He's not normally just going to, I mean, once in a while, he might open the door, but eventually you've got to open up. You've got to do your part for the door to actually open. So the first is, knock and the door will be opened, you know, ask and you shall receive. So there's two. One, you've got to do something. But the second thing is, what you ask for is what you're going to get. So that principle, the mechanics of God is sitting there listening all the time to everything that you're doing, everything you're saying, because He sees it.

2:19:03Father Chad Ripperger:And so He's listening. And I've actually had that experience even in session where mentally I just said to God the Father, punish this demon in a way that you've never punished someone before. And He just, boom, it's just this immediate. So you know that He's sitting there listening. But what you ask for is what you're going to get. And the principle is that prayer begets what it signifies. That's part of the spiritual mechanics. That means in the spiritual warfare, what you ask for is what you're going to get. And so, an example in relationship to the UFO situation, there's a book called The Alien Delusion by Gates.

2:19:44Father Chad Ripperger:And in that book, it's a bit dated, but there's some key things in there which still even apply even today. And there's actually, you can go online and actually research this, and there's historical situations where people have been being abducted by aliens, and then they'll cry out Jesus' name. You know, Jesus, help me. That's the prayer, that these are kind of, and then all of a sudden, boom, the aliens completely disappear, right? And so that's an indicator that what they prayed for, they got. Christ helped them. It's the same thing in the spiritual warfare. So if you ask your guardian angel, hey, you know, if you, you know, communicate with him and say, hey, look, I need you to protect me, protect my children, that's what he's going to do.

2:20:27Father Chad Ripperger:If you ask Christ, or also even Our Lady, but if you ask Christ, you know, hey, you know, protect my children or protect me, or there's this particular problem, which I think is a spiritual issue, can you bind any of the demons that are involved in that? Then, you know, can you please just bind them from being able to do anything in relationship to that? So I actually put out a book called Deliverance Prayers for the Lady, which people shouldn't feel restricted to that book because a lot of times just asking Christ directly, hey, this is what I need. That's what he's waiting for, and then he'll give it to you.

2:21:00Father Chad Ripperger:And that's true about spiritual warfare. It's also true about just advancing in your own spiritual life and trying to become holier. But the book Deliverance Prayers for the Lady has some examples of, hey, this is how binding This is how if you consecrate things to Our Lady or to Our Lord, then as a result of that, they'll start protecting them and things of that sort. So that kind of gives an example of the things that they can actually do. The main thing that people have to do, though, is they have to understand how evil works. And when they see the evil in their life, they have to go and ask Christ for the specific things.

2:21:31Father Chad Ripperger:So, for example, if you have a child who's like, oh, I think I'm gay or I think I'm this, you have to start asking Christ, you know, A, give him the grace to see that that's not what the situation is, or give him the grace to not want to be transgender or whatever the case, but also Christ, block any demons that could be causing those kinds of thoughts in this kid's mind. If they start asking for the very specific things, that's when they're going to see the most effect, because what you ask for is what you're going to get. So do we talk to our angels, or do we communicate? Do we talk to them, or do we pray to them?

2:22:08Father Chad Ripperger:Because they can see it in their mind when we're talking verbally, but they can also, if we direct our thoughts to them, they can hear our thoughts. So, we can pray to Christ, God, the Holy Spirit, Virgin Mary. We talk to angels. Yeah. How do we differentiate who we pray to? Why wouldn't we just always pray to God if He is the highest? Well, it kind of has to do with this. Let me ask you this question. Let's say for the sake of argument, there was somebody who wasn't even, you didn't even know and was outside your corporation. But they really wanted for you to do a particular thing for them. Would you be more likely to listen or grant it if they just came up to you and said, hey, Sean, would you do X?

2:22:57Father Chad Ripperger:Or would they do it if your favorite employee or some of the guys, or like your wife, they went to your wife and your wife says, you know, I think that's good. I'll ask Sean and see what he thinks. When are you more likely to give it? Direct. Well, OK, that's because you are what? You're manly about the situation. OK. But most people would do what? They're not telling you. They would do the route. But if your wife, if your wife asks, you're like, now, the reason that you're not, you wouldn't do it is because the reason you like to direct is because you don't want people being obsequious going around and trying to do that type of thing.

