In the Forward of the book Prophetic Ministry, T. Austin Sparks mentioned about two brothers. One was used by God to plant assemblies of considerable spiritual depth all around China. What Sparks spoke of was Brother Watchman Nee.
Another brother raised up many assemblies of New Testament character, bearing the testimony of the Lord according to the spiritual principle and example set in the Scriptures, in India. His influence extended beyond India and this brother was Brother Bakht Singh.
張貼者： Joshua Yau 位於 下午 7:19 0 意見
Feb 4, 2010
Bro.Bakht Singh called to glory
November 13, 2000
Bakht Singh, a prominent evangelist and church planter in INDIA, died September 16 of Parkinson's disease. He was 97. An internationally known Bible teacher, Singh started more than 6,000 indigenous churches and fellowships throughout India. Today his influence is felt in about 10,000 churches planted in India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Australia, and the United States. Singh's Bible training center, the Hebron Assembly, continues to equip hundreds of people in sharing their faith. An estimated 600,000 people from around the world attended memorial services in Hyderabad, India, to mourn Singh's death.
Source : http://www.ctlibrary.com/ct/2000/november13/24.35.html
Bakht Singh, a prominent evangelist and church planter in INDIA, died September 16 of Parkinson's disease. He was 97. An internationally known Bible teacher, Singh started more than 6,000 indigenous churches and fellowships throughout India. Today his influence is felt in about 10,000 churches planted in India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Australia, and the United States. Singh's Bible training center, the Hebron Assembly, continues to equip hundreds of people in sharing their faith. An estimated 600,000 people from around the world attended memorial services in Hyderabad, India, to mourn Singh's death.
Source : http://www.ctlibrary.com/ct/2000/november13/24.35.html
Bakht Singh - India's Billy Graham
Bakht Singh(1903 - 2000)India's Billy Graham
The clamour of Asian life constantly echoes around the vast city of Hyderabad in southern India. But on Friday 22nd of September, 2000 the normal cries of the hawkers and explosion of exhaust from the rickshaws fell silent. Businesses closed and the traffic stood still as a crowd of over 300,000 mourners shuffled with a coffin to the cemetery. Who were they weeping for? He was not a rich man: he lived most of his life in a 10 by 8 foot room and never held a bank account. Nor was he a politician or an entertainment celebrity: he never read the newspaper, nor watched the TV. He was a Bible preacher; known to thousands as simply, ‘Brother’.
Hater of Christ
Bakht Singh’s family never dreamt he would become a Christian, let alone a famous preacher. When he was born in 1903 he was dedicated to Guru Nanak, the founder of Sikhism, and in his teens was often found in their temples rather than in the street playing. Even though his parents sent him to a Christian mission school in Gujranwala in the Punjab, he despised Christianity as an inferior religion and to prove his hatred tore up the Bible given to all graduating students. After school Bakht Singh married a girl chosen by his parents and had a son. His father was a wealthy factory owner and agreed for Bakht Singh to go abroad to England to study agricultural engineering. Here the young Bakht Singh became the dapper man of the world– he shaved his Sikh beard, drank and smoked, flashing a golden cigarette case when lighting up, and wore the finest suits to visit theatres and dance halls. Religion was of no interest to him. He wrote to a friend, ‘I have become an atheist.’ His love of travel took him to Canada for a summer holiday in 1928 and it was on the sea journey something mysterious happened. As an Indian Bakht Singh wanted to show his Western travelling companions that he could take part in all their activities. So when he saw there would be a Christian service in the first class dining room he went. He stood for the singing, sat and dozed during the sermon, but then it came to the prayer time and everyone knelt. He wanted to walk out, but it was too late. So he knelt: and something happened. Later he wrote – ‘The very moment I knelt down, I felt some divine power had engulfed me.’
Lover of Christ
But that was all. Another year went by till this encounter grew to full Christian faith. The next summer Bakht Singh went to Canada for a longer period to finish his studies. He stayed at the YMCA in Winnipeg and there made friends with a bank manager called Owel Hansen, a committed Christian. When Bakht Singh this, he asked him for a Bible and on December 14th 1929 his friend gave him a New Testament. Bakht Singh read it continuously for three days. On the third day the words of Jesus, ‘Truly, truly I say unto you’ pierced his heart. The still small voice of the Lord began talking and did not stop for over seventy years. Christ showed Bakht Singh his sins, so much so that he began to cry – and then His blood. Bakht Singh became a Christian at 11.30 a.m, on December 16th, 1929.
On Christmas Day that year Owel Hansen gave Bakht Singh a whole Bible. He became engrossed, finishing it in less than two months. In Canada he was grounded in the faith, was baptised – and called to full-time service. After his conversion Bakht Singh still planned to be an agricultural engineer, but in April 1932, there was a long struggle in prayer. He first told the Lord that he would give Him all his money, the reply was, ‘I don’t want your money, I want you.’ At 2.30 a.m. on the 4th April 1932 God offered Bakht Singh’s an invitation to full-time service on three conditions: he was not allowed to let any man know about his financial needs; he was not to join any society, but to serve all equally; and he was not to make any plans, but to be led every day. Bakht Singh agreed and so his ministry began. It would cost him dearly.
After seven years studying abroad there were tears of joy when Bakth Singh disembarked from the ship in Bombay and met his parents in April 1933. Those tears soon turned to grief. For when his father told him he could be a Christian privately, but not in public – Bakht Singh refused. His mother and father were stunned. In abject humility his father took off his turban and laid it at his son’s feet in the hope of making his son change his mind. Bakht Singh did not waver. And so there was an anguished farewell. He was now separated from his parents and his wife and son. [1]
Revival
Alone and penniless, Bakht Singh slept his first night in India in a public shelter. He immediately began witnessing for Christ, trusting God for his needs. From Bombay he went to Karachi, and here he truly began his ministry. He threw himself into evangelising the poor sweepers who responded with great enthusiasm. Those who came to faith he gathered for prayer and Bible study at 4.00 a.m. before they went to clean the city, and then he would go and preach in the open air, and more would come to Christ. Or he would go to the beach for whole days of prayer on his knees. His evangelistic success was recognised by the churches and soon he was holding preaching campaigns with hundreds attending in the Sind, the Punjab, and Baluchistan. In May 1935 he was in Quetta, and felt it was like Sodom and Gomorrah. He warned the hundreds who came to his meetings to repent and earnestly prayed that the Lord would ‘shake them till they kneel down.’ The shaking was truly awful. An earthquake swept thousands to their death – but very few Christians, and only two of those who had come to his meetings died.
In June 1937, with some hesitation Bakht Singh went to preach to a nominal Christian village called Martinpur in the Punjab. He was hesitant because the place was infamous for heavy drinking and immorality. As he entered the village a group of five older men were sitting under a tree smoking a hookah and they asked him why he was coming. Bakht Singh said he had come to pray. Their retort was, ‘Pray? You pray the whole night, nothing will happen here.’
For four days Bakht Singh hardly slept, so intense was his prayer and fasting, but for thirteen days there was no breakthrough: just ridicule and apathy. On the fourteenth night he told the people this was his last meeting and he was going away. He then asked them to stand for prayer. All stood. And then they started falling down, pulling at their hair and crying out over their sins, until 3.00 a.m. Revival had come. Bakht Singh did not leave, but stayed to teach. As well as Bible studies, there was a bonfire for people to burn charms, a ‘love feast’ where everyone came together for a meal, all night prayer meetings, and many processions of singing. From this revival, Bakht Singh took seventy young men and they walked 150 miles to the Christian convention in Sialkot – singing and witnessing as they went. When they arrived, Bakht Singh’s preaching and the miracle of Martinpur electrified the three thousand present.
Bakht Singh was now a household name throughout India[2], invitations poured in and for two years after Martinpur he was on the road leading revival campaigns. Thousands received salvation – and not a few received healings, though Bakht Singh played down this side of his ministry. In fact he eventually asked the Lord to stop healing through him as he did not want to attract people to Christ for the wrong reasons. He hated publicity and never allowed any advertising for his meetings, saying it was God’s job to bring people in answer to prayer.
There was a lot of prayer. At Mukti in Mahrarashtra he led nineteen all night prayer meetings with Christian workers crying out for revival and he was constantly at prayer himself. Many who shared a room with him, would wake up in the early hours to see him still in on his knees. He always prayed on his knees – whether in private or public. And if he found a Christian who did not kneel he knew at least 43 verses by heart to prove that true saints always knelt. His knowledge of the Bible was encyclopaedic; indeed it was the only book he ever read. He insisted that all Christians buy their own Bible, a New Testament was not enough, and he made everyone hold it up at the start of his meetings. If someone didn’t have one, he would say ‘Shame on you 174 times, because the Word of God is mentioned 174 times out of 176 verses in Psalm 119!’ Not surprisingly Bible shops sold out during his crusades. As a part of his outreach, he would hold processions of witness with Scriptures written on banners, and at the end he would host a ‘love feast’, as he had done at Martinpur, where all the believers were welcome without charge. Huge numbers came to these meals.
One of this greatest revival meetings were in Madras in 1940 which ended with 12,000 coming to the ‘love feast’. All were fed. Bakht Singh was seen off at the railway station by large crowds, so much so that he had to be carried by two men to get to his compartment. His final words to them were, ‘The fire shall ever be burning upon the altar; and it shall never go out.’ He probably did not realise that this was in fact a prophecy for his own ministry in this city. Shortly after his campaign, a number of Madras ministers held a meeting and decided to ban Bakht Singh from their churches because he had spoken out against nominal Christianity. This of course upset the thousands who had found spiritual life through his meetings, so when Bakht Singh was next passing through Madras in the summer of 1941 on his way to a retreat they pleaded with him to start a church there. During his retreat Bakht Singh spent 21 days in prayer and fasting over this, keenly aware people needed proper discipling, but wary of taking on more responsibilities. He already had many unanswered invitations. Eventually he surrendered to the idea of starting churches, saying to God, ‘give me the assurance that you are leading me.’ The answer was Exodus 34:10, ‘Behold, I will do marvels.’
Starts Assemblies
Many marvels indeed happened. Bakht Singh and his close co-workers returned to Madras, but before their first Sunday service they, characteristically, spent the Saturday night in prayer on a hill overlooking the city. Then followed a Sunday that would become typical for thousands as Bakht Singh fellowships spread. They were not for the half-hearted. Early in the morning, before it got too hot, there were baptisms, sometimes up to fifty, followed by the laying on of hands, an important ceremony to show the new believers belonged to the body. Then at about nine o’clock there was an exhortation to worship, followed by a lengthy time of praise where all were encouraged to offer their own prayers. This was followed by another long message. Nobody knew the speaker till just before the meeting when Bakht Singh would pray with his associates and ask if someone had a message from the Lord. He refused to pre-plan the speaker as he believed this stopped the Holy Spirit choosing. The preaching always tended to be expository, especially if the speaker was Bakht Singh. The emphasis on the Bible was reinforced by the banners proclaiming Scriptures, or even painted on the walls of all Bakht Singh churches. After the sermon came the breaking of bread and then at about two or three o’clock, there was a ‘love feast’ where all the believers had a simple meal together, usually dhal, bread and water. Later in many fellowships there would then be a march of witness, inviting people to the evening evangelistic service which started about eight and finished at ten.
From this first church in Madras there are now over one thousand assemblies who look to Bakht Singh as their spiritual father. Most of them are in the south of India, but there are many elsewhere in the subcontinent, and a good number among the Indian/Pakistani Diaspora in the West. About 350 churches were born directly as a result of Bakht Singh’s continuing evangelistic ministry. He would hold a campaign in a city, and then his close associates, often an English missionary Fred Flack[3], would remain for several weeks teaching the new believers. Many other churches were born when people returned home after attending Bakht Singh’s annual ‘Holy Convocation’[4]. These were conferences, lasting about nineteen days, for all Christians associated with Bakht Singh’s churches. Usually several thousand came, sleeping in tents and booths, as in Old Testament times. Though costly, nobody was asked to pay a rupee and there was no fund-raising. The aim of the conference was for Christians to ‘feast’ on the Lord Jesus. And feast they did. The day started at about 5.00 a.m. and apart from meals-times people were either praying or listening to preaching. And in one booth there was a 24 hour prayer chain. It is not surprising that people returning from these ‘holy convocations’ wanted to maintain the spiritual life they had enjoyed and so started their own assemblies. A final way the Bakht Singh assemblies spread was through one of these new churches, then planting another. This especially happened in the state of Andhra Pradesh. From 1946 onwards Bakht Singh regularly travelled abroad where he was in great demand as a speaker. A number of assemblies were born in the places he visited – and, as always, thousands were inspired to walk more closely with God.
Unnerving Saint
Bakht Singh’s total commitment to Christ was infectious – and unnerving. As seen he spent hours in prayer. He only read the Bible which he knew probably better than any of his contemporaries. He dedicated all of mission leader George Verwer’s children. Obviously the ceremonies took some time, as Verwer later said, ‘He had more verses for children than I ever knew existed.’ And in this prayer and Bible reading he believed God spoke to him about the details of a day, and would provide every need. His close walk with God was also seen in his enmity with the world. He refused to read the newspaper, preferring to be given a weekly round up of the news by a friend, and both cinema and TV were taboo. One he heard that a church member in Hyderabad, where he later moved his headquarters, had smuggled a TV into his house. He called him into his room and found out that the man wanted it to watch the Olympic Games. Bakht Singh said, he and his family would end up being tempted to watch other things and soon they would know the names of the soap opera stars, but not the characters of the Bible. The man got rid of his TV. Bakth Singh could be embarrassing. Once he was invited for a meal where there were posters of scantily clad film stars on the wall. He said, either the pictures come down, or I will not eat here. On another occasion his hostess was wearing too much gaudy jewellery. He told the couple to sell it and use the money to buy Scriptures, which they did.
This emphasis on separation from the world inevitably had the down-side of making some of his assemblies exclusive and judgmental: nobody is ever good enough. Tragically this included the Pentecostal movement that swept into India after Bakht Singh had started his ministry. Another problem that inevitably arose from a ministry so rooted in one man
hearing God’s voice was that of leadership. Until his health failed, all major decisions remained with Bakht Singh: nothing could be done without ‘brother’s’ approval. This caused problems, as all saints have clay feet
However no ministry is perfect, and the emotion of the vast crowds that came to bid this saint farewell in Hyderabad in 2000 is overwhelming confirmation that Bakht Singh was truly a man of God who served his people faithfully to the end.
© T.G.S. Hawksley
[1] Later Bakht Singh was reconciled with his family and he baptised his own father. However his wife never returned to him.
[2] Martinpur and Sialkot are now in Pakistan, but till 1947 there was only India.
[3] Fred Flack worked with Bakht Singh for forty years. Living in Sidmouth, England, he is still in good health at 102, and talks about India as the happiest of his long life.
[4] Bakht Singh started these in 1941, on the basis of Moses calling together all the people to Jerusalem in Leviticus 23 for a ‘holy convocation.’
Source : http://sites.google.com/site/sternfieldthoughts/Home
The clamour of Asian life constantly echoes around the vast city of Hyderabad in southern India. But on Friday 22nd of September, 2000 the normal cries of the hawkers and explosion of exhaust from the rickshaws fell silent. Businesses closed and the traffic stood still as a crowd of over 300,000 mourners shuffled with a coffin to the cemetery. Who were they weeping for? He was not a rich man: he lived most of his life in a 10 by 8 foot room and never held a bank account. Nor was he a politician or an entertainment celebrity: he never read the newspaper, nor watched the TV. He was a Bible preacher; known to thousands as simply, ‘Brother’.
Hater of Christ
Bakht Singh’s family never dreamt he would become a Christian, let alone a famous preacher. When he was born in 1903 he was dedicated to Guru Nanak, the founder of Sikhism, and in his teens was often found in their temples rather than in the street playing. Even though his parents sent him to a Christian mission school in Gujranwala in the Punjab, he despised Christianity as an inferior religion and to prove his hatred tore up the Bible given to all graduating students. After school Bakht Singh married a girl chosen by his parents and had a son. His father was a wealthy factory owner and agreed for Bakht Singh to go abroad to England to study agricultural engineering. Here the young Bakht Singh became the dapper man of the world– he shaved his Sikh beard, drank and smoked, flashing a golden cigarette case when lighting up, and wore the finest suits to visit theatres and dance halls. Religion was of no interest to him. He wrote to a friend, ‘I have become an atheist.’ His love of travel took him to Canada for a summer holiday in 1928 and it was on the sea journey something mysterious happened. As an Indian Bakht Singh wanted to show his Western travelling companions that he could take part in all their activities. So when he saw there would be a Christian service in the first class dining room he went. He stood for the singing, sat and dozed during the sermon, but then it came to the prayer time and everyone knelt. He wanted to walk out, but it was too late. So he knelt: and something happened. Later he wrote – ‘The very moment I knelt down, I felt some divine power had engulfed me.’
Lover of Christ
But that was all. Another year went by till this encounter grew to full Christian faith. The next summer Bakht Singh went to Canada for a longer period to finish his studies. He stayed at the YMCA in Winnipeg and there made friends with a bank manager called Owel Hansen, a committed Christian. When Bakht Singh this, he asked him for a Bible and on December 14th 1929 his friend gave him a New Testament. Bakht Singh read it continuously for three days. On the third day the words of Jesus, ‘Truly, truly I say unto you’ pierced his heart. The still small voice of the Lord began talking and did not stop for over seventy years. Christ showed Bakht Singh his sins, so much so that he began to cry – and then His blood. Bakht Singh became a Christian at 11.30 a.m, on December 16th, 1929.
On Christmas Day that year Owel Hansen gave Bakht Singh a whole Bible. He became engrossed, finishing it in less than two months. In Canada he was grounded in the faith, was baptised – and called to full-time service. After his conversion Bakht Singh still planned to be an agricultural engineer, but in April 1932, there was a long struggle in prayer. He first told the Lord that he would give Him all his money, the reply was, ‘I don’t want your money, I want you.’ At 2.30 a.m. on the 4th April 1932 God offered Bakht Singh’s an invitation to full-time service on three conditions: he was not allowed to let any man know about his financial needs; he was not to join any society, but to serve all equally; and he was not to make any plans, but to be led every day. Bakht Singh agreed and so his ministry began. It would cost him dearly.
