This is the Truth Network. This is the Truth Network. I've called this guy Uncle Tom all my life, like an adopted father. He's a Greek. He's on fire for Jesus.
You have heard about the gangs of New York. You've heard about the Guardian Angels, the crossing the switchblade, right in the middle of the fray. Is Tom Maharris, Manhattan Bible Church, all kinds of stuff going on.
Now you're going into prisons. Who is Tom Maharris? Tell us, answer that question. Listen, I'm a. A man who's homeless and lost.
Who found the bread of life telling other people where to get it? That's about it.
Well, and you showed me a picture that I hadn't seen before that blew me away of you in front of thousands of people, hundreds of thousands of people. That was April the 5th, the day after Martin Luther King was assassinated. on April the 4th, 1968. I I in 1968 played for the prom of George Rushington High School. You know, the MGs, the writers of Rohan, we had a variety of names.
back in those days. But then I went to the school when Martin Luther King was killed. I said, man, that's it. We're going to shut the school down.
So I went there. Told everybody in the front of the school, George Washington High School, five and a half thousand students.
So we're out of here.
So about. two, three, four hundred, five hundred, I don't know how many of us went. to Central Park. The band shell, I found out. Uh I found out that um that we were having a uh a peace demonstration.
It was uh I said, I'm there.
So I went there with my guitar. Little did I know I run it to Richie Havens who really opened. Woodstock for 90 minutes. He was the key thing, and nobody could get there in Woodstock the following year. But in 1968 Richie was there.
That's one of the reasons I went down there. I wanted to hear him. And he said, Hey man, you play that? I took my guitar, I got there early, I started playing. He said, Man, I like that song.
I wrote a song about it, it was called White God, Black God, and then I'd scream out, I believe. I believe that man is destined not individually but as a whole to be made one final species in the body and in the soul. And I scream out, I believe. Because I was really searching. You know, for what's going on, why are the black people, white people, all the racism?
And so I was involved in a lot of demonstrations. We're trying to do an interview, babe.
Now we're on a cruise ship. We're on a cruise ship.
Now, look, there's a pool right behind us. There's your lovely wife right there. There's a fine young man that we're sharing God's word with here. I got a big mouth. This is Dr.
David Jeremiah's cruise ship. And of all people to be on this ship, Tom Harris, a man who's been a pastor, shepherd of many. He's been a mentor to my family. Early on in the days of WMCA, you know, big students were Christian radio station, Salem Media and Uncle Ed. They're stationed Joe Davis, New York City.
But you have been such an impact to all your kids. They're like my sisters that, you know, growing up. I had enough sisters, but I got more when the Meharris family was around, Stephanie, all of them. But sex, drugs, and rock and roll, that was in your testimony. Take us from there to how you came to Christ.
So, you know, my whole life being involved with, like I said, Richie Havens, the whole Woodstock. the whole entourage of sex, drugs, and rock and roll. And I was in a mental institution, freaked out on LSD. In Lenox Hill Hospital, 83rd Street in New York City off Madison Avenue. And they gave me 10 shock treatments to help me.
Think about how stupid this is. You're already freaked out.
Now they're gonna electrocute you to help you, and they're. Blowing all these brain cells as if I didn't blow it up out. And I got out of there. My brother got me out and I went over to the band shell what I was just talking about. This could be called the band shell experience.
And I went to the band shell that day and I'm looking at all these people. And I'm looking around saying, what is life all about? Where did I come from? What am I doing? Where am I going?
And that was kind of, and I picked up a book called The Last Temptation of Christ because when I was in the mental institution, I was thinking, man, I wonder what was going on with. Jesus, although I didn't know who Jesus was, I was a Greek Orthodox by faith, Vicky. was Catholic, we were living together. And and here I was questioning you know, origin, where I come from. Questioning purpose, what am I doing here?
Questioning destiny, where am I going? And this guy, I hitch type all the way up to Lake George. And that day in Lake George, apparently, The word of life is group. that that had camps for kids. would send groups of kids to talk to people down in Lake George.
