I Persecuted Christians, yet They Helped Me

My name is Raja. I live in Belur, District:- Howrah, WB. I am from a Hindu background. I was born as an premature baby. When I was in the womb of my mother, my father didn’t want me to be born and kicked on my mother’s belly and my mother got seriously hurt. There was only a chance for one person to survive, either me or my mother. But thanks to God, I survived. I was in glass room for two months from the day of birth.

As I began to grow, I grew in the teachings of the Hindu religion and at last grew as an Orthodox Hindu youth. My childhood was very painful as I had to gone through physical sickness time by time. Fights between my parents used to happen regularly. This made me very depressed. I wanted to do suicide. I was looking for peace and strength in my life.

When I was a studying in Standard 11, I got to know about Jesus from my friend, who was a believer. He started sharing me stories from Bible every day and I eagerly used to go to him to listen Bible stories. All these stories made me curious to know about Jesus and the church environment. I requested him to take me to the church. When I attended church the first time, it was a very joyful experience for me. I felt a happiness which I never experienced before.

I started going to church every Sunday. But still I was doing idol worship and leading my life according to Hinduism. Whenever pastor or believers used to preach and share with me about evil behind idols, I used to get angry. I was not ready to listen to anything against idols and Hindu gods – goddesses. As I continued going to church for some months I started arguing with pastor and believers and used to put my Hindu view upon them. These arguments took sometimes to foster anger and frustration about Christians in my mind. When things got worse, I totally started hating Christians and the church.

Meanwhile I left church and became an Anti-Christ. After leaving the Church, I started sharing about the strategies and the planning of the church with Hindu people. I started organizing Hindu people together to attack the church and the believers. I put together a group of Hindu people, and we were literally planning to attack the church. Even I made a statement like this that “I will kill the pastor “. Whenever I used to see any believer, I used to tease them. I along with my teammates started arguing with them and fight with them. Literally I used to go to the very new believers of church and used to preach about Hinduism and started encouraging them to obey the Hindu religion.

But I was astonished that in response they never did misbehave with me. This thing made me think ‘how come these people are not responding in anger even in persecution’. Rather whenever believers see me in difficulty, they helped me in spite of my bad behavior. But I kept on going with my rigid, rebellious nature towards them until the day came when I realized that I was doing evil.

26 December 2014, one of the members of that Anti-Christian group did misbehave with me and family without any valid reason and showed his inner anger for us. This incident broken my heart. I was thinking how come a person of my own group and religion as well can do this with me and my family.

But for the Christian people, I created persecution. But they did no harm to me. This made me understand that if Christians are so good, how much their God is good. I repented to God and again rejoined the church. When I went to church again, no one ever told me wrong or blamed for me anything. Rather they welcomed me with open arms and started loving me as if I had done nothing to them. In a couple of days, I gave my life to the LORD and received Him as personal savior.

Raja preaching to a crowd in India.