The attraction for love and money is the driving force to millions of people. This is what the vendors are looking at when they are advertising their product. People are willing go anywhere to do anything to be rich or receive love. The sad part is, religion bought into this kind of thinking. Prosperity gospel plays a huge roll for some preachers to make their wallets big. However, a religion by the name voodoo also attacks people by what it has to offer; a false hope in making a person more richer or a better love life draws people to this religion. Dan Bilefsky in the New York Times writes an article under the name “Voodoo, an Anchor, Rises Again,' showing that this religion has been an attraction point for those who are looking for love and money.
This religion even attracted a business man, who’s stocks were falling down. Bilefsky write, "Wall Street bankers seeking spells to guard against falling share prices and homemakers aggrieved about wayward husbands.” Thinking if some “priestess” (that’s how they call her) walks around and do, what ever she is doing, will affect his business in the positive way. I could see that happening in the person who has no hope in the sovereign God drawn to some cheep cult inorder to keep his business going.
The problem with this specific religion "voodoo" is that it is based on exorcism. It promises to cast out demons from the person, and boy this could get really pricey. Bilefsky says "Prices can range from $300 for a recipe to infatuate a wary lover to $5,000 for a full-fledged exorcism in which evil spirits are transferred from humans to other animals, like pigs." This in reality could do more harm then good to a person. First of all, the person is dealing with something that he or she has no understanding in who they are dealing with, the spiritual world is unknown apart from the Bible. Plus the whole process in the ceremony is not realistic. Bilefsky says, "The bride’s dramatic entrance was signaled when a priestess in a shimmering pink silk dress started trembling violently, her eyes rolling toward the back of her head before she fainted.” Something happens to the person that it causes for her or him to faint. If you just YouTube this religion, you could also see people using a dead chicken in swingin and wiping it against the person who is the center of that ceremony.
Not only that, Bilefsky in his article mentions a story about a girl getting on fire during this kind of proces, and the grandma of that girls does nothing, just sits there watching her own daughter burn. "[Grandma was] accused of doing nothing while her granddaughter was burned, was sentenced last week to one to three years in prison after pleading guilty to reckless endangerment. . . The fire, in a building in Flatbush in February, was ignited by candles surrounding a bed during a ceremony in the apartment of a voodoo priest who the authorities said was hired by a woman to chase away evil spirits. The fire killed a 64-year-old woman in another apartment and left dozens of tenants homeless.”
Also, Haiti, a country that suffered 316,000 death, and left 1,000,000 people homeless in the 2010 earthquake (wikipedia), has a big influence by this “voodoo” religion. "In voodoo, a healing-based religion that was brought to Haiti by slaves from Western and Central Africa, followers commune with one God — Gran Met,” says Bilefsky. “Scholars [say] that voodoo has played a central role in Haitian history, sustaining people who have endured oppressive governments, grinding poverty and natural calamities." The county that needed the word of God desperately is engulfed with a cult by the name voodoo.
Casting out demons is not something new in our world. I am not saying that voodoo religion is good, it is the opposite, it's demonic. Any religion that does not accept Jesus Christ as a Son of God, who came down from heaven, is demonic. In fact, this demonic world witnessed this themselves about Jesus being the Son of God. Luke writes, “And demons also came out of many, crying, You are the Son of God! But he rebuked them and would not allow them to speak, because they knew that he was the Christ” (4:41), -- Christ just didn't needed them to be his witness to the world.
As Christians, we need to know that we have a “Father who is in heaven [and He gives] good things to those who ask him!” (Mtt 7:11).
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/10/nyregion/10voodoo.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&hp
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Haiti_earthquake
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