The Bible-Burner of Rampur

In 1903, a fifteen-year-old Sikh boy named Sundar Singh tore a Bible apart page by page and fed it into a fire in his courtyard in Rampur, India. He did it publicly, defiantly, so his classmates at the Christian mission school could watch. He pelted Christian preachers with mud and stones. He was zealous for his father's faith and furious at this foreign religion that had, as he saw it, poisoned his village.

Three days after burning that Bible, Sundar Singh woke at three in the morning, determined to throw himself under the Ludhiana Express if God did not reveal Himself before dawn. He prayed — not to Jesus, but to whatever God was real. What happened next, he would describe for the rest of his life in the same simple words: a light filled his room, and the living Christ spoke to him in Hindustani.

By sunrise, the boy who had burned scripture was reading it on his knees. Within weeks, he was baptized. Within months, he had given away every possession and set out barefoot across India in a saffron robe, preaching the Gospel to Hindus, Sikhs, and Buddhists for the next twenty-five years.

The Lord does not ask permission before interrupting a life. He interrupted Saul on a highway. He interrupted Sundar in a dark bedroom. The fiercest enemy of the faith is often just one blinding moment away from becoming its most passionate witness.