India (MNN) — Violence continues to plague Christians across India. Christians are the targets of attack on a weekly basis. Until now, Christians could only guess that they were being assaulted because so many Hindus were turning to Christ. Now, there's hard evidence.
President of Mission India of Grand Rapids, Michigan Dave Stravers says the evidence comes from hardline Hindu groups. "We [received] a power point presentation from a Hindu extremist group warning people in the state of Karnataka that the Christians are growing so fast that they're worried that the state might actually become a majority Christian state."
According to Stravers, the Hindu radicals also believe the state of Andhra Pradesh could become Christian if something isn't done.
Quoting the power point, Stravers tells us the Hindus are shaken by the growth of the church saying, "It used to be when you went through the villages, you saw only temples. But now you're seeing churches, and the temples are being closed. It's really confirming our experience that there is a powerful movement of Christ in India."
Hindu radicals are doing something about it. They're threatening and attacking pastors. Stravers says one of the pastors they support was recently attacked. "He had received a warning about a week earlier to stop preaching the Gospel in that village. Receiving a threat is just part of ordinary life of being an evangelist in India."
Unfortunately, this time the threats were real, and Pastor Anil was attacked. "About 11:30 in the morning, in the middle of the service, a group of approximately 50 men, ran into the church wielding clubs. They ran up to the pulpit area and just began beating the pastor," says Stravers.
His wife and infant daughter were pushed to the ground. As church members tried to protect Pastor Anil, 10 church members were also injured. "To this point," says Stravers, "nothing is being done to track down or to prosecute those people who committed that violence."
Mission India is helping the local church by helping establish children's Bible clubs, literacy classes and pastoral training. Stravers is asking Christians to pray. "We're praying that Christians will have the courage to continue meeting together, and they're praying for their pastor. We're praying the situation will stabilize for him and his congregation."
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I am a south african christian and i do prayer intercessary for who ever need prayer. Please send me updates of what percific i should pray for. Your sister in christ.
dear sister thanks and praise God that god has given u desire to interceed for people.plz pray for i m desperatly in need of a church building as mine is a fast growing church and we r not able to accomodate people in present hall.
God bless
Perhaps we should be concerned about extremist Christians aggressive conversion of poor Hindus rather than blaming extremist Hindus for preserving their culture? I would love to see evidence of this “attacks”. Perhaps we should share our own statistic of the Christains demonising poor Hindus and forcing them into Christainity! This is beyond shameful. The church clearly gets funding from the West to go to poor countries like India and Africa and brainwash the downtrodden through a hidden agenda of “help”. So you ask for their membership to your fast waning organisation in return for monetary help since you couldn’t even save your religion in the West! Now you are facing the backlash via Islam overpowering your Christian territories in the West. Guess that’s Christian retribution uh?