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If you want to reach the lost, India has largest number of unreached
people groups in the world. We have never heard of Christ. Over
1.2 billion souls or 17% of the world's population live in India. It is estimated that India will
be the most populous country in the world by 2028. India is
a country with rich history that spans over 5,000 years, yet it
only gained its independence in 1947. India has one of the
fastest growing economies in the world. but 24% of the population, or
276 million people, live below the poverty level. India is a birthplace of four
of the world's major religions. The people are very devoted to
their religion, but India is a country in great spiritual
darkness. Of these 1.2 billion people,
75% are Hindus who worship thousands of gods and goddesses. Villages
and cities have numerous temples for the worship of idols. Indians are very devoted to their
religion, but their religion can never meet their needs for
forgiveness of sin and salvation. Another 15% of the population
is Muslim, who also live without hope of ever reaching the heaven
they long for. Christians make up less than
5% of the population. However, Bible-believing Christians
are less than 1% of the population. How will the multitudes respond
to the gospel that they have never heard? How can so many
be told of the good news of Christ before their souls are lost forever? Marian Baptist Bible College
was established in 1956 to train Indian people to reach their
own communities with the gospel of Christ. Bible College has over 5,500
graduates who are in full-time ministry. Over 700 churches have
been planted by the graduates of Barium Baptist Bible College
and Seminary. One of the greatest ways to build
a church is to train pastors. Christians are hungry for the
sound biblical teaching as they do not have commentaries and
other biblical resources in their own languages. Pastors in India
need your prayers and support. Often pastors will shepherd more
than one church at a time, and many of these churches are poor
and cannot meet the pastor's basic needs. The Bible College ministry supports
70 pastors who faithfully preach Christ in the midst of persecution
and poverty. These pastors work very hard
for so little. Another area of ministry is our
work with children in our five children's homes and two schools. It costs $75 a month to provide
education, housing, and the gospel to the underprivileged children.
These children are shown the love of Christ and how Christ
died for the forgiveness of their sins. Will you be part of this exciting
time of sharing the light of the gospel in this dark world? There are many ways to help.
Support a Bible college student for $150 a month. Support a child in the children's
home for $75 a month. Support a pastor for $100 per
month. The harvest truly is plenteous,
but the laborers are few. Pray, therefore, the Lord of
the harvest, that he will send forth laborers into his harvest. We are the church, we're chosen
by the Christ. We have the ingring of his cross
upon our lives. The highest price was paid. Oh, say does that star-spangled
banner yet wave The only one who has the strength
to stand. The man's distinct proclaim is the power of His hand. We praise
God. I want to thank the pastor for
giving me this time to come and thank you and thank you for your
prayers and for the support of the ministry of the Barium Baptist
Bible College, which you'll have been doing, I think, more than
40 years. We have been supporting the ministry
there, and you see how the Lord has blessed the ministry. Like
the psalmist says, the Lord has done great things for us. We're
off, we are glad, in Psalm 126.3. and we thank God for the great
things God has done throughout the 65 years of the ministry
of the Barium Baptist Bible College and that God continues to lead
us and guide us and we do continue to pray for the ministry as we
are facing a lot of challenges in these coming years. In the
last few years, we faced quite a bit of challenges with the
rise of Hinduism, where people want to, the politicians would
like the nation to be a Hindu nation, and has brought a lot
of restrictions on preaching the gospel of the Lord Jesus
Christ. Even though we are the largest democracy in the world,
We still have a lot of restrictions and so I do pray that God will
continue to give us the liberty that we'll be able to proclaim.
