Sid Roth - A Hindu Man's Shocking Encounter… In Heaven
Sid Roth: 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 and were you in the highest caste?
Mahesh Chavda: Yes, we were in the ruling caste, called Rajput caste, which is we were the Rajput, '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 there were, we could trace it back to nearly 800 years.
Sid Roth: So how did you even have the curiosity to look at a Bible or even think about Jesus?
Mahesh Chavda: Well I had a hunger from way back when I was in school in my early stages that I had a hunger to know the truth. I wanted to know truth. Where is truth? And 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, 5:00 in the morning and around six we would join her there, and then I would go to the Hindu temple often.
Sid Roth: You were raised in Kenya though.
Mahesh Chavda: Correct. But there are hundreds of thousands of immigrants and people who worked. My father worked for the British government, so 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 the town. So there were big large temples that I remember going to this big one time, around about 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 I said, 'God, I know you are out there somewhere. I can't sense your presence anywhere near in this thing. Where are you? If you are truth, show me your truth'.
Sid Roth: But there came a point where you're reading the Bible and then you kind of lost interest. How come?
Mahesh Chavda: Well it wasn't, I met some, the wife of a missionary who was meeting with some little children in our neighborhood in Kenya, in Mombasa, and she was thirsty at the end of the day. And she happened to be left my house and knock on the door and ask for a drink of water. I gave her a drink of water. I could speak English. 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 loved 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 I've ever read, like the words started leaping out at me. And I so started reading hungrily and I found this unique figure that I never knew existed in that manner. I heard about Jesus is the God of the west and all that, but I didn't know about this Jesus what I read in the Bible. And I realized 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 father except by me'. And those really struck 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. And then I knew what that meant. That meant I had to make a choice. I had to follow Christ or turn my back, and therefore, turn my back.
Sid Roth: On your family.
Mahesh Chavda: On my family.
Sid Roth: Or turn your back on Jesus.
Mahesh Chavda: That's right.
Sid Roth: And be with your family.
Sid Roth: It says count the cost.
Mahesh Chavda: And not only my family. With the kind of pride we were brought up with our ancestry and our belief systems that I was going to, I was thinking I would 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, I'm not going to think about the Bible. I stopped reading and yet the words that I read kept haunting me. They kept coming back: 'I'm the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the father except by me'. If it were not so, I would have told you that was very important right there in John 14. If it were not so I would have told you.
Sid Roth: But one moment changed that. Tell me about it.
Mahesh Chavda: Exactly. One evening I remember this night so clearly, in Mombasa, the mosquitos are very heavy there. It was hot. So I had a little shawl, some kind of cover on top of my head so I could keep the mosquitos 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. My head hit the table. I was wide awake one moment and then the next moment I am, 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 had 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 had ever heard. I heard songs I had never heard, harmonies that would put you in perfect ecstasy. I saw colors I had never seen before.
Sid Roth: You know where he was? He was in heaven. Wait until you hear what happened to him. We'll be right back after this.
Sid Roth: Hello. Sid Roth here with Bonnie and Mahesh Chavda and we found out that Mahesh, coming from a Hindu background, is struggling. I mean, because just like in a Jewish background like mine or a muslim background, when someone comes to believe in Jesus it's not a lukewarm type of commitment. You're either in or you're out and there's family to consider. And so he was counting the cost and all of a sudden he felt, I don't want to put words in your mouth, but it sounds to me like what you said was you felt yourself slipping out of your body. Your head hit the table, but you were in heaven.
Mahesh Chavda: Yes. My consciousness was, who I was, was in heaven. I didn't know it was heaven, but later on I found out it was heaven. But I had, one of the great things I remember so clearly was the light there was living light. It was not just the light that we have here or when we go out in the sunlight. It was light, but living. It had sound in it as well as illumination. It was music and harmony. Everything was perfect. And then the light got brighter and brighter. That light, I could know, if there was one word the light was saying to me in one sentence is, 'i love you. I love you'. I could sense love all over. Thousands of beams of light hitting me at the same time saying I love you. And then I saw the light get brighter, and then there was a light that was brighter than 10,000 suns. It did not hurt my eye. And then in that light was Jesus Christ and he walked towards me, gave a smile, and put his hands on my shoulder, and said, 'my little brother'. And I knew who he was. I knew I had met my Lord, my God, and I knew the truth I was seeking was a person named Jesus Christ. I knew that was like instantly I knew that my life belonged to him because he had died for me.
Sid Roth: You know, I'm going to fast forward just a little bit. And Mahesh becomes a pastor, a single pastor, and Bonnie becomes a believer in the Messiah, but she's got a problem. What was your problem, Bonnie?
Bonnie Chavda: Well just as I think a result of some relationships that I had had and things that I had been involved there began to be some really hairy and scary supernatural things that were happening around me, fearful things, dark things. And as I was struggling with this, you know, it would include the sense of hearing voices, feeling oppressed, unusual things that were out of my control. And I was sharing with a young friend of mine about this one day, and she said, 'oh,' she said, 'i know a man who actually can help you with that problem'. And I said, 'take me to your leader'. So that's how Mahesh and I met.
