I am aware today that many Hindus say that Christianity was forced upon nations. For this, we have to understand history and the Bible.
The Bible starts with God who created the world, and initially the people were grouped together in one location. However, the seed of sin of disobedience and rebellion in humans brought their destruction in Genesis 3. In the third book of Genesis in the Bible, God promises the Savior, the Messiah to come down on Earth, Genesis 3:15: And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; He will crush your head (Christ will bring down satan’s kingdom and power, and you will strike His heel.” (Christ on the Cross). Jesus Christ was in Heaven with God, John 6:38: For I have come down from heaven not to do My will but to do the will of Him who sent Me. Philippians 2:7: Instead, He gave up His divine nature, He took the humble position of a slave and was born as a human being. When He appeared in human form, He supernaturally was born as a baby. He did this to create the pathway to eternal life in the Kingdom of Heaven by His sacrificial death and resurrection now ruling in the Heavens.
The people had one unity of their conception of God, After the birth of Seth’s son Enosh, the Bible says then people began to call upon the name of the Lord (Genesis 4:26). However, due to the greed and ambition of humans, they wanted to rule in the Heavens, as we see. God scattered them out of their unity into diversity because in their unity, their ambition bred on evil grounds of suppressing the weaker. In Genesis 11 we read the account of the tower of Babel, where the people, attempting to build a tower that reaches to Heaven to ascend to the heights. Their ambition was giddy and dangerous and God had their language confused and scattered them across the whole face of the Earth.
After Christ came, quintessentially, the message of Jesus dying for the sins of people, accepting Him as Savior was the important message of the Gospel commissioned to Christians to the world. Christians shared this message evangelically all over the world. The idea was not to create a kingdom on Earth but to call people into the Kingdom of Heaven. John 18:36 : Jesus said, “My Kingdom is not of this world. If it were, My followers would fight to prevent My arrest by the Jewish leaders. But now My kingdom is from another place.” The Gospel message is a spiritual one, not an earthly one nor physical or material one. Christians shared the Gospel and moved on. There was never any violence or force, but people believed in Christ because of the power of His presence. It was a supernatural transaction.
This message came to Europe through Paul, the Apostle, came to India to the South through Thomas the Apostle, to the Jews through Peter the Apostle and many others. All in all, these were gentle, powerful, humble men and women of God who simply shared a message. The gifts of the Holy Spirit, which are extraordinary spiritual gifts always accompany the born again Christians, born of the Spirit of God once they believe in Christ. These are the word of wisdom, the word of knowledge, increased faith, the gifts of healing, the gift of miracles, prophecy, the discernment of spirits, diverse kinds of tongues, interpretation of tongues. A gift is given with no effort of your own, so these gifts came supernaturally and touched masses of people at a time. These came from God.
Over time, after the Resurrection of Christ, the mass conversions to Christianity made egocentric Nero, the emperor of Rome insecure. As he was eccentric, extravagant and a narcissist, while Rome was burning and Christians were thrown to the gladiators, lions, and covered in tar and burned as flaming torches, he would be inspired to compose poetry. The inhuman massacre of Christians caused the church to go underground in a place called the catacombs. In fact, they dug and constructed underground tunnels and chambers as swiftly as they could and hid there, having their worship services and studying the Scriptures in the maze of tunnels.
The persecutions continued until a new conqueror rose. He was known as Constantine the Great, originally from France, also known as Constantine I or Saint Constantine, was a Roman Emperor from 306 to 337 AD. He was on a quest for conquering new lands to gain an empire.