the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ to a needy world that
needs salvation, needs to hear the gospel and come to the saving
knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. Just this last month, my state
of Karnataka, where the college is located, they passed an anti-conversion
bill, a law, now that if we are convicted of forcing people to
convert from Hinduism to Christianity, then we will be held liable and
we could be in prison from three years to ten years without bail. And so these are some of the
challenges we face in India. So I do pray for that, that God
will continue to give us the courage, the boldness to keep
continuing to preach the gospel. The laws may be there, but we
still have to preach the gospel. Greater is he that is in us than
he that is in the world. And just pray that God will continue
to give us the liberty since we have our constitution gives
us that liberty that we can choose any religion but still The laws
are being put in place that we are not supposed to convert people,
but we tell people we don't convert. It's the Lord Jesus Christ who
converts people. It's the Holy Spirit of God that
brings people to conviction. And so these are the challenges
we face in the land of India, and also the way that they're
trying to control is to control the funding. And one of the things
that they have put a lot of regulation on how we receive funds into
the ministry. And there's a lot of paperwork
that we have to do and they can stop funding at any time without
any reasons why they stopped it. They don't have to give us
any reasons. And so we face these challenges,
how we can continue to run the ministry. But the Lord has kept
the door open thus far. We know that when the Lord opens
the door, no man can shut it. And when God shuts the door,
no man can close it. And so we know, we trust God
that this is His work. He has led us for 65 years in
doing the ministry and establishing, training young men and women
for the ministry, and what an impact the college has had, not
only in India, but even in our neighboring countries of Nepal,
Bhutan, Southeast Asia, some of our graduates are ministering
even to people that are working in the Middle East that have
gone from India. Many Christians are there. They have a little
church services and some of them are ministering there for these
people. So we thank God that we are able to train young men
and women to take the gospel to their own people, to their
own languages. India is a diverse country. Every
state has its own language and culture, and so the only language
that really is very common is English. Yes, Hindi is spoken
by 40% of the people, not all of it, all of them. And so the
last 60 is all of different languages and dialects. And so it's a challenge. But the Bible college, we teach
in English. And so we're able to train many
with the gospel and the word of God. And they go out and establish
churches in their communities. So do pray. that God will enable
us to continue. And so my burden was, how do
we continue the ministry even if the foreign funding is stopped?
How do we continue? We know it is the Lord's work,
and he will continue. But the Lord laid on my heart. My father had started in 1958
a school in the vernacular language, which is the second most largest
spoken language, Telugu. in the city of Hubli, where he
grew up. And so the school was not doing
very well, and we knew that education is very important. In India,
we say, yeah, we have many gods and goddesses, but two main gods
in India are money and education. That's the most important people
give to is money and education. And so we said, why don't we
felt burdened to change the vernacular school into an English medium
school and that will generate funds and also will help the
ministry because many, many people will pay for an education, Christian
education, not Christian education, English speaking, and they like
Christian schools. Many people like the Christian
schools because we do teach and many of the schools do teach
and have a good reputation of giving good education. So we
felt this would be a way that we could continue the ministry.
And so this year we began the school in English medium. And
for the first year, we were surprised. We thought we may not get many
students because it was in vernacular language. We were transitioning.
We didn't know. The school also had a lot of
problems. My father was in the court system. for 28 years because
he was accused of conversions. And so they had to go to the
courts and prove that it was not true, that we were just having
our assembly as a Christian organization and we never forced any Hindu
children to read the scriptures or any of that nature. But they
would hear the gospel. of the Lord Jesus Christ. And
so he had faced a lot of challenges, and the reputation was there
of the school that it had problems. But when we transitioned, we
saw how the Lord opened the doors. And now in the last, I think
yesterday, the administrator sent me a note saying that for
the first year, for the first two weeks of the school, we have
80 children. in the school. And so we thank God for that.
So continue to pray for these schools. We have started another
school in Bagalore, which is about 40 or 50 kilometers from
where our campus is. So do pray for that ministry.
Another school has been started. The principal there said we have
about close to 38 students now. Some more are coming for admission.
So we thank God that at least 40 to 50 students will be enrolled
in this school. And most of the children, I was
told, are from Hindu families. And so this is a great avenue
for us to just plant the seed of the word of God, the gospel.
and teach and reach the families. That's what our goal is, to reach
the homes through the children, that we'll be able to reach homes
and share the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ when the doors are
being closed on evangelism and open air preaching that we used
to be able to do, distribution of strikes. We can't do that
anymore. And so God opened these two doors for us. We are behind,
so I do pray for this need. The schools that we've been building,
one of the schools is completed and I'm behind about $150,000
in payment. It cost us over $300,000, so
we have paid all that amount, so $150,000 is remaining, and
so we got some money towards that, about $50,000, so about
$100,000 is remaining, and I know the Lord will bring that in.
There's nothing impossible with God. All things are possible
with Him. It's His work and He will provide. And so everything
that we build and we do, we are all debt-free. We don't take
loans. My father said, never take loans.
