What Led A Swami To Christ

 

I am no fan of Christianity Today (it has become a wayward publication), but the testimony of how this former Hindu priest came to Christ is absolutely fascinating.  He explains how he came to enter the Hindu priesthood, how he became disillusioned with it, and how he finally came to know Christ as his Savior and his Lord.
 
What played a large part in his disillusionment with Hinduism is that despite the ritualistic practices of his fellow Swamis and no matter how much time they spend meditating and studying their sacred texts, he saw no meaningful change in any of them and felt no meaningful change in himself no matter what he did:
 
 
 
All around me, I saw swamis who had worshiped and studied for decades without experiencing any meaningful change in their lives. Why, I wondered, after all this fasting, reading, and meditating, were they still given to anger, jealousy, or spite? I didn’t feel like I was changing, either.
 
A few years later, I was ordained into the Hindu priesthood and began wearing the saffron robes of sacrifice. With my shaved head and holy appearance, I embarked on a pilgrimage to sacred Hindu sites across India. I bathed in the Ganges and other rivers invested with spiritual significance, hoping to cleanse my sins and gain a sense of renewal. But again, nothing in my inner nature changed. [1]
 
 
 
What sets Christianity apart from other religions is that adherents of other religions rely on one’s own merit, the keeping of certain laws and ordinances, and the performing of a certain set of rituals on a regular basis to obtain and retain the favor of God or whatever power they credit for their existence and before whom they believe they will have to stand and give an account for the lives that they have lived but Christianity, unlike other religions, addresses not just the outward performance, but also the inward condition of our very nature. 
 
All the theistic religions of the world may agree that there is a higher authority greater than that of any man that demands that we all abide within a certain set of moral standards and must be approached with utmost reverence, but what sets them apart from Christianity is that while adherents of every other religion believe and teach that they will only be judged by their outward performance, Christianity teaches that even the very thoughts, motives, and attitude of the heart will also be taken into account which is why unlike what other religions teach, we cannot rely on ritualistic practices and that adherence to certain ordinances and moral standards to obtain the favor of the Lord and escape judgment.
 
The law of God was given for the purpose of restraining wickedness, establishing order in our lives, and for revealing sin which is the inherent inward corruption of our very nature which produces within us the very things that lead to the outward acts conduct that are identified as sinful or wicked behavior but the keeping of the law can never obtain the favor of God or grant us entry into His Kingdom because we are not able to keep it perfectly due to sin within us.  In order to keep the law perfectly, we would have to keep it perfectly not just in our actions or speech, but we also must be able to keep it perfectly within our minds and within our hearts and if we fail at this even once, then we are guilty of sin and stand condemned before a Holy and Righteous God who is without sin.  Even the least of all sins is subject to punishment and is enough to keep a man out of the Kingdom of Heaven and condemned to an eternity of unrelenting punishment and there are no amount of good works that will ever be able to atone for that sin and since God is perfect in every way, then so is His justice and perfect justice demands that a penalty be paid for any sin committed and no matter how good or pious of a person you think yourself to be, if you have failed to keep the law and commandments of God in any way, not even your best performance is going to be enough to obtain His favor or save from eternal damnation.
 
