AMAZING STORY
Exotic Dancer Finds Freedom From Demonic Attacks
By Annika Young
The 700 Club
CBN.com -Julia Shalom Jordan was a high paid exotic dancer, beauty pageant winner and ad model. At the height of her career, she came close to losing her life while battling the evil that took possession of her mind and body.
On an afternoon train ride through Chicago, Julia Shalom Jordan remembers the fear. “All these voices start coming out of me. Different voices like a little girl's voice, and this just angry growling voice.”
For months, Julia believes she was tormented by demons. “And I’m just sweating. The room is just instantaneously feels like it's 100 degrees. And I’m like, ‘Oh my gosh. What is happening to me?’”
Julia says the attacks resulted from years of bad choices, and running away from God. “I'm young. ‘Why not try and discover and get out of this little pond I’ve been in in my whole life?’ The idea of adventure really appealed to me.”
Julia grew up going to church, and remembers a family friend who often told her how much God loves her. “I felt love that I've never felt before and joy that I've never felt before. So I knew what she was talking about was real.”
But over the years, she started hearing a different message about God. “’If you don't do this, you know, God's going to judge you.’ And I heard a lot of those type of messages and I got frustrated because I knew I was always going to be falling short. I knew I was never good enough.”
So Julia walked away from the church, and God. By now she was in college on her dime. Eventually, she needed money. “So I started getting this like, anxiety, like, ‘how am I going to pay for all this? What am I going to do?’”
A friend told her she could make good money as an exotic dancer. Julia saw it as an opportunity, but wanted to establish some boundaries. “I didn't drink. I didn't smoke. I didn't let guys touch me. I didn't go home with customers.”
Later she quit school and started a modeling career. “That was like a drug for me but getting alone with myself I definitely didn't feel confident or beautiful. I needed those titles to make me feel validated.”
During this time she met John, who was also a model and they married. “When I was a little girl, my Sunday school teacher said, ‘Write a list of everything you want in the man you’re gonna marry and that God would prepare him at the perfect time.’”
Still, Julia was dancing at strip clubs; and thought nothing it. Now, after 13 years, that was changing. I got to stop dancing because I feel like after all God's done for me, I can't break His heart. Like, I just feel really bad about it now."
Then she lost a close friend to a heart attack. “I realized life is short and if I’m gonna start living for God I can’t keep putting it off another day. And I just felt this thought in my heart like, ‘open the Bible.’”
The words were piercing. “The very first verse I land on is like in Matthew and it says, ‘If your eye offends you, cut it out. It's better to go into heaven with one eye, then hell with two eyes.’ And I said, ‘oh gosh, I think that has a lot to do with my job. I think the Lord's talking to me about my job, that I need to cut my loses and really serve Him.’”
Julia says as she continued reading she felt a strange presence. She called her mother. “I’m reading the Bible and something weird's happening. And then I’m laying on the bed and then all of a sudden BOOM! My hands go up and my feet are like to the bedposts. And it feels like something's tied around my-my wrists and my and my ankles. And I’m literally on the bed like this, and I go, ‘Mom?’ and then all of a sudden ‘grrrrrrrr.’ This voice just rips through my body and it's like not me, and (it says,) ‘I hate you! I hate you!’ And it’s just growling.”
Julia’s mother and friends from church rushed over to pray for her. She made it through the ordeal. Over the next several months, she had more attacks. John wasn’t convinced they were supernatural. “She's not demon possessed. My wife, she has a mental issue or she maybe has some kind of depression or something wrong with her psychologically. But I couldn't figure it out because when I left she was totally normal and in one minute she's not.”
One night, Julia jumped out of the car as John was driving. He checked her into a psychiatric hospital. He did not know what to do. “I said to God, ‘if you're real, I need help. I can't do this. I can't fix this. Please, God, help me.’"
Julia found a church that knew how to help, but first Julia had to give her life to God. She surrendered. “Lord, I’ve lived for the devil my whole life. I’ve lived for myself my whole life. Now I want to live for You.”
She felt a change. “The Word is the Bread of Life. It literally was filling me up so much that the demons just expelled themselves and that part was amazing to me.”
She gave her life to Christ and John did the same. Julia quit dancing. She and John began studying God’s Word, and building their faith. Julia says, “I start my day off the day in prayer and I always thank the Lord because I want to be reminded of how good He is. I feel like living for the Lord is this great adventure. Instead of going on our whims, we let the Lord carry us and we let the Lord change us.”
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