CHRISTIANS TURN TO OBEAH FOR HEALING

Bedridden for almost three years, John Brown* says he has decided to consult an obeah man in an effort to get healing.

Despite being a long-standing member of a Seventh-day Adventist Church, the 81-yearold man, who has diabetes, confesses that he no longer believes that he can get healing in the church.

“Mi go church and all dem a pray, that neva help mi cause all mi do a get worse and worse. So mi decide say mi a go call a obeah man cause although mi a Christian, mi woulda still want to get healing,” he said.

But Bishop Rohan Edwards, a prominent minister of religion in Spanish Town, St Catherine, believes that once a Christian turns to obeah, he/she was never a believer in the faith.

“When you go into witchcraft and obeah, you’re serving another God and that is Satanism, and if yuh touch obeah, a Satan yuh gone to,” he told THE STAR.

UNCOMFORTABLE

Edwards said that he has heard of Christians turning to obeah, but insists that although the church is for everyone, he is uncomfortable with obeah workers.

“Anyhow unuh a Christian and unuh leave the church and go obeah man, don’t come back to me. Just stick with unuh obeah people,” he said.

Instead of getting mixed up in obeah, he encourages Christians to wait on the Lord for healing.

“I have known of people who have been sick and they have never gone to an obeah man and they have never gone to see anybody else and they were delivered afterwards,” he explained.

Edwards further warned that person who turn to obeah might only get temporary relief.

“Nuff of them that I have ministered to have been to obeah man and obeah man tek dem money and tell dem say that they will be all right. But later on, they find out that it wasn’t true and then they have to come back to me and when I done minister to them, them all right,” he said.

CAST OUT DEMONS

Meanwhile, Pastor Herro Blair Jr said that throughout his 22 years in the ministry, he has interacted with persons who have dabbled in obeah.

He said that he has had to deal with persons, not just Christians, who have been mixed up in obeah, and he has had to cast out demons out of some of those people.

“I preached in a church abroad and when I got through preaching, I began to prophesy to a man. I called him and said: ‘For you have been asking God for 12 years now that you have been a Christian, why are you not being blessed? And God told me to tell you that you’re going to witchcraft’. The man said ‘yes’, and I told him that ‘the devil put a curse on you, and I, through the will of the Lord, I release you from your curse’. He took the mic and told the church everything he had done,” Blair recounted.

“When you interact with some people, you can tell that the reason why God is not blessing them is because they have sought their blessings elsewhere. Some persons see it as a way out, but it is a way towards further oppression,” he added.