Mighty Hand of God – Part 3

Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? (Rom 8:35)

On July 22, 2023, we started early for a small town about a two-hour drive from Bhubaneshwar for a prayer meeting. On the way from Cuttack, another town that we passed through, we picked up a family that was going to the same meeting. Finally, we reached our destination around 10.30 a.m. and were received at his home by the pastor who had organized it. It was a small village, and the pastor’s home was a tiny Indian village home. There were a few people there, along with several children, some of whom appeared to be in their teens. They gave us soft drinks and some desserts, and once we had refreshed ourselves, the pastor took us right next door to a one-room building, which was the village preschool, the venue for the meeting that day. As we entered the room, we could see that there were about thirty to forty people, including children, all seated on the floor on mats. We were led to the front and offered chairs to sit on. There were three other people up front, including the local pastor, facing the people.

“Now therefore are we all here present before God, to hear all things that are commanded thee of God.” (Act 10:33)

Several minutes after we were seated, the local pastor got up and made some introductory remarks in their local language and then began to sing a song, formally marking the beginning of the prayer meeting. Since I didn’t understand their language and therefore the song, I had my eyes closed and worshipped in my heart. Perhaps they were into the third song when I sensed the music stop suddenly and I opened my eyes. Right before us stood a bunch of men making a wall that cut off our view from the people who were seated on the floor. They had walked in quietly through the open door and had just positioned themselves before us. They looked tall and strong compared to the normal people I had seen there so far. By US metrics, an average person from India may easily fall into the ‘skinny’ category, but these guys weren’t skinny by any measure. They looked big and intimidating.

Within a few moments, they started questioning us who were seated on the chairs, and since I could not understand them, I kept quiet. Though the others began to answer their questions, soon it became obvious to me that they were getting more and more aggressive very quickly. What had started as a very small and peaceful prayer meeting quickly spiraled into a classic hostile mob situation. They began to accuse us of converting people, which I could gather a little here and there through what little Hindi they spoke, and I soon realized that they were threatening us. Things were moving so fast that within moments they became frenzied and began to abuse us verbally, accusing us of converting people to Christianity even though the meeting had barely begun. It became clear to me that they had come there with an agenda and that they were deadly serious.

About five or ten minutes into this frenzy, the local pastor’s wife got up and began to resist them by screaming back at them, and that caused a diversion. Using this opportunity, pastor SB and I left the meeting room and went back to the pastor’s home next door, where we were only minutes before. Though we had sat on the verandah earlier, now we went into the inner room and sat on their bed. I briefly went out through the back door to see if there was a way to slip away from the mob through the fields behind the house, but it was not possible because they had surrounded both the meeting room and the house. In fact, hundreds had gathered by then, and the open space before the pastor’s home and all the surrounding areas were occupied by them.

Even though it was a mob, in hindsight, I feel that several of them were obviously well briefed or trained. Many of them were walking all around, and some had stationed themselves behind the house to prevent us from slipping away. Another thing I noticed was that several of them had their phones up, and they were recording our every move and everything going on there. Later, I learned that they were live streaming everything on social media, which went viral in no time.

The attack was so sudden, aggressive, and unprecedented that my heart raced, and a million thoughts crowded my mind. As I sat there, I put my wallet and cell phone, and the contents of my pockets, in an empty bag that was lying there, hoping that even if they physically searched me, they would not be able to find these items. Obviously, I was thinking of being robbed during the attack. However, it never crossed my mind at that moment that I had my passport, visa card, and some cash in my backpack. I mention this here because it impacted the way things developed later in the day. In the midst of all this, I was praying silently, and I believe so was pastor SB.

Thankfully, till then, none of them had entered the pastor’s home, even though they knew that we were in there. But that was short-lived because after perhaps twenty minutes, some of the mob began to walk right through the pastor’s home with their phone cameras on. They were marching through someone else’s home with no trepidation, though it was clearly trespassing. Later, I noticed that none of the police officers seemed concerned about it while they interrogated me. It was as if those who stood accused had no rights whatsoever, even though all that happened violated their very basic rights many times over.

Soon some of them came in and dragged pastor SB outside, leaving me behind in the house. There were some women and children in the house, but they were helpless before this frenzied mob, and therefore they did not resist. They took him outside, to the car in which we had come. Later, he told me that some of them had removed both the license plates from the vehicle and had broken and tossed away both the wing mirrors. They made him open the car, took away the registration papers, destroyed it, and began to smash the dashboard with their fists. Then they began to punch and beat him with their fists and with whatever they could get. They kicked him and vented their fury at him. He suffered injuries all over his body especially to his head, face, back, and legs. The Lords mighty hand working through the pastor’s wife who resisted them boldly prevented them from beating him to death.

“Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him that loved us. For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Rom 8:37-39).

To be continued…

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