Sadhu Sunder Singh (1889-1929)

Sadhu Sunder Singh (1889-1929)

Early Life

Sadhu Sundar Singh was born in Patiala (Punjab) in 1889 in a Sikh family. His devout mother trained him in a tradition of the Sikh and the Hindu bhakti devotion, hoping to see her son as a Sadhu one day. Sundar Singh joined the missionary school but rejects the teaching of Christianity and it is said that he once burned a Bible. He studied the Gita, the Upanishads, and even Koran and practiced yoga. But he failed to attain peace. 

Conversions

So his thirst for peace grew stronger and was desperate for it as his mother passed away when he was fifteen years old on 18th Dec. 1904.

“So at the age of fifteen he resolved one night that if he did not attain peace he would commit suicide in the morning by lying down on the railway line. Early in the morning, however, and to his complete surprise, he had a vision of Jesus, radiant in his beauty and commanding him to obedience. He obeyed. And immediately there was a great peace in his mind, a peace which made him assert that he was living in heaven upon earth.

That was on 18th December 1904, and after further instruction he was Baptist in September 1905. His mother had always had the hope that one day he would become sadhua and now at the age of sixteen, he become one. But it was as Christian, not as a Sikh, that he donned the ochre robe.” 

In 1909 he entered to Divinity College at Lahore, but he had no taste for academic theology. So he left with an Anglican preacher’s license, but surrendered it because he wanted to preach in all churches without regard for denomination difference. Sadhu Sunder Singh was not a theologian and had no logical worked out system of theology. His teaching in parables and analogies are taken from his personal experience or from his common life of the people. 

The Concept of God

Sadhu Sunder Singh was very Christo Centric. Everything for him begins and ends with the experience and vision of Jesus Christ to understand God. In the story of a vision of heaven, he explains his understanding of the Trinity. He says, God is not to be seen here anymore than in earth, for God is infinite. But there is Christ and He is the image of the invisible God. So in Him we see God in heaven and God on earth. The waves shinning and peace-giving and going through among the saint and angels to be the Holy Spirit. For him relation of God to the world is like the relation of the warmth of the body to one’s clothes. Just so, life in all living creatures is derived from the one source of life behind.