Stanley Scism

India See Increase in Religious Persecution in 2007

by Stanley Scism

All India Christian Council compiled statistics to say Christians were attacked over 1000 times in India in 2007.

And 2008 isn’t starting well, with many attacks in Orissa, and a ripple effect in other N Indian states.  Many of the gun, knife and bomb assaults have been done by Vishwa Hindu Parishad workers, and in the police’s presence.  The VHP is trying to hide evidence,  and so many bodies are missing.

Near Barakhama Village, 415 of 450 homes of tribal Christians were burned.  One Christian of that village, Bhogra Naik, was cut to pieces by attackers after they destroyed his home.

From 1950 to 1998, government figures showed only 50 anti-Christian attacks.  In 1998, the Bharatiya Janata Party came to power at the central government,  and the attacks began escalating because attackers knew the government would do nothing to punish them.

Although now the central government is no longer under the BJP, several state governments are.  The present wave of attacks started on Christmas Eve.  A Hindu mob,  angry because some Hindus have become Christians, attacked Christians and churches.

Demonic attacks like this have failed before,  and they will fail now.  Times of persecution have been some of the times of most rapid Christian growth.  In Christianity’s early history, people noted that, for every Christian killed, ten more people became Christians,  and said,  ‘The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church.’  Some day, when the dust clears, we’ll see that a larger proportion of India’s people became Christian during this time,  as people turned from hatred to God’s love shown to mankind by his coming down as Jesus Christ to save us from sin.

Only people afraid that their faith’s dominant position is endangered attack others.  Notice that the Christian majority nations are, generally speaking the ones in the world with religious freedom, simply because Jesus Christ has the best message, and it can take the competition in the theological and philosophical marketplace of ideas.

Sanjit Subba graduated from Scism Christian University, is now SCU’s representative for North Bengal/Sikkim, assistant pastor for the nation of Nepal, and secretary-treasurer for Bhutan. He reports:

Dear Brother Stanley,

Brother Muthu (of Malaysia)’s visit greatly blessed all our churches he visited in Nepal, Bhutan and North Bengal. Due to political problems, we changed some plans, but later we found that is how God wanted to work–his plan, not ours. Here is the report of his wonderful work in the churches we visited:

2007 November 25 - Kolkatta ( according to Bro Muthu’s report), 5 people received the Holy Spirit and 9 were healed.

27 and 28 - Jaigon, N Bengal, near Bhutan border. In two services, the Holy Spirit filled 17 people and healed 9.

29 - Birpara, N Bengal. Eleven people received the Spirit, 2 were healed.

December 1 and 2 - In Ilam and at a refugee camp, both in Nepal, 28 people received the Holy Spirit and 10 were healed. The refugee camp church elder is independent. He’s in touch with me all the time by phone, asking me to visit his church. Thank you, Bro M uthu, because by you we had a chance to meet this brother.

December 4 - Sikkim. Twenty people received the Holy Spirit, 4 were healed.

December 6-8, Darjeeling, N Bengal. Thirty-one people received the Spirit. For the first time, we had prophecy and tongues and interpretation in our church, and it was all from small children.

December 7-11, Panighatta, N Bengal. Seventee people received the Spirit, three were healed.

This is the first time that all small Churches came into one unity.Thank you brother Stanley for inviting Bro Muthu and his wife. God has done wonderful work. We always looking forward to see his great revival.

Sincerely,
Sanjit Subba

Bihar is an eastern state of India, known for its lawlessness.  Jharkhand was once southern Bihar, is now a separate state.

Bitendra, a man from Sonpur, Bihar, joined the Indian army and was posted to Churchandpur due to the ethnic strife tearing the area apart at the time.  He met Christians there, came to Christ, was baptized in Jesus name, received the Holy Spirit, married a Pentecostal woman, invited Manipur’s ministers to speak in an army church.

