A former soldier for the terrorist group Hezbollah is sharing his testimony of how he converted from Islam to Christianity, saying he encountered Jesus in a vision and was transformed from someone who hated Jewish people to someone who learned to love.
Afshin Javid, the author of As Easy As Drinking Water, told CBN in a new interview that he formerly was a devout Muslim and Hezbollah soldier who admired Hitler but believed the Nazi leader “didn’t finish the job.” Hezbollah is a militant group and political party within Lebanon, to Israel’s north.
“I was on my way to the United States to convert Christians to Islam, and I had 30 illegal passports at that time. I was arrested and put in jail in Malaysia. I was a dedicated Muslim who not only prayed the prayers, but I read the Koran once every ten days, cover to cover. So I was very dedicated in my time in jail,” Javid told CBN.
A vision of Jesus changed his life.
“One day, as I'm praying, a man appears in front of me – normal size, but his being shines like light,” he said. “This light is not a normal light. This light carried identity in it. And you knew that he was holy, and instantaneously, I knew I was not. Even though I had prayed so many prayers, even though I had fasted so much and I had read the Koran and I had volunteered to work on landmines, or I had participated in hanging people trying to please Allah, I knew, even though I have kept all the rules and regulation of Islam, I knew I am not just, and I'm not holy, and I knew the only just thing for him to do is to kill me.
“But I didn't want to die. So I ran to the corner of the room, literally held my head in my arms, and just cried out, shouting, ‘Forgive me, forgive me, forgive me.’”
Javid didn’t believe he would be forgiven.
“[But] I felt a touch on my left arm, and He said, ‘I forgive you.’ And I felt the weight just lifted off me. And I knew I was forgiven, but I don't know how. And I was confused. Still, I say, ‘Okay, I don't understand. Only God can forgive, but You just forgave me. You are God, but You are a different God than the one I have studied about. This is not Allah. So who are You that forgives me?’ And He said, ‘I am the way, the truth, and the life.’”
“And I thought, ‘That's very powerful.’ It means a lot because, as a Muslim, you pray, ‘Show me there's a straight path.’ And so the way is a direction. Truth is something you measure. Life is a source, but He claims to be all those three. I never thought the way is a person. The truth is a person, and life is a person, and all of them are the same person. So I said, ‘I don't understand -- what is your name?’ And He said, ‘Jesus Christ.’ And it was as if someone grabbed all my bones out of my body. I just fell like a piece of meat to the ground. And I just began to weep.
“It's like, you know, being colorblind, and then suddenly you see colors, and you realize the world is so much more beautiful than you ever thought. And if you ask me what made the world so colorless, it's the hatred, the anger that is in the heart of every Muslim,” he added.
Up until that point in his life, Javid had never met a Jewish person. Christ, he said, transformed how he sees the world.
“I thought Hitler was a good man for doing what he did. He just didn't finish the job. I don't know why I hated them,” Javid said. “No Jew had ever done anything bad to me. God didn't design us to hate; he didn't design us to want to see someone dead. He did not design us for these things. These are designs of Satan. How do you think killing the people to whom God gave this land is going to please Allah? Jesus is not a God that celebrates when Jews are killed."
Photo Courtesy: ©Getty Images/Paula Bronstein / Staff
Video Courtesy: CBN News via YouTube
Michael Foust has covered the intersection of faith and news for 20 years. His stories have appeared in Baptist Press, Christianity Today, The Christian Post, the Leaf-Chronicle, the Toronto Star and the Knoxville News-Sentinel.