FIVE SMOOTH STONES - The Five Ascension Gifts in the Heavenly Shepherds Bag

FIVE SMOOTH STONES — The Five Ascension Gifts in the Heavenly Shepherd’s Bag

into the air as a symbol of their prayers going up to their gods. When he asked them what they were doing and was told, he said, “ Why are your gods not receiving the offering, as the water is returning down ?” Purportedly he said, “ My God would not require worthless acts, but if I did offer Him an offering He would accept it. ” He then went out into the water and prayed a simple prayer and tossed the water into the air and they watched as the water continued up and never did return to earth. This caused quite some excitement among the priests, who under the caste system were the highest rank in their society. Some say the priests, out of the highest caste called Brahmin, believed and were converted. It is said that the entire village of Brahmins got converted because of this miracle. They took Thomas to the king who was unimpressed with the story at first, but had a sick daughter who was healed when Thomas prayed for her. This caused many of the priests and the ruling class, the second highest in their order, to convert to Christianity. To this day the highest percentage of Christians in India is in the south, where Christians are in every area of society. In the state of Kerala, Christians are still enjoying high status as their ancestors are believed to be once Brahmins or Kshatriyas. According to the oral traditions, Christians were considered honorable also because of the high standard of integrity they practiced. In the local’s courts, the testimony of a Christian witness was always accepted. This is in contrast with the north of India, where the missionaries came in more modern times and reached out to the “poor and down cast” but neglected the upper classes. Today there are very few Christians in the upper or ruling classes in the north of India, and many of the ruling Hindus believe Christianity is a religion of Europe and poor people. This is also a root of the anti- Christian effects and persecution found primarily in the north of India. There are some influential evangelists who have had great success in leading people to the Lord and salvation in their evangelistic campaigns around the world. However, historically, with follow-up in areas where even thousands of people received the Lord, within a few months there is no discernable or measurable change in the city or region where the gospel was preached. This is not the pattern we see in the gospels and the book of Acts. One reason for this is we tend to de-emphasize reaching out to the cultural leaders in the various

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