With a Subtitle: Uncovering the subversive tactics used to stir dissent within the Kingdom of God.

A brief Excerpt: Discover the startling true story of a former satanist's conversion and the undercover digital attempts to undermine it. Learn how the enemy uses deception to divide the Church and why unity remains our greatest defense.

The Author is: Zack Duncan

This story is about a satanist who masquerades as a Christian to stir up dissent and division within the Kingdom of God.

It starts with a man named Riaan Swiegelaar.

The Occultist Turned Christian

Riaan was born into a Christian family before becoming a scientifically minded atheist and psychic medium.

He co-founded the South African Satanic Church (SASC) to promote Satan as a symbol of individual expression and personal freedom and to address supposed misconceptions related to “satanic panic.”¹

He’s now a former atheist and satanist after a supernatural experience with “Yeshua of Nazareth” in 2022² led him to renounce Satan and follow Christ.

These days Swiegelaar no longer seeks hidden knowledge and power through supernatural rituals. He helps others leave the occult world he had lived in for so long.

His conversion to Christ has been noticed within the satanist community as well.

I accidentally learned this while doing some research about his fascinating conversion. I came across the following subreddit for The Satanic Temple (TST).

Before we see what these folks think about Riaan, let’s do a quick satanism explainer.

Satanism for Dummies

Satanist organizations are typically united by a desire to promote secularism and individualism.

Swiegelaar says that satanists are mostly “normal” professionals who work as doctors, lawyers, teachers, and business leaders. They are regular people who desire spiritual empowerment but reject the rules of organized religion.³

Organizations that promote Satanism include the Church of Satan (CoS) which was founded in 1966 by Anton LaVey; the Temple of Set; and The Satanic Temple (TST) which was founded in 2013 and is based in Salem, MA.

Some, like the Temple of Set, are theistic and worship a literal, supernatural entity. Others are atheistic (like the Church of Satan) or non-theistic (like TST).

The ranks are growing quickly. Membership in TST had been 10,000 in 2019 and shot up to 700,000 by 2023.⁴

The Satanic Temple, just like Swiegalaar’s former SASC, maintains that Satan is merely a symbol or archetype. They deny that their rituals — including “unbaptisms” and abortion rituals — are actually directed towards an actual spiritual entity.⁵

It’s a metaphor tied to their emphasis on bodily autonomy and individual sovereignty, they say.

Many Satanists don’t believe God is real (the atheistic and non-theistic variety). There are others who do believe God is real but are similar to the Gnostics who hold that Yahweh is not our Good Father but a malevolent or ignorant deity.

In either case, they affirm self-will and the deification of the individual rather than surrender to Christ.

[Side Note: Despite the “metaphorical” public position, Riaan has said he increasingly came to believe he was literally contacting actual supernatural entities during his 20+ years in the occult. He just did not believe they were malevolent nor did he believe in a literal “Devil” until after coming to Christ.]

With that intro out of the way, let’s take a look at what some of these folks associated with TST have to say about Riaan’s conversion.

What Do Satanists Think About Riaan?

The responses range from skepticism to denial to “meh” to anger.

Here, we have a skeptic.

This next person parodies a stereotypical Christian response to falls from grace. Resolve the cognitive dissonance by denying that Riaan was ever really a “true” satanist.

It’s the next comment where things get interesting. Pay particular attention to that second commenter.

This individual will make a return appearance soon as our subversive counter-Christian who hasn’t quite covered his tracks.

Before we see him in his new role, we should all remember that people don’t get into Satanism because they think it’s evil and like that sort of thing.

They think that affirming the values of Satan is what we need as humans and that Christianity is the harmful and oppressive force.

Therefore, pretending to be a Christian in order to attack and divide the body of Christ would not necessarily seem immoral to the Satanist. I’m not saying willful deception is ok (it’s not), but attempting to frame up the mindset of our commenter who believes that the ends of delegitimizing Christianity would justify the means is.

This is sometimes referred to as the Left-Hand Path in Western esotericism and Satanism. ⁶

Now that we have a little more understanding about mindset, let’s see our secret Satanist playing a different role.

The Catholic Satanist?

If you do a Google search for “Riaan Swiegelaar,” you might come across the Catholicism subreddit below.

Take a look at who posted it.

It’s the same individual who was active in the Satanic Temple thread lamenting Riaan’s conversion.

It’s a counter-messaging objective framed as question.

No longer visibly angered by Riaan’s conversion to Christ, this individual now appears as a concerned Catholic who is casting sincere doubt on the legitimacy of the conversion.

The goals are clear:

• Acknowledge the reality of the conversion experience but cast doubt on the idea that it was truly from Jesus
• Accuse Riaan of “divination” and attempting to invoke a “demonic cluster” to horrify the Catholic audience and distract from the heart of the story

Aside from the fact that this individual made the mistake of not using a different username (whoops), it’s a clever plan.

It’s right out of the Public Relations 101 playbook for dealing with “bad news.” Redirect the likely conclusion of a harmful story while attacking the credibility of the source.

