Number 100:  March 30, 2007

On our walk, we left Sangat’s gated community, turned left past the waiting rickshaws, past the vegetable cart vendors, past the cow basking in the sun, past the few shops that were on his street, and came to a major road. Filth was everywhere. We, the five white Americans, discovered that we had become the focal point of many. Rickshaw drivers would bicycle past us and slow down and stare at us until they were out of sight. In India, people stand around and watch anything new. We attracted quite a crowd the next day while we were just loading the bus at Sangat’s.

As we walked past the make-shift village of shanty houses made of anything from cardboard to mud, we came across a man who invited us to visit his Jain temple. Jainism is one of the 11 [12 if you count Jedi-ism] major religions of the world. Temples and gods are everywhere in India. The believers in India ask the Hindi or Jain if their god was doing anything for them? They would ask if they wanted the one true invisible God who had power to truly deliver them to help? They then utilize the power of the true God and deliver the Hindi or Jain from physical or spiritual bondage.

When the Apostle Paul came to Athens, it was similar to India in that they had a god for everything. It was said that it was easier to find a god than a man in Athens.

 Acts 17:23, 24, 29:

 For as I passed by, and beheld your devotions, I found an altar with this inscription, to the unknown god. Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, him declare I unto you.

God that made the world and all things therein, seeing that he is Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands.

Forasmuch then as we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Godhead is like unto gold, or silver, or stone, graven by art and man’s device.

After the deliverance, the former Hindi or Jain would tell his family and many would start coming to the Christian fellowships. They came because they saw the great power of the true God in operation. The saints there are not afraid to expect God to do what He says He will do in His Word. They believe that they can operate the power of God to deliver many from physical and mental infirmities, thus they are with tremendous results.

I Corinthians 2:4:

And my speech and my preaching was not with enticing words of man’s wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power.

We left the temple and headed past the pigs eating the garbage from the foul dried up river bed, past the man who had set up his street barbershop next to the foul stench, past the gawking rickshaw drivers, through the insane traffic, down the road to the quiet harbor of peace that a home where the Spirit of God lives. We were thankful to be there.