For many of us, our perception of witches started with television and movies. Take The Wizard of Oz, for example, ‘Are you a good witch or a bad witch?’ Only bad witches are ugly. Or Snow White, where the queen turns herself into a witch. That’s what we were introduced to as children. We learned to associate witchcraft with fantasy, crystals, or tarot cards like on the tv show Charmed. However full-blown witches and warlocks are hiding in plain sight, right within the church. You also have those who operate under a spirit of witchcraft through manipulation and control and the crazy thing is that they use scripture to do it.

2 Corinthians 11:13-15

For such are false apostles, deceitful workers, transforming themselves into the apostles of Christ. And no marvel; for Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light. Therefore it is no great thing if his ministers also be transformed as the ministers of righteousness; whose end shall be according to their works.

They don’t show up looking like wolves. The Word tells us that they show up in sheep’s clothing. That is also why God told us to test the spirit, to be inspectors of fruit. They can sing, prophecy, preach repentance, they just can’t live right. Look at how those men of Pharaoh tried to imitate Moses, however God allowed those serpents to be devoured by Moses’ serpents. I always share from personal experience. This isn’t something I heard, it’s what I’ve witnessed, one too many times. It took God to open my eyes and give me understanding. This is about to get really personal. I’ve struggled, really contemplated writing this for over a year. 

My first encounter with a warlock was as a child. I was around seven or younger, too young to understand what was happening. It actually takes my mom talking about that pastor-prophet and the things he did. I do remember one moment clearly where he made a woman laugh like a hyena in church. He performed miracles, signs, and wonders or so they thought.  He performed fake miracles, he made the podium walk, he made the drum cymbals shake. He even had an illusion in the sky that the moon was upside down. People believed in him. He even said that he could show them more but they would say that he was working witchcraft. Well he actually was a warlock and he told on himself.

My second encounter came at age 20. I had never heard of this bishop before, but my grandmother and one of my aunts started going to his church. I visited with them a few times. He preached the Bible, he could prophesy, and honestly, I thought he was solid. Some time passed, and then it came out that he had made a sexual advance toward my aunt. Before that happened, he had told my grandmother that her daughter, my aunt, had been over there talking bad about the family and begging for money. So when my aunt came forward saying he made a pass at her and that he was a warlock, no one believed her, not even her own mother. I know some of y’all are probably thinking, “How could you not believe her?” Listen, it's a long story, and you’d have to know the family history to fully understand. Even though it was my grandma who told us what had happened, it wasn’t until my mom spoke with my aunt herself that she believed her. I remember my mom saying, “See, Mama didn’t tell it all, he just beat her to the punch.” Still, I didn’t really connect it to witchcraft at the time. But my mom said there was just something about him she couldn’t put her finger on.

I continued to go to his church for a while. He preached repentance, and it all sounded right. One day, my cousin came with me,  my aunt’s daughter. During the service, my cousin passed me a note saying she was scared. And here I go with my dumb self, writing back, “He’s preaching out the Bible. Everything he’s saying is in the Bible.” I just didn't know how naïve I was at the time.  I didn’t realize that the enemy knows the Word too. Now, I told you my aunt said he was a warlock. She mentioned things he was saying that were off-the-wall. Things I had never personally heard him say. But over the years, there were situations that came up with him and our family. My other aunt went to him for counseling. She was having trouble in her marriage. She had also been warning my Grandmother about the things that she had heard about the bishop. She also knew that he had made a pass at my Aunt. When my mom questioned her about it, asking, “Why would you go to him knowing what he is?” Her response was, “I was trying to save my marriage!” Honestly though it just made things worse but that’s her story to tell. However the marriage ended. Even my uncle started attending this church. Which is huge because I had never known my uncle to go to church. 

I had started slacking off, only going every now and then. But it wasn’t until I was 27 that I realized: This man is really a warlock. I had a personal conversation with my grandmother about a decision I was making. She was in full agreement with me. Then if I remember correctly, she told me the bishop wanted me to call him. I didn’t think much of it, so I did. He was against my decision which was fine. I wasn’t asking for permission. I was going to do what I felt led to do. His words were “I don’t see that, I just don’t see that”. The whole time I was thinking to myself, I don’t care what you see, that's where I’m moving to. But after that call, probably an hour later, I talked to my grandmother again and her entire conversation had changed. Now she was against my decision too.

