Sadhu Sundar Singh A Biography

Introduction
There are many in our world today who are genuinely puzzled by such phrases as, "the
Lord spoke to me" or "the Lord visited me" or "the Lord asked me to do this or that." No apology
at all is owing to any man for the use of these phrases, provided the user has had a real and clearcut
experience of God, which evidences itself through the transparency, beauty and joy which he
manifests in his everyday life. Moreover, "the Lord said," "the Lord spoke to me saying," "thus
saith the Lord" are key phrases of the Bible, which are meant to be our experience too, today.
Here, in this book, we give the reader one of the most compelling lives of the twentieth
century. Sundar Singh made no pretence to scholarship and high learning. Earlier on in the 20th
century, when vicious attacks on the authenticity and authority of the Bible and its relevance to
the present day and time were being freely made everywhere, God raised this young man, who at
the outset was virulent in his opposition to Christianity, yet who, on meeting Christ, became so
like Him.
Wherever he went, garbed in his simple saffron attire, and expressing himself in terms
and phrases which a child could understand, Sundar Singh threw men into inexpressible wonder
that he so closely resembled Jesus Christ in his life and walk. The manner in which the Lord
Jesus revealed Himself to this young man who bitterly hated Him and the startling results which
followed, shook even rabid sceptics and those who in the name of modern science and
scholarship deride the supernatural.
It has been readily acknowledged by those who have ventured to write the life of Sundar
Singh in the last two decades, that they had little access to any original matter. Some of them
however did a tremendous job in trying to interpret this great man of God to a present-day
generation, which scarcely understands the ABCs of spiritual life. Nearly all of these good and
godly authors laboured under the decided disadvantage of not being able to converse with
someone who knew Sundar Singh firsthand. While this book makes no claims to scholarship, it
fills that gap, revealing Sundar Singh as a very human personality and as a young man saw him.
That young man was my dad, who bore indelibly in his life, many marks of those precious
lessons in Christlikeness, which he learned from Sadhu Sundar Singh.
Some of those golden threads of communion with God, holiness unto the Lord and
complete obedience to His Word, which were richly woven into the texture of Sundar Singh's
life, became a continuous weave in the life of my father also. But that is another story.* (That
story can be read in the book "Another Daniel" by the same author.)
Soon after my father's own conversion as a boy of sixteen, Sundar Singh's emergence and
news of his love and exploits for Christ, came as balm to his soul and he longed to see him. This
desire God gave him and more. Dad accompanied him and lived with him for some days.
Late in my dad's life he commenced dictating an account of Sundar Singh's life. He did
not, however, manage to complete it, partly due to the lack of someone who could take down his
dictation, amidst his heavy schedule. The incomplete narrative which he left behind, I have
sought to complete.
It is amazing how Sundar Singh's life has captured the imagination and stirred a spirit of
inquiry in millions of people. It is all the more remarkable that this sustained interest in his life
and the lessons of his life have so persisted in all the continents, in spite of the paucity of the
books written about him and their limited availability. It appears all the more incredible that this
interest in Sundar Singh persists even today, after the passage of over sixty years since he was
last heard of, before disappearing in the snows of the Himalayas, on what proved to be the last of
his nearly twenty missionary journeys to Tibet. Thus many earnest and interested people will
welcome the fresh light and the new intimate and authentic incidents from his life, which this
book provides.
Our prayer is that God will speak to you through this short account of Sundar Singh's
vibrant and Christlike life and cause you, like him, to seek the unsearchable riches which are in
the Lord Jesus.
Joshua Daniel
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