After seven years studying abroad there were tears of joy when Bakth Singh disembarked from the ship in Bombay and met his parents in April 1933. Those tears soon turned to grief. For when his father told him he could be a Christian privately, but not in public – Bakht Singh refused. His mother and father were stunned. In abject humility his father took off his turban and laid it at his son’s feet in the hope of making his son change his mind. Bakht Singh did not waver. And so there was an anguished farewell. He was now separated from his parents and his wife and son. [1]
Revival
Alone and penniless, Bakht Singh slept his first night in India in a public shelter. He immediately began witnessing for Christ, trusting God for his needs. From Bombay he went to Karachi, and here he truly began his ministry. He threw himself into evangelising the poor sweepers who responded with great enthusiasm. Those who came to faith he gathered for prayer and Bible study at 4.00 a.m. before they went to clean the city, and then he would go and preach in the open air, and more would come to Christ. Or he would go to the beach for whole days of prayer on his knees. His evangelistic success was recognised by the churches and soon he was holding preaching campaigns with hundreds attending in the Sind, the Punjab, and Baluchistan. In May 1935 he was in Quetta, and felt it was like Sodom and Gomorrah. He warned the hundreds who came to his meetings to repent and earnestly prayed that the Lord would ‘shake them till they kneel down.’ The shaking was truly awful. An earthquake swept thousands to their death – but very few Christians, and only two of those who had come to his meetings died.
In June 1937, with some hesitation Bakht Singh went to preach to a nominal Christian village called Martinpur in the Punjab. He was hesitant because the place was infamous for heavy drinking and immorality. As he entered the village a group of five older men were sitting under a tree smoking a hookah and they asked him why he was coming. Bakht Singh said he had come to pray. Their retort was, ‘Pray? You pray the whole night, nothing will happen here.’
For four days Bakht Singh hardly slept, so intense was his prayer and fasting, but for thirteen days there was no breakthrough: just ridicule and apathy. On the fourteenth night he told the people this was his last meeting and he was going away. He then asked them to stand for prayer. All stood. And then they started falling down, pulling at their hair and crying out over their sins, until 3.00 a.m. Revival had come. Bakht Singh did not leave, but stayed to teach. As well as Bible studies, there was a bonfire for people to burn charms, a ‘love feast’ where everyone came together for a meal, all night prayer meetings, and many processions of singing. From this revival, Bakht Singh took seventy young men and they walked 150 miles to the Christian convention in Sialkot – singing and witnessing as they went. When they arrived, Bakht Singh’s preaching and the miracle of Martinpur electrified the three thousand present.
Bakht Singh was now a household name throughout India[2], invitations poured in and for two years after Martinpur he was on the road leading revival campaigns. Thousands received salvation – and not a few received healings, though Bakht Singh played down this side of his ministry. In fact he eventually asked the Lord to stop healing through him as he did not want to attract people to Christ for the wrong reasons. He hated publicity and never allowed any advertising for his meetings, saying it was God’s job to bring people in answer to prayer.
There was a lot of prayer. At Mukti in Mahrarashtra he led nineteen all night prayer meetings with Christian workers crying out for revival and he was constantly at prayer himself. Many who shared a room with him, would wake up in the early hours to see him still in on his knees. He always prayed on his knees – whether in private or public. And if he found a Christian who did not kneel he knew at least 43 verses by heart to prove that true saints always knelt. His knowledge of the Bible was encyclopaedic; indeed it was the only book he ever read. He insisted that all Christians buy their own Bible, a New Testament was not enough, and he made everyone hold it up at the start of his meetings. If someone didn’t have one, he would say ‘Shame on you 174 times, because the Word of God is mentioned 174 times out of 176 verses in Psalm 119!’ Not surprisingly Bible shops sold out during his crusades. As a part of his outreach, he would hold processions of witness with Scriptures written on banners, and at the end he would host a ‘love feast’, as he had done at Martinpur, where all the believers were welcome without charge. Huge numbers came to these meals.
One of this greatest revival meetings were in Madras in 1940 which ended with 12,000 coming to the ‘love feast’. All were fed. Bakht Singh was seen off at the railway station by large crowds, so much so that he had to be carried by two men to get to his compartment. His final words to them were, ‘The fire shall ever be burning upon the altar; and it shall never go out.’ He probably did not realise that this was in fact a prophecy for his own ministry in this city. Shortly after his campaign, a number of Madras ministers held a meeting and decided to ban Bakht Singh from their churches because he had spoken out against nominal Christianity. This of course upset the thousands who had found spiritual life through his meetings, so when Bakht Singh was next passing through Madras in the summer of 1941 on his way to a retreat they pleaded with him to start a church there. During his retreat Bakht Singh spent 21 days in prayer and fasting over this, keenly aware people needed proper discipling, but wary of taking on more responsibilities. He already had many unanswered invitations. Eventually he surrendered to the idea of starting churches, saying to God, ‘give me the assurance that you are leading me.’ The answer was Exodus 34:10, ‘Behold, I will do marvels.’
Starts Assemblies
Many marvels indeed happened. Bakht Singh and his close co-workers returned to Madras, but before their first Sunday service they, characteristically, spent the Saturday night in prayer on a hill overlooking the city. Then followed a Sunday that would become typical for thousands as Bakht Singh fellowships spread. They were not for the half-hearted. Early in the morning, before it got too hot, there were baptisms, sometimes up to fifty, followed by the laying on of hands, an important ceremony to show the new believers belonged to the body. Then at about nine o’clock there was an exhortation to worship, followed by a lengthy time of praise where all were encouraged to offer their own prayers. This was followed by another long message. Nobody knew the speaker till just before the meeting when Bakht Singh would pray with his associates and ask if someone had a message from the Lord. He refused to pre-plan the speaker as he believed this stopped the Holy Spirit choosing. The preaching always tended to be expository, especially if the speaker was Bakht Singh. The emphasis on the Bible was reinforced by the banners proclaiming Scriptures, or even painted on the walls of all Bakht Singh churches. After the sermon came the breaking of bread and then at about two or three o’clock, there was a ‘love feast’ where all the believers had a simple meal together, usually dhal, bread and water. Later in many fellowships there would then be a march of witness, inviting people to the evening evangelistic service which started about eight and finished at ten.
From this first church in Madras there are now over one thousand assemblies who look to Bakht Singh as their spiritual father. Most of them are in the south of India, but there are many elsewhere in the subcontinent, and a good number among the Indian/Pakistani Diaspora in the West. About 350 churches were born directly as a result of Bakht Singh’s continuing evangelistic ministry. He would hold a campaign in a city, and then his close associates, often an English missionary Fred Flack[3], would remain for several weeks teaching the new believers. Many other churches were born when people returned home after attending Bakht Singh’s annual ‘Holy Convocation’[4]. These were conferences, lasting about nineteen days, for all Christians associated with Bakht Singh’s churches. Usually several thousand came, sleeping in tents and booths, as in Old Testament times. Though costly, nobody was asked to pay a rupee and there was no fund-raising. The aim of the conference was for Christians to ‘feast’ on the Lord Jesus. And feast they did. The day started at about 5.00 a.m. and apart from meals-times people were either praying or listening to preaching. And in one booth there was a 24 hour prayer chain. It is not surprising that people returning from these ‘holy convocations’ wanted to maintain the spiritual life they had enjoyed and so started their own assemblies. A final way the Bakht Singh assemblies spread was through one of these new churches, then planting another. This especially happened in the state of Andhra Pradesh. From 1946 onwards Bakht Singh regularly travelled abroad where he was in great demand as a speaker. A number of assemblies were born in the places he visited – and, as always, thousands were inspired to walk more closely with God.
Unnerving Saint
Bakht Singh’s total commitment to Christ was infectious – and unnerving. As seen he spent hours in prayer. He only read the Bible which he knew probably better than any of his contemporaries. He dedicated all of mission leader George Verwer’s children. Obviously the ceremonies took some time, as Verwer later said, ‘He had more verses for children than I ever knew existed.’ And in this prayer and Bible reading he believed God spoke to him about the details of a day, and would provide every need. His close walk with God was also seen in his enmity with the world. He refused to read the newspaper, preferring to be given a weekly round up of the news by a friend, and both cinema and TV were taboo. One he heard that a church member in Hyderabad, where he later moved his headquarters, had smuggled a TV into his house. He called him into his room and found out that the man wanted it to watch the Olympic Games. Bakht Singh said, he and his family would end up being tempted to watch other things and soon they would know the names of the soap opera stars, but not the characters of the Bible. The man got rid of his TV. Bakth Singh could be embarrassing. Once he was invited for a meal where there were posters of scantily clad film stars on the wall. He said, either the pictures come down, or I will not eat here. On another occasion his hostess was wearing too much gaudy jewellery. He told the couple to sell it and use the money to buy Scriptures, which they did.
This emphasis on separation from the world inevitably had the down-side of making some of his assemblies exclusive and judgmental: nobody is ever good enough. Tragically this included the Pentecostal movement that swept into India after Bakht Singh had started his ministry. Another problem that inevitably arose from a ministry so rooted in one man
hearing God’s voice was that of leadership. Until his health failed, all major decisions remained with Bakht Singh: nothing could be done without ‘brother’s’ approval. This caused problems, as all saints have clay feet
However no ministry is perfect, and the emotion of the vast crowds that came to bid this saint farewell in Hyderabad in 2000 is overwhelming confirmation that Bakht Singh was truly a man of God who served his people faithfully to the end.
© T.G.S. Hawksley
[1] Later Bakht Singh was reconciled with his family and he baptised his own father. However his wife never returned to him.
[2] Martinpur and Sialkot are now in Pakistan, but till 1947 there was only India.
[3] Fred Flack worked with Bakht Singh for forty years. Living in Sidmouth, England, he is still in good health at 102, and talks about India as the happiest of his long life.
[4] Bakht Singh started these in 1941, on the basis of Moses calling together all the people to Jerusalem in Leviticus 23 for a ‘holy convocation.’
Source : http://sites.google.com/site/sternfieldthoughts/Home
Another Sikh, Another Singh
Another Sikh who became an internationally known Christian was Bakht Singh. Born to wealthy parents in 1903, Bakht Singh was converted in 1929 (the same year Sundar disappeared) while studying in Manitoba. Knowing that his parents (like Sundar Singh's) would not accept his conversion, he returned to India with great trepidation. His fears were well-grounded. His wife left him. His parents and relatives rejected him. Despite suffering from a speech impediment, Bakht Singh became an evangelist. He spent hours a day on his knees studying the Scripture. He carried the Bible wherever he went and urged converts to read it daily. His sermons quoted extensively from Scripture. Revival followed wherever he went, but he was unsatisfied. Converts were not receiving the follow up they needed. What should he do? After a night praying on a mountain, he determined he must form a new kind of congregation for Indian believers, a congregation based on New Testament principles. He started over 500 of these local assemblies in his lifetime. Thousands of these Christian brethren gather each year in designated cities to hold Christian festivals which Bakht Singh established. They march singing and holding aloft Scripture banners. Bakht Singh helped make Indian Christians independent, the very thing Sundar Singh had wanted to do.
Source : http://www.christianhistorytimeline.com/GLIMPSEF/Glimpses/glmps120.shtml
Source : http://www.christianhistorytimeline.com/GLIMPSEF/Glimpses/glmps120.shtml
ICEU Madras
In 1950, Bro.Bakht Singh told Prof Enoch about Dr T Norton Sterrett, then a teacher in a Bible School at Jhansi, U. P. Prof Enoch also heard that Dr Sterrett was in touch with International Fellowship of Evangelical Students (IFES) and was keen to pioneer evangelical student witness in India. He invited him to come to Madras to help with the work. Dr Sterrett came to Madras in 1951 with the Moody science film, 'God and Creation'. The film, which was screened in many colleges, caught the attention of the students and helped the seniors to find those who were interested in the things of the Lord. They had a real breakthrough in Stanley Medical College which gave them many contacts. The persons contacted through film shows were encouraged to join the Friday Prayer meeting at Poonamallee High Road. As the number of participants for this meeting grew steadily, they formed many small prayer groups in Madras. The constant interaction and prayer among students and graduates led to the formation of the committee for Inter Collegiate Evangelical Union (ICEU) of Madras in 1951. A student magazine, entitled The Evangelical Student, began to appear with Watson as Editor. Tom Thurley, a veterinary student, became the first President of Madras ICEU. This group in some ways had the most encouraging beginning as it was mainly started through student initiative. ICEU was a small group of students meeting regularly for prayer at Prof Enoch's residence. Some of the students included Sam Kamaleson (now Vice President of World Vision International) Nesarathina Carunya (now Administrator, Dohnavur Fellowship), C T Rajarathnam (Philadelphia, USA) and Ebenezer Christadoss (Tennessee, USA). Three or four students in a Government College in Madras had kept faith, stood for the Lord by means of weekly Bible study. They brought in their friends students to hear the Word and won some for Christ.
http://www.uesi.org.in/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=9&Itemid=11
http://www.uesi.org.in/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=9&Itemid=11
The New Missions Generation
One of the featured speakers, Bakht Singh from India, urged students to consider the cost of following Christ in missions. "Young people, don't follow Christ lightly," he said. "Be willing to pay the cost." That day, 300 students pledged to serve Christ overseas, a hint that American postwar dominance would change the Western missionary movement for a generation.
Complete Article : http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2006/september/19.100.html
Complete Article : http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2006/september/19.100.html
Bakht Singh of India
Bakht Singh, another foreign student who had a tremendous impact on discipling his own country is Bakht Singh. Raised in a Sikh family in Punjab of India, he came to Canada as an engineering student at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg in 1929. He was befriended by a Christian couple, John and Edith Hayward, who invited him to live with them. They gave him a Bible, and their Christian lifestyle and testimony were influential in leading Bakht Singh to trust in Christ.
OSM photo shows Bakht Singh on one of his visits to the U.S. sponsored by OSM in the 1950s.
When he returned to India, his father met him in Bombay and demanded that he give up his �foreign religion.� When Bakht Singh said Christ was his only reason for living, his father disinherited him.
Bahkt Singh began going house to house witnessing for Christ and discipling those who confessed Christ. Known for his meticulous Bible teaching, he trained scores, then hundreds, then thousands of disciples, who carried his message and method throughout India. Some say Bakht Singh and his disciples were responsible for planting 2,000 churches.
Two of them were instrumental in leading Prem Pradhan to the Lord in northern India. Prem was a Nepalese member of the Indian Army, who after his conversion returned to his homeland to sow the gospel. He is considered by some to be the first Nepalese missionary to establish a beachhead for the kingdom of God in what was then known as the world�s only Hindu kingdom.
Bill Bray�s job is to locate and raise up more John Sungs and Bakht Singhs, and even lesser infantry personnel in God�s army.
Source : http://www.worldchristianministries.org/printed.asp?active_page_id=325
OSM photo shows Bakht Singh on one of his visits to the U.S. sponsored by OSM in the 1950s.
When he returned to India, his father met him in Bombay and demanded that he give up his �foreign religion.� When Bakht Singh said Christ was his only reason for living, his father disinherited him.
Bahkt Singh began going house to house witnessing for Christ and discipling those who confessed Christ. Known for his meticulous Bible teaching, he trained scores, then hundreds, then thousands of disciples, who carried his message and method throughout India. Some say Bakht Singh and his disciples were responsible for planting 2,000 churches.
Two of them were instrumental in leading Prem Pradhan to the Lord in northern India. Prem was a Nepalese member of the Indian Army, who after his conversion returned to his homeland to sow the gospel. He is considered by some to be the first Nepalese missionary to establish a beachhead for the kingdom of God in what was then known as the world�s only Hindu kingdom.
Bill Bray�s job is to locate and raise up more John Sungs and Bakht Singhs, and even lesser infantry personnel in God�s army.
Source : http://www.worldchristianministries.org/printed.asp?active_page_id=325
Bakht Singh demonstrated Biblical Missions
by Dr. Bob Finley
Chairman of Christian Aid
Bakht Singh visits with foreign missionaries in what is now Pakistan soon after his return from Canada. They looked upon him as a curiosity, having never seen a native missionary before.
In the Book of Acts our Lord revealed a pattern by which His kingdom would eventually spread to every people, tongue, tribe and nation. Clear examples were demonstrated in the lives of Barnabas of Cyprus and Saul of Tarsus. In the Twentieth Century the pattern was duplicated in the life and ministry of Bakht Singh of India, who went home to glory on September 17, 2000.
In fact, I have never seen or read of a clearer example of God's pattern throughout the centuries since the kingdom of God was first launched on this planet almost two thousand years ago.
Now before I go any further let me define "the kingdom of God," also called "the kingdom of the heavens" (the original text is almost always plural) in Matthew. Matthew was originally written in Hebrew and to avoid casual use of the sacred term "God" it was preferable to say "the heavens." Our translation of Matthew's original Hebrew text begins with John the baptizer preaching, "the kingdom of the heavens is at hand" (Matthew 3:2). It continues in 4:17 with our Lord also preaching that the kingdom of the heavens is at hand. In Mark and Luke, written later in Greek, "kingdom of God" is used instead.
Bakht Singh often preached to huge crowds. This gathering took place in 1959.
In recent times some have erroneously taught that we no longer preach the gospel of the kingdom. Rather, they say our message is the church, which God revealed through the Apostle Paul. I say, such teachers don't really know their Bibles. In Acts 20:25-31 Paul is quoted as saying he had been preaching the kingdom of God in Asia for three years. Acts 28:23 finds him in Rome, still preaching the kingdom of God. And the book closes with him still doing it in the very last verse.
The kingdom of God is this: our citizenship is in the heavens; we are strangers and pilgrims on this earth, serving as ambassadors for our risen Saviour among all nations. Our God is visiting the nations to take out of them "a people for His name" (Acts 15:14) and the Greek word for those who are called out of the world and into God's kingdom is translated "church" in English. As a planter of churches among many nations, Bakht Singh exemplified God's purpose for His kingdom as clearly as any man in church history.
Like Saul of Tarsus, Bakht Singh was called of God while away from home as a foreign student. He left his Sikh family in Punjab state to study abroad in Canada. While living in the home of John and Edith Hayward of Winnipeg, he strongly resisted their attempts to teach him the Bible. Then one night while alone in his room he could resist no longer, and yielded his heart to Christ. From that moment forward he became a flaming witness for the Saviour.
Here are some features that characterized his life and ministry.
Though highly educated in secular universities of England and Canada, Bakht Singh had no Bible school or theological training.
Thus he did not have to unlearn the many medieval and colonial traditions which hinder the spiritual growth of European and American Christians. As he read the Scriptures, he could comprehend God's revelation much more readily than those who are blinded by tradition.
Bakht Singh with his father, whom he baptized 12 years after his return to India.
