The resurrection of Katshinyi Manikai

Place: Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, Broward General Medical Center, Fort Lauderdale, Florida

Date: May 9, 1985

The young evangelist reached into the incubator and picked up his dying son, all 19 ounces of him.

Holding him in the palm of his hand, he blinked away tears as he watched the 4-day-old infant gasp in pain for each breath.

Finally, he said, “Aaron, it looks as though I may not see you again. I want you to know that your daddy loves you. But Jesus loves you even more than I do. If I never see you again here on this earth, I know I’ll see you in heaven.”

Then with a heart of lead, he turned and left for the airport and the start of a two-month preaching and healing tour of Africa.

Situation: Impossible

The bitter irony stabbed at his soul without mercy: Here he was, going on a tour in which thousands of suffering people would be lining up, waiting desperately for his prayers of healing.

Yet all the while, his own son’s life would be flickering away in distant Florida, and his wife Bonnie would have to bury him alone. He could not bear to think of it. But the trip was so long and complex that canceling it could bankrupt all his hosts.

The doctors gave him no hope whatsoever. Aaron was four months premature and impossibly tiny: born at 24 ounces and already down to 19. At his birth, he could only utter three tiny mews like a newborn kitten.

Worse, a whole section of his intestines was dead – rotting away, blocking any digestion, and causing toxic peritonitis. Worse yet, they found blood leaking into his spinal fluid. Probable cause: cerebral hemorrhage.

It was all over but the crying. And he had to leave.

Place: Kasavubu Square, Kinshasa, Zaire (Congo)

Date: Four Weeks Later: June 7, 1985

The evangelist was Mahesh Chavda, a former Hindu of Indian descent. Until that day, the name was not widely known.

But on Monday, the first morning that he spoke in the central square, a dying elderly woman covered with cancerous tumors came walking down the aisle for prayer, and before she even reached the stage, she suddenly fell in a heap as if struck by a giant hand. By the time Chavda raced to her side, every tumor was gone without a trace.

All 2,300 pairs of eyes in the square bugged out as the lady stood up and went dancing away for joy. The news flashed across Kinshasa like a nuclear chain reaction, and that night 100,000 people swarmed in. Chavda’s lifetime ministry had jumped to a new level.

Date: Two days later, Wednesday morning, June 9.

Chavda began speaking at 10:30. Even though daytime meetings are far smaller, the crowd was now 30,000.

Then precisely at 12:00, he finished his talk and stepped back from the microphone.

Suddenly, the entire world seemed to vanish. For Chavda, there was no crowd, no sound, no sense of time. From that, he knew that God was getting ready to tell him something, maybe something big.

Place: The Mikondo District of Kinshasa

Time: Eight Hours Earlier (4:00 a.m.)

Mulamba Manikai is a large, kindly man who was a professional heavyweight boxer. He lived with his wife and 6-year-old son Katshinyi on Lumbi Street in Mikondo, across from the airport and 40 kilometers from Kasavubu Square.

Arriving home Monday, Manikai was alarmed to find his son in a coma. In his words:

He could not eat, could not stand, could not sit up. When I touched his body, his skin felt hot. …

On Tuesday, my brother Kuamba and I took the child to the dispensary of Lever Brothers, where I had recently worked making soap and margarine. They told us he had cerebral malaria. It was very bad.

They were told to go to a clinic in Mikondo to get medicine, so the two brothers arose very early Wednesday to go to the clinic, carrying the limp form of Katshinyi, who had not moved or spoken for 24 hours.

About 4:00 a.m., as they neared the clinic, Katshinyi suddenly arched his back, threw back his head, and went limp. No breath, no pulse. He died in his father’s arms.

A few minutes later, the clinic doctor gave him a shot to revive him. It did nothing. He poked the body with needles, but there was no reaction.

Manikai just could not accept that his son was dead. So the annoyed doctor took a flame and scorched parts of his feet and legs. Still no response. “I can do nothing for him,” he said. “You must take him to Mama Yemo Hospital in Kinshasa and get a death certificate.”

