Report on India

I don't know if it is appropriate for me to say it, but as a representative visitor to Garnavello, may I thank the saints very, very much for the warm welcome, and also those who have worked so hard behind the scenes, obviously, to see that we were so well fed. I now have a monumental task on my hands, and that is to keep you folks awake for the next 45 minutes or so, when you're stuffed full of good beef and mashed potatoes and cookies and ice cream and all the other things that we've had. It's not going to be too bad for me to stay awake while I'm up here, but listen, if you really need to sleep, then just do it.

Just do it. Because, you see, if this was in India, then you wouldn't be sitting on chairs, you'd be sitting on the floor. And you'll see the sisters, especially when they're feeling a little bit tired, and maybe they've walked 15 miles to the meeting, so they've got a right to be tired, and one will just tap the other on the shoulder, and they'll swivel around, they'll go back to back, they'll pull the saris over the face, and they're out.

And they're out for maybe 30, 40 minutes, however tired they are, and when they wake up, they have a little drink of water, and they maybe clean their teeth with a stick, and they listen again. Now, what they don't suffer from is neck damage. In the West, we suffer from neck damage, because we're trying to say, I'm awake, I'm awake, you know.

So please, don't hurt your neck on my account. Sleep. If you need to sleep, you sleep.

And then after it all, you can just pretend you dreamed the whole thing. So, let's turn to the Scriptures, and I just want to read a verse with you in Acts chapter 20. Acts chapter 20, Paul is speaking to the brethren from Ephesus, and it's good to have an apostolic example.

The Lord, of course, is the greatest example for us to follow, but the apostolic example is good as well. And Paul is rehearsing with the brethren his ministry since he has come into Asia, and he says in verse 18, Acts 20 verse 18, He said unto them, Ye know from the first day that I came into Asia, after what manner I have been with you at all seasons, serving the Lord with all humility of mind, and with many tears, and temptations which befell me by the lying in wait of the Jews, and how I kept back nothing that was profitable unto you, but have showed you and have taught you publicly and from house to house, testifying both to the Jews and also to the Greeks, repentance toward God and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ. We trust God will bless the reading and the brief report that we are privileged to be able to give.

Paul was very conscious when, by the Spirit of God, he took the gospel into Asia, that it wasn't going to be a picnic. And I suppose when brethren seek to give report of the Lord's work, there is always the tendency, quite understandably, to concentrate on blessings seen, and of how the work is prospering. It's a kind of an upbeat thing.

But in any work for the Lord, it doesn't matter where it is, whether it's here in Garnevillo, whether it's in the state, whether it's in the U.S., whether it's abroad. If you're doing a work for God that he has equipped you for, it's going to be tough. Nothing else was ever promised.

There's going to be the need for a bit of steel, and above all, a sense of great dependence upon God. Paul, at the end of all his ministry, when he writes the second letter to Timothy, I suppose if we could have seen Paul in that cell, and said, Paul, what have you got to show for a lifetime's ministry since the Lord saved you? Sure, you saw some churches established, but, you know, there's false teachers have come, there's others are fighting amongst themselves, there's young men who were with you in the work and they've left, Demas has forsaken you, he's loved this present age, and so on. And that dear man could just look and say, listen, I'm not measuring success by the way the world measures it.

I know whom I have believed, and I am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I've committed unto him against that day. Now here's another classic case of not taking your theology from your hymn book. When you sing that as a hymn, the thought is of committing the soul to Christ of eternal security, that is not what Paul was speaking about.

Paul hadn't committed his soul to Christ against that day. No, he had committed to the Lord his service, all that he had done, everything he had sought to do in the energy of the Spirit of God and for the glory of God, he had committed it all to the Lord against that day when his motives and all his work would be rightly assessed for reward by the only one who was qualified to make that assessment. So Paul wasn't fazed by the fact that humanly speaking everything he had sought to build up had apparently started to crumble.

He was very confident that he'd moved in the mind and the will of the Lord and that he had committed unto the Lord to keep until that day all that he had done. Well when Paul started out in Asia conscious that there would be difficulties he said to the brethren I kept nothing back that was profitable unto you but have showed you and have taught you publicly and from house to house. Three things Paul was conscious of in this verse as he held nothing back for them that was going to be profitable for their growth as believers and as assemblies of God's people.