In the world of PR, this is what you do with a “bad” (but true) story that is impossible to hide: “inoculate” the audience against the likely detrimental effect.

By controlling the narrative, one can immediately shift the focus from miraculous conversion to spiritual danger.

There are more PR best practices we see at work.

Like using loaded language such as “divination” and “demonic cluster” to get the red alerts flashing. The goal is to get the audience to associate Swiegelaar with deception and further neutralize the bad news.

When one of the Catholic commenters rightly pushes back on the doubts, the Satanist-in-disguise continues to cast doubts and attack Swiegelaar’s credibility by accusing him of being a “new age guru.”

The subversive secularist accuses Riaan of having “an odor of Gnosticism” and ends with a halfhearted commitment to “just pray for him.”

I bet he will!

Should we be startled by this devious bit of PR manipulation?

Is This a Surprise?

It shouldn’t be.

Not to anyone who has heard the words of Jesus and takes them seriously.

He makes that clear in John 8:44, saying, “When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies.”⁷

This is simply an on-brand move.

And it shows a reality that often remains hidden to Christians. Whether we want to acknowledge it or not, there is an invisible struggle between light and dark.

That struggle is not against flesh and blood. It’s not against the counterfeit Catholic who believes he’s doing something good by attacking Christians.

It is against a supernatural evil that seeks to deceive the whole world and steal the faith, joy, and peace of Christians.

For the Christian, there’s no need to be scared or to get outraged. This is not unexpected in the Christian life.

Jesus Gathers, Satan Scatters

Jesus is simultaneously gracious and open in welcoming all while also being rigidly exclusive about the difference between light and dark. The dividing line is loyalty to Jesus and His Kingdom vs. remaining in the camp of the enemy.

Jesus came to bring a new Kingdom that provides forgiveness of sins, newness of life, and victory over the darkness.

And the enemy does everything he can to oppose the new Kingdom.

Jesus warns His followers about this in the parable of the weeds.

Matthew 13:24-29 - He put another parable before them, saying, “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a man who sowed good seed in his field, but while his men were sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat and went away. So when the plants came up and bore grain, then the weeds appeared also. And the servants of the master of the house came and said to him, ‘Master, did you not sow good seed in your field? How then does it have weeds?’ He said to them, ‘An enemy has done this.’So the servants said to him, ‘Then do you want us to go and gather them?’ But he said, ‘No, lest in gathering the weeds you root up the wheat along with them.

What do weeds do?

They seek to strangle the wheat and corrupt the harvest. That’s what we see when we look at more of the incognito posts of our secretive satanic agent: a committed desire for division in the Church.

Dividing the Body

Jesus prayed for unity in His body. And Satan hates everything God loves.

So it’s no surprise that our satanic saboteur would love for Catholics to spend time getting stirred up about things that Protestants might say.

Below is another attempt to stir up division.

This time it’s not an original post but a response to a question from a real Catholic.

In this case the original poster had shared a thought-provoking Protestant viewpoint. Rather than seriously engaging with the question, which could have the undesired effect of growing Christian charity between Christian traditions, the Satanist again seeks to deflect and redirect.

What Satan Wants

I know there are Christians who get squeamish about the idea of affirming unity in the mystical body of Christ with fellow Christians across denominations.

But I wonder what you think after seeing how much this Satanist wants to add bricks to the walls that divide us. What does it tell us when we might want the same thing that Satan wants?

Because when it comes to true unity, I’m not talking about watering down the faith to something bland and meaningless through a fear of causing offense.

I’m talking about standing with brothers and sisters from different faith traditions who affirm the regula fidei. Brothers and sisters who know that the Cross is an offense and a stumbling block and are unashamed of Jesus. People who have decided to cling to loyalty in Christ in the face of any opposition.

This is a reality that many Christians outside of America are already experiencing. The battle is not with other Christians with different doctrinal particulars. The battle is supernatural against a truly real and deceptive enemy.

Wrapping Up

So what should Christians do?

For one thing, we should acknowledge reality. We can’t pretend that deception like this is not a real goal and a practical reality of our enemy.

Nor can we simply be angry or cynical.

Jesus told us to love and pray for those who might consider us enemies. This same Jesus prayed for forgiveness for the people who were quite literally crucifying Him.⁸

And we should remember that most satanists don’t believe they are aligning with a literal entity the Bible calls ha-satan, the adversary. Christians are called to love Satanists.

And that’s interesting because of it’s an essential part of Riaan’s conversion story.

Shortly before his supernatural encounter with Jesus, he received a surprising hug from an employee of a radio station where he had been vocal in his criticism of Christianity.

Instead of antagonism or indifference towards a potential “other,” she showed him love. She shocked him with her generous spirit of compassion and care. Let us pray for the courage to do the same.

And while we’re at it, let’s learn to boldly proclaim the centrality of Jesus and seek to repair divisions in the Body. Let’s do precisely the opposite of what Satan desires, since we know he desires the opposite of God’s perfect will.⁹

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