It is Sunday evening and a collection of local churches have been meeting in Fareham,Hampshire,England. Tonight Basil De Souza from Mumbai is over to minister.(Yellow shirt)I felt to pray prophetically that a whirlwind of prayer be stirred up in the Body of Christ worldwide,
to cover, to empower, to heal, to bless, the saints in the decimated region of Orissa. That, just as the Church rose up in revulsion at the murder of James in Acts, to pray for Peter who was imprisoned....in the same way a mighty whirlwind of prayer be stirred up all round the world to see a deliverance on a regional scale. Just as Peter's case was a test case for the Body of Christ...to stand up as one and resist the inevitable murder of Peter also, so may we stand up in the Spirit and through prayer effect a deliverance and mighty victory on behalf of a region. For what we are seeing is nothing less than a story from Acts, be it Jerusalem or Ephesus with Paul.
Here are the facts as I remember from what Basil was sharing.
India is experiencing a mighty growth of Christian faith.Many individuals are receiving supernatural visitations of God. Some are experiencing a healing anointing, praying for folk, then only weeks later asking Jesus into their heart. This is God out of the box. This is God pouring out His Spirit on all flesh. Messy. Not how we'd do it...but nevertheless God. Basil is from Mumbai, but has close links with the Christians in Orissa.
Basil has known anointing in a powerful way for years...but nothing like since Florida. He took a whole new level of anointing back with him to India. Whole swathes of people being zapped by the Spirit in huge numbers. One person was propelled backwards into the air as if levitated. He came back from Florida, whereby just gazing upon people, fire would come out of his eyes and people would be baptised in the Spirit, healed and delivered. So this was happening in his area but also Orissa.
Unofficially the conversion rate in India may now be as high as 10%. Certainly some 27% of the Orissa area are Christian. Now, like Ephesus, this area traditionally is inundated with temple trade. There are temples everywhere. With the huge increase in Christians this has affected the region's temple trade.
Since late summer, the Hindus have risen up and hordes of demonically inspired young men have been committing the worst crimes against the Christians. And in many cases right in front of the local police stations. The authorities have stood by and done nothing. Hundreds and thousands have evacuated as if overnight to try and find refuge in woods and forests , or local refugee camps.
Basil's experience is similar to the heaviness Jesus must have felt when John the Baptist was murdered. It was all just too much and Jesuus had to go away to pray.
DK, an apostolic figure in Basil's life, and one who has raised up great works in Orissa, just looks on bemused as the churches are all burnt and the members vanished. Their homes destroyed, and their crops harvested by the Hindu locals.
Tonight we managed to raise £2000 to send out with Basil. Seeing as no one was particularly prepared to give a special offering this was encouraging.
In addition a rare form of malaria has just taken and killed DK's beautiful 20 year old Christian daughter. He has also had to try and encourage pastors who have had their wives and offspring hacked to death in front of them. One girl tried to escape into a house to hide. They dragged her out, repeatedly raped her, then stripped her naked to walk unclothed in the streets. A fellow Hindu girl who was helping in a Christian orphanage was burnt to death by the mobs, too.The tremendous envy of the Christians by the Hindu locals also arises because the gospel and the changed lives have been producing a relative prosperity among the Christians.
An aid agency has conducted a fact finding report and heartily condemns the regional authorities.
They report on the appalling lack of food and shelter, and criticise India's Government for not taking action.
Despite all this, Basil had taken time to come over to the Christians in our area, holding leadership training among some in Southampton, and encouraging us with the might and power of the Lord, from various teachings of Paul in the latter chapters of Romans.
Truly an outstanding brother in the Lord.
I submit my prophetic prayer to any who feel this to be of God.
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