Love is More Potent than Fear
eZ,
A. J. APPASAMY
come every day.
But the farmer provides carefully for it.
He tills the soil, he collects the seeds, he engages the workmen. Then when the monsoon breaks he is ready to begin cultivation.
He cannot make the rain fall; that is God's work.
But he should make the best use of the showers when they do fall.
~~ _
LOVE IS MORE POTENT THAN FEAR
John Ramachander sat for hours on the broad steps of Lechler Memorial Church, Salem.
People began to gather around him and ask him why he was sitting there.
He told them that he had been discharged from his work as a writer in the London Mission
High School without sufficient grounds and he was going to fight this matter out non-violently.
Unless he was reinstated he would fast unto death.
He was determined about it. Some of the people who saw him sympathised with him.
They began to ask why the school authorities should be so harsh and treat him so severely.
This will put his wife and innocent children to great hardship.
Certainly something should be done to have this decision reviewed and to help this man who had been so unjustly treated.
It was at that time Mr William Nagenda, the African Evangelist, came to Salem to hold meetings.
When he heard about Ramachander he was worried. He met Ramachander and asked him several questions about the termination of his service.
Ramachander put all the blame on the Headmaster and the Correspondent of the school and did not accept the responsibility for even a single fault.
At last Nagenda gave him an illustration, vividly demonstrating with his fingers; he said that when we point out another man's fault with one finger, three fingers are pointing towards us and showing us our many faults.
Then he prayed with Ramachander.
This illustration went home and was the cause of his conversion.
He accepted Christ as his personal Saviour.
From that day he lived in peace.
His conversion took place in 1954.
Ramachander was forgiven and appointed as a writer in another diocesan school:
He could not be sufficiently thankful to the authorities for giving him another chance to serve the Diocese.
Love, we found, was more potent than fear.
LOVE IS MORE POTENT-THAN FEAR
I kept in touch with Ramachander from his conversion to my retirement in 1959.
He told mea good deal about his life and his work for Christ.
I gave him such help and guidance as I could.
My father was a Brahman convert to the Christian religion.
I was educated in the C.M.S. High School at Srivilliputhur.
After my school course I wanted to be entirely free and so left my parents and lived a bad life.
Like the Prodigal Son I returned home.
Even then I was not happy with my parents, I served in the Navy from 1942 to 1946.
Then I got a writer's post in the London Mission High School at Salem.
I was a nominal Christian.
There was no sincerity in my life.
I was very proud of my father's Brahman ancestry and of the S.P.G. Church at Salem to which I belonged, as most of the Government officials of the town attended that Church.
I did not respect anybody.
I criticised everyone.
'There were no family prayers in our house.
I did not do my duty by my wife or my children. I paid very little to God and very much to doctors.
In the High School I gave the Headmaster considerable trouble and my service was terminated.
I started a fast unto death which ended on my conversion.
On 3rd of September 1955 Ramachander and his friends inaugurated an Evangelistic Band with the name, 'Soldiers Of The Cross Brigade'. September 3rd is a significant day in the Indian
Church.
This is the date on which Sundar Singh was born in 1889 and also the date on which he was baptised as a Christian sixteen years later.
It was, therefore, quite appropriate that the Salem Evangelistic Brigade should begin on that date.
Ramachander and his friend Mr M. J. Williams, another writer in the Diocese, went every week-end and every office holiday to preach the Gospel in the villages of the Salem District.
Ramathander was full of evangelistic zeal and had a gift for organization.
He applied to the Diocese for a loan of Rs 500 for the purchase of a projector to show film strips.
This loan was given to him.
I wondered how he was going to return the loan from his small salary as a clerk.
He made vegetable pickles and sold them. 'Many people bought the pickle and added some donation for the Brigade.
With the sale proceeds of the pickle
A. J. APPASAMY
bottles he cleared the loan. His friends gave him over one hundred and twenty pictures on the Life of Christ, the Good Samaritan and Pilgrim's Progress.
