The Persecuted Church

A Brother's Testimony
By Christa Friel

Many of you may remember hearing about the missionary to India, Graham Staines, who was burned to death with his two sons in his car in November, 1999. This sad event caught my eye at the time because the shooting at Wedgwood Baptist Church here in Ft. Worth had just happened in September of the same year. One night, our group sang at a little mission church outback, Beaudesert Baptist Church. It was there that I met Graham Staines’ brother, John, and he told me what good God has worked through his brother’s death!

John Staines told me that at the time of Graham’s death, letters of encouragement and support poured in from the United States. He said that one letter, however, stood out above the rest by far. It was a letter from a woman in New York City. She told John that recently a woman had come to visit the United States. The visiting woman’s host took her to a performance of Handel’s Messiah. When the visitor heard the “Hallelujah Chorus,” she burst into tears. Afterwards, her host asked what had moved her so during the song. The woman said, “I am an Auca Indian. Years ago, when I was a child, I watched as five missionaries were speared to death on the banks of the river. As I watched, I looked on the other side, and I saw men dressed in white. They were singing that song.”

Amazing! Hopefully, most of you recognize the Auca Indians as the people group who were responsible for the deaths of Jim Elliot and four other missionaries back in the 50’s. This woman from New York City told John Staines this story to encourage him: God is present at the death of His saints!

After telling me this story, John Staines leaned in close to me, and he said: “At the time of Graham’s death, nationals—both Christian and non-Christians—ran into the village to tell Graham’s wife of the news. They all reported the same thing: that as the flames engulfed the car, they saw a bright light come down from heaven, and they heard the singing of Christian hymns. Yet, they saw no one.”

Like Elisabeth Elliot, Graham Staines’ wife and daughter have gone back to India to finish the work they started…with continuing faithfulness to God’s call.

As I stood in the fellowship hall of this small outback Australian church and listened to John Staines speak with intensity and conviction about God’s power, I felt a lump rise in my throat. It was all I could do to choke back the tears as I stood there. How amazing are the ways that God uses to encourage us! How amazing that God would take me to the other side of the world, to a little city outback, to a small mission church, to meet the brother of a man who had so inspired me five years ago. I left the church that night, with gratitude to God—deeply moved and more dedicated to the calling God has placed on my life.

“They overcame [the accuser] by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony; they did not love their lives so much as to shrink from death.”—Rev. 12:11