Article By Rebecca Johnson // EEW Magazine News

Two different stories have emerged in connection to Pastor John Gray’s cheating scandal.

He said on daytime talk show, “The Real,” that his affair was only “emotional” and not sexual, but a woman who identifies herself as his former mistress says the two had a consensual sexual relationship.

She has shared voicemails and an exclusive interview with journalist Larry Reid in hopes of corroborating her story that the preacher was entangled in a web of lies involving sex, money, abuse of power, and manipulation. The tale she tells is damaging and has divided public opinion.

In a conversation published online and heard by EEW Online Editors, the unnamed woman tells Larry Reid Live she has known the South Carolina-based Relentless Church pastor for more than 20 years. She says their sexual relationship, which was both physical and virtual through Apple’s video-messaging application, FaceTime, ended as recently as the summer of 2018.

The woman says the 45-year-old star of OWN’s “The Book of John Gray” not only had sex with her, but he also paid off her BMW, gave her additional financial support through cash app, and said he was going to leave his wife, Aventer Gray, to be with her.

In a revealing snippet of an hours-long phone conversation with The Larry Reid Live Show—first recorded in 2018 and newly published following Gray’s public denial of any sex-related activity—the woman says the illicit relationship began innocently with Gray “ministering” to her, and agreeing to help out one of her friends, who was also an employee of hers.

 “I called on him to do a favor for a person that I knew that was struggling with some addiction issues,” she says, adding that Gray successfully got this person on “the straight and narrow.” She says she expressed gratitude for the pastor’s help, after which, he offered to assist her in the future if the need ever arose. She took him up on his offer.

“I ran into an issue financially,” she says, so she requested that Gray give her an undisclosed sum of money which she says he gave to her. “It was a really big thing,” she explains, telling Reid it was a significant amount.

After that she says, “It just snowballed into [him saying] ‘I just love you so much. I always loved you. I always cared about you. I always thought about you.”

She says the two continued talking and Gray confided in her about his festering resentment of his wife, expressing that, “…he did not like her; that he was never in love with her; that he was never attracted to her; that he only married her because she looked good on paper.”

Though First Lady Gray said on The Real that she has never seen the mistress, the woman says she knows plenty about Mrs. Gray and her husband’s dissatisfaction with the fractured union.

Gray admitted on The Real to “sharing things about my marriage outside of my wife, and outside of trusted counselors,” adding, “It was wrong. I take responsibility for that. But I will not take responsibility for that which I did not do.”

The woman, however, says he did do the things he denies and more.

Some are asking why a mistress would be checked into a hotel for an “emotional” affair as they struggle to understand leaked messages and details that seem to contradict his story.

According to the woman, she was thoroughly convinced that Gray would leave his wife, which gave her confidence to leave an abusive marriage knowing she would be taken care of by the pastor.

“Basically he led me on to believe that he was going to leave her” because he was “tired of being behind this mask,” and she says this statement was made “right as they were moving into the new church.”

Gray, who was installed as pastor of Relentless Church in May 2018, maintains that, despite the publication of incriminating voice mails from him and salacious details provided by the unnamed woman, the picture being painted is inaccurate.

He says while there were multiple conversations and one in-person encounter, there were zero instances of sexual activity.

He drove home the point with the co-hosts of The Real by telling them, “Over a year ago, my wife and I were in a very difficult place in our marriage, and in that time, I began to converse with someone — other than a counselor, other than a pastoral leader, which is where I should have taken my issues and challenges — and began to converse, and I was even in the presence of that person one time.”

He added, “But being in the presence of someone is not the same as sleeping with them. I did not sleep with anyone."

Since the two vastly different sides of the story have now emerged, some say they still don’t believe the pastor is telling the whole truth. At present, only Gray, the mistress, and God know what truly happened.

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