He was a forceful, gifted evangelist.
While still in Canada in 1932 Bakht Singh was driven by the Holy Spirit to share Christ with everyone he met. And upon his return to India he pressed on from person to person, village to village, city to city preaching Christ.
I have original early photos of him passionately sharing the gospel in leper colonies, schools, and open air market places. He traveled continually, beginning at Bombay in the south where he arrived upon his return and pressing onward to the far northwest through his native Punjab into what is now Pakistan. Everywhere he went he distributed the Word of God and proclaimed salvation through Christ alone.
His life was saturated with prayer: both worship and intercession.
When we sponsored Bakht Singh for visits to the USA in 1959 and 1968 he insisted on having at least one full hour free in the middle of the day when he could give himself to intercessory prayer, on his knees. That was in addition to his worship time in the early morning.
When David Burder, now our field rep in Delhi, once asked him, "Brother Singh, how much time do you spend in prayer every day?" the man of God replied, "Until I am satisfied."
When Billy Graham conducted his first India crusade, Bakht Singh gathered 5000 believers outside Billy's hotel in Madras to pray all night. Once when our dear brother was praying for a sick friend the believers reported that the entire building seemed to vibrate, so powerful were his prayers. And the terminally ill patient arose from his bed and walked out of the hospital.
Bakht Singh received grace for apostleship.
Bakht Singh greets foreign students at the University of California in 1959. At right is Allen Finley, who was working with his older brother, Bob, at the time.
Of the various graces which God gives to individual believers, apostleship heads the list according to Paul's epistles. The apostle is the pioneer who plants churches among those people and in those places where no witness for our Lord has previously existed. God used His servant to plant at least 2000 new assemblies of believers throughout the subcontinent of South Asia.
Some were among his fellow Sikhs in Punjab and Pakistan. Also among the Tamil, Telegu, Bengali and other nations of India. The first churches in Nepal were a direct extension of Bakht Singh's ministry among Nepali immigrants in northeastern India. Believers from at least a hundred tribes and nations were among the 25,000 who annually attended Bakht Singh's "holy convocations."
He did not perpetuate institutional colonialism.
The manner in which God used Bakht Singh to plant churches among so many tribes and nations was in sharp contrast to the colonial practices of traditional mission boards in the U.S. and Canada. Primarily he reached people from many nations while they were away from home, and then sent them back to plant assemblies of believers among their own people.
A notable example was Prem Pradhan of Nepal who was won to Christ in 1951 by Bakht Singh's disciples while he was serving in the army of India. After three years of discipleship he resigned his military commission and returned to his native land to plant the first churches in that closed land.
In 1975 I visited Bakht Singh at his home base in Hyderabad and found about 100 new disciples in training there. Among them were men from Nepal, Bhutan, Sikkim, Tibet, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and all the then 16 states of India. After a few months all would be going back to spearhead Christian witness among their respective peoples.
Bakht Singh arrives in 1969 for meetings in the USA.
He understood that the local church is the body of Christ in that locality.
As Bakht Singh read the New Testament he discerned that a local church should be like one's home. And a meeting of believers should be like a family gathering. This understanding guided him in planting hundreds of new assemblies without an "ordained minister" to run the show in any of them.
He read in Paul's epistles how God gives grace by measure to every believer, and the measure of grace each one receives determines his place in a local body of Christ. First is the apostle, followed by the teachers, prophets, evangelists, deacons, donors, and others within a given assembly. There is no way they could work in a "pastor" like those advocated by traditional missions. Had he followed colonial tradition he probably wouldn't have established even ten churches in his lifetime.
Like the Apostle Paul, Bakht Singh was bitterly opposed by the traditional religious establishment.
In 1959 when I announced in our mission's newsletter that we were sponsoring Bakht Singh for meetings in U.S. churches, the head of the Evangelical Foreign Missions Association telephoned me. For about 30 minutes he nearly chewed my ear off, telling me what a bad person Bakht Singh was and warning me about all the harm he would do among evangelical churches in America.
I asked him if he had ever met Bakht Singh, and he said he hadn't but he had heard all kinds of negative things about him from EFMA missionaries.
Why did they hate him so? For the same reasons the chief priests and Pharisees hated Paul: his new teachings were a threat to their privilege and power. Colonial missionaries resented Bakht Singh because he had the courage to tell them that it would be better for the cause of Christ if they would all pack up and go back where they came from. Of course he did it in a kind and gracious manner, but there was no mistaking his meaning.
Bakht Singh lived a life of utmost simplicity. He owned no property and never spent one rupee for anything that wasn't an absolute necessity. Foreign missionaries living in six-room houses and driving around in expensive cars (while Indian missionaries didn't even have bicycles) hurt the cause of Christ in Asia, and Bakht Singh didn't hesitate to call attention to it. He was also outspoken about the un-Biblical aspects of institutional "churchianity" and the need for renewal. Rather than respond to his preaching, the traditionalists continually tried to discredit him.
Bob Finley fellowships with Bakht Singh at a congress in Lausanne in 1974.
Bakht Singh lived by faith, trusting God to supply his needs through the gifts of His people at home and abroad.
I never heard my dear Indian brother make an appeal for funds, yet he taught his disciples to give sacrificially as an act of worship. At local assembly meetings, which usually lasted several hours, a high point came when a large basket was placed on a table in their midst and one by one each would go forward to drop in an offering. Even the unemployed and those who earned only a dollar a day responded.
After Bakht Singh returned to India in the 1930s he sent regular reports to Mrs. Hayward in Canada. She copied them and sent them to all his Canadian friends. Many would send a dollar or two to Edith, which she sent on to India. That's how his ministry was financed for the first few years.
When I returned from overseas and started Christian Aid in 1953, one of the first indigenous ministries which we began to help was the work of Bakht Singh. By that time he had hundreds of missionaries on the fields, and even though we sent tens of thousands of dollars over the ensuing years it was still only a small portion of their total needs.
Colonial mission leaders tended to be critical of even that amount, saying it would cause dependency. But our dear apostolic brother had an answer for them: "Our dependence is upon the Lord alone," he would say. "We are on our knees daily praying that God will supply our needs, and He does. Some comes from Bombay, some from Madras, some from Delhi, a portion from Britain, other gifts from Canada and some from the USA, but it's all from the Lord. He alone is our provision."
Note: This article reprinted from Christian Mission magazine, Winter 2000-2001.
Source : http://www.tcfnj.com/Bakhtsingh2.htm
Chairman of Christian Aid
Bakht Singh visits with foreign missionaries in what is now Pakistan soon after his return from Canada. They looked upon him as a curiosity, having never seen a native missionary before.
In the Book of Acts our Lord revealed a pattern by which His kingdom would eventually spread to every people, tongue, tribe and nation. Clear examples were demonstrated in the lives of Barnabas of Cyprus and Saul of Tarsus. In the Twentieth Century the pattern was duplicated in the life and ministry of Bakht Singh of India, who went home to glory on September 17, 2000.
In fact, I have never seen or read of a clearer example of God's pattern throughout the centuries since the kingdom of God was first launched on this planet almost two thousand years ago.
Now before I go any further let me define "the kingdom of God," also called "the kingdom of the heavens" (the original text is almost always plural) in Matthew. Matthew was originally written in Hebrew and to avoid casual use of the sacred term "God" it was preferable to say "the heavens." Our translation of Matthew's original Hebrew text begins with John the baptizer preaching, "the kingdom of the heavens is at hand" (Matthew 3:2). It continues in 4:17 with our Lord also preaching that the kingdom of the heavens is at hand. In Mark and Luke, written later in Greek, "kingdom of God" is used instead.
Bakht Singh often preached to huge crowds. This gathering took place in 1959.
In recent times some have erroneously taught that we no longer preach the gospel of the kingdom. Rather, they say our message is the church, which God revealed through the Apostle Paul. I say, such teachers don't really know their Bibles. In Acts 20:25-31 Paul is quoted as saying he had been preaching the kingdom of God in Asia for three years. Acts 28:23 finds him in Rome, still preaching the kingdom of God. And the book closes with him still doing it in the very last verse.
The kingdom of God is this: our citizenship is in the heavens; we are strangers and pilgrims on this earth, serving as ambassadors for our risen Saviour among all nations. Our God is visiting the nations to take out of them "a people for His name" (Acts 15:14) and the Greek word for those who are called out of the world and into God's kingdom is translated "church" in English. As a planter of churches among many nations, Bakht Singh exemplified God's purpose for His kingdom as clearly as any man in church history.
Like Saul of Tarsus, Bakht Singh was called of God while away from home as a foreign student. He left his Sikh family in Punjab state to study abroad in Canada. While living in the home of John and Edith Hayward of Winnipeg, he strongly resisted their attempts to teach him the Bible. Then one night while alone in his room he could resist no longer, and yielded his heart to Christ. From that moment forward he became a flaming witness for the Saviour.
Here are some features that characterized his life and ministry.
Though highly educated in secular universities of England and Canada, Bakht Singh had no Bible school or theological training.
Thus he did not have to unlearn the many medieval and colonial traditions which hinder the spiritual growth of European and American Christians. As he read the Scriptures, he could comprehend God's revelation much more readily than those who are blinded by tradition.
Bakht Singh with his father, whom he baptized 12 years after his return to India.
He was a forceful, gifted evangelist.
While still in Canada in 1932 Bakht Singh was driven by the Holy Spirit to share Christ with everyone he met. And upon his return to India he pressed on from person to person, village to village, city to city preaching Christ.
I have original early photos of him passionately sharing the gospel in leper colonies, schools, and open air market places. He traveled continually, beginning at Bombay in the south where he arrived upon his return and pressing onward to the far northwest through his native Punjab into what is now Pakistan. Everywhere he went he distributed the Word of God and proclaimed salvation through Christ alone.
His life was saturated with prayer: both worship and intercession.
When we sponsored Bakht Singh for visits to the USA in 1959 and 1968 he insisted on having at least one full hour free in the middle of the day when he could give himself to intercessory prayer, on his knees. That was in addition to his worship time in the early morning.
When David Burder, now our field rep in Delhi, once asked him, "Brother Singh, how much time do you spend in prayer every day?" the man of God replied, "Until I am satisfied."
When Billy Graham conducted his first India crusade, Bakht Singh gathered 5000 believers outside Billy's hotel in Madras to pray all night. Once when our dear brother was praying for a sick friend the believers reported that the entire building seemed to vibrate, so powerful were his prayers. And the terminally ill patient arose from his bed and walked out of the hospital.
Bakht Singh received grace for apostleship.
Bakht Singh greets foreign students at the University of California in 1959. At right is Allen Finley, who was working with his older brother, Bob, at the time.
Of the various graces which God gives to individual believers, apostleship heads the list according to Paul's epistles. The apostle is the pioneer who plants churches among those people and in those places where no witness for our Lord has previously existed. God used His servant to plant at least 2000 new assemblies of believers throughout the subcontinent of South Asia.
Some were among his fellow Sikhs in Punjab and Pakistan. Also among the Tamil, Telegu, Bengali and other nations of India. The first churches in Nepal were a direct extension of Bakht Singh's ministry among Nepali immigrants in northeastern India. Believers from at least a hundred tribes and nations were among the 25,000 who annually attended Bakht Singh's "holy convocations."
He did not perpetuate institutional colonialism.
The manner in which God used Bakht Singh to plant churches among so many tribes and nations was in sharp contrast to the colonial practices of traditional mission boards in the U.S. and Canada. Primarily he reached people from many nations while they were away from home, and then sent them back to plant assemblies of believers among their own people.
A notable example was Prem Pradhan of Nepal who was won to Christ in 1951 by Bakht Singh's disciples while he was serving in the army of India. After three years of discipleship he resigned his military commission and returned to his native land to plant the first churches in that closed land.
In 1975 I visited Bakht Singh at his home base in Hyderabad and found about 100 new disciples in training there. Among them were men from Nepal, Bhutan, Sikkim, Tibet, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and all the then 16 states of India. After a few months all would be going back to spearhead Christian witness among their respective peoples.
Bakht Singh arrives in 1969 for meetings in the USA.
He understood that the local church is the body of Christ in that locality.
As Bakht Singh read the New Testament he discerned that a local church should be like one's home. And a meeting of believers should be like a family gathering. This understanding guided him in planting hundreds of new assemblies without an "ordained minister" to run the show in any of them.
He read in Paul's epistles how God gives grace by measure to every believer, and the measure of grace each one receives determines his place in a local body of Christ. First is the apostle, followed by the teachers, prophets, evangelists, deacons, donors, and others within a given assembly. There is no way they could work in a "pastor" like those advocated by traditional missions. Had he followed colonial tradition he probably wouldn't have established even ten churches in his lifetime.
Like the Apostle Paul, Bakht Singh was bitterly opposed by the traditional religious establishment.
In 1959 when I announced in our mission's newsletter that we were sponsoring Bakht Singh for meetings in U.S. churches, the head of the Evangelical Foreign Missions Association telephoned me. For about 30 minutes he nearly chewed my ear off, telling me what a bad person Bakht Singh was and warning me about all the harm he would do among evangelical churches in America.
I asked him if he had ever met Bakht Singh, and he said he hadn't but he had heard all kinds of negative things about him from EFMA missionaries.
Why did they hate him so? For the same reasons the chief priests and Pharisees hated Paul: his new teachings were a threat to their privilege and power. Colonial missionaries resented Bakht Singh because he had the courage to tell them that it would be better for the cause of Christ if they would all pack up and go back where they came from. Of course he did it in a kind and gracious manner, but there was no mistaking his meaning.
Bakht Singh lived a life of utmost simplicity. He owned no property and never spent one rupee for anything that wasn't an absolute necessity. Foreign missionaries living in six-room houses and driving around in expensive cars (while Indian missionaries didn't even have bicycles) hurt the cause of Christ in Asia, and Bakht Singh didn't hesitate to call attention to it. He was also outspoken about the un-Biblical aspects of institutional "churchianity" and the need for renewal. Rather than respond to his preaching, the traditionalists continually tried to discredit him.
Bob Finley fellowships with Bakht Singh at a congress in Lausanne in 1974.
Bakht Singh lived by faith, trusting God to supply his needs through the gifts of His people at home and abroad.
I never heard my dear Indian brother make an appeal for funds, yet he taught his disciples to give sacrificially as an act of worship. At local assembly meetings, which usually lasted several hours, a high point came when a large basket was placed on a table in their midst and one by one each would go forward to drop in an offering. Even the unemployed and those who earned only a dollar a day responded.
After Bakht Singh returned to India in the 1930s he sent regular reports to Mrs. Hayward in Canada. She copied them and sent them to all his Canadian friends. Many would send a dollar or two to Edith, which she sent on to India. That's how his ministry was financed for the first few years.
When I returned from overseas and started Christian Aid in 1953, one of the first indigenous ministries which we began to help was the work of Bakht Singh. By that time he had hundreds of missionaries on the fields, and even though we sent tens of thousands of dollars over the ensuing years it was still only a small portion of their total needs.
Colonial mission leaders tended to be critical of even that amount, saying it would cause dependency. But our dear apostolic brother had an answer for them: "Our dependence is upon the Lord alone," he would say. "We are on our knees daily praying that God will supply our needs, and He does. Some comes from Bombay, some from Madras, some from Delhi, a portion from Britain, other gifts from Canada and some from the USA, but it's all from the Lord. He alone is our provision."
Note: This article reprinted from Christian Mission magazine, Winter 2000-2001.
Source : http://www.tcfnj.com/Bakhtsingh2.htm
BROTHER BAKHT SINGH—A SAINT OF GOD AN OVERVIEW OF HIS LIFE AND MINISTRY
By Dr. T.E. Koshy
"If any man serve Me, him will my Father honor." John 12:26
". . . he being dead, yet speaketh." Hebrews 11:4b
A Procession of Saints
On Friday, September 22, 2000, the city of Hyderabad came to a stand still--the Hebron, Hermon compounds, all adjacent roads and the main road (Chikkadapalli) between Golconda Cross Roads and Narayanaguda Cemetery, were like a sea of saints, numbering according to some estimates, a quarter of a million (two and one half lakhs). Shops and offices were closed. Traffic was diverted. Police and law enforcement officers struggled in vain to control the wave of multitudes that participated in the funeral procession. It took about three hours for the procession to cover the distance of three kilometers from Hebron to the cemetery. The funeral procession turned out to be the largest gospel procession Hyderabad had ever witnessed, where the weeping saints inched forward holding Bibles and Scripture banners, singing and praising God. What a witness for Christ and Him crucified. It was not a typical funeral procession but it was a victory parade for Christ triumphant, in honor of His humble servant who served Him so faithfully for about 70 years.
It seemed as though the Lord had accomplished so much even through the death of His beloved servant. The Lord was greatly glorified and magnified as an unprecedented throng of saints shook the city for Christ by proclaiming the gospel as they went. It was so awesome and glorious. People desiring to take a last glimpse of the casket containing the body of Bro. Bakht Singh climbed on trees, balconies and roofs of offices and houses along the three-kilometer stretch of Chikkadapalli Road. Hyderabad has never seen anything like it and probably never will. Even in church history a funeral procession of this magnitude has seldom occurred. The unusual occurrences in nature before and after his homecall reminded us that he was a man sent from God for the edification of His body and for His eternal glory. For example, just a few hours before he slept in Christ on Sunday, September 17th at 6:05 AM, there was an earthquake in and around Hyderabad coupled with continuous and unusual thundering and lightening. Lights were out and darkness blanketed the area for a while. Then on Friday, September 22nd, just before his funeral as the casket was being carried out from Hebron at about 11:30 AM while the sun was shining brightly, a rainbow circled the sun for a short time. As the rainbow disappeared, a shining ring, which looked like a "crown," appeared around the sun. Then suddenly scores and scores of pigeons flew over Hebron as the funeral procession proceeded to the cemetery.
People came from all over India and from around the world to pay their last homage and tribute to their spiritual father and saint of God, Bro. Bakht Singh. Weeping saints from across denominational barriers, languages, tribes and colors gathered together, praising God for every remembrance of this man of God who was indeed God's gift to the church of the Lord Jesus Christ worldwide. News of his homecall spread like wildfire and over 600,000 came to pay their last tribute to him from Sunday, September 17th through Friday September 22nd. His passing away brought an end to an era. Future church historians may refer to this period as Bro. Bakht Singh's era.
He Lived for Christ
What is the reason for such an outpouring of love, tears and honor for this simple man of God who began his ministry as an unknown itinerant preacher about 70 years ago in Colonial India? There are many reasons, but let me cite at least seven for this unprecedented honor showered upon him by God:
1) He was a grain of wheat that was willing to fall into the ground and die.
