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It all began when my daughter collapsed and started speaking in elderly people’s voices. I remember identifying one of them as my late mother’s voice. I could be wrong, but I felt her presence, and it scared me.
It dawned on me that I might have to seek help to understand what was happening to my then 18-year-old daughter.
The archbishop at my church in Soweto told me my daughter did not have demons. He said she was gifted and he explained that dead people were using her to communicate with us. He said we should consider ourselves to be lucky.
What are spirits, and how do we tell which ones are good and which are demonic or evil?
The archbishop said that, when a person died, the flesh rotted away and the spirit went to heaven’s passage, where their deceased family members are waiting to accept him or her before they enter the Kingdom of God. The holy ground does not want any evil. All the spirits that come to the gate bearing evil will be turned away.
“Those are the lost spirits that become demons,” he said.
Some customs, apparently, are what cause evil spirits to wander. The archbishop said people who buried their loved ones with any form of weapon, asking them to avenge their death, were risking the spirit’s acceptance in the Kingdom of God. Good people did not die, they slept. He said the evil died, which is why they became demonic.
Spirits have to be collected from the place of death and taken to the place of burial to avoid becoming lost spirits. That is why we have ghosts – they are spirits that do not have a home and are wandering around.
My brother, a former deacon at EL Tabernacle Holy Ghost Ministries in Walkerville, said that you knew the difference between a good and a bad sprit from the feeling you got when you were around one.
“The spirit of God is very calming when experienced,” he said.
The archbishop said dead relatives become our ancestors, and there was nothing wrong with consulting them.
He quoted 1 Samuel chapter 28 verses 3 to 25, which speaks about Saul chasing all fortune tellers and mediums out of Israel, only to discover that he would need a medium to communicate with God.
When I first visited the Universal Church and the pastor prayed for me, I started trembling and hitting my face. The church assistants brought me forward and prayed for me, cursing what they called “demons” possessing my body.
I laughed in what sounded like a man’s voice, and then I screamed.
My brother confirmed this behaviour to be possession by demonic spirits and said I should continue going to church until the episodes stopped.
However, the archbishop said it was not demons. He said I should have attended a different church for the spirits to come forth in a different way. He called the experience a gift from the ancestors, and said they wanted to communicate, but were unable to do so because the church labelled this as demonic.
“Ancestors are turned into demons at some Christian churches,” he said.
My brother said witch doctors, prophets, sangomas and other mediums were used to communicate with the dead. He said you could identify whether they were good or evil by the work they did.
“If a witch doctor asks for a human sacrifice, it means they’re demonic. Any other form of sacrifice is acceptable,” he said.
Picture: iStock
