A pastor in India reportedly miraculously survived after being beaten nearly to death by a Hindu communist group.
According to Faithwire, Pastor Tilak was captured by a group of Naxalites and “mercilessly beaten.”
The group asked him:” Will you leave your Christian faith or not?”
“I cannot leave my faith … No,” Tilak said.
The group bound his arms and legs together and continued to beat him with a large stick. They then forced Tilak to crawl up a mountain path of rocks and thorns.
When they thought he was dead, the men threw Tilak’s body in a ditch.
They then went to the homes of other Christians, saying “See, as your Jesus was beaten and killed, so have we killed your pastor now. His body is in a ditch in the forest. Find him and bury him.”
A group of Christian families found his body and brought him back to the village. Tilak then allegedly opened his eyes.
“When his persecutors heard the news, they rushed to the house to see it for themselves,” Open Doors USA reported. “Hindu villagers, the same ones who had urged the Naxalites to silence this man, were shocked. They were the ones who had complained that he was polluting the minds of their neighbors with his gospel, confident that the Naxalites would make quick work of him.”
When Tilak recovered, the Naxalites took him to a forest and told him to leave the area.
“I left the village with my family at once, as I had suffered extreme torture a year ago. I didn’t want the same for my family,” he said.
Tilak and his family were welcomed into their new community and today, share a hut with another family.
“It’s been a few years, but we are still very much traumatized,” he said. “We did not have courage to talk with anyone in the new village or share the gospel. However, when we attended the Persecution Preparedness Seminar, we experienced change in our hearts and minds. We are, however, still in the process of healing.”
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