Over the weekend, vandals sprayed satanic graffiti of the phrase “Hail Satan” and pentagrams on four Long Island churches.
Three churches in North Amityville, Suffolk County, were vandalized on Friday; on Saturday, a fourth nearby church was defaced.
The New York Post reported that three Pentacostal churches were targeted, Gospel Church, Amityville Full Gospel Tabernacle, and Prayer Tabernacle Church of God in Christ; the fourth church, Shaw Temple A.M.E. Zion, is African Methodist Episcopal.
Walter Willie, the pastor at Prayer Tabernacle Church of God in Christ, told WPIX-TV: “They must have a vendetta. To attack a place of healing, a place that helps people in time of great need — whoever did this has hurt in their heart.”
Alton Lamont, a deacon at Amityville Full Gospel Tabernacle, added, “It’s very upsetting that someone would desecrate a house of God.”
Only a week before, New Covenant Church in East Meadow, New York, located in nearby Nassau County, was vandalized with “demonic imagery and phrases,” the Post reported.
On Sunday, the churches’ pastors and congregants held a kind of exorcism; Amityville Full Gospel’s pastor, William Walker, 48, placed his hands where the pentagram had ben removed, shouting, “The blood of Jesus covers this house! No distress, no fear, to this family! Bless this house, no sign of evil will stop the word of God. Hail Jesus, hail Jesus, hail Jesus!”