Sadhu

Sundar Singh A Biography

The author of the story written by Joshua Daniel
Sadhu Sundar Singh Born 3th September 1889 was an
“ Indian Christian Missionary ”. He is believed to have.
died in the foothills of the ‘Himalaya’ in 1929.

Bron : 3 September 1889. Ludhiyana Punjab.British
India (present day Punjab India).

Died : Unknown (Himalaya).

Education : Anglican college,Lahor Eving Christian
school Ludhiyana Punjab,India.

Congregation Served : Reformers.

Title : “Sadhu”.










 "Why Doesn't the Living God Work amongst Us
Today?"

Now this was the question which haunted my dad in
his early teen-age years. In Sundar Singh God provided
a meaningful answer.

My late father, in his agonised quest to find reality,
power and relevance in today‘s Christianity, was hardly
given any convincing answers by the religious leaders
around him. They failed to show him a faith which
really produced answers. At this rather critical juncture
in his youth, news reached him of one named Sundar
Singh, who

losely resembled Christhjiiiwalk and ‘life; He was
thrilled to hear of his amazing conversion and of the
mighty works God was doing in Sundar Singh‘s
lifg‘Sensing that here was one who really walked with
god, he was greatly

stirred! W ' '

Next he longed to meet Sundar Sin in person. At that
time. my dad who was about seventeen years old, had
himself been converted a little earlierLHe had neither
the finance act the possibility ofJiiidenakin& a lqng
Journey, from the Southern town of Kakinada where
he was a student, to the Punjab in the North of India,
to meet this wonderful a'nd eclectic person. Thus my
dad prayed, 'Lond, bring this servant of'Yours to my
place.“ The Lorq

?_rgught Sundar Singh to Kakinada thhin six months.
My dad was even then lcaming a life of prayer. With
singlemmdedness in this qui

It happened this way. One day he heard that Sundar
Singh was going to visit his place. His excitement and
joy at the prospect of meeting this great man of God
was unbounded. Such was his earnestness, zeal and
practical turn of mind that he wanted all of his friends
and class-mates to hear Sundar Singh.§ome of them
were proudjnd indifferent, and dc5pised anything that
had to do with the ‘Christtan' religion, such as the son
which they saw around them He even besought some
01‘ them uponhis knees. to go and hear Sundar Singh.
Many of them did. Sundar Sing 's words made a
pmfound impression upon them all. One of them said
to my dad. soon after having a meeting with Sundar
Singh "Daniel, l can neve_r be the same again: i am a
Christian from this day" He tumed to Christ from
Hinduism and during his long life of nearly ninety years.
he remained steadfast and faithful to the Lord Jesus.
Not many from his 'caste‘, who held themselves in tony
isolation had ever tamed to Christ in those parts)

My late dad himself was given an interview with
Sundar Smgh. Sensing that this young disciple was no
mere eccentric moved by idle curiosity, Sundar Singh
invited him to stay and eat with him in the next place
to which he was going. Thus he accompanied Sundar
Singh and lived With him for a while. though he very
firmly and politely declined the invitation to dine with
him, simply because he felt that he was not wonhy to
sit at the same table with Sundar Singh.

When my dad told Sundar Singh of his longing to go to
Tibet with him and to become a martyr for Christ, this
man of God clearly indicated to my dad that God would
not have him go to Tibet together with him. lt was my
father's longing as a young man to become a malty! for
Christ. As, in Tibet, preaching the Gospel carried the
death penalty. that was where my dad wished to go
and preach. Fmthermore,§undar Singh emphatically
told him that )t was a far more important and difficult
thing to live a consistent and holy life for Jesus, than to
die as a martyr for Qhrist in «emote TibetJ‘hus as a
young man he was given to understand by Sundar
Singh, that God was going to use him mightily
amongstyoung peogieAThus my father continued his
education and won souls all along the way.

Meeting Sundar Singh or hearing him Speak of Jesus,
made the whole Gospel narrative come alive tn I
striking and incontrovertible manner to many in
several parts of the globe. My dad and others known to
me were amongst those Who were deeply influenced
by Sundar Singh's life.

My mother too as a young woman heard Sundar Singh
and was deeply moved by his preaching.

