Welcome to God Today. I am Vishal Mangalwadi from Revelation Movement. I have been meditating with you on Psalm 119:130. “The opening of God’s Word gives light.” India doesn’t lack intelligence, but for thousands of years, Indian philosophies and religions were encouraging people to kill their mind, silence their thoughts, meditate on nothingness in silence. Until the Word of God came to India began to be translated, and published, and distributed. When from the Bible, we realized that the human mind is made in God’s own image. In the image of the mind, who created this universe, therefore, as His children, we need to be cultivating our minds, studying, thinking, and researching.
Not only did the missionary movement bring the Bible to us, but they also brought education. The first protestant missionary, the pioneer of the missionary movement, William Carey, was a cobbler in England who became a linguist, came to us in India and gave us one of our first universities, Serampore, in Bengal. He began to translate the Bible into Indian languages and publish them, making it available.
With the opening of the Bible came the intellectual awakening in India as it had come in Europe when Martin Luther began to translate the Bible into German. And inspired people like William Tyndale and others to begin to translate the Bible in other European languages. So that once the Bible was printed in people’s language, people began to read, study, think about it, meditate. You need schools, colleges, universities, and this amazing intellectual development of the West that happened as a result of the Bible. It came to India as a blessing, and Indian religions that had been teaching us, encouraging us to silence our minds actually began to open our mind and more than education and development came into India.
The Bible tells us that our mind is not simply a product of chemical reactions that happen in the brain. But, it is much more than chemistry, it is God’s image in us. And we need to cultivate this mind.
I would like to pray with you. Father, thank you for the audience who have been listening to your Word. I pray that today they would be delivered from any form of anti-intellectualism and realize that our minds are the greatest gifts that God has given to us so that we might be like Him. I pray for the opening of the human mind once again. In Jesus’ name. Amen.