After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice, “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!” Revelation 7:9-10
From childhood, I have always loved westerns, ranging from “Hopalong Cassidy” and “She Wore a Yellow Ribbon” to “Tombstone” and “Lonesome Dove.” Often featured in those westerns, sometimes as “good guys” but more often as “bad guys,” were the people we called “Indians.”
When I was older, I finally learned how these many wonderful tribes and cultures became labelled as “Indians.” Christopher Columbus sailed from Spain in 1492 to find an ocean route to southeast Asia, then known to the empires of Europe as “the Indies”. When he landed in the Bahamas, over 8,000 miles short of Asia, he erroneously thought he had succeeded in his quest and named the local people “Indios”. For virtually all the Europeans who immigrated to the Americas thereafter, the name (and error) stuck.
Today our preferred collective names for these fellow citizens range from “Native American” to “Indigenous American” or “American Indian.” I am grateful they are part of our nation. I am also grateful I have now had the opportunity to visit a nation where Indians truly surrounded me – 1.4 billion of them!
In September, I was part of a small team that travelled to Sathya Veda Seminary (SVS), located on the city outskirts of Thiruvananthapuram in the state of Kerala, India. For a week, two members of our team provided advanced educational training to the SVS faculty while the rest of us assumed teaching responsibilities for the SVS students. I love teaching God’s Word, but I learned much more than I taught.
I learned what it is like to be Christian in a primarily Hindu nation that is incredibly diverse in language and culture. India is one third the geographic size of America but has a population over four times greater. There are 122 major languages and twenty-two official languages, and people groups ranging from remote and rural to massively urban. Delhi in north central India has a population of thirty-four million – four times larger than New York City.
I learned the challenges of pursuing Christian ministry when the national government is led by a Hindu nationalist party that is, despite constitutional protections, openly hostile to Christianity and other religious minorities.
Best of all, I learned (again) how linguistic and cultural differences become inconsequential when you are with people who trust and love Jesus Christ.
The SVS faculty and staff were welcoming, loving, humble, gifted, and faithful to the Lord. And I do not have the words to adequately describe the two hundred amazing young men and women who make up the SVS student body. Many experienced rejection from their families and communities when they accepted Jesus as Lord and Savior. Most have little if any money. And they know those rejections and financial challenges will not be easily resolved when they graduate and enter their ministries of church planting, pastoring, evangelism, bible teaching, and worship leadership.
Yet they are committed to Jesus, His Kingdom, and His calling on their lives. They are eager to learn and keep learning. They are eager to serve despite the risk of harm or even death. They are eager to worship from the depths of their hearts. They are eager to pray, and both they and the faculty/staff see God-sized answers to their prayers on a regular basis.
In short, they were inspiring, and inspiration is an important aspect of the witness our Lord wants us to provide in this broken world.
Revelation 7:9 is just one of the scriptures revealing the Lord’s plan for disciples from all nations, tribes, people groups, and languages (Daniel 7:14; Isaiah 49:6; Galatians 3:28; Ephesians 3:6; Matthew 24:14; Acts 1:8). Yet American Christians today seem, with many marvelous exceptions, to be more focused on “Us first” than “Christ first” and “Kingdom first” (Matthew 6:33; 1 Peter 2:9-10).
We benefit from remembering our nation’s population is 4.2% of the world population. 96% of the world is not “us”, and they are all loved by God.
Because of today’s efforts to perpetuate racial tension and distrust, we may benefit from understanding so-called “white” people are 10-12% of the world population while so-called “people of color” are almost 90%. And it is without doubt important to remember American Christians are 8.6% of the world Christian population. All around the globe, we have brothers and sisters Jesus commands us to love. The world will know we are Christians by our love (John 13:34-35).
I was surrounded by Indians this year, and I am a better man for it.
God bless you, and God bless our community.