2 Sundar’s Home
When the shadow of a missionary fell upon him once,
he ‘thought he could not be free from the awful
pollution which that entailed, until he had washed
himself by a

prolonged bath of one hour, When Christian preachers
were preaching in his neighbourhood or town, he
would send his servants to throw eowdtmg at them.
He found the New Testament to be very unlike his
rcligion's Granth which is the holy book of the Sikhs,
the other Hindu sacred books, and the Koragjf the
Mohammedans He used to interrupt the Scripture
classes in the school with many naughty questions and
cause as muchisruption as possible, when the Bible
was taught.
His father was a rich landlord with much money in the
bank and gave Sundar all the comforts that he needed

Their hometown Rampur, in Patiala, is very hot during
summer and so they used to retire to the cool heights
of Simla, m the Himalayas.
The future saint in the making was-both at school and
at

home-a turbulent boy, leading a gang of youngsters
against the preaching of Christ, in his village and
neighbourhood.
Even at the age of seven he knew Bhagavadtha‘ {The
sacred book of Hindus) by heart in Sanskrit and began
to pore over Hindu religious books while still very
young.






3.His Eyes of Understanding Opened

Of this period of his life Sundar Singh said, "They
taught n with great sympathy and freely gave me the
benefit of their experiences, but they had not
themselves had that rc blessing for which my soul was
craving, so how could they help me to get it?"
With the passing away of his mother and the deep void
it Ich in Sundar Singh's heart, there came a desperate
longing for reality and peace.
Love with heart purity, love with holiness of life, and
faith with humility, which the Lord Jesus gives a
repentant sinner, result in a great capacity to bring
men under the influence of the Cross of Christ.
sanyasis, and the poets of India great a development
and power, These psychic excrciscs lead to self-
hypnotism and also a good deal of sclf-deceptton. 1 hi
in turn creates in them an illusory satisfaction which
comes from self-denial and a self-imposed rigorous
dismphne

of both the body and the mind.
If ever a man could have found true release and
fulfilment through Yoga, it was Sundar Singh, as he was
in dead earnest to practise and implement all that this
system taught, with all its basic occul overtones.
Unlike this, when a man comes under the influence of
the Holy Spirit of God, those instincts are not killed but
controlled and sanctified and led in the right channels
of service.
Then he sat in meditatign or prayer and said to God, "0
God, if there is a God, if You answer me and give me
peace before 5 o' clock this morning and appear to me
in your true form, I will serve You as a sadhu all my life.
He was so full of joy that he ran to his old father, who
was sleeping, and woke him up saying that he had seen
Christ and that he had given himself to Him.
But then came the thought that God perhaps was
answering him and he closed his eyes again.
He had never, for even a moment, expected that the
answer to his prayer was Christ.
Then flashed into his mind the fact that he had never
prayed to Christ but to the universal God, to reveal
Himself to him.










4. Understanding Sundar Singh

lt is very unfortunate that in India men who aspire to
leadership in the churches, are more anxious to go to
colleges in the West for theological training, in order to
earn a position and name upon their return, than they
are to go to the Word of God, on their knees, before
the Living Spirit, who teaches us the Word according to
the mind of
The people who developed their psychic powers, such
as the great sages, sadhus“ (Those religious men who
have chosen to remain single, in order to give
themselves wholly to the pursuit of God.), poets, and
learned men of India, developed the character which
St. Paul calls “the righteousness of the law".
Many leaders and early converts in the Indian church,
who had had remarkable conversion experiences like
him, had sunk into shallowness owing to the lure of
position and honour, and were lost in polemics, party-
strife and controversies.
Thirdly, there are men and women who are converted
from above by the Spirit of God.
Some people, when they nominally turn to Christianity,
remove all the physical marks and symbols of their
earlier religious affiliation, and there alter begin to
attend church services from time to time.
Good training and a disciplined church life, have
ofttimes given many people a higher standard of
righteousness and morality, as compared to the
generality of people.

Sundar Singh was never stained by any worldly
ambition or love of name or fame, At. the acclaim and
renown that came to him so early In his life, did not
turn him one bit from the simplicity of “\e

Gospel.
Would to God we could have more men like him who
would show the people o’today the unparalleled glory
of the Christlike life and the abounding power of true
discipleship.
















