When the Satanist Greater Church of Lucifer opened down the street from Spring First Church in Houston, Senior Pastor Rob Hogan encouraged his congregation not to join the protests that were taking place outside the Luciferian’s building.

“If you want to picket it, picket it on your knees,” Hogan said, CBN reports.

Hogan was convinced that the best way to deal with the new satanic group was through ‘fervent prayer’ and extending Christ’s love.

The new Satanic church was started by an ex-Mormon, Jacob McKelvy. He defiantly turned against God as a young boy when his sister died after being bitten by a snake.

Believing God had rejected him, McKelvy angrily converted to satanism.

“There was a lot of hopelessness and feeling of powerlessness that drew me to become a [satanist],” McKelvy said.

This eventually led him to start a Satanist church in his garage. It proved so popular, that they moved to a public building on Halloween night, October 30, 2015.

The reaction was almost immediate as people, many of them Christians, gathered outside their new building to angrily picket the satanist group.

These protests took a bizarre turn, when arguments broke out between picketers over theological disagreements between the different groups.

A Nigerian pastor even joined the fray from the other side of the ocean. Videos emerged of him praying that McKelvy would be attacked by dogs so he would no longer lead the satanic meetings.

But these negative reactions to the satanic church contrasted a couple points that the Apostle Paul made in his letter to the Ephesians.

First, he told them that our battle is not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers in high places.

In other words, by focussing their attention on McKelvy and the satanic church the picketers were missing the mark. The real battle was with the demonic realm.

This is a spiritual enemy that requires spiritual weapons.

I don’t how many times, I have applauded after one bad person in place of influence was removed, only to see the individual replaced by someone even worse.

This happens because we failed to deal with the real issue, the Satanic forces behind these flesh and blood people.

Secondly, Paul told the Ephesians that they should put aside “all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice.” (Ephesians 4: 31).

Smcintos asks in his article, “after reading those words in the book of Ephesians, there is an important question to ask: Why did they have to be told?”

It’s obvious that the Ephesians were arguing and slandering others.

If that wasn’t difficult enough, Jesus added that we needed to “love our enemies” and pray for them (Matthew 5:43-44).

Did Jacob McKelvy fall into this ‘enemy’ category?

It’s not easy being a believer, because the Christian life goes against every natural instinct. We can only do it through the power of the Holy Spirit.

But this was the approach that Pastor Hogan and his congregation took with McKelvy and the Luciferian church. They fervently prayed about the situation and their prayers were answered.

On February 5, 2017, a year and a half after opening his satanic church, McKelvy walked into Pastor Hogan’s office at New Spring Church. Four hours later McKelvy renounced satanism and accepted Christ. He and wife were water baptized a short time later.

CBN reports that a few months after McKelvy’s conversion, the Satanist Greater Church of Lucifer closed its doors.