Why is Vision India joining the celebration of 150 years of Christianity in Nagaland?

Speaking to Mokokchung Times, Pastor Amit Aryan, National coordinator of Vision India said that they are in Nagaland to celebrate 150 years of Christianity.

In his words, he says, “We are celebrating 150 years of Christianity with the people of Nagaland by torching Dr Clark’s gospel flame.”

He said Vision India is taking up this movement as a “nation building inspiration for youth.”

The gospel torch movement of Dr. Clark is the third one of the five flames they had planned. Vision India began this journey of gospel torch from 2nd August 2022 at St. Thomas Mount in Chennai.

Before coming to Molungkimong, they had ignited the flame in Kedgaon district in Pune to celebrate and honor the centenary year of Pandita Ramabai, a lady Christian missionary.

Pandita Ramabai, a Brahmin woman highly respected in India for her orthodox Hindu learning, converted to Christianity in September 1883. She established the Mukti Mission at Kedgaon near Pune, Maharashtra. She translated the Bible from Hebrew and Greek to the Marathi language which was the first Marathi translation of the Bible. Through the Ramabai Mukti Mission, she converted hundreds of famine-affected poor rural women to Christianity. She was also awarded the Kaiser-i-Hind Medal in 1919 by the British Government for her distinguished service to the Indian Education system. She wrote the book ‘Hindu women in India’ and is the author of more than 36 books. She started a big orphanage after accepting Jesus Christ.

Talking about their third gospel torch, which is Dr. EW Clark, Amit shared that they started the flame from Molungkimong Baptist Church today with Pastor Moaliba, sister Sentila and Village council members and sixty warriors.

“We took a road procession of about 3 Kms in the town, the village and then we started coming down towards Mokokchung. After Mokokchung, we will go to Kohima then to Dimapur and to either Guwahati or Siliguri and then to Delhi,” he said.

After Nagaland, they shall be heading to Kolkata to ignite the flame of William Carey on September 10 at Serampore University in Kolkata.

“We want to celebrate William Carey’s contribution to building the nation of India by igniting his flames. We will have a huge celebration on September 10. We plan on taking out a huge park street rally and may visit about nine churches.”

William Carey is known as the father of modern Protestant missions and is a pioneer of new-style evangelism in India. Carey paid for his missionary work (among other things) by acting as a director of an indigo factory and as a professor of languages in a secular institution. The objective of the community was to disseminate the gospel in all possible ways: by preaching, by teaching (in schools), and by literature (translating the Bible into more than 30 languages). He is also the person to establish the first-degree granting university in Asia.

Vision India will have their fifth flame torch in Ludhiana, Punjab to ignite Sadhu Sunder Singh.

Sundar Singh was born in 1889 into an important landowning Sikh family in Patiala state, North India. After his mother passed away, torn by anguish and pain, he began to hate the Christians and ridiculed their teaching but eventually, he found comfort in the words of God. On his sixteenth birthday, he was publicly baptized as a Christian in the parish church in Simla, a town high in the Himalayan foothills.

“In that era missionary schools were there, zealously distributing bibles, talking against idol worshipping and all but he headed Christianity. He headed the religiosity of the missionaries of that time and he taught the bible. He became the first indigenous missionary with indigenous writing for our land,” Amit shared.

According to Amit, all the five flames will come together in Delhi on 24th October to inaugurate their National Youth Festival.

“Our vision is to see that the Christian youth become nation builders like these five people. Like these people we want to be committed to the teachings of Jesus which tells us to love our neighbors, it tells us to dedicate our lives to the salt and light of the earth, to increase the value of human beings and to fulfill the needs of people,” he said.