5. Living with Sundar Singh

When parting with young Daniel, Sundar Singh gifted
to him his shawl, saying that he was giving it to him as
a token of his love.
Either due to his commitments as a student, or through
lack of finance to go fun-her with Sundar Singh on his
journeys, young Daniel parted with him after the
meetings which Sundar Singh addressed at
Visakhapatnam.
Young Daniel could scarcely tell when Sundar Singh
managed to wash and dry his one saffron robe, if it
were not in the middle of the night.
Fortunately it was the Christ of Sundar Singh whom he
followed, and all glory was given to Jesus for this
marvellous deliverance.
There were too many who were drawn by mere
enthusiasm or curiosity and by the renown of Sundar
Singh, to peer closely at him or to seek interviews with
him.
At this juncture, young Daniel, who had arrived on the
scene full of renewed faith, walked into the chamber
where his brother lay dying, knelt down and spread the
blanket of Sundar Singh over him and prayed.
that it was the unchristian lives of the 'Christian' boys
at the boarding school which had greatly disported him
and caused him to return home.
He was on the third of December that the Lord Jesus
appeared to Sundar Singh, just a little while before the
suicide which he had planned.
That girls can nearly always be depended upon to turn
away the bean of a boy, from pursuing God with all his
heart, is, of course, common knowledge.
At this juncture, Sundar Singh persuaded his father to
send him to a Christian boys’ boarding school in
Ludhiana, which was not too far away.
The boy who had hated and ridicu|ed his Christian
teachers, now befriended them to the astonishment of
everybody.
On the conversion of a loved one to Christ, the
proverbial tolerance of the 'Hindu' or those of other
religions appears to turn into implacable hatred and
rancour' Sometimes relatives take an oath to kill a
'new' convert, rather than let him live as a Christian.











6. Expulsion From Home

Thrust out from home, as Sundar Singh walked away
into the cold night, with just the clothing which was
upon him and his New Testament, he did not know
that together with his last meal at home, he had been
administered poison which was designed to kill him.
lt was by no means Sundar Singh's intention to
aggravate his father, nor was he trying to make a great
display of his religious zeal; yet the time had come for
him to signify to his family that his discipleship to the
Lord Jesus was irrevocable.
When one pleads with the family and says, "But you
know very well that your son is free from his drug
addiction today because of Jesus," or "Your husband
has become a faithful husband after long years of
immorality by being changed by the Lord Jesus," it
simply has no weight with them.
He told me that my miraculous recovery had made
such an impression on him, that he began to read the
Bible and was a Christian."
lt is painful to realise, that this fanatic zeal to so seal
the caste circle as to preclude the possibility to’a
breakaway, has nothing at all to do with uprightness of
life or purity of heart.
The long hair, uncut from his childhood, and the
bracelet on his hand, were marks that identified him
anywhere as a member of the Sikh faith.
The factor so vital to conversion-which is turning away
from all unrighteousness and evil in one’s life-is
something which amazingly does not figure at all m the
thinking of those who are h0stilc to the Spread of
Christianity in India.
But those good men who befriended Sunder Singh at
this stage were godly, dedicated and well-meaning
men, who wanted to shelter the young disciple from
the numerous dangers which a new convert faces.
Unlike most of us who would hate to venture into the
place from which we were turned out in apparent
disgrace, Sundar Singh retraced his steps to his
hometown of Rampur, in order to proclaim the Good
News in consul To his surprise, many heard him gladly.

7. Slmngcncua of the (‘luttot NI Chi lstlnn Scene

Sad to say, a genuine convert like Sundar Singh was
rare to come by in many districts and towns of India.
He was able to enter many well-to-do homes and
proclaim Jesus to women, who would normally disdain
all social contact with Christians, whom they deemed
to be too low in the caste ladder to even admit into
their dwelling places.
nor do you become one by some religious ceremony or
by long adherence to hoary tradition When you really
reach out With a broken hp" il und touch the Lord
Jesus, then you are made whole and you are bon-again

Divinely appointed agents can point you to repentance,
but the actual spiritual rebirth Itself is by the Stmt of
God.
and others, with no real deep sense of mission but
rather committed to the humanistic ideal of social
uplift and service, there are bound to be a large
number of adherents and hangers-on, who show forth
no true marks of spiritual conversion.
Sundar Singh, aware that he could not escape their
fury and rage with his life, knelt down and committed
his spirit to the Lord, being convinced that his end was
near.
Strangely, he kept warm through the night and did not
realise until the morning that his bed fellow was a large
cobra which had curled up beside him!
Next day, the same mob appeared in the distance and
Sundar Singh felt that they were now advancing upon
him with the resolve firmly renewed to dispatch him.
Sundar Singh had not realised that the angels of God
had come and surrounded him when the mob was
drawing near.
(Moreover it was akin to a tradition with which he was
familiar-the life of a 'sadhu’.)
Possessed of a burning heart, he was aflame to tell all
whom he could reach, of the love of God in Christ
Jesus.
Sundar Singh, who saw little of Christ in all these
Western traditions, was bewildered and turned off by
the mere imitation of Western ways.
Shivering and burning with fever as he was, Sundar
with a radiant face was heard saying, "How sweet it is
to suffer for Jesus!“