2:23:29Father Chad Ripperger:But with God, the way it kind of works is that, yeah, he'll listen to us. So the direct stuff does work. And so I'm not telling people they shouldn't do that. But on the other hand, he set up certain saints and even our angels. He sent them up so that he wants us to go to them. Because then they can go to him and ask him. And because he likes them more, he's more likely to give it. And that's how basic intercession works. By the way, a lot of Protestants will say, well, the saints can't pray for us. It's not such a—we believe—even the Protestants believe in intercessory prayer. It's just who can do it is the question, because they pray for other people, too.

2:24:13Father Chad Ripperger:So they're interceding for other people. And so the question is, can't the saints do it? Well, there's nothing in Scripture that says that they can't.

2:24:26Let's talk a little bit more about the spiritual battle. Mm-hmm. Is the battle happening right now between angels and demons, or is this something that's coming?

2:24:38Father Chad Ripperger:So they don't fight each other direct. Well, they do kind of fight each other directly, but it's... So then after their fall, there was a short kind of period of time in which they still had... They were still in the presence of each other, the ones who had fallen and the ones who were faithful and the ones who had the beatific vision, the ones who were damper in this presence of each other. At a certain point, St. Michael, who's the guardian angel of the elect, that's his assigned task. He's the guardian angel of the elect. God gave him the power and told him, separate them so that they can't be engaging in this battle with each other anymore.

2:25:16Father Chad Ripperger:And we know about that separation because it's right in Scripture. where the guy that's damned says, hey, can you send Lazarus down to tell my brothers? And he says, well, first of all, we can't cross the abyss. There's this separation. And the only time it's ever allowed to cross that is God has to allow it. So we know that that's actually happened. So there's this kind of this actual abyss. that means that in the spiritual warfare, the angels and the saints aren't necessarily battling each other. And the reason being is because there's this thing called prelation. Prelation is the ability of one thing who's higher, a prelate, is able to command a lower one to do something.

2:26:06Father Chad Ripperger:All of the angels in heaven and all the saints in heaven have prelation in relationship to the demons. So all they have to do is command them, leave, and they, boom, it has an immediate effect. So they don't sit there and battle back and forth. It has this immediate effect. That means that the battle now is primarily in us, in this world, in our minds, primarily in our bodies, where that's where the primary field of the battle is that's actually occurring, the primary theater, as you would say. And so, basically what it is is that that means that there's two components to the spiritual warfare.

2:26:42Father Chad Ripperger:One, we have to get our guardian angels and the saints and God and more involved in our lives so that they drive them out. So there's that. But then also, we can combat them to leave as well. And so, we can actually command the demons, you know, because Christ gave us the example, Satan, get behind me. So we can tell the demons, get away from me. And because we have rights over our body, they have to respect the natural law in relationship to us. And so if we're persistent, they'll leave. Do angels kill? I read somewhere that a single angel killed 180 ,000 in one day. Yes, in the sense of there has been some history.

2:27:29Father Chad Ripperger:that my understanding is that's part of the mechanism in the Old Testament. They can, but they only do it when God tells them to do it. And it's the same kind of a thing in which you saw in the Old Testament, God telling the Jews in the Old Testament, hey, you've got to wipe out this whole group of people. And the reason being is because even the children, and to us that's just pretty jarring, But the part of the reason for that is because you have to wipe out the adults because they're doing the evil and they're going to cause evil and you're going to get sucked into the evil. The problem is that the demons that are afflicting the parents also start affecting the kids and get attached to the kids.

2:28:12Father Chad Ripperger:And so even if you let the kids leave, you're going to have a problem with it later. And so that's why it was done in the Old Testament. And I'm not suggesting that we do that as a form of warfare today. It's a different kind of a dynamic. But that's actually why. So in the past, the angels could kill entire segments of population, God permitting. Legally, we can't say drinking Storm makes you smarter and more focused. But with zero sugar, 200 milligrams of caffeine, and immunity support, you're smarter and more focused for drinking Storm. Storm. Good energy in, good energy out. Energy for life.

2:28:47You brought up Michael several times.

2:28:50Father Chad Ripperger:What about Gabriel? So Gabriel's assigned function was to announce the coming of Christ, to actually the incarnation. So that was his one assigned task. And so that's why he actually appears to Our Lady to announce this is what the, actually, so that's what he was actually created for. Outside that context, so each, not each angel, but a lot of the angels have a primary assigned task for which they were given, and then they have a secondary task that's usually connected to that. And so the other thing that Gabriel actually can do, too, is to encourage us and to get us to be more devoted to Christ.

