A former Hezbollah terrorist who was groomed from an early age to be a zealous leader for Islam before he encountered Jesus Christ in a prison cell told CBN News in an interview from war-torn Israel that “God didn’t design us to hate.”
Afshin Javid, who was converted after years of being a devout Shiite Muslim, was in Jerusalem with his wife and his Christian ministry Cyrus Call on Oct. 7, when Hamas launched terror attacks against Israeli civilians. Before his conversion, Javid had been a devout Shiite Muslim in a family who had looked to him as someone who had received special favor from Allah.
The Christian news outlet interviewed him at their Jerusalem broadcast studio and posted an article about it on their website. In the interview, Javid recounted his conversion, his former hatred for Jews, and his hopes for both Muslims and Jews to find true peace through Jesus.
Javid knows something about hatred of Jews and other “infidels.” For three years, he was a dedicated member of Hezbollah, an Iranian-backed terror group that has joined the recent attacks on Israel by reportedly firing missiles into northern Israel.
“I don’t know why I hated [Jews]. 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,” he told CBN.
Prior to his conversion three decades ago at age 17, he was detained in Malaysia with 30 illegal passports and thrown into prison.
In an earlier video interview, Javid said that the Quran doesn’t prohibit followers from seeking spiritual power from angelic beings, and he believes he had received power by pursuing these spiritual forces until he had a frightening encounter that caused him to doubt what he believed. After several weeks of fasting, praying and seeking answers from that Malaysian jail where he had led Quranic studies for other inmates, he says he was at a crossroads when Christ appeared to him during his prayer time.
He elaborated to CBN: “Even though I had prayed so many prayers, even though I had fasted so much and I had read the Quran and I had volunteered to work on landmines or I had participated in hanging people trying to please Allah … 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,” he told CBN. “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 said the Man told him that He had indeed forgiven him, but Javid realized that only God can forgive sin, and this was not Allah.
“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,” he told CBN.
He closed the interview by offering a salvation prayer for Muslims and Jews, adding: “The creator of Heaven and Earth, God Almighty—You love the world, the whole world, all the people of the world. So much that you sacrificed Jesus Christ so that we will not perish but have eternal life.”
