Behari Lal Singh and His Vision for Missionary Training
Singh believed that people in different environments had different questions, most of which had not been addressed in the Western church. In fact, his voice as a native of India added weight to Duff’s efforts to present missions as an integral part of the church and to raise consciousness about their concerns. For a long time after this conference, many Scottish missionaries continued to uphold Duff’s and Singh’s vision.
Only one representative from Asia appeared in 1860 at the overwhelmingly British Conference on Missions in Liverpool. It was Behari Lal Singh, who had become a Christian under the guidance of the Scottish missionary Alexander Duff. By then, Singh had been serving in the Scottish Reformed Church for almost twenty years.
While grateful for all the service and sacrifices of foreign missionaries in India, Singh humbly submitted his suggestion that they should give more room and better training to Indian converts, allowing them to evangelize their own country.
He gave the example of translations. Until then, he said, “the plan of translating the Bible had been conducted as though foreign missionaries were the only successful or competent translators.” Wasn’t it time for the foreigners who had so commendably “expended their time, strength, talents, and accomplishments in the work of translation” to spend now “their time and strength in raising an effective native agency to translate the Bible with far greater purity and precision than it had ever been done before?”[1]
He also suggested that native converts be given better education so they could confidently explain Christianity to learned Hindus and Muslims. At that time, most missionaries were only given a minimal education. Because of the scarcity of workers, most of them didn’t have to attend a seminary or undergo serious studies. The assumption was that they would be speaking to uneducated people in so-called third-world countries.
But missionaries to India often discovered that the common people referred their religious decisions to the highly-educated Brahmins. While the Brahmins represented a small percentage of the population, they were held in high esteem, and few people would venture to embrace Christianity without their approval.
Not everyone at the Liverpool Conference shared Singh’s views. Many thought that higher education was unnecessary and a poor investment of time and money. In case anyone thought that he was moved by personal money interests, he clarified that he taught for free for the first two years in the mission and, “if it would concede to the welfare of the native churches, he was willing to surrender anything.”[2]
Providing high education and reaching the influential classes had already been Duff’s vision from the start. With the help of the Hindu reformer Ram Mohun Roy, Duff had been accepted by the Hindu community and had been able to bring the gospel to many young Brahmins who were dissatisfied with traditional Hinduism. Until then, many of these young people had found a confirmation of their objections in Western atheistic Enlightenment literature. That is, until they understood the radical message of the gospel.
Duff, who was probably the most renowned missionary at that time after William Carey, raised money to endow a missionary chair at New College, Edinburgh to prepare missionaries to face the new questions raised by people who lived in different cultures and environments. The goal was to give missionaries a thorough knowledge of the history, geography, languages, literature, and beliefs of different countries. He served there as the first professor.
Moved by Christian Example
Singh was one of the young men who learned under Duff’s teaching ministry. It was Singh’s father, eager to give his sons a thorough knowledge of the English language, to send Singh and his brother to Duff’s school in Calcutta.
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God’s Grace Draws us to Christ
All of us are in great need of seeing our salvation from God’s perspective. The current trend in the 21st Century in some parts of the visible Church is for the focus to be on being a Christian for temporal gain. However, those who see the truth of their sin and totally lost condition until God saved them will not consider this life to be the focal point of it.
41 Therefore the Jews were grumbling about Him, because He said, “I am the bread that came down out of heaven.” 42 They were saying, “Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How does He now say, ‘I have come down out of heaven’?” 43 Jesus answered and said to them, “Do not grumble among yourselves. 44 No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him; and I will raise him up on the last day. John 6:41-44 (NASB)
One of the aspects of our Christian faith that we lose sight of sometimes, and it gets us in trouble when we do, is how vital it is that we remain totally amazed that we ever got saved at all. We make a huge error when we forget this because that path leads to self-righteousness, self-absorption, and an ungrateful heart towards God. Even though we may not be fully aware that we are in that place of self-focus, we cannot be Spirit-led when we are full of self.
God works in people’s hearts by sovereign grace, taking away their imperviousness to his word, taking away their inability to respond to that word, and changing the disposition of their hearts so that instead of saying “Nonsense” when they hear the word of Christ, they say, “That’s just what I need,” And they come.Are you a Christian? A believer? Then you came to Christ because you found yourself willing, longing, desirous, wanting to, as well as, perhaps, not wanting to but knowing you must. How was that? It was because God worked in your heart to give you this desire. He changed you. It was his irresistible grace that drew you to the Savior’s feet. Praise him for it! It was one expression of his love to you. – From: To All Who Will Come pp 184-185 by J.I. Packer
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Heart Rending
Heart -Rending is divinely wrought and solemnly felt. It is a secret grief which is personally experienced, not in mere form, but as a deep, soul-moving work of the Holy Spirit upon the inmost heart of each believer. It is not a matter to be merely talked of and believed in, but keenly and sensitively felt in every living child of the living God. It is powerfully humiliating, and completely sin-purging; but then it is sweetly preparative for those gracious consolations which proud unhumbled spirits are unable to receive; and it is distinctly discriminating, for it belongs to the elect of God, and to them alone.
