By Mark Ellis —
Two Christian missionaries visited her village in Bihar State, but the people did not accept their message.
“We didn’t know who they were, why they came to us, and their message we could not understand,” Anaya* told the JESUS Film Project. “They tried to help us, but somehow we sensed they were not welcome, especially by the spirits.”
In Anaya’s village, they tried to appease the evil spirits with sacrifices. “We offer our animals, our few crops, even children to them, but they still come and sometimes they kill,” she said. “They come in the night as ghosts and as an evil presence in our homes, terrorizing us in our sleep.”
Both missionaries fell ill during their visit and four villagers died suddenly. “We thought a great spirit was displeased because we did not accept them,” Anaya recounted.
Then something remarkable happened. After the missionaries left, a mysterious man appeared in the clouds, and many witnessed it.
“We saw Him, hundreds of our people,” Anaya reported. “A man in a flowing robe appeared, wandering on the clouds above our villages. He walked along the hills weeping, as if He was praying. Some saw Him passing through the villages at night and during the day. He was like no one we had ever seen. He was in great sadness.
Then, as suddenly as He came, He was gone.”
Some time later, another team of missionaries arrived, this time carrying the JESUS film.
“Most of us had never seen such a thing,” Anaya said. “The moment we saw him on the screen a commotion arose. We were astounded! Everyone was shouting.”
“It’s him; it’s him, the man in the clouds! The man we saw weeping!” they exclaimed.
In the film, Anaya discovered that Jesus has power over the evil spirits, like the demons that terrorized her village. “We saw his miracles, that he healed people of their diseases. We became convinced this man is divine. He is the Son of God.”
But after Jesus was arrested, tried, beaten and crucified, the film viewers were momentarily crushed. “How can this be?” Anaya wondered. “Our hope turned back to fear and darkness, but then, we were amazed that Jesus came back to life, completely whole, alive, to give us life.
“We were ecstatic with joy. Now we understood he loved us and offered us forgiveness and eternal life.”
In response, Anaya surrendered her life to Jesus Christ as her Lord and Savior and was born again, along with most of her village.
Churches were planted almost immediately. As a result of the film, it is estimated that 100,000 more people are followers of Christ in Bihar State.
“It is like electricity passing through the crowd when they hear the Word of God in their own heart language. Truly, ideas travel in the chariot of language. In Bihar, 20,000 villages have yet to hear the gospel for the first time,” according to the JESUS Film Project.
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*name changed