2) He followed the footsteps of his Master.
3) He loved the Lord more than his own life.
4) He did not count his life dear unto himself.
5) He finished the race with joy.
6) He fulfilled the ministry, which he received from the Lord.
7) He demonstrated the grace of God by his life and example.
His life and ministry exemplified the life and ministry of the Lord Jesus Christ as well as the Apostle Paul. John 12:24-26 says, "Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit. He that loveth his life shall lose it; and he that hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal. If any man serve me, let him follow me; and where I am, there shall also my servant be: if any man serve me, him will my Father honor." Acts 20:24 says, "But none of these things move me, neither count I my life dear unto myself, so that I might finish my course with joy, and the ministry, which I have received of the Lord Jesus, to testify the gospel of the grace of God."
Brother Bakht Singh was the spiritual father of tens of thousands in Asia as well as a spiritual role model and inspiration to believers across the world. He was India's foremost evangelist, revivalist and indigenous church planter who founded churches based on New Testament principles. In many respects all the five gifts mentioned in Ephesians 4:11 were evident in him. "And he gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers." No other saint of God was used more mightily than this man of God to turn many to righteousness in India. No other man of God had been used of God to spiritually impact his generation more than Brother Bakht Singh. Being a man he too had his flaws and frailties, but his spiritual strengths far outweighed his human weaknesses. Like the Apostle Paul he could say, "I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith." II Timothy 4:7
God's Call
Bro. Bakht Singh was born to Hindu parents in Punjab (which is now part of Pakistan). He was raised as a Sikh . After graduating from Punjab University he went to England as a student of Agricultural Engineering. Bakht Singh miraculously accepted Christ in 1929 while in the West. In 1933 following his studies he returned to Colonial India with a clear call from God to be a witness for Christ among his own people in India. The Lord received him for his ministry on three conditions:
1. Do not join any organizations—serve all equally.
2. Do not make your own plan. Let Me guide you and lead you every step of the way.
3. Do not make your needs known to any human being. Ask Me only and I shall provide for your needs.
Brother Bakht Singh agreed. He resolved to trust God to guide him through prayer alone in carrying out that purpose. In seeking to obey God's call in various parts of undivided India, he underwent many trials and testings, but God sustained him through them all. After serving as an itinerant evangelist for a few years in Karachi and other parts of Punjab, God brought about a mighty revival through him in Martinpur (now part of Pakistan) and other places in Punjab. In 1937 he was a speaker at the Sialkot Convention, which was primarily organized by the Presbyterian Church and other major denominations. He spoke from Luke 24:5 "Why seek ye the living among the dead?" His preaching electrified the participants and organizers alike, both clergy and laity. In the words of Dr. J. Edwin Orr, British Church Historian, "Brother Bakht Singh is an Indian equivalent of the greater Western evangelists, as skillful as Finney and as direct as Moody. He is a first-class Bible teacher of the order of Campbell Morgan or Graham Scroggie."
Soon Bakht Singh became a household name among Protestant Christians throughout India. News of his extraordinary life and ministry flashed across the world through missionary magazines and newsletters. He was one of the most sought after young evangelists in India at that time. In one month alone he received more than 400 invitations from all over India. In 1938 he went to Madras and then on to Kerala and other parts of South India. Tens of thousands turned to Christ. According to Dave Hunt, author and writer, "The arrival of Bakht Singh turned the churches of Madras upside down. . . . Crowds gathered in the open air, as many as 12,000 on one occasion to hear this man of God. Many seriously ill were healed when Bakht Singh prayed for them, even deaf and dumb began to hear and speak."
Bro. Bakht Singh Establishes Jehova Shammah in Madras
Whenever the church--the Body of the Lord Jesus Christ--goes through spiritual decline, the Lord who is the Head of the church raises up His chosen vessels to bring back spiritual vitality. Bro. Bakht Singh was such a vessel chosen by God to bring back the glory of God in the Body of Christ throughout the world. Even though many turned to Christ through his preaching, they were not being discipled or built up spiritually by the lukewarm denominational churches. He fasted and prayed and sought the Lord's mind to do His will at any cost to remedy the problem. The Lord then led him and some of his co-workers to spend all night in prayer seeking His will for the future ministry.
After a time of fasting and prayer the Lord led him and his coworkers to establish a local church to fulfill the four-fold purposes of the church on the basis of Acts 2:42. These principles can be applied in any country in any culture without compromising the revealed Word of God. The four-fold purposes of the church are:
1) To show forth Christ's fullness (Eph 1:22-23)
2) To show forth Christ's unity – the unity of all believers (Eph 2:14-19)
3) To show forth His wisdom (Eph 3:9-11)
4) To show forth His glory ( Eph 3:21) and (Acts 2:42)—"And they continued stedfastly in the apostles' doctrine and fellowship, and in breaking of bread, and in prayers."
The first church was established in Madras, Tamilnadu, called Jehovah Shammah on July 12, 1941 and the Lord began to multiply these churches across Andra Pradesh and other parts of India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Australia and other parts of the world, now numbering into the thousands. Indeed Brother Bakht Singh can be called the father of the indigenous churches of India and abroad.
The Center of His Ministry Moves from Madras to Hyderabad
Brother Bakht Singh and some of his coworkers moved to Elim, Hyderabad on September 25, 1950. In the mid 1950's the Lord provided new facilities to house the local and extra local church ministry. He called the new place Hebron. The work of the Lord grew and multiplied. From the 1950's to the 1970's the local churches established by Brother Bakht Sing and his coworkers were the fastest growing local churches in India. These churches grew both qualitatively and quantitatively trying to show forth the four-fold purposes of the church.
Ministry Overseas
In the year 1946 Brother Bakht Singh left India for ministry in Europe, UK, USA and Canada. The Lord used him mightily in every place, particularly at the Inter Varsity students' missions conference (now known as Urbana Convention) in Toronto, Canada, where he was one of the plenary speakers. Among those who attended the conference was Jim Elliott who was martyred in Ecuador in the 1950's along with four of his fellow American missionaries. In the 1950's Brother Bakht Singh ministered in Australia, various parts of Asia, Africa and the United States of America. Wherever he went the Lord used him to spread His fragrance. He was indeed a breath of fresh air in the midst of lukewarm churches and Christians who had a form of godliness yet denying the power thereof.
In Australia through his ministry the Lord constrained some believers to gather together on the basis of Acts 2:42. There are now several Assemblies, particularly in the Sydney area still gathering together as a result of Brother Bakht Singh's ministry there in the 1950's and 60's.
In 1969-70 Dr. Bob Finley of International Students Inc. invited Brother Bakht Singh to speak at the Indigenous Missions Institute, which was held in Washington, DC. The main purpose of the Institute was to give the returning Christian international students and scholars the vision of the New Testament church based on the New Testament principles already practiced by Brother Bakht Singh. During those years he also traveled extensively in various parts of the United States and Canada ministering in churches of different denominations. In 1969 and 1970 during his visit to the United States, he also spent time with us in Syracuse, New York, and encouraged us to start a local church based on Acts 2:42. In 1970 the Lord constrained us to start International Assembly which still continues today. In 1974, following his visit to Lausanne Congress on World Evangelism in Lausanne, Switzerland, Brother Bakht Singh visited various parts of Europe, the United Kingdom, and the United States. During that visit he advised me to hold a Holy Convocation in Syracuse, New York. The Lord led us to have the first Holy Convocation on October 18-22, 1974. The Lord blessed it so richly for the blessing of all who attended. The Lord enabled us to continue the Convocation until 1983. Brother Bakht Singh and his senior fellow workers came year after year for these Holy Convocations. We discontinued the Holy Convocation for some years and started again from 1993 onwards.
On his way back from the United States Brother Bakht Singh used to visit the UK and Europe, particularly France and the Middle East. Brother Bakht Singh shared with Brother E. Verborne and his fellow workers in France the importance of having a Holy Convocation to build up the Body of Christ. After much prayer Brother Verborne and his fellow saints were constrained by the Lord to start a Holy Convocation in Sarcelles, France in 1977. The Lord used these Holy Convocations to edify the scattered believers from various parts of Europe, the Middle East and other places.
Secret of His Spiritual Life
The Lord used Brother Bakht Singh as His chosen vessel to enrich and enhance the spiritual life of many around the world. He ministered Christ and the vision of the Church. Many asked him the secret of his spiritual life, as he was very unique in many areas of his life. Let me share at least a few.
1) His total dependence upon the living God.
2) He accepted the Bible as the Word of God and encouraged every believer to have his or her own Bible and to live in total obedience to the revealed Word of God. His insight into the Word of God and his photographic memory of the Scriptures are legendary. According to Robert Finley, President of Christian Aid Mission, "I have never seen a man who has a greater knowledge and understanding of the Bible than Bakht Singh. All our Western preachers and teachers seem to be children before this great man of God, Bakht Singh of India." During Brother Bakht Singh's visit to England in 1965 Dr. Martin Lloyd-Jones, the famed expositor and Bible teacher and Rev. Keith Samuel, one of the speakers at Keswick Convention met with Brother Bakht Singh. I was present at the meeting. They spent several hours with Brother Bakht Singh asking him questions from the Word of God. Brother Bakht Singh's answers challenged and surprised these men. Then Martin Lloyd-Jones asked Brother Bakht Singh how he got such insight into and knowledge of the Word of God. To that Brother Bakht Singh answered simply by reading and meditating on the Word of God upon His knees. Most of his life, until he became sick, he read the Bible upon his knees and meditated upon it for hours. The Holy Spirit of God revealed wondrous things out of His Word to him.
3) He sought and did God's will at any cost.
4) He had a passion for God and compassion for souls.
5) He discovered and practiced Biblical worship and encouraged all the saints both male and female to worship the Lord in spirit and in truth.
6) He encouraged fellowship among saints by introducing the love feast.
7) One of his greatest contributions was the annual Holy Convocations. The first Holy Convocation was held in Jehovah Shammah in Madras in December 1941, which lasted for 19 days. These Holy Convocations have been one of the hallmarks of Brother Bakht Singh's work and ministry. Norman Grubb, who was the International Director of World Evangelization Crusade, had this to say about his visit to the Holy Convocation in Hyderabad: "To us Westerners, the most striking part of the whole work with Brother Bakht Singh are the Holy Convocations held annually at Hyderabad. . . . Brother Bakht Singh puts on these Holy Convocations yearly where several thousand people are massed together in close quarters and all fed by the Lord for a week with no appeals to men. . . . Here is an Indian proving God."
8) Indigenization of New Testament principles in the local churches. After visiting Hyderabad in the 1950's, Norman Grubb noted in his book Once Caught, No Escape, "But in all my ministry experience I think these churches on their New Testament foundations are the nearest I have seen to a replica of the early church and a pattern for the birth and growth of the young churches in all the countries which we used to talk about as the mission fields."
9) The life of faith. Brother Bakht Singh was a man of faith. He trusted the Lord for all his needs throughout his life. The Lord honored his faith and not only provided for his needs and for the ministry but also used him mightily to challenge the people of God about the importance of trusting God for their needs.
10) The gospel processions testifying of Christ. During his gospel campaigns in every place he went, he held gospel processions going around the city/town turning them upside down for Christ. But the largest of all the gospel processions was the one that followed his casket to the cemetery where hundreds of thousands marched before and after the casket singing and praising God. Even though he died, his work and ministry follow him.
11) Life of prayer. Brother Bakht Singh was a man of prayer. He spent hours upon his knees in communion with the Lord seeking the Lord's mind regarding His will concerning the work and ministry. Therefore, the Lord also honored him and blessed him beyond any human understanding. This is one of the reasons why the Lord has used him so mightily for the edification of His Body and for the extension of His glorious kingdom both in India and abroad.
Even though he is dead yet he still speaks. We are richer for having known him and having been taught by him. The work that the Lord began through His servant and his early coworkers, such as Brother Fred Flack, Brother Raymond Golsworthy , Brother John Carter, Brother Dorairaj, Brother Rajamani and several others, may not only continue, but be multiplied till the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. Let us rededicate ourselves to carry out his teachings and his vision so that local churches based on the New Testament pattern may be raised up all over the world for the edification of His Body and for His eternal glory.
Source : http://www.brotherbakhtsingh.org/briefbio.html
"If any man serve Me, him will my Father honor." John 12:26
". . . he being dead, yet speaketh." Hebrews 11:4b
A Procession of Saints
On Friday, September 22, 2000, the city of Hyderabad came to a stand still--the Hebron, Hermon compounds, all adjacent roads and the main road (Chikkadapalli) between Golconda Cross Roads and Narayanaguda Cemetery, were like a sea of saints, numbering according to some estimates, a quarter of a million (two and one half lakhs). Shops and offices were closed. Traffic was diverted. Police and law enforcement officers struggled in vain to control the wave of multitudes that participated in the funeral procession. It took about three hours for the procession to cover the distance of three kilometers from Hebron to the cemetery. The funeral procession turned out to be the largest gospel procession Hyderabad had ever witnessed, where the weeping saints inched forward holding Bibles and Scripture banners, singing and praising God. What a witness for Christ and Him crucified. It was not a typical funeral procession but it was a victory parade for Christ triumphant, in honor of His humble servant who served Him so faithfully for about 70 years.
It seemed as though the Lord had accomplished so much even through the death of His beloved servant. The Lord was greatly glorified and magnified as an unprecedented throng of saints shook the city for Christ by proclaiming the gospel as they went. It was so awesome and glorious. People desiring to take a last glimpse of the casket containing the body of Bro. Bakht Singh climbed on trees, balconies and roofs of offices and houses along the three-kilometer stretch of Chikkadapalli Road. Hyderabad has never seen anything like it and probably never will. Even in church history a funeral procession of this magnitude has seldom occurred. The unusual occurrences in nature before and after his homecall reminded us that he was a man sent from God for the edification of His body and for His eternal glory. For example, just a few hours before he slept in Christ on Sunday, September 17th at 6:05 AM, there was an earthquake in and around Hyderabad coupled with continuous and unusual thundering and lightening. Lights were out and darkness blanketed the area for a while. Then on Friday, September 22nd, just before his funeral as the casket was being carried out from Hebron at about 11:30 AM while the sun was shining brightly, a rainbow circled the sun for a short time. As the rainbow disappeared, a shining ring, which looked like a "crown," appeared around the sun. Then suddenly scores and scores of pigeons flew over Hebron as the funeral procession proceeded to the cemetery.
People came from all over India and from around the world to pay their last homage and tribute to their spiritual father and saint of God, Bro. Bakht Singh. Weeping saints from across denominational barriers, languages, tribes and colors gathered together, praising God for every remembrance of this man of God who was indeed God's gift to the church of the Lord Jesus Christ worldwide. News of his homecall spread like wildfire and over 600,000 came to pay their last tribute to him from Sunday, September 17th through Friday September 22nd. His passing away brought an end to an era. Future church historians may refer to this period as Bro. Bakht Singh's era.
He Lived for Christ
What is the reason for such an outpouring of love, tears and honor for this simple man of God who began his ministry as an unknown itinerant preacher about 70 years ago in Colonial India? There are many reasons, but let me cite at least seven for this unprecedented honor showered upon him by God:
1) He was a grain of wheat that was willing to fall into the ground and die.
2) He followed the footsteps of his Master.
3) He loved the Lord more than his own life.
4) He did not count his life dear unto himself.
5) He finished the race with joy.
6) He fulfilled the ministry, which he received from the Lord.
7) He demonstrated the grace of God by his life and example.
His life and ministry exemplified the life and ministry of the Lord Jesus Christ as well as the Apostle Paul. John 12:24-26 says, "Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit. He that loveth his life shall lose it; and he that hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal. If any man serve me, let him follow me; and where I am, there shall also my servant be: if any man serve me, him will my Father honor." Acts 20:24 says, "But none of these things move me, neither count I my life dear unto myself, so that I might finish my course with joy, and the ministry, which I have received of the Lord Jesus, to testify the gospel of the grace of God."
Brother Bakht Singh was the spiritual father of tens of thousands in Asia as well as a spiritual role model and inspiration to believers across the world. He was India's foremost evangelist, revivalist and indigenous church planter who founded churches based on New Testament principles. In many respects all the five gifts mentioned in Ephesians 4:11 were evident in him. "And he gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers." No other saint of God was used more mightily than this man of God to turn many to righteousness in India. No other man of God had been used of God to spiritually impact his generation more than Brother Bakht Singh. Being a man he too had his flaws and frailties, but his spiritual strengths far outweighed his human weaknesses. Like the Apostle Paul he could say, "I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith." II Timothy 4:7
God's Call
Bro. Bakht Singh was born to Hindu parents in Punjab (which is now part of Pakistan). He was raised as a Sikh . After graduating from Punjab University he went to England as a student of Agricultural Engineering. Bakht Singh miraculously accepted Christ in 1929 while in the West. In 1933 following his studies he returned to Colonial India with a clear call from God to be a witness for Christ among his own people in India. The Lord received him for his ministry on three conditions:
1. Do not join any organizations—serve all equally.
2. Do not make your own plan. Let Me guide you and lead you every step of the way.
3. Do not make your needs known to any human being. Ask Me only and I shall provide for your needs.
Brother Bakht Singh agreed. He resolved to trust God to guide him through prayer alone in carrying out that purpose. In seeking to obey God's call in various parts of undivided India, he underwent many trials and testings, but God sustained him through them all. After serving as an itinerant evangelist for a few years in Karachi and other parts of Punjab, God brought about a mighty revival through him in Martinpur (now part of Pakistan) and other places in Punjab. In 1937 he was a speaker at the Sialkot Convention, which was primarily organized by the Presbyterian Church and other major denominations. He spoke from Luke 24:5 "Why seek ye the living among the dead?" His preaching electrified the participants and organizers alike, both clergy and laity. In the words of Dr. J. Edwin Orr, British Church Historian, "Brother Bakht Singh is an Indian equivalent of the greater Western evangelists, as skillful as Finney and as direct as Moody. He is a first-class Bible teacher of the order of Campbell Morgan or Graham Scroggie."
Soon Bakht Singh became a household name among Protestant Christians throughout India. News of his extraordinary life and ministry flashed across the world through missionary magazines and newsletters. He was one of the most sought after young evangelists in India at that time. In one month alone he received more than 400 invitations from all over India. In 1938 he went to Madras and then on to Kerala and other parts of South India. Tens of thousands turned to Christ. According to Dave Hunt, author and writer, "The arrival of Bakht Singh turned the churches of Madras upside down. . . . Crowds gathered in the open air, as many as 12,000 on one occasion to hear this man of God. Many seriously ill were healed when Bakht Singh prayed for them, even deaf and dumb began to hear and speak."
