Ascent from Darkness by Michael Leehan

Ascent from Darkness by Michael Leehan is a memoir of the author’s own dark past, and how he rose from the darkness and started living in the light again. The author’s journey into Satanism lead him down a path that you’ll never want to take, and hopefully his story will help to lead others out of the darkness as well.

Book Description
“A life of difficulty and disappointment set 33-year old Michael Leehan up for the worst decision of his life—to make a deal with the Devil to follow and serve him. Practicing the dark arts that include ritualistic cuttings and blood sacrifices, while fine tuning his manipulation and control skills, Michael launched into a twenty year downward spiral that included job loss and detachment from loved ones, and even jail time.

But God had another plan that included a group of Christian men to love him and pray for him—even when it became evident his assignment from Satan was to kill their pastor, Craig Groeschel.

The life Michael Leehan lives today is an incredible testimony of the transforming power of God's mercy and grace, but is also a wakeup call to the church to be fully aware of the spiritual war that is going on all around them, and to the ultimate battle for their souls.

"I am sending you to open their eyes and turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan to God, so that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me." Acts 26:18” – Ascent from Darkness


My Thoughts
Ascent from Darkness is a dark read. It is a true story about the author’s life, which makes it that much more chilling. The author doesn’t claim to be a writer, but he does a very good job with telling his story.

Even though the author does find God again and comes out of the darkness, this isn’t really a very uplifting read. It is dark, depressing, and at times you’ll think the author was a bit crazy. However, knowing that Michael doesn’t continue to follow Satan forever did help me to keep reading the book. If he didn’t, I wouldn’t have read it or continued to read it.

Overall, I found the book to be decent. It isn’t great, but it isn’t terrible either. I do hope that it helps people who are in the same darkness that the author was in. However, if they are that far gone, I don’t think they’d be sitting down reading this book to help them.


* Thank you to the publisher of Ascent from Darkness, Thomas Nelson, for providing me with a copy of this book for review as part of their BookSneeze program. All opinions expressed are my own.