8 Sundar Singh's zeal for the Lord Jesus and his practice
of Christian discipleship comes as a rebuke to the soft,
over-cuddled, comfortable Christian believer of today.
When Sundar Singh was still very young and
inexperienced, h&&c happened to meet a man of great
zeal and devotion by the name of Samuel Stokes.
The famous C. F. Andrews, the writer, came up with
Sundar Singh and Stokes up in the mountains around
Simla, at a small place called Kotgarh on the road to
Tibet.
Patterning his life on that of St. Francis of Assisi, who in
all aspects of his life wanted to mirror the life of Jesus,
Stokes renounced all his possessions and after giving
them away to the needy, hit the road, ministering to
the sick and suffering.
That cave became the home of Sundar Singh and
Stokes, and his little band of young lads.
Thus, a gentleman who later became a YMCA secretary
in England, wrote of that night which had let him
stunned and speechless: "Long alter midnight, I was
roused by a movement in the room.
As he went on his way, Sundar Singh realised with
much thankfulness to God that he was spared from
death that day and rejoiced that he could point a truly
miserable sinner to the Saviour who came to seek and
save the lost.
While Sundar Singh moved amongst inhospitable
regions and trudged across terrain which few humans

crossed, without any question, it was the angel of the
Lord who protected and guarded his footsteps, until his
work on earth was done.
The foregoing deliverance brings to mind the more
famous incident when a man-eating wolf was rebuked

and tamed by St. Francis of Assisi.
9.. Murderous Bandit 'l‘amed and Other Incidents

The strict chronology of all the incidents and miracles
that took place in Sundar Singh's initiations is hard to
determine.
(‚When Sundar Singh met this cruel man who blocked
his path with an upraised sword, he meekly put down
his head and expected the sword to fall at any
moment.
There Sundar Singh proclaimed to this desperate and
wicked man the forgiveness which the Lord Jesus of
fern to sinners.
The narrator of “n sad story went on to my that he was
absolutely penniless and had no money with which to
cremate or other...

ununge tor the removal of his companion’s body.
We have seen strong men suddenly fall down and
come close to dying, and even expiring suddenly, when
they uttered blatant lies where God was at work, i.e.,
in the midst of a revival environment.
and although he had so little and curried hardly any
money, he tried to do for this man what he could by
way of relieving his distress.
Now, though the road was clear, he could not rouse his
friend who would normally spring back to 'instant
health' when culled.
(While outwardly the missionaries were lauded and
praised for their noble self sacrificing services by the
public, yet in reality any little concession or help given
by the government to a missionary sponsor of a
humanitarian cause was deeply resented.)
This is, however strong l ' d'g Ye scatted inbuilt bias and
antagonism to Christ, which is prevalent in most
peOple of the East Thinking ybln 10.8tlve
Hence the tragic and totally unwarranted association,
which got firmly fixed in the minds of ethnic people all
over the world that the white skin is synonymous with
a Christian.
The British government, of course, had established
chapels and churches at all their cantonments and
army garrison towns and seats of government-not out
of a missionary love for the local people, or solicitude
for their souls, but because they had to provide
baptism and burial for their nationals.
The Sadhu Robe-Saft'ron Attire

Sundar Singh strongly felt that if Christ was presented
to India in terms more native to their thought-pattens

and ideas, it would be easier for the people to
overcome their prejudice and accept.


10 (While outwardly the missionaries were lauded and
praised for their noble, selfsacrificing services by the
public, yet in reality any little concession or help given
by the government to a missionary sponsor of a
humanitarian cause was deeply resented.)
The British government, of course, had established
chapels and churches at all their cantonments and
army garrison towns and seats of government-not out
of a missionary love for the local people, or solicitude
for their souls, but because they had to provide
baptism and burial for their nationals.
Hailing as he did from a rural village with all its
orthodoxy, prejudice and fanatic adherence to old
beliefs and practices, he saw how antagonistic the
people were to anything which smacked of the West
and an alien culture.
Now, this false premise has been a great stumbling
block to many who have never cared to enquire in any
depth into this stumbling-block of the ignorant and the
immature.
which got firmly fixed in the minds of ethnic people all
over the world that the white skin is synonymous with
a Christian.

