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Executed Christians Praise God With Dying Breaths, But You Won't Believe What Their Crime Was

Jessilyn Justice : Apr 30, 2015
Charisma News

The killings have sparked an international outcry with even Guns 'N Roses Axl Rose protesting the deaths. But still, says Pastor Karina de Vega, "It was breathtaking. This was the first time I witnessed someone so excited to meet their God."

airlift(Indonesia)—Eight men executed in Indonesia were singing to the Lord as they were marched to their death. (Screengrab via Sydney Morning Herald)

"They were praising their God," Pastor Karina de Vega tells the Sydney Morning Herald. "It was breathtaking. This was the first time I witnessed someone so excited to meet their God."

But we're men we're not martyrs.

Instead, reports say the seven foreigners and one Indonesian national were convicted of drug trafficking.

While one woman was spared, these executions are causing international outrage, drawing attention to the conversions of the inmates.

One of those executed, Andrew Chan, led Bible studies and became an ordained minister while in prison, according to the LA Times. Chan was convicted as a drug smuggler and one of the Bali Nine.

Another of the condemned, Okwudili Ayotanze, was a Nigerian Gospel singer who would sing to the prison guards.

"Their crimes were now long ago, their hearts and minds forever changed by their crimes, their trials, the hurt they've caused their loved ones," Guns 'N Roses Axl Rose writes in an open letter to the Indonesian president.

Rose highlights the need to consider the conversion and how inmates like Chan should be spared after radically turning their lives around to Jesus.

"To kill these men under these conditions of their profound and proven change for the better seems a barbaric, backward and truly disgraceful act of pride, ego, fear and prejudice, prejudice against your own system and the souls of anyone who has committed what's been deemed a crime from one day making amends and having the opportunity to make things right by how they live their lives and not how they are brutally and with disregard executed."