Police said the visitors entered the country on tourist visas. Nepali rules bar foreigners on tourist visas from taking part in religious education or promoting a religion. The arrests followed a complaint alleging that the group was involved in illegal religious teaching and training.
The Morang police chief, Kabit Katwal, said the group violated the terms of the visa. The 24 have since been held by the Department of Immigration in Kathmandu, and deportation proceedings are under consideration. The Nepali government has not yet laid out the full charges in public.
The college principal, Sarad KC, disputes the police account. He said the visitors were meeting with believers inside a local Bible college. He said they were not preaching in public or trying to win converts. Local Christian leaders and rights advocates have called the raid unwarranted. South Korea's Foreign Ministry said it is in close contact with Nepali authorities through its embassy and is providing consular help. Accounts differ on some details, including how long the group had planned to stay.
Those are the facts so far. Twenty-four people are in custody. No court has ruled, and the visa question is for the authorities to settle. But a deeper question sits under the visa paperwork, and it reaches well beyond Nepal.
What a closed door cannot lock out
A government can control a border. It can stamp a passport, write a rule and send a man home. Nepal has every right to enforce its immigration law, and a Christian is called to respect the authorities over him. But a government cannot control the one thing it was never given charge of, and that is what a man believes in his heart about God.
Think of the people in that room in Morang. They crossed a great distance to sit under the Word of God. Whatever the court decides about their visas, they came for a reason older than any visa. Men and women have always crossed oceans and mountains to hear the good news, and others have always crossed them to tell it.
The Lord Jesus told His disciples plainly what they would meet.
"Yea, and all that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution." (2 Timothy 3:12)
Notice the word all. It does not say some, and it does not say only in faraway lands. It says all who will live godly in Christ. The believer in Nepal who holds a Bible class in a college building knows that. So does the believer in an American city who is told to take his faith out of public life. The pressure differs in degree, and the cost differs. The gospel is the same.
Here in America we have a First Amendment, and we should thank God for it. We should also guard it, because liberty that is not defended gets traded away a little at a time. The right to worship, to teach and to believe was bought dearly. Free people must not grow careless with it.
But the believer's hope was never in a charter. The Lord said to His own, "Fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul." That is the answer to every raid and every cell door. A man may lose his seat in a classroom, and he may lose his passport. If he belongs to Christ, he has not lost his Savior.
My friend, if you are a Christian at ease, remember those 24 tonight. Remember the brother in Nepal, the sister in Nigeria and the pastor behind a wall in China. They are not strangers. They are family. And if you do not yet know Christ, look at what these people were willing to risk to learn about Him. That kind of devotion is not foolishness. It comes from knowing the One who died for sinners and rose again on the third day.
Governments rise and fall. Borders shift. Visa rules are rewritten every few years. The Word of God stands, and the door Christ opens, no man can shut.