Mighty Hand of God – Part 5

The Lord is near to those who have a broken heart (Psa 34:18).

There were some moments during this entire experience that I considered very special, and this is one of them. Sometime after I was brought back into the prayer room, I was standing near the door with my back against the wall, with this amazing peace in my heart in the midst of all the craziness around me. Suddenly the Lord reminded me of this verse: “Many bulls have surrounded Me; strong bulls of Bashan have encircled Me.” I knew it was from the Psalms but did not recall the chapter and verse. Later I, found out that it was from Psalm 22 and verse 12. This is a Messianic Psalm concerning the suffering of Christ. As soon as He had reminded me of this verse, He spoke in my heart and said, “This is how I felt.” He was reminding me of the way He had felt as He stood among the soldiers and before the Sanhedrin the night he was arrested.

The feeling I had when this happened is hard to explain. I literally felt the presence of the Lord so strongly, enveloping me and covering me with His peace. The voice of the Lord was so comforting, just the knowledge that He was right there with me in the middle of that craziness was enough to keep me going. It gave me a renewed understanding of how He intervenes and reveals Himself to us so personally, right when we are in the midst of trouble, changing the very equation inside of us. Outside, the circumstances may still be the same, yet inside, you are made strong by the Lord God Almighty.

The Lord was faithful, and His prophetic promise that He would be walking with me, which He had given me before I traveled to India, strengthened me instantly. If you haven’t read the first part of this series, you can find the prophetic promise here:

I cannot emphasize enough that the Lord Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever (Heb 13:8). He speaks through His prophets today just as He has done from the beginning, as we read in the Scriptures. He heals, delivers, pardons, and saves, just as he did two thousand years ago. If you have a theology that denies all these things, it is probably based on a different gospel, not the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, for He is the Gospel, the good news of God’s salvation (Luk 2:29-30), and He is the same today. He is not a different Jesus (2 Cor 11:4) and not another spirit, because He is the Spirit (2 Cor 3:17) and the Father of Spirits (Heb 12:9). He is the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father (Isa 9:6), who visited His people two thousand years ago in the flesh (Luk 1:68) and dwells in them even today by His Spirit. If you have been taught something else, please re-examine the Scriptures for yourself, but this time do it with an open heart to find the truth, listening to the Holy Spirit, and He will reveal the truth to you.

Back to the story: in the meantime, there were still men walking in and out of the room verbally abusing, threatening, and accusing, and I also remember someone speaking to me in Hindi, almost like a voice of reason, saying, “Why would you want to come here and convert our people? How would you feel if I came to your place and did that? Maybe he didn’t know that, where I came from, it was perfectly fine to do so. If there was any opposition at all, it was against the Lord Jesus and His people when everything else got a free pass. Perhaps he also didn’t know that it was perfectly fine to preach their religion there and that very well-organized efforts have been going on for a long time in Canada and the USA, and in the west in general, to propagate Hinduism, without any opposition. In fact people there have been welcoming the eastern religions and philosophies rather than attacking the messengers.

By then, some of the mob and the police had started questioning the guests who had come to attend the prayer meeting. They began to collect the names and details of those who were there along with their statements, in the hope that there would be someone who would corroborate their accusations. Nobody was allowed to leave the room, and children were not spared from this forced information gathering process.

Behold, I will do a new thing, now it shall spring forth; shall you not know it? I will even make a road in the wilderness and rivers in the desert. (Isa 43:19)

Then the Lord did something else quite extraordinary. The state of Orissa was going through a dry spell due to a lack of rain, and that was one of the topics we had talked about on our way to the meeting. Sometime between noon and 1 p.m. He let loose a strong thunderstorm and it began to rain heavily. Lightning flashed incessantly, heavens rumbled and the wind blew so strongly that tree branches were torn off. When the rain came down furiously, the whole mob frenzy dissipated, yet a substantial number of people still hung around.

There were several policemen and officers and a few police vans in which they had come. While the rain was still pouring down, they put pastor PB, myself, the local pastor, and his wife in one of the vans and took us to a police establishment—not the regular police station but another police facility—about 20 to 30 minutes away. I went from there barefooted, as I did not get the opportunity to wear my sandals, which I had taken off before I had entered the pastor’s home earlier. We drove through the heavy downpour to this facility, and as we went, we could see that the road was littered with tree branches due to the storm.

In 1999, something quite gruesome happened in Orissa that deeply affected those who followed the story back then. A faithful servant of God, an Australian named Graham Staines, who had made India his home, used to work among the tribal people of the state of Orissa. He was a medical doctor and missionary who had worked among the lepers in that part of India for several decades, among those who were rejected by all. His wife and three children also lived with him in India. January 22, 1999, late in the night, he and his two young sons were burned alive in their car by a violent mob. You can find that story here.

Nine months later, a tropical cyclone tore through Orissa and killed about ten thousand people, displaced more than twelve million and caused much flooding and damage in five districts of Orissa. Read the report here. The village where we were attacked was in the same area where the cyclone had made landfall and had wreaked the most devastation. In the aftermath of the sudden thunderstorm someone brought this information to my attention which I looked up on the internet, later.

 ^“When the poor and needy seek water, and there is none, and their tongue faileth for thirst, I the Lord will hear them, I the God of Israel will not forsake them. I will open rivers in high places, and fountains in the midst of the valleys: I will make the wilderness a pool of water, and the dry land springs of water.” (Isa 41:17-18)

Many faithful servants of God have laid down their lives for the Lord in India. I am forever hopeful that the Lord will never forget their sacrifice for the sake of their brethren but will honor them and bring forth a great harvest from Orissa and the rest of India. Please join us as we steadfastly pray for the salvation of over 1.4 billion souls in India.

To be continued…

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It is a joy to share with you what the Lord is doing in and through our lives. Thank you for praying for us.

Please share ‘Resurrection Life’ with your friends and family and bring them along in our journey with the Lord. All glory to the One who rose from the dead, never to die again – our Lord Jesus Christ.

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