He said I have showed you I have taught you publicly and from house to house. Notice what comes first. I have showed you.

Example came first. And Paul was very conscious that for people who were going to be saved out of idolatry or saved out of Judaism that those people first of all needed a role model. When they first got saved they knew nothing.

Zero. There was no heritage of truth. They didn't have a new testament anyway.

These people at the outset were going to be very dependent upon the example that these preachers set. Now I know that today by the grace of God we have a rich heritage of truth and of experience in the assemblies of God's people but especially those of us who are privileged to stand before God's people we must never forget that example is one of the most powerful things that we teach to others. Moms and dads know that it is true when it comes to the teaching of their children that children look first of all at how their parents behave.

Not what you believe but how you behave. And that example is very very important. And so it is when it comes to moving in areas where the gospel is new where there is no heritage of truth where they are going to be first generation Christians and the things these brethren see you do they will do.

They don't really think about it. They can't. They're babes in Christ.

So example is very very important. It's a bit kind of lighthearted I suppose in one sense but we had some meetings on the east coast of Sri Lanka that's the little island that lies beneath India but is completely separate from India politically. And just after the tsunami had hit on the east coast in 2004 I went there in 2005 and we had meetings they had turned back from the natural disaster and back into awful civil war and it was pretty tough living across there for them.

But anyway the Lord blessed and we saw souls saved and so these souls were going to be baptized. They're going to be baptized in the sea and the local brethren said brother will you do the baptizing? I said no I'll not do the baptizing you will. And they said well the only brother we had who did the baptizing you know we haven't baptized folk for some time and well the only man who did it he's in hospital across in Colombo.

I said well now is the time to learn then. So they decided which two brethren one was going to be like a safety man out in the sea the other man was going to do the baptizing. So he was very nervous.

