The News: What is Happening?
Victor Marx says he has encountered demons.
In one account, Marx wrote that a captured man he described as an Islamic State commander physically transformed while Marx was praying with him in Iraq in 2017. Marx said the man’s face hardened, muscles bulged from his forehead and his ears became pointed. He also wrote that someone photographed the transformation from beginning to end.
In another account, Marx described praying over a teenage girl in a youth prison who began growling and making what he called otherworldly noises. He described her as a “demon” and a “creature,” and said he smelled sulfur and rotten eggs during the encounter. Talking Points Memo reported that Marx has also described the girl as becoming “reptilian.”
Marx is not merely a preacher recounting supernatural experiences. He is the Republican nominee for governor of Colorado.
A Marine Corps veteran and founder of the faith-based humanitarian organization All Things Possible Ministries, Marx defeated three other candidates in Colorado’s June 30 Republican primary. The race was close enough that the Associated Press did not call it until July 9. He will face Democratic Attorney General Phil Weiser in November.
His candidacy has brought new scrutiny to a series of extraordinary claims he has made about his own life, involving martial-arts battles, dangerous missions overseas, large-scale rescues and episodes in which he has suggested people may have died because of his actions.
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