I don’t know for sure if he called her after we spoke, or if he was just speaking through her, but something shifted. That was the moment I knew for sure: he’s a warlock. You might think I’m exaggerating, but it was like night and day. I still followed through with my decision and moved away. I don’t know why he thought that he had any influence on what I did but once he saw that I wasn’t listening to him. He tried to use my grandmother to sway my decision and he was wrong again. He kept sowing discord in the family, and even now, I’m trying to be considerate about how much I share.

Some years later he started appearing in my dreams. It went on for about three years. By then, I was saved and Holy Ghost filled myself. I had been praying for God to keep him out of my dreams. One night, God allowed me to speak directly to him in the dream. He came to me again, and I told him: “Stay out of my dreams. And if you don’t, I’m going to tell Grandma to tell you to stay out of my dreams and expose you for what you are.” And after that he stopped. I know it sounds far-fetched, but I promise you I’m telling the truth. People think these kinds of things only happen in movies but astral projection is very real. As I’ve said before, this man had been sowing discord in our family for years. He was also sending spirits to my mother. She was the only one who never entertained him. No matter what he did or what we told my grandmother, she always defended him. Even when he publicly humiliated her.

If you know the bishop, then you know he’s extremely particular down to the finest detail. They were having a program at the church, and he made my grandmother and another woman look like they were stupid as if they didn’t know how the program was supposed to go. Like they didn’t know how to do anything right. This wasn’t the first time they held a program they had been doing it for years. And please don’t think we were the only family affected by him. We weren’t. I may be sharing our side, but there are other families and friendships that were torn apart too. It’s just not my place to tell their stories. But I will say this: my grandmother didn’t just turn on us. She turned on one of her friends, someone she knew long before she ever knew him that also joined his church. She even turned on his own wife, yep the “first lady” and his grandson when he got old enough to speak out about who the bishop really was. That’s how deep the deception went. It was never the bishop. It was always everyone else.

For me, everything came to a head a few years ago. Eleven years later, my grandmother is still a member of his church. By then, my uncle had suffered multiple strokes and had been given a prognosis of 0 to 6 months to live. We don’t even know when that timeframe started. His wife had been neglecting and mistreating him and at this time he was in the hospital. God led my mother to step in. The sisters and my grandmother had a meeting and all agreed to help. My grandmother went to the hospital with my mother, advocated for him, and fought against his wife to bring him back home with her. He moved in with my grandmother and needed 24/7 care. He wasn’t supposed to be left alone at all. My mother was running herself ragged back and forth to my grandmother’s house. My sister who was nine months pregnant was also helping however she could. Changing him, feeding him, doing whatever needed to be done. His money was handled by my grandmother and was meant to be used for his care, bills, and whatever was left was to go toward burial costs. My mom was even supposed to have neck surgery but put it off just to help care for him. My grandmother, being in her 70s, could really only sit with him. If my mom had already spent most of the day there, she’d still come back in the evening to help if he needed to be changed. It didn’t matter what time of the night it was, my mom was going. He was a big man and my grandma couldn’t manage it.

The bishop had church on Tuesdays, Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays. My grandmother was a missionary only in title and the church secretary. She refused to give up her Tuesday and Friday services even with everything going on. Mind you, she was driving 40 minutes each way, even after my mom had been there all day. Both of my aunts lived over an hour away and, truth be told, they didn’t help even though they had promised they would. One Tuesday night, my grandmother was on her head to get to church and called my mom, talking and acting very ugly. After everything my mom had done, including being eaten up by bedbugs in that house (and yes, that’s a whole other story).

