SWAMI JESUS

When Srila Prabhupada arrived in America for the very first time in 1965, he stayed at the Agarwal family home in Butler, Pennsylvania. The Agarwals, Sally and Gopal, a charming and good-hearted couple, lived with their two children Kamla Kumari (their three-year-old daughter) and Brij Kumar (their newborn son).

Sally loves to mention that her baby daughter may have been the first in the West to detect Prabhupada’s holiness:

“Once, my three-year-old, Kamla, seeing Swamiji in the robes of a holy man, called him ‘Swami Jesus.’ He merely smiled and said, ‘And a child shall lead them.’”

In a letter to Sally Agarwal dated 19 November, 1965 Srila Prabhupada writes:

“I am obliged to your good daughter for awarding me a good degree as SWAMI JESUS which is actually a great honour for me. Some time the Lord speaks through innocent child and I take this honour as sent by Lord Jesus through an innocent child free from all formalities of the current society. Lord Jesus preached the message of God and I have taken up the same mission, and it would be a good luck for me if I can follow the foot prints of Lord Jesus who preached the message of God in spite of all persecution. Lord Jesus is a living example how one has to suffer in this material world simply for the matter of preaching the message of God.

In Bhagavatam also there is another example like Lord Jesus. He is Prahlada Maharaja a boy of five years old but because he was a great devotee of God and preaching the message of God among his little class mates, his atheist father tried to kill him. So the atheist class of men are always inimical to the devotees of God even though such devotee happens to be the atheist’s son like Prahlada.”