Journey

• Host: Jeremiah Roberts
• Guest: Jon Clash, who has a YouTube channel focused on apologetics and discernment

Cultish: Santería: Exposing Demons In Disguise, Pt. 1

8 Mar 2023 YouTube

When people think of Santería, a lot of times people think of that Sublime song. So, I actually think I made a post about it. I had a couple, I think in an Instagram story, and people literally were replying to me like the lyrics, like “I don’t practice Santeria”, yeah. So, like a lot of times, people kind of have this idea of what it is.

Sublime – Santeria (Official Music Video)

• Jon’s involvement with Santería was a blur, but it lasted around five to seven years. He got into it by being invited by a friend.
• Santería is defined as a syncretistic occultism blended with Spanish/Latino culture. Santería has many offshoots, practiced differently in various places it spread to, such as Cuba, Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, and Brazil. African spirituality blended with Roman Catholicism to create Santería. Yoruba tribes in Nigeria had their own deities, but when brought over in the slave trade, they were combined and associated with Catholic saints.
• Santería was disguised as Catholicism to avoid persecution, so many people who practice it may not realize its African roots. Santería is a syncretistic religion that blends African and Catholic beliefs.
• The rituals involve accessing saints, ancestors, and spirits. Altars with candles, cups of water and candy, and offerings of food are common in Santería as offerings to various saints.
• Jon had a bugged out experience at a Bembé ceremony where they played Santería music and had an altar set up. The lady leading the ceremony had personality changes and would handle different sashes for each personality. Each personality had different mannerisms and preferences for things like smoking cigars or drinking rum. Jon was amazed when the lady started telling him things about his childhood that he never told anyone, and she communicated with him in Spanish even though he responded in English. The lady practitioner revealed things about the person and deceased family members that nobody else knew. She also knew that the person wanted to become a famous rapper and desired wealth.

Then she tells me, “Hey, we know that you want to be a famous rapper. You want money.” “We’ll give that all to you, all you have to do is this, and it was like wear these beads, make an altar, light these candles, do all this stuff, and me, I’m like, “All right, let’s see what happens,” because I don’t care at that point. I’m, right, I’m looking at this one eye like, “All right, this is legit.” The other eye, I’m like, “We’ll see what happens.” Right? So anyway, I went home and I just made the altar, I lit all the candles, I did everything, and I still at that point had no idea what was going on. I didn’t know that these were, quote unquote, “the Saints.” I didn’t know any of that. I was just going with the flow of everything.

• The practitioner instructed him to perform certain rituals to obtain his desires. He complied and had a positive experience. The allure of the occult was similar to the appeal of a peep show. He continued the practice by lighting candles and communicating with the Saints.
• The practitioner explained that the Saints would possess the person and take them on a ride.
• Jon initially didn’t fully understand the concept of worshiping Saints, but recognized their names from childhood exposure to Catholicism.
• Santería is a big part of many Latin cultures and African spirituality. Discussing Santería could be misconstrued as attacking someone’s culture, which is not the case.
• Jon was introduced to Santería by his Dominican friend and was fascinated by the culture. He attended ceremonies and seances where he witnessed bizarre events, such as a woman eating glass and being unharmed, which made him think it was weird but confirmed how powerful it was at the same time.
• Each member of the group has a saint assigned to them, but he was assigned all 21 saints
• He started getting success and then stopped taking care of his altar and candles. He still wasn’t a true believer, so was thinking he was doing it himself with all his hard work. But he then received a phone call that the saints were mad at him for not attending to them. The person on the phone knew about his altar even though there was no monitoring. He had to do a ceremony and cleansing to make the saints not mad at him.

And so I had to do my own little séance, my own party, and at it, they were like, ‘If you do not continue to do what we asked you to do, we’re gonna take everything from you. Everything we’ve given you will be gone.’ And I’m like, ‘What? Were they threatening me?’

And I’m like, “Oh, that’s crazy,” so I had to do like a cleansing and all of this weird stuff, including offering his Sperm.