At that hospital later in the morning, they told Manikai to go buy a burial permit. But he had no money. In his despair, he decided to go see his older sister in the Kisunka quarter of the Ngaliema borough to announce Katshinyi’s death. Leaving Kuamba with the boy’s body, he stepped into the street about 11:00 a.m. and collapsed in tears.

But within moments, he saw on the ground a tract written by Billy Graham entitled, “The Transforming Power of the Resurrection”! As he picked it up and read, God spoke quietly but clearly to his heart: Why are you weeping? He took courage.

After about an hour, his steps reached Kasavubu Square, where one takes the public transport to Kisunka, and there he happened to hear the sounds of Chavda’s meeting.

Approaching the crowd from the rear, he arrived just in time to see Chavda step away from the microphone and go silent. His heart sank because he thought he had just finished praying for people and the meeting was over.

But as the crowd murmured in anticipation of something big, Chavda stepped to the mike again and announced, “The Lord has shown me that there is a man here whose son has died this morning. Come forward and receive prayer, and the Lord will do something wonderful.”

Manikai waved his hands and yelled, “C’EST MOI!! C’EST MOI!!” (It’s me! It’s me!) Ushers quickly escorted him to the front. Chavda saw him coming, his face a wild fight between hope and fear, faith and doubt.

When he reached the front, Chavda didn’t even ask his name. He immediately put his hands on Manikai’s head and said, “Lord Jesus, in your name I bind the powers of darkness and death that are at work in this man’s son, and I ask you to send your Spirit of resurrection to bring him back to life.”

Manikai looked in the evangelist’s eyes, nodded a silent thank you, and turned away. The crowd parted respectfully like the Red Sea as he walked briskly back toward the hospital.

Place: Mama Yemo Hospital

Time: 12:03 p.m.

A large group of friends had gathered around Mulamba Manikai’s brother, Kuamba, who was still holding the boy’s corpse. They were all crying.

Suddenly, about three minutes after noon, Kuamba felt the body move. Then Katshinyi sneezed. Then he sat up and asked for something to eat! Finally, he started asking, “Where is my father? Where is my father?”

Mulamba and Katshinyi Manikai with Mahesh Chavda, 1985

When Manikai burst through the doors 45 minutes later, the entire hospital was in an uproar – and he added to it with loud shouts of, God is good! He is true! My tears have turned to joy!

That weekend, a sea of 200,000 faces filled the square.

Update

Today, Katshinyi is a happy 27-year-old. The last time I spoke with him, he still lived with his family at 38 Lumbi Street in Kinshasa. You can probably knock on their door and meet him and his father. I recently chatted on the phone with Mulamba, who is now pastor of a 150-member church that meets in his yard. He says Katshinyi is perfectly healthy – except for some permanent scarring on his feet and legs from the doctor’s flame. Katshinyi is now trying to finish his education.

Mr. and Mrs. Manikai with Katshinyi, 2004

(He has been unable to finish high school because of a lack of funds. If you are interested in helping him, I will be happy to forward your full donation. Contact Megashift Ministries.)

And little Aaron Chavda did not die! He began a truly miraculous recovery about the time his father prayed for Katshinyi Manikai. Today, he is a smiling, healthy 21-year-old student living with his parents Mahesh and Bonnie in South Carolina.

Since 1985, a huge tide of miracles has begun to engulf the entire world. It is still spreading. By now, so many people have seen actual miracles that it has almost become more difficult to doubt than to believe – just the opposite of 22 years ago.

In case you’re wondering if I’m making all this up, I’ve given you photos from 1985 and 2004. You can also get the fuller story, plus before-and-after photos of Aaron, in Chavda’s best-seller, “Only Love Can Make a Miracle.”

If these still don’t help, catch a plane to the Congo and go to Kinshasa to enjoy some good arguments. Prepare to tell long-term residents there why they didn’t see what they saw in 1985.

Take a lunch. You’ll have to persuade 30,000 of them.

This column is adapted from Jim Rutz’ s “The Meaning of Life.”