A Spark of Curiosity

“Which denomination do you belong to?”

The question came from my English teacher, Mr. B.G. Bhatt and It caught me completely off guard. I was a student in secondary class at Shreyas Vidyalaya, Baroda, likely the only Christian in the entire school. English was the subject I enjoyed the most throughout school.

When I admitted my ignorance, he said.”It’s a good thing you don’t know”. His response left me puzzled, but it also sparked something deep within me: a hunger to understand who I was, where I came from, and how my faith fit into the tapestry of history.

That afternoon after school, I asked my mother the same question. She explained, “We are Jacobite Syrian Christians, with our Patriarch in Antioch.” She went on to describe another group, the Orthodox Christians, who had split from the Jacobites, with their Bishop based in Kottayam, Kerala. Until that moment, I hadn’t realised there were different denominations within Christianity because I  never heard any conversation about denominations in our house. All I knew was that I was a Christian and I loved Jesus!

As I grew older, I began to see how little the world around me understood about Christianity. 

My friends often saw it as a Western religion, exported to India by the British. But Christianity in India traces its roots back to 52 A.D., when Apostle Thomas, one of the 12 disciples of Jesus, arrived on the Malabar Coast in Kerala. According to tradition, Apostle Thomas arrived at the port of Muziris (near modern-day Kodungallur) in AD 52. At that time, Kerala had flourishing trade relations with the Roman Empire and the Middle East, especially through Jewish and Arab traders. It is believed that Apostle Thomas preached the Gospel, baptized the gentiles, and established seven and a half churches (“Ezharapallikal”) along the Malabar Coast. These include churches in places like Kodungallur, Palayoor, Paravur, Niranam, and Nilackal. He turned many into Christ, including local Brahmins, Jews, and other communities.

Later, he is believed to have traveled east across the Western Ghats to the Coromandel Coast (modern-day Tamil Nadu), where he continued his missionary work. He is said to have settled near Mylapore (now part of Chennai). According to tradition, he was martyred in AD 72 on a hill now called St. Thomas Mount, pierced with a spear while praying. His body was buried in Mylapore, and a shrine was built over his tomb. The site is now the San Thome Basilica, a major Christian pilgrimage center.

To most of my Hindu friends, Jesus is one among many gods, believing there are many ways to salvation. But unlike Hinduism, Christianity is not a religion, it’s a relationship with Almighty God through His Son Jesus Christ. It’s all about the revelation of Jesus Christ the Son of God and the Holy Spirit is the revealer of who Jesus is. Jesus makes it clear “I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me”. Whoever believes in Son has the Father also (1 John 2:23). Salvation is only through faith in Jesus Christ. “The gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord” (Romans 6:23). Salvation is free; you don’t have to earn it or pay for it. It’s a gift, offered to us because of God’s immeasurable love. 

For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life” (John 3:16). 

There is heaven, and there is hell. The choice is ours. With Jesus, God promises us heaven—a place of eternal joy, free from pain, sorrow, and sin.

In contrast to the Hindu belief system, where folks believe in multiple gods, in Christianity, there is only 1 God but 3 distinct persons:  Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We call it Trinity. We see the concept of trinity in Water: vapour, liquid, and ice—but it’s still water. The Bible has different names for God. 

• Yahweh / Jehovah (The LORD” or “I AM WHO I AM”) 
• Elohim (Creator) 
• Adonai (“Lord” or “Master”)  
• El Shaddai(God Almighty” or “All-Sufficient One)  
• Immanuel (“God With Us”) 
• El Elyon (Most High God)

God the Father is the Master Planner. He commands. “Let there be light”. “Let us make man“. Jesus Christ, the Son of God, equal to God the Father, carries out the divine will of the Father like an administrator. The Holy Spirit, the third Person of the Trinity, is the Creator and Sustainer of all things. He manifests what Jesus does on this earth and in our life. The Holy Spirit makes Jesus real to us. He is the Spirit of Jesus. He is Jesus Christ without limit. He is a Person and not a power. He is the beloved of Jesus. Jesus loves the Holy Spirit so much that He says, every sin can be forgiven, except the blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. Before Jesus’ ascension, He blew the Holy Spirit on the disciples and said “Receive the Holy Spirit” heralding the new age of the Holy Spirit. He promised the disciples about the power of the Holy Spirit which they will receive and asked them to wait. And precisely on the day of Pentecost, the Holy Spirit came upon the disciples in the upper room and they were endowed with power as promised. The Bible says, this precious Holy Spirit dwells in the body of every believer. He is omni-present. Jesus is in heaven now, sitting on the throne, seated at the right hand side of the Father.

