Cambodia had a population of 7.5 million when Pol Pot came to power in 1975. Four years later, his Khmer Rouge had killed an estimated 2 million people, most notoriously in “killing fields”—where so many bodies were piled into mass graves that clothing and bones still emerge from the dirt after a heavy rain. Although the Vietnamese invaded Cambodia in 1979, toppling the Khmer Rouge, the aftermath has not been easy.
But as the population has grown, so has Christianity. Over the last 30 years, in a country that knows the cost of manmade utopian efforts, the number of Protestants has jumped from 2,000 to more than 300,000.
Missionary J. D. Crowley works in the northeastern part of the country. Along with other missionaries, he’s seen 3,000 people come to Christ and 70 churches planted since 1994. In the last few years, the training at the local Bible school has been given over to indigenous pastors and funded by the local churches. “When we can catch our breath,” Crowley said, “we just shake our heads and think what a privilege it has been to watch God do what he’s done up here.”
Ways to pray:
- Praise for the new birth of thousands of Cambodian Christians
- For those who have not yet heard and believed in Jesus
- For new leaders to continue to be raised up and trained well
Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up. Galatians 6:9
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Is there enough evidence for us to believe the Gospels?
In an age of faith deconstruction and skepticism about the Bible’s authority, it’s common to hear claims that the Gospels are unreliable propaganda. And if the Gospels are shown to be historically unreliable, the whole foundation of Christianity begins to crumble.
