John Christian Arulappan : The First Indian Brethren Evangelist

(1810-1867)
Born into a royal Maratha lineage, John Christian Arulappan walked away from earthly status to pioneer a profound spiritual revival in nineteenth-century South India. Relying entirely on faith rather than salaried support, he established self-sustaining Christian communities and laid the groundwork for the Brethren movement.

John Christian Arulappan was a native Evangelist who devoted his entire life for serving Lord Jesus Christ as his Saviour and Master. He could bring a great spiritual revival in South India during the 19th century. While he was yet a teen, he sought the Lord and surrendered to His call. John Arulappan lived an exemplary life that drew people around him to God. He was successful in uniting people in the service to the Lord. For the welfare of the community, he laboured and established a self-sustaining Christian village. He and his associates could build that unique village and named it Christianpettah (presently Christianpet), which they dedicated unto the Lord. There they worked, worshipped, and preached. His stewardship for the Lord made a difference in the village that brought a radical change in their outlook towards the world. Now it is a town situated in Viruthunagar district of Tamil Nadu. There are many devoted Christians living there even today.

Hundreds of natives from the neighbouring villages renounced their old lifestyle and followed Christ and committed themselves to the assembly fellowship of respective areas. By the grace of God, he could convince many souls to salvation by preaching the gospel of sin and repentance. He published many tracts and pamphlets and owned a printing press to evangelize the entire village.

Many of the then missionaries testified of his service to God. His ministry had a huge impact on many lives. He was blessed with a large family, and he left a legacy for his descendants. It was commendable that Arulappan selected appropriate scripture references and expressed them to various people groups according to their occupation. To men who were threshing the paddy, he spoke about chaff and wheat from the scripture. He would speak about Christ who holds the “fan is in his hand, and he will thoroughly purge his floor, and gather his wheat into the garner; but he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire” (Mat. 3:12). To the shepherds he would speak about the Good Shepherd who gave His life for the sheep from John’s Gospel chapter 10.

Arulappan’s Royal lineage

During the 17th Century, Tanjore (Thanjavur) in South India was ruled by Marathas. It was a Minor Maratha Kingdom. Tanjore now falls in Tamil Nadu. Venkoji, a half-brother of Maharaja Shivaji was the first ruler of Thanjavur from Bhosale dynasty. One of the descendants of Venkoji and the last independent king of Bhosale dynasty of Tanjore was Raja Serfoji 11. He had a sister who was married to the King’s General, a Rajput namely Ranjith Singh. They were blessed with a son, Arjun Singh.

Arjun Singh later married his own uncle Raja Serfoji’s daughter. Arjun Singh became a Catholic Christian and changed his name to Arulappan. Arjun Singh came in contact with Dr. Schwartz, a godly German missionary, a Lutheran who laboured much in Tanjore from 1750 for nearly fifty years. Arjun Singh was brought to the knowledge of salvation by faith in Christ by Dr. Schwartz. Later, Arjun Singh built a Church at his own expense and devoted himself completely for the service of the Lord to become a worthy example for his grandson to follow.

Arjun Singh had a son named Rayappan, who became a Protestant missionary and preached gospel in Tirunelveli town. Rayappan was sent to Ukkiramman Kottai a nearby village as a gospel worker. John Christian Arulappan and Rachel were born to Rayappan when he was in Tirunelveli town. He served the Lord in that place till the age of 98 years.

Early days of John Arulappan

John Christian Arulappan was born to Rayappan in the year 1810. Arulappan was brought up under the care of Rayappan his father. John Christian Arulappan was nurtured by Biblical principles from his very childhood. Being in a missionary family, in due course of time John C. Arulappan could cultivate a strong zeal for Christian ministry. This was due to the grace of God bestowed unto him. John Christian Arulappan was 15 years of age (1825) when he started his mission work. To equip for the ministry, in the year 1822 he enrolled himself in a seminary established by a missionary C.T.E. Rhenius. Arulappan also learnt the English language in the boys’ school of Mr. Schaffter.

Rhenius was a clergyman of the Lutheran church, sent to India as a missionary by CMS (Church Mission Society). Rhenius was one of the two missionaries who influenced John Arulappan to mold his Christian character in the service of the Lord.

Rhenius is known as the Apostle of Tirunelveli (1790- 1838). He was the first CMS missionary to India. He was an ordained Lutheran clergy from Germany. He renounced all the earthly riches for the sake of the gospel and came to India as a missionary at the age of 24, on 22 Feb. 1814. Initially he was based in Chennai (Madras). He could translate New Testament into Tamil and produce a Tamil grammar book. Rhenius was a devoted Christian with strong principles.

