Will an earthquake be necessary?
Lessons of Haiti for a Lula administration avid to promote Afro-Brazilian religions as “culture”
By Julio Severo
Before the immense tragedy of the earthquake in Haiti, where dozens of thousands died, Gerge Samuel Antoine, the consul of Haiti in São Paulo, Brazil, was sincere enough — and also politically incorrect — to attribute the tragedy to the religion of Haitians. The official religion of Haiti, a nation overwhelmingly formed by African slaves’ descendants, is voodoo.
Voodoo is a religion from Africa that, as Afro-Brazilian candomblé, mixed elements of the Catholic rulers’ religion. As in candomblé, rituals in voodoo are marked by music, dances and food, including sacrificed animals. In the ceremony of both, participants enter a trance and receive spirits in their bodies. There are reports, abundantly documented and published, of human beings’ sacrifice in some of those rituals — including boys’ rape by the leader, which is usually homosexual.
From the point of view of the Bible, those practices are dangerous:
“You must never sacrifice your sons or daughters by burning them alive, practice black magic, be a fortuneteller, witch, or sorcerer, cast spells, ask ghosts or spirits for help, or consult the dead. Whoever does these things is disgusting to the LORD…” (Deuteronomy 18:10-12 GWV)
Would it be any wonder then that the same nation that has voodoo as its official religion is, at the same time, the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere? That miserable condition is a spiritual heritage preceding European colonization.
Before the European colonization, Africa lived a culture of wars among tribes, enslavement of the members of conquered tribes, human beings’ ritual sacrifices — and the common element of that “culture”, which was impeding progress and peace in Africa, was its own religion, which leaned on the invocation of spiritual beings and powers considered by the Bible and the Christian tradition as demons and dark powers.
Therefore, one can understand the Haitian consul’s declaration, Antoine, who said on the earthquake in Haiti: “I think it has to do with messing so much with voodoo, I don't know what it is… The African himself has a curse. Everywhere there are Africans it’s f…”
It is not difficult to decipher the consul’s words, although expressed in a thoughtless way. Where there are many descendants of Africans, there are a lot of voodoo and candomblé. And where there is a lot of voodoo and candomblé, there are many descendants of Africans. And where there is a lot of voodoo and candomblé, there is a lot of curse. At least, that is the sheer reality in Brazil and Haiti.
However, it is necessary to make it clear that the curses on them are not the result of their skin color, but because of predominant religious practices. When those wicked practices are given up, there is real change. According to the Bible, the man that is in Christ is a new creature, whether he is white, black, yellow or blue. Where there are blacks saved, delivered and transformed by Jesus’ blood, there are not the usual curses of voodoo and candomblé. That is a different and beautiful reality, which Haiti and its consul in São Paulo ignore. What they know is the reality of destruction of voodoo.
I understand that reality very well, because in my childhood I was taken to the rituals of an Afro-Brazilian religion, where my mother was one of its local leaders. So today I am able to pray with discernment when a homosexual activist threatens me saying that he has been invoking Afro-Brazilian spirits against my life.
Gay activists and Afro-Brazilian religions have been very united because, different from the God of the Bible who abhors homosexuality, spirits in candomblé, macumba and voodoo love sex between two men. Even “Christian” gay activists in Brazil are very supportive of Afro-Brazilian religions. Late Neemias Marien, a Rio de Janeiro minister expelled from the Presbyterian Church in Brazil for his homosexual militancy, said that he had spiritual experiences common in candomblé and voodoo. And in a meeting of the World Council of Churches in Brazil, gay militants and Afro-Brazilian adherents were pictured together.
Of course the same “cultural” tendency that despises Christianity equally values the religion (not mentioning the homosexuality) of “minorities” and historically “discriminated” groups, so that any Brazilian daring to say openly what the consul said against voodoo (or against candomblé) incurs a moral lynching by the leftist media and by the paranoid leftist government of Brazil. Nevertheless, only people that lived under Afro-Brazilian religions, or voodoo, know the destructive power of the evil spirits. Haiti is living that reality.
And even so Brazil, under the Lula administration, wants the promotion and protection of those religions, including in schools, as “culture”. It is with a lot of haughtiness that the government insists on that direction — antagonizing the largely Catholic culture of Brazil.
Actually, what the socialist agenda wants is the weakness of Christianity and its values, which are contrary to the socialist ideals. By insinuating that Afro-Brazilian religions are “victims” of an “oppressive” Christianity, socialists hope to eradicate every trace of Christian influence in the society and substitute it for their own values.
The notion that they want to teach to the public is simple: if the African slaves’ descendants are victims, then their religion is a victim too. All of their millenarian misfortunes are used then to blame exclusively European colonialism and by extension Christianity — leaving voodoo and candomblé virtually untouched and exempt from responsibility in all of the tragedies, catastrophes, poverty, criminality and other evils.
Try to suggest slightly that there may be evil in voodoo and candomblé, and the leftist media quickly provides a heavy torrent of criticism and condemnations, as if every denunciation against those religions were a direct racist attack against backs. They put those religions in a privileged pedestal where to criticize them is like a “sacrilege”. But that same media grants totally inverse treatment when Christianity is under criticism.
The socialist agenda wants the situation to reach a point where a Christian, even one that has left African religions, might be legally threatened and condemned by “prejudice” if he says that there are curses in people and countries that invoke demons of witchcraft. It is evident: there won’t be any condemnation for the “irreverent” individuals that say what they want about Christianity — in these cases, the invocation of a right of free expression seems always to work very well!
But, wanting or not, what the anti-prejudice ideology is doing is to put demons of voodoo, candomblé and similar religions to occupy in an outstanding way the social stage as “victims” of the “imperialistic” Christianity — in fact, as “poor victims” in need of the protection and assistance from the State —, as if now it were the turn for God to be put in the category of criminal, discriminator, bigot, racist against African religions, etc. Or as if now it were the turn for the gods of the Afro-Brazilian religions to have their “cultural” revenge.
With his ambitious and obstinate politics of promoting as culture what the Bible classifies as witchcraft, Lula shows his own preferences. Before the 2006 presidential election, he visited Benin, the African nation considered the cradle of voodoo. There, Lula participated in a long ceremony of voodoo priests, to “help him” being reelected. In return, now he wants the Afro-Brazilian religions, which are related to voodoo, in privileged position in the schools, to the detriment of Christianity itself.
Will one or two earthquakes be enough to wake up the Brazilian society for the evils of the politically correct? I doubt a lot. The book of Revelation makes it clear that in these last days there will be a lot of curses and environmental tragedies, including enormous earthquakes, which will come as judgment and consequences of the sins of the society. Revelation describes the reaction of those surviving these judgments:
“And they did not repent of their murders or their sorceries or their sexual immorality or their thefts.” (Revelation 9:21 NKJV)
That is, even after major earthquakes and plagues,
Modern generation won’t repent from their homicides: murder of unborn babies through abortion, euthanasia, human beings’ ritual sacrifice in witchcraft, macabre scientific experiences with embryos, etc.
Modern generation won’t repent from their sorceries (invocation of demons and their powers under several forms, including macumba, candomblé, voodoo and many others) and from promoting them as “culture” in the schools, TV and other educational ways, flooding the whole society with their infernal malignancy and protecting them of criticism.
Modern generation won’t repent from their sexual immorality (adultery, sex outside marriage, homosexual acts, pornography, pornographic sexual education in the schools, etc.).
Modern generation won’t repent from their thefts, in a culture where many want to take advantage of their neighbor in the first opportunity, especially through government offices.
For their sins and a lack of repentance, they will continue suffering judgments.
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