Level Martinez, bare-knuckle brawler, Syndicate gang leader, now a Christian

At 5 years old, Rene Level Martinez ran away scared, but his mom and the Santeria practitioner grabbed him, took him to the bathroom, where they slit the veins of a goat and poured its blood on his head.

The ritual was supposed to ward off evil and protect Level, but from that moment on, Level says he was possessed.

“I would see demons and hear these screams (of people) in agonizing pain, like screams from Hell,” Level recalls on his Soldier of Jesus Christ YouTube channel. “I would have horrible nightmares. I would see demons walking around the house. Pretty much my whole life, I was possessed by a giant demon.”

Today, Level is an extraordinary soul-winner, a convert from the fearsome Latin Syndicate gang that terrorized Miami during the 80s and 90s.

His descent into some of the most heinous crimes of violence began when his mother, Emiliana, an immigrant from Cuba, separated from his dad because the abusive womanizer went to see his ex-wife when Emiliana was giving birth to Level.

It was the days of the Cocaine Cowboys in Miami, and Emiliana was addicted to the white powder and was almost never home. Once he even found her overdosed in bed and called the ambulance.

“Rene had two parents that were so dysfunctional that he turned to the streets,” Emiliana admits.

As young as nine, Level broke into cars and houses and collected guns.

At 14, he was committing grand theft auto when the police began to pursue.

“We got into a high-speed chase,” Level says. “We were doing over a 100. We weren’t even thinking about it, we were flying through red lights.”

Jackson Memorial Hospital called to inform Emiliana that her son had been involved in a terrible accident and was in a coma with a 5% chance of survival. The man they hit died.

For the first time, Emiliana prayed to God instead of resorting to the witchcraft of Santeria.

“Take away everything I have, but give me my son’s life back,” she said, bargaining with the Almighty.

He woke up three weeks later from a coma in the hospital. He was placed in a full body cast and later had to undergo rehab to walk again.

“You thought I would’ve learned my lesson,” Level admits. “But no, I didn’t learn my lesson. As soon as I started walking again, I got right back into the streets, breaking in cars, stealing, breaking into houses.”

After not paying rent for a year and a half, Emiliana lost her home and moved into the back of a video store with her son. She fell into a deep depression and couldn’t even get out of bed.

“I would have to go rob to eat,” says Level, 15 at the time. “There was no food. There was no money.”

With a 9 mm, he assaulted men, forcing them to the ground. Sometimes, Level found food in dumpsters. One night he fought with his own homie and tried to kill him with a Glock. He didn’t come home for days at a time.

One night, his mother overdosed on pills and slashed her wrists in an attempted suicide. Level came home, found her, and rescued her. It happened a second time; again Level saved her life.

In her suicide note. Emiliana asked forgiveness from Level for her imperfections as a mother and she expressed a desire to be reconciled with her sister Myra, whom she hadn’t seen for five years.

At that time, Myra, was visiting at a friend’s house and heard about Jesus for the first time. Suddenly, the Lord placed on her heart the need to pray for Emiliana and she saw a vision of her being rescued by Jesus.

Myra visited Emiliana and shared the gospel with her. Remarkably, she received the Lord with great joy and stopped drinking and consuming drugs. God gave her money from a man who visited the video store, and she bought a little car, rented a place and started school.

She was getting her life together. Level did not accompany her on the journey towards God.

“For me it was too late,” Level says. “All I knew was the streets. I had a demon of rage, a murderous… Read the rest: Level Martinez bare-knuckle legend, Syndicate leader, now serves Christ.

They nearly chopped her arm off

Shamso was a sickly Somali girl in a refugee camp with a growth on her arm that doctors thought was cancer. They wanted to amputate.

Fortunately, her mother refused and wanted to seek better health care in another nation. A church from Texas sponsored Shamso’s family to come to America with no strings attached.

In 2000 they came to America and got involved in their local Muslim community. Shamso was very religious and taught other children, observed Ramadan, and did everything possible to make it to Heaven.

But she was unsettled by the teaching in Islam that one can never be sure she’ll gain entry into paradise, one can never be sure their good works will be enough.

“I was deathly afraid, not knowing where I was going to be after I die, if I was going to make it into” Heaven, she says on her YouTube channel. “Was I good enough here on Earth? I would always recite the Koran and all sorts of stuff because I genuinely wanted to make it into Heaven.

“But when I realized that everything I was doing was probably not good enough for Allah, it felt like a mentally difficult thing for me to accept. I was super afraid of death. I couldn’t go to sleep at night. Darkness terrified me.”

Shamso was a naturally talkative girl and a naturally curious girl. When in Islamic “Sunday school” she heard that other religions describe Jesus as more than a prophet (which Islam limits him to by definition).

She wanted to explore other religions, but was told not to ask questions. Her teacher told her mom about the questions she had been asking, and she got in trouble.

Shamso wasn’t scared merely of death. She was also scared of the jinn, or spirits sometimes translated and conceptualized as “genies” in English but probably better understood as demons. Her mother told her the story of somebody who accidentally dropped the Koran and turned into a half human, half goat creature by the jinn.

At age 16, Shamso witnessed a new Somali girl at school manifest a full-blown case of demon possession during their English class.

“The jinn was on her. She was screaming, yelling. It was absolutely terrifying. I was already terrified of these things, so to see it in real life, a person being held captive by an evil spirit, instantly I ran out of the room,” Shamso recalls. “It was pure chaos. All the kids were outside. The teachers were outside. Tears were flowing. I trembled with fear.”

The Somali girl was allowed to return home with an adult friend and returned to school the next day, seemingly normal. She didn’t remember anything about what happened, what she said, or what she did.

But Shamso remembered every “freaky” thing.

“For the longest time ever I was terrified of this girl. She was a very… Read the rest: Muslim girl converts to Christ.

You’re not disqualified

Intriguingly, Jesus employs racism to make a point. But Jesus said unto her, Let the children first be filled: for it is not meet to take the children’s bread, and to cast [it] unto the dogs. — Mark 7:27 KJV.

He addresses a Syrophenician who requests freedom and healing for her demon-possessed daughter. A lot of people miss the subtleties of the Bible. When Jesus offered living water to the Samaritan woman (John 4), at least she was half Jewish. But the Syrophenician is completely gentile, utterly excluded from the kingdom of God (under the old scheme of things). The Jews called them “dogs,” and Jesus testing her faith employs the same ugly, unacceptable term.

In other words, He says, “Don’t you know you’re supposedly disqualified from a miracle?” Whether it was hyper optimism or simply desperation, this lady would not be discouraged and the word “disqualified” was not in her lexicon.

Ok, she says, I don’t care if you insult me. Call me a dog, but even the dogs get crumbs from the table. Jesus’ subsequent reaction dispels the notion He’s a racist: “For this saying go thy way; the devil is gone out of thy daughter.” — Mark 7:29 KJV.29

It’s necessary to understand you’re not disqualified from receiving a miracle. That is faith. When you pray, banish from your mind that you are disqualified from receiving a miracle. A lot of preachers try to put requirements on a miracle. They’re trying to explain why some people don’t receive a miracle. I say, Let’s get rid of the requirements and bolster people’s faith.