Witches Invitation by Carman Licciardello

Back in the day, when I was in my late teens, early twenty's there was a Christian singer named, Carmen.  As far as I know, he only did Christian events after giving his heart to Christ and he is still around today, bringing the love of God to people through music. He has walked with the Lord for years now and has a gift for song-writing/story telling.  

Years ago, an evangelist named Mario Murillo, was doing a chapel service at Oral Robert's University (ORU) and Carman (Licciardello) was also invited to the chapel, doing the worship.  Carmen stayed at the piano when Mario took the pulpit, just be ready if Mario wanted some back-up music so Carman now had a front-seat view to the story Mario was about to tell.  

Mario started his time teaching with a story. He began talking about an invitation he had received from a man while preaching in the campus of the University of California, Berkley (Berkeley).  A man name Isaac Bonewits came up to Mario and began to compare his god (satan) to the God of Mario, Jehovah .

Mario found out later that Bonewits was one of the only people ever to receive an accredited bachelor of arts degree from Berkeley with a major in witchcraft.  Mario goes on to tell of how Bonewits left their meeting by giving him his business card inviting him to come and chat more regarding their "gods".  Mario never responded to this invite, so later, Bonewits actually sent a written invitation to Murillo to continue the conversation. Mario thought he would not go and meet him so he threw the invite in the trash but on the way to the can, the Lord told Mario that he should go and meet with him.  Here is the link to the full story of Mario sharing what happened regarding this invitation on the blog called Encounter Today.

Remember now that Carman was sitting there on the same stage with Mario as Mario is telling the whole story to the ORU students so being the great song-writer he is, he took the event and wrote a song. He named the song, Witches Invitation. Here is the link to the video of Carman at a live event, where he played the video, Witches Invitation.

I remember when this song came out and just loved it. I had no idea then that it was from a real event.  My mom used to listen to Mario Murillo back in the day, but I didn't know the two of them were connected until I came across this testimony by Mario last week.  This song was one of my favorites by Carman and many of the Christians I ran with at the time loved it as well. 

From what Mario says, Carman did change the name of the character from his real name of Bonewits to Horowitz in the song but most of the other details follow perfectly the song to what Mario said happened; all except the closing words about  wanting to "rumble with a man of God".  Amazing!

So true! Our God has bought us with the blood of Jesus and satan has to let us go! Never a more true statement ever spoken!