Biography of George Whitefield

George Whitefield was born in England in 1714. As a child Whitefield loved acting, and he mimicked the preachers whom he heard. Though his early education was spotty because of his family’s financial troubles, in 1732 he began attending Oxford University. There he met Charles Wesley, a devout Anglican student who encouraged Whitefield toward devout Christianity. Whitefield joined the “Holy Club,” led by Charles’s brother John. The club was a gathering of students dedicated to prayer, fasting, and other spiritual exercises, called “Methodists” because of the methods they used to promote personal holiness. These young men both deepened their spirituality and, with Whitefield and the Wesleys at their head, created the Methodist movement.

Whitefield was ordained after receiving his BA. He immediately began preaching, but he did not settle as the minister of any parish. Rather he became an itinerant preacher and evangelist. Just as the Wesleys had done earlier, Whitefield made his first trip to North America in 1738, traveling to the newly established colony of Georgia. There he conceived the idea of establishing an orphanage, which he named Bethesda. For the rest of his life, Whitefield raised money for the orphanage.

After he returned to England, Whitefield’s preaching became increasingly popular. Whitefield preached in a dramatic style that crowds loved, engaging, for example, in imagined conversations in the pulpit. His detractors said that he was more of an actor than a preacher. His voice was powerful, which was a necessity to reach the large crowds that gathered to hear him. He preached in established churches whenever he could, but he often resorted to preaching outdoors when he could not find a cooperating church or when the audience was too large. For most of his life, Whitefield preached multiple sermons every day of the week. And Whitefield, like the other Methodists, sought out groups of people whom other ministers had passed over, such as miners in Britain or slaves in Georgia.

Whitefield’s preaching wasn’t different just because of his style; his message was different too. Where other Anglican ministers emphasized religious ritual or moral living, Whitefield preached conversion. His hearers must be inwardly changed through faith in Jesus Christ for a personal salvation from sin, to experience a new birth through the Holy Spirit. That conversion and regeneration could be experienced in an instant, Whitefield preached, if only people would repent and believe.

As he grew increasingly popular, though, Whitefield also became increasingly divisive. Many established ministers thought he was wrong to emphasize conversion and that his style was too flamboyant. They accused him of being an “enthusiast,” that is, someone who injured the dignity of preaching and illegitimately claimed revelation from God.  Whitefield in turn was unsparing and sometimes uncharitable in his attacks on other ministers, whom he accused of being ignorant of the gospel and of serving Satan. These disputes began to create a division between evangelicals like Whitefield and mainstream Anglicanism. Whitefield also broke with his fellow Methodist John Wesley over a theological argument that led to a personal rift, and the Methodists separated into two camps.

In 1739 Whitefield returned to the colonies for what would become the most important preaching tour of his life. At the same time that he raised money for the Georgia orphanage, Whitefield preached throughout the colonies, from New England to Georgia, in a trip that lasted over a year. He held meetings both in the open air and at whatever churches would invite him. The trip was well publicized, for Whitefield arranged for newspaper coverage and wrote many pamphlets and sermons on his journeys, thereby harnessing the power of the press for the sake of revival. Consequently, Whitefield preached to tremendously large crowds, including some gatherings that numbered in the tens of thousands.

What made Whitefield’s preaching tour so important was that it came during the height of several local revivals. In New England under Jonathan Edwards, in Pennsylvania and New Jersey under William and Gilbert Tennent, and in Virginia under Samuel Davies, these awakenings led to many converts. Whitefield preached alongside each of those ministers. It was the shared experience of Whitefield’s preaching, both by the tens of thousands who attended his services and the even wider audience that read about them in newspapers and pamphlets, that made a series of scattered, local awakenings into the Great Awakening.

On his return to Britain in 1741, Whitefield continued his preaching ministry, though his popularity was waning. Many churches were closed to him because of his attacks on the Anglican clergy, so he preached in the open air and established a chapel for himself in London.

Whitefield sailed again for the colonies in 1744. The fires of the Great Awakening had cooled, but Whitefield was able to stir them up again, albeit not as successfully as during his earlier tour. As in Britain, he found an increasing number of churches closed to him by ministers who opposed the Awakening. Whitefield also continued to raise money for Bethesda. Regrettably, in trying to support the orphanage permanently, Whitefield accepted the donation of some slaves and bought some of his own. Those slaves were set to work on a plantation in Georgia, and the income went to the orphanage. Whitefield had earlier been mildly opposed to slavery, but thinking only of his orphanage, he became both a practitioner and defender of slavery. Evangelicals who were his contemporaries were beginning to have grave doubts about slavery and even to oppose it outright, and evangelicals would later lead the antislavery movement.

In 1748 Whitefield returned to England. He became the personal chaplain to Selina Hastings, the countess of Huntingdon and a prominent patron of evangelical ministers. As Whitefield aged, his health grew worse. Still, he continued to preach multiple times each day, traveling throughout England, Ireland, Scotland, and several more times to North America.

