By JOAN McCOY
Leader staff writer
Kevin Davis is one of the conservatives on the Cabot City Council. He’s a no-nonsense alderman who questions spending and is worried about where the tax dollars go. But that’s the alderman.
Davis is also an evangelist, a back-to-basics believer in the Bible, who took his message to India this month and talked later about his experiences with the candidness and clarity of one who completely understands his message.
Davis has been an evangelist since 2001. His work has taken him to about 15 countries, usually as part of a group. But the trip to India was different. He raised money and went alone as a teacher of pastors.
“This one, the Lord took me there,” he said.
Davis was invited to India by a pastor he met two years ago on Facebook, P. Wilson Babu, founder of the Aurishaddai Church and the Truth Children Home, an orphanage in Kakinada, Andhra Pradesh, on India’s east coast.
The orphanage is home to approximately 35 children whose parents were killed in a tsunami five years ago.
Davis, who was in India between Feb. 10 and Feb. 17, got to help feed the children and he went with them to the beach. But he emphasized that visiting the orphans was not the purpose of the trip.
He called his message to the pastors the organic teachings of Christ.
“Bring healing and grow your church,” he told them.
Davis essentially told the pastors they had everything to gain and nothing to lose by praying for healing.
India has many in need of medical attention but few doctors and hospitals. Sick people are literally in the streets there, Davis said.
“I took them the Bible and showed them how Jesus prayed for the sick,” he said.
“Lay hands on them and see what happens. I had them pray for each other and the sick people on the street.”
Then he took part in open-air meetings and prayed for the sick himself.
“Healing and atonement came from the same blood,” Davis said.
“Seventy-five percent of Jesus’ ministry was healing and he sent his apostles out to heal the sick. There’s no difference between them and us. God wants to operate through mankind.”
Hindu is the primary religion in India and it is against Indian law for foreigners to proselytize there, Davis said.
His contact with the pastors was legal, he said, but he was not allowed to try to convert any of the Hindus to Christianity.
At one of the open-air meetings, a reported 35 were healed and five were converted to Christianity. The conversions alarmed the pastors, he said, and another meeting was canceled.
After that, Davis said he was careful to only tell his own story of salvation and to pray for healing for the sick.
He would leave the conversions to the Indian pastors, who could do that legally.