During a date, he explained the beads he was wearing to a Latina woman, who told him it wasn’t Saints he was worshipping, but demons:

Then I go on a date, with a Latina woman, and I’m wearing my beads, and she goes, “Oh, what are those beads that you’re wearing?” And here I am, I’m like, “This girl doesn’t know,” and I’m about to school her on her own culture. Yeah, it’s gonna be a good night for me. That’s how I’m thinking at that time.

So I’m, now I start breaking it down for her, telling her, “Yeah, these are the Saints of Santeria, I’m surprised you don’t know this, blah blah blah,” and she’s just listening to me. She’s like, “Oh, okay.” And then after I’m done telling her, she’s like, “Yeah, John, those aren’t Saints, those are demons.”

• Jon initially didn’t believe in demons, despite experiencing sleep paralysis.
• Jon eventually became a Christian and felt convicted to stop practicing Santería. He learned about Christianity through attending church, but initially didn’t take it seriously.
• When he researched the origins of different religions, including Santería, he discovered its African, being disguised as Catholicism. African gods called orishas were worshiped by the saints. Orishas were perceived as gods and some ancestors can become deified. Orishas are like angels and received worship through idolatry. African spirituality was repackaged as a branch of Catholicism when people migrated to Cuba. He didn’t know the origins until he researched it.
• Counterfeit spirituality requires sacrifice of the body and often includes distorted sexuality.
• Jon went along with the group’s rituals, but is now aware of how twisted they were. Animal sacrifices and other rituals were also a part of the group’s practices, although he was only at surface-level, kind of like staying at the first level of the Freemasons, where he never witnessed it, but knew it went on.
• True born-again believers in the room could stop the ceremony from happening because the demons would not want to be around them.

This is rampant in the United States. Yeah, it’s rampant like everywhere, right? It’s just that not a lot of people know about it, but most Latinos know about Santeria. They have an uncle, they have an aunt, or they know somebody who reads coffee cups, and they have botanicas on like every corner in New York City. A botanica is a place where you go to buy statues, candles, incense, potions, and more. So it’s prevalent everywhere, and there are a lot of practicing Catholics and Christians who participate in this stuff because it’s embedded in their culture.

• Santería is prevalent everywhere, with botanicas on almost every corner in New York City.
• The practicing of Santería is embedded in Latin culture.
• Among people in the cartel, there is a lot of practice of Santería, and it is often used for protection.
• Santería is also connected to the protection of Latin gang members who wear the beads.
• He recalls that they never told him to stop hanging out with gangsters, doing drugs, drinking alcohol, doing steroids, sleeping around with multiple women, etc. If this was truly from God, they would’ve told him to stop sinning. They only told him they would give him more of what I want.
• He came to Christ by digging into the historical facts and only intellectualized it, but he started feeling convicted doing some of the things he was doing.
• After a conversation with one of his spiritual mentors, David Peach, about the end times, he went home and destroyed the altar.
• After doing that, his business started going backwards, his relationships fell apart, and his life started spiralling out of control, but he still made a decision to never submit to anyone else.

So let’s jump into when I got out of it. Now, I’m a Christian, right? But eventually, living my life as I was living it, you know, I started feeling convicted doing some of the things that I was doing, right? But, I remember having a conversation with, one of my spiritual mentors, David Peach. This dude was the first person that told me how to read the Bible, like really read it, and so, I respected him in business as well because he was a millionaire, and his dad was a pastor, from a lineage of pastors, so he knew his stuff, and he was not with the Prosperity Gospel, not with any of the new age, bleeding into Christianity, he was by the book, and he was talking about the end times, right? And the return of Christ and all this, and I don’t know what it was in that conversation, but I was like, I’m going home and I’m destroying this altar, and by then, you know, the candles were like, you know, down and I wasn’t really paying attention to it anymore, but I’ve just felt so convicted.

I went home and I destroyed that altar. I threw everything out, I buried some of the stuff, and at this time, I don’t know any real theology or anything, so I’m like, I rebuke you in the name of Jesus, and not understanding that, yeah, that’s useless, you know?

But it is interesting, like literally, this is something that even people who are very pro-new ways talk about how Christianity is sort of this way just to control people’s minds and that sort of thing, but it’s like when people actually come to Christ, like the immediate thing that they do, like of their own free will, instinctively, is like destroy those objects. It’s not like some giant conspiracy, and it’s like that you did that voluntarily.

