Pastor Mulongo had traveled to Mbale to take part in an open-air dialogue between Christians and Muslims. During that debate, two Muslim women stood up and publicly professed faith in Christ. A fellow pastor who attended the event, David Omala, said an imam present, identified as Hassan Musa, grew furious afterward and confronted Mulongo, warning him, "Bernard, you deserve death for blasphemous deeds and leading our people to that false religion. It is not right for you to use the holy book, Quran, to mislead our members."
Later that night, Mulongo and a traveling companion, Robert Mukisa, were riding together toward their lodging when several men on motorcycles blocked the road in Jami village. Mukisa said one of the attackers accused the pastor of drawing people away from Islam before the group struck him. Mulongo suffered wounds to his head, right hand, chest and back and died from his injuries.
Police in the district have opened an investigation. Musa has been named a suspect and, according to local reports, has not been found since the attack. No arrests had been announced as of this writing. Pastor Mulongo is survived by his wife and two children, ages 4 and 7.
What a young preacher's death asks of the living
A twenty-five-year-old man got on a motorcycle to ride home from a debate he had just won, in the truest sense a man can win one — two women had turned from one faith to stand with Christ. And for that, he was hunted down on a dark road and beaten to death. His wife is now a widow. Two small children will grow up with a photograph instead of a father. My friend, sit with that a moment before you rush past it. This is not a story from the first century. It happened this month.
There is a temptation, reading of such a thing from a comfortable distance, to feel a flicker of horror and then move on to the next headline. Don't. The Word of God has already told us plainly what to expect for those who name the name of Jesus in a hostile world, and it did not promise ease.
"Yea, and all that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution." (2 Timothy 3:12)
Notice that word "all." Not some unlucky few. Not only pastors in far-off villages. Every soul that will live godly in Christ Jesus. The form the suffering takes will differ — for some it is mockery at the office, for some it is a strained family relationship, for a man like Bernard Mulongo it was a knife on a dark road nine miles from Mbale. But the promise holds for every believer alike, and it is a promise, not a threat, because it comes bundled with another one: that the One who calls us to that road walks it first and walks it with us.
The gospel Mulongo preached is not complicated. It is the same gospel that has always cost something to carry and always been worth more than it costs. Two women heard it plainly enough, on an open-air platform, to turn their whole lives around in front of watching neighbors. That is what real preaching does — it doesn't flatter, it doesn't hedge, it calls a soul out of darkness and into light, and sometimes the darkness answers back with violence because it cannot answer back with truth.
Christ never told His followers that faithfulness would keep them safe from men. He told them it would keep them safe from something far worse.
"And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell." (Matthew 10:28)
A pastor in Uganda believed that enough to keep speaking after the threats started. He is with the Lord now, and the two women he led to Christ are not undone by his death — if anything, a grave dug in anger has a way of becoming a testimony louder than any sermon. That has been true since a Man was laid in a borrowed tomb and did not stay there. It is still true in Jami village. Pray for that widow, for those two children, and for a church in Butebo District that buried its pastor this month and is, even now, deciding whether to keep the doors open.