A strained relationship developed between Rhenius and CMS Committee. He was asked to move to Palayankottai an unreached town in Tirunelveli, South India. He was a remarkable man, a natural linguist, and an outstanding Christian leader. He was an excellent organizer - cheerful, tough, intelligent, transparent, pure in heart, immovable on questions of principle, pursued holy living and consecrated to the service of Christ.

It is in the year 1820 he reached Palayankottai; having been trained at the missionary Seminary in Berlin, he could start a seminary in Palayankottai in 1822. Rhenius’s strategy was to send out trained Indian catechists to preach and distribute literature. In each village where there was a significant response, a small elementary school would be established. As the schools prospered, conversions followed, and the converts informally gathered into local fellowship for worship. Simple meeting places were freely and willingly constructed by the Indians themselves, “being principally mud with palmyra leaf roofs” and many were large enough for two hundred people. In 1828, he started a work in Dohnavur, later to became famous as the “Home of Amy Carmichael”.

At one point of time Rhenius was forced to resign from CMS and gave up the salary. Mainly Groves encouraged him to do so. But they resumed their work, and for provision they depended on Lord only. They were not left alone to starve. Gifts came in from friends in Bombay and from Germany. Rhenius had to pay a heavy price for the stress and strain caused between him and the CMS society. He was called Home at the young age of 48, in the year 1838.

As a result of Rhenius’ ministry, John Christian Arulappan received relevant and useful guidance for a lifetime service of the Lord. John Arulappan came to the saving knowledge of Jesus Christ through the ministry of Rhenius. He joined in the Rhenius seminary at the age of fifteen in 1825.

Arulappan realised the disadvantage of “salaried” ministry from the life of his mentor Rhenius. A N Groves taught both Rhenius and Arulappan the New Testament pattern of “faith” ministry. “It is the Lord who has called us to the field, He is the Lord of the Harvest, he will provide the temporal and spiritual needs of His servants”. Arulappan was greatly impressed with these teachings and practiced it also in his life. Arulappan later on followed almost the same style as of Rhenius for the spread of the gospel. He also learned holiness and its importance in the life of a believer from Rhenius, who never compromised with unholy practices.

His marriage and family

During the second visit of A N Groves to India, Arulappan met him again at Chittor. Groves could teach and impart more discipleship training to him during this period. At Chittor he met a Hindu girl who was thrown out of her house because of her Christian faith. Her name was Anushya. He married Anushya in the year 1840, she was from the royal family of Vijayanagar. God blessed them with eleven children, out of which three boys died at young age. She was a virtuous woman and a great help in the service of the Lord.

Like his mentor Groves, Arulappan also adopted the principle of “faith ministry”. He was not an ordained minister nor accepted any regular “salary” from any missionary Society. They looked to the Lord to meet their everyday needs. The Lord met all their necessities.

While they were living in Christianpettah, one night it so happened that his wife realized that there was nothing at home to feed the children. She searched for her husband to alert him and found that he was spending time in prayer at the second floor. She was in a dilemma as she did not want to disturb him but at the same time could not watch children go hungry. Silently she too started praying to the Lord for their immediate need. Suddenly she heard the sound of an approaching bullock- cart. The cart brought plenty of prepared food items to meet more than their need. There was a wedding at the nearby village. The organizers found food in surplus, remembered the servant of God at Christianpettah and sent the bullockcart full of food. Amazing are the ways of God, “the young lions do lack, and suffer hunger; but they that seek the LORD shall not want any good thing” (Ps.34:10).

When Brother Bakht Singh started his ministry in Madras, two great grandsons of Arulappan helped him to start the Jehovah Shammah assembly. Bro. Dorairaj and Bro. Rajamoni were the grandsons of Arulammal the fifth daughter of Arulappan. They were the elders of Jehovah Shammah assembly at Chennai.

In his early years of ministry, Arulappan was groomed by two great missionaries - Rhenius and A N Groves. He started his mission work at the age of 15 when he was with Rhenius. While he was with Rhenius, he got influenced by the teachings of Lutherans and Church of England. He saw the powerful evangelical zeal and various activities of Rhenius, such as establishing Christian schools, tract distribution, caring for poor native brethren, reaching out to distant villages, which he reproduced in the later days in his own ministries. Moreover, he learned from Rhenius the importance of Holy living.

Following truths, he learned from A N Groves:

1. The Bible is the supreme authority in all matters of faith, worship and personal life.
   
2. Lord’s people should have fellowship with all saints whom Christ has received. “Receive Ye one another, even as Christ also received you, to the glory of God” (Rom.15:7).
   
3. Trust the Lord in all matters, including our material needs. Lord’s work should be carried out by faith alone. Lord who called is faithful to provide our needs. “Salaried” worker is foreign to the Word of God. He himself had witnessed the sufferings of a godly man like Rhenius because of the association with the ‘society’ for financial needs. So Arulappan learned the principles of ‘faith mission’ from A N Groves and practiced it by developing ‘Christian-pet’ a self-sustaining Christian village, located at present in Viruthunagar District of Tamil Nadu.
   