He was in a battle with King Maxentius whose army was twice the size of Constantine’s. Constantine’s army arrived at the field bearing unfamiliar symbols on either its standards or its soldiers’ shields. According to Lactantius, Constantine was visited by a dream the night before the battle, wherein he was advised “to mark the heavenly sign of God on the shields of his soldiers … by means of a slanted letter X with the top of its head bent round, he marked Christ on their shields. Eusebius describes another version, where, while marching at midday, “he saw with his own eyes in the heavens a trophy of the Cross arising from the light of the sun, carrying the message, In Hoc Signo Vinces or “with this sign, you shall win”; in Eusebius’s account, Constantine had a dream the following night, in which Christ appeared with the same heavenly sign, and told him to make a standard, the labarum, for his army in that form and to make a symbol representing the first two letters of the Greek spelling of the word Christos or Christ
Constantine did exactly as instructed and he won the battle against King Maxentius. With this great victory, he converted to Christianity.
Constantine was the first emperor to stop Christian persecutions and to legalise Christianity along with all other religions and cults in the Roman Empire. . Things changed rapidly for Christians, they suddenly got high positions of influences in courts and palaces and in high places of government, became bishops holding power. So millions converted to Christianity knowing they would hold high positions of favour. For many, it was not a heart spiritual conversion but a head and calculated conversion. As people came to Christianity and the church, they brought with them their old practices into the church. Over time, they brought in superstitions, religious traditions, and in time, the converted Roman Christians relabelled their idols with Christian names, the statue of Jupiter was labelled Saint Peter, and likewise others. Isis, who was an Egyptian goddess always depicted carrying her child Horus was now relabelled as mother Mary and baby Jesus. Idol worship is forbidden in the Bible as one of the ten commandments, yet this practice of idol making and worshiping crept in the Church in the 4th centuries. In the middle ages, Mary was venerated to the position of semi deity, speaking up for humans. At the Council of Nicaea, (325), the church commemorated Mary to the level of a goddess and co-mediator with Christ. There was a clear detour from the original Scriptures and the drastic change in the Church from the first century to the fourth century was humongous. Christianity degenerated and sin was rampant.
Revival in Rome: God raised up a monk from the Roman Catholic Church called Savonarola, Florence, Italy, 1496-1498. The sins of Rome and of the Roman Catholic Church gripped Savonarola to shock. At that time, Martin Luther was a young boy. Savonarola prayed, pleaded and cried out to God for change, often walking beside the River Po, crying out for the sins of the people. As Savonarola prayed, he wrote an article called “Contempt of the Word” where he paralleled the sins of the current age to the sins of Sodom and Gomorrah. He cried for revival. One day, God gave him a vision. The heavens opened and a Voice commanded him to announce the devastation to hit the church due to their sins. Filled now with the powerful anointing of the Holy Spirit, he began to preach openly before crowds of people. People on the streets started to be struck with conviction from the Holy Spirit, people from all walks of life, from royalty to laborers, men and women started to weep with repentance. Savonarola preached for eight years. He prophesied many things which came true. It was through the help of Savonarola that the people were taught of a democratic government to overthrow the wicked tyrannical rule of the present government. While lives transformed with heavenly glow, people sang, worshipped God, threw away worldly sinful books or obscene pictures etc. People had a renewed love for God.
In the meantime, the wicked pope, cardinals, bishops, and priests were furious and wanted Savonarola executed. They captured him, savagely tortured him, forcing him to recant, which he did not. They tore sockets out of limbs, put his feet on burning coals but the brave monk did not recant. In the end, Savonarola along with two other monks was executed before thousands of people. They died boldly, glorious, victorious with the power of God upon their lives.
The Roman Catholic church popes and leaders, a church that operated as a political system, which was never meant to be. Violence was executed in the Spanish Inquisition, Portugese Inquisition, which did affect Goa in India too. Christ never taught humans the way of violence, but evil ambition in human hearts rose to destroy the world.
The Word of God Revival: The Bible was not originally withheld from the people, but in time, when they saw differences between what the church was practicing and the Word, they challenged it, and in that interest, they decided not to make the Bible available to the people. From the 5th century to the 15th century, it was taught that only religious leaders were qualified to explain the Bible to the people. In the meantime, corruption rose in the church, and this time of spiritual, cultural, social and economic deterioration is known as the Dark Ages.
