A Crazy Priest and a Dying Boy
(As told by Sunil Sardar, Jan.'93; Incident occurred Dec.'92)

As we were discussing Christ with the Pardhi people of Gopal Nagar, a village in Ralegaon Tehsil, they began telling us about a particular priest in their village. Five years ago most of the people thought he was crazy. He often seemed tormented by evil spirits. They kept taking him to many god & goddesses for healing. Finally God healed him. All the while he kept saying "People from around the world are going to come to our village to tell us about the real God. We should follow him." So we asked him what kind of vision he saw. He said, " I saw people like you, white kind of people -- they were angels. They will come and tell about God." When we asked, "Do you think that those people are us? (Finnish & American)", he responded, "I don't know yet." But after four days of listening he trusted the Lord Jesus Christ and received him as his personal savior. His whole family, including his wife, have since denounced their god and goddesses -- a very big thing for the Pardhi people. Now other Pardhis are murmuring against this family, trying to exclude them. Still, these same people all come for prayer every day. But they are getting scared of Jesus Christ. They think that if they throw away their gods, those gods will get crazy and somebody will die. We are praying that God will take away the fear of their demons which they call god, and that this episode will transform the whole village. For now, we have waited to throw the gods from this priest's house to give time for the rest of the village to join with him. We want to see the whole village make a combined decision to throw the gods and goddesses from their homes, and so to stand together for Christ.

Later, while visiting house to house in Gopal Nagar, one lady told us about her son who one year back had died at six years old. The last day of his life he mentioned, "White people, angel-like people are going to come here ... they are going to stay here and they are going to tell about God. Whenever they come," he told his mom, "trust in them." Clearly, the Lord has been working in that area long before we arrived.

Every day almost everybody in the village is coming for prayer. We have translated some songs in Pardhi language which they like so much. They sing them as they go hunting for the quail birds.

(Update March, 1993)

When a number of the Pardhi villages expressed there fear that turning to Jesus and throwing out their old gods would offend these gods who had watched over their village through the years. So instead of asking them to take our word for it, we challenged them to pray asking the True God to reveal himself. Over the next several nights various villagers began having dreams. Basically, they saw the same thing in their dreams: Jesus and their god were fighting; Jesus beat up their god; and , their god fled away. That was enough for them. Jesus was clearly the more powerful God, and therefore they had nothing to fear from the old gods. It was only a short period of time before virtually the entire adult resident population was ready to make a commitment to Christ. In mid-March 100 villagers were baptized, 96 of them Pardhis of Gopal Nagar.

Copyright Din Bandhu Ministries, 1993 -- All Rights Reserved

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