Whitefield returned to the colonies in 1769 for the final time. He unsuccessfully pursued plans to found a college at Bethesda. He also took up the political cause of the colonies, which by that time were engaged in disputes with imperial Britain. During another preaching tour, Whitefield died in Newburyport, Massachusetts, where he was buried in that town’s Presbyterian church.

Whitefield was a man with a remarkable gift and a relentless energy for preaching. Though his zeal in preaching the gospel and converting faith in Christ sometimes led him into divisiveness, yet it also made him the most widely known and widely heard preacher in his day. For many people on both sides of the Atlantic, Whitefield’s sermons both in person and in print were the single shared religious experience that connected them to other people affected by the awakenings. Whitefield, more than any other man, turned a series of awakenings into the Great Awakening.

Biography of Jonathan Edward: 

Jonathan Edward (Oct5,1703-March 22,1758) was a Christian preacher & theologian. Edwards is a widely acknowledged to be America’s most Important & original philosophical theologian, and one of America’s Greatest intellectuals. Edward’s theological work is broad in Scope, but he is often associated with reformed theology the metaphysics of  theological determinism and the puritan heritage.

Jonathan Edwards was the son of two ministerial families. His father, Timothy Edwards, was a Congregationalist minister; his mother, Esther Stoddard Edwards, was the daughter of the powerful Massachusetts minister Solomon Stoddard. Born into a family of clergymen, Edwards was brought up for the ministry, receiving his early education from his father.

When he was twelve, Edwards entered Yale College. Yale had only recently been established as a doctrinal and geographic counter to Harvard College, which some believed was becoming doctrinally liberal. Edwards received a solid theological education, but he also learned the new science, psychology, and philosophy of Isaac Newton, John Locke, George Berkeley, and other contemporary European thinkers. Edwards mixed those two influences—Congregationalist theology and Enlightenment philosophy—as he restated Christian doctrine in terms compatible with the new philosophy.

These educational influences were paralleled by Edwards’s spiritual development. As a child Edwards had experienced religious desires, but he believed himself to be spiritually lacking in two regards. First, he could not yet acknowledge God’s sovereignty, because he doubted the doctrine of election. Second, Edwards did not believe that he had experienced God’s converting work of grace. Prior to the Awakening, it was seldom thought that conversion came in an instant; rather it was regarded as a gradual process whereby God converted the soul prepared by faith. Still, Edwards was unconvinced that God was working in him.

After receiving his BA from Yale in 1720 and reading for an MA at Yale for a year, Edwards served as a minister at a Presbyterian church in New York City, then at a country church in Connecticut. He soon returned to Yale to serve as a tutor, a position in which he was at once a teacher and a supervisor of the college students. He suffered severe depression, in part because of the disobedience of his students, in part because of his constant struggles with temptation. But Edwards’s depression proved to be his spiritual turning point. He experienced a personal conversion that was at once spiritual and intellectual: he became convinced that God had converted him by grace and that God was indeed sovereign and just.

In 1726 Edwards obtained a position as assistant pastor to his grandfather, Solomon Stoddard. Stoddard was a leading clergyman in New England, especially in the Connecticut River Valley. His influence was widespread, and he exerted it both from his pulpit in Northampton, Massachusetts, and as the patriarch of a family of ministers, lawyers, and soldiers. When his grandfather died in 1729, Edwards was given his position as pastor of Northampton.

As Edwards came into his own position, he began to develop the main themes and methods of his ministry. Though later he would be best known for his massive works of theology and philosophy, most of his early labor went into writing sermons. These sermons emphasized that God would judge sin, that God’s will determined who would be saved, and that sinners must prepare themselves to receive the grace of God, though only grace through faith could actually provide salvation. Edwards labored over his sermons twelve to fourteen hours per day, spending little time on pastoral visits to his congregation. He preached in the conventional New England form, yet he also brought something new to preaching. If preaching were to have an effect, Edwards saw, then it must stir people’s affections, speaking to the heart as much as it did to the head.

Edwards’s work was rewarded in the winter of 1734-35, when the youth of Northampton experienced an outbreak of religious enthusiasm. Many young men and women in New England were unable to marry because New England’s rapidly growing population left little land available, preventing the youth from being able to support themselves. Of a marriageable age yet restrained under their parents’ authority, men and women in their late teens and twenties often engaged in idleness, gossiping, and sexual sins. Edwards targeted those sins in his preaching and—after years of resistance—many of the youth suddenly joined the membership of the church, professing conversion. Edwards wrote about this revival in his Faithful Narrative of the Surprising Work of God (1737), a tract that was widely influential in both New England and Britain. The Faithful Narrative both publicized the awakening in Northampton and introduced other ministers to Edwards’s new style of preaching and conversion.