Why did Jesus come to this earth?

The Bible makes it clear: “The soul who sins shall die” (Ezekiel 18:4). And again, “The wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23). Because God is holy, sin cannot exist in His presence. God declared that the sinner must die, but in His mercy, He provided a way out: Rather than you die, I will accept the death of a substitute. So in OT, we see animals being made the substitute for our sins. The Bible says, without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness of sins (Hebrews 9:22). The blood of animals, however, could never fully remove sin. Those sacrifices were merely a foreshadowing, a picture of what was to come—Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29). In the Old Testament, there were five different offerings required, and each one pointed to Jesus, revealing His role as the ultimate sacrifice. 

Jesus came in the flesh to fulfill a divine plan far greater than any human mind could conceive. 

From the moment Adam and Eve fell in the Garden of Eden, God’s promise of redemption was set in motion. In Genesis, the very first book of the Bible, we find the seed of this promise: a prophetic declaration that one day, the offspring of the woman, a virgin, would crush the serpent’s head. 

I will put enmity between you and the woman,  and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel. Genesis 3:15

This was the first whisper of the Messiah, a hope that would echo through the centuries, carried forward by the priests, prophets, and kings of Israel. The story of Messiah, therefore, is not confined to the New Testament; it is the culmination of a narrative that began in Eden, unfolded through the covenants with Abraham, Moses, and David, and reached its fulfilment in the person of Jesus.

What was prophesied in the books of the Old Testament, about the coming of the Messiah was fulfilled, when God became man and dwelt among us. God loved us so much that He became one of us—Jesus—and took our place on the cross. He became our substitute, bearing the punishment for our sins so we wouldn’t have to. Jesus said to the Father, “I will take their punishment.” That’s why He came to earth: to be the perfect sacrifice for our sins. He was rich but He became poor, so that we through His poverty might become rich. He was sinless, but He bore our sins, he took our punishment, so that we might become the sons of God. 

The crucifixion of Jesus wasn’t a tragic accident of history—it was the very heart of God’s redemptive plan, orchestrated from the beginning for the salvation of mankind. Jesus’ death was the ultimate act of love, a sacrifice so profound that it bridged the chasm between a holy God and sinful humanity. 

Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me” (John 14:6).

He is the only bridge between humanity and God, the only path to eternal life. The cross wasn’t the end—it was the beginning of hope, the doorway to redemption for all who believe.

The Bible, I came to realise, is not just a collection of stories or moral teachings but God’s grand plan of redemption through Jesus Christ, woven through generations, with the Jewish people and the nation of Israel at its core. The Bible, in its entirety, is a book of prophecies. It is a collection of 66 books, written by 40 different writers who never met each other, at different times, different places, over a period of 1600 years, from 3 different continents, in 3 different languages. There are about 2500 prophecies, out of which more than 300 prophecies were fulfilled by Jesus as the Messiah. These include prophecies about His birth (Micah 5:2), suffering (Isaiah 53), death (Psalm 22), and resurrection (Psalm 16:10). 2000 prophecies have been fulfilled already in detail and some prophecies, particularly those about the Second Coming of Christ and the end times (Revelation, Daniel, etc.), are awaiting fulfilment. The Bible has 1 message: Salvation, and Redemption through the Son of God!

To understand Jesus is to trace His footsteps through the Old Testament, to see how every prophecy, every covenant, and every act of sacrifice pointed toward Him. It is to recognise that the story of Christ is not a new chapter but the climax of a divine epic that has been unfolding since the dawn of creation.

I pray that whoever reads this experiences a personal, face-to-face encounter with Almighty God and His Son, Jesus Christ. What was the turning point in your life that helped you discover your true identity? I’d love to hear—share your story in the comments!