2:29:31Father Chad Ripperger:What about Raphael? So in the Old Testament, of course, he's the one that heals. So you can invoke him for people who might have cancer, whatever the case is, ask for him to actually heal you. Are there any other significance? Well, one other thing in relationship to Raphael is also Also, Raphael sequestered. He's one of the nemeses of Asmodeus, who's the demon of homosexuality in men. He's also a demon of impurity. But in the Old Testament, he sequesters him in the desert. And so you can ask St. Raphael if you're dealing with that particular demon, but you can ask St. Raphael to be the one to help you in that regard.

2:30:14What does the final battle look like?

2:30:20Father Chad Ripperger:And basically, okay, so the structure of it is the human being's morals will implode so badly that, and there'll be wars and rumors of wars and all this other stuff to such a degree that at that point the Antichrist shows up and presents himself as the solution to human being's problems. And so, and he gains significant control over the human population. But there's a part of it that he actually doesn't. When he shows up on the scene, then there's kind of stages that actually start to happen. There's still battling that's kind of going on in a spiritual level. But then Enoch and Elijah show up.

2:31:02Father Chad Ripperger:They're put to death by the Antichrist. Then at a certain point, St. Michael shows up, but he doesn't actually, he battles with the Antichrist, but he doesn't actually put the Antichrist to death. And in the end, Christ is the one who shows up and puts the Antichrist to death. Will Gabriel come back to announce the second coming? Not directly, is my understanding. And when it's over, when we go to heaven or hell, are there levels to each? There is. What do those look like? So in hell, the level that you have in hell, which is inverted over what is it in heaven, the lower you are in hell, which basically means the more is based upon how depraved you are, how evil you actually are.

2:31:45Father Chad Ripperger:But that evil then also gives you more power in relationship to the other people in hell. So that's why even Satanists are doing a lot of evil things in order to raise their place in hell. And technically speaking, they're lowering it. But that's, so there is based upon how evil, whereas in heaven, it's how good you are, which basically means the more approximate or the more you're like God, the better you actually are as a human being, as a person, as an angel, the more whole you are, then that means that you'll have that place up in heaven. So there's different levels in heaven. What are the levels?

2:32:20Father Chad Ripperger:So, well, the levels are actually based upon primarily the sanctifying grace that's in your soul. St. Paul refers to in his letters, he refers to the fact that sanctifying grace is basically God indwelling in us, in our souls. It's a qualitative change. So how much we have Him indwelling in us determines where we're at in heaven. Now, some of that is broken down into the nine choirs of angels, so we're kind of in that. But there's also like different parts of heaven, so they call them parts. But it basically just means that there's certain people that will enjoy certain things more than others based upon the kinds of virtues that they achieved in this life or the good actions that they did in this life.

2:33:01Father Chad Ripperger:They'll just find certain things more enjoyable in heaven. All of us will have the beatific vision that is to see God face to face. And basically what that is, when you actually look at how the saints talk about the structure of this beatific vision, St. Paul talks about, I will see him face to face, and I will know myself as I am known. So you actually see God inside God's mind. You actually see Him. And so the way that works is in order for that to happen, there can't be any medium between us and Him. And so what He does is He infuses it in our minds. For us, because we can't see Him right now, even though He's here.

2:33:45Father Chad Ripperger:So what God does is He infuses us another, what they call the light of glory. He infuses us in us. He strengthens our mind so that all of a sudden everything can just peel back and we're able to see spiritual realities in what they actually are. And then, but that lumen gloria basically means that he infuses that in our mind. And at the same time, he presses his very nature on our minds. So we see him literally face to face. We see him. That means that once you see him, you can see everything he causes, everything that He's done, all the glory in His created order, all that, you're able to see it.

2:34:23Father Chad Ripperger:We can't comprehend it all at once, but we can kind of look at it from different features. And so that's what heaven is like. It's like spending all our time looking like this from a variety of different points of view. The wholer you are, the more illumined glory you get. And that means the more you understand God and the better you see His glory and His goodness. And as a result of that, the happier you actually are. So how happy you are is how holy you are and how good of a life that you led in this life. So if we both die today and go to heaven and we're at different levels, will we be able to interact?

