7-Day Voodoo Blood Ritual in Haiti SHATTERED by the Power of Jesus
My heart was beating out of my chest as my team and I descended deep inside the voodoo caves.
We were all very aware that death could be waiting for us as we obeyed Jesus’s command to take the Gospel to every creature according to Mark 16:15. One year before our arrival, we learned of the wickedness that was taking place in this region of Haiti. The news of possible human sacrifice provoked us to take action.
One of our principal keys in church-planting is to find the darkest places and take the Gospel to these locations as a demonstration that Jesus was actually victorious over all things. As we began to pray into the strategy, we contacted one of our apostolic team leaders and asked him to go scout the land and discover if God had prepared a person of peace to receive us. His testimony was shared with us:
As I prayed about going to the area, an angel came and stood before me. The angel showed me a picture of a man named Ernesto. The angel said, “Go and find Ernesto.” As I arrived in the territory of 40,000 people, I began to inquire of anyone named Ernesto. After several days, I discovered two people, but they were not the one the angel had revealed to me. I arrived at the last person’s home, and the daughter of Ernesto told me her father, the third Ernesto, would be home soon. I sat outside waiting for his arrival. Finally, I saw him walking down the dirt road. I declared to him with excitement, “You are the man the angel told me to find! He said that you would receive us in the territory.” Immediately, in fear, Ernesto fell to his knees declaring, “This cannot be me as I am only a lukewarm Christian!”
Ernesto repented and returned to the Lord that day. He also connected our leader to several others in the body of Christ, which opened the door for our ministry to begin working in the area.
Over the weeks ahead, my team and I visited the area and conducted a small meeting with local Christian leaders, pastors, teachers, and evangelists in the area. I remember the day of this particular training. I stood in front of men and women who loved God and had held on to what little ground the Gospel had taken, but they were beat up and spiritually weak by the continual onslaught of demonic attacks. I began to encourage them and thank them for their faithfulness to Christ and to each other. I further shared with them that our gift to the body of Christ was of the apostolic and prophetic nature. God was using us to bring forth vision and strategy to the local, existing churches there because He wanted this territory for His name.
It was a great day when they received us with humility. Over the next days, we trained them in the supernatural and in church-planting from house to house. We also shared how it was our desire to return in one year and conduct a small crusade in direct confrontation of the town’s annual, seven-day voodoo ceremony. Voodoo priests and practitioners would come from all over the world to participate in this wicked festival. Voodoo is the predominant religion of Haiti, which is a mixture of African animistic worship and Catholicism; it is very demonic. These local leaders were elated with this plan!
During these initial meetings, there was an 86-year-old pastor whom we will call Joel. Pastor Joel began to share about voodoo mountain, a place that had been given over to darkness. This mountain contained a large cave system that went down several hundred feet before finally opening up to what we called the ceremonial room. This was the place where they offered animal, and some even said human, sacrifices to the evil spirits of voodoo. As Joel continued to share with us, I could feel his broken heart over the people who were in terrible fear and bondage to the dark demons that were worshiped in his homeland. “In my lifetime,” declared Pastor Joel, “the Gospel has never been preached on this mountain.”
Those words penetrated my heart. This man of God, as wonderful as he was, had tolerated this darkness towering over both his life and also the lives of the hundreds of families in that area. What was “normal” for Pastor Joel was actually not normal nor acceptable. The Gospel demands confrontation with these evil powers. This led us into a strategy: to carry the Gospel covertly for the next year from house to house and establish new house churches in connection with the more traditional churches of the region. Thirty-three new churches were birthed over that next year! Great hope and faith began to fill the people of God as they assembled and began carrying intercession for their homeland.
Finally, the time had arrived for me and a small team to lead a crusade in the middle of the city and proclaim Jesus inside the voodoo caves on the mountain! The town was filled with a multitude of practitioners of voodoo from Haiti and even other nations. You could feel the tension in the air and warfare in the spirit as we proclaimed the Gospel of Jesus and called people to repentance. I stood in front of nearly 4,500 people and taught them on personal, family, village, regional, and national levels of deliverance. That night, many people received Jesus as Savior and Lord, repenting of their sins, turning away from voodoo, and turning to Christ.
The next morning was the day of ascending voodoo mountain for the purpose of preaching the Gospel to all who were inside the caves and offering sacrifices to demons. I was reminded of Paul, Elijah, Gideon, and others who had walked into wicked places and risked their lives because they loved Jesus and people. As we got closer to the mouth of the cave, we could hear the sounds of drums and demon worship coming from the ceremonial room deep inside the cave. With sweat pouring down my face, my heart was pounding with the realization that my team and I might be martyred for the sake of the Gospel. After a year of fasting, preparing, and planting churches across this remote region of Haiti, it all came down to this moment of confrontation.
Only hours before, I had met with my team and released them from any obligation of going into this voodoo cave to preach the Gospel. The sincerity of the moment was gripping as we were confronting our own personal fears and the intimidating demons behind the wicked voodoo system. Compelled by the love of Jesus, we descended deeper into the cave system and approached the beating rhythms of the voodoo drums.
We finally entered the ceremonial room; it was cold, dark, and musty with only the light of candles and a few rays of sunshine coming through a hole in the top of the mountain. We could see a bloody cow that had just been sacrificed to these evil gods. Inside the room were approximately 25 people plus eight voodoo priests holding their knives, which they had just used to sacrifice the cow on the altar. My team and I began to share the Gospel. Being overtaken by the Holy Spirit, I jumped up on top of the bloody cow and began to proclaim the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus. During this time, the voodoo priests lifted their hands while holding their daggers and backed up against the wall, as if in full surrender to the angelic hosts that were with us in that moment.
Conviction began to come upon those in the room as Jesus was exalted high above all other rulers and powers. Two ladies looked up at me, and through the beautiful Creole language said, “We received Jesus today.” They stood to their feet and started removing what they called their “devil clothing.” This was a part of voodoo rituals with different colored garments representing different demons that they worshiped. It was a beautiful sight to see as they came to know Jesus as their Lord and Savior in that very moment! As the Gospel went forth in demonstrative power, many evil “gods” were confronted, and the power of sin was broken! Everyone in the cave system came to know Jesus that day! After several hours in the cave, sharing the Gospel and witnessing great victory, these new believers joined my team and began to sing “Victory in Jesus” in Creole as we marched out of the cave system. I was walking behind the group of nearly sixty people, and by the time I exited the caves, the former voodoo practitioners had built a fire outside and were burning all of the items they used to worship the false demon gods. What a beautiful sight to behold! Transformation had begun, but it would not stop here.
Later that evening, we were at the crusade in the middle of the city. As these testimonies were going forth, there was a woman who began shouting in the middle of the crowd of over 4,500 people. Many of the leaders ran out and brought her to me. After some investigation, we learned that she had been blind for over ten years, and she was shouting, “I can see! I can see!” Everyone from the town knew who she was and that she was blind. Now, she could see!
The apostolic leader, whom we had sent to the town a year prior, took to the stage and began to declare this was a sign and a miracle from God that He was removing decades of darkness from the region and causing their God-given sight to return! A blanket of darkness and deception was removed from this region during this great deliverance! God is always faithful to show up when we step out in faith. The light of Christ has the power to penetrate even the darkest places of the earth and release the power of the Gospel to heal, deliver, and save!
