How do you make demons flee when they’ve been a part of your life forever?
In a recent video by Chris Garcia, he shared his testimony of how his family bloodline was entrenched in witchcraft, and the battle he faced against darkness until the light of Christ completely transformed his life.
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“It started when I was about nine-years-old,” Garcia says. “I used to struggle immensely with dark imaginations, dark oppressions of the soul. In my father’s side of the family there was a lot of witchcraft, and our family’s Puerto Rican so there’s that generational bondage of Santeria, espiritismo, or spiritualism, African Yoruba religion mixed with Catholicism, there was a lot of mixture there.”
Garcia says that while he saw glimpses of these elements throughout his childhood, God used his mother to guard him from a lot of this darkness. However, Garcia still dealt with lots of struggles and torment; depression and hopelessness had trapped him.
“We have to be careful what’s in our family line, and I didn’t know the Lord, so there was something that was always trying to be on me. This oppression that I often fought,” he continues.
At age nine, Garcia saw a puppet show where the gospel was explained to him. While he didn’t fully know what it meant at the time to surrender to Christ, Garcia says this was the first encounter he ever had with joy, peace and light.
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When Garcia was 16, he ended up losing his grandmother, which brought a devastating blow to his life. He blamed God for his suffering, and he started seeking hope from hopeless places like transcendental meditation, Buddhism and even Islam. However, none of these things provided him with the peace his soul truly longed for. It was then through another teenager that he became convicted of his need for Christ.
“I had a very warped perception of God, and I had a hatred toward the Lord because of the things that I went through in my life,” Garcia says.
Garcia ended up going to youth group with that young man. Garcia says that as soon as the seed of the gospel that was planted inside of him started to be watered, he battled with demonic attacks on an unprecedented level.
“I’m laying in my bed, and all of sudden, I cannot move my body. And I feel fear gripping me all throughout my soul,” Garcia recounts. “I felt that there was a person, a being, some sort of entity in my room, and this occurred for an entire week.”
Garcia says the demon started grabbing his body and sliding him on the floor, all happening in the middle of the day. One day, he eventually saw a 15-foot tall demonic entity outside of his window.
“I can feel this thing looming out of the window, and it begins to straddle me between my rib cages and I can feel its feet and it was standing over me, towering over me, and then it put its face to my face, and I can feel it breathing on me,” Garcia remembers.
What does one do in this complete moment of panic and utter torture?
“I was so scared, so I started crying, ‘God, God please help me,'” Garcia continues.
Garcia began praying the Lord’s Prayer, and the demon grabbed him by the neck and began to choke him. Garcia says he tried asking God for help, then Allah, then Buddha, but it was when he called out the name of Jesus that everything changed.
“Immediately it fled,” Garcia says. “At that moment, I didn’t understand much, but I knew that the name of Jesus had power. There was something about Jesus. There was something about specifically Jesus that carried a weight of authority and power that I did not understand.”
Garcia next heard the gospel preached clearly to him, and he repented, giving His life to Christ. It was only the name of Jesus that could save Garcia, and it is only by His name that any of us might be saved. It is the name of Jesus to which every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that He is Lord.
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Abby Trivett is content development editor for Charisma Media.
James Lasher