Source: God Reports, May 2, 2016<\/p>\n
He was the only blacksmith in his village in India, making plows and other farming instruments. He usually was paid with food and rarely received cash from other villagers.<\/p>\n
One day something surprising happened. \u201cTwo people from the Baptist Church came to my village and asked me to make two dozen iron crosses for their church,\u201d Ballipati Barburao told Final Frontiers Foundation<\/a>.<\/p>\n They also gave him some Christian tracts about the greatness of Jesus Christ and asked him to read the material and pass it out to his family and neighbors.<\/p>\n When Ballipati read the tract, he was confused. \u201cI went to the Baptist Church to give the iron designs and I asked the pastor to explain about Jesus,\u201d he recounts.<\/p>\n As the two men talked further the pastor explained the gospel to him. Suddenly he understood the true meaning of the crosses he fashioned in the fire. The Holy Spirit convicted Ballipati of his sins and his need for repentance. Then God planted a seed of believing faith in his heart.<\/p>\n \u201cI was absolutely impressed by the preaching and then I confessed my sins and accepted the Lord Jesus Christ as my personal Savior,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n The Holy Spirit filled him with a boldness to witness. \u201cFrom that moment I became a preacher,\u201d Ballipati says, but it was not without a cost.<\/p>\n \u00bb Read more about Ballipati\u2019s challenges<\/a> and how he was delivered through them.<\/p>\n \u00bb For a story with a different ending, read a stirring tribute to\u00a0 Pastor Han, martyred a few days ago<\/a> after a many years of ministry to North Koreans (Voice of the Martyrs Korea). You may have also heard about two US missionaries just killed in Jamaica<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Source: God Reports, May 2, 2016 He was the only blacksmith in his village in India, making plows and other farming instruments. He usually was paid with food and rarely received cash from other villagers. One day something surprising happened. \u201cTwo people from the Baptist Church came to my village and asked me to make … Continue reading INDIA: Blacksmith Paid to Make Iron Crosses Learns Their Meaning<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6374","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-briefs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6374","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6374"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6374\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6375,"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6374\/revisions\/6375"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6374"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6374"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6374"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}