 Evangelist Harry Gomes knows that the gospel is still as powerful today as it was in the New Testament church.
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Harry Gomes was an unlikely candidate to become a Christian evangelist. He grew up in a poor village in rural India where there were no believers in Jesus. His Hindu mother believed she would receive salvation if she wrote the name of the Hindu god Rama 10 million times. After she filled dozens of notebooks with the god’s name, she killed herself.
Harry became an atheist after his mother’s suicide. Depression and hopelessness hung like a cloud over his crude home when he was a young man. After he obtained a college degree in business he began to suffer from leukederma, an unsightly skin disease. Because of the pain and humiliation caused by his condition he often considered killing himself.
Then Jesus literally walked into his life.
"I couldn’t help but think that there is a connection between this man’s humility and the obvious spiritual power released when he preaches the simple gospel of salvation.”
Harry had a vision of Christ and was miraculously converted. He was later filled with the Holy Spirit, and Jesus appeared to him again—this time to commission him to reach India’s millions. Since 1993, when Harry sold everything he owned to purchase some property for a ministry center in the city of Coimbatore, he has sponsored 187 crusades in eight different Indian states. So far, 11.5 million people—mostly Hindus—have made decisions for Christ in his meetings.
“People still say that India is only 3 percent Christian,” Harry says, laughing loudly. “Actually the number is probably more like 11 percent. They are using old figures.”
In India, where old traditions die slowly, Hindu extremists are trying to hide the growth of Christianity in the world’s second most populous nation. But reports indicate that large numbers of Indians, particularly the Dalits, or “untouchables” of the lowest caste, are converting to Jesus.
Today in the village where Harry grew up, there are now five churches—and 90 percent of the 1,500 residents have become believers in Jesus. All this growth has occurred in less than 15 years.
Harry is a vivid example of how India is changing—and his unusual ministry demonstrates how New Testament-style miracles are shaking a nation. He has seen more than 240,000 people healed of chronic illnesses. And five people have been resurrected after distraught family members brought their dead bodies to his meetings. One of the incidents has been captured on videotape.
“I make sure people know that I am not the healer,” says Harry, who is remarkably humble and soft-spoken. On promotional fliers that are distributed to thousands of homes before his crusades, he tells people to expect Jesus to touch them. He does not typically lay hands on anyone. The miracles take place while he is kneeling on the stage.
Sometimes police come to his meetings to arrest him for breaking laws against using magic or superstition. “But they become believers when they see the miracles,” he explains.
Harry Gomes is one of my new heroes. Not because he sponsors big meetings, or because he sees powerful healings, but because I see in him a humility that seems lacking in the American church.
He speaks often of brokenness. He sometimes spends all night in prayer. On a typical day he prays for hours over the individual prayer requests of those who have attended his meetings. When he prayed for me this week he spent half his time confessing his own weaknesses and asking for God’s mercy. His selflessness convicted me to the core.
I couldn’t help but think that there is a connection between this man’s humility and the obvious spiritual power released when he preaches the simple gospel of salvation.
And the fact that he is spending his summer in the United States gave me hope that God is giving our nation a chance to reclaim the power of New Testament Christianity—so that we too can see a wayward generation raised to life.
J. Lee Grady is editor of Charisma. Reprinted with permission from Charisma, June 2007. Copyright Strang Communications Co., USA. All rights reserved. www.charismamag.com .
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