A pastor’s speech citing the ‘American Secret Report’ has terrified people who gathered for new year celebrations. Pastor Kuntam Edward Williams addressed the gatherings during the New Year event held by Bethel Church in Mushirabad, Hyderabad, in which he made wild allegations against the BJP-led Union Government, to instill fear into people gathered there.

“According to the American top secret agency report, in 2023 there will be religious attacks and genocide in Bharat and lakhs of Christians will be killed”, he said. Comparing Prime Minister of Bharat, Narendra Modi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah with Nebuchadnezzar, he called it their ‘Duty assigned by God to hate Christians’.

He made extreme comments saying that the BJP government at the centre will create ‘genocide in 2023′ and ‘lakhs of Christians will be killed by stab wounds and gunshots in that horrific massacre’.

Citing the example of German dictator Hitler’s massacre of Jews, Pastor Kuntam Edward Williams said that the same thing is going to happen in Bharat in 2023. Referring to the people who attended the church event and pointing towards them, he said that almost half of them will not be seen in 2024, and they will ‘die by stabbing, shooting and beating’ without seeing the new year 2024.

He also said that Bharat ranks 8th in terms of ‘Persecution in the world’, beyond Saudi Arabia and Syria. While the whole world is looking at Bharat, the ruling BJP is planning to separate Hyderabad from Telangana and make Hyderabad a union territory to steal the revenue generated from that city, he spewed like an unhinged conspiracy theorist. He said this is a beautiful opportunity for the Christians of Bharat to become a ‘hero or zero’.

Controversial statements made by Pastor Kuntam Edward Williams are causing an uproar on social media.

As per available information (archived here), Pastor Kuntam Edward Williams joined the Union of Evangelical Students of India as a student counsellor in 1990 and ministered to students in many universities and colleges for ten years. He then was the State Secretary of Andhra Pradesh until 2006. He conducted seminars in prestigious institutes like IIT Bombay, IIT Kharagpur, IIT Gundy, IISC Bangalore, JNU Delhi, Central University Pondicherry, JIPMER Pondicherry and CMC Vellore.

It is also learnt that Pastor Kuntam Edward Williams is trained as an apologist at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries (RZIM), founded by the late Frederick Antony Ravi Kumar Zacharias, an Indian-born Canadian-American Christian evangelical minister and apologist. There were severe sexual abuse allegations levelled against Frederick Antony Ravi Kumar Zacharias by multiple women that he had engaged in habitual sexual misconduct and/or abuse. Ruth Malhotra, a former member of RZIM, claims that suspicions regarding Zacharias’ behaviour had existed during his lifetime but that RZIM employees were not allowed to investigate.

Pastor Kuntam Edward Williams has been the host of Nireekshana television since 2000, which was sponsored by CBN Multimedia Pvt Ltd and is aired on TV9 every Sunday evening at 5.30. He is also the blogger and interactive web manager for an IPTV called “tipritv’ which reaches the diaspora Indians.

(This article first appeared nijamtoday.com on January 7, 2023 and is being republished as part of a content-sharing agreement via smart4bharat.com with minor edits to conform to HinduPost style guide and improve readability)