Ex-Satanist Riaan Swiegelaar’s journey out of the occult and into the Christian faith captivated the world when his story first went viral in 2022.

Swiegelaar has since shared details of what he says was a radical encounter with Jesus — an exchange that led him out of Satanism and into biblical belief.

He remarkably went from a person who denied Jesus’ existence to a man now trying to help others steeped in the occult. And it all started with the love of a stranger.

A few years ago, a Christian woman who heard Swiegelaar speak on the radio about his rejection of Jesus came up to the then-Satanist and hugged him, an action that left him stunned and planted a seed in his heart.

“A few days after that, I was supposed to perform … a Satanic ritual … to check in on whether the Antichrist has been born yet or not,” he told Billy Hallowell and Jen Lilley on the “Into the Supernatural” podcast. “Because of my background, at the time, was in the occult as a professional practitioner and somebody who actively practiced rituals even before I got involved in Satanism, they thought it a good idea to appoint me to do the ritual.”

As Swiegelaar was preparing for the strange rite, he said something supernatural happened.

“When I got to lighting the second candle, the whole room where I was doing this suddenly lit up as if there was a spotlight shown into the room,” he said. “My initial thoughts actually was that I’m either being pranked or I’m being watched by someone.”

But when he turned around, Swiegelaar was stunned by what he observed.

“As I turned around … Jesus was standing there,” he said. “And, again, I didn’t know that this was Jesus. So I asked Him, ‘Who are you?'”

Swiegelaar said Jesus identified himself, but Swiegelaar rejected the notion and proclaimed he didn’t even believe Christ existed. He knew in those moments that the apparition “wasn’t a person,” yet he was perplexed as to what — or who — was standing before him.

“Remember, in Satanism there is a lot of… involvement of invoking demons and working with demons,” he said. “So, demons always appear in a certain way to occultists and people practicing.”

But when Swiegelaar asked Jesus to prove who He was, something else happened that left him reeling: he was immediately hit with an inordinate amount of love.

“When I said to Him, ‘You’ll have to prove it,’ he flooded me with so much love — and because of that lady [who hugged me days before] I recognized that love, because, you see, she had Christ inside her,” he said. “So I immediately recognized that like this is real, and I remember I actually fell to my knees because I couldn’t stay standing up.”

Swiegelaar said the experience lasted no more than a minute or two, but the impact was deeply profound. He said it was as though the “whole world went quiet.”

“I just sat on the floor in that quietness and that feeling of love,” he said.

Everything Swiegelaar thought he knew was suddenly obliterated. He realized he had been happy by the world’s standards but that suddenly wasn’t enough.

“I just didn’t realize that I had a Christ-sized hole in my heart,” he said.

Swiegelaar, who was deeply impacted by the interaction, started on a path toward rejecting the Satanism he was helping lead and decided to embrace the Christian faith — a paradigm shift that transformed everything.

“I had to go through a 10-month deliverance period,” he said. “Because I was so involved in the occult and so involved Satanism, I went through nine sessions over a 10-month period of deliverance.”

Swiegelaar eventually found spiritual freedom. Now, he is sharing his faith and helping others exit Satanism and find true hope in the Christian faith.

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