I just knew it. I was convinced these ‘are’ demons, that I’m allowing these demons to have access to my life for my own personal gain, you know, for worldly things.

So I went down, I broke down the altar, got rid of it, and it was true what they said, that they would take everything from me. My business started going backwards, the relationship that I was in, I mean, I was living in sin in that relationship, but, you know, that, went really bad really fast. Like, my life kind of just started spiralling out of control. But I made a decision, I was like, I’m never submitting to anyone else.

It would be almost like your life was like a carrot – your life was like the carrot that they’re dangling in front of you, and now that you had rejected it, now they’re trying to yank it away and you’re hanging on to the carrot.

Yeah, yeah, I was just like, you know what, I don’t care how bad it gets. I really do believe Jesus is who he says he is, and I do believe these are demons. And I’m not gonna, you know, drink from the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons at the same time. Like, I’m just not gonna do this, right? So, it got pretty intense, and then my sleep paralysis increased like crazy.

Cultish: Santería – Exposing Demons In Disguise, Pt. 2

15 Mar 2023 YouTube

• After deciding to leave Santeria, things in Jon’s life began to fall apart
• He lost customers in his business and his relationship suffered
• Sleep paralysis became a regular occurrence for him
• Sleep paralysis is a state where you are half awake and half asleep and can’t move or speak
• Many people report seeing demonic figures during sleep paralysis
• Jon’s experience with sleep paralysis included being choked and pinned down
• Experience of sleep paralysis before involvement with Santeria
• Sleep paralysis initially thought to be related to trauma
• Sleep paralysis lessened during involvement with Santeria, intensified when walking away from it
• Discovered that saying the name Jesus stopped sleep paralysis
• Description of black figures during sleep paralysis
• Spiritual attacks became more intense during increased focus on relationship with Christ

The sleep paralysis, was super intense. Almost every time I went to sleep, I would suffer from sleep paralysis. For those of you who may not know what sleep paralysis is, it’s when you’re in this state of being half awake, half asleep, and many people experience maybe seeing, like, a demonic-looking figure coming towards you or next to you, and then, in my experience, they would kind of like choke me and pin me down, and then you can’t move.

So you can’t speak, you can breathe, but you can’t utter a word. You can’t lift your arms, you can’t lift your legs, and you can’t wake up.

So that happened to me pretty much before I was ever even involved with Santeria. That was happening to me a lot, but I chalked it up to trauma. You know, I thought it was a mental thing, like I’m just dealing with trauma that happened to me as a kid, and when you look into scientific studies on this stuff, that’s what they say.

I really just thought sleep paralysis was just me having bad dreams. I didn’t associate it with anything demonic. I got less sleep paralysis when I was involved in Santeria, so it lessened, and then when I was walking away from it, it intensified. So now I’m kind of doing the whole correlation thing again of like, ‘Hey, this is pretty bugged out.’ So I go down a rabbit hole of searching out other people who had experiences with sleep paralysis, and I kept coming across the fact that the only way to stop it was to say the name Jesus, and that’s what I kept hearing, and I just, I didn’t really believe that it would be that easy, but I’m like, I’m ready for it to stop. So, you know, I start doing that, and, it worked. Right? I was able to say ‘Jesus’ and they would flee.

And so, let me give you guys a description of what I would see. So, there were these black figures that literally just looked like a shadow. I couldn’t see their face, but it’s like I could feel their face more than I could see it, you know? That feeling when somebody’s looking at you, and you turn around, and it’s like a little kid staring at you or something like that, yeah, right? So, I would have that feeling all the time that something was looking at me, and my mom would say the same thing. In her house specifically, she would feel like something is staring at her. I would feel that when I’m awake, but then when I would be going to sleep, I would feel it intensify.

That feeling of somebody’s looking at you, and then when I would see the figures, it’s like I couldn’t see their faces, but I could see where they are looking, if that – I don’t know, I could feel where they are looking that yeah, more than I could see it, and then eventually, it’s like you see them, you see them, you see them, then boom, all of a sudden, they’re on top of you and holding you down. Sometimes it’s one, sometimes it’s two, sometimes it’s three or four, and I’m just pinned to the bed. This would happen a lot.