The 1734-35 revival sparked similar revivals in surrounding towns, but that awakening remained primarily local. After a few months the fervor died down, and Edwards returned to the struggle with a congregation dull of hearing. But in 1740-41, Edwards teamed up with George Whitefield, an itinerant minister from England who was traveling through the British colonies in America. While Edwards and Whitefield did not see eye to eye about some things—Edwards thought Whitefield’s preaching was too flamboyant—they agreed on the need for inward conversion and on the theology of awakening. The combined preaching of Edwards, Whitefield, and other ministers throughout the colonies ignited another series of revivals from Georgia to New England. Whitefield’s tour through the colonies connected the local, regional awakenings into a shared experience, which became the Great Awakening.

While the Great Awakening did much to strengthen churches and increase their membership and fervor, at the same time it caused division in churches and denominations throughout the colonies and in Britain. Some conservative, orthodox ministers and many liberal ministers objected to the “enthusiasm” of the Awakening, such as the excessive emotional outbursts of new converts. The refusal of some ministers to acknowledge the Awakening as the work of God on the one hand, and the often uncharitable criticism of other ministers by the supporters of the Awakening on the other, led to a deep rift. Edwards wholeheartedly took the side of the revivalists and wrote much in defense of the Awakening, yet he took pains to distinguish between the genuine working of God and the human excesses of the Awakening. In The Distinguishing Marks of a Work of the Spirit of God (1741), he explained that emotional displays did not prove that someone was a convert, but neither did they hinder God’s working. And in Some Thoughts Concerning the Present Revival of Religion (1742), he defended the experiences of converts by describing the spiritual raptures of his wife, Sarah Pierpont Edwards, whom he left unnamed.

Besides promoting and defending the Great Awakening, Edwards’s other great work was explaining it by means of a new, distinctive theology. Into Edwards there flowed the several intellectual and religious currents of his age: Puritan theology, Enlightenment rationalism, and continental Pietism, as well as his own experience in the Awakening. Edwards merged those streams—accepting and modifying parts of each—into a theology that maintained the Puritan doctrine of early New England, yet that was stated in the terms of the new philosophies and sciences, and that explained and encouraged conversion and awakenings. Edwards described how God worked in men to save them and to reveal Himself. God’s saving grace revealed God not merely to man’s intellect, which earlier theologians had termed the “understanding,” but also to his affections and emotions, which Edwards termed the “heart.” In other words, a person saved by grace did not simply assent to propositions with his intellect, but rather apprehended them through a total belief in God, combining both his mind and his heart in love towards God. Edwards explained this most clearly in his great work A Treatise on Religious Affections (1746). It was on the basis of this theology that Edwards and other revivalists preached so as to influence the affections of his hearers, stirring up many awakenings.

The revival enthusiasm in Northampton soon gave way to disputes between pastor and congregation. For several years, tensions had built between Edwards and his church. Edwards frequently requested salary increases because of inflating prices and a growing family—nine children and a wife—but the town routinely denied these requests. Edwards’s efforts to curb the sins of the youth had produced awakening, but they had also built up a backpressure of discontent. Two things brought the conflict to a head. Edwards publicly rebuked some young people by name from his pulpit, but he failed to distinguish between the accused and those who were merely witnesses. He thus angered a sizeable portion of his congregation. Edwards also instituted a new requirement that an applicant to church membership must give a credible profession of faith before being permitted to partake of communion. That requirement was a moderate return to the older Puritan tradition in New England, but it overturned both the policy of Edward’s grandfather and the longstanding tradition in Northampton. Edwards was soon dismissed, though he continued in the awkward position of preaching on Sunday whenever the congregation could not secure another minister.

In 1752 Edwards moved to another pastorate in Stockbridge, a frontier town in western Massachusetts. There he was both pastor to the small community of colonists and missionary to a settlement of Mahican Indians. Living in Stockbridge was dangerous, for the Edwards family was there during the middle of the French and Indian War, a time of frequent raids along the frontier. But there Edwards worked on his major philosophical works. He also worked on what he hoped would be his two masterpieces, though neither was finished: a large-scale commentary or study Bible, and a massive study of Christian doctrine in historical form, to be titled The History of the Work of Redemption.

Edwards left Stockbridge in 1758 to become the president of the College of New Jersey (later Princeton University). He had barely taken up his duties when a smallpox epidemic hit the town. Edwards, who kept up with medical advances, urged the townspeople and his own family to be inoculated. Nearly everyone who was inoculated survived the epidemic, but Edwards himself died from complications.

Though he was dead at the age of fifty-five, leaving what he thought would be his most important works unfinished, Jonathan Edwards had exerted a profound influence on American religion. His theological and philosophical positions have earned him a reputation as the greatest of American theologians and as one of America’s two or three great philosophers. But Edwards’s greatest contribution was his work as a pastor and preacher who stirred up the Great Awakening, a work that fulfilled Edwards’s consuming affection for God’s glory.

Biography of George Müller : " A man of faith and prayer "

George Müller (1805-1898), English preacher and philanthropist, was born near Halberstadt, Germany, on the 27th of September 1805, the son of an exciseman [formerly, a government agent who collects excise tax on goods and prevents smuggling]. He subsequently became a naturalized British subject.

