From Witchcraft to Jesus - Testimony

From Witchcraft to Christ

Ronald Harnage

I had been in the occult for over 21 years when I found Christ. I was raised in the Baptist church, but things began happening in my life that they had no accountable explanation for. I grew up in a home that was periodically disturbed by what I believed were ghosts or spirits at least. I was told this was all a figment of my imagination and that I must be having mental problems. The fact that other people witnessed this activity at my home did not seem to phase the church.

I was told that demons were all in hell since Christ came, that there are no such things as ghosts, and there aren’t, but they included any paranormal activity as non-existent. So I began to question how the world must really be. I knew there must be some explanation and what began really as a skeptical approach at disproving the supernatural lead into a deeper and deeper involvement in the occult. It appeared to me to be the only means to explore and uncover any existence of God or anything supernatural.

I had an uncle that was into Native American Shamanism, and through him I became interested and began practicing spirit guide techniques. I began to explore that at the age of 12. At 13 I was introduced to a sorcerer and demonologist named Randy Simpson and was given access to his occult library. With this I began to progress into astral projection, meditative states and occult herbalism. At the age of 20 I joined Gavin and Yvonne Frost’s School of Wicca and completed the initiate’s course with them and was invited to join their coven, but decided to remain on my own.

I enjoyed going to parties and entertaining people with supernatural feats, and proving to skeptics that the supernatural was real,(on one occasion this backfired and a guy got saved,lol!). I did this by using trance states, and would reach into fires and grab hot coals that I would squeeze in my palms and then show everyone I was not burned, or walk barefoot on broken glass and sit down in it uncut. I would use psychic abilities to tell people very detailed events from their past. Sometimes I used telekinesis and on one occasion I levitated across a graveyard.

One night at a party I was asked to help a young Wiccan that was having some problems with a coven of Satanists. This opened a door where I became involved in helping people who were having problems related to black magic and poltergeist phenomena. I also became involved with the Atlanta Area Rainbow Family about this time and ran sweat lodge ceremonies on occasion. I taught guided meditation, working with spirit guides, and psychic self-defense, and had begun healing people of leukemia and cancer with occult herbalism.

In 1997 I met Dr. Lee Francis, a Native American from the Laguna Pueblo tribe. He had been involved with the Edgar Cayce Foundation and had also authored a book on empathic abilities. We became close friends and as he was shifting from teaching at the University of Missouri to the University Of New Mexico he invited me to come and be on his staff at the Native America Studies Department in a position sponsored by his organization, Wordcraft Circle of Native American Writers and Storytellers. While there I worked as a Human rights activist and founded the Coalition of Intertribal Native Students. We held the first Native protest since ’72 to stop the university from closing down the Native American Studies Dept. It was a 3 day prayer vigil that gained national attention. We hosted tribal shamans from all over the west.

I did, however, as misguided as I was, talk to God a lot. He was after me for years. Unfortunately I didn’t listen to Him much, but I could hear Him. I remember distinctly on one occasion He asked me, “Have you considered my Son Jesus?”, and I declined telling Him that I didn’t mind Jesus at all, but it was His people that I had problems with, lol. So for the longest time I continued in this mind frame. I know now that the devil consistently sent religious people into my life to reinforce the belief that Christianity was for shallow people and that there was nothing supernatural about it, but my how things have changed now! LOL.

I had my life pretty much set as to what I was going to do and planned on being a human rights representative at the United Nations. My last year at the university I went through a horrendous set of tragedies and I took some time off and went home to visit my parents. My mother had gotten saved three years prior and was now a Pentecostal Sunday School teacher.

Even though I was heavily involved in the occult, I didn’t have any problem with this. I wasn’t a Satanist and was basically a peace loving person and wasn’t prejudiced toward people,(even Christians, lol). Besides, I thought it would be a mark of maturity if I could hang out with Christians and act loving and accepting,(my! how big of me, lol). I felt that if it made my mother happy then it was alright, but it just wasn’t for me.

A Pentecostal tent revival came to town while I was there. My mother was all worked up to go and wanted my step-father and I to go with her. She was relentless about it. I think my step-father and I finally agreed so that she would leave us alone and let us watch t.v.lol. So we went the night it started.

We got there and there was a lot of singing and praying. The pastor began to preach and I think my mind wandered off somewhere, but the next thing I knew he had called someone up to pray over them for healing. This got my attention. I was curious to see what was going to happen, because I was a white witch, meaning I used witchcraft and medicinal herbs to cure people.

He began praying over a lady that had come forward. She had cancer.  He prayed for her and she began to jump up and down shouting that she was healed and praising God. I was thinking this has to be some kind of fake. Maybe he just paid her to do that.  I knew it took me several days to heal someone with cancer.