• Government exploiting crisis and offering solution as parallel to dark forces and Santeria
• Dark forces creating problem and offering themselves as solution

Think about how the government always exploits a crisis. If we’re going to bring politics into this, for example, the government during COVID, they shut down everything. A bunch of people lost their jobs, businesses got destroyed, right? Then all of a sudden, the government initiated that. But all of a sudden, when they opened back up everything, people started going back to work and businesses started being open back up again, what was ever left over, and then they started taking credit, “Look at all these jobs we created!” So it’s almost like they’re the perpetrator, but they’re also the saviour of that. So in the same way, they think from a spiritual standpoint, you’re dealing with these experiences; at the time, you didn’t know they were demonic sleep paralysis, and then all of a sudden, so you have dark forces creating a problem, then really offering themselves as the solution.

• Dark forces create problems and offer themselves as the solution
• Cults and false beliefs get people to worship anything but the one true God
• Pursuing Christ and getting into a solid church led to spiritual attacks
• Last experience of sleep paralysis involved two demons holding him down while he was digging into the word. The demons were losing their grip when the person called out to Jesus/Yeshua.
• The sleep paralysis stopped until his wife left the new age. His wife was into the Law of Attraction, crystals, and new age practices. The Law of Attraction can be a gateway to other spiritual practices. They burned her new age books when she became a Christian and then he started experienced sleep paralysis again.
• He had preconceived notions about God as a Genie in a Bottle due to prosperity gospel and Santeria. Santeria is also a spiritual high that involves communing with demons.

I can remember the last time I had sleep paralysis. It was at my mom’s house. It was two demons and I remember they were holding me down. I remember my one arm specifically, like, I remember both of them on this one arm, and I knew they were coming that night. It was crazy. It’s like, ‘Oh man, it’s gonna go down tonight, I know it.’

So I was kind of pulling my arm up as they were holding me down, and I could feel them look at each other, and the sense that I got was they were losing their grip on me, and I couldn’t get out Jesus, I couldn’t, like, I just couldn’t get it out, and Yeshua came out, which was super random for me because I’m not one of these people who calles Jesus, Yeshua, but I think it was just all the studying that I was doing, learning all this stuff, it’s kind of like planted in my subconscious.

So anyway, I was able to get out the name, and that was the last time the sleep paralysis happened to me until… my wife left the New Age.

She was into New Age, Law of Attraction, you know, crystals, all of that stuff. I was friends with her for a long time before we started dating, for about like three years. We started talking during Covid, right, so I’m like, ‘God, why am I interested in this girl?’ Like, you know, yeah, she’s very attractive, very awesome chick, but, you know, me as a believer, I’m like, ‘Why am I interested?’ Like, no, keep this away!

She’ll tell you this story too, but so we had a FaceTime like relationship during Covid and she eventually became a believer, and I was like, ‘oh, now I see what you’re doing.’ And she wanted to burn all her New Age books and stuff like that. So we eventually got together, she lived in Boston, I was in New York, so we barely saw each other through the whole beginning of our relationship, and my mom has a fire pit and we burned all of her New Age books and the next day I got sleep paralysis.

I actually reached out to Steven Bancarz after that happened, and I was like, ‘hey man, is this normal, you know, when you start doing this stuff?’ He’s like, ‘yeah man, just keep at it, you know, it’ll stop,’ and it did.

It only happened like once or twice, and now my wife is like, ‘oh my gosh, like, if you would have pictured somebody like gung-ho for Christ, like, she was not it, and now she’s like all in.’ Anyway, when I finally really got my life right with Christ, the sleep paralysis and stuff stopped, but I did have to learn that God was not a genie in a bottle, because I had all these preconceived notions from, you know, Prosperity Gospel, then also in Santeria.

Here I am thinking, if I do this, I get this, if I do this, I get this, Law of Attraction as well, that whole mentality of if you put out good, you get good back, right?

It seems that all practices, one practice is always a gateway for the next one. For some people, it’s Reiki, and then they get into yoga, or some people they start with tarot that leads them to start getting the astral projection or just, you know, mix and match. It always seems one thing is always there, all like mix and matching stepping stones, you know what I mean?

