Bakht Singh: from Lying Playboy to India's Leading Church-Planter
Bakht Singh's tomb by Johnmylove. Licensed under Creative Commons Zero, Public Domain Dedication via Wikimedia Commons
ON THIS DAY, 4 February 1932, Bakht Singh was baptized in Vancouver, Canada. Formerly a Sikh, he had grown up in India, hating and mocking Christians. He even tore up the first Bible given to him. Nonetheless, he became a convert to Christianity.
Engineering studies took him to England though his father wished otherwise. Only after Bakht Singh promised his mother he would not change his religion did she persuade his father to allow him to study abroad. Once in England, he did abandon Sikhism, cut his hair, and considered himself an atheist, indulging in every kind of pleasure. He went through seven months of savings in one month and began to smoke and drink, which as a Sikh he had never done before. He sent false accounts to his father. These self-betrayals left him deeply unhappy. He began to view life as a “vanity of vanities.”
Sailing to Canada on a pleasure trip, he decided to attend a Christian church service aboard the ship to see what it was about. Falling asleep during the sermon, he woke to find everyone else kneeling. At first he rebelled against kneeling, but then humbled himself, thinking, “I’ve been to Muslim mosques and Hindu temples. I’ve taken off my shoes, and washed my feet to show respect for those places. I must honor this place too out of courtesy.” He knelt down. Immediately he felt the power of Christ. Later he reported, “I began to say, ‘Oh, Lord Jesus, blessed be Thy name, blessed be Thy name.’” The transformation which began that day led him to read the Bible and become an enthusiastic Christian.
After his baptism, Bakht Singh began to share his story. The first time that he stood up to give his testimony, he trembled violently. He could only say, “The Lord Jesus saved even me. I was a man who was worthy to be burnt to ashes, because my hands had torn the Bible. I was a blasphemer against the Bible and the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, and made fun of Christians and yet He saved even me.”
While dedicating himself to Christ, Bakht Singh sensed that God was asking him to accept three principles. (1) He must live by faith, (2)He must ask no one for anything (not even a cup of coffee), and (3) He must make no plans on his own. Binding himself to these three requirements, he sailed back to India. There he found himself homeless because he would not accept his parents’ demand that he keep his conversion quiet. However, his father soon became a Christian, too.
As a result of Bakht Singh’s obedience to God, he won thousands of Indians to Christ and had a hand in planting many churches. So influential and beloved was he that six hundred thousand people turned out for his funeral.
—Dan Graves
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Read more about the Christian faith in India in Christian History #87, India: A Faith of Many Colors
Beyond the Next Mountain is another true story of Asian Indians bringing the Gospel to others in India. Watch it at RedeemTV
Beyond the Next Mountain can be purchased at Vision Video