By Michael Ashcraft —
Curtis “Earthquake” Kelley was formerly a high-ranking witch, so he brings a wealth of counter-intelligence to Christianity — and what he finds is that most Christians are abysmally ignorant of their enemy’s strategy.
“Since I was in that dark stuff, God told me to bring that information to the table,” says the seventh-born heir to a dark legacy of priestly power in Haitian voodoo.
Today, Curtis, 64, uses his honorary doctoral degree to teach Christians the mechanics of deliverance from demonic oppression, from physical sickness to entanglements with sin. He travels internationally and gives classes over Zoom — “not just a whole lot of hollering and hooping. We need an understanding of God’s word for knowing how to fight these hobgoblins.“
Call it Deliverance 101.
Twenty years ago, Curtis taught Deliverance at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. Today, he is pursuing a goal of launching Schools of Deliverance in every major U.S. city.
“The enemy doesn’t want the body of Christ to be educated about what he does and who he moves,” Curtis told God Reports. “Deliverance is not a 40-yard dash. It’s an 880 run. It may take a little while to get around the track and learn these things. A lot of people give up because of their lack of knowledge. The church is not taught how to fight.”
Born to a Haitian immigrant family in New York, Curtis was heir to the family’s legacy in witchcraft because he was seventh born. He learned casting spells, astral projection, séance pronouncements and client manipulation, but when he saw demons coming in and out of his floor — and especially after a drug-induced dip in Hell — Curtis decided he wanted out.
He grudgingly attended church, and on the third day of revival in December of 1971 the evangelist called him out: “Young man, God wants to save you. God says, ‘I love you. I want to save you,’” Curtis remembers. “I didn’t want nothing to do with the church because I thought they were weak. But when I heard God loved me, I went up to the altar.”
Among the things he’s done through the intervening years, Curtis got into boxing. He was a good bare-knuckle fight club brawler and caught the eye of promoter Don King, who fronted him as a super heavy weight boxer along with Mike Tyson, who was heavyweight category, Curtis says.
He met with some success — in the shadow of Tyson — but a head-on car collision in 1986 abruptly ended his foray in the sport.
Curtis got into ministry. He was holding a drug-rehab program at a Los Angeles church in the early 1990s when a well-dressed participant — husband and wife — caught his eyes.
“You don’t look like you have any problems with drugs,” Curtis approached him at an opportune moment.
“Oh no,” the man responded. “We’re here for our son. Our son is strung out real bad.”
With the knowledge he gained, that man helped his son break free from drugs. Today, that son is a successful engineer, Curtis says.
It turns out, the man was a professor at USC and spoke to the Dean to get Curtis in to teaching a class — Deliverance and Demonology — for one semester. There were always 5 or 6 kids out of the 50-student class who hung out after class wanting to know more.
He met and married Selena 39 years ago. The couple had seven kids, the oldest son was murdered in car jacking, he says.
Curtis pastored a church in Hollywood from 2004 to 2009, and later pastored in New York. Now mostly, he has been traveling. The need is so great that he began to wonder how to multiply the impact of his teaching.
Thus, the School of Deliverance was born. Only Covid has kept it from launching already. He utilized his many connections with pastors and leaders around the United States to help birth the school and teach the “A to Z of deliverance.”
“My people suffer from lack of knowledge,” Curtis quotes scripture. “My people go into captivity because of lack of knowledge. The enemy is not being properly challenged in the church.”
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