Peter Waldo: He was a man who brought Word of Revival in the 1100s, Sources relate that he was a wealthy clothier and merchant from Lyons and a man of some learning. Sometime shortly before the year 1160, he was inspired by a series of events, firstly, after hearing a sermon on the life of St. Alexius, secondly, rejection of transubstantiation when it was considered a capital crime to do it, thirdly, the sudden and unexpected death of a friend during an evening meal. From this point onward he began living a radical Christian life, giving his property over to his wife, while the remainder of his belongings he distributed as alms to the poor.
At about this time, Waldo began to preach and teach publicly, based on his ideas of simplicity and poverty, notably that “No man can serve two masters, God and Mammon.” he condemned Papal excesses and Catholic dogmas, including purgatory and transubstantiation. He said that these dogmas were “the harlot” from the Book of Revelation. By 1170 Waldo had gathered a large number of followers, referred to as the Poor of Lyons, the Poor of Lombardy, or the Poor of God. They evangelized their teaching while travelling as peddlers.. They were often referred to as the Waldensians or Waldenses. He taught that the Bible should be taught to all the people, freely available to them in their own language.
The Waldensian movement was characterized from the beginning by lay preaching, voluntary poverty, and strict adherence to the Bible. This was not accepted by the Roman Catholic Church. Driven away from Lyons, Waldo and his followers settled in the high valleys of Piedmont, and in France, in the Luberon, as they continued in their pursuit of Christianity based on the New Testament. Finally, Waldo was excommunicated by Pope Lucius III during the synod held at Verona in 1184. The doctrine of the Poor of Lyons was again condemned by the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215, when they mentioned the group by name for the first time, and declared its principles to be heresy. Fearing suppression from the Church, Waldo’s followers fled to the mountainous regions of northern Italy.
The Roman Catholic Church began to persecute the Waldensians, and 80 were tried and sentenced to death in France. Following this, the Waldensians became critical of Catholic belief. They eventually merged with various Protestant churches that were forming in the late 16th century. Centuries later, many Waldensians were killed as well.
Martin Luther: The Holy Spirit stirred up people to call for revival, reform. In Germany, in the 1500s, God touched a monk, Martin Luther. He relentlessly tried to earn his salvation through good works as the Roman Catholic Church taught, yet always found that he failed miserable and punished himself harshly.
In time, as a monk he had to take his doctorate in the Bible and become a professor at Wittenberg University. During lectures on the Psalms (in 1513 and 1514), he had to study of the Book of Romans.
In this struggle for vice over good, one day as he was reading Romans 1:17—the words seemed to leap out of the page and ignite his spirit in a powerful new way. 17 For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith; as it is written, “The just shall live by faith.”
On meditating on the Scriptures more and more, he began to understand that the righteousness of God is that through which the righteous live by a gift of God, namely by faith. On this understanding, he was born again and had an experiencing of “entering paradise itself through the gates that had been flung open.”
On the heels of this illumination, came many more.. To Luther the church was no longer the institution defined by apostolic succession, but it was the community of those who had been given faith. Salvation came not by the sacraments and rituals but by faith. He pointed out the many errors in the existing Roman Catholic church which were not consistent with the original Scriptures. Outraged cardinals and a pope ordered him to recant, which he did not, eventually married Katharina, an ex-nun, had six children. His teachings led to a mighty revival in Germany, Switzerland, Scandinavia, France, and the British Isles. It could be said that Martin Luther brought a reformation in Christianity and brought back the original Scriptures to the common people. As we are aware, many old practices had crept into the Roman Catholic Church such as idolatry, worship of Mary and elevation as our intercessor, the high glorified positions of church leaders such as cardinals, bishops and pope all came from a Roman culture that glorified status and rank, unlike the Church of Jesus Christ.
