The God of Death Reaps in India

28 January 2005

          Not long ago I wrote about the toll on lives that trips to Mecca take on Moslems. Today, I write about the toll of lives taken prematurely

 by belief in the Hindu religion. In addition to the fact people die in their sins, it seems occasionally the god of both religions gets impatient to

 harvest human souls into eternal damnation. Most recently this occurred (in the past week) when a stampede killed at least 300 and injured

 some 400 more at a Hindu procession. People actually walked on top of others starting the toll of death and injury.

          This latest series of deaths took place in western India, where people had gathered for the annual worship of a Hindu goddess named 

Mandra Devi at her hilltop temple on a full moon night. About 300,000 were there this year, so but for the grace of the True God, many more

 might have perished. A stampede took place that resulted in the deaths, and local authorities are not even completely sure what caused it, but

 rumors abound.

          Stampedes are not uncommon at Hindu religious festivals, which sometimes attract millions of worshippers. Coping with such large 

crowds is difficult, and the demonic element present in false worship should not be ignored. Last August 39 Hindus were killed when a 

stampede occurred on the banks of a supposedly holy river in Nasik, a town about 110 miles Northeast of Bombay. In 1999, fifty-one 

died at a Hindu shrine in southern India, while 50 were killed in 1986 in the Northern town of Haridwar. The worst incident on record 

was in 1954, when around 800 pilgrims died during a Hindu festival in the city of Allahabad.

          The same day the deaths occurred at least five truckloads of goats had been sacrificed to this false goddess, but that was evidently

 insufficient for the demonic presence that inhabits all false worship. One reporter told how the 2 foot high idol of Mandra Devi, inside the

 temple was shrouded in smoke as the workers tried to clear away the bodies, a symbolic picture indeed of the torment false worship 

brings in this life and in the world to come. To think that there are those who want to equate such evil with the love of Christ and Christianity

 sickens my heart.

Michael L Ford, Th.D.