PAKISTAN • land of • sp iritua l
• opportunities
by Louis T. Talbot, Biola Chancellor I am sending these few lines from Pakistan where I have been for some time. After a blessed reunion w ith the members of my fam ily and old-time friends in Australia, I proceeded to this great and needy land. My family, years ago, numbered ten, including my father and mother, bu t the fam ily circle has thinned out through the years, as every fam ily does. The greater number are now in Heaven and those who rem ain are moving toward the sunset of life. I t was a great joy to see those who remain, and also to revisit the old places w ith which I was associated in my boyhood days, in Sydney. Among other spots, I visited the Sunday school and church which I attended when I was five years old. I saw the room where my Sunday school class was held, and sat in the old fam ily pew. When my sisters and I attended the morning service of this church, which has a seating capacity of one thousand, there were only six people in attendance. This brought a heartache. How ever, there is an explanation for it since this neighbor hood has become a p a rt of the slums of Syndey. W hat memories passed through my m ind as I looked at those pews and visualized the people who were once there! Most of them are in Heaven now. On another day, I visited the schools I had attended. I sat at my old desk and saw my name carved into the wood, and when I observed that, I had some realization of what my teachers had pu t up w ith, to pound some learning into my head! After six wonderful weeks, I took a plane for Karachi, Pakistan. We touched down a t the city of Darw in, in the northern part of Australia where kangaroos and emus are numerous; Djkarta, Singapore, and Calcutta. A lthough my plane arrived in Karachi at 4:00 A.M., my daughter and her husband were there to meet me. Here in this country I have had once again the oppor tun ity to lift up my eyes unto fields whitened for h a r vest. Karachi has a population of two m illion and is a Muslim city. On every hand mosques are to be seen, and every morning a t 4 A.M. I can hear the Muslim servants in prayer. Their devotion to their religion in many ways puts us Christians to shame. The city itself presents a need th a t would stir the hardest of hearts. Beggars are to be seen on every corner. Little children of four or five years of age tug a t your sleeve, begging something to eat. My daughter was walking through the marketplace w ith my grand-daughter when a little girl knelt and kissed her feet, and then looked up in suppli cation for something th a t would assuage her hunger. Some missionaries labor here, bu t one feels as the dis ciples did, when they received the five loaves and two fishes from the little boy: “But w hat are they among so many?” There are Biola missionaries in this city who were in the Institute when I was pastor of the Church of the Open Door. Among them are Rev. and Mrs. Elmer Fricke. They conduct a morning service in the Karachi American Schoolhouse which is attended by sixty people, some of whom belong to the American Air
Force. Others are American government officials, and some are Pakistanis. I have been preaching for Elmer for a number of Sunday mornings, and also have been helping other m inisters in the city. Some days ago, the Frickes drove me out to see the “Tower of Silence,” which is the sacred shrine of the Parsees, the Zoroastrians, whose religion was th a t of the Persians before their conversion to Mohammedanism. These followers of Zoroaster and their w ritings called the Zend-Avesta date their system back to the first cen tury A.D. They are very different from the H indus and Muslims in th a t they worship the four elements—fire, water, air and earth. In the temple where they gather you see fire burning, water running, and the earth, and, of course, air. People bow to the flame, inhale the air, drink the water, and worship the earth. Strange to say, these Parsees are the wealthy people of the Asiatic world. When we drove to the Tower of Silence, we found the gates securely locked and a notice posted to the effect th a t only Parsees were perm itted to enter. But it was not the first time I had come upon locked doors in my missionary travels, and so Mr. Fricke and I got out of the car; he talked to the guard in his own language. He told him who we were and th a t we would appreciate it if we could enter the gates and walk to the shrine which was about a quarter of a mile inside the gates. At first the guard was very reluctant to allow this, but we presented th a t good old “baksheesh” (the Persian word for g ratuity) and that is understood in every lan guage! He opened the gates, bade us enter, and accom panied us to the shrine. One area of the shrine is used for the bodies of dead Parsees. This is the gruesome way in which they dispose of these corpses. They cannot bury them, because this would pollute the element of earth; they cannot b um them because this would pollute the element of fire; they cannot dispose of them in the sea because this would pollute the element of w ater; and they cannot allow them to rem ain in the open for long because th a t would pollute the element of air. Consequently, they carry the bodies up a w inding staircase to the open tower where hundreds of vultures await. The guide told us th a t these voracious birds consume all flesh in ten minutes. This weird religion has a tremendous hold on its devotees and only He who is the light of the world can drive the darkness from their hearts and minds. Before we separ ated from this guide, Mr. Fricke had an earnest talk w ith him , and presented Christ as Saviour, explaining who He was and why H e had come into the world. The m an listened w ith puzzled interest as if the story he was hearing was altogether new to him, which likely it was. This is bu t one of m any kinds of heathenism we see on every hand and of course the same kind of darkness covers India, Burma, and the rest of Asia. Of course, the Communists are try ing to get a foot hold here, bu t if they make any progress, it w ill move very slowly. The Muslims w ith their belief in one God,
THE KING'S BUSINESS
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