Today was another successful day of open air preaching from the van. Pastor Lijo, Paul, Johnson, Joseph, Babu & myself were sharing the gospel.
We went to many remote villages in the area. The people are mainly Muslim or Hindu belief. We split up into two teams. The first team was Lijo and Johnson. The other team was Joseph and me. Pastor Paul and Babu stayed at the van and preached. Each team went to the houses and small village shops to distribute gospel tracts.
After an hour and a half we would pack up and move on to the next area and do the same things again.
The very last place we came to was a Roman Catholic area. We thought this would be a good area since most of the people here are Christians.
It was an unusually hot day especially it being the middle of January! From a distance I could see the local roman catholic priest and a group of men talking among themselves. Then they started walking towards the van.
I yelled out “excuse me sir, is there something wrong?”
He turned to me and asked, who are you? What organazition are you with? I answered all of his questions. But he did not like the answers. The priest said to me “This is my place here and you can not preach here nor can you distribute any gospel tracts here. While he was talking to me he could hear the preaching going on. What is going on over there he asked? He started to run towards Pastor Paul while he was preaching. I called out to the priest, “wait, im going there too. Lets walk together and talk.” But he didnt wait for us he was running to pastor paul where he was preaching. By the time Joseph & I got there more than 25 people showed up and the priest made Pastor Paul to stop preaching. We were preaching in a public place, in the public road side. I knew the priest had no right th tell us we cannot preach there. We were not going into anyone’s home. The reason we stopped preaching is because I know if we make any other decision it will cause a religious problem to arise. When things like this happen there will always be two sides. Some on our side & some on the Priest’s side. Before I knew it there were two groups of people that had gathered around. The group with the Priest kept shouting for us to leave & stop preaching. The other people were shouting back, leave him alone he hasnt done anything wrong. You have no authority here for this is a public place.
I could tell that this was not going to end peacefully if we didnt leave. Before leaving I told the priest we are leaving this place but the judgement will be upon you for this.
The priest said dont you worry I will take care of that.
In my 20 years of ministry I have never seen a Catholic Priest coming out from his church and telling us not to preach. It makes me wonder… Where is the Catholic church running to……..? What do they stand for….?
What are they preaching…..? Are they preaching the Bible….. or are they taking all their followers to hell???
It is very scarey and disturbing to my soul when I think about these things!
In His Mission,
Shajan
