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“And when the thousand years are ended, Satan will be released from his prison.”– Revelation 20:7
It can be difficult to imagine how the stench of 2020 could get any more rotten than it already is. We’ve all seen our fair share of the Fartenstein monster over the past several months, inspiring the most desperate of society’s pop-culture tailpipe suckers to drop to their knees and plead to their respective gods to bring on the new year. Haaaa! These Walmart shoppers and social media junkies actually believe that some manmade calendar created for the sole purpose of measuring time can actually save us from it. It’s sheer lunacy. What they haven’t stopped to consider is that life could always get worse before it gets better. That’s right, recovery is not always a given, and the fact that our fate mostly lies in the hands of political peons certainly doesn’t offer any assurance that we’re going to get better anytime soon. Nope. There’s always room for more pain and suffering, am I right? We could be invaded by herpes infected snakes, aliens could start sex trafficking us to duj yIja’choH (planet of the seven dicks), or, if Catholic exorcists are right, the Devil himself could use COVID to possess all of humanity with puke-spewing demons.
Wait, what?
According to Father Ronaldo Alblong, head padre at St. Vincent Ferrer in Barangay Camanjac in the Philippines, the pandemic is a breeding ground for diabolo attacks. The priest asserts that it’s times like these which make it easier for the Devil to slip in and start wreaking havoc on a person’s eternal soul. So, if your old lady has been acting a little moody lately, there might be something dark and sinister to blame. Or maybe she’s just miffed that you stayed up half the night getting drunk with your college buddies. Nevertheless, Alblong claims the effects of the virus – both physical stress and other weaknesses — make more of the population susceptible to demonic possession. He warns that we should do our best to stay healthy or else, Welcome to Hell.
If you lived here, you’d be home now.
“The devil is always around 24/7, and rides on to events in our surroundings, such as our problems, trials, illnesses, pain, and crisis,” he told the news source. “In fact, at the start of the pandemic, the exorcists in Manila came out with a deliverance prayer and they called me and asked me to join them to curb the effects of the devil’s actions, especially at a time of confusion.”
But not all demonic possessions are like they show in the movies. If they were, they might be easier to pinpoint and deal with accordingly. But no, the Devil is a sneaky little bastard who religious zealots believe uses human disaccord, like mental illness, to mask the markings of his deviousness. When someone goes stark-raving mad, scientific minds often chalk it up to good old fashioned lousy genetics or maybe a chemical imbalance. This is the reason everyone in the Midwest is all of a sudden bi-polar. But Ablong claims that some of this rabidness among humankind, the steady slipping away of the mind, is really just a demon setting up shop. Even if someone hasn’t gone full-blown Cuckoo’s Nest, but negative thoughts seem to invade their brain more often than not, the priest declares that this could be the first phase of demonic possession.
And hocus pocus like Ouija boards and all of that other witchy, voodoolicious stuff that folks like to mess with around the Halloween season, well, Ablong says that’s only making things worse.
“The devil does not come unless he is invited,” he said. “He only comes into our lives if we invite him and usually, it is through occultism, and this will give them the legal right to operate in your life.”
Um, legal right?
Listen, before you go dousing yourself in holy water because you’ve been a little depressed lately and might have even thought for a split second about jumping off the roof of a tall building, pump the brakes. I’m going to let you in on a little secret: We all have! You’re not possessed by demons. You’re flipping out, just like the rest of us. This pandemic has been nothing short of catastrophic for most. People have suffered tremendous financial loss because of this thing, and now we’re all secretly afraid that we will be one of the few that actually gets snuffed out by it. To make matters worse, there is no foreseeable end to the madness in sight. So stop thinking that 2021 is going to offer some reprieve. It probably won’t, at least not at the beginning.
Religious nuts want the population to think there are two sides trying to control the universe: good versus evil. Of course, the good is run by a legion of squeaky-clean white-winged angels that serve at the hand of the creator of the universe. And if you’re obedient little boys and girls and wallow in the mundane, you will join the team when you die and reside for all of eternity in a paradise, like Costa Rica. Meanwhile, evil is a similar ethos, only it is controlled by a former angel who decided it would be a lot more fun to torture humanity as a vicious, red, pointy-tailed ghoul who listens to heavy metal. However, follow his insidious path, and you’ll be swimming in pools of fire unlike any seen since Los Angeles burned earlier this year. But there aren’t two sides at work, folks, only one. What is it? Depends on who you ask. It’s probably the aliens. Whatever it might be, rest assured it hates us all. So, we’re not about to let some Bible-thumping minister of the church con us into thinking that our souls are being grudge-humped and devoured by some pesky demon who rode in on COVID-666. We’re all in the same boat, pal!
It’s called doomed.