The preacher said he got involved with promiscuity and substance abuse before experimenting with satanic rituals.
QUICK FACTS:
- Preacher Ben Atkins was formerly a worshiper of Satan and recalls his family falling away from Christianity when he was young, eventually leading to him reading “The Satanic Bible.”
- As a young man, Atkins started out with sex, drugs, and alcohol before moving on to non-Christian meditation and other such practices that eventually led him to a point where he had lost all hope.
- Atkins said he began to see demons, one of which appeared to him to tell him he was going to die, and went on to say his nightmares only got worse.
- “I was seeing demons, and demons were, like, coming to me and entering me,” he said.” I just became more and more depressed.”
- The young man then made a plan to kill himself because he said he “didn’t see a way out: “I thought, ‘Well, either Satan’s gonna kill me, or I am. So I’d rather at least seize back one last bit of power.'”
- Atkins then attended a Christian event with a friend of his family where a man prayed over him, causing a change in his life that eventually led him to Christ.
- “I’ve never set out to be a Christian. I’ve just wanted life and truth,” he said. “And that’s what led me into the arms of Jesus.”
- Atkins currently serves planting churches across the U.S. and U.K.
THE PASTOR’S COMMENTS:
- “All I can say is I had this deep craving in me to connect with my suffering and have it acknowledged,” Atkins said of his departure into Satanism. “And that’s what led me to explore some really dark ways of living.”
- “I’d already been … doing certain rituals with friends to harness the power around me or within me or, or whatever,” he said. “I had friends who, I guess they would say they were witches or whatever … All of this Satanic stuff and the witchcraft makes more sense of my life and actually offers me a better way forward,” he said he remembered thinking.
- He said he then received a disturbing message from Satan: “One morning … he was at the end of my bed, and he said to me, ‘You’re gonna finish your [end of college] exams, and then you’re gonna die,'” Atkins recalled.
- “I woke up, and, for me, that was just the worst thing I could possibly hear … It was at that point I started planning how to kill myself because I didn’t see a way out. I thought, ‘Well, either Satan’s gonna kill me, or I am. So I’d rather at least seize back one last bit of power.'”
- Upon attending the Christian event, Atkins recalled one of the believers reaching out to him, literally: “He put a hand on my shoulder, started praying for me in tongues, and, in that moment, I felt the most incredible rush,” he said. “All the things I’d been up to in life, I was chasing highs and trying to feel lows, and that peace that I felt was higher than any high I’d ever felt.”
BACKGROUND:
- In July of this year news broke that the South African Satanic Church resigned after Christians demonstrated unconditional love for him, as American Faith reported.
- The co-founder of the South African Satanic Church (SASC), Riaan Swiegelaar, terminated his membership in the group and resigned from his role as presiding priest.
- “To be very honest, I initially thought I’d quietly slip out the backdoor and I didn’t think people would be so interested in why I do what I do. I was very sad and very broken, without realizing it. I think a lot of people resonate with Satanism when they come from a very broken place.”
- The Idaho Satanic Temple was recently found to be involved in hosting LGBT events aimed at kids featuring “unbaptisms” and drag shows.
