Special thanks to Charisma Now for this very important article.
A Filipino pastor and evangelist who was tortured and scheduled for public hanging in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, now leads an organization that supports persecuted Christians worldwide.
Wally Magdangal had just two days left to live when he was spared a Christmas Day 1992 execution because of the intervention of international human-rights groups, the U.S. Congress and the White House.
His crime, according to the Saudi Arabian muttawa'in, or Islamic religious police, was blasphemy. It was a trumped-up charge based on his agreement with a Christian magazine article that predicted the ultimate fall of Islam, he said.
He noted that the real reason he was imprisoned was because the underground church he'd led for 10 years in a sprawling Riyadh villa had become one of the largest in Saudi Arabia, with between 300 and 700 people attending each service. Magdangal and his wife, Mathilda, leased the villa, which included a pool they used for baptisms, from a wealthy Muslim who knew of their activities and cautioned them to be careful.