Sid Roth: Well at this point, Mahesh, you had been fasting for 40 days many times. How in the world did you start to fast for 40 days? That's not a normal thing done here in the west.
Mahesh Chavda: I started fasting when I was working at a state school for mentally handicapped children and there was one little child that was so burdened and oppressed, and he would hit himself all the time, chronologically 16, but mentally, about a year and a half or two. And I heard the Lord say, 'this kind does not come out except through prayer and fasting'. And so I fasted. At that time it was 14 days and when I prayed for that little boy, he got completely free. He was crippled and started he walking and he stopped mutilating himself. And so I learned the truth that there is a kind of deliverance and healing that comes as we start praying and fasting, not only for ourselves, but for others to be set free.
Sid Roth: So Bonnie, were you set free when you came forward?
Bonnie Chavda: Yes, that's exactly right. I came to Mahesh, he was then a pastor, explained my problem. He said, 'young lady, you need deliverance'. And set me down in a chair, proceeded to put his hands on me, prayed for me in the name of Jesus, and I was more astounded than anyone when I actually saw figures of three frogs that sort of came out of my mouth and hopped off. And I know that the people around me didn't necessarily see that, but I could see something real in the spirit realm that had been oppressing me, that I had opened my life to had, in the name of Jesus now, had left.
Sid Roth: And how long did this take? Was it a real long period of time?
Bonnie Chavda: Fifteen minutes.
Sid Roth: And you're free.
Bonnie Chavda: Free.
Sid Roth: You go in a prisoner and you walk out free.
Bonnie Chavda: Absolutely. Absolutely.
Sid Roth: And it's good to be free.
Bonnie Chavda: It's good to be free. And you know, it convinced me of a further reality of the spiritual real that's all around us. There's good and there's bad.
Sid Roth: Just like Mahesh had an encounter, you had an encounter. And he's single, you're single, and you found out some interesting information. What was that?
Bonnie Chavda: Well I one day came home from work. After some of these kind of encounters with the Lord I realized Jesus is very real and I believe that every human being is looking for communion with God.
Sid Roth: Of course.
Bonnie Chavda: And in that search, suddenly, there was Jesus very, very real in my life. And so I would, I had a habit, I would go to work and then I would come home in the evening, and I would spend a little bit of time just meditating on God or reading the Bible, or doing something like that. And I was doing that as I usually did, and suddenly, the room began to fill with something that looked like, you know, you see in the smoke machines that they use in the movies and all of that. And there was a literal mist that began to fill up the room, and in a few minutes the figure of the Lord was standing, I can't explain it. He was about 16 feet tall, but he fit somehow in the eight-foot ceiling of my apartment and his presence, his glory filled the room beyond words. I was saturated with a sense of the reality of holiness, and wonder, and love, and joy of God, his eternal sense. I felt eternal at that moment. And after a bit that presence just sort of receded, and has he receded, he said, 'you're going to be married soon'.
Sid Roth: Did he say who?
Bonnie Chavda: No, he didn't say who.
Sid Roth: I'll tell you what, we'll come back in just a moment and you're going to find out who she was going to marry. I think you already know. But you're also going to find out about a dead person that comes back to life, literally. Don't go away.
Sid Roth: Hello. Sid Roth here with Mahesh and Bonnie Chavda. So Mahesh, you told me that this Bonnie, who's in your church, is very accurate prophetically. You know this. And she comes to you and she says, 'Jesus came and said I'm going to be married soon'. Did you think it was you?
Mahesh Chavda: No. She was so powerful in the anointing, but I knew as a pastor, I mean, that she needed a man of God to marry here. I was praying, who is it that I was praying for her, Lord, give her a godly man and I didn't know that it was supposed to me.
Sid Roth: How did you both figure this out?
Mahesh Chavda: The Lord visited her again. Go ahead.
Bonnie Chavda: Well we, as you can tell, we tended to have this relationship with another, who was the Holy Spirit, and in that context, God spoke to Mahesh, he spoke to me. And what we did is we actually went to dinner at the home of some of friends of ours, and they exited the house and left us there to get it all figured out, and we did. In the course of an evening we decided when we'd get married and how we'd go about it, and all of that sort of thing, and just proceeded to do that.
Sid Roth: Okay. Fast forward a little bit, some children and you are going to Zaire.
Mahesh Chavda: Correct.
Sid Roth: And but you're leaving with a little bit of a heavy heart. What was going on at home?
Mahesh Chavda: Yes. Bonnie had been pregnant with our fourth child and had great difficulty. She had placenta previa centralis. Then she delivered a very premature baby and four months pre-mature, so it was just five months barely in the womb and weighed about one pound, less than that. And they said he had severe cerebral hemorrhage. He had intestines that were gangrene and his lungs were malformed. They said he would probably live a few hours and die, but if he lived he would be in a vegetative state. So as I was supposed to go and join my good friend Derek Prince and we were going to be as a team together and do some meetings.
Sid Roth: How could you go? Bonnie, how could he go?