13 And rend your heart and not your garments.Now return to the LORD your God,For He is gracious and compassionate,Slow to anger, abounding in lovingkindnessAnd relenting of evil. Joel 2:13 (NASB)
Over the years I written much on this blog about the necessity of repentance in the heart of the believer. First, no one comes to Christ without it and second, no believer grows in Christ without walking in daily repentance. This walk of repentance on a daily basis is actually something we are called to do continually. That is what we do when we obey our Lord in taking up our own cross and follow Him (Luke 9:23) and present ourselves as living sacrifices holy and acceptable to God (Romans 12:1). None of you truly in Christ can say you are blameless in and of yourself. You, like me, are a sinner who is saved by grace through faith as God’s gift. This salvation makes us blameless in God’s eyes, but we still must come continually to the throne of grace to confess our sins (1 John 1:9), which both humbles us and God uses this to grow us in Christlikeness as he forgives and cleanses us from all unrighteousness. As Jesus told Peter on that last Passover before going to the Cross.
8 Peter *said to Him, “Never shall You wash my feet!” Jesus answered him, “If I do not wash you, you have no part with Me.” 9 Simon Peter *said to Him, “Lord, then wash not only my feet, but also my hands and my head.” 10 Jesus *said to him, “He who has bathed needs only to wash his feet, but is completely clean; and you are clean, but not all of you.” 11 For He knew the one who was betraying Him; for this reason He said, “Not all of you are clean.” John 13:8-11 (NASB)
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Pray for the Persecuted
Pray that the Lord would protect our neighbors a world away, especially those of the household of faith (Galatians 6:10). Pray that as God delivered Paul from the sentence of death (2 Corinthians 1:8-10) he would deliver those who have entrusted their souls to him in faith by any means necessary. Pray that the Lord would wondrously convert the wicked (Acts 9:1-7) and if not, that he would restrain or destroy them for the sake of His bride, the church (Psalm 139:19).
I was sitting in Mr. Scott’s 10th grade English class when the principal’s voice crackled over the loudspeaker: “Attention teachers and students, I’ve just received word of a terrible accident at the World Trade Center in New York City.” No doubt, many of you remember where you were on September 11, 2001, when you first heard the dreadful news. In the days and weeks that followed, America and her allies declared war against the al-Qaeda terror network responsible for the attack and the Taliban regime who harbored them in Afghanistan.
Now, 20 years later, our lives are being flooded again with unsettling images of people falling, not from burning buildings but from swarmed airplanes, men in truck beds toting AK-47s, and women and children running for their lives. In the wake of the withdrawal of remaining American troops from Afghanistan, the Taliban surged, retaking cities previously liberated from their barbaric tyranny. In just days, the capital city of Kabul fell and the country has since slipped back beneath the dark waters of fear and oppression. Only this time the Taliban are armed to the teeth with billions of dollars in American weapons left behind in the evacuation.
The situation is dire. Once again, women have been stripped of their humanity and civil rights, being required to veil themselves from head to toe and forbidden from pursuing education, employment, or leaving their homes alone. Once again, girls are being tortured, kidnapped, and sold into sexual slavery. Once again young men and boys are being conscripted into military service at gunpoint. And once again, our Christian brothers and sisters will be forced to choose: renounce Christ and live or confess him and die.
Even after the liberation in 2001, Christianity remained illegal in Afghanistan. But over the past twenty years, thousands have come to faith in Jesus Christ, worshipping secretly in their homes. Now, under the Taliban’s ruthless Sharia Law, conversion from Islam is a capital crime, punishable by death. We are already receiving disturbing reports from Afghan church leaders of soldiers gathering intelligence, checking the roles at local mosques, and going to the homes of suspected Christians. As footage of public beatings and executions surfaces, believers are being encouraged by their leaders to flee the country or remain hidden indoors. Unless the Lord intervenes with a mighty hand, the worst is yet to come for Afghan Christians.
In the face of such evil what can American Christians do? We can pray! Pray for our brothers and sisters in Christ facing persecution around the world knowing that the prayers of the righteous have “great power” in their working (James 5:16), not because the prayers of the righteous are great but because the one who has made them righteous and promised to hear them is great! Pray in light of Hebrews 13:3 “Remember those who are in prison, as though in prison with them, and those who are mistreated since you also are in the body.”
But how should we pray? Pray that the Lord would protect our neighbors a world away, especially those of the household of faith (Galatians 6:10). Pray that as God delivered Paul from the sentence of death (2 Corinthians 1:8-10) he would deliver those who have entrusted their souls to him in faith by any means necessary. Pray that the Lord would wondrously convert the wicked (Acts 9:1-7) and if not, that he would restrain or destroy them for the sake of His bride, the church (Psalm 139:19). Pray that God would pour out the Holy Spirit upon his people to galvanize their faith and give them the right words in the crucial hour (Luke 12:12). Pray that, if God has sovereignly decreed the deaths of Afghan Christians, that they would face their end with courage, clinging to Christ, “rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer dishonor for the name” (Acts 5:41). Pray that the blood of the martyrs would be the seed of a thriving Christian church in Afghanistan and spark a revival around the world. Pray that God would keep us ever mindful of and grateful for the delicate liberties we enjoy as Americans able to worship freely and without fear. Pray that the Lord would expand our capacity to sense the bigness of his kingdom and our union with Christians around the world, especially those facing persecution for the sake of his name. Pray that “in everything God may be glorified through Jesus Christ. To him belong glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen” (1 Peter 4:11).
Pray as those whose own souls depend upon the prayers of another, namely, the Lord Jesus Christ, our Great High Priest, who “ever lives to make intercession” for us (Hebrews 7:25).
Jim McCarthy is a Minister in the Presbyterian Church in America and is Senior Pastor of First PCA in Hattiesburg, Miss.