The tradition of a young man clad in yellow robes who
had renounced marriage and was therefore given the
honorit'tc 'sadhu', gave a person freedom of travel, as
a prerequisite of his calling.
His heart's desire was to communicate Christ, and this
he did in a way which few have equalled in history.
Those eccentric preachers who travel to Western lands
and appear on platforms in attire which belongs to
their native lands, merely seek to play upon the minds
of shallow listeners, who love to see something novel
and are drawn to any clownish person who claims to
be a 'guru' from the East.

11 It is hard to imagine how Sundar Singh felt in his
heart when the good Bishop tried to convince him that
his C protracted tours to Tibet would be quite
impossible, when he was ordained in the Episcopal
Church.
Sundar Singh, of course, felt that on these terms he
must refuse ordination and without any hard feelings
he also returned the licence to preach in that diocese.
At St. John's Divinity College

The friends and wcll-wishcrs of Sundar Singh wanted to
make sure that he was not lost to the Indian Church.

12. The First 0f His Tibetan Journeys "ln prisons more
frequent, in deaths oft“ (2 Corinthians 11:23)

Now that his short stint of eight months at Theological
School was finished, Sundar Singh plunged again into
the glorious mission of making Christ known to all who
would hear.
Tibetan tea too was equally unappetizing, seeing that it
was drunk with salt and a liberal helping of rancid b tler

A yon: passing to Tibet over the high passes of the
Himalayas had always to be on his guard to retrace his
step: before the heavy snowfalls completely closed the
passes.
Thus Sundar Singh returned to India across the Hi layas
he or: the passes became impassable but his mind was
set upon going back to Tibet in the next summer.
When Sundar Singh had his customary bath, the people
were practically convinced that he could not be a holy
man, since he did such a dreadful thing as taking a
bath!
On his first visit to Tibet, Sundar Singh did not
penetrate very far into the country, but sufficient to
see the abject squalor and degradation in which the
people lived.


13
Reaching the nccdy and scattered communities in the
wilderness of Tibet's high plateau was a burden laid
upon Sundar Singh's heart by God, and he carried out
this mission with a passionate zeal to declare Christ,
where His saving Name was never heard .
There may be temporary setbacks and delays, but a
man who is guided by the Spirit of God will not be
deflected even if there is very real danger to his life.
As Sundar Singh ventured deeper into Tibet and
explored new routes which were not customarily used
by travellers, more of the desperate need of Tibet was
unveiled before his eyes.
Prayer flags fluttered everywhere from the courtyards
of dwellings, as though God needed to be signalled and
His attention caught by a flag!
Some of these flags, in fact, had become so filthy and
tattered from exposure to rain and dust that they
made a sad and sickening sight.*
To Sundar Singh, and for that matter for any true
believer in Jesus, the concept of being a secret believer
is totally unthinkable as well as being unscriptural; for
Jesus Himself said, "Whosoever shall be ashamed of
me and of my words, of him shall the Son of man be
ashamed, when he shall come in his own glory, and in
his Father's and of the holy angels" (Luke 9:26).
Those timeless words which Jesus spoke which have
drawn men of all ages to Him, "Come unto me, all ye
that labour and are heavy laden, and 1 will give you
rest" (Matthew 1 1:28), and "For God so loved the
world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that
whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but
have everlasting life" (John 3:16), took fast hold of him.
His own experience that prayer from a broken heart
and in the Name of Je‘u‘ ‘ was effective to achieve
impossible things, was so far removed from the
practices of these poor people, who Were paralyzed by
their false religion.
This sage, of whom only a few men were aware, had
first come to India and the Himalayas, drawn by a great
love and compassion for the people of the
subcontinent of India.
ln one place the people were so roused with fanatical
hatred that they beat him, bound him and dragged him
out of the village and left him to die, having put blood-
sucking leeches on his body.
He was, however, deeply dissatisfied and felt hungry
for the truth, seeing that all his efforts to find God
were a failure.
He was just at that time of life when one is fired by an
unqucnchable love for Soul; _ and an insatiable desire
to do exploits for the Saviour.
Unable to bear the cry and sorrow of the land, he had
retired to one

cases of the Himalayas to plead and pray for the
people of this subcontinent and other nations.
All this has the cumulatit/c effect ‚of alrhost
(9:232:13)? a person of compassion with pangs of love
and longing to lift the heavy burden.