Educated in Germany, he resolved in 1826 to devote himself to missionary work, and in 1828 went to London to prepare for an appointment offered him by the Society for promoting Christianity among the Jews. In 1830, however, he gave up the idea of missionary work, and became minister of a small congregation at Teignmouth, Devonshire. He contended that the temporal as well as the spiritual needs of life could be supplied by prayer, and on this principle abolished pew rents and refused to take a fixed salary. After two years at Teignmouth, Müller removed to Bristol, where he spent the rest of his life.

Although George Muller became famous as one of the greatest men of prayer known to history, he was not always a saint. He wandered very deep into sin before he was brought to Christ. He was born in the kingdom of Prussia, in 1805. His father was a revenue collector for the government, and was a worldly-minded man. He supplied George and his brother with plenty of money when they were boys, and they spent it very foolishly. George deceived his father about how much money he spent, and also as to how he spent it. He also stole the government money during his father's absence.

At ten years of age, George was sent to the cathedral classical school at Halberstadt. His father wanted to make a Lutheran clergyman of him, not that he might serve God, but that he might have an easy and comfortable living from the State Church. "My time," says he. "was now spent in studying, reading novels, and indulging, though so young, in sinful practices. Thus it continued until I was fourteen years old, when my mother was suddenly removed. The night she was dying, I, not knowing of her illness, was playing cards until two in the morning, and on the next day, being the Lord's day, I went with some of my companions in sin to a tavern, and then, being filled with strong beer, we went about the streets half intoxicated."

"I grew worse and worse," says he. "Three or four days before I was confirmed (and thus admitted to partake of the Lord's supper), I was guilty of gross immorality; and the very day before my confirmation, when I was in the vestry with the clergyman to confess my sins (according to the usual practice), after a formal manner, I defrauded him; for I handed over to him only a twelfth part of the fee which my father had given me for him."

A few solemn thoughts and desires to lead a better life came to him, but he continued to plunge deeper and deeper into sin. Lying, stealing, gambling, novel-reading, licentiousness, extravagance, and almost every form of sin was indulged in by him. No one would have imagined that the sinful youth would ever become eminent for his faith in God and for his power in prayer. He robbed his father of certain rents which his father had entrusted him to collect, falsifying the accounts of what he had received and pocketing the balance. His money was spent on sinful pleasures, and once he was reduced to such poverty that, in order to satisfy his hunger, he stole a piece of coarse bread, the allowance of a soldier who was quartered in the house where he was. In 1821 he set off on an excursion to Magdeburg, where he spent six days in "much sin." He then went to Brunswick, and put up at an expensive hotel until his money was exhausted. He then put up at a fine hotel in a neighboring village, intending to defraud the hotel-keeper. But his best clothes were taken in lieu of what he owed. He then walked six miles to another inn, where he was arrested for trying to defraud the landlord. He was imprisoned for this crime when sixteen years of age.

After his imprisonment young Muller returned to his home and received a severe thrashing from his angry father. He remained as sinful in heart as ever, but in order to regain his father's confidence he began to lead a very exemplary life outwardly, until he had the confidence of all around him. His father decided to send him to the classical school at Halle, where the discipline was very strict, but George had no intention of going there. He went to Nordhausen instead, and by using many lies and entreaties persuaded his father to allow him to remain there for two years and six months, till Easter, 1825. Here he studied diligently, was held up as an example to the other students, and became proficient in Latin, French, History, and his own language (German). "But whilst I was outwardly gaining the esteem of my fellow-creatures," says he, "I did not care in the least about God, but lived secretly in much sin, in consequence of which I was taken ill, and for thirteen weeks confined to my room. All this time I had no real sorrow of heart, yet being under certain natural impressions of religion, I read through Klopstock's works, without weariness. I cared nothing about the Word of God."

"Now and then I felt I ought to become a different person," says he, "and I tried to amend my conduct, particularly when I went to the Lord's supper, as I used to do twice every year, with the other young men. The day previous to attending that ordinance I used to refrain from certain things, and on the day itself I was serious, and also swore once or twice to God with the emblem of the broken body in my mouth, to become better, thinking that for the oath's sake I should be induced to reform. But after one or two days were over, all was forgotten, and I was as bad as before."

He entered the University of Halle as a divinity student, with good testimonials. This qualified him to preach in the Lutheran state church. While at the university he spent all his money in profligate living. "When my money was spent," says he, "I pawned my watch and part of my linen and clothes, or borrowed in other ways. Yet in the midst of all this I had a desire to renounce this wretched life, for I had no enjoyment in it, and had sense enough left to see, that the end one day or other would be miserable; for I should never get a living. But I had no sorrow of heart on account of offending God."

He devoted himself particularly to the care of orphan children. He began by taking a few under his charge, but in course of time their number increased to 2000, settled in five large houses erected for the purpose at Ashley Down, near Bristol. The money required for the carrying on of this work was voluntarily contributed, mainly as a result of the wide circulation of Müller's narrative The Lord's Dealings with George Müller.
When he was over seventy he started on a preaching mission, which lasted nearly seventeen years and included Europe, America, India, Australia and China.
He died at Bristol on the 10th of March 1898..

