Some people are not merely difficult or strong-willed. They operate under a spirit that seeks dominance, often cloaked in familiarity or even spiritual language. Pastor Vlad Savchuk’s recent teaching cuts through the confusion, reminding believers that witchcraft is not confined to Hollywood caricatures or ancient rituals. It thrives in subtle patterns of control, intimidation, and spiritual bondage that contradict the freedom Christ purchased on the cross.
The Bible takes witchcraft seriously. Galatians 5:20 lists sorcery among the works of the flesh that bar inheritance in the kingdom of God. In Acts 19, new believers publicly burned their occult books and paraphernalia upon encountering the true power of Jesus. Today, the same ancient spirit adapts to modern relationships, churches, and personal circles. Discerning its presence is not about accusing others but about guarding the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free.
At its root, witchcraft represents control without consent—an attempt to bend another’s will through fear, guilt, seduction, or false spiritual authority rather than through the gentle leading of the Holy Spirit. God grants dominion over creation, not over fellow image-bearers. When individuals cross that line, the fruit reveals the root.
Craving Control Through Manipulation
The first clear marker appears in those who demand compliance through threats, emotional blackmail, or ultimatums. Phrases like “If you loved me, you would…” or “You’ll regret saying no” expose a Jezebel-like spirit that ran King Ahab while crushing opposition. Healthy relationships honor free will; controlling ones punish independence. This is not personality. It is spiritual warfare masquerading as concern.
Weaponizing “God Told Me”
Even more insidious is the use of spiritual language to manipulate. False prophets claim divine directives to enforce obedience: “The Lord showed me you must do this, or you’re rebelling against God.” Ezekiel 13 condemns such diviners who speak when the Lord has not spoken. True prophecy liberates and aligns with Scripture. Witchcraft prophecy breeds fear, dependency, and confusion. Believers must test every word against the unchanging counsel of God’s written Word.
Rage Against Boundaries
Healthy people respect “no.” Those under controlling spirits react with silent treatment, smear campaigns, rage, or withdrawal. When the apostle Paul cast out a spirit of divination from the slave girl in Acts 16, her handlers erupted—not over lost spirituality, but lost profit and influence. Assertive boundaries expose these dynamics. Passive compliance invites domination; aggressive retaliation mirrors the same spirit. Elijah’s firm stand against Jezebel’s threats offers the model: neither passive nor vengeful, but steadfast in truth.
Isolation From Godly Community
Witchcraft isolates its targets. It sows suspicion against pastors, spouses, friends, and churches, positioning itself as the only safe harbor. “They don’t understand you like I do” sounds like care but functions as a snare. First Peter 5:8 warns that the adversary prowls like a lion seeking isolated prey. Community provides covering; severance leaves souls vulnerable to devouring. Wisdom demands resisting wedges driven between believers and the body of Christ.
False Spiritual Gifts Without Fruit
Some display uncanny accuracy, dreams, or supernatural insights yet lack the fruit of the Spirit. The slave girl in Acts 16 spoke truth while carrying a demonic spirit. Jesus warned in Matthew 7 that we know people by their fruits, not flashes of power. Miracles do not validate character—recall Moses barred from the Promised Land despite mighty works. Discernment prioritizes holiness, humility, and love over spectacle.
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Occult Objects and Practices
Visible signs include tarot cards, crystals for “energy,” dream catchers, or New Age rituals justified as harmless décor. Deuteronomy 18:10-12 forbids such practices outright. Early Christians in Ephesus burned their occult items rather than repurposing them. These objects serve as points of contact with darkness. No amount of Christian branding excuses trafficking with the kingdom opposed to Christ.
Spiritual Oppression Following Interaction
Finally, consistent patterns of heaviness, nightmares, confusion, division, or dulled prayer life after prolonged contact deserve attention. Not every low mood signals witchcraft, but recurring residue following specific relationships points to influence. King Saul’s tormenting spirit altered the atmosphere around him. David’s harp brought temporary relief, but lasting freedom required separation and reliance on God.
How should believers respond? First, examine your own life. Close personal doors to compromise through repentance and renunciation. Become repulsive to darkness by walking in holiness. Second, establish wise boundaries without unnecessary confrontation. Limit access, emotional dependency, and personal disclosures as Elijah distanced himself from Jezebel’s reach. Third, verbally renounce agreements in prayer, breaking soul ties and word curses in Jesus’ name. When oppression persists, seek counsel from trusted pastors or deliverance ministries. Witchcraft is real, yet Jesus remains Lord.
In an age of blurred spiritual lines, where culture normalizes rebellion against God’s order, vigilance matters. Christians must reject both naivety and paranoia, walking instead in the discernment the Holy Spirit provides. For those sensing these patterns, the call is clear: stand firm, guard your heart, and trust the One who has overcome the world.
“For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.” (Ephesians 6:12)
The victory belongs to Christ alone. No control—only the cross.
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Two Storms, One Harvest
Every food crisis in living memory has been a one-shock event. The 2008 price spike was a commodity bubble. The 2020 shortages were a logistics failure. The 2022 grain scare was a war on one exporter’s ports. Each time, the system bent, adjusted, and recovered, and each time the experts assured us afterward that global markets are simply too big and too diversified to fail.
What nobody in Washington seems eager to discuss is that 2026 is shaping up to be something the modern food system has never actually faced. Two independent shocks, one climatic and one geopolitical, are converging on the same harvest cycle at the same time. Not sequentially. Simultaneously.