And one of these groups, and the one guy that came to me apparently was the college and career director. And he came up, he said, Hey, could I talk to you about spiritual things?
Meanwhile, I just gotten in jail for disturbing the peace. I had all these hundred hippies following me the day before. And So, this guy's coming to me. He asked me, and I said, Are you the devil? I'm thinking, I can't believe this guy wants to talk about spiritual things.
And then I sat there for the next hour, two hours, talking about how Jesus died on the cross for me. Was buried and arose again from the dead. He invites me to go to Word of Life Island, this Bruce. Guy, and I realized that God is talking to me the next morning. I reach up by faith to heaven and say, God, you know what?
I'm so screwed up, but if you'll forgive me and come in my life. I will let you run my life. That was 1968, Stuart. 1968, man. And I'm still here, 1968.
Hey, yesterday was was the new year. 2026. Can you believe it? And you know, it's funny because going up to New York as a kid, mom and they're like, we got to go see the Maharrises. We got to go to Manhattan Bible Church.
We got to go check them out. Little Stew, you got to go and go share the gospel on the streets. And the Guardian Angels, those were like superheroes to me. All of that stuff.
So you went on these guys, Jerry and Jeff Monroe, who started the Guardian Angels with Curtis Sleewell, who ran for Maya this year. And uh they they both died l the last year. Really? Both of them. And amazing enough, six months prior to this, they called me and wanted to come up and share their story with our drug rehab, which I did.
And I have that on video. I'm like, I can't believe these guys are, you know, and they were still walking with the Lord. These guys would go, and basically, they were believers, and they would go in, and a lot of them went to your church, they would go into the subways, and just. Defend the helpless from thugs and gangs and stuff, huh? What's interesting about them coming to our church, the first time they came, I gave an invitation, about 30 guys came forward.
And they're all in these red berets and a I'm like, what's going on here?
So, you know, they all come forward. This Jerry and Jeff Monroe. I said, well, what's going on? He says, well, I told him, you know, you better go forward. When he calls, you come.
I said, you can't make people go forward and accept Jesus Christ. You guys got to let the Holy Spirit of God deal with it. But it was just great. And that was a long time ago. We started that church in 1974.
We celebrated 50 years in 2024 of the church.
So, what's it like to pastor a church in New York City? I mean, of all places, I got a daughter in New York. I go up there, I can barely get home in time. I mean, it's wild, it's crazy, it's loud. But it's New York, right?
It's what happens when you turn the lights on in a summer night and all the bugs come to the light. That's what it's like. You know, all these bugs come to the light and we. We kept sharing the love of Christ. We started a homeless program.
We started a homeless program that is now feeding over 350,000 a year. It's called the New York LoveKitchen.com. If you want to go to the website, we started a drug rehab called Of the Transformation Life Center, and it's been going on since 1982. Over 3,000. Men have had their lives changed there.
It sounds like a Christian Academy. The school. The school, Manhattan Christian Academy, still going.
Now we grew to 400, but then during COVID, it dropped to 200. And of course, the church and other things that were going on. New York Gospel Outreach, we trained over 50,000 young people to share their faith in New York. Yeah.
So, you know, New York's fascinating because we can go on missions trips to all over the world, but if you go to New York, it's like they're all coming to you. Yeah, exactly. All over the world is there. It's 140 people groups in New York City. It's just amazing.
We would visit your church, and I'd say to my mom and dad, this is different. Like, all of these people are different. Like, all of them. Like, this ain't North Carolina anymore, mom and dad. Yeah, yeah.
You're not in Kansas anymore. Yeah, that's true.
So we just thank God that He saved us. Vicki and I, both together, 54 years. We've been married 54. We have five children. You know a couple of them.
And we have 10 grandchildren. And we have now two great-grandchildren and one great child, granddaughter is gonna be coming in February.
So we give God the glory. We're on this ship. David, Jeremiah, and Donna, dear friends. I had a chance to have some coffee yesterday with them, and we were talking to them. And just what a blessing to see the hand of God.