David Livingstone:

David Livingstone was a doctor, an explorer and discoverer, a philanthropist who did much for humanity, and, most of all, he was a missionary hero, who gave his life for Africa. 

The little David was born of sturdy, earnest Christian parents in the town of Blantyre, Scotland. His father, Neil Livingstone, was a traveling tea merchant in a small way, and his mother was a thrifty housewife. Before he was ten, the boy received a prize for reciting the whole of the one hundred and nineteenth Psalm, "with only five hitches," we are told. He began early to be an explorer, and went all over his native place. He loved to collect flowers and shells. He climbed one day to the highest point in the ruins of Bothwell Castle ever reached by any boy, and carved his name there.

When only ten, he went to work in the cotton mills, and bought a study-book out of his first week's wages. A schoolmaster was provided for evening lessons by the mill-owners. When David could have the master's help, he took it, and when he couldn't, he worked on alone. In this way he mastered his Latin. He was not brighter than other boys, but more determined to learn than many. He used to put a book on the spinning jenny, and catch sentences now and then, as he passed the place in his work. In this way he learned to put his mind on his book no matter what clatter went on around him. When nineteen, he was promoted in the factory. At twenty the young man became an earnest Christian.

It was about this time that Dr. Carey, sometimes called "The Consecrated Cobbler," stirred up the churches on the subject of missions. A good deacon formed a missionary society in Blantyre, and there were missionary talks, and the giving out of missionary books. David Livingstone became so deeply interested that, in the first place, he decided to give to missions all he could earn and save. The reading of the "Life of Henry Martyn" stirred his blood, and then came the appeals of a missionary from China, which thrilled the youth still more. At last he said, "It is my desire to show my attachment to the Cause of Him who died for me by devoting my life to His service." From this time he never wavered in his plan to become a missionary. He got a good preparation, through seven years of study, and became not only a regular minister, but a doctor as well.

The young man wanted to go to China, but the Opium War there prevented. Then Robert Moffat came home and Livingstone heard him plead for Africa and say that he had "sometimes seen in the morning sun the smoke of a thousand villages where no missionary had ever been," and this settled the question for him. He would go to Africa.

His parents consented gladly, but you know that the parting was hard. Look at this picture. It is the evening of November 16, 1840. Livingstone goes home to say good-bye before he leaves his native land for the Dark Continent. He suggests that they sit up all night, and we can see the three talking earnestly together. The father is a man with a missionary's heart in him. At five in the morning they have breakfast, and kneel for family prayers, after David has read Psalms 121 and 135. Now the father and son start to walk to Glasgow. Before entering the city, the two say, "Good-bye," and part, never to meet again.

Arrived in Africa, Mr. Livingstone finds some easy work offered at a station, but pushes on seven hundred miles towards Dr. Moffat's station where heathenism is like darkest night. Here the people think him a wizard, able to raise the dead. An old chief says, "I wish you would give me medicine to change my heart. It is proud and angry always." Livingstone shows the way to Jesus. He is the first missionary who ever came into this region. How busy he is as doctor, minister, and reformer. He studies the plants, birds, and beasts. He finds forty-three different kinds of fruit, and thirty-two eatable roots, in one district. He sends specimens to a London college.
This man keeps on exploring telling of Jesus wherever he goes. When he writes home, his letters are covered with maps of the country. He is learning more about Africa than any one has known before. He studies the African fever, and the deadly tsetse fly, that brings disease. During this time he has the adventure with the lion, often mentioned, the fierce creature rushing on him, biting him and breaking his arm and crushing his shoulder. It cripples him for life, but he says little about it. In putting up a new mission building, he breaks the bone in the same place, but hardly mentions it. Years later, a company of royal surgeons identify the body brought home as that of Livingstone by the scar and the fracture.

For four years this missionary hero toils alone in the beginning of his life in Africa. Then he is happily married to Miss Mary Moffat, daughter of Dr. Moffat who told of the "smoke from the thousand villages, where Jesus was unknown." Now they work earnestly together, in the station called Mabotsa, where the chief Sechele is the first convert. Before he fully learns the "Jesus Way," the chief says to the missionary, "You cannot make these people believe by talking. I can make them do nothing but by thrashing them. If you like, I will call them all together, with my head man, and with our whips of rhinoceros hide we will soon make them all believe." But the missionary teaches him the true way.

He goes on exploring new fields, teaching, healing, and helping all the way. He discovers Lake N'gami. He goes into the interior forcing his way through flooded lands, through sharp reeds, with hands raw and bleeding, and with face cut and bloody. He sets himself against the slave-trade, "The open sore of Africa," as he calls it, battling heroically against it and enlisting others in the struggle. His wife and four children must go home, but the man stays, to work on alone.

