July 6, 2012
Prabhu Kumar, Director of WEI in India, has risked his life to establish dozens of WEI “branches” throughout India, Bangladesh, and Nepal. This summer, he and Bro. Ajith (a WEI teacher), and members of Bro. Ajith’s family were beaten almost to death by Hindu radicals.
The subject line of Prabhu’s e-mail: “God has saved WEI team from death on worship day at Sariya, Chattisgargh.” In his e-mail, Prabhu gives graphic details of the terrifying experience. On Sunday afternoon, Prabhu and nine members of the church took two men to a pond and baptized them into Christ.
Prabhu writes, “After our return from the pond at 2:00 p.m., we arranged for the worship service. While we were getting ready to start the worship, two persons came and stood near that place, observing and hearing our words. . . . Slowly the two men came to us and introduced themselves. One was a news reporter from the Hindi daily newspaper, ‘Dinik Baskar,’ and the other was an important leader in ‘Bhajarangdal,’ a sister concern of Hindu RSS [a group of radical Hindus]. These two men began to make calls on their mobile phones, and gradually, the number of people increased until 15 to 20 people stood surrounding us. They began to argue with us and ask questions, shouting and saying that we should not enter their territory with our religious propaganda. One young man came up and explained everything about our daily teaching and baptizing people in the nearby pond. When they heard this, they came to me and forcedly took my camera and found all the baptism photos. At that moment, they got more angry and came to me with vulgar words, shouting, ‘It has already been proven by witnesses that you are the leader of this group. So what punishment do we need to give you? Tell me.’ While I was watching them without any words, suddenly, they began to beat me upon my face. Their hands and palms were like rods. I tried to cover my face with my hands, so they beat upon my hands also. Two times, I fell down and rolled upon the road. At that time, the women tried to cover me like a circle. So they beat them also. They kicked me like a football four times. All the women caught their legs and, with tears, asked them not to beat us, but they did not show any grace to us. . . . They turned on Bro. Ajith and started beating him also. They beat him very severely. . . . When his younger brother arrived, these people turned on him and tried to kill him. . . . Finally, Ajith’s son was caught by them, and they began to beat him also.”
Following this beating, Prabhu and the Ajith family spent a day in bed under the doctor’s care. While in bed, Prabhu wrote this report. Battered and bruised from the beating, he wrote, “We all are so happy that we got a great privilege to bear the beatings upon our bodies along with the apostles and those who are tortured for Christ today. We feel that it is a rare opportunity which will not come to everyone often.”
As one of our Muslim students in Iraq said, “True faith is when you refuse to deny Jesus is the Son of God, even if you’re tortured.”
Since then, Prabhu and his fellow-WEI teachers have baptized at least thirteen people.
