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'''EVANGELIST. S. S. THANGIAH Biography'''

Introduction Many pastors and Evangelist come and gone but I have experienced many miracles and amazing things as a son and co-evangelist during his lifetime. I really thank and praise my God for giving me the privilege to have him as a loving father and mentor.

From my small days I think I was 5years old and since then I started learning many things from him. First of all, he was a well-disciplined man of God in his time management and giving priority to his God and taking care of his wife and children. He knows everything and simply I could say that he will be able to talk about anything kitchen to the kingdom.

The following expanding pages will reveal many interesting events which touched my life and many others. I want to take you on a journey from Ittamozhi to Colombo and beyond. Many of these events which took place in his life are heard and personally experienced by me.

He dedicated his three sons for the Lord’s ministry and they are doing their ministry worldwide along with their wives and children.

I kindly request his friends to come forward and feel free to edit and write more about their life experience with him and his ministry.

Once again I thank my God for the opportunity he has given me to write this book and many others were also involved in this great project and I am happy to release his book through my Harvest Publication.

'''Rev .A. Joshua A. Thangiah Harvest Vision Ministries'''

His Birth Place Late Evangelist S.S.Thangiah was born on 25th August 1929 in a small village called Ittamozhi, in Tirunelveli District of down south of Tamil Nadu. My father was born to my grandfather Mr Subramaniam and my grandmother Mrs Parvathi. There were six siblings of two brothers and three sisters with him. The Christian missionaries came to India and sow the word of God in every nook and corner of every village of south India and because of their tireless effort, early 1900 produced many Christian Evangelists and pastors from the Christian community of Tirunelveli. My father was a most wonderful Christian always teaching his children by example. He taught in Sunday school, evangelism classes, Bible studies, weekly prayer services and in the churches and evangelistic crusades and conventions.

His Questions: From his small day, he was very much interested to seek questions for each and everything which he comes across in his life. School teachers were amazed at his questions. He had a family temple adjoined to his house and they had their own guru to perform poojas and special prayers for the family. He used to ask his guru to show the true God and quote many scriptures from the Hindu poetry collection called "Pathinettu Sithar Padalgal" and many other Hindu kinds of literature. These people were not well versed in their scriptures and always just neglect his questions and he never had a proper answer for any of his questions. He used to sit for hours and study those scriptures and looking for the true God.

Seeking true God''' As David says in Psalm 63: 1 You, God, are my God, earnestly I seek you; I thirst for you, my whole being longs for you, in a dry and parched land where there is no water. He asked his friends to help him to find the one and only true God but none of them helped him. He visited many temples, ashrams, seeking for truth. He did special poojas to find the true God and all his expectations went blank

His Bible He has a recorded message on his old Bible and it says he finished the whole Bible in 66 times. Many times it was in one month or in two weeks and amazing testimony for his reading habits. He sits for hours and always with a notebook. As small children, we will be fast asleep and sometime when we open our eyes he will be just reading his Bible in the middle of the night. He did not have a specific time to read the word of God and it was his life and path. Whenever he was invited to share a message, he simply walked to the pulpit and opens his Bible and read a passage or a verse and closes it. Then he will pray and start the message. We cannot understand where it comes from and the words pour out of his mouth just like water gushing through a flood gate. Another thing I wondered was his amazing memory power, He used to quote many scriptures from the Bible and if someone in the congregation struggle to find it, he will say “amma it’s a word on the right side of the Bible and it’s the seventh word” such a sharp memory power and which was from God who taught him day and night. We went to Bible schools to learn Bible but in his days he never went to any Bible schools but when he shares about the Holy Spirit and the gifts he tells us that, all nine gifts are divided into three groups like the revelation gifts, the power gifts and the utterance gift. வெளிப்படுத்தலின் வரம், வல்லமை வரம், நாவின் வரம். Nowadays we wonder where did he get this revelation of teaching which was exactly taught by the Bible schools. He was well versed not only in this subject but many books and chapters of the Bible.

His Prayer Life My father was a prayer warrior and he used to get up early morning between 4.30 and 5.00am and do his personal prayer. Then he walks to the living room with the drum and beat it once and goes to the bathroom. He will come out and look for his children in the living room and if one of us is not where we are one hundred per cent sure that we will get one bucket full of water on our body. He was very strict about prayer life. Each Friday was a day of fasting and prayer. I remember overhearing his prayer on one occasion. He was praying for his children: Oh God, he cried, don’t ever let my children have an easy life. Let them experience sorrow and suffering, pain and problems. That prayer shaped all of us children. It has given us a heart for the broken-in-heart. As a result of his prayers when we see the tears of others we want to dry their eyes because we can understand their pain. When others go through a time of grief we can identify with them because we’ve been there. When others are in need it motivates us to help them because we have been without. When we see the unsaved we are encouraged to pray: Lord what can I do to win them to Christ.

We must also remember that Jesus went through the very same experience. He was beaten and spit upon, abandoned and betrayed, went through hours of excruciating pain - even death itself. Now, in heaven, He remembers these feelings and through His ever sufficient grace will give us hope, help and healing.

His Children Home Schooling to learn the word of God Early childhood education begins at home. Though an infant does not know the difference between a Bible or catalogue, the object will make an impression which will eventually be interpreted. And if there are more catalogue than Bibles, the child will one day understand the priorities of the parents. Homes have walls and floors, shelves and ceilings. But what parents place on the walls or hang from the ceilings or place on the shelves is a choice. In my childhood home, everywhere we looked were objects that had a reference to God. I still remember my father and mother explaining or interpreting the meaning of pictures or using an old globe to tell a story about missionaries and what they did for Jesus. It was an important part of our family life. What I was taught through being schooled at home remains a very important part of my life and ministry today. It was compulsory for us to attend the morning and evening family prayers. Every day read a portion from the Bible and memorise a word and say it to our mother or father otherwise we won’t get our morning breakfast. Proverbs 4: 1 says Listen, my sons, to a fathers instruction; pay attention and gain understanding...When I was a boy in my father's house, he taught me: keep Gods commandments, get wisdom and understanding! How precious! We were three sons to our parents and my father dedicated all his three sons for the ministry and my older and younger brothers became successful pastors and serving the Lord in the United Kingdom and I became a Bible teacher and Evangelist.