4. He also learned that there is no need of ordination of any kind to preach the gospel.
   
5. Moreover he understood from the scriptures, that when saints gather together on the first day of the week, they can exercise the liberty to break the bread without an ordained priest to “administer the ordinance”.
   
6. He realized the importance of accepting the Lordship of Christ in every sphere of Christians’ life and how one should be submissive to the guidance of the Holy Spirit in exercising the spiritual gifts in the gathering of saints.
   
7. It is a privilege of the child of God to trust His Heavenly Father as to the future and therefore laying up treasure upon earth is not encouraged. For instance, when Mrs Groves inherited her father’s wealth (more than £ 10,000) she gave it away for the service of God. Arulappan learned all these principles from the life of Groves.
   
8. He believed that work of spreading the gospel should be ordered by the examples and methods of the Apostles. So, he was against all forms of human organization such as “Mission” Society. He emphasized that each Evangelist should be sent and be guided by the Lord, was responsible directly to the Lord, and should be dependent upon his Lord for daily maintenance. He regarded human guarantees of financial support for spiritual work to be unspiritual, unscriptural, and injurious to faith.

Growing in faith

It was in the year 1833, Arulappan met A N Groves. Their fellowship continued for the next twenty years, until the home call of Groves in 1853.

In December 1833 Arulappan left Rhenius and aligned with Groves. The next six months both travelled a great part of India, in surveying the field. Groves returned to England in search of missionaries to India and came back to India in July 1836 along with Bowden and Beer families. Groves settled at Chittoor and Bowden and Beer moved to Godavari Delta region for the ministry.

Arulappan joined with Groves at Chittoor in the year 1837. His association with Groves enriched the scriptural knowledge and deeper truths related with the Lord’s Second coming and millennial Kingdom. These formed the major theme of preaching in the latter days of his ministry.

In his early days Arulappan served with Groves as his interpreter. On one day while they were preaching, a native man teased him as a “salaried” worker of an English man. Then and there he told this to Groves and refused to accept a regular salary. Thus, Groves’ examples of faith began to bear fruit in Arulappan.

George Muller of Bristol who married Anthony Norris Groves’ sister, had learned the way of faith from Groves and had been enthused by his example. Muller among Europeans and Arulappan from India were the first of a vast number to follow ‘faith mission’ of Groves. He had followed Christ and his Apostles in this blessed path of the poverty that enriches. Arulappan wrote in 1866 just before his home call, how he fed both boys and girls in the boarding school just by faith without any promise of payment. He kept fully his confidence upon the Lord. He joyfully endured the hardship for the sake of preaching the gospel; his life was a ‘triumph of faith’ and it is apt to call him the ‘George Muller’ of India.

An itinerant Preacher

At Chittoor along with Groves he learned various spiritual truths regarding New Testament pattern of Evangelization, Church planting and practices. At the age of thirty, he started working independently as an Evangelist. He preached in various places of the present Tamil Nadu. Afterwards he came to a village called Christianpettah in the year 1840. (Pettah means Village). It was an undeveloped and uncivilized village, he named it Christianpettah. He established farming, schools and Churches in and around this village. The land was taken from the Government. This village became a place of worship and shelter for believers who were thrown out of their own villages. In the year 1842 he constructed an assembly Hall at Christian-Pet, probably the first Brethren Assembly Hall.

In the year 1859 more than 33 villages were evangelized, some of them located about 100 miles from ChristianPet. In the process, many assemblies got established and about 800 souls were touched by the gospel. Over this large area Arulappan perseveringly itinerated, visiting groups and individuals, baptising, teaching, comforting, admonishing, rebuking, reconciling, making his ministry fool proof as a true shepherd. Contrary to much mission practice, Arulappan trained these Churches to break the bread together for their profit and as a testimony. In the assembly gatherings he encouraged individual saints to exercise their spiritual gifts for the edification of the Church.

Revival meetings in Kerala

Arulappan’s evangelistic efforts were not limited to Tamil Nadu. He travelled all the way to Travancore (Kerala). Along the way he conducted street and market preaching’s. He visited churches and preached there. In some places five hundred to seven hundred people gathered to listen to him. His co-workers Marian, Michael and Aquillah accompanied him during his missionary Journey to South Travancore (part of today’s Kerala). His first visit to Travancore was in the year 1853. In a miraculous way the Lord met their financial needs for the whole journey.