Bitendra had a great burden for his people, and many times went to Bihar to preach good news of Jesus Christ.  When his family wanted to be baptized, Manipur minister Ramliana gave Bitendra the address of Daniel Darlong in Calcutta.  Ramliana and Daniel had attended Scism Christian Institute in New Delhi together.

Daniel went from Calcutta to Bihar and baptized the people.  In 2006, some of Bitendra’s family attended a crusade in Calcutta, and in Bihar we now have five churches, 11 preaching points and 104 baptized members.  In Jarkhand, we have nine members.  The Dum Dum, Calcutta, church supports the Bihar workers a little.

One worker, Prem Jaslok, was murdered on September 3, 2007.  He was 25 years old, the only son of an elderly woman named Devi.  He left behind a son, one year old, and his wife, twenty years old.  After he died, her parents, who are Hindu, took her back to another village.

Ramliana, Daniel and a young man from Calcutta who is Bitendra’s oldest son visited Bihar in November 2007.  Because Kiran is a very new Christian, too new, Ramliana feels, to survive as a Christian all alone, he asked her parents to let her and her son go to Churachandpur where the church will make a home for them.  They’ll see the parents’ response in February.

Ramliana, Daniel and friend also visited the towns Jadhua, Bidhipur, Mahanan, Mamrispur and Sonpur.  As Ramliana says, ‘The Healer is with us.’  Many people were healed, 32 received Holy Spirit baptism and eight people were baptied in Jesus name.

The brothers thank many people from many places who prayed for them.

Stanley Scism

HY Paul reports:  ‘Hindu young men attended a youth camp led by Bro Samir who only recently came to apostolic truth himself and is scheduled to come to Scism Christian Institute for minister training.  He won 30 Hindu young men to Christ.  They have started worshiping Jesus as God.

I am sorry I could not afford to attend this camp meeting.  As a result, the inportance of Jesus’ Name baptism and the Oneness was not taught during the camp meeting.  Lets pray for Orissa ministry.

We need finance to train ministers to want to hear about Jesus name baptism and God’s Oneness.

We need finance to have a crusade for a large group of people to come to this truth.

And we need finance to print tracts and new believers’ courses for all these people.

Rajasthan state of India is under a party in line with orthodox Hindu activists.  Hindus who get baptized into Christianity can lose jobs, lose inheritances, have spouses taken from them, be evicted from their rented homes, be physically attacked.  In spite of this, Konar Singh has now started eight churches and preaching points in the greater Jaipur area.

He’s got 123 Spirit-filled, but only 12 baptized.  Thanks for these twelve, and pray that God will give the other boldness to be baptized despite the persecution, and that God will give them miracles as signs to the Hindus that Jesus is the One True God.

Here are some more testimonies from Rajasthan:

1.  In three months, we reached many people, who received Jesus as Savior and received the Holy Spirit baptism.  In Sanjay Nagar, we shared God’s Word with a man bound by disease many years.  He received Jesus, I place my hand on his head, prayed for him, and he was healed in Jesus’ name.  He praised the Lord and received the Holy Spirit.

2.  One man asked us to pray for his family–a carnal Christian family who never attended church, had no peace, and his wife and 3 children were all ill.  After I prayed for them, they are now well and attend the church.

3.  A family from Jalpaiguri (in Eastern India) settled down to Jaipur more than 20 years ago.  The husband received Jesus and was baptized in Jesus name.  His wife and two children also received Jesus but haven’t been baptized yet.  Please pray for the family.

I’ve reached many people–they are happy to receive Jesus, but worried to take baptism for fear of persecution.  Pray God will touch hearts so they’ll understand God’s Word and power.

Sincerely,
Konarsing

People from the Meitei tribe in Manipur are now reaching into their
fellow tribals in Myanmar who have not yet heard of Jesus Christ.
This is a dangerous and difficult assignment. Please pray that they
will financially be able to go and will be kept free to minister, not
being jailed in Myanmar.

