Baptist Press writer Mike H. Hunter reports the chilling story of a courageous American pastor:
It was hot, stuffy and crowded in the one-room shack, deep in a labyrinth of slums of Mumbai, India, when the door burst open. Angry Muslim men ordered everyone to get out — except for one.
“You stay!” they told the pastor of one of Louisiana’s largest churches who was holding a Bible study with about a dozen Bangladeshi men.
As part of its international missions outreach, the church — unnamed for security reasons — adopted Bangladeshi Muslims, an unengaged, unreached people group who migrated to India by the millions and are despised “illegal immigrants” in the predominantly Hindu nation.
This was the second trip for the Louisiana church to meet with house church planters who were evangelizing the vast slums of Mumbai.
“The first minute or two my blood pressure rose because I knew they were angry — and I was alone — except for the Lord,” the senior pastor recounted. “But I felt courage rise. Jesus said, ‘Don’t worry before you go in to testify before kings and authorities, I will give you words in that moment,’ and in that moment the Lord was granting me wisdom to respond to what they were saying.”