The bishop didn’t like that my grandmother had been missing church and gave her position to someone else. And what did she do? She told my mom she was going to church even if she had to leave my uncle alone which she had done before. I was the one who caught her. My mom was crying, so upset. So I told her I would go sit with him that night, trying to keep the peace. I told my grandmother I’d come over on Tuesdays and Fridays so she could still go to church. But we had words about it. Her son, my uncle,  was on his sickbed. And all she cared about was not missing church and pleasing the bishop. I told her exactly what he was. How he had been coming to me in my dreams. How he made a pass at her daughter. And yet, she continued to defend him. Her response? “Your dad made a pass at her.” And I told her, “But he wasn’t a preacher. He wasn’t a pastor.” I let it slide that night. You might be wondering why that was relevant and I’ll tell you why. My biological father sexually abused me as a child. It took me years to heal and be delivered from that trauma. There was a time when if his name came up, I’d get angry and my grandmother knew that. When I couldn’t talk to my mom about it, I confided in her. She knew the pain. She knew the weight. Still thank God for deliverance because I didn’t react the way that I used to.

That Friday night, I came back over to sit with my uncle. It was late, maybe around 11 when my grandmother got back home. And the spirit she came in with was off. Angry. Hostile. I told her that it wasn’t doing her any good to be going to that church. She said “ you don’t know what it’s doing for me” I simply said “but Grandma look at how you’re acting”. She was saying all kind of things I couldn’t believe all in defense of that man. I was trying to talk some sense into her letting her know that she’s going to need her family even when the bishop is no longer around. She said she didn’t need any of her family. She didn’t care that I was her granddaughter. I’m telling y’all if my jaw could’ve hit the floor, it would’ve. All I could say was, “Grandma?” I told her: “He’s got you hoo doo’d, voo doo’d” And then I said, “You had the nerve to throw my dad in my face.” And her exact words were: “Yes, I did.” Right then, I knew she was trying to hurt me with it. The very one I had trusted with my pain, my struggles, was now trying to use them against me. She even said my mom had “just put” my uncle in her house  like it wasn’t her idea too. Listen, I’ve never disrespected my grandmother. But that night, I called her a liar to her face. I told her, “You went to the hospital with Mom. You helped bring him here. And when his wife came back to try and take him home, what did you do? “You’re happy here ain’t you, you’re not going anywhere are you” That’s exactly what you were asking Uncle G. You told his wife no. At that point, I was done. I was angry. Hurt. Grieving. Grieving the grandmother I thought I had but I was done. All I could think about was after everything we had done for her. When she didn’t have food, when her car broke down, when she couldn’t pay bills. It was always my family: my mom, my stepdad, my sister, and me. When no one else was thinking about her. I had literally just paid off a loan for her. Her loan, not my loan. I was devastated. Heartbroken. There’s more she said that night, but we’d be here for a while.

What I will say is this: The reason she could suddenly say she “didn’t need any of us” was because she had been stealing my uncle’s money. Yep you heard me right, and so much of it was unaccounted for because she was withdrawing cash. When my Mom had confronted her about it she said that all that was left was $300. That money was supposed to be saved to go towards burial & all you had of his money was $300. Sometime later, my mom and stepdad were at the grocery store. The bishop came on the radio. As she was going into the store she asked my stepdad to turn it off. When she came back out, he told her, “Your mama gave your brother’s money to that man.” The very same things my aunt said years ago that the bishop would say were the exact same things my stepdad heard on the radio. “What do you need with all that money?”. Bring your money to the church. You don’t know what to do with it anyway.” Apparently, they had sent in the wrong recording. And after that, the bishop was no longer on the radio. I wish that I could say that that was the end of the story for my grandmother and the bishop.

I know some of this might be hard to believe but I lived it. I watched it happen with my own eyes. This wasn’t fantasy. It wasn’t a movie. This was real-life witchcraft right in the church, right in the family, right in plain sight. We think witchcraft is just potions and crystals. But the most dangerous kind is the kind hiding behind a pulpit controlling people, twisting scripture, speaking word curses and operating in familiar spirits while claiming to be sent by God.

In Part 2, we’re going to talk about what that looks like not only in the church but as well as on social media. Because if you think witchcraft only lives in secret rooms, think again. Sometimes it goes viral.

Galatians 5:19-21

Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these; Adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, Idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, envyings, murders, drunkenness, revellings, and such like: of the which I tell you before, as I have also told you in time past, that they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God.