With Christian persecution at an all-time high, one businessman says the Holy Spirit led him to erect a cross as a safe haven for Christians in Pakistan.
“I said, ‘I am going to build a big cross, higher than any in the world, in a Muslim country.’ … I want Christian people to see it and decide to stay here,” Pakistani businessman Perez Gill tells the Washington Post.
The cross is bulletproof, 14 stories and at the entrance of the country’s largest Christian cemetery, the Post reports.
Blasphemy laws have severely limited to spread of the gospel in the country, and the list of persecution goes on and on: Suicide bombings, a missionary shot in the head, Christians held on false murder charges, being set on fire, and even Rabbi Jonathan Cahn labeling the onslaught as a “Christian holocaust,” just to name a few.
“The challenges facing Christians in Pakistan, many of whom live in slums and are relegated to working menial jobs, are particularly acute in rural areas. That has driven more of them to seek security and support in Karachi,” Bishop Sadiq Daniel, the leader of the Church of Pakistan in Sindh, tells Pakistan Today.
For Gill, the cross is a reminder for Christians to stay in their homes, and he tells the Post that both Muslims and Christians are working on the sculpture, which one Muslim man called “a work of God.”
