The founder of Gospel for Asia (GFA) has told Premier the island has been shaken like never before.
Bombers targeted churches and hotels on Easter Sunday, killing around 250 people and injuring hundreds more.
Cardinal Malcolm Ranjith, the current Catholic Archbishop of Colombo, has appealed to priests not to conduct mass at churches until further notice.
Dr KP Yohannan, director of the evangelistic charity Gospel For Asia told Premier:
“Sri Lanka has experienced years and years of civil war and tens of thousands being murdered, yet this one incident overshadows everything.
“In terms of the the shock and the magnitude of the day it happened, the church was packed with people and the suicide bomber ended up having these two huge blasts and 360 people died and tens of hundreds were injured. It’s shaken the island like never before.”
He was speaking before the death toll was revised down due to parts of the same body being counted separately.
Dr KP explained that Gospel for Asia lost a couple of people in the incident and that the bombers had planted two bombs right in front of their office and church “by God’s grace that was discovered and didn’t go off.”
“I was doing the Easter service while this news broke out and you can imagine what a shock it was for everybody. And all we can do is, and we don’t understand all of this, pray for this nation and the people and this suffering and what we can do is give some hope and help in the midst of pain.”
Dr KP added that Gospel for Asia do have plans for delivering help when earthquakes and floods happen and that a similar plan had been put into action.
He said lots of prayer would be needed for people who he thinks could lose their faith in light of this:
“How many Christians are now saying ‘why would God allow something like this to happen?’ and that is one of the purposes of the enemy – to twist things around.”
SEE THE ARTICLE ON PREMIER.ORG.UK
To join GFA’s prayer network for Sri Lanka, go to: www.gfa.org/pray/sri-lanka.
Read more news on Sri Lanka on Gospel for Asia: Digital Media Room.
Image Source: Phil Murphy, Flickr (CC BY-NC 2.0)
