Clouds of Witnesses by Noll Mark A.;Nystrom Carolyn;

Author:Noll, Mark A.;Nystrom, Carolyn; [Noll, Mark A.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: InterVarsity Press
Published: 2011-03-24T00:00:00+00:00

The End of a Life Well Lived

As Azariah finished his seventh decade he looked forward to retirement and to more leisure for writing, but it was not to be. In late December 1944 he traveled by bullock cart and foot to a tiny village, Parkal, that was surrounded by rice paddy fields. There he confirmed forty men and women in a mud and thatch village chapel. According to a Western observer who was with him, “They were ragged and not yet very advanced in ways of cleanliness and order, but with persistence the Bishop finally had them seated in orderly rows on the mat-covered mud floor, and the lists of candidates by villages before him. Then came the period of ‘examination,’ an informal hour when the Bishop in his white cassock sat with them, friendly and fatherly, testing their knowledge of lyrics which told of the life and work of Christ, their understanding of baptism and the promises made, of the Lord’s Prayer, the Creed, and asking questions about the witness of their own lives as Christians among their Hindu neighbors. Except for the . . . teachers none among them were literate, and everything of necessity depended on very simple verbal instructions together with the living witness of the pastor and teachers in their midst. As he sat listening to their lyrics, teaching, asking questions, noting their answers, his face alight with interest and often amusement, he was observing not only the village groups but individuals.”

On Christmas day Azariah preached his last sermon. It included an explanation of the Christian’s joy: “The reasons for the joy? Christ came, and with Him forgiveness of sins. Christ came, and He helps us to be brave in times of trouble, poverty, sickness.” Shortly thereafter the bishop went down with a fever, probably malaria contracted from contagion in the swampy paddies. He passed away on New Year’s Day, 1945.

Services of mourning were held throughout the south of India and as far away as the Houses of Parliament in London. At the latter venue, the Archbishop of York spoke of Azariah’s “two lasting memorials—a cathedral built in Indian style, and a greater memorial still in the lives of the thousands whom he converted to Christ.” His friend Stephen Neill later wrote that “Vedanayagam Samuel Azariah at the time of his death was far and away the most outstanding of Indian Christians, and one of the most eminent Church leaders in the world. . . . [N]ow he has gone, and those to whom his loss seems literally irreparable are an innumerable company.”

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.