2:34:58Father Chad Ripperger:Yeah, all those people in heaven have perfect interaction. And so let's just say you get a higher place in heaven than me. So it's a state of mind. A level of heaven is a state of mind, kind of. Kind of. Yeah, it's a state in the sense of... It's not a different location. Exactly. Exactly. So it just means that, like say you're higher in heaven, it just means you understand more and you have a higher degree of happiness than I have. I'm still perfectly happy, but there can be degrees of perfection. And so the people in heaven have, and there's no envy. When I see you enjoying the beatific vision, just to say for the sake of argument that you'd have a higher, I'll actually see how good that is and how God, and I'll take delight in seeing the fact that you have a harder place than I do.

2:35:41Father Chad Ripperger:So there's no envy. There's no envy. Do you think we will interact with relatives here on earth after we pass? Yes, we actually do. I mean, it depends. So if our relatives actually make it to heaven, then there is some interaction. I'll give you a couple of examples that I've had just recently. My father died about three years ago. In fact, next week, it'll be three years next week. And I was very, had a very strong or good relationship with my father. And in fact, he's the guy that just taught me, hey, look, real men don't do this or that, you know, type of thing. But anyways, so when he passed, because I worked as a mechanic with him twice, I've come across a mechanical thing that I couldn't solve.

2:36:32Father Chad Ripperger:So I literally just said, hey, Dan, how do I solve this problem? instantaneously. All of a sudden, boom, I get this clarity and see, all you have to do is put the wrench on this direction. Literally, like, even though I had been working trying to fork this thing out for 45 minutes, boom, the thing came right off. I've had two experiences of that with my father. So I think there is an actual interaction. There's also numerous people who talk about, like, I know one exorcist whose mother was a very holy woman. and during his sessions, he'll actually call his mother down and say, come down and be present to this.

2:37:09Father Chad Ripperger:And the person who's possessed can see the mother. So we do have interaction with them. It's just a one-way kind of a communication. We can communicate with them. They can do certain things with us. There are very, very rare circumstances where they appear to people, but I've never seen an authentic case in my life. I've just read about them.

2:37:33Do we see our direct lineage when we die? Yeah. Isn't everybody our lineage, though, if we all came from Adam and Eve? That's right. We'll know it all.

2:37:42Father Chad Ripperger:We'll see it. We'll see what? We'll actually see the entire lineage, both up and down the actual line.

2:37:56Did Christ have a guardian angel?

2:37:59Father Chad Ripperger:So that is a question which St. Thomas Aquinas asks, and then after him, it was pretty much the general belief of the theologians and saints after that. And basically, we have a guardian angel because we're in the process of trying to save our souls and get to heaven, right? And so they guard us so that we can actually get there. So, that state, the process of getting there, historically, the saints from the patristics on called that the wayfarer state, or wayfarers. We're on the process, we're on the way to getting there. So, the difference, though, is that Christ, even though He was alive in this life, He had the bigotific vision from the time of His conception according to the entire tradition of the Church.

2:38:45Father Chad Ripperger:And that's one of the reasons why we know that He had this, because of the fact that And he would actually talk about, I and the Father are ones. He could actually see it. But he would also say things like, you would see in Scripture, Christ knew their thoughts. Because he could see it. His human mind could see it in his divine nature. He could see it because God was causing them. So he could actually see those things. So we know that he had the actual beatific vision. that means that he's not a wayfarer. He's already, his human nature was already in union with God, which is the final goal. And so he wasn't on the way.

2:39:28Father Chad Ripperger:He was already at the end. And so St. Thomas says he didn't actually have a guardian angel. It didn't mean that there weren't guardian angels who assisted him at times. It didn't also mean that he wouldn't necessarily, in his divine nature, command certain angels to kind of keep certain things at bay so that he could do certain things. So, for example, you would read in the scriptures how the Jews would try and lay hold of them, and he would just walk right through them, right? And so the angels can kind of block them from being able to do that, the Jews from seizing them. So there was—and he actually mentions this to Nicodemus.

2:40:02Father Chad Ripperger:He says, you know, you're going to see the angels ascending and descending upon the Son of Man, because all of the angels in heaven knew who Christ was, and they knew that he, also being God, was who to whom they must serve. And that's also when he said, all power in heaven and earth will be given to me, so even the angels in heaven obey him and submit to him, so they serve him. And so we know that he didn't have a guardian angel, but they all served him.

2:40:34Interesting.

2:40:38Last question. What is divine mercy?