I call the Law of Attraction the gateway drug to spiritual heroin, because it just, it opens it up, and then you’re searching for spiritual highs all the time, and Santeria is a spiritual high as well, you know, you think that you’re special, you think that you have this knowledge that people don’t have, you think that you’re communing with saints when you’re really just spending time with demons.

• He started looking into Santería more after leaving it to understand it better.
• Santería is a repackaging of African spirituality, specifically of the Yoruba tribes. Each town would have it’s own specific deity, and when the slave trade happened, the African slaves brought it to Cuba, and all of those deities were combined into one spiritual practice that got disguised as Roman Catholicism. Different deities were attributed to specific saints with similar characteristics, such as Babalú Ayé to Saint Lazarus
• People who practice Santería crawl on their hands and knees for five miles to offer sacrifices to the deities, including animal sacrifices that require blood

Brief Cliff Note: So Santeria is the repackaging of African spirituality, right? And when we say African spirituality, that’s a broad brush. This specific form of African spirituality that Yoruba tribes would practice – each town would have its own specific deity. And then when the slave trade happened, they all came over to Cuba, and it was kind of all of those deities combined into one spiritual practice. And that got disguised as Roman Catholicism. They started attributing each one of these deities to a specific saint that had similar, quote-unquote, characteristics, right?

So, for example, I think it’s Babalua is one of their deities, and they associated him with Saint Lazarus. And because they say that both of them are for healing and for good life and health and stuff like that.

There’s actually in Cuba, I believe it’s once a year that a bunch of people who practice Santeria, they crawl on their knees for five miles to the Church of Saint Lazarus, and they crawl on their hands and knees for five miles to praise Saint Lazarus, and there are some people who know that that’s attached to an African deity, and then there are other people who don’t know, and they just literally crawl on their hands and knees for five miles to go and offer sacrifices to these deities, and there’ll be animal sacrifices and stuff like that, they want blood, and it’s so crazy looking back on it, of thinking that this stuff is definitely from God, you know? Like really being so diluted to think that that is a possibility that this could actually be from God.

• Fidel Castro used a dove to manipulate and gain support from the Cuban people through religion (Pre-Communism in his first recorded and famous speech). The Cuban people were superstitious and always looking for a sign. Castro trained doves for two weeks before the speech and a dove came and landed on his shoulder and stayed there for his entire speech. The people perceived the dove as a sign from God. Castro used a double confirmation to make people believe he was a Messianic figure sent by God. Che Guevara was a contemporary of Fidel Castro. Che Guevara and Fidel Castro were similar in what they believed and did.
• People are easily susceptible to manipulation, especially through emotions. The Demonic forces behind the Santeria religion are reflected in the manipulation tactics used by Castro.
• The Allure of more is a powerful tool for manipulation, making people feel special and questioning what they know to be true about God. Once people are in, it is difficult to get out of a manipulative situation.

• Importance of helping people transition properly and navigate spiritual warfare in a healthy way
• Danger of overcorrection and either denying the existence of the devil or seeing demons everywhere
• Personal experience of stumbling upon an ex-Santeria practitioner’s teachings and following his advice, as well as listening to Derrick Prince Ministries for guidance, but it didn’t feel right.
• He ended up at a Pentecostal church called Brookfield First in Brookfield, Connecticut. The church taught the word verse by verse and the speaker got plugged into a community of people who were trying to walk the walk. The pastor had a grounded approach and believed in the power of the gospel to deliver people.
• New Age beliefs are considered superstitions.
• The idea that Holy Spirit filled Christians can be possessed by demons and need to be delivered multiple times, and renounce generational curses, and pay for courses is not in the Bible.
• Confronting spiritual warfare is a truth battle, not through pagan incantations. You confront the devil with the truth, but it’s not you. Even the Archangel Michael who rebuked the devil, used the words “and the Lord rebuke you”.
• Overemphasis on fighting sins and demon possession can create a hierarchy among Christians. Unique experiences of deliverance should not be the standard for everyone. Paul doesn’t specifically tell us to cast out demons of lust or alcoholism. Paul emphasizes that our flesh is our biggest problem

It’s a hierarchy of who’s who’s had, who has a better connection with God, and who’s walking a holier life. And hey, I need to teach you these steps.