A new movement and awareness of the original Scriptures spread. Martin Luther spent his life preaching and organizing the new church. He did not make drastic changes to the old one to avoid mass confusion.
He died peacefully of a stroke that deprived him of his speech, and he died shortly afterwards at 2:45 a.m. on 18 February 1546, aged 62, in Eisleben.
The Wesley Brothers in the 1700s: Again revival fires ebbed two centuries after Martin Luther and John Calvin. Sin started to resurface again, and spread through the nations again. Rioting, killing, civil upheavals, crime, robbery, and brutality mushroomed. England was steeped in crime and violence at the time of the French Revolution.
On New Years Day, in 1739, John Wesley, Charles Wesley, and George Whitefield and many others met together, praying through the night and at 3 a.m., the power of God fell down on them, fell to the ground, overpowered by the Presence of God, crying tears of joy in Christ’s Presence. Over the weeks that followed, they started open-air preaching where thousands in England would gather to hear them. Crowds of 20,000 would gather and weep with tears of conviction. Initially, John Wesley was alarmed when people fell down under the power of God, but came to realize it was a sovereign work of God in which he must not interfere or try to stop.
Charles Finney greatly impacted America in the mid 1800s. People got so convicted by sin that they could not sleep. Weeping, sobbing, and crying for God where people became alive to God’s Presence was commonplace. In one event, a man blaspheming the revival fell down dead. The revival kept spreading. In Northern Ireland in the 1800s, great conviction of sin, and glorious conversions happened all the time. Business came to a standstill as people gathered in cottages on the hillsides, singing, praising God and praying. People did not sleep for nights, and drunk men were awed by the Holiness of God and gave up alcohol instantaneously. Thousands upon thousands gathered together, praying and crumbled to the ground by God’s Power. No one was making it happen, there was no leader. The Holy Spirit was the Leader.
The cloud of God’s presence hung over many parts of the United States in the 1800s, especially near the east coast near the sea. It is said that during those days while sailors approaching land, they would feel a powerful holy presence around them, even though they knew nothing of the revival. As the ship would be about to land, the captain would call for a minister and as the glory of God covered them, sailors would repent of sins and gloriously turn to the Savoir, Christ.
In India, when the British ruled for 200 years, they came mainly for trade and kept religion out of it. However, the Christian missionaries who came later started schools, hospitals, etc. and they spoke the Gospel message through love and good works. They were never forceful people, in fact, the most sacrificial gentle people of all. Many people of the pooer sections, felt loved and accepted by Christian missionaries where the hard caste system kept them down. These Christians who converted are today called the “rice bag” Christians. Well for the ones that did, they were considered the low castes, untouchables, so when the missionaries showed them love and acceptance, would not some convert? If their own upper classes spurned them and kicked them, would they not respond to the love they got from Christian missionaries?
The abolishing of Sati system is one of the greatest contributions of Christian missionaries in India. December 4 in 1829 was when Sati system – traditional Hindu practice of a widow immolating herself on her husband’s funeral pyre – was banned across the country. While notably Raja Ram Mohan Roy spearheaded the campaign, alongside him were Christian missionaries like William Carey who vociferously questioned the practice and fought for its ban. It was Carey’s relentless battle against Sati for 25 years which finally led to the famous Edict in 1829 banning widow burning. The cobbler turned Baptist missionary was also the first man who led the campaign for a humane treatment for leprosy and ended the practice of burning them alive. “Carey was a great social reformer. When he witnessed Sati, the worst evil which prevailed at that time, he was horrified and dismayed,” says Dr. Lalchungnunga, the principal of Serampore College, the oldest ecumenical organisation in India, founded by missionaries Joshua Marshman, William Carey and William Ward in 1827. uring his campaign against Sati, Carey found that nearly 300 widows were burnt alive around Calcutta and 10,000 all over India within a short span of time.