If God allows those who fall short of moral perfection into the Kingdom of Heaven, Heaven would then be as defiled as the earth has been defiled because sin affects more than we can comprehend and before it defiled the earth, it first defiled man but before sin entered into the world, the world was created to be a place of life, life, happiness, peace, joy and contentment and in which existed a perfect and uninterrupted harmony between God, man, and nature and in which man experienced an unhindered relationship with His Creator, and there was nothing withheld from man except for one thing and that was a fruit from a certain tree called the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, having been warned that in the day that they ate thereof, they would surely die, (Gen. 2:16-17, 3:3) but sadly, that warning was not heeded and the first man Adam and his wife Eve being the first woman and from whom we all descend disobeyed that one command and ate of that forbidden fruit and it was in that moment that sin entered into them and when sin entered into them, the sentence of death came upon them (Gen. 3:19) to which they eventually succumbed but the sentence of death did not stop with them.  It was then passed down to all of us because we are descended from them and in being descended from them, we have also inherited that inward corruption in ourselves that the Bible calls sin (Rom. 5:12) which is why we all sin and as a consequence, we all die because the wages of sin is death (Rom. 6:23) and not only are the wages of sin death, but its wages also are estrangement from our Creator and eternal damnation and since we are all born into sin and since sin lives within all of us, we all fall short of the glory of God (Rom. 3:23) which is moral perfection and if we are to be morally perfect, it isn’t just our outward performance that has to be made perfect, but our inward person also needs to be made perfect as well, for as it is written “cleanse first that which is within the cup and of the platter, that the outside of them may be clean also” (Mt. 23:26), for as it is also written that man is not defiled by that which is from without but that which is from within (Mt. 15:11, 17-20) which is why the Creator demands not cleanliness outwardly, but an inward cleanliness to; a cleanliness within the heart and within the mind and how many who have trusted in their own goodness find themselves shut out of the Kingdom of Heaven because they were still in their sin in spite of all of the good things they might have done and how religious they may have been as the righteousness that they trusted in was not enough to redeem them of their sins because the righteousness in which they trusted was also tainted by the sin within them and if men cannot be redeemed and cleansed of all sin by his own goodness and righteousness which falls short of what is demanded of our Creator, then by what means can we escape judgment except by a goodness and righteousness that is perfect and without sin and if our own righteousness falls short of perfection then how can we be reconciled to our Creator but by a righteousness that is perfect and sinless, which is not our own righteousness but the righteousness of another who is without sin and willing to take upon Himself the penalty of all of our sins so that we might be rescued from eternal damnation and reconciled to our Creator? And yet there is no man who has ever possessed or ever possesses such righteousness to be able to take the demanded penalty for all sins on all of our behalf.  The only one that can do this is the one whose righteousness is without sin and there is not one who is without sin but God alone and just as He is perfect in His righteousness and in His justice and goodness, so is He also perfect in His love and in His mercy and it is because of His love for all of mankind that He offers mercy and reconciliation and it is because of His love that He is not willing that any should perish but that all would come to repentance (2 Pet. 3:9) and escape what would otherwise be an unrelenting and unimaginable eternity of torment and punishment beyond comprehension and it is out of His love for us that He came to us in the flesh (Jn. 1:1-14) and as a man who being God was without sin (2 Cor. 5:21, Heb. 4:15) and because He was without sin He, being God the Son, was able to present Himself before God the Father as a perfect sacrifice; (Heb. 7:25-27) the sinless God offering Himself up on behalf of sinful man, which He did through the shedding of His own blood and the sinless man who did this on our behalf was none other than Jesus Christ our Lord, Savior, King, and God who, on our behalf, offered Himself up to be put to death for our sins which He did when he surrendered Himself to be crucified upon a cross and by the shedding of His blood was redemption on our behalf purchased and after having purchased in His death our redemption, was raised again from the dead so that we by faith would be justified in Him (Rom. 4:25) if we will but by faith call upon His name for the forgiveness of all sins (Rom. 10:9, 13) and it is by calling upon the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of sins that we are reconciled to our Creator (2 Cor. 5:18) and with the cleansing of our souls from sin and reconciliation to our Creator comes an inward transformation and it is this inward cleansing of the soul and this regeneration which cause all who are willing to call upon Christ for it, submit to it, and embrace it to no longer desire to follow after selfish and worldly pursuits but after those things that pertain to the Kingdom of Heaven, (Mt. 6:33)
to no longer take pleasure in those things that are evil and displeasing in the sight of the Lord, but in that which is good, right, and pleasing in His sight,
to no longer desire to walk in the lies of this present world, but only in the truth that comes from Christ Almighty, (Jn. 14:6) no longer placing our hopes in the things of this present world, but looking forward to that new and better world to come, (Rev. 21-22)
to no longer rely on worldly resources, men, or even our own power, abilities, skills, and wisdom for our needs and provision but upon God who is able to meet all of our needs, (Mt. 6:25-33) recognizing that the resources of this world and even the people He brings into our lives are but instruments and vessels through which God meets our needs and that the skills, power, knowledge, and wisdom by which we might acquire our provision are provided and instilled in us by God,
to no longer fear what men can do to us, but rather fearing the God before whom we will have to one day give an account for how we lived our lives, (Mt. 10:28)
to no longer look to corruptible institutions within our society for direction and order in our lives but to God who, by His written Word has given us laws and precepts to be applied to our lives and which serve to produce and maintain an ordered life, and who, by His Holy Spirit which comes to dwell within us upon repentance, establishes in our lives a course and direction in our lives to pursue for His glory,
to no longer seek our own glory but the glory of God,
to no longer rally behind corruptible men, but instead behind the incorruptible God in Heaven bearing in mind that those men and women God raises up for our edification are but instruments and servants of His for that respective purpose to which He has called them,
to no longer seek to align ourselves with the things of darkness but only with the things of the light,
to no longer trust in the wisdom of the world but only on the wisdom and knowledge that comes from above, nor depend on corruptible earthly authorities to swiftly administer justice, but only in the power of God to deliver us from evil.
 