Bro. Bakht Singh Establishes Jehova Shammah in Madras
Whenever the church--the Body of the Lord Jesus Christ--goes through spiritual decline, the Lord who is the Head of the church raises up His chosen vessels to bring back spiritual vitality. Bro. Bakht Singh was such a vessel chosen by God to bring back the glory of God in the Body of Christ throughout the world. Even though many turned to Christ through his preaching, they were not being discipled or built up spiritually by the lukewarm denominational churches. He fasted and prayed and sought the Lord's mind to do His will at any cost to remedy the problem. The Lord then led him and some of his co-workers to spend all night in prayer seeking His will for the future ministry.
After a time of fasting and prayer the Lord led him and his coworkers to establish a local church to fulfill the four-fold purposes of the church on the basis of Acts 2:42. These principles can be applied in any country in any culture without compromising the revealed Word of God. The four-fold purposes of the church are:
1) To show forth Christ's fullness (Eph 1:22-23)
2) To show forth Christ's unity – the unity of all believers (Eph 2:14-19)
3) To show forth His wisdom (Eph 3:9-11)
4) To show forth His glory ( Eph 3:21) and (Acts 2:42)—"And they continued stedfastly in the apostles' doctrine and fellowship, and in breaking of bread, and in prayers."
The first church was established in Madras, Tamilnadu, called Jehovah Shammah on July 12, 1941 and the Lord began to multiply these churches across Andra Pradesh and other parts of India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Australia and other parts of the world, now numbering into the thousands. Indeed Brother Bakht Singh can be called the father of the indigenous churches of India and abroad.
The Center of His Ministry Moves from Madras to Hyderabad
Brother Bakht Singh and some of his coworkers moved to Elim, Hyderabad on September 25, 1950. In the mid 1950's the Lord provided new facilities to house the local and extra local church ministry. He called the new place Hebron. The work of the Lord grew and multiplied. From the 1950's to the 1970's the local churches established by Brother Bakht Sing and his coworkers were the fastest growing local churches in India. These churches grew both qualitatively and quantitatively trying to show forth the four-fold purposes of the church.
Ministry Overseas
In the year 1946 Brother Bakht Singh left India for ministry in Europe, UK, USA and Canada. The Lord used him mightily in every place, particularly at the Inter Varsity students' missions conference (now known as Urbana Convention) in Toronto, Canada, where he was one of the plenary speakers. Among those who attended the conference was Jim Elliott who was martyred in Ecuador in the 1950's along with four of his fellow American missionaries. In the 1950's Brother Bakht Singh ministered in Australia, various parts of Asia, Africa and the United States of America. Wherever he went the Lord used him to spread His fragrance. He was indeed a breath of fresh air in the midst of lukewarm churches and Christians who had a form of godliness yet denying the power thereof.
In Australia through his ministry the Lord constrained some believers to gather together on the basis of Acts 2:42. There are now several Assemblies, particularly in the Sydney area still gathering together as a result of Brother Bakht Singh's ministry there in the 1950's and 60's.
In 1969-70 Dr. Bob Finley of International Students Inc. invited Brother Bakht Singh to speak at the Indigenous Missions Institute, which was held in Washington, DC. The main purpose of the Institute was to give the returning Christian international students and scholars the vision of the New Testament church based on the New Testament principles already practiced by Brother Bakht Singh. During those years he also traveled extensively in various parts of the United States and Canada ministering in churches of different denominations. In 1969 and 1970 during his visit to the United States, he also spent time with us in Syracuse, New York, and encouraged us to start a local church based on Acts 2:42. In 1970 the Lord constrained us to start International Assembly which still continues today. In 1974, following his visit to Lausanne Congress on World Evangelism in Lausanne, Switzerland, Brother Bakht Singh visited various parts of Europe, the United Kingdom, and the United States. During that visit he advised me to hold a Holy Convocation in Syracuse, New York. The Lord led us to have the first Holy Convocation on October 18-22, 1974. The Lord blessed it so richly for the blessing of all who attended. The Lord enabled us to continue the Convocation until 1983. Brother Bakht Singh and his senior fellow workers came year after year for these Holy Convocations. We discontinued the Holy Convocation for some years and started again from 1993 onwards.
On his way back from the United States Brother Bakht Singh used to visit the UK and Europe, particularly France and the Middle East. Brother Bakht Singh shared with Brother E. Verborne and his fellow workers in France the importance of having a Holy Convocation to build up the Body of Christ. After much prayer Brother Verborne and his fellow saints were constrained by the Lord to start a Holy Convocation in Sarcelles, France in 1977. The Lord used these Holy Convocations to edify the scattered believers from various parts of Europe, the Middle East and other places.
Secret of His Spiritual Life
The Lord used Brother Bakht Singh as His chosen vessel to enrich and enhance the spiritual life of many around the world. He ministered Christ and the vision of the Church. Many asked him the secret of his spiritual life, as he was very unique in many areas of his life. Let me share at least a few.
1) His total dependence upon the living God.
2) He accepted the Bible as the Word of God and encouraged every believer to have his or her own Bible and to live in total obedience to the revealed Word of God. His insight into the Word of God and his photographic memory of the Scriptures are legendary. According to Robert Finley, President of Christian Aid Mission, "I have never seen a man who has a greater knowledge and understanding of the Bible than Bakht Singh. All our Western preachers and teachers seem to be children before this great man of God, Bakht Singh of India." During Brother Bakht Singh's visit to England in 1965 Dr. Martin Lloyd-Jones, the famed expositor and Bible teacher and Rev. Keith Samuel, one of the speakers at Keswick Convention met with Brother Bakht Singh. I was present at the meeting. They spent several hours with Brother Bakht Singh asking him questions from the Word of God. Brother Bakht Singh's answers challenged and surprised these men. Then Martin Lloyd-Jones asked Brother Bakht Singh how he got such insight into and knowledge of the Word of God. To that Brother Bakht Singh answered simply by reading and meditating on the Word of God upon His knees. Most of his life, until he became sick, he read the Bible upon his knees and meditated upon it for hours. The Holy Spirit of God revealed wondrous things out of His Word to him.
3) He sought and did God's will at any cost.
4) He had a passion for God and compassion for souls.
5) He discovered and practiced Biblical worship and encouraged all the saints both male and female to worship the Lord in spirit and in truth.
6) He encouraged fellowship among saints by introducing the love feast.
7) One of his greatest contributions was the annual Holy Convocations. The first Holy Convocation was held in Jehovah Shammah in Madras in December 1941, which lasted for 19 days. These Holy Convocations have been one of the hallmarks of Brother Bakht Singh's work and ministry. Norman Grubb, who was the International Director of World Evangelization Crusade, had this to say about his visit to the Holy Convocation in Hyderabad: "To us Westerners, the most striking part of the whole work with Brother Bakht Singh are the Holy Convocations held annually at Hyderabad. . . . Brother Bakht Singh puts on these Holy Convocations yearly where several thousand people are massed together in close quarters and all fed by the Lord for a week with no appeals to men. . . . Here is an Indian proving God."
8) Indigenization of New Testament principles in the local churches. After visiting Hyderabad in the 1950's, Norman Grubb noted in his book Once Caught, No Escape, "But in all my ministry experience I think these churches on their New Testament foundations are the nearest I have seen to a replica of the early church and a pattern for the birth and growth of the young churches in all the countries which we used to talk about as the mission fields."
9) The life of faith. Brother Bakht Singh was a man of faith. He trusted the Lord for all his needs throughout his life. The Lord honored his faith and not only provided for his needs and for the ministry but also used him mightily to challenge the people of God about the importance of trusting God for their needs.
10) The gospel processions testifying of Christ. During his gospel campaigns in every place he went, he held gospel processions going around the city/town turning them upside down for Christ. But the largest of all the gospel processions was the one that followed his casket to the cemetery where hundreds of thousands marched before and after the casket singing and praising God. Even though he died, his work and ministry follow him.
11) Life of prayer. Brother Bakht Singh was a man of prayer. He spent hours upon his knees in communion with the Lord seeking the Lord's mind regarding His will concerning the work and ministry. Therefore, the Lord also honored him and blessed him beyond any human understanding. This is one of the reasons why the Lord has used him so mightily for the edification of His Body and for the extension of His glorious kingdom both in India and abroad.
Even though he is dead yet he still speaks. We are richer for having known him and having been taught by him. The work that the Lord began through His servant and his early coworkers, such as Brother Fred Flack, Brother Raymond Golsworthy , Brother John Carter, Brother Dorairaj, Brother Rajamani and several others, may not only continue, but be multiplied till the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. Let us rededicate ourselves to carry out his teachings and his vision so that local churches based on the New Testament pattern may be raised up all over the world for the edification of His Body and for His eternal glory.
Source : http://www.brotherbakhtsingh.org/briefbio.html
The Life and Ministry of T. Austin Sparks(2)
In his sharing, Hoseah Wu mentioned a book about the life and ministry of T Austin-Sparks. The book is named Shaped by Vision which means that Brother Sparks was a man shaped by vision.
Hoseah Wu began with the family background of Brother Sparks. Brother Sparks met the Lord in his youth. Right after his conversion, he was zealous for preaching the gospel and pursuit of the Lord. Then, he showed a gift of preaching and became a pastor of a church. He also became a coworker of G. Campbell Morgan and Mrs. Jessie Penn-Lewis.
When he was the pastor of Honor Oak Baptist Church in Britain, God enlightened him and he saw the eternal purpose of God. Once he saw that, the direction of his life and ministry changed greatly. Seeing the light of truth, he could no longer serve in Baptist Church. He quited his pastorate and met at the other place on the same road. The new meeting place was named Honor Oak Christian Fellowship Centre and he started an influential global ministry both orally and literally. They published a free periodical called A Witness and A Testimony and Brother Sparks was the editor. Most of the messages in this periodical were delivered by Brother Sparks.
Hoseah Wu also shared about the influence of the ministry of T Austin-Sparks to the saints in USA and how he was invited to speak in the conferences in the States in the sixties of last century. The coworkers with T A Sparks in the conferences include Stephen Kaung and DeVern Fromke. There are many messages of T A Sparks, including those delivered in USA, available for free downloading at the website of Christian Testimony Ministry (http://www.christiantapeministry.com/).
Frank Viola, an influential brother in the house churItalicch movement in the States, is the author of the books Rethinking the Wineskin, Pagan Christianity, Reimagining Church, From Eternity to Here etc. He uses the term “organic church”, as contrast to organizational church or institutional church, to describe the church life out of the life received from God. As he said in his blog, he adopted this term with the insight from the ministry of T A Sparks. He said the ministry of T A Sparks had the greatest influence on his life and ministry. It is reported that about 9% of christians in the State are now meeting at homes, learning to lead an organic church life or a simple church life.
From the biography of Brother Bakht Singh, Brother Bakht Singh of India, we know that the ministry of T A Sparks also helped Bakht Singh very much, especailly on the revealation about the church. Among the coworkers of Bakht Singh, some of them was sent by Honor Oak Christian Fellowship Centre, including Fred Flack and Raymond Golsworthy. Lady Daisy Ogle, who supported T A Sparks' ministry, also supported Bakht Singh's ministry.
Hoseah Wu began with the family background of Brother Sparks. Brother Sparks met the Lord in his youth. Right after his conversion, he was zealous for preaching the gospel and pursuit of the Lord. Then, he showed a gift of preaching and became a pastor of a church. He also became a coworker of G. Campbell Morgan and Mrs. Jessie Penn-Lewis.
When he was the pastor of Honor Oak Baptist Church in Britain, God enlightened him and he saw the eternal purpose of God. Once he saw that, the direction of his life and ministry changed greatly. Seeing the light of truth, he could no longer serve in Baptist Church. He quited his pastorate and met at the other place on the same road. The new meeting place was named Honor Oak Christian Fellowship Centre and he started an influential global ministry both orally and literally. They published a free periodical called A Witness and A Testimony and Brother Sparks was the editor. Most of the messages in this periodical were delivered by Brother Sparks.
Hoseah Wu also shared about the influence of the ministry of T Austin-Sparks to the saints in USA and how he was invited to speak in the conferences in the States in the sixties of last century. The coworkers with T A Sparks in the conferences include Stephen Kaung and DeVern Fromke. There are many messages of T A Sparks, including those delivered in USA, available for free downloading at the website of Christian Testimony Ministry (http://www.christiantapeministry.com/).
Frank Viola, an influential brother in the house churItalicch movement in the States, is the author of the books Rethinking the Wineskin, Pagan Christianity, Reimagining Church, From Eternity to Here etc. He uses the term “organic church”, as contrast to organizational church or institutional church, to describe the church life out of the life received from God. As he said in his blog, he adopted this term with the insight from the ministry of T A Sparks. He said the ministry of T A Sparks had the greatest influence on his life and ministry. It is reported that about 9% of christians in the State are now meeting at homes, learning to lead an organic church life or a simple church life.
From the biography of Brother Bakht Singh, Brother Bakht Singh of India, we know that the ministry of T A Sparks also helped Bakht Singh very much, especailly on the revealation about the church. Among the coworkers of Bakht Singh, some of them was sent by Honor Oak Christian Fellowship Centre, including Fred Flack and Raymond Golsworthy. Lady Daisy Ogle, who supported T A Sparks' ministry, also supported Bakht Singh's ministry.
Books by Bro Bakth Singh
To download - 'Right Click' on the link and select 'Save link as'. All links are in PDF format.
Bro.Bakth Singh's testimony (for telugu 'Click here')
English / Telugu Books by Bro.Bakth Singh
True Salt (for telugu 'Click here')
My chosen (for telugu 'Click here')
True Liberty (for telugu 'Click here')
Voice of the Lord (for telugu 'Click here')
Joy of the Lord
Much Business (for telugu 'Click here')
Greatest Secret (for telugu 'Click here')
Perfect Security (for telugu 'Click here')
Walk before me (for telugu 'Click here')
Our inheritance (for telugu 'Click here')
Come, Let us build (for telugu 'Click here')
So great salvation
Highway to victory (for telugu 'Click here')
Looking unto Jesus (for telugu 'Click here')
David recovered all (for telugu 'Click here')
Overcomer's Secret
Return of God's glory
Strong foundation (for telugu 'Click here')
How to find God's will
Forty mountain peaks
Seven heavenly things (for telugu 'Click here')
Bethany
Sharing God's secrets
Fulness of God (for telugu 'Click here')
God's dwelling place (for telugu 'Click here')
Unsearchable greatness of salvation
Behold, I will do a new thing (for telugu 'Click here')
Diving principles of happy married life (for telugu 'Click Here')
Holy Spirit - His work and significance Part 1
Holy Spirit - His work and significance Part 2
Holy Spirit - His work and significance Part 3
Holy Spirit - His work and significance Part 4
Holy Spirit - His work and significance Part 5
Holy Spirit - His work and significance Part 6
Holy Spirit - His work and significance Part 7
Holy Spirit - His work and significance Part 8
Bro.Bakth Singh's testimony (for telugu 'Click here')
English / Telugu Books by Bro.Bakth Singh
True Salt (for telugu 'Click here')
My chosen (for telugu 'Click here')
True Liberty (for telugu 'Click here')
Voice of the Lord (for telugu 'Click here')
Joy of the Lord
Much Business (for telugu 'Click here')
Greatest Secret (for telugu 'Click here')
Perfect Security (for telugu 'Click here')
Walk before me (for telugu 'Click here')
Our inheritance (for telugu 'Click here')
Come, Let us build (for telugu 'Click here')
So great salvation
Highway to victory (for telugu 'Click here')
Looking unto Jesus (for telugu 'Click here')
David recovered all (for telugu 'Click here')
Overcomer's Secret
Return of God's glory
Strong foundation (for telugu 'Click here')
How to find God's will
Forty mountain peaks
Seven heavenly things (for telugu 'Click here')
Bethany
Sharing God's secrets
Fulness of God (for telugu 'Click here')
God's dwelling place (for telugu 'Click here')
Unsearchable greatness of salvation
Behold, I will do a new thing (for telugu 'Click here')
Diving principles of happy married life (for telugu 'Click Here')
Holy Spirit - His work and significance Part 1
Holy Spirit - His work and significance Part 2
Holy Spirit - His work and significance Part 3
Holy Spirit - His work and significance Part 4
Holy Spirit - His work and significance Part 5
Holy Spirit - His work and significance Part 6
Holy Spirit - His work and significance Part 7
Holy Spirit - His work and significance Part 8
Bro.Bakht Singh called to glory
November 13, 2000
Bakht Singh, a prominent evangelist and church planter in INDIA, died September 16 of Parkinson's disease. He was 97. An internationally known Bible teacher, Singh started more than 6,000 indigenous churches and fellowships throughout India. Today his influence is felt in about 10,000 churches planted in India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Australia, and the United States. Singh's Bible training center, the Hebron Assembly, continues to equip hundreds of people in sharing their faith. An estimated 600,000 people from around the world attended memorial services in Hyderabad, India, to mourn Singh's death.
Source : http://www.ctlibrary.com/ct/2000/november13/24.35.html
Bakht Singh, a prominent evangelist and church planter in INDIA, died September 16 of Parkinson's disease. He was 97. An internationally known Bible teacher, Singh started more than 6,000 indigenous churches and fellowships throughout India. Today his influence is felt in about 10,000 churches planted in India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Australia, and the United States. Singh's Bible training center, the Hebron Assembly, continues to equip hundreds of people in sharing their faith. An estimated 600,000 people from around the world attended memorial services in Hyderabad, India, to mourn Singh's death.
Source : http://www.ctlibrary.com/c
Thousands Mourn Death of 'India's Father'
Evangelist Bakht Singh led a fruitful life of teaching and founding churches.
