THE PREACHER WHO SURVIVED BEING SKINNED ALIVE. THE MOUNTAINS FINALLY TOOK HIM.
They sewed him into a wet animal skin and left him in the sun to die slowly as it tightened around his body. He survived. They packed cloth full of scorpions and leeches against his skin. He survived that too. They tied him to a tree overnight as bait for wild animals in the mountains. He survived. Then one spring morning in 1929, he walked into the Himalayas alone, and nobody ever saw him again.
Sundar Singh was born in 1889 into a wealthy, landowning Sikh family in Punjab, India. His mother took him weekly to sit at the feet of a Hindu holy man in the forest, hoping to raise a devoted son. When she died, Sundar was only fourteen, and grief turned to rage. He hated the missionaries in his town, mocked their faith, and one day bought a Bible and burned it page by page in front of his friends to prove his contempt.
The peace he expected never came. Weeks later, hollowed out by despair, he decided he would end his life unless the "true God," whoever that was, showed up before dawn. That night, he said, a light filled his room and he saw Jesus Christ standing before him, asking why he had persecuted Him. By morning, sixteen-year-old Sundar Singh was a Christian.
His family's response was immediate and brutal. His father disowned him. His own brother tried to poison him. The community that had once respected his family now treated him as a traitor. Rather than retreat, Sundar made a decision that stunned everyone who knew him: he put on the plain yellow robe of a Hindu holy man and chose to live as a barefoot, homeless preacher of Christ, walking from village to village with no possessions, no salary, and no home to return to.
He became known across northern India as "the apostle with the bleeding feet." His robe offered no protection against the snow. He was stoned. He was arrested. He once slept in a roadside hut and woke to find a cobra had shared the space with him through the night.
But it was Tibet that called to him most. Closed to missionaries, fiercely Buddhist, and hostile to any foreign faith, Tibet had defeated nearly every attempt to bring the gospel across its border. Sundar Singh crossed it anyway, for the first time at just nineteen years old, and then returned almost every year that followed.
The persecution there went far beyond stones. In the Tibetan town of Rasar, he was arrested, tried, and sentenced to death for preaching. His executioners sewed him into a freshly skinned, still-wet yak hide and left him in the open sun, knowing the hide would shrink as it dried, crushing the person inside. Villagers later said he was found alive, the yak skin split open, with no explanation anyone could give. On another occasion, he was thrown into a dry well filled with the remains of previous prisoners and left to die in the dark. Two nights later, he said, a rope was lowered down to him and he was pulled out, though he never saw who had done it. Other accounts describe him bound to a tree overnight in wolf territory, packed in cloth filled with stinging insects, and other things few missionaries anywhere in history have endured and lived to describe.
He kept going back.
By his thirties, Sundar Singh had preached across India, Tibet, Nepal, and eventually Europe, America, Australia, and beyond, drawing enormous crowds wherever he spoke. Yet the very hardship of his Tibet journeys had worn his body down long before old age had any right to. Friends who saw him in his last years described him as prematurely aged, frail, and exhausted in a way that alarmed them.
In April 1929, against the advice of nearly everyone close to him, Sundar Singh set out on what he intended to be one more journey into Tibet. He reached a small town called Kalka at the foot of the Himalayas, a worn, aging figure in a yellow robe among the pilgrims beginning their own climbs into the mountains.
He was never seen again.
No body was ever found. No grave exists. No witness ever came forward with a final account. Whether he collapsed from exhaustion on a mountain path, was killed by those still hostile to his preaching, or simply reached the high mountains he loved and was lost to the snow, no one has ever been able to say. Nearly a century later, it remains one of the enduring unsolved mysteries in modern mission history.
A man who survived being sewn alive into an animal skin, left for dead in a well of corpses, and bound out as bait for wolves, was finally taken, quietly and without a trace, by the very mountains that had always called him home.
LESSONS FROM HIS LIFE:
• Surviving hardship isn't the same as being spared from cost, both were true in his life at once
• Radical obedience often costs relationships with the people we love most
• Faithfulness doesn't require safety, only surrender
• Some of the most significant lives leave the world with more questions than answers, and that's alright
• A body poured out again and again in service still needed rest it rarely received
"For to me, to live is Christ, and to die is gain." — Philippians 1:21
If your final chapter was never written for anyone to read, would your life still have spoken loudly enough?
Follow this page for a new story like his every week.