2:40:44Father Chad Ripperger:So mercy is defined as loosening the bonds of justice for the good of the individual. So in other words, somebody's done something bad. Now, justice normally being served would indicate that the person should have to suffer a proportionate evil in relationship to it. It's called the Lex Taliani, so the law of the talents, which is actually in the Old Testament. So, you know, an eye for an eye or two for the two. So the punishment has to fit the crime and it has to be proportionate. Okay. But a lot of times that's not good for people, right? And especially with us as human beings when we're stupid and we realize, oh, man, I did something really bad.

2:41:25Father Chad Ripperger:If we suffered the effects of all of our sins all the time, we would just be brutalized from the process. So what God does is he loosens the bonds of justice. In other words, he doesn't apply the full punishment of the law because it's better for our spiritual well-being in the process. And so his mercy, he grants it to us because it's a manifestation of his goodness. St. Augustine says it's the greatest manifestation of how good God is, that he actually doesn't punish us, that he actually doesn't extend the full extent of the punishment to us for that. Now, mercy is, we get mercy for two reasons.

2:42:03Father Chad Ripperger:And this we know from the Old Testament, and we also know it from the New Testament, that mercy is for the stupid. You know, you're dumb, okay, and so I'm going to cut you some slack, right? But he doesn't do it all the time. Once in a while, he'll let us kind of suffer our stupidities, so we clue in, okay? But then the other one is when we're sorry for it. And the reason his mercy, he gives it to us because we're contrite, we're sorry for what we've done is because of the fact that the sorrow, when we look at the evil that we've done, we sorrow in that evil. Whereas when we committed the sin, we were focusing on the good we were getting out of it, and that was disorder.

2:42:40Father Chad Ripperger:So when he sees that order within the soul that, look, I've done a bad thing, and that you're sorry to him because you've offended him when he sees that sorrow, then he realizes that's the order that I was looking for, that the soul is rightly ordered, and there's a result that he communicates to them his mercy. And that means he loosens the bonds of justice and they're not bound by it. And so God's mercy is for the stupid and the contrite. And so divine mercy is specifically God's mercy is, which he said in the Old Testament, look, if you're sorry in the New Testament, if you're sorry for your sins, this is what I'm going to give you.

2:43:17Father Chad Ripperger:So there's a certain sense in which it's also His mercy is His justice, because He is going to be absolutely true to His Word, which is just, that if you meet these requirements, I will loosen the bonds of justice, which is His mercy. But if you're not, then I'm not going to. So there's a justice element of it. But the point being is that His mercy is something which is He desires for us to be under His mercy, which basically means He desires Is that right over the soul for us to be sorry for the sins that we've committed? And then he basically, then at that point, he'll forgive us our sins. And then he'll also confer to us good things because of the fact that we're sorry.

2:43:57Father Chad Ripperger:What's interesting is because God's outside of time and he sees the totality of time all the time and all at once. So he sees what you've done in the past and he sees what you're doing now. That means that even though he has loosened the bonds of justice with you in the order of time, for all eternity, that is, and is eternal now, he will see the offense that you committed. This is why Christ dying upon the cross has an infinite effect, because it extends for the rest of eternity. That's why it says in Psalms, his mercy endures forever, even though he looked your offense for all eternity. Nevertheless, he also sees your contriteness, and then you place yourself under his mercy, and then that's what he lets you live under, even though he sees it for all eternity.

2:44:49Father Chad Ripperger:So he's literally merciful, even to the people in heaven. The only ones who didn't get to enjoy his actual mercy are the angels who were always faithful, because they never committed anything evil. But the rest of us, his mercy endures forever. Beautiful. Well, Father, I feel really good about this interview. Good. Would you like to end it in a prayer? Sure. In the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, amen. Jesus, we give you thanks for everything that you have given us during this and for all the knowledge that you have communicated through divine revelation, which has come down through us through the tradition of the Catholic Church and that we have actually been able to make use of.

2:45:30Father Chad Ripperger:We also thank you for all of the graces that you have given to all of us, and we ask you to continue to give us the grace so that we may be faithful to your call to become holier, but also that we may be willing to follow the truth regardless of the personal cost. And in that, then, God, we will finally arrive at you, whose truth itself. In the name of the Father and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, amen. Amen. All right. Well, Father, I hope the next time I see us fly fishing on the river. I hope so, too. All right. God bless you. God bless.

2:46:34if you're feeling extra generous, head to Apple Podcasts and Spotify and leave us a review. What if I told you you only have 12 hours to legally have sex?

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