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.

Les Brown, Christian motivational speaker, on his struggles through life

Les Brown swore he would kill the man who arrested his mother, a single woman who turned to making moonshine to feed her seven adopted kids because she became disabled at work.

When did he meet the man? By chance, RIGHT AFTER he told his son to never act out of anger.

“She was injured on the job, so she promised our birth mother that these children will never go to bed hungry. We will always have a roof over our head and clothes on,” Les recalls on an Ed Mylett video.

“I was 10 years old, and he grabbed me by the throat and hit me on the side of the head and threw me up against the wall. He said she’s back there in the room and they went back there and mama was selling homebrew and moonshine and they he said, ‘Pull up the linoleum,’ and they pull up the linoleum and she kept it under the floor of the house and they brought Mom out in handcuffs.”

While “Mama” Mamie Brown was in jail, little Les took to the streets to make money for the family. He collected copper and aluminum for recycling and helped older men carry heavy equipment.

Years later when Les Brown was running a high-paying radio show in Miami, a man tapped him on the shoulder to congratulate him. It was Calhoun, the same man who orchestrated his mom’s arrest. Calhoun didn’t recognize Les, but Les would never forget the face.

Les had just told his adult son, John Leslie, to never act out of anger. “Anger is a wind that blows out the lamp of the mind,” he said. They were at a public event.

When Les turned around to see who was tapping his shoulder, he froze. He started crying. He hid his face and rushed out of the room, got in his car with his son and drove off. He pulled over to the side of the road.

“Is everything okay?’ his son asked, bewildered.

“No,” he responded.

But as he composed himself and collected his thoughts, he marveled at God’s timing and God’s way of doing things. The timing was just too coincidental to not be a miracle.

“I got that hatred out of my heart for him because you were here,” Les told his son. “I promised if I ever saw him again, I would kill him. I have to model what I’m teaching. Forgiveness is remembering without anger. I forgive him, but most of all, I forgive myself. Please forgive me, God, for carrying this anger and hatred.”

Adversity has made Leslie Calvin “Les” Brown, 75, motivational speaker of the Fortune 500, grow better, not bitter.

He was born in the Deep South, in Florida, during the time of segregation. His mother couldn’t care for him and gave him and his twin up for adoption. Mamie, who had only a 3rd grade education, took him in and six other kids.

One day when he was five, Les let go of his mother’s hand and ran to a water fountain where some kids were playing. It was 90 degrees and he was thirsty.

“My mother grabbed me by the neck, and she threw me down on the ground. She started punching me with her fists in my face and on my head,” Les recalls. “I was screaming. She had a crazy look in her eyes. I said, ‘Mama, it’s me. It’s me, Mama.”

Meanwhile a white cop swaggered over, smacking menacingly his baton into the palm of his hand

“Okay, that’s enough,” he barked. “You beat that little n—– boy enough. Now he’s learned his lesson. He won’t do that again.” Read the rest: Les Brown Christian

MC Jin, 1st Asian rapper, flopped, then succeeded with Jesus

After his ballyhooed album bombed, MC Jin — the first Asian American solo rapper to sign for a major label — dropped out of the public eye.

He learned about the resurrection, found God, and later resurrected his career.

Jin Au-Yeung was raised by immigrant parents from Hong Kong. They ran an unsuccessful string of Chinese restaurants in Miami. When he was teenager, Jin answered the phone in the restaurant while Mom and Pop were wrapping wontons.

His parents instilled in him success through hard work and college, but Jin dreamed of doing rap. After their last restaurant closed, they moved to New York where Jin began engaging in rap battles and hawking mixtapes on the streets.

Jin was particularly good at rap battles, which require more quick wit than a smooth-talking attorney because you have to insult your opponent cleverly, in rhyme, with rhythm, instantly. He was so adept at rap battles that he got spotted by an agent and soon landed a spot on BET’s Freestyle Friday, where he won seven successive battles and entered their Hall of Fame.

His meteoric rise in rap led to signing with the eminent Ruff Ryders hip-hop label when he was only 19. He was heralded as the next best thing, evidence of America’s diversity and the diversification of hip-hop.

Despite recording with Kanye West and others, his first album, The Rest is History, fell flat.

Jin left Ruff Ryders and was reduced to selling indie music over MySpace through PayPal.

“As quick as I went up is as quick as I went down,” Jin surmised on the Christian Post.

After floundering for two years, Jin was given a second shot at fame and success in his parents’ native land. Universal Music Hong Kong, seeing a surge of popularity for hip-hop on the island nation, offered Jin a contract with proper promotion.

Jin didn’t have anything else going on, so accepting was a “no brainer.”

Originally he thought he would be in Hong Kong for four months, but those four months turned into four years. He recorded ABC (American Born Chinese) in 2007 and 回香靖 (Homecoming) in 2011 rapping in Cantonese. He landed roles on TV, movies and commercials. He became a sensation.

“I was the Justin Bieber of Hong Kong,” he later reported.

While he finally found worldly success, he also found spiritual success. In 2008, he rekindled his relationship with Jesus (he first accepted Jesus with his Aunt Kathy as an 8 year old). He joined The Vine Church, a bilingual congregation. Read more about MC Jin, first Asian rapper, becomes Christian rapper.