Dear Friends,

The Lord has truly opened a harvest door before us in March 2007 that we were able to baptized 22 souls in the precious name of Jesus.They are mainly from Lutheren and Anglican churches that heard the Gospel and obey the Truth.As we took them into the water many of them spoke in tongues for the first time as the spirit of God fell upon this precious people including one elderly lady whose son in law was a trinitarian pastor(the pastor and his wife were baptized too earlier in the Name of Jesus)

May God bless you abundantly for standing in the Gap of Prayer

Patients in a hospice need Jesus more than anything else.  Most of the patients are only one millimetre from Heaven or Hell.

God blessed me to baptise one of them in Jesus’ wonderful name.  I can feel I can hear the shouthing of joy in Heaven.

Some of the hospice patients pass away, but with joy in their
faces.  With your prayer and support we show them love.  I tell them there is some one who cares.

B. Ramliana

In 2007 January, a fight between youth belonging to rival United Pentecostal Church factions–the UPC–NE India and a breakaway organization called Mizoram UPC–led to involvement by police and, some people injured.  Here’s how (to answer questions I’ve received) the situation go to this point.

In the US political world of the late 1980s and early 1990s, people upset with the Democratic Party’s long hold on legislative power and the high advantages of incumbents toward re-election passed term limits.  This bled into the United Pentecostal Church in  North America, which passed term limits, too.  News of that got into their magazine, The Pentecostal Herald, and NE Indians who subscribed and were similarly restless managed, in an acrimonious and chaotic conference in 1994, to pass term limits AND mandatory retirement policies.

Part of the dispute based in long-term rivalry between the then-general superintendent and the district superintendent of the largest district, which comprised more than half the unit’s total constituency.  When a faction in that district rose (with the general superintendent’s encouragement) against the district superintendent, then lost the election, the executive board with the general superintendent’s support divided that district and then–crucial point–located the border between the two without consulting the parent district board.  This violated their bylaws, so the aggrieved party appealed to FMD.  My father, general director of the Foreign Missions Division at the time, said the unit needed to dissolve the illegally formed district and reform it.  The NE Indian UPC declined to do this on grounds that it would simply re-open all the animosity (which has, as you see, since happened anyway–they were deluded if they thought they could simply stifle dissent to the deed).  The aggrieved party left, forming its own organization, called The Mizoram UPC.

The breakaway faction now has term limits and retirement policies, too, suggesting this wasn’t the main reason for breaking away.  One main motive was simply power:  Two prominent laymen led the breakaway and their organization’s structure now gives a laymen’s board power to post pastors to various circuits of churches, which they call sections (as does the parent organization).  On the other hand, they have resisted some centralization tendencies of the UPC–NE India’s leadership.  For instance, their affiliated units in other states have their own names in those states.

The breakaway faction kept a name similar to the UPC–NE India in order to try through the courts to wrest buildings from the older organization.  As a result, since India’s court system is frequently slow and at times corrupt, many buildings are locked up by the authorities, vandalized by local yokels, used by no one except teens having sex, taking drugs or, now, engaged in occult practices.
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In one case I know of (and there might well be others), a local agreement between factions allowed the church to unlock buildings and start using them again.

Meanwhile, a great revival goes on.  The church in N. India went from 2000 at the end of 2005 to 2600 at the end of 2006, and from 26 churches to 38.  The church in Nepal went from 3300 at the end of 2005 to 4000 at the end of 2006, and formed two new districts.  In S India in the last month, many people have been released from demons, healed, and filled with the Holy Spirit.

Meanwhile, many people in India need Jesus Christ.  We must do all we can to bring them to Jesus’ feet in submission, to his hands to heal them, to his heart to bless and save them, to his mind to answer their deepest questions and fill their purpose.

Scism Christian Institute graduate B. Ramliana started a hospice ministry in Churachandpur, Manipur state, India–praying for HIV positive patients, sometimes feeding them.

Manipur is one of the first ports of entry into India for drugs from Burma.

Earlier, Ramliana evangelized drug dealers in the state prison and baptized sixteen of them in Jesus name.

