He was scheduled to die on Christmas Day. Ten years ago, Oswaldo “Wally” Magdangal waited in a Saudi Arabian prison to be hanged for the crime of blaspheming Islam. Until his 1992 arrest by Saudi religious police, or
muttawa’in, Magdangal had been leading one of the largest underground house churches in the officially Muslim nation where open Christian worship or witness brings arrest, torture, and often, execution.
He knew the risk. “Every time we came together, we made people aware that this may be your first or even your last time to be in a church in that place,” said Magdangal, who is featured on
The Coral Ridge Hour November 3. “At anytime,” he told worshippers at his house church, “the police can come in and take us all to prison.”
Magdangal, who entered Saudi Arabia in 1982 as a guest worker from the Philippines, attracted the attention of the
muttawa’in, because of his underground Bible school and his house church, where 300 to 700 people gathered to worship.
“Terrified”
When, after years of clandestine ministry, his arrest came, he was “terrified.” He was shackled, thrown into a three by four foot cell, stripped, and subjected to sleep deprivation, brainwashing attempts, and flogging. Once he was tortured for three-and-a-half hours by three Muslim clerics who demanded he provide the names of other Christians.
“Eventually, I was so weak they placed the pad of paper in my lap, and they forced the pencil into my hand,” Magdangal told
Christianity Today. “I was weeping, and I said, ‘Lord, you’ve got to help me here,’ and I began to write the names of Billy Graham, Charles Spurgeon, and others. After a few days, they were so mad, because they’d been all over Saudi Arabia looking for those people.”
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Despite the brutal torture and cruel mistreatment he suffered from his captors, Magdangal “did not feel any kind or any type of bitterness at all, nor hatred towards
 these people.” He even prayed for them. “I said, ‘Lord, these people do not understand what they’re doing. Do not take this up against them.”
Magdangal was sentenced to die on Christmas Day, because it happened to fall that year on a Friday, the Muslim day of rest—and the day executions typically occur. But Magdangal was spared death when an international outcry convinced Saudi King Fahd bin Abdul
al-Aziz Al Saud to overrule the muttawa’in and order him released and deported on Christmas Eve. Magdangal arrived in Manila on Christmas Day 1992.
200 Million Affected
“It was a miracle of God,” Magdangal said. But a miracle not given to thousands of other believers killed each year for their faith. After his release, Magdangal founded Christians in Crisis, a group that works to raise awareness about the 200 million believers in at least 60 nations worldwide who face persecution for their belief in Jesus.
The problem is most severe in Muslim and Communist nations. North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, and China are among the worst offenders.
In North Korea, which is ranked first on Open Door’s most recent “World Watch List” of countries where Christians are most severely persecuted, communist dictator Kim Jong Il, like his deceased father, Kim Il Sung, demands the exclusive worship of his citizens and seeks to eliminate Christians.
Please see Persecution, page 7
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