Escape from Prison with Angelic Assistance, AD 1920’s – Sundar Singh

Sundar believed in angels. However skeptical or cautious his friends from the West might be, affected as they were by the Higher Criticism of that period, he had not the slightest doubt about either the existence of these spiritual beings, or of their having come to his aid in times of danger. On his return from some of his journeys in the Himalayas he quite naturally related experiences of deliverances which he attributed to angels who appeared in the form of men…

The most remarkable instance of angelic succour and deliverance that he related happened when he had reached a town in Tibet called Rasa. Here he was arrested for having entered the country to preach a foreign religion. He was brought before the head lama who passed sentence on him – a sentence which amounted to death…

The method chosen in Sundar’s case was to cast him into the well. He was hustled there, the iron cover unlocked and removed, and he was pushed over the edge, down into a pit so foul that his very soul recoiled. The bottom of it was covered with dead men’s bones and rotting flesh, and the stench was almost overwhelming. Then what little light had penetrated was shut out as the cover of the well was replaced and he was left in darkness.

It was far worse than anything he had ever experienced before. No one had accompanied him on this trip; he was in a country where he was unknown, and he realized that humanly speaking his situation was hopeless. There was no possibility of help from any human source, and this time the inner joy he had known in times of persecution was missing.

“My God, my God… why have you forsaken me?” The words of Jesus on the cross came to mind but without the comfort of conscious fellowship. Why, oh why had God brought him to this place of horror and left him there?

Hours passed – how many he had no means of knowing. His arm had been wrenched as he was cast into the well, but the physical pain was as nothing compared with the anguish of his soul. In relating the story years later he said he was in that well for two days and nights, and on the third night he heard a sound above. The cover of the well was being removed and then a rope was let down and a voice told him to take hold of it. Summoning what strengths remained in him he slipped the snooze under his arms and was slowly drawn up, to sink on the ground, conscious only that he was gulping in fresh air at last. Weak as he was from hunger and thirst, it was air his body craved more than anything. As he breathed it in he felt himself strangely revived and the pain in his wrenched arm had gone. But he was alone. There was no sign of his rescuer.

… How had he escape, the head lama demanded, but all Sundar could tell him was what had happened, and that he had seen no one. Furiously the lama asserted that someone must have stolen the key to the well, and ordered that a search be made for it. No one was more taken aback than he when it was eventually found on his own girdle.

Excerpt taken from “Sadhu Sundar Singh” by Phyllis Thompson, Armour Publishing Pte Ltd, Singapore, 2005. pp. 73,75,76

"Strange Clouds" photo from www.science.nasa.gov.