Noah preached for 120 years and saved 8 souls, Jeremiah preached his entire life and saved none, while Peter preached and saw 3,000 and then 5,000 souls saved.
As 1 Corinthians 3:6 says, “I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the increase.”
The conclusion I draw from this is a call for perseverance. There is a tremendous need to preach and teach with consistency and passion, especially in North India, to advance His Kingdom.
Let all of us from Mukti Pantha press on to see the world transformed as God desires.
Jai Muktinath!
Naren
While I resonate with Naren’s call for the Kingdom of God, I am a bit concerned about the way he compared Noah, Jeremiah, and Peter, emphasizing the numbers.
First, the term “souls were saved” is a traditional Christian phrase. As we strive to remain Hindu bhaktas of the Lord, we need to carefully rethink how we frame our message. I understand that we are often unconsciously shaped by our mentors’ teachings. As Naren mentioned, we do need more robust instruction.
Regarding Peter “saving 8,000 souls,” we must be mindful of the context. When we explore the teachings of Muktinath, three dimensions are crucial: textual, theological, and historical (and, in our country, a fourth—social). Who were the people Peter preached to? When Christian convention speakers share the Good News to large crowds at church-organized events, and thousands come forward after the typical call to “save one’s soul,” what does that number truly represent?
Similarly, Peter’s audience consisted of Jews from the diaspora gathered in Jerusalem for Passover, not “non-believers” in the broader sense. The majority of them became Messianic Jews. Their understanding of the Kingdom of God was likely very different from ours. As the message moved from Jewish areas to Hellenistic regions, even the title Messiah gave way to Kurious (Lord). The dynamic changed as the Good News reached non-Jews, or Other-than-Jews, as I would call them.1
The Core Concern: Numbers
We must not be overwhelmed by numbers. Evangelism in India has long been driven by this tendency to count conversions, and it remains a concern today. Historically, missionaries prioritized mass conversions when they struggled to reach educated and upper-caste individuals. This strategy—“win the winnable while they are winnable”—may have produced impressive numbers, but the results are mixed. The pitfalls of focusing too heavily on numbers are now evident.
I’m not questioning the sincerity of those who converted or the methods of those who led them. They answer to God, not to me. However, if we continue to focus solely on “headcounts” in the name of contextualization, without considering long-term spiritual growth, we risk repeating the mistakes of the past.
In fact, within a generation or two, many of those “saved souls” may either drift back to their old ways or merge with Christianity, leaving a remnant confused about their identity, like a “Dobi ka Kutta,” sitting on the wall unsure of which side to jump.
If you have the time and interest, consider studying the Subbarao movement in Andhra Pradesh. My concern is that similar movements in the North may face the same fate.
DB, Gurukulam, 7-5-2023, Revised on 21-9-2024
1…According to the Book of Acts unnamed believers originating from Cyprus and Cyrene spoke to Greeks in Antioch about “the Lord Jesus” (Acts 11:20). In all previous proclamations, Jesus had been presented as the Messiah, the Saviour of Israel. In this new, Hellenistic-pagan context, he is given the title Kurios, the title Hellenistic pagans gave to their cult divinities. One might have expected (did any of their more cautious contemporaries predict?) that the result would be the recognition of the Lord Jesus as one more cult divinity the Lord Serapis or the Lord Osiris. The major reason this did not (p. 34) happen was undoubtedly that those pagans who responded were brought into a community where the Septuagint was constantly read, and the biblical associations of Kyrios penetrated their minds and attached themselves to the cult divinity title. But in the first encounter, the loading of Kyrios with the cult divinity title. But in the first encounter, the loading of Kyrios with the idea was vital, It is doubtful whether unacculturated pagans in the Antiochene world could have understood the significance of Jesus in any other way. None of us can take in a new idea except in terms of the ideas we already have. Once implanted, however, this understanding of the word received a set of controls from its new biblical frame of reference. In time much of the original loading of the word disappeared altogether. — Andrew F. Walls, The Missionary Movement in Christian History, New York, Orbis Books, [1996], Tenth Printing 2005, pp. 33-35
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