Saturday, March 21 a.m.

Sat morning b’fast on our own. Leaders’ conference 10:00 at Anglican church meeting room. Singing when arrived. Spoke/preached on theme of Altar in Revelation. Don’t recall ever preaching that strongly.

The service had already begun by the time we arrived. Joseph played the guitar, leading the congregation in singing.

This was the scene as we arrived on Sat morning. They had rented the "fellowship hall" of the Anglican church in Jodhpur for the day's activities. But they were under a bit of a tight schedule, because the Anglicans observing Lent had other activities scheduled for the same building later that evening. It's a little bit amusing to watch Indians try to follow a timeline. As with all other "family oriented" or "people oriented" societies (as opposed to time oriented like the USA), they prefer to ignore the clock and just let events dictate time. But this time for a change, we had to keep track of the clock as well and still allow the flow of events to run smoothly.

My first trip to India was in Oct - Nov, 2007. Immediately after that BW and I received invitation from a home Bible study group at our church to serve as facilitators of their study. I was eager to do this, but had some uncertainties. Basically those boiled down to this: They told me they had just finished studying the book of Genesis. Fine. Now what direction would they go? I was willing to help with most any book of the Bible. But really did not want to do Revelation. You guessed it: They had already decided to jump to Revelation. Still, I/we clearly felt God's hand in this. And what an experience it has been. We spent almost 10 months going through the book.

Raju Thomas, area coordinator, greets the crowd. About 120 finally came.

Lay people, pastors and missionaries all attended.

Meanwhile, my involvement with RIMI/Mission India as well as volunteering with Voice of the Martyrs, brought me regular notices of the attacks on Christians in the Indian state of Orissa. Studying about the spiritual war described in Revelation while getting reports of the attacks in Orissa brought the book of Revelation to present-day reality for BW and me. So when this trip to India started materializing, I knew from the outset that I would teach/preach mainly from Revelation.

Mike Harmon gave his testimony.

Then it was my turn to preach. Stephen, a local pastor, did an excellent job of translating.

But having less than a week in 1 locality forces certain limitations. And in Jodhpur, I only had Saturday morning with the leaders, then Sat afternoon at the graduation ceremony and Sunday morning at church. So I chose a few themes and tried to follow these through the book--as time allowed in each venue.

After my sermon, we had time to greet children and friends from before. Behind my right shoulder you can see Prakash, who was a student when I came before. Now he is a missionary in a very hostile community.

I encourage you to open your Bible to Revelation 6:9ff and read that section. Then skim through the rest of the book to find about a half dozen other references to the altar. All but 1 of those remaining citations involve some kind of response by God or on God's behalf responding the martyrs UNDER the altar mentioned in 6:9. Speaking to the believers in Rajasthan, I found a very receptive audience as I demonstrated that God first says, "wait a little longer." Then the succeeding visions show God's response of vengeance on those who persecute his people. It really is a very encouraging picture, or series of pictures.

More to come....

Thank you for the feedback!

ttfn