Something To Think About

A story from a missionary to India...

My alarm went off at 4:30 a.m. this morning... way too early for my exhausted, jet-lagged body. But this was one morning I didn’t want to sleep in. I wanted to be on the River Ganges by dawn... I had traveled half way around the world to witness the sights and smells that were truly unbelievable.

By the time we arrived at the riverbank, thousands of people were already busy washing themselves in the filthy water. Hindus believe that if they ceremoniously bathe in this most holy of all rivers, their sins will be washed away.

But the waters of the Ganges are polluted by raw sewage, trash, dead bodies and ashes of cremated humans. Every day over 100 bodies are burned in Varanasi and their ashes sprinkled in the river. Hindus believe that this allows their loved ones direct access to heaven. I saw piles of wood . . . the smoke from the burning bodies . . . family members weeping . . . with little or no hope.

My heart was broken. Everywhere I looked there were people in the water, pouring water on their heads and actually drinking it. Some had brass pots where they scooped up water, held the pot over their head and slowly poured it into the river. Many folded their hands and prayed . . . Hindu holy men with painted faces and bright orange clothing chanted . . . music was playing in the background . . . all this was being sincerely done in an act of worship . . . asking for forgiveness.

As we glanced all around us at the masses of people . . . our hearts were broken.

Yesterday, we had met with about 70 of our World Help church planters in a secluded location. We had driven through over 100 isolated villages on our way to this meeting and I counted more than 75 Hindu temples and shrines . . . but no churches.

World Help’s senior vice president, Tom Thompson, brought greetings as we prayed with them, worshipped with them and encouraged them. They had seen over 5,600 new churches planted just in the last year in Northern India and thousands of new Christ followers have been baptized.

These church planters get together once a month for three days of training, strategizing and encouragement. They told us incredible stories of how God is building His kingdom in Northern India.

One of our church planters, Zul Fakar, was working in a very dangerous and persecuted area, when militant anti-Christians ambushed him in an alley and beat him to death . . . He died on August 10. He had been a believer for only 15 months, yet he already had 25 converts and two churches established in unreached villages. His wife, Rabia, was encouraged to deny her faith and come back to her home village. She said, "My husband died for his faith in Jesus Christ . . . the best way I can honor his memory is to spend my life serving the one he died for."

It was a sobering reminder that these church planters are in life and death situations every day as they take the good news to villages that do not have a church of any kind.

As I floated down the River Ganges early this morning, overwhelmed by the spiritual darkness that totally enveloped these truly "religious" people, I couldn’t help but think of these church planters. I was actually looking into the faces of thousands of sincere idol worshippers and realized that no one had ever told them that it was not the dirty, polluted waters of the River Ganges that washes away their sins, but only the shed blood of Jesus Christ. They have never heard of Jesus . . . they have never heard the Gospel . . . they are totally unreached.

And then I prayed for our church planters . . . asking that God would continue to give them boldness and courage and use them to shine the light of God into all of this spiritual darkness. Please keep our team in your thoughts and prayers and please pray for our church planters who pay such a high price to follow Jesus Christ.

Thank you and God bless you,
Vernon Brewer

Orissa Is Not Out of the Woods

The violence continues in Orissa. Please watch this video...




You can find out more at: http://www.gfa.org/extremists-launch-attacks-against-christians?cm_mmc=GFA-_-Email-_-377991-_-080915

And I Thought Hindus Were Peaceful

It seems our illustrious Media have more pressing issues to report about these days:

There's the hot hockey mom who may be President someday who doesn't have enough experience (even though she has more than Obama) whose daughter is pregnant...

Then there's the story about how Hurricane Gustav missed New Orleans and all that didn't happen...

And of course, are American actors manly enough...?

But what I would think is a rather big story seems to be entirely ignored by the American media, and most of the global media: Hindus, supposedly known for their nonviolence, are torching thousands of homes and killing dozens of people in Orissa State, India. People killed with axes and machetes... burned to death... nuns being gang-raped.

How do I know this? A good friend of our church is an Indian national planting churches and building Christian schools and orphanages in Orissa, and he e-mailed us and others with a plea for help. So I checked the Web for evidence of Media attention to this and found mostly blogs.

Here's one:

http://blog.christianitytoday.com/ctliveblog/archives/2008/08/christians_in_i_1.html

Human Rights Watch actually has done some work on this crisis:

http://hrw.org/english/docs/2008/08/28/india19711.htm

There also seems to be some BBC coverage...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7160164.stm

But the BBC report is from DECEMBER 2007, When these problems in Orissa first started. It seems that Maoists have attacked some key Hindu nationalists in Orissa and the blame has been placed on the Christian minority. The Hindus have retaliated severely, with December's anger still seething, apparently.

So where is the NEWS coverage? Do you suppose if Christians were burning Hindu temples it might make the news? What about if Christians were gang-raping Hindu nuns?

I should stop whining, I suppose. The world is not fair. I just thought maybe the great Watchdog of Justice - the International Media - or at least UN or someone would squawk about this...

And where are the Hindu leaders denouncing the violence? Aren't these the people who won't eat beef because they deplore violence against cows?

Here are their main tenets:

5 PRINCIPLES
1. God Exists: One Absolute OM. One Trinity: Brahma, Vishnu, Maheshwara (Shiva) Several divine forms
2. All human beings are divine
3. Unity of existence through love
4. Religious harmony
5. Knowledge of 3 Gs: Ganga (sacred river), Gita (sacred script), Gayatri (sacred mantra)

10 DISCIPLINES
1. Satya (Truth)
2. Ahimsa (Non-violence)
3. Brahmacharya (Celibacy, non-adultery)
4. Asteya (No desire to possess or steal)
5. Aparighara (Non-corrupt)
6. Shaucha (Cleanliness)
7. Santosh (Contentment)
8. Swadhyaya (Reading of scriptures)
9. Tapas (Austerity, perseverance, penance)
10. Ishwarpranidhan (Regular prayers)

http://hinduism.about.com/od/basics/a/principles.htm


Good thing the cows are not Christians...

Nonetheless, "Pray for those who persecute you". We must pray earnestly for those in darkness - darkness is why they do what they do. So pray for the Hindu extremists and those they persecute.