Researched and written by Christian Ekeneme （Facebook）
一位被活剥皮（缝入兽皮）却幸存下来的传道人，最终归于雪山。
他们把他缝进一张湿漉漉的动物皮里，搁在阳光下让他慢慢死去——随着兽皮干瘪收缩，会活活将他绞杀。但他活了下来。他们将满是蝎子和水蛭的布料紧贴着他的皮肤塞满，他也活了下来。他们把他绑在树上过夜，当作大山里野生动物的猎饵，他依然活了下来。直到 1929 年的一个春日晨曦，他独自一人走进了喜马拉雅山脉，从此再也没有人见过他。
桑达尔·辛格（Sundar Singh）于 1889 年出生在印度旁遮普省一个富裕的锡克教地主家庭。他的母亲每周都会带他坐在森林里的印度教圣人脚边，希望能把他培养成一位虔诚的信徒。然而在他十四岁那年，母亲去世了，极度的悲伤化为了愤怒。他开始仇视镇上的宣教士，嘲弄他们的信仰；甚至有一天，他买了一本《圣经》，在朋友面前一页页烧毁，以此宣泄心中的蔑视。
但他预期的平静从未降临。几周后，被绝望掏空的辛格决定，除非这位“真神”——无论他是谁——能在天亮前向他显现，否则他就结束自己的生命。据他回忆，那天晚上，一道光照亮了他的房间，耶稣基督站在他面前，问他为什么要逼迫祂。到了清晨，十六岁的桑达尔·辛格成了一名基督徒。
家族的反应极其迅猛且残忍。父亲与他断绝关系，亲哥哥企图下毒害死他，曾经尊重他家族的社区如今将他视为叛徒。然而辛格没有退缩，而是做出了一个让所有认识他的人震惊的决定：他穿上印度教圣人的黄色简朴长袍，选择成为一名赤脚、无家可归的基督传道人。他在村落之间穿行，无业无薪，也再无家可归。
他在印度北部被称为“脚底流血的使者”。他的长袍抵挡不住严寒风雪；他被石头砸，被逮捕；他甚至曾在路边的茅草屋过夜，清晨醒来发现一条眼镜蛇与他同室共眠了一整晚。
但西藏才是最召唤他的地方。当时西藏对宣教士封锁，有着深厚的佛教传统，对任何外来信仰都持敌意，几乎挫败了所有试图跨越边境传播福音的努力。然而辛格还是去了——第一次去时他只有十九岁，此后几乎每年都会再次踏上那片土地。
那里的迫害远不止投掷石块那么简单。在西藏的拉萨尔镇（Rasar），他因宣教被捕、审判并判处死刑。行刑者把他缝进一张刚剥下、还泛着湿气的牦牛皮里，抛在烈日下，因为干涸的牦牛皮会急剧收缩，将里面的人活活勒死。然而村民后来发现他还活着，牦牛皮已经裂开，没有人能解释究竟发生了什么。还有一次，他被扔进一口干涸的枯井里，井底堆满了此前囚犯的骸骨，任他在黑暗中等死。据他所说，两天后的深夜，有人向下抛了一根绳子将他拉了出来，而他自始至终都没看到救他的人是谁。其他的记载还描述过他如何在狼群出没的区域被绑在树上过夜、被裹满刺螫昆虫的布料紧包，这些遭遇是历史上极少有宣教士能在历经后还能活着讲述的。
但他依然一次又一次地回去。
到了三十多岁时，桑达尔·辛格的足迹已遍布印度、西藏、尼泊尔，随后又前往欧洲、美国、澳大利亚等地，所到之处盛况空前，吸引了成千上万的听众。然而，早年在西藏历经的苦难早已透支了他的身体。在他生命最后的几年里，朋友们见到的辛格早已未老先衰、虚弱不堪，那种疲惫程度令人担忧。
1929 年 4 月，不顾几乎所有亲友的劝阻，桑达尔·辛格再次出发，踏上了他计划中最后一次进藏之旅。他来到了喜马拉雅山脚下的小镇加尔卡（Kalka），身穿黄色长袍，混在准备进山进香的朝圣者队伍中，显得沧桑而衰老。
从此，再也没有人见过他。
没有找到遗体，没有坟墓，也没有任何目击者能提供关于他最终结局的线索。究竟是在山路上力竭倒下，还是被敌视他宣教的人害死，抑或是终于抵达了他所热爱的高山并融入了茫茫白雪，没有人能够说清。近一个世纪过去了，这依然是现代宣教史上悬而未决的谜团之一。
这个曾历经活缝入兽皮、从堆满尸骸的枯井中幸存、并曾被绑在野外当狼饵的男人，最终悄无声息、不留痕迹地归入了那片一直在召唤着他的大山。
从他一生中获得的启示：
苦难中的幸存并不等同于无需付出代价，这两者在他身上同时成为了现实
彻底的顺服，往往意味着要付出与最爱之人断绝关系的代价
忠心并不要求绝对的安全，需要的只是全然的摆上（顺服）
某些最为伟大的生命，离开这个世界时留下的疑问远多于答案，而这本身并没有关系
即使是一个为了奉献而一次次被掏空的身体，依然需要那极少能得到的休息
“因我活着就是基督，我死了就有益处。” —— 腓立比书 1:21
如果你的最后一章从未有人读到，你的一生是否依然能够声如洪钟？
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