I began by singing a simple children’s chorus. It was all I knew. By the time I finished, a crowd stood at the foot of the rock. I had not prepared myself to speak, but all at once God took over and filled my mouth with words of His love. I preached the Gospel to the poor as Jesus commanded His disciples to do. As the authority and power of God flowed through me, I had superhuman boldness. Words came out I never knew I had—and with a power clearly from above.
Others from the Gospel teams stopped to listen. The question of my age and calling never came up again. That was 1966, and I continued moving with mobile evangelistic teams for the next seven years. We traveled all over North India, never staying very long in any one village. Everywhere we went I preached in the streets while others distributed books and tracts. Occasionally, in smaller villages, we witnessed from house to house.
My urgent, overpowering love for the village people of India and the poor masses grew with the years. People even began to nickname me “Gandhi Man” after the father of modern India, Mahatma Gandhi. Like him, I realized without being told that if the village people of India were ever to be won, it would have to be by brown-skinned nationals who loved them.
As I studied the Gospels, it became clear to me that Jesus understood well the principle of reaching the poor. He avoided the major cities, the rich, the famous and the powerful, concentrating His ministry on the poor laboring class. If we reach the poor, we have touched the masses of Asia.
The battle against hunger and poverty is really a spiritual battle, not a physical or social one as secularists would have us believe.