Bonnie Chavda: Well one of the things that Mahesh didn't mention was the fact that I had had a visitation from the Lord and he told me that I would have a son and I was to name him Aaron. And then as these horrible circumstances came up I just believed in his word. And the day that Aaron was born, Jesus actually walked into the operating room and his voice came out him out of him, traveled through my body and birthed our son. And of course, and I passed out, but I knew in the beginning God would be faithful.
Sid Roth: Okay. You're having this campaign in Zaire and you had a vision about someone dead. Tell me about that.
Mahesh Chavda: Yes. I had finished my work in Zambia with Derek and then I flew on to Zaire. And this meeting, there was a visitation of God over that city. And the first night without almost no advertising, we had over 100,000 people.
Sid Roth: Wow.
Mahesh Chavda: Wednesday, my heart was still broken because my son was in the hospital. He was dying. And so on Wednesday afternoon, in fact, I was talking about praying for the peace of Jerusalem. And at the end, I said how we should bless Israel and love the people.
Sid Roth: Mahesh, there is a tie-in between blessing Israel and the release of the miracles of God.
Mahesh Chavda: It is so true.
Sid Roth: I know that, but go head.
Mahesh Chavda: So that, I just finished talking about and praying for the peace of Jerusalem and blessing Israel. And I stepped back from the mic and I saw the glory of God was all around, that light I described in the beginning, of the golden light, living being of light all around me, literally. And in that I heard the Lord say, 'there is a man here. His son died this morning. Call him up because this day I'm going to do a great thing'. So I said, 'where is the man, your son died this morning. Come up'. And a man named Malamba Malachi who lived in the Congo neighborhood in Kinshasa, in the Congo, in Zaire, ran up saying, 'my son died at 4:00 from cerebral malaria. His body is with mommy in the hospital'. And when I laid hands on the father, the body was in the morgue being washed by some of the members of the family, according to custom. And the body of the little six-year-old boy named Paches sneezed twice. He woke up as if from a sleep at the same moment I prayed for the father, and he said, 'where's my father'? And then he said, 'I'm hungry'.
Sid Roth: But what about your son?
Mahesh Chavda: That was the amazing thing that the presence of God, as I declared that God was going to raise that boy up, the glory and the presence of God went thousands of miles across where my little boy was dying in plantation general hospital in Florida, and healed him completely, healed him of cerebral hemorrhage, healed him of the gangrene in the intestine, healed him perfectly so that now he's 21 years old and he's going to, he's an a student at the university of North Carolina, brilliant, beautiful, handsome.
Sid Roth: So what's the moral of this? Put God first? Seek his kingdom first and everything will work out?
Mahesh Chavda: That's right.
Bonnie Chavda: And he's a supernatural God, Sid. God is miracles. He is the God of miracles.
Sid Roth: What happened? I heard that you had a visitation in your own house. What happened, Bonnie?
Bonnie Chavda: Well in those years sometime after around Aaron's birth, I woke up one night. All the lights were on in the house, and I thought, you know, my little children had gotten out of bed, were playing somewhere or whatever. But as I got up and went to find out why the kids were out of bed and the lights were on, the light switches were all off, and yet the house was filled with light. And when I realized I was standing in the middle of a supernatural phenomenon, I just got down on my knees and suddenly the reality and presence of our Heavenly Father was there, and it was the beginning of a church-wide, a whole community visitation that we had that was quite astounding and life-changing for me.
Sid Roth: I believe you're going to have a visitation in your home right now as Mahesh prays for you. Would you look into the camera, Mahesh, and just for about a minute, would you pray whatever God tells you to pray.
Mahesh Chavda: Father, I thank you that these your precious friends, your sons and daughters are listening today. The Word of God is alive and active, and full of power. And as we share these truths about Jesus Christ those who are needing healing or needing a breakthrough, a miracle in their family, we just take authority over every power of darkness and death. We tell the devil to get out of our house and our families, and we welcome the Holy Spirit. Thank you, father. We acknowledge that Jesus Christ is the son of the living God, raised, resurrected from the dead. He's the king of glory and he's entering our lives. As we open our hearts, Lord, thank you that through the name of Jesus, miracles are happening right now. Cancers are going now in the name of Jesus and the paralytics are walking. Where there is pain that you are bringing restoration. Where there is blindness, Lord, you are healing eyes. We are setting the captives free. We bless each one listening right now in the name of Jesus.
Sid Roth: I believe that that was not hype. That was God. Isn't it nice not to have hype? You don't have to scream for God to show up. You don't have to shout for God to show up. You just have to believe. That's the courage you see of the kingdom of heaven, and if you will believe, and the most important thing is for you to have intimacy with God. There is nothing higher than that because from that intimacy comes every, your heart's desire. This is what happened to someone with 800 years of Hindu heritage. He chose God and look how God has blessed him. Will you choose God right now? You choose God through repenting of your sins, telling God you're sorry and asking for his help to do better, and saying with your mouth, Yeshua, that's Hebrew for Jesus, Jesus is my Messiah and Lord. Look, you tried everything else. Come on now. Isn't there something more to life? Of course there is. That's why you're watching. It's bashert. It's a Hebrew word which means it's destiny, it's meant to be that you'd be watching. This is your moment. What are you going to do about it, feel sorry for yourself or have intimacy with God? No contest.