Brother Ramliana, as one of the leaders of a ministerial group in Churachandpur, Manipur, a few months back hosted Ronnie Melancon of Thibodeaux, Louisiana, and Ronnie Melancon’s friends, for a powerful Spiritual ministry during an event there.

NE INDIA:
Scism Christian Institute graduate B. Rama brought kids off the street for a camp. Sixteen were baptized in Jesus name and more than twenty received the Holy Spirit.

N INDIA:
Scism Christian Institute graduate Tsathvu Thuvuri’s work in Uttar Pradesh, N India, has now grown to 26 churches, which includes 98 Hindu priests having come to Jesus Christ in two locations, and 11 Sikh priests.

N INDIA
In Delhi, HY Paul reports: recently, in one of the house churches, a Hindu man sick from childhood and always shaking, came to be baptized. He wept in the baptistry. We prayed for him in the house church. God healed him. Now his mother wants us to have a church in her house. He still needs the Holy Spirit. We want to reach many more Hindus through him.

NE INDIA
B. Rama, Scism Christian Institute graduate, now of Churachandpur , Manipur, reports twenty-eight people baptized in Jesus name, one owning a school of more than 950 students, more than half of these being Hindu. ‘My vision is to reach all these Hindu children for Christ–500 children telling their parents the story of Jesus! Brother Stan, I am very excited about this. Jesus is so wonderful! I just love to work for him. He is so faithful.’

N INDIA

Tsathvu Thuvuri comes from Nagaland, NE India. He studied in Scism Christian Institute–New Delhi, and in his third year was student body president. After graduation, instead of returning to Nagaland where he would have had a financially secure career in district administration, he went to Uttar Pradesh, India’s largest state. Uttar Pradesh has 160 million people–if it were a separate nation, it would be one of the ten largest on earth. We had NO churches there.

Tsathvu started a church in his house and also went around to all the pastors who would listen, trying to tell them about Jesus name baptism. He convinced three, baptized them, and they baptized their congregations. Now we had four churches.

These four pastors started the crusade at which the first 43 Hindu priests came to Jesus Christ. That happened thus: the pastors wanted to have a crusade, but had no money, so they couldn’t hire a hall or PA equipment. They just started services beside the road and the first day concentrated on healing. By word of mouth, they announced to everyone, ‘Bring out your sick. We’re going to pray for the sick.’ Since India has much disease, they had people to pray for. One boy who had died earlier that day was raised from the dead. Two men who’d been born deaf and so had never heard anyone speak and never learned how to speak, were healed and when they went home could hear AND speak.

The word of these healings spread like wildfire and the next night hundreds of people were present, including over 200 priests from a nearby Shiva temple (Shivaites are the right-wing fanatics of Hinduism–ash on their bodies, matted dreadlocks, carrying tridents, three-pronged paintings on their foreheads). Some of the priests were sick and others curious. When the Holy Spirit descended on the meeting, 43 of these priests, including the high priest of the temple, who owned the temple, were thrown to the ground. The ministers prayed for the demons to come out and after the demons left, and now ex-priests stood and addressed the crowd, saying, ‘It’s clear that Jesus is the one true God, because we saw our gods leave us when you told them to leave in Jesus’ name.’ The ex-high priest became the pastor of the local assembly, his priests became his congregation, and his building became their place to worship Jesus Christ.

These priests got into a debate with other priests, resulting in the other priests’ coming to Jesus Christ–now there are 64 in that district (county). Also, in another district, 34 more Hindu priests have come to Jesus.

Another new constituent: Tsathvu and his wife Kasa, who have two daughters, have a new baby boy!

We just need partners in missions for the India (North) account so we can spread revival further.

N INDIA
Tsathvu Thuvuri, in Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh, N India, reports that, so far, 236 people have been baptized in Jesus name and 60 have received the Holy Spirit.

In Kaji Khera area, 34 Hindu priests have come to Jesus Christ.
In Uria area, 64 Hindu priests have come to Jesus Christ.
In various towns, a total of 11 Sikh priest have come to Jesus Christ.