Outstanding Pakistani Church-Planter Testifies of Dramatic Life Change

Saturday, Sep. 5, 2009 Posted: 12:53:58AM HKT

He refused to answer God's call through his godly parents and led a life of immorality. Yet today Pastor Anwar Fazal stands as a miraculous, living testimony of God's ability to save.

Besides growing a church-planting movement in Pakistan with some 30,000 house churches, Fazal also leads the largest congregation in the country with a weekly attendance of 20,000 people. And all this happened in a short span since his conversion in 1995.

Fazal was giving his life testimony at the first Asian Ministers Fellowship International conference held in Singapore.

Though his parents, who were pioneers of Pentecostalism in Pakistan, dedicated him to God, Fazal rejected the call. They threatened to disown him, but he simply went further away and lived in all kinds of immorality.

Then one day he received a touch from God and began speaking in other tongues. His Muslim colleague thought he was ill and brought him to the hospital. The doctor examined him and thought he was crazy.

At that time, he had a vision of falling into the mud and calling out to someone he saw to rescue him but that person could not speak. Then he met the Lord Himself, and He showed him the nail marks on His hands and feet. Jesus said: I paid the price for you.

Rain fell from heaven, washing away his ‘dirty things’. God also changed his clothes. Then Jesus showed him some germs and told him that they were previously in his mind.

From then on, his life was totally changed. He resolved to quit his job working in the secret service. But the Pakistani government did not allow that, for he had signed a lifelong contract. Though he would be putting himself at great risk by disobeying the state, he was determined not to let other souls perish in hell.

Fazal started off with only four people in a small house. Now he is the leader of one of the largest church-planting movements in the world. He also set up the very first Christian television station in the Middle East, he told The Christian Post.

After showing a detailed video presentation of the mass crusades he had conducted each year, the church-planter screened a second video showing the extent of anti-Christian persecution in his country.

His TV station had documented the damage done when extremists burned 186 homes belonging to Christians, killing eight people. The conference attendants proceeded to pray for the Christians in Pakistan, led by an organiser.

Fazal says he plants small churches with at most 25 people with the intention of maximising the sharing of the Gospel and fellowship.

Edmond Chua
edmond@christianpost.com