On our lives, on his life, and what he said to me was, Tom, can you believe this man? We've been preaching the gospel all these years, and we're still. You know, enamored and in love with Jesus Christ, and we're telling people about Jesus.
Well, this particular session is on heaven, which is, can you think of a better topic? You're still preaching, you're still on fire for God, and you're going to the worst places, the prisons. We're going to turn the page, we're going to take a quick break. We'll come back. Toma Harris, Manhattan Bible Church, a fiery New York and evangelist, Greek, loves Jesus with this amazing Italian wife, amazing legacy.
Yeah, man. And we're going to come back and talk about, we're going to go straight to prison when we come back, all right? Hang on. Should I This is the Truth Network. Did you know that a big chunk of your New Testament was written from prison?
Exactly. Exactly. Well, the man sitting next to me, Tom Aharis, long time mentor, long time. I remember you came and spoke in chapel when I was at Masters in California, and it was powerful. You came for the whole week and preached.
God's used you, Manhattan Bible Church, New York, all over the country, all over the world. But most recently, something's really stirred in your heart for prisons. What got you excited about that? And take us into the prison. This is remarkable, supernatural stuff that's happening.
Well, I was invited about 20 years ago to go to the Angola Prison, which is Louisiana State Penitentiary. By the warden, Burl Kane. Burl Kane. started a Bible college in the prison. I mean, it was an incredible, it's an incredible story.
That's a whole other story. Those are the guys that made the coffin for Billy Graham, I believe, is that right? Exactly, exactly. And they are primarily, 90% of them are lifers. They'll never get out.
So, you know, at that time, there was 6,300 prisoners. I mean, it's huge. It used to be the bloodiest prison in the world. It's still the bloodiest prison. Only the blood of Christ is on it now.
And, you know, and the prisons are run by gangs, and it's still run by gangs. Only they're called churches now. There's 30 churches. And the gang leaders are the pastors. And these guys have graduated.
From The Bible College, and it's actually the New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary in the prison. They walk, I mean, they get the regular four years, they're learning Greek and Hebrew. And I went there and I started teaching them some of this, and now when I go, they start screaming out Greek words: Lo gizo me du los, and I'm like, man, these guys listen. And but what happened is over 350 graduated. And they began to minister to the prisoners, and some of them became associate pastors.
And the thing that turned Louisiana State Penitentiary around was that Bible College.
So 75% of the violence. Dropped.
Now, people are coming from all over the world, prisons all over the world, to find out what happened. And they have to hear the story of the Bible College.
Now, I go to Mississippi State Penitentiary, and the guy that used to be in Angola prison. uh working in the seminary as a as a prisoner Now he's running. The Mississippi State Penitentiary and he's Robert High, he's a good friend of mine, and he wants to take the 100 students there and double them and even quadruple them. I just came from there a month ago. We went to four prisons, women's prison, men's prisons in Mississippi.
And we saw over 320 Prisoners come to Christ. It was just incredible. In fact, in the women's prison, Uh the warden There's a lady, a young black, phenomenal woman. They call them, instead of wardens, they call them superintendents in Mississippi. And she said, She said, Pastor Tom, could I bring 200 more girls in the.
I said, Are you serious? Of course, just back them up. She came, and just every space in that prison was people sitting on the floors. And when we gave the invitation, I had. I had Anthony Bonner, I had Bill Alexon, who started the chapels across all of the NBA teams, and he was the chaplain for the Celtics for 23 years.
And this guy Shared his story. And Bonner shared his story, and we had a couple of musicians. One of the guys that played for with Dion DiBucci, and he got saved actually. Through Dion's testimony, they were down in Miami doing a session in the studio, and my friend Santos said to, he was his brother-in-law, he said, Hey, how did you stop doing heroin, man? What happened?
And he said, and he whoops out a Bible. And he says, You gotta get born again. This is the way he spoke to him. He says, You gotta come to Christ and accept Jesus as your personal Savior. And he accepted Christ, and so he comes and does Duwak.