And he said now brother tell me again what do I do? I said well look come here I'll show you. So I got him in my arm I said now hold your hands up here I got hold of his hands I said now look you know just one nice movement I talked him through how to baptize somebody and then well I suppose looking back on it my error I said to him as a last thought I said now look brother some of these people are a little nervous and they might want to hold their nose when they go under the water now if they want to do that that's not a problem you let them hold their nose. So I watched as this procession went out into the sea quite a few people and this brother stood there with the other man and the first person a brother in Christ went forward to him to be baptized and in Tamil I heard the words floating across the water this confession of faith and then there was a slight pause and to my great interest the brother got hold of this young man who was going to be baptized and he grabbed him by the nose like this and he pushed him under the water and he pulled him back up the same way so his poor brother came out to the water rubbing his face and obviously thinking well I'm glad you only get baptized once the second one went forward he did exactly the same thing so it was the third this woman was looking very nervous so I called him brother come here so he waited back ashore and he said yes brother what is it I said look why are you doing it like this he said do you know everything you told me I just forgot he said the only thing I could remember was you saying hold their nose I said no they can hold their nose you hold them by the hands so it would be fairly easy if he carried on doing that to recognize Christians in Sri Lanka you know they'd all have a nose like Pinocchio or something like this you see the brethren in these instances have got no nobody to turn to who's done it before they've got no background of things so it's all new and example is of the utmost importance the things that you even unconsciously do they will do but then Paul said not only example but he said I've taught you publicly so that's exposition isn't it he taught the word of God and through teaching the word of God systematically with these people they were grounded in the faith and that's very necessary and the breadth of work in India can be from the rural areas where I spend most of my time where you might be preaching to I don't know two or three hundred people all newly saved all saved out of idolatry and perhaps out of them all maybe half a dozen of them can read the nearest schools for some of them are perhaps fifty, sixty miles away and you say to them well how are your kids ever going to learn to read why do they need to read they're going to look after buffalo they're going to plant rice they're going to cultivate rice they're going to reap rice they're going to keep looking after buffalo and then they're going to die why do they need to read you say yeah but you know they really need to read because otherwise how do you know what the word of God says so you see when speaking to people who are newly saved out of idolatry they wouldn't know one book of the Bible from another and they can't read you have to teach them so exposition building the thing up line upon line watching watching the audience are they still with you are they following you now you see here in the west we're very adept at making ourselves look interested though actually we're planning what color we're going to change the dining room you see so when you've lost an audience in India you know you've lost an audience in India they start talking to each other you know and they get up and they walk out and they walk back in bit like an American conference and so you have to watch them and say now have I got these people with me or not I was talking to a company in the middle of India about how the Lord stilled the storm but before he stilled the storm in Matthew's account he spoke to the disciples he gave them peace in the storm my audience is totally lost not following it at all so quickly you rewind in your brain and you say where did it go wrong what did I say that they didn't understand so I turned to my brother who was interpreting for me into the Marathi language and I looked and I said brother do these folk know what a boat is do they know I said where is the nearest lake I don't know he said scores of miles away well you know for these people their world was maybe maybe had like a 10 mile radius so I said these people won't know they can't even visualize a boat on a lake in a storm no brother he says meaningless they've never seen it in a book they've never seen it on a TV they've never seen it for real so I said why didn't you tell me he said well I was enjoying it so you really have to think to yourself what do these people know an exposition is not just trying to trot out what you know about the Bible it's trying to build the whole thing up for them and it's amazing you know if you have 4 or 5 days and meetings will run for maybe well for maybe 6 in the morning and your final meeting maybe at 10 o'clock at night it's not unusual to be preaching for 10 or 12 hours a day and when you're doing that for 4 or 5 days it's tremendous how those people learn good men particularly in the state of Andhra Pradesh which is in the middle of India and the eastward side that's the most rural kind of area the most backward population and good men in the past have set Bible truth to song I suppose that's what our early hymns were like really and you sit there waiting for this meeting to get going and these dear saints their singing is very discordant to the western ear and the hymn might go on for 25-30 minutes and I grew a bit impatient to my shame I grew a bit impatient I said to this brother how much longer is this going to go on he said well brother they've nearly finished singing the truth of the letter of Paul to the Ephesians you see they can't read so they're never going to read the letter to the Ephesians themselves but as each person gets saved and they come into contact with other believers so they learn the song and the song teaches them the truth of the word of God it's a whole different way of teaching but exposition is the way in which they get grounded in the truth of the word of God well Paul said I taught you by example I taught you by exposition but also from house to house explanation and you see where the explanation comes in is out of that crowd to whom you've been speaking you'll soon learn to identify very promising young men and young women it's vitally important that we teach them both because those young sisters though they will never have a public role it is essential that they develop into spiritual godly young women because they're going to be the wives of the spiritual godly young men who are going to be