You might recall from an earlier post the Bartholomaus faced opposition from the European colonists in the area. One form this opposition took was their refusal to attend worship services with the Tamil natives. The Tamil Christians were reluctant to attend services with the colonists, because their morals and behavior left much to be desired. Bartholomaus was never one to let something like that hinder the work he was doing for the Lord, so he came up with a very straightforward solution: he would see to it that they had their very own church.
Innovative Approach
One major thing that made Bartholomaus so different was his attitude toward the Tamil people. He didn't see them as his inferiors, like many Europeans did. From the time he first landed, he chose to live among the Tamil, attend their school, and really try to understand their culture -- he even studied their religion, to better understand them. The result of his study of Hinduism was simple: everything they had been looking for was in Jesus Christ, and he was delighted to share that news with them.
As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten: be zealous therefore, and repent. Did you know that when the Lord rebukes, corrects, or punishes us, it is out of love? The Lord is working to keep us from going forward in a path that will destroy us. He does this because He loves us. That, my friends, is why we should be grateful when we feel conviction over sin in our life. Conviction is a tool the Lord uses to reach our hearts, to warn us that we are in the wrong path, and to convince us that we need to repent and seek not only His forgiveness but His help. The key to understanding the Christian viewpoint of Heaven is to understand that true Christians trust God implicitly -- we know, through our personal experience with Him and the study of the Bible, that we can trust Him to do what is good and right. That means we trust Him with our death, also.
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AuthorSara McCaslin is an engineer, a computer scientist, and a freelance writer. Archives
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