Proclaiming the Message of the Gospel

(Sadhu Sundar Singh, known as the Holy Man of India and the Apostle of Christ from India, had lived and died for Christ during the early 20th century (1889-1929). Sundar Singh was raised a devout Sikh, and consecrated from his youth to become a Hindu Sadhu (hermit). However, his spiritual longings were not fulfilled until emotional and spiritual turmoil drove him to urgently ask the true living God to reveal Himself fully, lest he take his own life in the hope of finding peace in the next life. Barely hours, before he intended to take his own life, the young Sundar Singh had a dramatic vision of Jesus Christ. Immediately the emptiness and despair that had filled his heart was lifted, and his search for inner peace was over. The outcome was strikingly similar to that described in Acts 9:3-5 of the Bible's New Testament. Thereafter, the born again Sadhu became a living witness of the eternal security, peace and comfort he had freely received. Despite opposition and rejection at home, he soon knew that he had to share his faith throughout the towns and villages of India, and beyond into the dangerous mountain regions of Tibet. As Sundar Singh moved through his twenties his ministry widened greatly, and long before he was thirty years old his name and picture were familiar all over the Christian world. What better way than to put on the robes of a Sadhu, and to take to the road with no guarantee of food or shelter, but with a passionate desire to live as his Master had done before him?)

Sadhu in America!

Sadhu Sundar Singh visited America 1920. Dr.Jowett and others introduced the Sadhu to the American people. Curiously enough, when it was known that he was going to America, there were good people who feared the result. Sincerely believing that his mission to the States would be more likely to arouse curiosity than accomplish any great spiritual purpose, a number of devout persons met together for prayer in New York, to ask for God’s overruling providence in the matter.

There was no time for suitable arrangements to be made before the Sadhu’s arrival. The Pond Lyceum Bureau offered to arrange a full programme covering the USA, and ventured the opinion that as a business proposition it would be an even greater success than the one they had carried through for Rabindranath Tagore. They published preliminary announcements, but when the Sadhu realized that this was a business arrangement, he declined to have anything to do with it. The National Bible Institute then made necessary arrangements, covering a couple of months, after which the Sadhu was due to leave for Australia.

On May 30, 1920, the Sadhu was at the Union Theological Seminary in New York. Then followed engagements in Hartford, Baltimore, Pittston, Princeton University, Brank Presbyterian Church, New York; the Marble Collegiate Church, Brooklyn; Philadelphia, Boston, and other cities. On June 25, he went to the Silver Bay Students’ Conference, and spent four days addressing 800 students and their leaders. Early in July, he was in Chicago, and passed onto Iowa, Kansas and other places, finally arriving at San Francisco, where his journey and work in America ended. Some friends there were moved to give money for the support of “consecrated young men to the Sadhu, who had laid themselves on God’s altar to become martyrs for Christ by carrying the Gospel message to Tibet”.

At Lake George, the following incident took place. In the front row at a certain meeting sat a small child of three and a half years. All through his address, this wee mite scarcely took her eyes from the Sadhu’s face. When he sat down, the audience was almost electrified to hear the question asked in a clear childish treble, “Is he Jesus?”

A writer in the New York Evening News said:

“This tall strong young man has come from India to tell the world of Christianity again. He has an entirely ageless look of both youth and age in one; joy, energy, wisdom…. He has a high glad way about him. He is said to look like the pictures of Christ, and he does; but there is a greater vitality and joy about him than is ever represented in the pictures of Christ. Perhaps the pictures are wrong.

He comes to bear testimony to the endless power; the endless joy of Christ, to tell how he turned from Hinduism to Christ and in that way found peace of mind. To Indians nothing matters but serenity and peace of mind, as perhaps nothing else matters to anyone. He feels no oddity about coming to America to tell the power of Christ, when for some many generations; people have gone from here to tell the same. Christians must tell their experience, their joy that is all…. Sects are strange unnecessary things, the Sadhu thinks. There is one God; why have so many creeds? Piece and quiet come from knowing Christ. Why cause dissension? But still! “This is the world,” he says, resignedly though never without joy. “When all sects are one, it will be world no longer. It will be heaven then”.

Mr.Frank Buchman of Hartford Theological Seminary, who had traveled for some weeks with the Sadhu wrote of him:

“I agree with the newspaper reporters of America who interviewed him, “Nearer the Christ than any living man we have seen”. The leading papers gave him ample space. His pictures appeared in the movies, and he was able to reach influential and lay circles in the various cities. He is Spirit-taught and has almost a medium-like gift of sensing people and situations.

He brings the message of the Supernatural, which this age needs. Men simply flocked to hear him that he had scarcely time for his meals. I have just received a letter from the Headmistress of a leading preparatory school. She said there was a veil of light on every boy’s face as he left the Sadhu’s meeting. He said a true word when he predicted that America would have no spiritual leaders fifty years hence if she kept up her present pace. He has a practical message for America.

Reports on Sadhu in the western world

A Swedish Archbishop pointed to Sundar Singh and said: “The gospel has not undergone any change in him…In the history of religion Sundar is the first to show the world how the gospel of Jesus Christ is reflected in unchanged purity in an Indian soul”

“Christianity is imperishable”, said another writer, “and out of the east it will come again. The Sadhu is perhaps the first of the new apostles to rekindle the fire on dying altars”.

Archbishop Soderblom, in speaking of Canon Streeter’s book “The Sadhu”, said: “As far as I know there is no other instance in the history of religion of an original land charming saintly character, already surrounded with the glamour of miraculous faith, during his life-time being the object of methodical examination by a scientific investigator – an examination as scholarly in its sound criticism as in its sympathy for its object”.

On March 9, 1920, the Sadhu met and talked for an hour with the Archbishop of Canterbury, and the following day he spoke at the Church House, Westminster, to some seven hundred clergy of the Church of England, including the Archbishop of Canterbury and six bishops, probably the first occasion when Churchmen of all shades of opinion met together to well one to whom sect is nothing but Christ is all in all.

The Church Times of March 12 gave an excellent account of this remarkable gathering:

“The atmosphere is instinct with expectancy. Slightly before the time announced there enters the strange figure of Sadhu Sundar Singh. He is as a man from another world. His sermon went to the heart of things. To men was given the inestimable privilege of witnessing to Jesus Christ. The angels could reveal truth, could make plain hidden mysteries: but they could not witness; man alone out of his own experience of God’s love and mercy could do that. So the angel spoke to Cornelius, but sinful Peter witnesses”. The writer added, “Nothing I can say here can convey the impression I could wish – that of a man apart, renouncing great possessions, exulting in the saving grace of his Master and speaking with the utmost simplicity. His complete freedom from any self-consciousness made even the Bishops’ gaiters seem a bit ridiculous”.