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Issue link: http://magazine.kcm.org/i/1091782
Victoria Park Subway Station in Toronto, Canada, teemed with people. Moving. Always moving. Eyes down, shifting their bodies to move out of the way. No touching. No connecting. Except for Marcus Martinez, who stood still. Watching. Absorbing. Listening to all the different languages. Observing different clothing styles and the various cultures. A tall man, his presence seemed solid, immovable. His eyes missing nothing. He watched the crowd make a wide swath around the gang members. Kingpins of their own form of organized crime, they didn’t put off a welcoming vibe. Marcus walked right up to the top guy and looked him straight in the eye. “The kid,” Marcus said, nodding toward a boy at the edge of the group. “Leave him alone. Don’t turn him.” There was something steady about Marcus Martinez. His was a quiet authority, whose chocolate eyes sparkled with life. The two men locked eyes like bulls locking horns. A slow duel, neither looking away. The dealer raised an eyebrow in silent acquiescence. Marcus nodded, then sauntered off to another group of boys. “I want you guys to come out tonight….” Just then, someone screamed. Turning, Marcus saw a kid running down the subway stairs, pointing a gun at them. The group Marcus had spoken to melted away screaming, “Run! Pastor Marcus, run!” Marcus didn’t run. He turned to face the boy with the gun, locking eyes on him in the same manner he had approached the drug dealer, and didn’t budge. Onlookers held a collective breath while the gunman poised to shoot. Suddenly he lowered the gun, leaving Marcus with two words: “You’re lucky!” Divine Protection “Luck had nothing to do with it,” says Marcus. “I pled the blood of Jesus every day. When I went after those kids, I got threatened a lot. It was scary—nothing like the life I’d known in the Caribbean.” Marcus had been raised on Trinidad and Tobago, twin sovereign islands in the southern tip of the West Indies. The eldest of three children raised in a Catholic family, he was 18 when they moved to the U.S., settling in Florida. “Someone gave my mother tapes by Kenneth Copeland, which changed our lives,” Marcus recalls. “We listened to the tapes and then started listening to his broadcast. My entire family got born again, spirit filled and started living by faith. My mother’s heritage was Portuguese and Venezuelan and my father’s was Indian and black. This was all new to us, but my grandfather had been Pentecostal. We heard Brother Copeland talk about Kenneth E. Hagin, so we started listening to him as well. That’s how we learned about Rhema Bible Training Center.” In 1994, Marcus moved to Tulsa, Okla., to attend Brother Hagin’s Rhema Bible Training Center. After he graduated, his mother and siblings enrolled in the school. “Since I’d been born and raised in the Caribbean, I assumed the Lord wanted me to go back there and preach,” Marcus recalls, “and I accepted a position as a youth pastor in the Cayman Islands.” BVOV : 13