A few weeks back, I was looking through my traffic logs and found someone who came across my article “The Power of Christ Compels You” via the following Google search:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=applying+the+blood+of+jesus+against+evil+people

I’m guessing my article wasn’t what this person was looking for, so I ran the search myself and found the following essay: How to Plead the Blood of Jesus for Deliverance and Protection.

This remarkable essay is founded on a deep belief in what I can only call Christian magic. It claims that “pleading the blood of Jesus”, a specific type of prayer which it explains precisely how to conduct, will create supernatural protection for the life and possessions of the claimant against real-world disasters. It helpfully lists the basic things that a Christian can invoke the blood of Jesus to magically protect: your house (“will help protect you against fires, break-ins, burglaries, natural catastrophes or any type of bad accidents”), your car (“will help prevent you from getting into any serious auto accidents, along with helping to prevent any break-ins or theft of your car”), your finances (“will help protect you from all of the scammers and con artists that are out there trying to scam and steal all of your hard earned money”), your children (“will help protect them from any possible abductions, serious accidents or life-threatening illnesses”), and yourself, to personally protect you against all of these catastrophes. Unbelievably, the site even claims that this spell will protect against earthquakes, tornadoes, lawsuits, and plane crashes!

The site insists that, like any good magic spell, the words must be spoken precisely and specifically:

You will have to Plead the Blood on each of the above six items to get God’s full protection on it. You have to be very specific on the things that you will want covered and protected under His Blood.

Evidently, despite being omniscient and presumably knowing what people need, God parses all prayers like a lawyer does a contract, only granting the exact boons the believer asks for.

It even adds the specific magical gestures that help the believer’s spell work most effectively:

The other thing that you can do is to hold out your right hand, palm facing forward when actually Pleading the Blood. The Bible tells us that the right hand of God is His hand of power and deliverance. When you Plead the Blood, you are going on the offensive. By holding out your right hand when Pleading the Blood on the basics, you are showing God that you mean serious business with Him, and that you have every intention of pulling down His divine supernatural protection to cover you on all of the basics that you are Pleading the Blood of His Son on.

as well as how long the magical protection lasts:

I have personally found out the hard way that if I want God’s full protection on all of the above items – that I have to Plead the Blood on the night before the beginning of the next month. In other words, if I want God’s protection for the month of May, then I have to Plead the Blood on all of the above on the last day of April.

I’d suggest to the authors of this site that they try testing their magical powers in a controlled fashion to see if they have any effect whatsoever distinguishable from chance, but I suspect few theists’ beliefs are as blissfully uncontaminated by evidence as the writer of this essay. As with all believers in magic, Christians who use these spells will remember the hits and forget the misses, attributing the inevitable failures of prayer to some sin in their lives or simply to a change in God’s unknowable will. The terminally superstitious may use these magical beliefs as a crutch to help them get through their daily lives, but it is a crutch that is only hobbling them further, when they would do far better to stand and walk on their own two feet.