14Although he showed few signs of life, it was against
the grain for Sundar Singh to leave a dying man to
perish in the snow storm.
C iting the Scripture, "For whosoever will save his life
shall lose it; but whosoever shall lose his life for my
sake and the gospel's, the same shall save it“ (Mark
8:35), he had this illustration to give:

On one of his Himalayan journeys in an awful blizzard,
he together with another traveller was struggling to
reach the next village.
The labour and friction involved when carrying a
deadweight, such as a man who was almost lifeless,
was perhaps the cause for Sundar's own survival in that
dreadful storm.
ln some places they had such a crowded programme
scheduled for him, that on arriving he would score out
the excessive number of engagement: and meetings
and choose only to address two important meetings a
day.
Some in Europe, who had seen Sundar Singh while they
were very young, spoke to the present writer of the
unforgettable experience.
Sundar Singh, when confronted by the large crowds of
nominal Christians in South India, said, "Although there
are so many Christians here in the South-westem
comer of India (now called Kerala), and in the Southern
region (now called Tamil Nadu), all forward movement
of the church is paralyzed.
One of the noteworthy developments which arose out
of this call for prayer was that the late father at (Ins
present writer was called to address revival meetings
in one of the key churches, where Christian wotk was
newly paralyzed by factionalism and plain wickedness.
When he took up this bishopric in the Church of South
India, there was so much turbulence, warring factions,
court cases and chelhun in so many of his churches
that the Bishop, seeing no way by which to reach his
people, culled on the diocese to pray

‘ for revival.
15 It was not long before the news reached the head
lama and he was once again arraigned before him, in
the same hall where he had earlier been condemned to
die. it was quite mcomprehcnsnble to the lama and all
concerned, when there was but one key to the door of
the well and it hung on the key nng bcneath the lama's
robes, how Sundar could have gained his release from
the well.
The upshot of this mphcable miracle was that the head
lama ordered Sundar Singh to be thrust out of the
town with the injunction that he was never to set foot
in it again.
Presently there was a rope with u loop at its end,
which was lowered into the well, and he was asked to
hold it tight.
One can imagine the consternation and the absolute
sensation that his reappearance, alter he was taken for
dead in the well, should have made upon the
onlookers.
With his one good arm, as well as he could, he clung to
the rope, having thrust a leg into the loop.
His visitors shut the door and locked it and before he
could thank them they were gone!
Gently he was raised to the top of the well.

16 Then there was St. Paul, who, in the twelfth chapter
of 2 Corinthians, wrote in the third person about
himself, "I knew a man in Christ . . .
While Sundar Singh was chary about revealing these
intimate experiences of his communion with God, he
somehow managed to disclose-whether wittingly or
unwittingly-that almost on a regular basis he would get
carried into the very presence of God.
God granted Sundar Singh also to see a great personal
victory in the conversion of his dear dad who had
initially suffered much pain and embarrassment at
Sundar's conversion to Christ.
What a joy it was to Sundar Singh to see the triumph of
the Gospel in his own father's life!
It is not to be wondered at, that many who could not
understand some of his experiences such as going into
ecstasy and also his other mystic experiences, criticized
him.


17 for one who had grown in spirit in the solitude and
quietness of the Himalayas, the greed, the (WM pursuit
of money and things and the resultant neglect of the
Lord Jesus must have been very Wing, to say the least.
The vicar came and found that Sundar Singh was at the
door.
Sundar Singh began to develop a deep longing to tread
the very paths that the Lord Jesus in His h'tctime trod.
Thus it wus thut he turned his feet to the incredibly
dangerous regions of Buluchistan and of the North-
west Frontier Province.
18 All this would have been a total negation of all
Sundar Singh stood for-for he had taught men to love
Jesus with all their hearts and live like Him and never
hesitate to be partakers of His sufferings.
The Last Journey

To those of us who daily check the day's temperature
and in certain climes listen carefully to the weather
forecast so that we know what kind of weather one has
to face, what clothes to wear, and what hazards of the
road to expect, the exploits of Sundar Singh are
hopelessly beyond our mental depths.
As Sundar Singh prepared for the last of his Tibetan
journeys, seeing his poor health his friends tried to
prevail upon him, to set aside his plans.

