Six seminary students affiliated with an evangelical ministry to Asia were hospitalized after being attacked last weekend in Southern India. The head of that evangelistic organization, which has been helping provide disaster relief services to tsunami survivors, says the Church is encountering increased hostility towards Christianity all over the world.
K.P. Yohannan is founder and president of the Gospel for Asia ministry, which has established 54 Bible colleges in the heart of the "10/40 Window" or Resistant Belt, the area of the world containing the largest population of non-Christians in the world. Named for its global coordinates, the 10/40 Window extends from 10 degrees to 40 degrees north latitude, and stretches from North Africa across to China.
According to Yohannan, the young missionaries who were attacked in Southern India were evangelists in training, seminary students who had been regularly visiting a community of laborers on weekends - praying for the sick, caring for the needy, sharing the love of Christ and offering hope.
A GFA field correspondent reported that, as a result of the missionaries' steady, compassionate outreach, people's hearts were beginning to respond and their continuous visits were "bringing fruitful results."
According to GFA sources, the Bible college students were out evangelizing on Sunday, February 13, when they were surrounded, abducted, and beaten unconscious. In the wake of the vicious attack, five men were arrested in a raid conducted by the deputy superintendent of Police.
The Hindustan Times reports that the arrested suspects had ties to the RSS, an armed Hindu militant group hostile to Christianity and other religious minorities. In the weeks before the attack, RSS men had apparently warned the seminary students to stop witnessing in the area.
Yohannan says this is not the first time GFA missionaries have been subjected to violent attacks, but the problem seems to have escalated lately. In a recent Associated Press interview, he noted, "We have about 12 or 14 of our missionaries in the last 10 years who have been murdered by extreme fundamentalists. These kinds of things you never heard 25 years ago - such animosity and hatred towards the gospel."
Nevertheless, the GFA's leader says the seminary students in India and others like them are ready and willing to give their lives for the sake of Jesus. But while the evangelical ministry's staff and trainees are subjected to the threat of physical violence, the president of GFA says they must also contend with attacks from the Western media.
For instance, Yohannan says his agency was castigated by the press for mixing evangelism and tsunami relief. "We've been criticized and attacked for praying with people and reading Bible verses, after we have given them all the physical help in the world," he told AP. "We never tell people, 'Believe in my Jesus so I'll give you this." We never do that -- [it would be] unkind."
The president of GFA points out that the answer to the question "Why does the world hate Jesus?" can be found in scripture, as in John 15:18-19, in which Christ told His disciples: "If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated Me first."
Yohannan says all Christians need to be prepared to face extreme persecution because he believes the days ahead will hold more adversity for those who follow Jesus.
Gospel for Asia (www.gfa.org)
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