He kept calling more and more people up there and I continued seeing the same results. Excited people were saying they were healed and praising God. I came back night after night. I had to figure this thing out! lol. Something was going on! God had gotten my attention! After a few nights it became obvious it was no con game. No little tent preacher could afford to pay all those people to act like they were getting healed, lol.

So, I began to take an interest in what he was preaching. The supernatural power got my attention, but it was the preaching on the love of Christ,(and not damnation I might add), that began to change my mind. Preaching on hell wouldn’t have done me any good. I had heard that before. I had lived in hell all my life. I wasn’t scared of hell. I saw hell every day. I knew what demons were. Hell was just more of the same to me.  I knew that my life was cursed. I had been living with a sense of doom for some time and I felt that there was no escape.  It had really hit home over the past year.  The pastor preaching on sin and the condition of the lost seemed to confirm what I was already struggling with but hearing that God really loved me and that He sent His only Son to demonstrate His love for us, now that was something almost too good to hope in, and I liked that idea!

So, one night I came home from the tent revival and I was looking at the bible in my room. I was laying there reading the book of Matthew. I really wasn’t sure about this Jesus guy yet. I considered my self a man of peace and the occult had TAUGHT ME SOME VERY LIBERAL IDEAS ABOUT LOVE AND TOLERANCE, and some of the things Jesus had to say just didn’t sit right with my ideas about peace and love. I thought I would bring this up because I see so much of the exact same thinking in the church, however, I digress, lol.

I hadn’t made my mind up, but I finished reading for the night and turned my light off and went to bed. I was laying there trying to go to sleep when I heard the closet door open. Then the lamp next to my bed suddenly crashed to the floor. The window blind began beating against the window. I knew what it was. I knew it was demons trying to scare me. I was lying there deciding what to do, and pretending to ignore it. I really did not like demons. I came to the conclusion that if they did not like what I was considering, then it must really be a good idea!

I got up and turned the light on and began flipping through the bible. The activity had not stopped at all, if anything it was more dramatic. The closet door was opening and closing, the window blind still banging against the wall and I was hearing scratching and hissing. I was beginning to feel a little panic, I knew from people witnessing to me before that there was some type of prayer of salvation. I was hurriedly flipping through the bible to find it. After a few minutes of this I was becoming frustrated. It was too big of a book! lol. I didn’t know where it was, and of course like any skillful witch, I knew it had to be done the right way, with the right spell, lol. I also knew though, that sometimes with the supernatural you just had to improvise.

So I gave up trying to find it in the big book and began calling on the Lord. I asked Him to save me and forgive my sins. I told Him that I believed Him that He had raised His Son from the dead. I really had to struggle with this a few minutes. I at first had a hard time believing God raised anyone from the dead. I knew if I didn’t get past this then this prayer wasn’t going to be real,it wasn’t going to be accepted,and wasn’t going to work. It was like something powerfully intense was bearing down on me at that moment screaming “:No! You can’t honestly believe this!” I felt utterly hopeless at this moment as I looked at the window blind banging maniacally against the window.I asked God to help me and for some moments I struggled to find some answer, but then a thought pierced through my mind,bright and crystal clear and i heard “So,with everything you’ve seen me do these past two weeks you think I can’t also raise the dead? There is no difference to Me in healing the sick or raising the dead,one is no harder than the other. I am God,I can do anything! I had to admit that did make perfect sense and at that moment the struggle seemed to cease.I believed and I asked Jesus to be my Lord and Savior and from that night forward I was a changed man! The next night I returned to the revival and publicly confessed Jesus as my Lord and Savior. I was Baptized in the Holy Ghost and felt the whole world lift from off my shoulders! My long search for a real and powerful God was over.

I experienced such an oppressive attack from the enemy after that. It was several weeks before I believed without a doubt that I was saved. The enemy put up quite a fuss about it. They of course hate seeing a lost soul get saved,but when they lose one of their own servants they get really upset about it, lol! I was under quite an attack on my mind for a while. I really had to fight to get out from under it, but all that fighting taught me how to pray and seek His presence!

I daily thank my God for coming into my life and rescuing me from something that very few people escape from, and now I help others, ministering to all walks of life, but I have also been used by the Lord to lead many out of witchcraft, so many that I have lost count now. It gives me special joy to lead a lost soul to the Lord, but even more so a witch, because I know how deceptive it is and how few escape. Perhaps it was one of life’s strange ironies or more likely, I think the poetic justice of God, but a poltergeist caused me to wander into the occult, and then a poltergeist caused me to find Jesus…

This all came about I believe because I had a praying mother. I see so many Christian parents that have just given up on their children because they are so far gone, but I believe I am living proof that you can’t be so far gone that God is unable to get a hold of you. I also think on that Great Day there are going to be a lot of praying parents up in the front of the line!

I also have relatives and a few old friends that can attest that what I have shared with you is true. They remember how I was before I became a Christian and also were witnesses to a lot of what I have described.