The God who hung on the cross
In September 1999 Pastor Tuy Seng travelled. To Khampong Tom province in northern Cambodia. His goal was to bring the gospel to the unreached areas in this province. This part of the country was one of the last isolated areas that was controlled by Khmer Rouge until the end of the 20th century, so it had been impossible to bring the gospel here any earlier. As far as one could know, pastor Seng was the first one to preach the gospel of Christ in this area. Most of the villages were Buddhists or Spiritists, and Christianity was totally unknown.
When pastor Seng arrived a small village he was greeted with open arms. The people there couldn’t get enough of the gospel there. Almost all of them gave their life to Christ. Pastor Seng was curious about this, and asked around, he got a kind of feeling like they had been waiting for him.
An older lady stepped forward in a shy way, bowed her head, and took pastor Seng’s hands. “Yes we have waited” she said. “We have waited for you for 20 years”. And she started telling the story about the village.
When Khmer Rough came to power in Cambodia, they destroyed all forms of structure and functioning order across the country – bridges, roads, hospitals, infrastructure, and people's lives. This happened systematically, and over time. They started with large cities like Phnom Penh, and after that they moved on to “cleanse” the villages.
The soldiers arrived in this village in Khampong Tom in 1979. They proceeded in their normal manner. The communist warriors came out of the jungle, walked from house to house, and commanded that the people should gather at the gathering point in the village. If anyone resisted they were shot dead at the spot. A lot of people died outside their homes. The rest was taken to a little clearing in the jungle behind the village. The soldiers threw some tools to them, and commanded them to start digging.
The villagers were digging their way down in the red clay soil. All of them had an awareness that it was probably their own graves they were digging. Some of them collapsed from the pressure, they were shot immediately, and thrown at the side of the whole they were digging.
Hours went by; the poor people were sweating, crying and digging to make the holes deep and wide enough. Eventually they were told by the soldiers to put down their tools, and all of them were ordered by the soldiers to face the graves they had just made. Terrified they were standing there waiting for the killing shot or hit; they knew that the soldiers preferred to beat them to save their ammo.
The humid air was standing still. One by one thy started to cry, and a desperate prayer for help could be heard from their lips. Some were calling for Buddha, others for their ancestress, some called for mom. Suddenly one woman started shouting. Here shout originated from something her mom once had told her long time ago – about a God that was hanging at a cross. She was now crying out to this God. Maybe he who suffered himself could have compassion with those waiting for death themselves. Suddenly all of their voices united in one common outcry to the God that was hanging on the cross. After that everything was silent. Everyone was staring at the dark graves in front of them. Seconds went by – still quite. Nothing happened. Slowly they started turning around to see what was happening. There was no one behind them. The soldiers were gone.
“Since that wondrous day in 1979 our people has been waiting” the lady explains. “Waiting for someone to come and tell us more about this God that was hanging at a cross”.