Sadly, the Hindu practice of polygamy compounded the problem even more. On one occasion Carey documented 33 wives of one man burned alive at his funeral. This practice made children orphaned without both father and mother. Carey fought against all these, publishing articles and books, resolutely opposing this gory practice. Both Carey and William Wilberforce later persuaded the then governor Lord William Bentinck to carry a regulation on December 4, 1829 declaring Sati as illegal and criminal. In addition to abolishing Sati system, Carey also protested against other cultural institutions that oppressed women like polygamy, female infanticide, child marriage, euthanasia and forced female illiteracy.
Here are a few Indian mighty men of God, they declared the Gospel simply in the power of faith and the presence of the Holy Spirit. It was the power of the Holy Spirit that brought the conversations. These men moved on, they rarely had infrastructure or people to help them develop their “conversion” act as is thought by others.
About Brother Bakht Singh (1903 – 2000). He first experienced the love and presence of the Lord Jesus Christ when he was an engineering student in Canada in 1929. Even though previously he had torn up the Bible and was strongly opposed to Christ and Christianity, he developed a great love for the Lord Jesus Christ and an intense desire to read and study the Bible. After hearing the Lord’s voice and having been convicted of his sinful life, he confessed his sins and accepted the Lord Jesus Christ as his Savior and dedicated his life to serving Him. The Lord blessed him with a deep faith and empowered him with compassion, prayer, and a love for scripture. He developed a deep understanding of the church universal, fellowship, and worship. He constantly preached on these subjects with Biblical strength and spiritual conviction was a man of God and a servant of Christ who “served his own generation by the will of God” Acts 13:36. He became a Christian while he was a student in Canada. He was India’s foremost evangelist, preacher and indigenous church planter who founded churches based on New Testament principles. He began a worldwide indigenous church-planting movement in India that eventually saw more than 10,000 local churches. He never sought recognition or status for what he believed the Lord was calling him to do. Br. Bakht Singh went to be with the Lord early September 17, in Hyderabad, India. He was 97.
This is the link to the website dedicated to him, where you will also find his books! http://www.brotherbakhtsingh.com/
In India, Pandita Ramabai, a Hindu-covert, a great Indian social reformer in the 1800s to 1900s, built a home for the widows. She was a woman of great prayer, raising up a movement to pray for revival when she heard how revival was spreading like wildfire over the Western countries. After much prayer, her girls got touched and awakened to the Glory of God, stuck under conviction of sins and experienced the joys of salvation. One of the girls was set aflame, looking as if she was engulfed in flames, so another girl ran to throw a bucket of water on her, to find that she was inflamed in spiritual fire, not literal fire!
Sundar Singh was raised a member of the Sikh religion. (Sikhism is a sect within Hinduism that was founded about 1500 A.D. that teaches belief in one God and rejects the caste system and idolatry.) Prior to his conversion, Sundar attended a primary school run by the American Presbyterian Mission where the New Testament was read daily as a “textbook.” Sundar “refused to read the Bible at the daily lessons…To some extent the teaching of the Gospel on the love of God attracted me, but I still thought it was false.” Though according to another testimony, Sundar confessed, “Even then, I felt the Divine attractiveness and wonderful power of the Bible.”
In the midst of such confusion and while only fourteen years old, his mother died, and Sundar underwent a crisis of faith. His mother was a loving saintly woman and they were very close. In his anger, Sundar burned a copy of one of the Gospels in public.
“Although I believed that I had done a very good deed by burning the Bible, I felt unhappy,” he said. Within three days Sundar Singh could bear his misery no longer. Late one night in December 1903, he rose from bed and prayed that God reveal himself to him if he really existed. Otherwise — “I planned to throw myself in front of the train which passed by our house.” For seven hours Sundar Singh prayed. “O God, if there is a God, reveal thyself to me tonight.” The next train was due at five o’clock in the morning. The hours passed.
Suddenly the room filled with a glow. A man appeared before him. Sundar Singh heard a voice say, “How long will you deny me? I died for you; I have given my life for you.” He saw the man’s hands, pierced by nails.