public now I'm looking at some excellent young men and women here today now let me say this with all my heart you be very very prayerful before God and you be careful to take the counsel of all the believers as you seek to identify a husband or a wife for the future because the husband or the wife that you take will be the making or the breaking of your lifetime service for God now will you hear that please it's difficult when you're young to and I'm not being rude now you've got great minds but what I mean is when you're young you simply don't have yet the experience to be able really to project your mind forward 30, 40 or maybe even 50 years but your effectiveness for God young men particularly your effectiveness for God your usefulness for God will be radically affected by the wife that you take it's essential therefore that we teach the men and the women the younger men and the women how to be godly how to go in for the things of the Lord because many a promising young man has been spoiled by the girl he married and many a promising young sister has had her life spoiled because she married the wrong boy that's one of the things we have to watch for because in one sense as we're teaching these rural Indian believers there is in one sense understand what I'm saying there's not a lot we can do for the older believers they never are going to learn to read so we'll seek to feed them we'll seek to teach them we'll seek to make them useful members of the local assembly but my burden is to seek to teach teachers to take the young men and women who by and large are literate even in the most illiterate states the youngsters tend to be literate now they're the ones who can read they're the ones who are getting educated and these if the Lord remains away these are the brethren and sisters who are going to be the teachers and the preachers and their wives and who are going to shape and mold assembly life in India until the Lord comes so I suppose in a nutshell my mission would be to go to an area to seek to teach local teachers and make myself redundant as quickly as possible so that local men are teaching local people the truth of God in their own language it's pointless me trying to learn any particular Indian language there are more than 600 major languages for that nation the territory is only a third of that of the United States but the population is four times there's about 1.1 1.2 billion people now in India and the vast majority of them are from the Hindu religion now Hinduism of itself is quite benign toward Christianity at least initially where the Muslim has got his Koran where the Christian has the Bible the Hindu doesn't have any one sacred book they do have a book they call the Bhagavad Gita which is well it's a kind of philosophical book and they have all different writings of all different gurus and pundits but essentially they have no final authority as to what they believe in fact Hinduism is so wide ranging that it has room for everyone from the pantheist to the atheist I learned that myself on a train one day the trains aren't particularly swift in India their flagship express train I took from Delhi to south to Valley Chennai and well the the journey took about a day I think 24 hours I think the average speed of the train was 26 miles an hour something like that that's their flagship express so you have plenty of time to speak to people Indians are very friendly very courteous and very interested always in foreigners and what you are and what you know and what you do and they will talk about religious things spiritual things they will talk about these things as readily as we speak about the weather so it wasn't long before I got talking to these men and they were business men and they're all Hindus and I said to one of them the first man I said would you mind telling me please what are your deities or which particular deity do you worship well this first man was a pantheist that simply means that God for him was in everything so he would he would fall down and worship a sunset or a river or a tree anything that kind of took his interest because God is in all of these things so if he's worshipping a tree he's worshipping God pantheism the next man very ready to speak about what he believed also a Hindu but he's a polytheist he has many gods many deities and he worships them in rotation usually that rotation is governed by the movement of the stars and the constellations so he might worship for a few months Ganesh the elephant god then he turns his devotion to Hanuman the monkey god or to Naga the snake god and he worships all these different deities in rotation so he's a polytheist the next man was an atheist didn't believe in any supreme deity didn't believe in any god with any personality he simply believed in good and evil forces like this that come from within that's Hinduism for you totally all embracing and I have found it is a great lead in to preaching the gospel because knowing the response I would get I then said to these men I'm very interested that you have all these different deities I think somebody told me that there are more than 30 crores of deities now a crore is 10 million in India in India so more than 300 million gods oh they said that would be a conservative estimate sure we got more than that I said well look out of all these gods you worship tell me something please what do they ever give you so it's a slight pause and then the first man began to laugh then the others were laughing with him and through his laughter the man said to me did you say this you've been to India before I said yes many times he said you've been to India before and you ask a dumb question like that that's exactly how he put it he said I thought you would have known by now that every god in India is on the take we have to take them rice, chickens, coconuts, money they don't ever give us anything no no we always have to take stuff to them so that's interesting and they're all like that yes they're all like that I said can I tell you about my god yes yes please yes we'd be very interested I said I've got a god who gives you see you've got many gods I've seen them and they've got big eyes but they can't see anything and many of them have got mouths but they never speak to you some of your gods have got multiple arms but they they've got no strength to do anything for you so they consider this and they nod I said the god in whom I believe and the god in whom my faith is is the almighty god of heaven who hears and sees and knows and who has spoken and above all he has given for god so loved the world he gave his only begotten son that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life they said we never heard of a god like that out of all those millions of deities they have they haven't a god like that so what an opportunity there just to be able to speak