Even when it comes to specific issues that we have, why doesn’t Paul tell us to cast the demon of lust out? Why doesn’t he tell us to cast the demon of alcoholism out or drunkenness? He doesn’t tell us to do that. He tells you that your flesh is your problem, your flesh is your biggest problem. When it comes to a demon of lust, I do believe that demons can influence you and kind of align things in your life to where you’re going to stumble on what they know you can stumble over. You have to stop looking at this quick fix mentality of, “Let me get rid of this demon of lust,” and maybe you should just delete your Instagram, and maybe you should just stop watching certain things, maybe you should delete Snapchat so you don’t get those random messages. You have to do some work, rely on the Holy Spirit, obviously, but you gotta do some work.

If you get released from the demon of alcoholism and then you go to the bar the next day, it’s not a demon, that’s you. There’s some time where you have to realize, no, this is actually like your responsibility.

When it says idolatry, it’s like out of the heart comes these things, like it’s, that’s what Jesus taught. It’s not something that’s out there, like sometimes there can be like temptations stuff for sure, but that comes from within, and like a lot of times, an unhealthy spiritual war can negate the responsibility that you have to not do those things.

Many of the things that I would think was like, “Oh, this is demons, you know, making me do this, demons make,” because I had real demonic experiences, so I can easily go back and say, “Oh, yeah, it’s a demon’s fault”. No, that’s my fault. I’m the one that’s opening that app. I’m the one that’s having a drink when I shouldn’t have a drink. I’m the one that’s staying out too late. I’m the one that’s talking to girls in their DM. That’s me, right? It’s all me.

• Demons can influence us, but we also have to take responsibility for our actions
• Quick fix mentality doesn’t work, we have to do some work and rely on the Holy Spirit
• Temptations come from within, out of the heart
• Unhealthy spiritual warfare can negate our responsibility to not do those things
• People can get defensive when approached about confronting scripture on demons
• The deliverance ministry can be short-sighted and lead to false beliefs about claiming the blood of Jesus for personal gain. His biggest issue with deliverance ministry is not the act of casting out demons, but the false beliefs surrounding it. Be hyper-focused on the gifts, but don’t twist scripture to fit your theology. Watch out for people twisting scripture to validate their position in deliverance ministry. They twist scripture to find believers in the Bible who had demons and make it seem like it’s normal for believers to have demons. They play semantics well and find little points in scripture to twist to their advantage.
• No believer in scripture who is Holy Spirit-filled after the day of Pentecost had demons cast out of them. There are no instructions on casting out stubborn demons in the Epistles.
• Word of faith, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Mormons, Law of Attraction practitioners, and spiritual gurus twist scripture to prove their beliefs.
• He had a confrontation with some believers who twisted Romans 15:9 to claim that signs and wonders are needed to preach the gospel.
• Social media allows anyone with a phone and bad theology to lead people astray, so it’s important to counter with truth.
• People twist scriptures to create a distorted view of spiritual warfare. Examples of twisted scriptures include praying a hedge of thorns or protection, binding Satan, and loosening demons.
• Some people combine different scriptures to create a new theology.
• It is important to constantly reform and align oneself correctly
• Deliverances do happen, but it is important to be led by the Spirit and not overcorrect.
• The course of spiritual deliverance is led by the Holy Spirit.
• One should avoid over-correcting and taking spiritual warfare to extremes
• Denying the existence of the demonic realm is not helpful
• Reliance on Christ is key in dealing with spiritual warfare
• Confession of sin and reliance on Christ can help combat tendencies towards sin
• Run to Christ in everything, as He is all that is needed.

So my issue is not with, ‘You go, all right, cool. Go cast out some demons, buddy.’ My issue is, stop twisting scripture to fit your theology. If we don’t nip this in the bud right now, if we don’t stop people from twisting scripture in order to fit what they wanted to fit, 10 years down the line, you’ve got a whole bigger mess to deal with. So we have to be vigilant in paying attention to when people are twisting scripture.