Jesus was the last person Sundar was looking for. After all, Jesus was the ‘foreign god’ of the Christian teachers at his school… Amazed that his vision had taken the unexpected form of Jesus, Sundar was convinced in his heart that Jesus was the true Savior, and that He was alive. Sundar fell on his knees before Him and experienced an astonishing peacefulness which he had never felt before. The vision disappeared, but peace and joy lingered within him.
To meet Christ was only the beginning for Sundar Singh. He was a Sikh. Sikhs had endured terrible persecutions in their early history. As a consequence they were fiercely loyal to their faith and to each other. Conversion to Christianity was considered treachery. Now every effort was made to woo or coerce Sundar Singh back to his ancestral faith.
Despite his family’s please, bribes, and threats, Sundar wanted to be baptized in the Christian faith. After his father spoke words of official rejection over him, Sundar became an outcast from his people. He cut off the hair he had worn long like every Sikh man. Against great opposition, he was baptized on his birthday in 1905, in an English church in Simla.
Conventional Indian churches were willing to grant him a pulpit, but their rules were foreign to his spirit. Indeed, he felt that a key reason the gospel was not accepted in India was because it came in a garb foreign to Indians. He decided to become a sadhu, so that he could dedicate himself to the Lord Jesus. He was convinced that this was the best way to introduce the Gospel to his people since it was the only way which his people were accustomed to. As a sadhu, he wore a yellow robe, lived on the charity of others, abandoned all possession and maintained celibacy. In this lifestyle, he was free to devote himself to the Lord. Dressed in his thin yellow robe, Sundar Singh took to the road and began a life of spreading the simple message of love and peace and rebirth through Jesus. He carried no money or other possessions, only a New Testament.
“I am not worthy to follow in the steps of my Lord,” he said, “but like Him, I want no home, no possessions. Like Him I will belong to the road, sharing the suffering of my people, eating with those who will give me shelter, and telling all people of the love of God.”
Sundar journeyed much. He traveled all over India and Ceylon. Between 1918-1919, he visited Malaysia, Japan and China. Between 1920-1922 he went to Western Europe, Australia and Israel. He preached in many cities; Jerusalem, Lima, Berlin and Amsterdam among others. Despite his growing fame, Sundar retained a modest nature, desiring only to follow Jesus’ example: to repay evil with kindness and to win over his enemies by love. This attitude often caused his enemies to feel ashamed of themselves, and caused even his father to become a Christian later in life, and to support Sundar in ministry.
He was quite independent of outward Church authority in all his religious life, thought, and work. He dropped out of a Christian seminary that he briefly attended. Neither did he attach much importance to public worship because in his experience the heart prays better in solitude than in a congregation. He was also highly displeased with what he found when he toured western nations that for centuries had the benefit of the Bible and whose central figure of worship was Jesus. Sundar proclaimed almost prophetic denunciations upon Western Christianity, and laughed at the way the West looked down upon religious men of the East as mere “pagans” and “heathens.” “People call us heathens,” he said in a conversation with the Archbishop of Upsala. “Just fancy! My mother a heathen! If she were alive now she would certainly be a Christian. But even while she followed her ancestral faith she was so religious that the term ‘heathen’ makes me smile. She prayed to God, she served God, she loved God, far more warmly and deeply than many Christians.”
Theory of Ghar Wapsi: Everyone’s origins came from somewhere else, so today if we commanded the world to return to their original faith or place where they lived, there would be chaos and bloodshed all around the world. Around 1300 BC, the Indo-Aryan people began to migrate to India, with the kingdoms mentioned in the Vedas in place by 1000 BC. The Dravidians mostly withdrew to the South, where they absorbed the Adivasi peoples. The ones who remained behind in northern India were absorbed into Indo-Aryan culture.The North Indians came from Mesopotamia while the South Indians from the Indus Valley. They were polytheists, worshiping multiple deities.
