Source: Christian Aid Mission, November 17, 2017<\/p>\n
Pastor Philip Zacharia had been praying for four years about how to bring together his staunchly Hindu neighbors in Bihar state, \u201cgraveyard of missionaries,\u201d to hear the gospel. When he learned of the gospel potential of Christmas parties from a Danish friend at an evangelists\u2019 conference convoked by Billy Graham in Amsterdam in August 2000, it seemed to be the answer to his prayers.<\/p>\n
Up to that point, his efforts to proclaim Christ had met with scant success. Rather, it had stirred the ire of Hindu extremists, who in October of that year summoned him to a meeting.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey were accusing me of trying to convert people,\u201d Pastor Zacharia said, \u201cand one of the men said, \u2018We\u2019ve tried to kill you many times, but somehow you escaped. We\u2019ve called you today to give you the last warning. If you continue to preach, your children will become orphans, and you will be responsible for that.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
The strapping men towered above him, and he began to pray. He tried to engage them in conversation, but they only told him to leave and to stop preaching the God of Christianity.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo I was coming back home and thinking, \u2018Lord what to do?\u2019\u201d he said. \u201cI was excited about this idea of Christmas parties, and now these guys are telling me, \u2018If you preach anymore, you\u2019ll be killed.\u2019 I didn\u2019t want to share those things with my wife, I didn\u2019t want to share those things with the church. I was keeping it in my heart and praying, \u2018Lord what to do?\u2019 and the Lord said, \u2018Go forward.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Without telling anyone about the death threats, he began preparing for the Christmas program, going house-to-house to extend the invitations. Unknowingly, he knocked on the door of the Hindu extremist who had threatened to kill him.<\/p>\n
\u00bb Read what happened next<\/a>. It\u2019s encouraging!<\/p>\n \u00bb See also Christianity Continuing to Grow in Nepal Despite Persecution<\/a> (Open Doors\/Christian Today).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Source: Christian Aid Mission, November 17, 2017 Pastor Philip Zacharia had been praying for four years about how to bring together his staunchly Hindu neighbors in Bihar state, \u201cgraveyard of missionaries,\u201d to hear the gospel. When he learned of the gospel potential of Christmas parties from a Danish friend at an evangelists\u2019 conference convoked by … Continue reading INDIA: Christmas Parties Prove Popular in Hindu Communities<\/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-6820","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-briefs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6820","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=6820"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6820\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6821,"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6820\/revisions\/6821"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6820"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6820"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6820"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}