Finally he disappears for three years. He is found in a wonderful way by Henry Stanley, whom he leads to Christ, but he will not return with him to England. He toils on and toils on, weary and worn. One morning in 1874, his African servants find him on his knees in his hut beside his bed. The candle is burning still, but the brave, unselfish life has gone out. They bury their master's heart under a tree, and carry his body on their shoulders a thousand miles to the coast — a nine months' march, then send it home to England. There it sleeps to-day in Westminster Abbey, but the hero and his work live unforgotten and ever-to-be-remembered while the world endures...

Biography of Sadhu Sundar Singh : 

One hundred and four years ago on September 1889, Sundar Singh was born in Rampur, in the region of Patiala northern India. He was raised in the luxury of his family's wealth. As a Sikh, Sundar was taught about Hinduism and came along with his parents to Hindu temples. By the age of seven he had already memorized Bagawadgita, the songs of blissful people, which is a long and intricate verse containing lessons of life. At sixteen, not only had he mastered Veda, the ancient sacred books of Hinduism, but he had also read Koran, the sacred book of Islam. He then got acquainted with some Sadhus who taught him Yoga. A Sadhu is a Hindu who devotes his entire life to his religion and forsakes all the worldly pleasures. Sundar remained single and jobless. He travelled all over India wearing a yellow robe without any food and without having any permanent residence. He lived only on the charity of others.

It was his mother who first encouraged him to become a Sadhu. She once told him, "Do not be selfish and materialistic like your brothers, but seek for your peace of mind and hold steadily onto your faith. Be a Sadhu." However, he never achieved peacefulness in his meditations. Owing to his mother's connections with some women from a British mission in Rajpur, Sundar was able to enter the school run by the missionaries. It was there that Sundar was first exposed to the Bible. He wasn't interested in the Bible at that time. Instead, he ardently buried himself in the occult art of Hinduism.

His mother died when he was 14 years old. Since then his life changed dramatically. Convinced that what Jesus had taught was completely wrong, he tore the Bible apart and burned it. He even threw stones at preachers and encouraged others to do likewise. Still, however hard he tried, he couldn't find the peace he had been seeking for in his own religion. He reached a point in his life where committing suicide crossed his mind. Three days after he burned the Bible in front of his father, he woke up at 3 a.m. and said to himself, "Oh God, if you do exist, show me the right way, or I will kill myself." He was thinking of throwing himself in front of a train that usually passed at 5 a.m. every morning behind their house in the hope that he would find peacefulness in his future reincarnation. He repeated his prayer once again. All of a sudden he saw a brilliant light. At first he feared that the room was on fire. But nothing happened. He then thought that it might be an answer to his prayer. While watching the light, he suddenly saw Jesus' figure in the radiance. He then heard a voice in Hindi saying, "How much longer are you going to search for me? I have come to save you. You prayed for the right path. Why have you not followed it?" At that time, Sundar realized that Jesus had not died 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.

Thereafter his life was transformed. He wanted to be baptized. Although his family tried to prevent him from his intention, he was determined. In 1905, on his birthday, he was baptized in an English church in Simla. At that time, he decided to become a Sadhu Christian, so that he could dedicate himself to the Lord. As a Sadhu, he wore a yellow robe, lived on the charity of others, abandoned all possession and maintained celibacy. 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. In addition, he also wanted to be free to devote himself to the Lord.

Having become a Christian, he was renounced by his father and ostracized by his family. On October 16 1905, Sundar wearing a yellow robe, barefooted and without provisions, resumed his nomadic life from village to village, but this time he followed in Jesus' footsteps. In 1906, he went to Tibet for the first time. That country attracted him, primarily because of the great challenges it presented against evangelism. "There will be very strong opposition and persecution there. High above the tranquil snowclad Himalayan peaks, there will be a lot of time and opportunities to meet God and to read the Bible," he thought.

On his way to Tibet, he met Stoker, an American missionary who also wore a yellow robe. Sometimes they spent the night together under a tree or in a mountain cave at an altitude of 5000 meters above sea level, without enough food. Happily they endured all the hardship for the sake of spreading the Gospel. When Sundar became ill, Stoker got them a place to stay in a house belonging to a European. Inspired by Sundar's faithfulness towards God and sincere love towards other people, the host repented his sins and gave his life to serving the Lord.

Following the advice of his friends, Sadhu enrolled himself in St.John School of Theology in Lahore. After studying for two years there, he resumed his travel. An eyewitness reported his experience with Sundar, "I encountered Sundar Singh as he was walking down a mountain trail to proclaim the Gospel to us. He then sat on top of a tree, wiped the sweat off his face and sang a hymn about the love of Jesus to us. The audience was not impressed by the song. One man came forward from the audience, pulled Sundar down from the tree and knocked him to the ground. Silently, Sundar got to his feet and began praying for these hostile people. He then told us about the love of Jesus who had died to redeem all sinners. Because of that I repented and so did the attacker." That was not the only time when Sundar won souls for the Lord by adhering to Jesus' instruction which says, "Do not take revenge on someone who wrongs you. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, let him slap your left cheek too." (Matthew 5:39).