And I have also Marty Rabin, who is the lead singer of his Shenandoah. He's come at least six times with me. And so we're just very excited to go into the prisons. Everybody waits. We have a tremendous entourage.
They accept us like, you know, it's phenomenal. And then when we share our story and share the gospel story, more importantly, what his story. That he died for us, was buried, rose again, that he'll take broken people. and love them into heaven. And they're just such a response, man.
I'll give you one incident. My wife and I went to one time, we went into a prison with about five, six hundred guys. They were so noisy. And I said to Vicky, something's wrong here. There's demonic forces, I feel it.
Come with me. I took her by the hand. We went through the middle of the room. I mean, right through the prisoners. And I said, God, in the name of Jesus, push the demons out of here.
By the time we sat down, the place was absolutely dead silent. When I gave the invitation and shared how Christ will transform you like the demoniac, actually I think I preached on that that day, the five-fold change that he went through, a spiritual change, a physical change, a mental change, a social change, a domestic change. And then he went out preaching the gospel in Decapolis, the 10 cities all around where he lived. We had guys coming forward prostrate. I never saw this before in prisons.
Flat out on the ground, weeping. I mean, at least two dozen guys. And this is just so rare. And I'm watching this and I'm going, God, only you can do this. Only you can do this kind of stuff in prison.
And, you know, I've heard it said that. And I want you to answer this conundrum. Why is it that it seems to be that there are people in prison that are more free in Christ than people on the outside?
Well, they know they have a need, a huge need. With all the toys that we have outside, I mean, it's like Disney World, man. You know, every day, like we're doing here on this ship, we're on a Christian cruise. The David Jeremiah, that's why it's, by the way, that's why it's so loud. Who knows what music's going to play next?
And there's people panning and goofing around and playing and all. Children. Who cares about heaven when you think this is heaven? Right. You know, after the walk of the Lido deck there, the buffet, and you see, you've got to be non-stop.
But until you get cancer, until you lose your job, until your son overdoses on heroin or some fentanyl. And until you or your wife says, man, I don't want to live with you anymore. And then you realize, oh man, something's wrong. It's not the money that's holding us together. It's not my talents and my beauty and so forth.
So that's, that really is the problem. When you're in prison, And I've met all kinds of guys in prison, multi-millionaires. When you're in prison, you realize, hey, you know what? You're just another guy. You're just, you know, and it's really, you try to find significance in Christ because He brings worth.
To your life.
Well, and you sent me these pictures. You sent me these videos. It's like, I'm like, what in the world? Because I'm sitting there thinking, Tomaharris, growing up, my Uncle Tom, Manhattan Bible Church, I mean, in that groundswell of the Jesus movement in New York with the guardian angels, with all the things going on, in the revival, your church was in the middle of it, multicultural, multiracial, reaching people with the gospel, preaching on the streets. Jews for Jesus was big.
You know, it's still big in New York. And, you know, and I was thinking. No. You know, shouldn't you be chasing that little white ball? Like, what are you doing, amping up the preaching?
What are you doing taking your sweet wife and missions trips and going to the prisons? You know, why aren't you retiring and just cruising in a little camper? Tom, here, talk, talk about that as we transition out of here. You know, giving charge to everyone out there, young and old, about pursuing Christ. Even David Jeremiah in his 80s preaching the gospel to all these people here.
There's no retirement in Christ. Our retirement's heaven. And we got a long retirement that got us planned. He calls us, you know, a chosen generation. a royal priesthood.
We're royalty, man. and we are a royal priesthood. We're representing God in this world. A priest represents the people to God. A prophet represented God to the people.
The king ruled over the people.
Now, there's a little verse, the last verse is, and he is the one, peripises. He sought us out and he brought us onto himself. And it's the same word you find, you know, in several places, but I like the one. That Luke chapter, and this is a charge I want to give. This is Luke chapter 17 and verse 34.
33 says, remember Lot's wife. What happened to her?
