Automatic Transcript Generated:
Speaker 1
All right, so Roland is asking, I have read that the Apostle Thomas went to India and spent time evangelizing until he was eventually speared to death in that country. I know there is no biblical reference for this story. Is there any historical account regarding such narrative?
Speaker 2
So Roland, you are spot on. And that, yes, this is a tradition about Thomas and that there is no biblical documentation as to what Thomas did after basically the Book of Acts. We don’t see much besides what we see, the parcels and that sort of thing in the Book of Acts. But there is a tradition about Thomas going to India, especially this specific coastal city. And I don’t know. So as far as the historical documentation, I haven’t seen anything like a solid like there’s actually this town named after him or whatnot, but there seems to be quite a bit of evidence that he may have indeed gone to India. But the thing is, as far as him being steered to death, that’s actually a Syrian tradition, a Syrian Christian tradition, which I think is interesting because Syria is quite a bit away from India. So I don’t know if that’s really true or the case as to his martyrdom or how he fell asleep in Christ. As far as historical documentation, what I would suggest is to look at some documentation that are out there. There’s a lot in the Christian encyclopedia and that kind of gets a little bit more information.
Speaker 2
There was a book that I was looking at, it was called In India and the Apostle Thomas an Inquiry with a Critical Analysis. It seemed pretty interesting to me because I know that there’s a lot of like there’s even a festival around his martyrdom in India and that sort of thing. There’s definitely some interesting things. And there is a family that was supposedly converted to Christianity by Thomas. They were a Brahmin family, so they were very well to do, well known family. And so it’s through their tradition as well that they came into Christianity through the Apostle Thomas almost 2000 years ago. So I hope that that kind of helps you a little bit. I know that there’s not a whole lot of super clear cut and that’s true of most of the apostles, is we don’t know exactly 100% for sure everything that they did after Christ resurrection, but we do have some clues out there and there’s a lot of traditions. But again, we’re not going to know everything until we get to Heaven. So I hope that helps you. And I hope that you just continue to study God’s word. And I hope that you learned from Thomas because he’s a very important apostle.
Speaker 2
And I hope that you’re not like Thomas, that you doubt Christ, but that you commit yourself fully in faith and trusting in the words of Jesus. So anyway, so I hope that answers your question. Do you have any anything else?
Speaker 3
Yeah, I recommend you do a Google search on the St. Thomas Christians and you could read about it. There is this tradition of this group of people on the Malibar coast of India and that St. Thomas Kevin converted them. And interestingly, yeah, we don’t have records proven definitively. St. Thomas was there, but there were actually Sabbath keepers and they had traditions very similar to what Jews were doing. And there’s records of the Portuguese around like the 1500s when Columbus is flying around, floating around and Marco Polo is doing his thing and the Portuguese actually the Catholic Portuguese actually go and persecute decimate these Sabbath keepers for not worshipping on Sunday and following other Catholic traditions. So that at least is documented. And then you have to ask where did these Sabbath keeping Christians in India come from? And the tradition is they came from Thomas. So interesting thing. That’s a very interesting thing.
Speaker 2
Awesome. I didn’t even know that. That’s awesome. That’s a really cool history there.
Speaker 1
It is fascinating. I’m going to ask about some of this because.
Speaker 3
From friend, I talked about him about that and yeah, friends in India have commented that they believe that is true and definitely say there’s long standing traditions.
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