You'll be paying interest for the rest of your life. It's the
Lord's work. He will provide. And he will
get the work done. And so most of it that has been
done has everything is paid for as we are almost a debt free
ministry. But I know this hundred thousand also we will clear by
the end of this year. We know we'll be able to clear
that debt. And the Lord worked with the engineers and the contractors
that work with us. They're working and they said,
you can pay us as you get the money. And so we're able to do
that. So do pray for that need that
God will enable us to. pay this off so that we'll be
able to reach the people of India with the gospel of the Lord Jesus
Christ through education, through outreach ministries, and other
things. One of the other things I want
you all to pray for is our printing ministry. We had received a press,
a big web press in the year 2000. and to print Bibles bearing precious seed. But things
didn't work out the way it should have, but there were some problems
with them, with the organizations that were working with us, and
we were not able to print any Bibles for almost 22 years. We
came to a point where we did not know what else to do because
I'm not a printer, I've been in the ministry, I've been trained
as a physician, that I work here in the United States as a medical
doctor when I'm here and support my family and all the other extra
money we put into the ministry that I make. And so we were wondering
what to do. This was a big burden on us because
it's very expensive machinery that we had, the binders and
the binding machine and the printing machine, web press. So what to
do? So we called a Christian printer
to come and help us who had a business in Mumbai to sell the press. Because everybody that came and
said, what are you going to do with it? I said, I'm not a printer,
I don't have much help, and it costs a lot of money to print.
The paper cost, the ink, the electricity, the labor. I said,
we don't know what else to do, but they all said, why don't
you sell this and invest in the schools and other things. Many
of godly men who came and visited us. And so we were planning on
selling the press, but God closed the door. And one of our friends,
the evangelist, Dr. Verghese, he was with Gospel
Literature of India. They had closed their ministry,
and he said, Dr. Chelly, I was very grieved. and
had tears in my heart because we were not able to print gospel
literature for the people in India. Why don't we print? The machine came for Bibles.
Let's pray. Let's ask God's wisdom and let
us print the Bibles. Let's not sell the press. And
the same thing, the printer also said, why don't
we do that? I said, well, then you've got to help me with the
printing. He said, you raise the money, I will help you with
the printing, and let's move forward. Then I said, what about
the copyright that the Bible Society says they have all the
copyrights for all the languages in India? So he says, you don't
worry about that, you start something with your graduates, you'll begin
to work with it, and we will help you to get through all of
those things. Dr. Verghese assured me that. So
with that, we asked, I asked one of our graduates to work
on a Telugu Bible and he did work on it and then by God's
grace we were led to a born-again believer who was a linguist who
had a very good knowledge of the Telugu language, the most
spoken language, the language that my father and we had spoken
at home. So we said we will do that. And
so now we thank God that the Bible has been translated. We
did a new Bible with more than the language that we speak today.
They had used a lot of archaic words that were not understandable
for common people. And so most of the Bibles that
we'll print will be given to as free distribution for unbelievers
of all people in India. And so pray for that. I know
Brother Fitzsimmons visited us in the month of March in Bangalore. He was there. I know Brother
John Conrad. We've been working. We've been
building churches even in India with them with the Carpenters
Project. And the Carpenters Project gave us $70,000 to print 7,000
Bibles. And so we are printing those
Bibles now, so we'll have 7,000 Telugu Bibles for distribution.
So do pray for that ministry. Then Dr. Keene, who was part
of it in the beginning, now is excited that we are beginning
to print the Bibles, he said, we'll
be able to help you. In what way can we help you continue
to print these Bibles again in the land of India? So I said,
you can pray and help us to get paper. That is the most expensive
cost. So do pray for this, that we'll
be able to distribute the 7,000 Bibles, people ask me how you
do that, I was told that one of our graduates said that in
the state of Andhra Pradesh where this language is spoken for second
most spoken language in India, they said in every county you
have one graduate. who will be able to distribute
these Bibles to people that need it. And so do pray for that,
that God will enable us to get not only the Bibles, but also
Christian books that will enable pastors and laymen to study the
Word of God and to teach. And so these are some of the
great needs we have. So do pray for them. I know I'm
taking much time. Pastor is getting anxious here
to come and preach. I won't take much of his time.
And so do pray for us. Thank you for helping us through
all these years, praying for us and faithfully supporting
and that God is taking the work further. And we'd like to see
God work a mighty way and pray for us as we continue our travels.
And going back, we'll be starting our college this year in July
4th. We'll open the academic year
for the Bible College to do pray for that and also pray for the
future. The needs are We like to see
a cancer center open. We see a lot of people with cancer
and money dying because of poor treatment. I was trained as a
physician. My burden is also to get people
good care, health care, and also do some our way of reaching people
with the cross. So we would like to start a hospital.
Do pray for that. In the future, we are trying
to do it in a year or two. So do pray for those needs and
pray for the nation of India that people will turn to Christ.
Thank you for all your prayers and support.
Chelli Missions Report
| Sermon ID | 613221450415694 |
| Duration | 22:34 |
| Date | |
| Category | Sunday Service |
| Language | English |
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