A Colombian flight attendant recently shared how pop superstar Justin Bieber led her to saving faith in Jesus Christ.
In a recent episode of “The Becket Cook Show”, Victoria Mandylor spoke of her upbringing leading up to her conversion, CBN News reported.
"Yeah, he planted a seed," Mandylor said of Bieber. "He was another person that was put in my life to put the last seed [in] and water it."
Despite growing up Catholic, she shared that her faith in God wavered when her uncle started sexually abusing her when she was 12 years old.
"He groomed me from the time I arrived in the United States until I was 17 and then he raped me," she explained. "It went on for many years and he [mentioned] God to do what he was doing because he knew that I believed in God."
Mandylor also noted her uncle would even follow her to school and told her that his actions were based on his love for her.
"It was quite awful because I knew how wrong it was but then he was also very clever at convincing me it was love, that love is good, that 'God is love,' and that he loved me more than his own daughters," she said. "It was an awful time in my life."
Despite Mandylor ultimately pressing charges against her uncle, who is now in jail, she no longer had faith in God and turned to New Age practices including meditation and yoga to cope with the pain. Her experience with the New Age, however, opened the door to demonic encounters.
"I got really, really into this stuff but at the same time I was having this horrible sleep paralysis where I was falling asleep and either coming out of my body or I was seeing entities coming into the room trying to take me and I couldn't move," she said. "I couldn't talk. I would try screaming and no voice would come out of me. All my limbs were completely frozen and I just couldn't do anything."
"But at the time I was already curious about Jesus and I had a Bible," she added. "When this entity that looked like an alien...was coming to get me I just closed my eyes...and I said, 'Jesus. In the name of Jesus, please get rid of the entity. Take it away from me, please'...And it just disappeared."
Mandylor told Beckett that her road to faith in Christ started with an encounter with Bieber while she worked as a stewardess on the singer’s private jet.
"He gets on board and the first thing that he says to me is... 'Do you believe in Jesus Christ?' I just looked at him and I said 'Excuse me?' and he said, 'Do you believe in Jesus Christ? Do you believe He is the Son of God that was crucified and died for your sins? And do you know that you are forgiven?' And I was like, 'I am very spiritual and I do a lot of meditating and stuff and maybe He existed'," she recalled.
"I was very arrogant," she continued.
The singer also asked her if she listened to Christian worship music and ended up sharing a few songs with her. At first, Mandylor did not listen to the songs but she ended up finding a YouTube video, titled "From Yoga to Christianity” which included the testimony of an ex-new Yoga instructor who also struggled with sleep paralysis.
Mandylor’s life would ultimately be changed after her ex-gay Christian friend invited her to attend Reality Church of Los Angeles with him. She shared that she had felt the Holy Spirit in the middle of the church service and gave her life to Christ.
"I just fell to my knees and I began sobbing," Mandylor explained. "It's like my life was flashing in front of me and I'm feeling this horrible guilt and then all of a sudden as I cry it's like guilt is being taken away from me and then I feel love. It's this supernatural love."
"It's this overwhelming peace and I am sobbing and I can't get up....and I felt the Holy Spirit," she continued. "It was a supernatural experience," she said.
Less than a year later, Mandylor met Bieber again on another flight she was working on and told him about her conversion. In response, Bieber celebrated the moment and prayed with Mandylor.
Mandylor also refuted claims that her conversion came due to Bieber’s influence, but rather his explanation of the Gospel.
"I had never heard anyone just put it so simple," she recalls. Mandylor explained that Bieber said, "'He is the Son of God. That died for you.' Just as simple as that. 'He died for you.'"
As Christian Headlines previously reported, an actor from the Christian hit series “The Chosen” also shared how he came to faith in Christ after Bieber invited him to church.
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Milton Quintanilla is a freelance writer and content creator. He is a contributing writer for CrosswalkHeadlines and the host of the For Your Soul Podcast, a podcast devoted to sound doctrine and biblical truth. He holds a Masters of Divinity from Alliance Theological Seminary.