Mark Lanzarotta great historian of over 50 years writes, “The ancestors of the Dravidians, the Proto-Elamites, originated from a Zarzian (Nostratic) migration from the Zagros Mountains to Turkmenistan around 13,000 BC. They were driven from there in 8000 BC by Proto-Sumerians from the Altais and fled to Iran, where they gave rise to the Elamites, among others. They began to drift into India around 7000 BC and wrested it from the Nihalis (the new arrivals started the Mehrgarh civilization, a blend of Dravidians and native Nihalis). The Mundas didn’t exist yet, they came from Yunnan later. The Dravidians married the Australoid indigenes and became quite dark, though they imposed their language on the conquered people. In the Indus Valley was invented Dentistry by these people. The Iranian Dravidians (Elamites) drove the Kartvelians from Mazanderan to the Caucasus around 6000 BC. The Indus Valley people had terrible floods and plagues which drove them south. The Aryans, a mixture of Iranians and Hunas, began to filter into India around 1300 BC, absorbing some Dravidians and driving the others south. The Indo-Aryan kingdoms mentioned in the Mahabharata were established by 1100 BC. Bengal remained Dravidian much longer than western India, though they were eventually conquered. Bengal means “God’s Country” in the language of the Mundas, the original inhabitants.
The Dravidians were related to but not the same as Elamites, since they arose as a mixture of Elamites and African settlers from the Horn of Africa in the Ormozgan area of southeastern Iran, around 7500 BC.
The ancient Adivasis or Australoids originally spoke Australian languages before the Dravidians conquered them. The Dravidians are related to Austro-Asiatics like the Mundas through extensive admixture in India, though not by common origin. Dravidians are Nostratics with an Eritrean admixture, they have a separate origin from the Austric peoples. The Australoid Adivasis are among the oldest Indians of them all, they arrived in India in 60,000 BC. But they were preceded by the Negrito ancestors of the Andamese, who were in Uttar Pradesh as early as 85,000 BC. Before them Denisovan hominin and Homo Erectus lived in India for countless ages, and a few of their most ancient genes are still in the Indian people today.
The Vedas of the Hindus has verses where it writes of monotheism, worship of only one God, while today, Hinduism is polytheistic, worshiping many deities. So something did change.
**Yajurveda 13.4**
*There is **one and only One Creator* and Maintainer of the entire world. *He alone **is sustaining the earth, sky and other heavenly bodies. He is Bliss Himself! **He alone* deserves to be worshiped by us.
**Atharvaveda 13.4.16-21**
*He is neither two, nor three, nor four, nor five, nor six, nor seven, nor eight, nor nine, nor ten. He is, on contrary, **One and Only One. There is no Ishwar except Him. All devtas reside within Him and are controlled by him. So **He alone* should be worshiped, none else.
***Atharvaveda 10.7.38
**Ishwar alone *is greatest and worth being worshiped. He is the source of all knowledge and activities.
**Yajurveda 32.11**
*Ishwar resides at each point in universe. No space is devoid of Him. He is self-sustaining and does not need help of any agent, angel, prophet or incarnation to perform His duties. The soul which is able to realize this **One and only One Ishwar* achieves Him and enjoys unconditional ultimate bliss or Moksha.
So, on the basis of above logic and reference’s from the Vedas its proved that the *Vedas speaks of only one God.* So if we speak of Ghar Wapsi, it should apply to all..in its logical sense. But how dangerous is this, forcing people..going back to the cycles of force that have hurt humanity by dominance. When do we learn to get out of these cycles?