And it is this inward reformation and transformation that is missing from other religions for while the fear of eternal damnation and offending what they believe to be God may drive them away from doing evil or what is perceived to be evil, for those of us who follow Christ, it is not just the fear of God that drives us to avoid that which is evil and displeasing in the sight of the Lord but it is also our love for Him and our gratitude and appreciation for the forgiveness of sins that we receive in Him that not only causes us to avoid that which is evil and displeasing in His eyes but to also do that which is right and good in His sight and to faithfully obey and honor Him in all that we do and so this is what sets apart Christianity from all other faiths.
 
The other religions of the world demand that men earn the favor of God or what they believe to be a god or even a multitude of gods through the keeping of laws, ordinances, and the performance of certain rituals.
 
But Christianity preaches a God who has done for man what man could never do for himself and that is the offer of a redemption purchased on our behalf through the death of one who was without sin and then was made alive again so that, by our faith in Him will be justified in Him and by Him and the redemption that we receive in Him is offered to us and given to us by an act of grace, being a favor unmerited and unearned, but offered and given out of love for us, which is why it is written that by grace are we saved and not of ourselves lest any should boast (Eph. 2:8-9)
 
And just as we are made spiritually alive in Christ, so also we will one day be delivered from bodily death itself when our present bodies are changed from that which was born into corruption into that which is without corruption (1 Cor. 15:51-55, 1 Thess. 4:13-18) but not only will we also see our bodies redeemed from death, just as our souls have been redeemed from eternal damnation, we will also witness creation itself, which presently groans and travails in pain to this day because of sin (Rom. 8:19-22) being delivered from the curse of sin when it is made anew and in that new creation, there will be no sin, no evil, no darkness, nor any curse.  There will be no death, no decay, nor any pain, nor any hardship, no oppression, no misery, no cruelty, no despair, or any grief for all of these things will have passed away with the old corrupted creation but instead, there will only be life, light, happiness, peace, and harmony before the Lord God Almighty.
 
If you reader, no matter how religious or spiritual you might consider yourself and no matter how good of a person you try to be should find yourself wondering whether or not your goodness and even piety may be enough to escape eternal damnation and still find yourself dreading the possibility that, despite your best efforts to live a life of godliness, holiness, and righteousness, that you still may find yourself falling short of what is required of you and may still find yourself standing condemned then I urge you reader, that if you have not done so already, call upon the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of all sins so that you will have peace concerning your eternity.  It is just a simple sincere prayer of repentance away:
 
 
 
"Lord Jesus I need you.
 
 
I realize that I am a sinner
who has fallen short of the glory of God
and that my goodness falls short
of your standard of Moral perfection.
 
Please forgive me of all of my sins.
Come into my heart and into my life
to be the Savior and Lord of my life.
Make me into the servant and follower
that you want me to be.
In your name Lord Jesus, I pray.
 
 
Amen."
 
 
Know that God is not concerned with the words that you use to call upon Him forgiveness, but with the attitude of your heart and if you have, with all sincerity, have asked Christ to forgive you of your sins, placing your trust in Him only for your salvation and in nothing else, then your sins are forgiven and your place in Heaven is certain.
 
 
 
End notes:
 
 
 
1.   Rahil Patel, “I Wanted a Bigger God Than My Hindu Guru Offered,” Christianity Today, April, 2024 Issue
https://www.christianitytoday.com/2024/03/rahil-patel-testimony-hindu-priest/
 
 
 
Scripture references:
 
 
 
1.  Genesis 2:16-17, 3:3
 
2.  Genesis 3:19
 
3.  Romans 5:12
 
4.  Romans 6:23
 
5.  Romans 3:23
 
6.  Matthew 23:26
 
7.  Matthew 15:11, 17-20
 
8.  John 1:1-14
 
9.  2 Corinthians 5:21, Hebrews 4:15
 
10.  Hebrews 7:25-27
 
11.  Romans 4:25
 
12.  Romans 10:9, 13
 
13.  2 Corinthians 5:17
 
14.  2 Corinthians 5:18
 
15.  Matthew 6:33
 
16.  John 14:6
 
17.  Revelation 21-22
 
18.  Matthew 6:25-33
 
19.  Matthew 10:28
 
20.  Ephesians 2:8-9
 
21.  1 Corinthians 15:51-55, 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18
 
22.  Romans 8:19-22