Miracles on the train help bring Indian construction worker to Christ

Morgan Jackson recounts the extraordinary story of how Jesus closed the eyes of a railway ticket inspector, helping a Hindu man become a Christian.

INDIA — A Bible Woman who had a New Testament [in Telugu] on cassette had found what we call a Woman of Peace, a woman who was a Hindu but who was interested in learning about Jesus Christ. She had welcomed the Bible Woman to come to her hut and play the Scriptures two or three times a week. As she had done this, the Hindu woman had come to Christ and had begun to pass on the good news to her husband.

It is really difficult for Hindus to come to Christ. Her husband was listening to her and seeing what Jesus was doing in her life, but he was not going to accept it for himself. Yet he was being drawn… “Jesus Christ will answer your prayers!” she kept saying. “Jesus Christ can help you! Jesus Christ can rescue us!”

Her husband was a construction worker. They live in a slum and he makes very little money. He was working in a city three or four hours’ train ride away but it was a new city, so there was work there.

He would go there, stay all week and, most of the time, sleep in a hostel or actually in the building they were working on. After a couple of weeks, he had just enough money to buy a ticket back.

Being in an unfamiliar city he got on the wrong train and he got into the sleeper class. There’s a 500 rupee fine – that’s a month’s wages! – for doing that. And not only that, but the guys who check tickets don’t like the fine, they want to ‘deal with’ you. So they have an arrangement with the staff at the different stations and if someone gets on the train illegally, they just make sure that they’re caught the minute they get off the train. The staff at the station take them over and just beat them up.

So the husband realised that he was on the wrong class on the wrong train and he didn’t have a ticket for it and he was afraid. He didn’t know what to do and he was thinking of jumping from the train. But at that moment, his wife’s words came back to him: “Jesus Christ can answer your prayers, Jesus Christ can rescue you.” She had been listening to the New Testament in Telugu and had told him these things.

So in his heart he called out – one of those ‘in the trenches’ prayers – “Lord, if you save me, I’ll believe in you! Lord Jesus, you really are God if you will rescue me.”

Now a complete stranger walked up to him and said, “Come here,” and pulled him up and sat him down where the man who collected the tickets usually sat. Then the stranger went back and sat in the sleeper where the Hindu man had been.

Well, the ticket inspector was going up and down checking everybody – they’re very thorough – and he came to the Hindu man and he looked at him and he didn’t check him!

Now the Hindu man’s heart was beating … but the inspector didn’t check his ticket; he walked by. Anyway, they came to the next station, which is quite a way down the line, and the train stopped, he got off and the stranger got off with him. They didn’t exchange any conversation. And then another train came along which was going to take him back to where he had come from, because he had set out in the wrong direction.

No money

So he got on that train – but he still had a problem: he had no money to buy the right ticket. So again he was fearful and he cried out, “Lord Jesus, if you are real, help me again!”

Well, again the same stranger took him and told him where to sit. He sat where he was told and the stranger went off and sat in his own seat. And the inspector came along, checking everybody’s ticket, reached the Hindu man, looked at him and didn’t check it! He walked by!

So they arrived back at the original station and he got off. God had rescued him, but now he was back where he had begun. Then he found out that he was at the wrong station. From that station he couldn’t get a train to where he needed to go: he had to go to the other station across town.

Rickshaw driver

It was late at night and he had no money so he went to talk to a rickshaw driver and that rickshaw driver asked for no payment to take him but took him all the way over to the other side of town and dropped him off. And he got on the right train at last, got into his seat and the ticket man came along – and checked his ticket!

Impossible

Three things that are supposedly ‘impossible’ in India had happened in a row and so the Hindu man now is a believer in Jesus Christ. He’s now a Christian along with his wife: they are both believers, both have got rid of their household gods. They are no longer Hindus but are Christians because Jesus Christ answers prayer.