Agur Masillamany, who was a zealous follower of Arulappan wrote about these revival meetings in his book “Church history of Travancore”. Mahakavi K V Simon quoted Masillamany and wrote “His (Arulappan’s) messages on second coming of Christ were the most attractive. It was the first-time people of Kerala heard that Christ will personally reign on the earth for thousand years.” Again, Arulappan visited Travancore in 1859 and conducted revival meetings.

He was a mighty revival speaker, and the audience experienced a great movement of the Holy Spirit while he ministered. Because of the unusual manifestation of the work of the Holy Spirit, some Church historians consider John Arulappan as the ‘Father of Pentecostalism’ in India.

During his missionary Journey an interesting event happened at Nagercoil. A rich man hosted a big dinner in honour of the preacher. Arulappan was asked to grace the dinner. During the dinner, one of the guests brought up the fact that Arulappan forgot to pray for blessing the gracious host. Arulappan replied “At God’s command the ravens brought bread and meat for Elijah. Is it necessary to thank the ravens?”

Later, in 1873 Evangelist Mathai from Tirunelveli, Tamil Nadu one of the disciples of John Arulappan came to Kerala and conducted great revival meetings in Travancore. Like Arulappan, he also spoke on the Lord’s crucifixion, second coming, reign of Anti-Christ, Millennium, eternal Judgment, etc. ‘Vidwankutty and brothers’, who were converted during the meetings of Evangelist Mathai, also became famous through their revival meetings during that period.

Visionary leader

A missionary should be a visionary. Being a true visionary leader, Arulappan could recognize and train a second line of leadership to carry forward the works, which Lord began through him. He never considered them as subordinates but treated them as his fellow workers or co-workers. Twenty of these workers were there at the time of his home call in the year 1867. Marian was the prominent one among them who was promoted to glory in 1865, just before Arulappan’s Home call. Elias, Aquillah, Michael and Yesudasan were some of his coworkers who ventured along with him to reach the unreached areas. Some of them joined with him during his Travancore missionary Journey.

Missionaries all over the world gave importance to education and establishment of schools. It is presumed that the King of Israel should be able to read and write. He should make a copy of the book of law for daily reading (Deut.17:18-20). A Christian being a royal priest should know how to read and write.

Arulappan established few schools for boys and girls. Some were boarding schools and some were for day scholars. Primary purpose of establishing schools was to help them to read scriptures. He also understood the importance of the education of the girl child and helped them to learn sewing. His own daughter became an English teacher in Chennai.

Mr. Huffton of the CMS started a school in Arulappan’s native village. He sent his sons to study there. So they came under the influence of Church of England. [Unfortunately, when Arulappan died his son Paul Arulappan invited the CMS to take over the assemblies he had founded. But many of the brethren were unhappy about the changes in the form of service. In 1895 Handley Bird was invited to exercise ‘damage control measures’ and help the locals. Next year in 1896 Mr and Mrs Thomas H Maynard moved to Tirunelveli and started a boarding school at Mount Zion. But the youngest Son Anthony Arulappan followed the foot steps of his father and continued the assembly ministries].

Curse of Casteism

Arulappan vehemently opposed casteism. He considered all believers are equal because all are born of one Heavenly Father and have one and the same Saviour, who is Lord Jesus Christ. So, if anyone keeps caste, he is not a true child of God.

One day it so happened that his relatives who were unbelievers saw him having supper with his fellowChristian brother. They accused him for eating with a person of a low caste. Then he answered and said, “Whosoever believes not Jesus Christ, he shall go to hell-the lower place, and he is of the low caste. Whosoever believes on Lord Jesus, he shall go to heaven- the higher place and he is only of the high caste”.

The Printing Press

In the year 1853 while returning from Kerala mission, Arulappan visited Nagercoil and met Mr. Mault who owned an old wooden press; he purchased it for Rs 20. Mr. Mault was kind enough to send a technician to teach printing technics to Arulappan’s men. Hundreds of tracts, books and Bibles were printed and distributed mostly in Tamil and some books were also printed in Telugu. Press was a great blessing for the spread of gospel.

Summary

G H Lang summarizes the life of John Arulappan as ‘triumph of faith’ which tested and demonstrated-ted the New Testament Principles of Evangelization and Church planting for more than twenty- five years. That was long enough to show that they are workable. This great man of God was called Home on March 14, 1867, at the age of 57 leaving a great spiritual legacy behind.

Bibliography

1. The history and diaries of an Indian Christian (J C Aroolappen) by G H Lang.
   
2. Triumph of Faith by Stanley Edward.
   
3. The Challenges of India by F A. Tatford, 1983 page 282-83.
   
4. History of Brethren Movement by Mahakavi K V Simon (English) 2018.
   
5. Father of Faith Missions: The life and times of Anthony Norris Groves by Robert Bernard Dann, 2004

This article originally appeared in the Harvest Times magazine's February, March 2019 issue.