In the following years, he was often persecuted but he was also miraculously delivered by the Lord. In 1914, Sundar preached in Nepal, a country with a very strong root of Buddhism. In the town of Rasa, he was sentenced to death by a local Lama on the grounds of spreading a foreign religion. He was thrown into a dry well the top of which was then covered and locked from the outside. He was without food and drink, naked inside the well together with corpses of executed murderers. He stayed in the horrible well for 2 days until a stranger came and helped him out of the well. After relocking the well, the stranger left without saying anything. Not long after that, Sundar was recaptured and taken to the Lama. The Lama was very surprised since he had always kept the only key to the well with him. Realizing that Sundar was under the protection of a very powerful God, they became fearful of him and begged him to leave them.
Sadhu Sundar Singh journeyed much. He travelled 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. Sundar remained modest despite his fame. His attitude made his father repent.
Sundar visited Tibet every summer. In 1929, he visited that country again and was never seen since. Sundar manifested into his life the verse written in Mark 8:35 which says, "For whoever wants to save his own life will lose it; but whoever loses his life for me and for the Gospel will save it."

Dr. Graham Stuart Staines :

Dr. Graham Stuart Staines (1941 – 22 January 1999) was an Australian Christian missionary who, along with his two sons Philip (aged 10) and Timothy (aged 6), was burnt to death by a gang while sleeping in his station wagon at Manoharpur village in Keonjhardistrict in Odisha, India on 22 January 1999. In 2003

He had been working in Odisha among the tribal poor and lepers since 1965. Staines assisted in translating a part of the Bible into the Ho language of India, including proofreading the entire New Testament manuscript, though his focus was on a ministry to lepers. He reportedly spoke fluent Oriya and was popular among the patients whom he used to help after they were cured. He used to teach how to make mats out of rope and basket from Saboigrass and trees leaves.
Some Hindu groups alleged that Staines had forcibly converted or lured many Hindus into Christianity; Staines' widow Gladys denied these allegations. She continued to live in India caring for leprosy patients until she returned to Australia in 2004. In 2005 she was awarded the fourth highest civilian honor in India,Padma Shree, in recognition for her work with leprosy patients in Odisha.

Graham Stuart Staines Death :
On the night of 22 January 1999, he attended a jungle camp in Manoharpur, an annual gathering of Christians of the area for religious and social discourse. The village is situated on the border of the tribal-dominated Mayurbhanj and Keonjhar districts of Odisha. He was on his way to Keonjhar with his sons, who had come back on holiday from their school at Ooty. They broke the journey for the camp, and decided to spend the night in Manoharpur, sleeping in the vehicle because of the severe cold. His wife and daughter had remained in Baripada.But a mob of about 50 people, armed with axes and other implements, attacked the vehicle while Staines and the children were fast asleep and his station wagon where he was sleeping was set alight by the mob. Graham, Philip and Timothy Staines were burnt alive. Some villagers reportedly tried unsuccessfully to rescue Staines and his sons. Staines and his sons apparently tried to escape, but were allegedly prevented by a mob.
The murders were widely condemned by religious and civic leaders, politicians, and journalists. The US-based Human Rights Watch accused the then Indian Government of failing to prevent violence against Christians, and of exploiting sectarian tensions for political ends..

Gladys Staines stated in her affidavit before the Commission on the death of her husband and two sons :
The Lord God is always with me to guide me and help me to try to accomplish the work of Graham, but I sometimes wonder why Graham was killed and also what made his assassins to behave in such a brutal manner on the night of 22nd/23rd January 1999. It is far from my mind to punish the persons who were responsible for the death of my husband Graham and my two children.

But it is my desire and hope that they would repent and would be reformed..

Hattie May Wiatt : The Little Girl who Died & Left 57 cents to build a bigger Church

Hattie became well-known for an inspiring act of charity. According to Temple Univeristy founder Russell Conwell, Hattie May was a student in his church's Sunday School, however many students included herself could not attend because the room was too small. Finding Hattie outside, Conwell says he brought her inside and reassured her that hopefully one day a bigger building would be built to fit all the children. Hearing this, Hattie resolved to save her pennies to make this happen. When she died not long after, a small purse was found under her pillow containing the 57 cents she had saved. At her funeral her mother gave the money to Conwell, which he took to the church and, telling her story, announced it as the first gift towards the new Sunday School building. He changed the money into pennies which he offered for sale. They were sold for $250 and almost all of the pennies returned to him as well. The $250 was then changed into pennies and sold for enough to buy the property for the school. Inspired by Hattie May's generosity, the congregation not only built a bigger Sunday School but an entire new church. The "Wiatt Mite Society" named for her managed to raise the money against all odds and the church was built right on Broad Street. The owner of the lot purchased for the new church accepted Hattie's pennies as the first down payment on the property, and though it was officially called Grace Baptist Church this new church also became known as The Temple. It was out of this church, bought with Hattie's pennies, that Temple University grew as well. Conwell declared that this congregation of thousands was born out of Hattie May's small investment. He said "she is happy on high with the thought that her life was so full, that it was so complete, that she lived really to be so old in the influences she threw upon this earth."

