India

Tied to a chair in a small room, struggling to breathe after a severe beating, Pastor Dharala Francis awaited his death. For nearly 30 years, he had faithfully led a ministry that served the disadvantaged in India, but on July 9, 2015, his reputation for sharing the gospel caught up with him. That day, an angry mob beat him severely and conspired to burn him to death. “I didn’t have fear,” he recalled eight months later, sitting with his wife and daughter at a guest house in India. “I was ready to die that day. I said, ‘If this is the last day for me, I want to go to heaven directly.’” Instead of dying, however, Pastor Dharala saw a surprising work of God. A Threatening Love The pastor and his family had spent the first six months of 2015 building relationships with villagers in western India, praying for those who were sick, serving the poor and distributing Christian literature. Gradually, Hindus — and even some Muslims — started following Christ. “Every Sunday we would go to that village and share the Word of God, and day by day the number was increasing because of many miracles taking place there,”

Onslaught on Christians in India’s Sacred State One evening in early September 2018, an investigative report on India’s Zee News stunned many viewers with the claim that pastors in Uttar Pradesh state were paying Hindus to convert to Christianity. Though fictitious, the report reinforced similar claims about Christianity that had appeared elsewhere. Hindu radicals were incensed by the news that Christianity was growing and even flourishing in Uttar Pradesh, which is considered the sacred home of Lord Shiva and an important site of worship on the holy Ganges River. Hindu nationalists believe that India should be a purely Hindu state and that followers of other religions should be expelled from the country. Throughout September and October, persecution against Christians erupted across the densely populated state of Uttar Pradesh. Gangs blocked roads leading to churches and vandalized some smaller churches. Angry mobs beat Christians and dragged pastors from their beds in the middle of the night. Police arrested pastors during Sunday services, closed churches and arrested more than 100 Christians for “creating community disharmony.” And most evangelism in the area came to an abrupt halt. Meanwhile, Christian leaders in the area struggled to respond to the ongoing incidents, paying bail, traveling

As villagers watched Ritesh exchange the emptiness of worshiping idols for a relationship with the one true God, they accused him of converting his family to Christianity. For 35 years, Ritesh regularly performed puja at a temple in southern India. Like millions of other Hindus who practice the ritualistic prayer, he lit sticks of incense, displayed colorful flowers, listened to meditative music and worshiped various Hindu idols. He often spent more than an hour in the temple meditating on Hindu texts. But as much as he longed for spiritual growth through these rituals, he and his family never felt a connection with their gods or found the peace for which they were yearning. Then, one day in 2016, a local shopkeeper named Pascal gave him a Bible after a lengthy discussion about how to know God. Ritesh read the book daily … and soon learned that finding peace with the true God would mean losing peace with his neighborhood. finally meeting god On an invitation from Pascal, Ritesh attended his first church service a few months after receiving the Bible. He was deeply moved by the Scripture readings, the sermon and the way the Christians worshiped. “It was like something