Start with the weather. The Pacific Ocean is currently building toward what forecasters now openly call a record event. NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center puts the odds of at least a strong El Niño near 88 percent, with roughly two in three odds it reaches “very strong” status, the tier reserved for perhaps three or four events in the entire satellite era. Every major global model now projects a median peak in Super El Niño territory, and most of them project it exceeding the 2015-16 event, which until now held the modern record. Sea surface anomalies were already brushing the super threshold in mid-July, months before these events normally peak. The atmosphere has already shifted into El Niño mode, and the event is forecast to crest in late fall and early winter.
This is not about “climate change.” It’s about the standard cycles of weather, and the cycle we’re currently in is one that has likely devastated societies in the past. We’re better prepared as a society today, but not all Americans are equally prepared.
Serious households have started doing the quiet math on their own. Grocery bills tell part of the story, and the forecast maps tell the rest, which is why long-term food storage has moved from fringe hobby to mainstream line item in the family budget, with established suppliers like Heaven’s Harvest seeing demand from people who five years ago would have rolled their eyes at the idea. That instinct is not paranoia. It is pattern recognition, and the pattern is worth walking through carefully.
Editor’s Note: Heaven’s Harvest IS a sponsor, but the warnings of this article are real and would be written even if we didn’t have a survival food sponsor. With that said, those who take advantage of what they offer can use promo code “Patriot” for 15% off.
The Fertilizer Clock Is Already Running
While the Pacific warms, the second shock has been unfolding in the Strait of Hormuz. The conflict with Iran turned the world’s most important energy chokepoint into a contested waterway, and the consequences reach far beyond the gas pump. Roughly a third of global fertilizer trade moves through Hormuz, and the disruption sent urea prices up 86 percent year over year by March, with a 53 percent jump in a single month.
The World Bank projects energy prices rising about 24 percent in 2026 and fertilizer about 31 percent. By its own accounting, fertilizer prices ran 35 percent higher in the first five months of this year than the same period last year.
Here is the mechanism the nightly news will not explain. Fertilizer is not a grocery item. It is a time-delayed input. The nitrogen a farmer in Iowa or Punjab could not afford to apply this spring does not show up as a problem this spring. It shows up as a thinner harvest six to twelve months later.
The World Bank’s own food security brief concedes that the effects of reduced applications earlier this season “are likely to become visible only later in harvest outcomes.” Translate that from institutional language into plain English and it means this. The damage is already done, it is already in the ground, and we are simply waiting for it to arrive on the shelf.
Now check the calendar. Six to twelve months from the spring planting season lands us squarely in late 2026 and early 2027. Which is precisely when the strongest El Niño in the instrumental record is forecast to peak, bringing its signature droughts to Southeast Asia, Australia, southern Africa, northern Brazil, and South Asia, the very regions that grow the world’s rice, sugar, and oilseeds.
The World Bank warns openly that a strong El Niño “could disrupt multiple crop belts simultaneously” on top of the conflict-driven input costs. Their baseline projection assumes the Middle East disruptions ease by autumn. What in the last two years of Middle East history suggests that assumption is safe?
The System Has No Slack Left
The comfortable answer is that global markets always adjust. But adjustment requires slack, and the slack is gone. Global cereal production is expected to decline from last year’s records even before El Niño does its work. The UN World Food Programme, hardly a den of right-wing preppers, is calling this the most significant disruption to its supply chains since Covid and the invasion of Ukraine, and its supply chain director put the stakes bluntly.
Today’s supply chain challenges are tomorrow’s hunger crisis.
There is also a political dimension that markets cannot price. When food gets scarce, governments do not behave like economists. They behave like politicians. Export bans, hoarding mandates, and panic buying at the national level turned the modest rice shortfall of 2008 into a global crisis, and analysts are already warning that import-dependent nations are the first dominoes.
The 2015-16 Super El Niño, a far weaker event than what is now forecast, threw tens of millions into food stress across Africa and Asia. This one is projected to be stronger, and it arrives with fertilizer already rationed by price and shipping lanes already contested by missiles.
What Joseph Knew
Scripture does not treat preparation for lean years as faithlessness. It treats it as wisdom delivered in advance to those willing to act on it.
Behold, there come seven years of great plenty throughout all the land of Egypt: And there shall arise after them seven years of famine; and all the plenty shall be forgotten in the land of Egypt.
Joseph did not respond to that warning with a hashtag or a committee. He stored grain during the years of abundance, and when the famine came, Egypt stood while its neighbors begged. The lesson is not that famine is certain. It is that the time to prepare is precisely when preparation still looks optional.
Nobody who filled a pantry in a year of plenty has ever regretted it, and nobody standing in an empty aisle has ever been glad he waited for certainty.
None of this calls for panic, and panic is the enemy of sound judgment anyway. It calls for the same unglamorous prudence our grandparents considered ordinary. Keep some cash margin, know your local growers, and put real food in deep storage while it is cheap and available, because the entire arc of this story is that cheap and available is a closing window.
Families looking for a straightforward place to start can visit Heaven’s Harvest and use promo code Patriot for 15 percent off long-term storable food. The forecasts may yet soften, the strait may yet reopen, and we should pray they do. But hope is a fine thing to hold and a foolish thing to eat.