to these men about a god who knows and sees and in spite of what he knows and sees he gives and it's always a great lead into the gospel amongst these Hindu people but as with all idolatry demonism is rife so there's a lot of demonism and with that demonism there comes great opposition to the gospel as well couple that with the fact that as a culture the Indian women folk it's a bit of a conundrum in a way because they have many prominent women they've had women prime ministers they have women state ministers but they tend to come from known dynasties generally speaking the life of a woman in India is not to be coveted by you they're treated very badly in fact so badly that though their legal system is based on the British one they do have a law that has come in maybe 8 years back that if a bride dies in unexplained circumstances within 2 years of being married her husband and his family will be assumed guilty unless they can prove their innocence of her death the reason was because bridal death was becoming endemic in the country it works like this whereas in Africa when a boy marries a girl he is seen as obtaining something good he is seen as obtaining a prize so a dowry is paid from the boy's family to the girl's family he's paying a price to obtain a bride in India it's the other way around the moment that girl is born into the family she's seen as a financial drain on the family she's seen as a financial liability and because she is a financial liability if somebody's boy is going to marry her if it's my girl and your boy is going to marry my girl because I have a financial liability in this daughter I now have to pay you a dowry to take her off my hands and the older she is and let's be honest the uglier she is the higher the dowry so the price is going up the clock is ticking all the time and the price is going up that I have to pay to offload my daughter onto your boy but let's say eventually it's done then very often within about six months that young girl will have been doused with cooking oil and burnt to death this isn't a one-off this isn't an occasional thing this was becoming so endemic that they had to pass a law that if a woman dies like that then her husband will be assumed guilty unless he can prove his innocence why? because very simple business logic I pay you to take my girl off my hands six months later you burn her to death six months after that the whole transaction takes place again somebody else some other father pays your boy to take his girl off his hands and they make a business out of it I was having meetings in a place called Gudur down in the south-east of India and as is very typical in those cities they're filthy everything's broken there was no electric power so we had a gospel meeting in a big open area and they fixed up a tube light to a lorry battery truck battery and we had this one light and well folks were sitting closer than you folks are now I could see maybe two or three lines of people and beyond that was out of darkness I mean you just know there's a big crowd but you don't know how many's there you can't see them and the preaching's a little difficult because you have ants eating your feet this one light is attracting every airborne bug within about I don't know a 15 mile radius so they're just coming in from all over in fact you can't see your Bible to read it you have to brush the bugs away to see the text there's just that many of them it's very uncomfortable preaching like that very hot conditions but as I'm preaching so out of the crowd that came up onto the little stage a woman I had time enough just to see that she was disfigured there was some men with me on the platform she came she spoke to them in the Telugu language and afterward when I found out what it was about I said you know what was going on they said well this woman came up out of the crowd and they said the men said to her what do you want and I had been preaching from Luke chapter 8 this dear woman had come up onto the platform and she said to these men sirs would you tell me something more about a God and about a man who would love me and love me enough to give his life for me you see her husband had doused her with his family they doused her with oil set her alight she had run out of the house and the neighbors had heard the screaming and they had doused the flames she was very very badly wounded very badly scarred her father and his family they don't want her back they paid money to get rid of her clearly the husband's family don't want her they try to burn her to death there's no social support system nobody cared whether this dear girl lived or died she was just a beggar in the streets of Guder one day she heard the message of the gospel that there was one man who loved her and loved her enough to die for her that's the glory of the message of the gospel and it doesn't just lift people out of their sins and save their souls but it emancipates their whole life that dear sister is in assembly fellowship today God has brought the solitary into a family she blesses God for the day she ever heard the gospel and that's one of the reasons why the gospel is so fruitful in India these days in the state of Andhra Pradesh where I would spend a lot of my time back in the late 50s there were 34 assemblies today there's over one and a half thousand in fact in the southern four states of India there would be a total of about two and a half thousand assemblies and the spirit of God is doing a great work there's many many folks getting saved in fact it's the most unusual gospel meeting where people are not saved so that when we have gospel meetings the arrangements are already made if there is not a nearby pond or lake then the brethren will have got a cistern made there will be water there when people get saved they get baptized that's great isn't it I think I read that somewhere in my bible why don't we do that you see because of Hinduism's all embracing philosophy if a man or a woman a boy or a girl if they go home and they say listen we heard a message today that says Jesus Christ is Lord and by faith I have made Jesus Christ my Lord they will say great that's really good never heard of that one because they will all have their own Lords so if you found a new one to have as a Lord that's wonderful let's hear about him so it doesn't phase them in the slightest if one of their family goes home and says listen we heard the gospel and now Jesus Christ is my Lord but the moment they get baptized now I don't know how the heathen know this but the heathen do know this that the moment a person gets baptized they are making a confession of faith they are showing an allegiance to the Lord Jesus Christ and somehow the heathen people know that it means a complete break with what they once had so it's not the statement of faith that makes the difference to the families