These Prayed

Kartar Singh

Sadhu Sundar Singh was an awesome man of God in India. I will have more on him in the future but this story was from Sundar as he made his way into the country of Tibet to witness.

“Sundar, coming to the Tibetan town of Tsingham, met a man for whom the people had a superstitious reverence, one of the few who could preach about Jesus in this anti-Christian land without fear of reprisal.

This preacher had once been chief secretary to the lama of the town but, owing to the witness of a Christian missionary, had declared himself a follower of Christ. His first was made to his own master, the fanatical, ignorant Buddhist lama. Within a few days he was sentenced, before the walls of the lamasery, to a pitiless death. Sewn into a wet yak skin and flung into the scorching sunshine, he was left to be crushed to death as the skin contracted. When he did not die quickly enough red hot skewers were thrust through the skin into his body and he was later withdrawn from the skin and dragged through the streets to the refuse heaps outside. Excruciating tortures were inflicted on him, and when he was finally dropped onto the dunghills his breathless body fell awkwardly and awry. As the crowds left the vultures began to gather.

The mutilated victim was not dead, though after this treatment he should have died of exposure; or septic poisoning or starvation in the days that followed. Instead, he crawled back from the doors of death, and returned constantly to the village to preach.

When Sundar asked this astonishing man what had won him for Christ, the preacher’s reply was that is was the witness of another martyr, done to death in this very same town and in an identical fashion. Within an hour or so the end the dying man asked for a moment’s freedom for his right hand. With excruciating pain, he rolled toward a little book which the crowd had left lying by his side. It was his New Testament. On the fly leaf, with writing materials given to him by an onlooker, the martyr had written his last message.

‘The life He gave me was what I gave to Him.’

The Sadhu discovered that this young missionary, whose witness had had such remarkable results, was an Indian, a Sikh like himself from the Punjab, by the name of Kartar Singh. He too had been brought up in a home of luxury, had been made an outcast by an enraged family and had finally penetrated the Himalayas to preach to the devil dreading Tibetans.

Sundar returned to the Punjab with the story of Kartar Singh’s martyrdom and sought out the young hero’s father. He had been without news of his son for years, and as Sundar told him of the boy’s courage and the effect of his life and death, the old man’s heart was broken.

He stretched out his gnarled hand and clutched at the Sadhu’s yellow robe. His fingers touched the sharp outline of the New Testament which Sundar always carried. His eyes filled with tears. ‘I believe in Jesus too,’ he whispered, choking over the words.”

Brothers and sisters, what does our faith cost us? What price are we willing to pay to be His witness? Remember His full cost of the cross and always be ready to live the life spent completely!!!

God Bless you all.

Source: The Story of Sadhu Sundar Singh, by Cyril J. Davey, Moody Press 1963

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