Well, she had it all made, man. Who knows what she was doing in Sodom and Gomorrah, but she wasn't doing what was right. And God told her, Don't look back through the angel, don't look back. No, she just had to look back. You know, something was holding her, something was you know, magnetically pulling her.
Which way are you being pulled? Are you being pulled towards heaven? Is your eyes fixed on Jesus, the author and finisher of your faith? Or is it fixed on money? Is it fixed on sex, drugs, and rock and roll like I used to think?
And the thing it says is in verse thirty four. that he who seeks To find his life, that's Petty Pisces, who is gonna try to accumulate for himself his life. Basically. Whether you're a golfer looking for golf or a basketball player like Anthony Bonner had $10 million and just blew right through it. He used to guard Michael Jordan when he played against him.
He played 6'8. He was with us in the prison this last time we went a month ago. What are you looking for? Is it another billion? Is it another million?
Is it just getting a job? Whatever it is, if you're a musician, that next song. You know, he who seeks to make for himself his life, he's going to lose it. Because it's short-lived. But if you lose your life for basically what Jesus was saying, if you lose your life for me and the gospel.
You'll save your life for eternity. That's basically it.
So, let me ask you: what are you living for? Are you living for the gospel? Are you living for Jesus? Is it really a reality every day? When you get up in the morning and you're looking for who am I going to talk to and love them to Jesus Christ, like God saved me and changed me.
Now, we're going to make this a podcast. That's Tom Maharris, and I'm going to send this to Uncle Ed. All right, who's another great mentor? And my dad and him, partners forever, and they loved Tom Maharris. They loved the Maharis family, they loved Manhattan Bible, they loved New York City, they loved talking about you fondly all those years.
Do you have any big stew moments or memories? You know, big stew's in heaven. A big tall fellow came along. What did you think? Give me a quick big stew moment as we get out of here.
Well, a big stew moment was when he said to me, Tom, you ought to come and work with us. Come over here. We got some property up there in Salem. He said, Yeah, I want to. I said, Stu, I can't do that.
I got to go to where the masses of people are in New York City.
So when I got up there, he used to come through. I think he was in Philly, and he came through New York, going up to Boston. He had several stations. And I said to him, Why don't you have a station in New York? Come on.
Come on, do something. And so that was a challenge to student. This was a big moment. He said, you find me the station. And help me get somebody to help me get it, and we'll get one in New York.
So, we hired my brother-in-law, Joe Ricadella. Stu hired him. We got that WEVD going, and then from there, WMCA. It's still going. It's still going AM570, the mission.
New York City, I tell every Uber driver I get in the car in New York, and I tell him to turn that station on. Remember, Jimmy D. Young? He's in heaven, too. All those guys.
That was a big moment. Another big moment was he sent some money to our camps for inner city kids. I needed some funds. I think he sent about a $20,000 check at that time. We reached 25,000 young people from the streets of Brooklyn, Manhattan.
We had 175 acres up in Ulster Park, which is an hour and a half north of Manhattan. And we basically preached the gospel every time we brought these kids up, and these were. Unchurched kids, 80% of them never heard the gospel.
So Stu was a part of that. And I would love to get Ed and yourself to our drug rehab is right there. And I would love for you to come. We've got 20 buildings. We've got about 40 guys, 40, 50 guys, and we're still there.
I go up every Thursday through chapel. And I would love to get you up. We'll have to come up, maybe go to the Conge deli for lunch or something.
Now, Tom's deli down in down downtown further. Yeah, okay, Toma Harris, pastor, leader, evangelist, man of God. Your favorite Bible verse as we get out of here. What's the Bible verse that, you know, Dad's got Micah 6:8 on his tombstone? What is it that you want to be?
John 3:16 changed my life. John 3:16, I never, God so loved the world. That he gave his only begotten son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.
Well, this is the way it read in Greek when it was first written. And then my challenge verse is Romans 1:16. I'm not ashamed of the gospel. Because it is the power of God, the dina mistu the power of God unto salvation to the Jew first. And also to the Greek.
And I'm big. Truth to the Bye.
