SID: Hello, Sid Roth here. Welcome to my world where it’s naturally supernatural. We’re told there are three Messianic miracles. One, someone born blind that can see. Two, someone deaf that can hear. Three, someone’s dead that is risen from the dead. My guest has seen and prayed for, multiple times, a number of these, what are known as Messianic miracles. His name is Mahesh Chavda. Mahesh, you have quite a background. 800 years of Hinduism. Were you in the highest caste?
MAHESH: Yeah, we were in the ruling caste, the Rajput caste. Raj means “king”, and Put means “sons of kings”, so I came from that kind of ancestry that believed in Hinduism. And I could trace back my name. At our ancestral home, there was a log of the names of past parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, and we could trace it back nearly 800 years.
SID: So how did you even have the curiosity to look at a Bible or even think about Jesus?
MAHESH: Well, I had a hunger from way back when I was in school, in my early stages. I had a hunger to know the truth. I wanted to know truth. Where is truth. So, I was brought up Hindu, my parents were Hindu. My mother was a very devout Hindu, so we had a little shrine in our house that she would get up every day, 5 o’clock in the morning, and around 6 we would join her there. And then I would go to the Hindu temple, often.
SID: You know, you were raised in Kenya though.
MAHESH: Correct, but there were hundreds of thousands of immigrants, and people who worked. My father worked for the British government. See, these were all British colonies at that time; India, East Africa, of course many other parts of the world were very much part of the “map in red”: the British Empire. So there were many thousands of Hindus there in that town, so there were big, large temples. And I remember going to this big one one time, probably around 15 and a half or so. And I went and bowed to the different images and talked with the priest there. And I came out and I remember crying out, looking up at the sky, and saying “God, I know You’re up there somewhere. I can’t sense Your presence anywhere near in this thing. Where are You? I want You to, if You’re true, show me Your truth.”
SID: But there came a point where you’re reading the Bible and you kind of lost interest. How come?
MAHESH: Well, it wasn’t… I met the wife of a missionary who was meeting with some little children in our neighborhood in Kenya, in Mombassa. And she was thirsty at the end of the day, and she happened to be led to my house to knock on the door and ask for a drink of water. And I gave her a drink of water. I could speak English. And so she talked with me for a while, and ended up giving me a Bible, and that’s how I started reading this Bible. I love to read, and so I didn’t know necessarily that I would find the truth there, but I started reading it. And this was the most unusual book that I’ve ever read. Like the words started leaping out at me, and so I started reading hungrily. And I found this unique figure that I had never knew existed in that manner. I’d heard about Jesus, He’s the God of the west and all that, but I didn’t know about this Jesus that I read in the Bible. And I realized that I’m looking for the truth, if there is any man that lived a life of truth, it was this Man. So His words were important. And in John 14, I found these words just leaping out at me where He says “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except by Me.” And those really stuck in my heart. Is Jesus a Man of truth? I said yes. Then whatever He said was truth. And that’s where my struggle came. I knew what that meant. That meant I had to make a choice. I had to follow Christ, and therefore turn my back on my family…
SID: On your family, or turn your back on Jesus and be with your family. It says “Count the cost.”
MAHESH: And not only my family. With the kind of pride we were brought up with, of our ancestry and our belief systems, I was thinking I was going to have to turn my back on all that it represented. That was too much. And for a time I said “I’m not going to think about Jesus, think about the Bible.” I stopped reading it, and yet the words that I’d read kept haunting me. They kept coming back. “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except by Me. And if it were not so, I would have told you.” That was very, very important. Right there in John 14. “If it were not so, I would’ve told you.”
SID: But one moment changed that. Tell me about it.
MAHESH: Exactly. One evening… I remember this night so clearly in Mombassa. The mosquitoes are very heavy there, it was hot, so I had a little shawl or some kind of cover on top of my head so I could keep the mosquitoes away. And I was reading. I felt like I wanted to read the Bible. But then, I said “I’m not going to read this ever again!”
And the moment I did so, suddenly, I was struck unconscious. Yet there was consciousness. It’s hard to explain, but maybe some would call it a trance. But my head hit the table. I was wide awake one moment, the next moment, my head is hitting the table. And I said to myself, I remember very clearly, “That’s my head hitting the table.”
And yet, I found my consciousness more conscious than ever before, in a place I’d never been before. And I was in this place where I was walking on streets of gold. And I heard the most beautiful music I’d ever heard. I heard songs I’d never heard. Harmonies that would put you in perfect ecstasy. I saw colors I had never seen before.
SID: You know where he was? He was in heaven. Wait till you hear what happened to him. We’ll be right back after this.