By Corrie Cutrer | posted 9/01/2000 12:00AM
Related articles and links | [no previous page] 1 of 1 [no next page]
Bakht Singh, one of India's most prominent evangelists and church planters, died September 16. He was 97. An internationally known Bible teacher, Singh suffered from Parkinson's disease. He died at his home in Hyderabad, India. Born and raised a Sikh, Singh later declared himself an atheist while studying abroad in England. Then, as an engineering student in Canada, two friends gave him a New Testament. Soon after, Singh became a Christian.In 1933, he returned to colonial, undivided India to serve in full-time ministry. For 60 years he traveled throughout the country preaching at revivals. He initiated over 6,000 indigenous churches and fellowships in India. Today his influence has seen about 10,000 churches planted in India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Australia, and the United States. Singh's Bible training center, the Hebron Assembly, continues to equip hundreds of people in sharing their faith.Robert Finley, president of Christian Aid Mission, once wrote: "I have never seen a man who has greater knowledge or understanding of the Bible than Bakht Singh. All our Western preachers and teachers seem to be children before this great man of God."Several thousand people from all over the world attended memorial services to mourn Singh's death. "He's been a father to thousands and thousands of people in India," one follower said.
Related Elsewhere
Read the stories or contribute to the information being collected in Singh's memory at brother bakhtsingh.org.Previous Christianity Today coverage of India includes:India's Bishops Fear for the Life of Prominent Christian Activist | "I have been targeted," says John Dayal. (Aug. 17, 2000) Plans to Resolve India's Interfaith Tensions Face Delays and Accusations | Did India's National Commission for Minorities plan a meeting to discredit Christians? (July 20, 2000) India's First Dalit Archbishop Holds 'No Grudge' Over Predecessor's Attack | Once "untouchables" now Dalits make up bulk of country's Christians. (May 11, 2000) India's Christians Resist Move to Register Conversions | State's legislation unconstitutional, say leaders. (May 2, 2000)
Copyright © 2004 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.
Source : http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2000/septemberweb-only/55.0b.html
By Corrie Cutrer | posted 9/01/2000 12:00AM
Related articles and links | [no previous page] 1 of 1 [no next page]
Bakht Singh, one of India's most prominent evangelists and church planters, died September 16. He was 97. An internationally known Bible teacher, Singh suffered from Parkinson's disease. He died at his home in Hyderabad, India. Born and raised a Sikh, Singh later declared himself an atheist while studying abroad in England. Then, as an engineering student in Canada, two friends gave him a New Testament. Soon after, Singh became a Christian.In 1933, he returned to colonial, undivided India to serve in full-time ministry. For 60 years he traveled throughout the country preaching at revivals. He initiated over 6,000 indigenous churches and fellowships in India. Today his influence has seen about 10,000 churches planted in India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Australia, and the United States. Singh's Bible training center, the Hebron Assembly, continues to equip hundreds of people in sharing their faith.Robert Finley, president of Christian Aid Mission, once wrote: "I have never seen a man who has greater knowledge or understanding of the Bible than Bakht Singh. All our Western preachers and teachers seem to be children before this great man of God."Several thousand people from all over the world attended memorial services to mourn Singh's death. "He's been a father to thousands and thousands of people in India," one follower said.
Related Elsewhere
Read the stories or contribute to the information being collected in Singh's memory at brother bakhtsingh.org.Previous Christianity Today coverage of India includes:India's Bishops Fear for the Life of Prominent Christian Activist | "I have been targeted," says John Dayal. (Aug. 17, 2000) Plans to Resolve India's Interfaith Tensions Face Delays and Accusations | Did India's National Commission for Minorities plan a meeting to discredit Christians? (July 20, 2000) India's First Dalit Archbishop Holds 'No Grudge' Over Predecessor's Attack | Once "untouchables" now Dalits make up bulk of country's Christians. (May 11, 2000) India's Christians Resist Move to Register Conversions | State's legislation unconstitutional, say leaders. (May 2, 2000)
Copyright © 2004 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.
Source : http://www.christianitytod
The Passing of an Era - A tribute to Bakht Singh
by Reuben David, Visiting Scholar, The Wilberforce Forum
A Christian convert from Hindu Sikhism, Bakht Singh, died in India, in September, 2000, at age 97. He was one of India's most prolific church planters and a most remarkable evangelist.
In January 1915, a young lawyer from India, Mohandas Gandhi, returned to his homeland from South Africa with a new resolve to liberate his homeland from the domination of the British Raj. Elsewhere in India, in the northwest region of Punjab, a young Sikh named Bakht Singh Chabra had a dream. It was a dream that haunted him for years, a dream that would later catapult him to becoming one of India's most prolific church planters and a Christian evangelist of world renown.
"In my dream as a young boy" Bakht Singh writes in one of his more than sixty books, "I was climbing a high and steep hill. With great difficulty and struggle I would reach the top. As soon as I reached it, somebody would come along and hurl me down. As I fell, the sharp points of the rocks would dig into my ribs. I would be in great pain, so much so that I would cry out in my dream. But in the end I would find myself lying on soft silk cushions. I would wonder that the pain of falling down was worth landing on such soft silk cushions." That recurring dream proved to be prophetic of his conversion, later, to Christ.
Bakht Singh was born on June 6, 1903, in the northern region of Punjab that later became part of Pakistan. Born into a family who strictly observed the Sikh traditions, he would spend hours in gurudwaras (the Sikh temples) and observe all the religious rites. Sikhism, a derivative of Hinduism, was founded by Guru Nanak (1469-1539). The Sikhs believe in the unity of God and the brotherhood of man. A typical Sikh maintains the five Ks: kes (long hair), kangha (a comb), kirpan (a sword), kach (short trousers), and kara (a steel bracelet). The word Sikh means a disciple, and their common family name, Singh, means the lion.
Like others of his heritage, Bakht Singh hated Christianity from his childhood. He once tore the pages out of a Bible that was presented to him in school, keeping only the leather binding. Little did he realized then that God already had plans for his life.
In 1926 Singh sailed for England to study mechanical engineering at King's College, London. He promised his parents his loyalty to the Sikh religion, but his student years changed all that. He was captivated by the aristocratic lifestyle he observed at King's and, before long, he started smoking and drinking alcohol. He learned to eat with knife and fork, visited the theaters and dance halls, and wore expensive Western clothes. Most shocking to his friends and family, he also cut off his long hair - the outward mark of his religion. "I became an atheist," he said, "a socialist and a free thinker." Yet there was still a deep emptiness in his heart that haunted him. Eventually, despairing of his new lifestyle and his dark view of life, he began a search for inner peace.
An Awesome Power
By 1928 Singh had occasion to travel to Canada, and during the transatlantic passage he noticed a small sign announcing the Christian service held in the ship's main dining salon. This captured his interest. Curious to know what Christians do in worship, he entered the room and sat down on a back bench. He had never read the Bible or participated in any Christian service. He had never heard about salvation through Jesus Christ. But when he knelt with the others for prayer, he felt an awesome power lifting him up. "I was trembling," he wrote later. "I felt a divine power entering into me. Joy flooded my soul. Unknown to me, I was repeating the name of Jesus again and again. I felt great peace." he said. Thus, a once proud Sikh was won to Christ.
From that day on, Singh was known to spend hours reading the Bible - as much as 14 hours at a stretch. His former desire to read popular magazines, newspapers, and novels was replaced with a passion to know the Bible and to plumb its depths. He was baptized on February 4, 1932 in Vancouver, Canada, and immediately began sharing his testimony with those around him. As he matured in his faith and his understanding of the word, he felt called to full-time ministry, and began studying seriously to that end.
When Bakht Singh returned home to India as a Christian, on April 6, 1933, his parents met him at the Port of Bombay. Reluctantly, they accepted the idea of his conversion, but they urged him, at all costs, to keep his newfound beliefs a secret. But Singh refused to comply and, from that moment, his family deserted him. Suddenly homeless and driven by his passion for Christ, he began to preach on the streets of Bombay. Before long he was preaching to large crowds and holding revivals throughout the country. Crowds thronged to hear him. He was a powerful and winsome speaker, and the passion in his words attracted tens of thousands to hear about Jesus Christ. And his sermons were always followed by signs and wonders.
A Dynamic Witness
Singh's biographer and co-worker with him for over 50 years, Dr. T. E. Koshy, who was chaplain at Syracuse University, says, "The early years of his ministry were marked with signs and wonders. People fell to the ground crying for mercy." Dr. Ravi Zacharias, the most prominent Indian-born Christian teacher and apologist of our day, says, "I was a young Christian when I heard of Bakht Singh. His impact for Christ in India and worldwide has been immense."
Bakht Singh's preaching impacted the religious landscape of Hindu-Muslim India as no Christian teacher had ever done. People from all walks of life flocked to hear him. He eventually went on to plant thousands of churches all over the sub-continent and many other parts of the world.
The great British church historian, J Edwin Orr, said of him, "Brother Bakht Singh is an Indian equivalent of the greater Western evangelists, as skillful as Finney and as direct as Moody. He is a first-class Bible teacher of the order of Campbell Morgan or Graham Scroggie." American author Dave Hunt writes, "The arrival of Bakht Singh turned the churches of Madras upside down. Crowds gathered in the open air to hear this man of God. Many seriously ill were healed when he prayed for them. The deaf and dumb began to hear and speak."
"Singh's role in the 1937 revival that swept the Martinbur United Presbyterian Church inaugurated one of the most notable movements in the history of the church in the Indian subcontinent," notes Jonathan Bonk, in the Biographical Dictionary of Christian Missions. But Singh did more than preach the salvation. He launched the indigenous church-planting movement that was so essential to the rise of Christianity in India, contextualizing the gospel to the local culture. Eventually he saw the formation of more than 10,000 "houses of worship," and he traveled the world, setting up churches in Australia, France, America, and England, as well as Pakistan.
In Total Dependence
Another missionary, statesman, author, and teacher, Norman Grubb, said of him: "What impressed me most on my Asian visit was my eight days with Bakht Singh of India and his co-workers and congregations. Here was to me a sample of the coming church of Christ ... In all my missionary experience I think these churches on their New Testament foundations are the nearest I have seen to a replica of the early church and a pattern for the birth and growth of the young churches in all the countries which we used to talk about as mission fields."
Singh was a friend to leaders such as Billy Graham, Francis Schaeffer, Dr. Martin Lloyd-Jones, Jerry Falwell, and John Stott, to name only a few.
"Singh taught total dependence on God and urged people to get their own Bibles and study them. He was known to read the Bible on his knees," says David Adimoolam, who was for many years a member of the assembly organized by Bakht Singh. "He was strict yet gentle," he says. "Those were days when we felt the glory of God coming down. Singh was a man of prayer. He emphasized the importance of the word."
At his death in the Central Indian town of Hyderabad, his ministry headquarters, on September 16, 2000, at age 97, Christians worldwide commemorated the life of this man of God. An estimated 600,000 mourners attended the funeral. Some also reported that a mild tremor had hit the city a few hours before his death. And on the day of the funeral, the entire city witnessed a rare phenomenon - a rainbow over the sun as flocks of doves flew above the funeral procession. Coincidence or not, many took these events as a sign.
Today, as India is undergoing a new wave of attacks on Christian and their churches, there is good reason for alarm. The international community has been slow in responding, but the resolve of the church has only increased. Persecution, though terrible, cannot stop the progress of the Word of God, and the passion of Indian believers today, including those in the churches organized by Bakht Singh, are armed with conviction and a profound resolve to overcome and endure. And for those who knew him, the memory of the great evangelist, Bakht Singh, is an ongoing reminder of what God can yet accomplish through those who are wholly devoted to Him.
Reuben David holds a Master of Science degree in Journalism from Bangalore University and is currently a graduate student at Regent University. He is a visiting scholar at The Wilberforce Forum, a division of Prison Fellowship in Washington, DC.
Source : http://www.urbana.org/articles/the-passing-of-an-era--a-tribute-to-bakht-singh
A Christian convert from Hindu Sikhism, Bakht Singh, died in India, in September, 2000, at age 97. He was one of India's most prolific church planters and a most remarkable evangelist.
In January 1915, a young lawyer from India, Mohandas Gandhi, returned to his homeland from South Africa with a new resolve to liberate his homeland from the domination of the British Raj. Elsewhere in India, in the northwest region of Punjab, a young Sikh named Bakht Singh Chabra had a dream. It was a dream that haunted him for years, a dream that would later catapult him to becoming one of India's most prolific church planters and a Christian evangelist of world renown.
"In my dream as a young boy" Bakht Singh writes in one of his more than sixty books, "I was climbing a high and steep hill. With great difficulty and struggle I would reach the top. As soon as I reached it, somebody would come along and hurl me down. As I fell, the sharp points of the rocks would dig into my ribs. I would be in great pain, so much so that I would cry out in my dream. But in the end I would find myself lying on soft silk cushions. I would wonder that the pain of falling down was worth landing on such soft silk cushions." That recurring dream proved to be prophetic of his conversion, later, to Christ.
Bakht Singh was born on June 6, 1903, in the northern region of Punjab that later became part of Pakistan. Born into a family who strictly observed the Sikh traditions, he would spend hours in gurudwaras (the Sikh temples) and observe all the religious rites. Sikhism, a derivative of Hinduism, was founded by Guru Nanak (1469-1539). The Sikhs believe in the unity of God and the brotherhood of man. A typical Sikh maintains the five Ks: kes (long hair), kangha (a comb), kirpan (a sword), kach (short trousers), and kara (a steel bracelet). The word Sikh means a disciple, and their common family name, Singh, means the lion.
Like others of his heritage, Bakht Singh hated Christianity from his childhood. He once tore the pages out of a Bible that was presented to him in school, keeping only the leather binding. Little did he realized then that God already had plans for his life.
In 1926 Singh sailed for England to study mechanical engineering at King's College, London. He promised his parents his loyalty to the Sikh religion, but his student years changed all that. He was captivated by the aristocratic lifestyle he observed at King's and, before long, he started smoking and drinking alcohol. He learned to eat with knife and fork, visited the theaters and dance halls, and wore expensive Western clothes. Most shocking to his friends and family, he also cut off his long hair - the outward mark of his religion. "I became an atheist," he said, "a socialist and a free thinker." Yet there was still a deep emptiness in his heart that haunted him. Eventually, despairing of his new lifestyle and his dark view of life, he began a search for inner peace.
An Awesome Power
By 1928 Singh had occasion to travel to Canada, and during the transatlantic passage he noticed a small sign announcing the Christian service held in the ship's main dining salon. This captured his interest. Curious to know what Christians do in worship, he entered the room and sat down on a back bench. He had never read the Bible or participated in any Christian service. He had never heard about salvation through Jesus Christ. But when he knelt with the others for prayer, he felt an awesome power lifting him up. "I was trembling," he wrote later. "I felt a divine power entering into me. Joy flooded my soul. Unknown to me, I was repeating the name of Jesus again and again. I felt great peace." he said. Thus, a once proud Sikh was won to Christ.
From that day on, Singh was known to spend hours reading the Bible - as much as 14 hours at a stretch. His former desire to read popular magazines, newspapers, and novels was replaced with a passion to know the Bible and to plumb its depths. He was baptized on February 4, 1932 in Vancouver, Canada, and immediately began sharing his testimony with those around him. As he matured in his faith and his understanding of the word, he felt called to full-time ministry, and began studying seriously to that end.
When Bakht Singh returned home to India as a Christian, on April 6, 1933, his parents met him at the Port of Bombay. Reluctantly, they accepted the idea of his conversion, but they urged him, at all costs, to keep his newfound beliefs a secret. But Singh refused to comply and, from that moment, his family deserted him. Suddenly homeless and driven by his passion for Christ, he began to preach on the streets of Bombay. Before long he was preaching to large crowds and holding revivals throughout the country. Crowds thronged to hear him. He was a powerful and winsome speaker, and the passion in his words attracted tens of thousands to hear about Jesus Christ. And his sermons were always followed by signs and wonders.
A Dynamic Witness
Singh's biographer and co-worker with him for over 50 years, Dr. T. E. Koshy, who was chaplain at Syracuse University, says, "The early years of his ministry were marked with signs and wonders. People fell to the ground crying for mercy." Dr. Ravi Zacharias, the most prominent Indian-born Christian teacher and apologist of our day, says, "I was a young Christian when I heard of Bakht Singh. His impact for Christ in India and worldwide has been immense."
Bakht Singh's preaching impacted the religious landscape of Hindu-Muslim India as no Christian teacher had ever done. People from all walks of life flocked to hear him. He eventually went on to plant thousands of churches all over the sub-continent and many other parts of the world.
The great British church historian, J Edwin Orr, said of him, "Brother Bakht Singh is an Indian equivalent of the greater Western evangelists, as skillful as Finney and as direct as Moody. He is a first-class Bible teacher of the order of Campbell Morgan or Graham Scroggie." American author Dave Hunt writes, "The arrival of Bakht Singh turned the churches of Madras upside down. Crowds gathered in the open air to hear this man of God. Many seriously ill were healed when he prayed for them. The deaf and dumb began to hear and speak."
"Singh's role in the 1937 revival that swept the Martinbur United Presbyterian Church inaugurated one of the most notable movements in the history of the church in the Indian subcontinent," notes Jonathan Bonk, in the Biographical Dictionary of Christian Missions. But Singh did more than preach the salvation. He launched the indigenous church-planting movement that was so essential to the rise of Christianity in India, contextualizing the gospel to the local culture. Eventually he saw the formation of more than 10,000 "houses of worship," and he traveled the world, setting up churches in Australia, France, America, and England, as well as Pakistan.
In Total Dependence
Another missionary, statesman, author, and teacher, Norman Grubb, said of him: "What impressed me most on my Asian visit was my eight days with Bakht Singh of India and his co-workers and congregations. Here was to me a sample of the coming church of Christ ... In all my missionary experience I think these churches on their New Testament foundations are the nearest I have seen to a replica of the early church and a pattern for the birth and growth of the young churches in all the countries which we used to talk about as mission fields."
Singh was a friend to leaders such as Billy Graham, Francis Schaeffer, Dr. Martin Lloyd-Jones, Jerry Falwell, and John Stott, to name only a few.
"Singh taught total dependence on God and urged people to get their own Bibles and study them. He was known to read the Bible on his knees," says David Adimoolam, who was for many years a member of the assembly organized by Bakht Singh. "He was strict yet gentle," he says. "Those were days when we felt the glory of God coming down. Singh was a man of prayer. He emphasized the importance of the word."
At his death in the Central Indian town of Hyderabad, his ministry headquarters, on September 16, 2000, at age 97, Christians worldwide commemorated the life of this man of God. An estimated 600,000 mourners attended the funeral. Some also reported that a mild tremor had hit the city a few hours before his death. And on the day of the funeral, the entire city witnessed a rare phenomenon - a rainbow over the sun as flocks of doves flew above the funeral procession. Coincidence or not, many took these events as a sign.