Do Christians Convert Then? Jesus taught that when the Holy Spirit came, He would convict the world of sin, righteousness, and judgment (John 16:8). Jesus explained in verse 9 that the Holy Spirit would convict the world of sin, “because they believe not on Me”. Jesus is the pure, sinless, and holy Son of God. To reject Him is to reject God (Luke 10:16) and to oppose what is right. The Holy Spirit’s word convicts the sinner of sin in rejecting the Savior. In verse 10, Jesus said the Holy Spirit convicts of “righteousness, because I go to My Father and you see me no more.” Jesus was condemned by man on a charge of blasphemy, but His resurrection, ascension, and exaltation to God’s right hand established His claim of equality with God. Through the word, the Holy Spirit works on the sinner’s heart, convincing him that Christ is righteous and he is guilty. Further, in verse 11 Jesus taught that the Holy Spirit convicts “of judgment, because the prince of this world is judged.” Paul called Satan “the god of this world” (2 Cor. 4:4). He withstood Jesus in every way, although he was ultimately unsuccessful. He was responsible for the death of Jesus, hoping to not only destroy His life but also His work. When God raised Jesus from the tomb the plans of the Devil were foiled, and his doom sealed. He is under the judgment of God! The gospel (revealed by the Holy Spirit) works in the heart of a sinner, convicting him of the absolute certainty of his own accountability before God.
Please know that the Spirit does not coerce our conviction. There is no arm-twisting, trickery or physical force involved in bringing us to faith in Christ. I have been to many temples, mosques in my life, but that did not convert me. Likewise, someone coming to church does not convert them. If you are trying to make a friend side up with you on some issue, your friend has the freedom to accept your ideas, or to reject them altogether. I have never seen anyone come to Christ through a debate. We see our famous Indian TV debates and no one can convince the other. Our famous apologist, Ravi Zacharias never brought anyone to the faith through his arguments, it is a spiritual transaction, not an intellectual one. The more we force someone, the more they turn away. God calls, not us. The Holy Spirit lightens some truth in our hearts and we convert through conviction. People never convert because they get benefits. They take the benefits but remain as they are. It is harder for a Hindu or Muslim to convert out of choice or for material benefit because they face so much persecution, so it has to be a spiritual conversion that holds them through.
A Christian must not offend the religion of another person, never insult or put them down. Such Christians only create bitter wounds for them, it is a work of the Holy Spirit always. 1 Corinthians 10:31-32 “Whether therefore ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God. Give none offence, neither to the Jews, nor to the Gentiles, nor to the church of God.
The Scriptures teach that the Spirit operates through the word of truth which He has revealed. In every instance of conversion in the New Testament, the Spirit and the Word are never separated. The Word of God was taught to every person who was converted to Christ. Certainly, some miracles were performed, and there were outpourings of the Holy Spirit. Yet, each case shows that the Spirit’s word had to be believed and obeyed for salvation to take place.
Consider the fact that genuine faith comes by hearing God’s word (Rom. 10:17). Our hearts are made pure by faith (Acts 15:9). Birth by water and by the Spirit (John 3:5) is essential for one who wishes to see the kingdom. Paul said that the Corinthians were born by the gospel (1 Cor. 4:15). James added that God birthed us with the “word of truth” (1:18). Finally, Peter assures us that we were “born again … through the Word of God which lives and abides forever.” (1 Pet. 1:23). The evidence is abundant that the Spirit convicts and converts through the agency of the Scriptures.
I have never met anyone Christian who has been forced into being a Christian, nor heard of it anywhere. I know people accept Christ by choice or a supernatural encounter, some experience a miracle and then convert later. It is a supernatural transaction between God and Man, Woman. The presence of the Holy Spirit touches people. It is still a mystery to us how people turn to Christ, but on asking/reading of thousands of people, they all say, Christ touched me, I felt His Love! As I did too when I got deep into my faith. I too felt a very powerful presence of His Love surround me for two weeks and I felt as if I was walking in Heaven, on earth! Real true Christianity is a relationship with God by faith. Those who are searching will find God. I do believe every single human will have that opportunity to connect with the Light of the world, even in their last moments in the zone between life and death. This is why God so loves the world!
Rita F. Kurian
Comments