19 The whole of one night the rain fell in torrents and
in the bitter cold we had to sit all night under an
umbrella.
So close were the bonds between them that he even
wrote: "Please don't write 'Sadhuji" (ji' is a suffix which
denotes profound respect.) to me. 1 am your little
brother in Christ. 1 shall be glad if you will write 'little
brother' instead of 'Sadhuji‘."
Sundar seemed to think that Japanese victories in the
battlefield and in the other fronts had shattered the
foundations of their spiritual life.
Even when Sundar Singh was labouring in the cities of
China, the call of Tibet seemed to be quite strong upon
his heart.
"On l6th July we arrived at a Tibetan village, Mutth,
where the headman received us kindly and that night
hc invited an important lama to dine with us.
At this great height we could scarcely draw our breath;
our hearts and lungs were filled with pain and the
beating of our hearts sounded in our ears.

20
For the modern application the message could be
applied on several levels: (1) just as there would have
been unbelievers in Babylon who would come to faith
at this call, so too today people might respond to the
message (this or any message about the future
fulfillment of the promises) and leave their bondage
and sin and find themselves in the service of the LORD;
(2) Christians who have been living under the
oppression of the world (largely due to sin) and being
conformed to the world may need to separate
themselves and be useful in God’s service; and (3)
believers need to watch and be ready for the coming of
the LORD, for the passage may be again a picture of
the LORD’s calling His people out of the bondage of
this world to service above in the final redemption.
Verse 3 introduces this theme in a soliloquy of the
LORD: Israel was not sold to Babylon for compensation,
and so she will be redeemed without money.
Announcing such an oracle would have the impact of
warning and encouragement on the immediate (eighth
century) audience would be warning and
encouragement—warning not to get themselves into
the predicament of an exile and have to face all of this,
and encouragement that if and when they did a
remnant would return (as the message based on the
name of the prophet’s child early declared).
The primary audience, of course, would be the exiles in
Babylon who are called to step out in faith and return
to their land and their service (and as we said before,
Isaiah probably thought his immediate audience would
go into exile and then need these words to encourage
them and to call them home).
Rather than be in the estate of the slave (47:1), the
people will be restored to their dignified state of a holy
nation and a kingdom of priests (see Zech. 3 which
symbolizes this restoration by having the filthy
garments removed from the priest (who signifies the
nation) and clean robes and a new miter or turban
given to him (which signifies the renewal to spiritual
service after the exile).
The explanation given in the verse is that from this
time on the un-circumcised and the unclean (probably
referring to the Babylonian invading armies among
others) will not plunder the temple and the state and
desecrate them.
Now the LORD calls Zion to awake from her sleep
because He will not allow His name to be blasphemed
any longer (1-6); in fact, heralds announce to Zion that
God has come to reign (7-8), prompting the call for
Jerusalem to rejoice because God has brought
salvation (9-10).
So the point is that by faith they must respond to the
Word of God and trust God to enable them to return to
the land.
Verse 3 introduces the idea that when Israel went into
bondage she went because of her own sin, and not
because the LORD sold her for a price.
Haggai, Zechariah, and Ezra all address the issue of
whether or not the fasts from Babylon were still to be
mourned when they were back in the land.
Here that “something” is “strength” (‘oz [oze]),
probably a metonymy of effect, the cause being the
power of God that will give the believers the strength
to do what needs to be done (recall the renewing of
strength in Isaiah 40).
hanan [khah-nan]) means “free, without cost, for
nothing, for nought, gratis”; it is etymologically related
to the word for “grace” (hen [khane]) and so provides a
nice illustration of the meaning of grace as “freely” or
“gratuitously, without a cause.”

For the modern application the message could be
applied on several levels: (1) just as there would have
been unbelievers in Babylon who would come to faith
at this call, so too today people might respond to the
message (this or any message about the future
fulfillment of the promises) and leave their bondage
and sin and find themselves in the service of the LORD;
(2) Christians who have been living under the
oppression of the world (largely due to sin) and being
conformed to the world may need to separate
themselves and be useful in God’s service; and (3)
believers need to watch and be ready for the coming of
the LORD, for the passage may be again a picture of
the LORD’s calling His people out of the bondage of
this world to service above in the final redemption.
Verse 3 introduces this theme in a soliloquy of the
LORD: Israel was not sold to Babylon for compensation,
and so she will be redeemed without money.