She was the daughter of Joseph and Hattie J. Wiatt and they lived at 1917 Marvine Street in Philadelphia. She died of diphtheria at age 7. An aspect of the story which has been forgotten from the famous story of Hattie is that her baby sister Annie also contracted the illness and died just five days after her. They were originally buried in Monument Cemetery's Section E, Lot 251, Grave 4N, but were moved within the cemetery to Section B, Lot 434, Grave 4S on May 11, 1904. Two years later their grandmother Abbie P. Ball was buried with them. Monument was closed in 1956 and on June 22 of that year Annie and Hattie May were removed for a second time and along with Abbie were buried at Lawnview Cemetery where the grave is marked by a "Ball" plaque. The church Hattie inspired to be built now functions as the Temple Performing Arts Center and is a magnificent historic landmark. The church still exists as The Grace Baptist Church of Blue Bell. 

William Carey :

The Cobbler Who Gave India a Bible : 

William Carey was born near Northampton, England, on August 17, 1761. The words of the Lord to Saint Peter, "Thou art ... thou shalt be" (John 1:42), may very well be applied to Carey. Not many missionaries have started their careers with so few advantages, or culminated their work with so much success for the glory of God and the good of man, as did William Carey.

When he was fourteen years of age, he became an apprentice in a shoe shop. He was converted at the age of eighteen, and affiliated himself with the local Baptist Church. At the age of twenty-six, he was ordained. His income as a preacher was so limited that he gained his subsistence by working as a shoemaker. In his spare moments he studied languages, biographies, and conditions of the heathen world. He acquired a fair knowledge of French, Dutch, Greek, Latin, and Hebrew.
In front of him, on his work bench, hung a map of the world which he himself had made. In the year 1786 he pleaded with other ministers of his denomination to take up work among the heathen, but was greatly grieved when the chairman reproved him by saying, "Sit down, young man. When it pleases God to convert the heathen, He will do it without your help or mine!"

Fruitful Life. Self-denial was not the only mark of Carey's life. Thoro system enabled him to accomplish much work. Up at 5:45, reading a chapter in the Hebrew Bible, "private addresses to God," family prayers with the Bengali servants, reading Persian till tea, translating Scriptures in Hindustani from Sanskrit, teaching at the college from ten till two, correcting proof sheets of Bengali translating of Jeremiah, translating Matthew into Sanskrit, spending one hour with a pundit on Telinga, at seven collecting thoughts for a sermon, preaching at 7:30 to forty persons, translating Bengali till eleven, writing a letter home, reading a chapter from the Greek New Testament and commending himself to God as he lay down to sleep, is a sample of one day's work. It would appear that Carey's chief work of life was to make translation of the Scriptures and it was his joy before the close of life to see "more than 213,000 volumes of the Divine Word, in forty different languages, issue from the Serampore press." But this was but a part of his life work. About 1801 he was appointed professor of Sanskrit, Bengali and Marathi in Williams College, Calcutta, which position he held for thirty years. At first he received £600 per year. In 1807 Brown University, U.S.A., conferred the degree of D.D. on him. His salary was increased to £1,200 per year, yet according to the arrangement with the missionaries, he lived on £40 and had £20 extra to enable him to appear in "decent apparel" at the college and government house, and the remaining £1,140 was turned into the mission treasury. He wrote articles on the natural history and botany of India for the Asiatic Society; he published the entire Bible in the Bengali in five volumes in 1809.

A NEW ERA: It was on October 2, 1792, that Carey preached his memorable sermon, giving out the challenge: "Expect great things from God—attempt great things for God." The immediate result was the organization of the Baptist Missionary Society, which was the first Protestant missionary society in England. An amount equal to sixty-five dollars was received to start missionary work in India. After overcoming apparently insurmountable difficulties, Carey, at the age of thirty-two years, secured passage on a ship belonging to the Danish East India Company. He arrived in Serampore in 1793.
William Carey recognized the need of organization and administration of missions at home, as well as of effective work on the mission field. Accordingly, in 1795 he took the first and principal step in the organization of the London Missionary Society.
For more than seven years he labored faithfully in India without the joy of reporting to friends at home that he had won a single convert. His trials were many, the opposition great. His wife was an invalid for fourteen years. He buried some of his children in India. His printing establishment, together with manuscripts—the fruit of many years of labor—was once destroyed by fire. But patiently he continued preaching, writing, and living the gospel.

William Carey was like John Wycliffe, the "morning star of the Reformation," in his strong belief in the power of the Word of God in print. This man of God, once a cobbler, practically self-educated, void of selfish interests, translated the Word of God into forty different languages and dialects, and printed it as well.
After forty-one years of labor as a missionary to the people of India, he died and was buried at Serampore in 1834.
"Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord ... and their works do follow them...

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