Today, as India is undergoing a new wave of attacks on Christian and their churches, there is good reason for alarm. The international community has been slow in responding, but the resolve of the church has only increased. Persecution, though terrible, cannot stop the progress of the Word of God, and the passion of Indian believers today, including those in the churches organized by Bakht Singh, are armed with conviction and a profound resolve to overcome and endure. And for those who knew him, the memory of the great evangelist, Bakht Singh, is an ongoing reminder of what God can yet accomplish through those who are wholly devoted to Him.
Reuben David holds a Master of Science degree in Journalism from Bangalore University and is currently a graduate student at Regent University. He is a visiting scholar at The Wilberforce Forum, a division of Prison Fellowship in Washington, DC.
Source : http://www.urbana.org/arti
Publication: International Bulletin of Missionary Research
Date: 01-OCT-05
Author: Dann, Robert Bernard
COPYRIGHT 2005 Overseas Ministries Study Center
In the spring of 1834, as he neared the end of his first tour of Protestant missions in India, Anthony Norris Groves (1795-1853) declared, "My earnest desire is to re-model the whole plan of missionary operations so as to bring them to the simple standard of God's word." (1) How might we interpret such a declaration? Was it presumptuous, subversive, or simply naive? Or was it the first deliberate expression of a primitivist and biblicist strategy that would prove to be of enormous significance to the future history of Protestant overseas mission? Opinions are likely to differ as widely in our day as they did in his.
Brief Biography
Born in 1795 in southern England at Newton Valence, Hampshire, Groves completed his secondary education in Fulham, near London. After training as a dentist, he set up practice in Plymouth and later in Exeter. In 1816, at the age of twenty-one, he first professed himself "a disciple of Christ," a typical middleclass convert to evangelical High Church Anglicanism. In the same year, Groves married his cousin Mary Bethia Thompson, but soon found his growing desire to serve overseas with the Church Missionary Society (CMS) thwarted by Mary's determined resistance. Eight years later, after contact with Anglicans and Nonconformists of a more Calvinistic persuasion, Norris Groves gained a fuller assurance of his personal salvation. About the same time, Mary also responded to Calvinistic influences and began to support not only his philanthropic activities but also his missionary interests. (2)
While engaged in dental practice, Groves became convinced from his reading of the New Testament that Jesus intended his disciples in every age to take literally the instructions given in the Sermon on the Mount. The result was a small booklet published in 1825 with the title Christian Devotedness, in which he encouraged his fellow believers to give away their savings and possessions, and assist in proclaiming the Gospel throughout the world. The message in this booklet typified Groves's lifelong desire "to read the word of God with a single view to know his will" (3) and to follow, in the most literal fashion, the teaching and the example of Jesus and the apostles as recorded in the New Testament.
Embarking on a course of theological study in 1826 with a view to ordination in the Church of England and service with the CMS in the Middle East, Groves traveled to Ireland every three months to take examinations at Trinity College, Dublin. In the course of these visits, he was invited to drawing room meetings for prayer and Bible study that were attended by Christians of both Establishment and Dissent. (4) He was impressed by his first experience of Christian fellowship transcending denominational barriers, and in the spring of 1827 he proposed going one step further. Denying the necessity for an ordained minister to administer the sacraments, he suggested that, according to Scripture, "believers, meeting together as disciples of Christ, were free to break bread together as their Lord had admonished them; and that, in as far as the practice of the apostles could be a guide, every Lord's Day should be set apart for thus remembering the Lord's death, and obeying His parting command." (5) A small circle of friends began to meet regularly for this purpose.
A few months later, finding on pacifist grounds that he could no longer accept the Thirty-nine Articles of the Church of England and Ireland, (6) Groves withdrew from Trinity College and abandoned his plans for ordination. In the spring of the following year (1828), he severed his connection with the CMS, and shortly afterward he requested adult baptism.
Unconnected with any church denomination or missionary society, Norris and Mary Groves, with their sons, Henry and Frank, set off for Baghdad in June 1829. Traveling through St. Petersburg, Russia, they arrived six months later in Baghdad. There they launched what could be considered the first Protestant mission to Muslims in the Arab world. They were assisted for a year by Karl Gottlieb Pfander of the Basel Mission, whose book Mizan al-Haqq (The Balance of Truth) subsequently became a classic in the field of Christian-Muslim apologetics. Also with them, serving as a tutor to the boys, was John Kitto, who later wrote a series of scholarly works elucidating aspects of Eastern culture for English readers of the Bible. In April 1830 Groves and Pfander started a small elementary school, in which the idea of vernacular literacy was introduced using colloquial Bible translations as reading texts for both boys and girls.
A year after their arrival in Baghdad, civil war broke out, and the city entered upon two years of devastation through siege, famine, warfare, floods, cholera, plague, and typhoid, during which two-thirds of its inhabitants were killed by disease, and two-thirds of its houses were swept away by floods. Among the dead was Groves's wife Mary. After many delays and anxieties he was joined in Baghdad by a small party from Dublin including John Vesey Parnell, Edward Cronin, and Francis W. Newman (younger brother of the cardinal John Henry). The team opened a medical clinic and resumed their evangelistic efforts, but without seeing any great encouragement.
In 1833 Groves left Baghdad to investigate the possibilities for ministry in India, and the following year the Baghdad venture was abandoned.
In India Groves intended to visit missions associated with a wide range of Protestant agencies and denominations throughout the subcontinent. Traveling in short stages from Bombay to Calcutta via Ceylon, he generally met with a warm welcome and found opportunities to share his distinctive ecclesiological and eschatological (premillennialist) ideas with missionaries and other expatriates. In the far south, at Tinnevelly, he attempted to intervene in a dispute between the CMS and some of its own German agents, led by the Lutheran K. T. Rhenius, who protested the curtailing of their right to ordain Indian catechists in deference to the Anglican bishop in Calcutta.
After remarriage, to Harriet Baynes, and a brief recruiting campaign in Britain and Switzerland, Groves returned to Madras in 1835 with a fresh team of missionaries. (7) Somewhat to his surprise, he encountered opposition to his unconventional views and to his support of Rhenius against the CMS, and his opportunities for pastoral ministry and Bible teaching in English became severely reduced. A Christian farm settlement that he then established at Chittoor suffered serious financial reverses, which largely clouded his later years. In 1853 he died at the age of fifty-eight in Bristol, England, at the home of his sister Mary and her husband George Muller.
Although he considered his own missionary career a failure, Groves lived long enough to witness the success of his most promising Indian disciple, John Christian Arulappan, who created an expanding network of indigenous Christian fellowships in the Madurai district of Tamil Nadu. Following Groves's distinctive missiological principles, this indigenous work might be considered the truest fulfillment of his vision in his own lifetime.
A Radical Ecclesiologist
In seceding from the Anglican Communion, Groves was following a path marked out by others of his generation. He differed from them, however, in his choice neither to attach himself to another denomination nor to launch a denomination of his own, but rather to adopt a deliberately nondenominational stance. He attributed the tensions and divisions between contemporary Christians to church customs and requirements not found in the New Testament. As he himself expressed it, "My full persuasion is that, inasmuch as any one glories either in being of the Church of England, Scotland, Baptist, Independent, Wesleyan, etc., his glory is his shame.... For as the apostle said, were any of them crucified for you? The only legitimate ground for glorying is that we are among the ransomed of the Lord by his grace." (8)
Groves's ecclesiology was essentially pietistic, based upon the simple principle of the individual believer seeking to please Christ and encouraging others to do the same. With little interest in buildings, services, finances, organization, training, or ceremony, he desired to rediscover, from the New Testament itself, the original "apostolic" principles of Christian ministry, unity, and influence. As a principle of ministry, he urged the liberty of any Christian man to teach the Bible and of all members of the spiritual body to exercise the spiritual gifts entrusted to them, recognizing no distinction between clergy and laity. Regarding unity, he considered the essential oneness of Christians to be spiritual rather than organizational, insisting that a true church should be neither an arm of the state nor a voluntary society with limited membership. Concerning influence, he believed that personal benefit would extend to others from God's spiritual blessing on a Christlike life, rather than through the acquisition of social prominence or political power.
In several controversial articles and booklets, as well as in his personal journals, Groves applied these principles to the circumstances of his day. In particular, he urged Protestant Christians to cooperate, without reference to church or denomination, in any spiritual activity that did not require them to act against their own conscience. He encouraged personal holiness through a willing response to progressively increasing "light." He hoped, at least initially, for a restoration of miraculous gifts, especially for a gift of tongues to facilitate gospel preaching to other peoples. He proposed a simple form of dispensationalism, liberating the church from the necessity to observe the law of Moses while requiring it to follow the instructions of Christ. He urged sacrificial Christian stewardship, a literal offering of oneself and all of one's material resources for the benefit of others. In fact, he considered his frugal practice of "living by faith," in constant dependence on the written promises and active providence of God, to be the happiest and wisest course for every Christian. He affirmed, "So intensely am I convinced of this truth that I can with my whole heart pray for myself and all who are nearest and dearest to me that we be so circumstanced in life as to be compelled to live by faith on the divine promises day by day." (9)
Ecclesiological Influence
It can hardly be disputed that Groves's ideas were radical. The bitter opposition they aroused, especially from Anglicans of the expatriate community in India, demonstrates the extent to which they were unconventional and largely unwelcome to the majority of Christians around him.
They came, nevertheless, at a time when the "romantic" and the "primitive" were newly fashionable. (10) The publication of Christian Devotedness in 1825, followed in 1827 by Groves's suggestion that unordained Christians of diverse denominations might partake together of the Lord's Supper, and then his own resolve in 1829 to launch a mission to Baghdad "by faith," without the support of a recognized church or missionary society, certainly challenged and enthused his circle of personal friends. Some of these friends soon became leading figures in the Brethren movement, which itself would prove to be a phenomenon of great significance to British evangelicalism of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. (11)
It could be argued that, once Groves himself had left Britain, the Brethren movement developed without significant personal input from him and in directions of which he strongly disapproved. Correspondence between India and Britain, however, enabled him to remain in fairly close touch with major leaders of the movement in Devonshire and London, particularly with his friends and former colleagues John Parnell (Lord Congleton), Henry Craik, Robert Chapman, and John and Robert Howard. His closest tie was with his brother-in-law George Muller, whose influence in open Brethren circles was second to none. (12) The views expressed by these men substantially coincide with those offered by Groves in his published writings, copies of which he would certainly have sent to them, and they had opportunities to discuss matters with him personally during his three brief visits to England (1835-36,1848-49, and 1852-53). Muller's own initial decision to live "by faith" without financial appeals or debts, and then to provide for his orphans "simply through prayer and faith," (13) may be traced back to 1829, when he read Groves's Christian Devotedness and experienced what he described as a "second conversion." As Muller himself recalled, "The Lord most mercifully enabled me to take the promises of his word and rest upon them.... In addition to this, the example of brother Groves, the dentist ... who gave up his profession and went out as a missionary, was a great encouragement to me. For the news which by this time had arrived of how the Lord had aided him on his way to Petersburg, and at Petersburg, strengthened my faith." (14)
Additional aspects of Groves's radical ecclesiology found a place in the Brethren movement, and through Brethren influence spread far beyond it. His emphasis on liberty of ministry, active participation in the body, unsalaried plural leadership, and spiritual unity and cooperation, as well as his concepts of sacrificial stewardship, holiness, "light," faith, and obedience, all became characteristic of the open wing of the movement and eventually found their way, especially through the university Christian Unions, into wider evangelical circles. With this in mind, we may consider Groves a significant contributor to primitivist trends in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Protestantism in the United Kingdom.
A Radical Missiologist
It was in India, however, that Groves spent most of his adult life and where we see the fullest practical outworking of his ecclesiology in a cross-cultural context.
He observed affluent missionaries amid poverty, foreign denominations competing for Indian converts, and missionary societies preoccupied with issues of authority, property, and finance. He suggested, "It must be obvious to all, if the native churches be not strengthened by learning to lean on the Lord instead of man, the political changes of an hour may sweep away the present form of things, so far as it depends on Europeans, and leave not a trace behind." (15) He wished to simplify the missionary task of the church, believing that conversion to Christ should be quite possible without any provision for authority, property, or finance. With no organization to oversee, no buildings to maintain, and no salaries to pay, his emphasis lay in the freedom of local converts to meet together without foreign supervision and to preach the Gospel to their own people without being trained, authorized, or paid to do so.
Groves elaborated these thoughts in his journals and especially in his "Letter on Missions to the Heathen," published in 1840, where he suggested that "the work societies endeavour to accomplish can be done better, because more scripturally, by the Church herself." (16) He proposed the sending of evangelists by local congregations to plant other local congregations, the liberty of indigenous Christians to take responsibility without reference to foreign organizations, the freedom of missionaries and Indian Christians to seek guidance and provision directly from God, the development of local leadership in the course of active Christian service, and the partnership of industrialist and evangelist in frugal living "by faith" for the extension of the Gospel. (17)
Fourteen years later, Henry Venn and Rufus Anderson would propose their "three-self" scheme for congregations to become self-governing, self-supporting, and self-propagating, along with their concept of the foreign mission as a scaffolding that must remain until the national church has been firmly built. But Groves had already foreseen the difficulties that would face mission executives wishing to transfer weighty administrative and financial responsibilities to nationals, and he did so eighty years before Roland Allen drew our attention to the problem. (18)
Whereas Venn envisaged the creation by one institution (a foreign mission) of another institution (a national church), Groves made no distinction between mission and church. And rather than projecting an eventual shift from foreign government, support, and propagation to self-government, support, and propagation, Groves would start with no organized government, support, or propagation at all, expecting these to develop naturally as local believers helped one another develop their own abilities and ministries after the fashion described in the New Testament.
Missiological Influence
In 1985 Groves was described as "a neglected missiologist," (19) and twenty years later the neglect persists. During his own lifetime he suffered considerable prejudice and misrepresentation from Protestant Christians, which no doubt restricted the extent of his influence both in his own day and later. Nevertheless, his primitivist and pietist principles eventually found their way into circles that made great use of them. In the process, they were developed and adapted, sometimes almost beyond recognition, yet credit should be given to Groves himself for introducing ideas that stimulated the breaking of traditional denominational molds and the birth of a new generation of missions following what have been called "faith principles."
Groves's eldest son, Henry, having survived his early experiences in Baghdad and India, in 1872 became one of the founding editors of the magazine Echoes of Service, which facilitated prayer and financial support for Brethren missionaries from the British Isles. Brethren have since planted assemblies with a quasi-primitivist ethos in more than a hundred different nations, (20) and there are now approximately 2.5 million Christians worldwide identifying themselves as Brethren. (21)
Groves's influence was equally significant to the founders of the great interdenominational "faith missions." All of these were inspired by Hudson Taylor, whose "faith principles" can be traced back to George Muller and, through him, to Groves. These three men moved in the same circles. Indeed, in the early years of Hudson Taylor's China Inland Mission, its financial support came almost entirely from personal friends of Groves. (22)
In fact, Groves's idea of using the New Testament as a practical manual of missionary methods was taken up with greatest effect not by Western missionaries but by indigenous Christian leaders. We might think in particular of Bakht Singh in India (whose closest colleagues were great-grandsons of Groves's disciple Arulappan), (23) Watchman Nee in China (who mentions Groves and the Brethren as an early influence), (24) and John Arulappan himself.
Groves encouraged young Indian Christians to ignore Western church tradition and to follow, as closely as possible, the teaching and practice of Christ and his apostles, which he saw as a divinely inspired model applicable to every generation and every culture. In 1840 he confided, "The fact that our position here puts pastoral work and fellowship on a simple Christian footing among the natives is by no means the least important feature of our work. Until we came, no one but an ordained native was allowed to celebrate the Lord's Supper or to baptize; and when our Christian brethren Arulappan and Andrew partook of the Lord's Supper with the native Christians it caused more stir and enquiry than you can imagine. The constant reference to God's word has brought and is bringing the questions connected with ministry and church government into a perfectly new position in the minds of many." (25)
Shortly afterward, Arulappan moved to Madurai, where, with Groves's blessing, he initiated a rapidly growing network of entirely indigenous fellowships. He encouraged self-supporting Indian evangelists to travel widely, preaching the Gospel, initiating informal meetings, and stimulating the emergence of local leadership. By 1853 congregations had been established in sixteen places, comprising nearly 200 believers. By 1856 there were twenty-five villages with 300 believers in total; and in 1859, thirty-three villages and 800 believers. (26) In August 1860 the Anglican Church Missionary Intelligencer declared, "It is indeed a new era in Indian missions--that of lay converts going forth, without purse or scrip, to preach the gospel of Christ to their fellow-countrymen, and that with a zeal and life we had hardly thought them capable of." Here, the writer believed, was "the first entirely indigenous effort of the native church at self-extension." (27)
Groves in the History of Missiological Thought
Lesslie Newbigin has identified three basic elements, as three corners of a triangle, that in varying proportions combine to determine the basic strategy adopted by any missionary or missiologist. They are foreign church custom, local culture, and New Testament principle and practice. The third of these "corners" is obviously the one that interested Groves. Indeed, we might identify him as the first major primitivist or biblicist among mission strategists.
Newbigin suggests that, in general, this third "corner" will be valued more highly by indigenous Christians than by the agents of Western missionary societies. He comments, "The Bible has operated as an independent source of criticism directed both against the Christianity of the missionaries and against the traditional culture of the tribe." (28) It was this use of the Bible by the Indians themselves that Groves encouraged, and which equipped them to act on their own initiative without waiting for foreign tuition, authorization, or finance.
Like Groves himself, primitivists such as Arulappan, Nee, and Singh have taken to its logical conclusion the evangelical belief that the New Testament is inspired, authoritative, and rightfully endowed with a status above foreign church custom and local culture. For these indigenous leaders, the New Testament represents genuine Christianity, untainted by either Western or Eastern accretions. Bakht Singh's approach, as described by his biographer, is typical: "He did not compromise the Word of God with Indian culture, customs or the traditions of men. He vehemently taught against any culture or custom that was contrary to, or in conflict with, the Word of God. 'What we needed in the Body of Christ was not Western or Eastern culture but Biblical culture,' he emphasized." (29)
Though generally neglected by missiologists, these primitivist movements arguably achieved more, in a shorter space of time, than contemporaneous Protestant missions following different principles. With evidence that their indigenous leaders were both directly and indirectly influenced by Anthony Norris Groves, we may consider his legacy a substantial one.
Selected Bibliography Works by Anthony Norris Groves
Except where noted, the following items by Groves are found in the Christian Brethren Archive, John Rylands Univ. Library of Manchester, Eng.