it's the baptism it's one of the reasons why when people profess Christ as Saviour they are as soon as possible and practical they are baptized it means there's very little false profession one place I preached a lady got saved and she is a surgeon in a hospital the following day along with a good number of others who had been saved at the same meetings with the elders of the assembly leading the way they marched down to a local lake singing hymns as they went what a testimony through that community and these folk were going to get baptized and they went down and as she went into the water and got baptized as she came up out of the water the people were calling to her in the Telugu language what is your name and I asked them I said why are they calling that I know what her name is her name is Lakshmi it's the name of the Hindu goddess of fortune they said no see if someone gets saved and they have an obviously Hindu deity name they change it they won't be known by the name of a Hindu deity if they are a believer so she has changed her name well while she was getting baptized her husband and her sons were walking along the main street of the town burning her effigy as far as they were concerned she was dead she had already been fired from her job she's a surgeon in a hospital now she's got saved she's gone back and told them all this within 24 hours she's fired she's lost her job she's lost her family and as she came up out of the waters of baptism and they were saying what is your name with a beaming smile she said my name is Grace wonderful what the gospel can do isn't it when I last saw sister Grace she told me that well she said they needed me as a surgeon in the hospital she said I knew I'd get my job back eventually but she said I had to wait some weeks and then they took me on as a porter and she was the head surgeon in the hospital she was the top girl so now she has to humbly push the trolleys around and when she'd done that for a bit then they let her do some nursing and now she's carrying the bedpans and washing the floors then eventually they reinstated her in her position as a surgeon this is the cost you see of owning Christ Jesus as Lord amongst some of these dear Indian saints and yet the gospel is thriving and just last June I was out in the state of Maharashtra and I was in an assembly where the brethren came and they said brother we've got something to show you I said really yeah they said it's great you know we've been out preaching the gospel and we remember your last meetings where you were teaching us the doctrine of the gospel so we feel a lot more comfortable about what we're preaching now and we've had been out in all the villages and we've seen some assemblies started and last weekend was great I said what do you want to show me then and as one they turned round they took off their shirts they said this and their backs were lacerated they'd been beaten by the villagers and eventually the police were called but the police won't get involved in anything of a religious nature because they could start a riot so they just left them and eventually these brethren beaten up made their way home and they were wearing these wounds on their backs with pride I mean not bad pride it's a good pride I'm not sure but if there's good pride they had it and they had a right to it they just felt so thrilled that they had been counted worthy to suffer in this way to take the gospel to others small wonder that the gospel is prospering and so many different souls are being saved the great need is for teaching God would have all men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth and the great problem is teaching that's what I want you to pray about most that's what they would ask you to pray about most because sometimes we're with rural assemblies where nobody can read and sometimes we're in assemblies where there's a whole heap of very bright youngsters with multiple degrees and this sort of thing and we are addressing the whole span of education human education it means you can teach a lot to this group that you can't teach to this group but above all else we need to see local men raised up of God able to teach the word of God to their own people in their own language one thing we're just gearing up for now to try and help in that conditions in our home assembly frailty and illness mean that I can't travel as often or as long to India as I was doing so we're now looking to prepare podcasts we're preparing e-booklets that well many of them don't have lavatories but they do have phones so they can download onto these smartphones booklets outlining certain points of doctrine you know maybe here's a little booklet on the gift of the Holy Spirit what's all that about so we'll spell out the scriptures we'll give them teaching on this it can be translated into their language and they can download it from a website onto their cell phone so we're seeking to harness this kind of technology so that we can teach as many of God's people there in their own language as soon as possible so that the assemblies are not only growing numerically but they're growing in their knowledge of the Lord Jesus as well my time is up and I don't want to steal any time from Brother Shad you'll appreciate that the work is vast Brother Michael Brown with whom I first went out to India I don't know a dozen years ago Michael is grounded now because his wife is so ill he can't leave her not because she can't get nursed by someone else but the medication she's on brings on kind of panic attacks if he's out of her sight for too long so consequently Michael wasn't able to get to India at all last year I don't really know of anyone else who's going from the assemblies out to India on any kind of regular basis to help them we've asked the brethren in Singapore in the Juchat assembly to come and help next time I'm there God willing a brother from Singapore will join me and we're trying to get those brethren in Asia to take an interest in the work in India it's not comfortable it's hot it's filthy it can be dispiriting but the rewards for eternity are amazing wouldn't it be great for some of you young men and sisters just to experience going out and praying and knowing that when the gospel is preached folks will be saved and those who are saved will be baptized and those who are baptized will come into fellowship in a local assembly it's great to see the work of God multiplying as it did in the days when the new testament was written it's not without its problems but we trust that in the goodness of God and also with your prayers as well the work will prosper and that not only will folks be saved but they will be taught and assemblies established in the truth for the honor and for the glory of our God.

God bless you thank you for listening and we look forward to seeing you again. Thank you.