He borrowed from the National Christian Council Film Library film strips on the Prodigal Son and other subjects. pe The Brigade worked in co-operation with the other Churches and Missions in Salem District—the Strict Baptist Mission, the Ceylon and India General Mission and the Eaton Memorial Church.
Pastor Viswasam of the Philadelphia Pentecostal Church went often with the team and gave Kalakshepams on the Prodigal Son and the Good Samaritan.
He told these great stories vividly and at great length.
He also sang lyrics specially composed on his themes and was accompanied by Indian musical instruments.
Kalakshepams are a characteristically Indian method of giving religious instruction.
The Brigade planned to work among middle-class nonChristians.
They carried tracts and Gospels.
When they saw four or five people standing together on the road, they stopped, gave out the tracts and started a conversation about Jesus Christ, the Saviour of the world.
They sold 4,800 Gospels and gave away thousands of hand bills.
They also sold some Bibles and New Testaments.
When they reached a village they showed the slides and explained them in churches or schools.
They carried with them specimen copies of the Bible Correspondence Courses in Tamil run by Dr J. H. Piet of Vellore.
They sought to introduce these Courses to the men, particularly the young men, whom they met in their evangelistic tours.
In this way they visited hundreds of villages and towns in Salem district.
Their evangelistic work was wholly voluntary.
They travelled on bicycles to save expense.
When hospitality was not offered by local people, they bought their own food.
This was a new type of Evangelism—Cycle Evangelism!
They applied to Bishop Newbigin (our next door neighbour at that time) for permission to tour in his Diocese of Madurai during the month of May in 1957 and 1958.
He gladly gave them permission and prepared a careful programme for them for every day during those months and also wrote to his people to welcome them.
When I was at Kodaikanal in the Madurai Diocese they met me on May 6, 1957. Ramachander and Gabriel, one of the young teachers in a Salem Diocesan Elementary School,
LOVE IS MORE POTENT THAN FEAR
had come from Salem to Batlagundu on their bicycles, a distance of about two hundred miles, preaching the Gospel all along the way.
Kodaikanal is 7,000 feet high. They could not come there on their bicycles and so had travelled by bus from Batlagundu to hold their meetings.
I was glad to meet them in the course of their evangelistic tour and to hear their report.
This was certainly a most useful way of spending their holiday month.
After three and a half years of such active evangelistic work I asked Ramachander various questions.
'Do Christians and Hindus attend your meetings?' I said.
His reply was: 'In the town churches only Christians come to our meetings.
In the village churches both Christians and Hindus come.
To open air meetings only Hindus come.'
'Is there opposition from Hindus to the Gospel message?
What are the grounds of their opposition?' I asked.
'During the last three and a half years there was no opposition except in one village.
A leading person in that village objected to our preaching the Gospel on the ground that he did not want the religion of low-caste people to come to his village.
He said that he would do propaganda against the Gospel if we preached it.
Then I asked him how he could do anti-propaganda unless he knew the Gospel well.
Other Hindus accepted my argument and made him buy a Gospel from me.
Many others also bought Gospels from me.'
I asked Ramachander another question.
'Have any Hindus accepted Christ and been baptised?'
His answer was this: 'As we were touring preachers we directed all enquirers to the nearest Protestant pastor or teacher.
We supplied only literature.
One father, a Hindu, who was adamant in not allowing his bad son to come home, after seeing our pictures of the Prodigal Son, forgave his son and allowed him to come back to his house.
He often sought advice of the Christians in his village if there was. any trouble in his family.
He read the Bible.
Some other Hindus are reading the Bible regularly and will be ready for baptism in course of time.
We often got letters asking for prayer from Hindu friends who heard the Christian message through our team.'
In South India during the last month of the Tamil year Hindu devotees sing songs of praise (Devaram) to God with musical instruments early in the morning and go through the streets.