1825 Christian Devotedness. London: J. Hatchard & Son. 2d ed., London: James Nisbet, 1829. Reprint, Belfast: Raven Publishing Company, n.d.; Kansas City: Walterick, n.d.; Oak Park, Ill.: Midwest Christian Publishers, n.d. The second edition is available online at http:// web.ukonline.co.uk/d.hasla
Date: 01-OCT-05
Author: Dann, Robert Bernard
COPYRIGHT 2005 Overseas Ministries Study Center
In the spring of 1834, as he neared the end of his first tour of Protestant missions in India, Anthony Norris Groves (1795-1853) declared, "My earnest desire is to re-model the whole plan of missionary operations so as to bring them to the simple standard of God's word." (1) How might we interpret such a declaration? Was it presumptuous, subversive, or simply naive? Or was it the first deliberate expression of a primitivist and biblicist strategy that would prove to be of enormous significance to the future history of Protestant overseas mission? Opinions are likely to differ as widely in our day as they did in his.
Brief Biography
Born in 1795 in southern England at Newton Valence, Hampshire, Groves completed his secondary education in Fulham, near London. After training as a dentist, he set up practice in Plymouth and later in Exeter. In 1816, at the age of twenty-one, he first professed himself "a disciple of Christ," a typical middleclass convert to evangelical High Church Anglicanism. In the same year, Groves married his cousin Mary Bethia Thompson, but soon found his growing desire to serve overseas with the Church Missionary Society (CMS) thwarted by Mary's determined resistance. Eight years later, after contact with Anglicans and Nonconformists of a more Calvinistic persuasion, Norris Groves gained a fuller assurance of his personal salvation. About the same time, Mary also responded to Calvinistic influences and began to support not only his philanthropic activities but also his missionary interests. (2)
While engaged in dental practice, Groves became convinced from his reading of the New Testament that Jesus intended his disciples in every age to take literally the instructions given in the Sermon on the Mount. The result was a small booklet published in 1825 with the title Christian Devotedness, in which he encouraged his fellow believers to give away their savings and possessions, and assist in proclaiming the Gospel throughout the world. The message in this booklet typified Groves's lifelong desire "to read the word of God with a single view to know his will" (3) and to follow, in the most literal fashion, the teaching and the example of Jesus and the apostles as recorded in the New Testament.
Embarking on a course of theological study in 1826 with a view to ordination in the Church of England and service with the CMS in the Middle East, Groves traveled to Ireland every three months to take examinations at Trinity College, Dublin. In the course of these visits, he was invited to drawing room meetings for prayer and Bible study that were attended by Christians of both Establishment and Dissent. (4) He was impressed by his first experience of Christian fellowship transcending denominational barriers, and in the spring of 1827 he proposed going one step further. Denying the necessity for an ordained minister to administer the sacraments, he suggested that, according to Scripture, "believers, meeting together as disciples of Christ, were free to break bread together as their Lord had admonished them; and that, in as far as the practice of the apostles could be a guide, every Lord's Day should be set apart for thus remembering the Lord's death, and obeying His parting command." (5) A small circle of friends began to meet regularly for this purpose.
A few months later, finding on pacifist grounds that he could no longer accept the Thirty-nine Articles of the Church of England and Ireland, (6) Groves withdrew from Trinity College and abandoned his plans for ordination. In the spring of the following year (1828), he severed his connection with the CMS, and shortly afterward he requested adult baptism.
Unconnected with any church denomination or missionary society, Norris and Mary Groves, with their sons, Henry and Frank, set off for Baghdad in June 1829. Traveling through St. Petersburg, Russia, they arrived six months later in Baghdad. There they launched what could be considered the first Protestant mission to Muslims in the Arab world. They were assisted for a year by Karl Gottlieb Pfander of the Basel Mission, whose book Mizan al-Haqq (The Balance of Truth) subsequently became a classic in the field of Christian-Muslim apologetics. Also with them, serving as a tutor to the boys, was John Kitto, who later wrote a series of scholarly works elucidating aspects of Eastern culture for English readers of the Bible. In April 1830 Groves and Pfander started a small elementary school, in which the idea of vernacular literacy was introduced using colloquial Bible translations as reading texts for both boys and girls.
A year after their arrival in Baghdad, civil war broke out, and the city entered upon two years of devastation through siege, famine, warfare, floods, cholera, plague, and typhoid, during which two-thirds of its inhabitants were killed by disease, and two-thirds of its houses were swept away by floods. Among the dead was Groves's wife Mary. After many delays and anxieties he was joined in Baghdad by a small party from Dublin including John Vesey Parnell, Edward Cronin, and Francis W. Newman (younger brother of the cardinal John Henry). The team opened a medical clinic and resumed their evangelistic efforts, but without seeing any great encouragement.
In 1833 Groves left Baghdad to investigate the possibilities for ministry in India, and the following year the Baghdad venture was abandoned.
In India Groves intended to visit missions associated with a wide range of Protestant agencies and denominations throughout the subcontinent. Traveling in short stages from Bombay to Calcutta via Ceylon, he generally met with a warm welcome and found opportunities to share his distinctive ecclesiological and eschatological (premillennialist) ideas with missionaries and other expatriates. In the far south, at Tinnevelly, he attempted to intervene in a dispute between the CMS and some of its own German agents, led by the Lutheran K. T. Rhenius, who protested the curtailing of their right to ordain Indian catechists in deference to the Anglican bishop in Calcutta.
After remarriage, to Harriet Baynes, and a brief recruiting campaign in Britain and Switzerland, Groves returned to Madras in 1835 with a fresh team of missionaries. (7) Somewhat to his surprise, he encountered opposition to his unconventional views and to his support of Rhenius against the CMS, and his opportunities for pastoral ministry and Bible teaching in English became severely reduced. A Christian farm settlement that he then established at Chittoor suffered serious financial reverses, which largely clouded his later years. In 1853 he died at the age of fifty-eight in Bristol, England, at the home of his sister Mary and her husband George Muller.
Although he considered his own missionary career a failure, Groves lived long enough to witness the success of his most promising Indian disciple, John Christian Arulappan, who created an expanding network of indigenous Christian fellowships in the Madurai district of Tamil Nadu. Following Groves's distinctive missiological principles, this indigenous work might be considered the truest fulfillment of his vision in his own lifetime.
A Radical Ecclesiologist
In seceding from the Anglican Communion, Groves was following a path marked out by others of his generation. He differed from them, however, in his choice neither to attach himself to another denomination nor to launch a denomination of his own, but rather to adopt a deliberately nondenominational stance. He attributed the tensions and divisions between contemporary Christians to church customs and requirements not found in the New Testament. As he himself expressed it, "My full persuasion is that, inasmuch as any one glories either in being of the Church of England, Scotland, Baptist, Independent, Wesleyan, etc., his glory is his shame.... For as the apostle said, were any of them crucified for you? The only legitimate ground for glorying is that we are among the ransomed of the Lord by his grace." (8)
Groves's ecclesiology was essentially pietistic, based upon the simple principle of the individual believer seeking to please Christ and encouraging others to do the same. With little interest in buildings, services, finances, organization, training, or ceremony, he desired to rediscover, from the New Testament itself, the original "apostolic" principles of Christian ministry, unity, and influence. As a principle of ministry, he urged the liberty of any Christian man to teach the Bible and of all members of the spiritual body to exercise the spiritual gifts entrusted to them, recognizing no distinction between clergy and laity. Regarding unity, he considered the essential oneness of Christians to be spiritual rather than organizational, insisting that a true church should be neither an arm of the state nor a voluntary society with limited membership. Concerning influence, he believed that personal benefit would extend to others from God's spiritual blessing on a Christlike life, rather than through the acquisition of social prominence or political power.
In several controversial articles and booklets, as well as in his personal journals, Groves applied these principles to the circumstances of his day. In particular, he urged Protestant Christians to cooperate, without reference to church or denomination, in any spiritual activity that did not require them to act against their own conscience. He encouraged personal holiness through a willing response to progressively increasing "light." He hoped, at least initially, for a restoration of miraculous gifts, especially for a gift of tongues to facilitate gospel preaching to other peoples. He proposed a simple form of dispensationalism, liberating the church from the necessity to observe the law of Moses while requiring it to follow the instructions of Christ. He urged sacrificial Christian stewardship, a literal offering of oneself and all of one's material resources for the benefit of others. In fact, he considered his frugal practice of "living by faith," in constant dependence on the written promises and active providence of God, to be the happiest and wisest course for every Christian. He affirmed, "So intensely am I convinced of this truth that I can with my whole heart pray for myself and all who are nearest and dearest to me that we be so circumstanced in life as to be compelled to live by faith on the divine promises day by day." (9)
Ecclesiological Influence
It can hardly be disputed that Groves's ideas were radical. The bitter opposition they aroused, especially from Anglicans of the expatriate community in India, demonstrates the extent to which they were unconventional and largely unwelcome to the majority of Christians around him.
They came, nevertheless, at a time when the "romantic" and the "primitive" were newly fashionable. (10) The publication of Christian Devotedness in 1825, followed in 1827 by Groves's suggestion that unordained Christians of diverse denominations might partake together of the Lord's Supper, and then his own resolve in 1829 to launch a mission to Baghdad "by faith," without the support of a recognized church or missionary society, certainly challenged and enthused his circle of personal friends. Some of these friends soon became leading figures in the Brethren movement, which itself would prove to be a phenomenon of great significance to British evangelicalism of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. (11)
It could be argued that, once Groves himself had left Britain, the Brethren movement developed without significant personal input from him and in directions of which he strongly disapproved. Correspondence between India and Britain, however, enabled him to remain in fairly close touch with major leaders of the movement in Devonshire and London, particularly with his friends and former colleagues John Parnell (Lord Congleton), Henry Craik, Robert Chapman, and John and Robert Howard. His closest tie was with his brother-in-law George Muller, whose influence in open Brethren circles was second to none. (12) The views expressed by these men substantially coincide with those offered by Groves in his published writings, copies of which he would certainly have sent to them, and they had opportunities to discuss matters with him personally during his three brief visits to England (1835-36,1848-49, and 1852-53). Muller's own initial decision to live "by faith" without financial appeals or debts, and then to provide for his orphans "simply through prayer and faith," (13) may be traced back to 1829, when he read Groves's Christian Devotedness and experienced what he described as a "second conversion." As Muller himself recalled, "The Lord most mercifully enabled me to take the promises of his word and rest upon them.... In addition to this, the example of brother Groves, the dentist ... who gave up his profession and went out as a missionary, was a great encouragement to me. For the news which by this time had arrived of how the Lord had aided him on his way to Petersburg, and at Petersburg, strengthened my faith." (14)
Additional aspects of Groves's radical ecclesiology found a place in the Brethren movement, and through Brethren influence spread far beyond it. His emphasis on liberty of ministry, active participation in the body, unsalaried plural leadership, and spiritual unity and cooperation, as well as his concepts of sacrificial stewardship, holiness, "light," faith, and obedience, all became characteristic of the open wing of the movement and eventually found their way, especially through the university Christian Unions, into wider evangelical circles. With this in mind, we may consider Groves a significant contributor to primitivist trends in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Protestantism in the United Kingdom.
A Radical Missiologist
It was in India, however, that Groves spent most of his adult life and where we see the fullest practical outworking of his ecclesiology in a cross-cultural context.
He observed affluent missionaries amid poverty, foreign denominations competing for Indian converts, and missionary societies preoccupied with issues of authority, property, and finance. He suggested, "It must be obvious to all, if the native churches be not strengthened by learning to lean on the Lord instead of man, the political changes of an hour may sweep away the present form of things, so far as it depends on Europeans, and leave not a trace behind." (15) He wished to simplify the missionary task of the church, believing that conversion to Christ should be quite possible without any provision for authority, property, or finance. With no organization to oversee, no buildings to maintain, and no salaries to pay, his emphasis lay in the freedom of local converts to meet together without foreign supervision and to preach the Gospel to their own people without being trained, authorized, or paid to do so.
Groves elaborated these thoughts in his journals and especially in his "Letter on Missions to the Heathen," published in 1840, where he suggested that "the work societies endeavour to accomplish can be done better, because more scripturally, by the Church herself." (16) He proposed the sending of evangelists by local congregations to plant other local congregations, the liberty of indigenous Christians to take responsibility without reference to foreign organizations, the freedom of missionaries and Indian Christians to seek guidance and provision directly from God, the development of local leadership in the course of active Christian service, and the partnership of industrialist and evangelist in frugal living "by faith" for the extension of the Gospel. (17)
Fourteen years later, Henry Venn and Rufus Anderson would propose their "three-self" scheme for congregations to become self-governing, self-supporting, and self-propagating, along with their concept of the foreign mission as a scaffolding that must remain until the national church has been firmly built. But Groves had already foreseen the difficulties that would face mission executives wishing to transfer weighty administrative and financial responsibilities to nationals, and he did so eighty years before Roland Allen drew our attention to the problem. (18)
Whereas Venn envisaged the creation by one institution (a foreign mission) of another institution (a national church), Groves made no distinction between mission and church. And rather than projecting an eventual shift from foreign government, support, and propagation to self-government, support, and propagation, Groves would start with no organized government, support, or propagation at all, expecting these to develop naturally as local believers helped one another develop their own abilities and ministries after the fashion described in the New Testament.
Missiological Influence
In 1985 Groves was described as "a neglected missiologist," (19) and twenty years later the neglect persists. During his own lifetime he suffered considerable prejudice and misrepresentation from Protestant Christians, which no doubt restricted the extent of his influence both in his own day and later. Nevertheless, his primitivist and pietist principles eventually found their way into circles that made great use of them. In the process, they were developed and adapted, sometimes almost beyond recognition, yet credit should be given to Groves himself for introducing ideas that stimulated the breaking of traditional denominational molds and the birth of a new generation of missions following what have been called "faith principles."
Groves's eldest son, Henry, having survived his early experiences in Baghdad and India, in 1872 became one of the founding editors of the magazine Echoes of Service, which facilitated prayer and financial support for Brethren missionaries from the British Isles. Brethren have since planted assemblies with a quasi-primitivist ethos in more than a hundred different nations, (20) and there are now approximately 2.5 million Christians worldwide identifying themselves as Brethren. (21)
Groves's influence was equally significant to the founders of the great interdenominational "faith missions." All of these were inspired by Hudson Taylor, whose "faith principles" can be traced back to George Muller and, through him, to Groves. These three men moved in the same circles. Indeed, in the early years of Hudson Taylor's China Inland Mission, its financial support came almost entirely from personal friends of Groves. (22)
In fact, Groves's idea of using the New Testament as a practical manual of missionary methods was taken up with greatest effect not by Western missionaries but by indigenous Christian leaders. We might think in particular of Bakht Singh in India (whose closest colleagues were great-grandsons of Groves's disciple Arulappan), (23) Watchman Nee in China (who mentions Groves and the Brethren as an early influence), (24) and John Arulappan himself.
Groves encouraged young Indian Christians to ignore Western church tradition and to follow, as closely as possible, the teaching and practice of Christ and his apostles, which he saw as a divinely inspired model applicable to every generation and every culture. In 1840 he confided, "The fact that our position here puts pastoral work and fellowship on a simple Christian footing among the natives is by no means the least important feature of our work. Until we came, no one but an ordained native was allowed to celebrate the Lord's Supper or to baptize; and when our Christian brethren Arulappan and Andrew partook of the Lord's Supper with the native Christians it caused more stir and enquiry than you can imagine. The constant reference to God's word has brought and is bringing the questions connected with ministry and church government into a perfectly new position in the minds of many." (25)
Shortly afterward, Arulappan moved to Madurai, where, with Groves's blessing, he initiated a rapidly growing network of entirely indigenous fellowships. He encouraged self-supporting Indian evangelists to travel widely, preaching the Gospel, initiating informal meetings, and stimulating the emergence of local leadership. By 1853 congregations had been established in sixteen places, comprising nearly 200 believers. By 1856 there were twenty-five villages with 300 believers in total; and in 1859, thirty-three villages and 800 believers. (26) In August 1860 the Anglican Church Missionary Intelligencer declared, "It is indeed a new era in Indian missions--that of lay converts going forth, without purse or scrip, to preach the gospel of Christ to their fellow-countrymen, and that with a zeal and life we had hardly thought them capable of." Here, the writer believed, was "the first entirely indigenous effort of the native church at self-extension." (27)
Groves in the History of Missiological Thought
Lesslie Newbigin has identified three basic elements, as three corners of a triangle, that in varying proportions combine to determine the basic strategy adopted by any missionary or missiologist. They are foreign church custom, local culture, and New Testament principle and practice. The third of these "corners" is obviously the one that interested Groves. Indeed, we might identify him as the first major primitivist or biblicist among mission strategists.
Newbigin suggests that, in general, this third "corner" will be valued more highly by indigenous Christians than by the agents of Western missionary societies. He comments, "The Bible has operated as an independent source of criticism directed both against the Christianity of the missionaries and against the traditional culture of the tribe." (28) It was this use of the Bible by the Indians themselves that Groves encouraged, and which equipped them to act on their own initiative without waiting for foreign tuition, authorization, or finance.
Like Groves himself, primitivists such as Arulappan, Nee, and Singh have taken to its logical conclusion the evangelical belief that the New Testament is inspired, authoritative, and rightfully endowed with a status above foreign church custom and local culture. For these indigenous leaders, the New Testament represents genuine Christianity, untainted by either Western or Eastern accretions. Bakht Singh's approach, as described by his biographer, is typical: "He did not compromise the Word of God with Indian culture, customs or the traditions of men. He vehemently taught against any culture or custom that was contrary to, or in conflict with, the Word of God. 'What we needed in the Body of Christ was not Western or Eastern culture but Biblical culture,' he emphasized." (29)
Though generally neglected by missiologists, these primitivist movements arguably achieved more, in a shorter space of time, than contemporaneous Protestant missions following different principles. With evidence that their indigenous leaders were both directly and indirectly influenced by Anthony Norris Groves, we may consider his legacy a substantial one.
Selected Bibliography Works by Anthony Norris Groves
Except where noted, the following items by Groves are found in the Christian Brethren Archive, John Rylands Univ. Library of Manchester, Eng.
1825 Christian Devotedness. London: J. Hatchard & Son. 2d ed., London: James Nisbet, 1829. Reprint, Belfast: Raven Publishing Company, n.d.; Kansas City: Walterick, n.d.; Oak Park, Ill.: Midwest Christian Publishers, n.d. The second edition is available online at http:// web.ukonline.co.uk/d.hasla
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)