The Blood, Fire, and Power

By Evangelist Mark C Martel

In these catastrophic timesin the terminal battles between the Deity and the Devilthis book is a clarion call to accept Christ, our Redeemer, right now without delay, for that is the only life-saving guarantee of victory. This book reveals how God forgives sinners and forearms them as saints. It verifies how the living Word of God changes lives and seals them for His use. Hallelujah! Richard Eby, DO, author of the perennial best seller, Caught Up Into Paradise

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Oct 21, 2015
• ISBN: 9781512713336

Evangelist Mark C Martel

Mark Martel is a dynamic evangelist who has traveled throughout the United States, bringing to thousands the message of hope and healing through the name of Jesus Christ. He is presently living in Ponchatoula, Louisiana, with his wife, Patti. .If you would like to have Evangelist Mark Martel and Patti speak, you can contact them at [phone] or [phone].

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PART I

The Blood

CHAPTER 1

The Stranger

I t was a freezing winter night, and icicles were hanging from the eaves of our small New England house. But an even deeper winter was settling into my soul.

My wife, Patti, was in the cellar of our house, doing laundry. I went down to see her, just to talk. I threw some more wood into the old wood-burning stove, watched the fire lick up and die again, and then dragged myself over to the cold stairs and sat down. And I said for what must have been the thousandth time that day, I am so depressed.

The old Kenmore sloshed the clothes back and forth, and Patti said not a word. But I knew from the expression on her face that she was bone tired. I felt that way too.

I was failing. I’d never been trained to pastor a church; I didn’t even have a college education.

And now I’d done it. I’d stepped out on straight faith and nothing else and had begun my small church with only Patti, our three sons, and myself. And even though we were holding church services in our small house, to my surprise the attendance was growing. But everything seemed to be going wrong. I was a failure. Looking at my exhausted wife made me more certain of it than ever. How was I going to pastor an entire church if I couldn’t even take proper care of my own family?

Patti was putting clothes in the dryer when I said it again. I am so depressed.

Suddenly she’d had enough of me. She turned, pointed her finger into my face, and said, Mark, you’d better stop saying that. God’s plan for you is just different from the one you want, that’s all.

But I was too wrapped up in my own depression to even hear what she’d said. I simply couldn’t understand why things were getting me so far down or how I’d put myself in such a spot.

Then, just as I was about to again try to drag Patti’s mood down to join mine, the phone rang, interrupting my misery. I ran upstairs to answer it.

It was Ron, an evangelist and friend from Marlborough, a small Massachusetts town about forty miles from our home in Southbridge. Ron had a small ministry that held services in a nearby Holiday Inn. Immediately after I said hello, he said, Brother, the Lord has just given me a message for you. He wants me to tell you that He sees you, He knows what you’re going through, and He’s going to help you.

But you know how depression is. It can grip your heart and turn it to stone. So I remember thinking, Yeah, sure. People say things like that all the time, but it doesn’t mean anything. To me, his words were just empty platitudes.

I mumbled something polite, and then he got to his original point. He wanted to know if it were possible for Patti and I to sing in his Christmas Eve service in a couple of weeks.

I cupped my hand around the phone so he couldn’t hear me, and I called down to Patti to ask her if she wanted to go. Sure, she called back. We would have to get someone to cover for us at our church that night, but I told him we’d be there.

It was actually pretty easy to find someone to take over the Christmas Eve service at our church. That alone should have told me something was about to happen.

Still, when Christmas Eve came, I was as depressed as ever. The Christmas lights shining throughout the town might as well have been skid-row neon. I wasn’t in the mood to drive all the way to Marlborough, and I certainly wasn’t in the mood to sing.

Interstate 90 was icy that night, and I had the heater on high all the way. The brisk, cold air enhanced the brightness of the moon, but even the moonlight, which I usually love, held no warmth or joy for me. As if sensing my mood, Patti was strangely quiet. The heater was drying out the air inside the car; outside, the world seemed frozen. Then, suddenly, there was the garish neon light of the Holiday Inn, beckoning us toward the icy exit. We pulled into the driveway with the crunching and ice-crackling sound of the tires on the freshly plowed snowfall. But to me the wonderland was just cold and annoying—another aggravation to add to my many problems.

My depression was getting worse.

I was about to give up. Maybe being in the ministry wasn’t what God had planned for me after all. Maybe in my own enthusiasm, I’d misunderstood God’s will for my life. And besides, even if I hadn’t misunderstood, was I really ready to give up so much in return for so little? God was moving in my church. I knew that. It was growing fast. But there were so many problems, and many of those problems were largely with the other ministers in the area who resented the fact that some of their parishioners had changed pews. Rumors were rampant that since I hadn’t attended Bible school or seminary—or even college—that I had no right to lead a church. And the rumors were starting to hurt me badly and at a very personal level. On top of that, there was never enough money to take proper care of my family. That bothered me. Let’s face it: being in the ministry isn’t easy.

Many years later at my church in Honolulu, my youth pastor, Dan, wrote this small item:

Jerusalem Want Ad

Wanted:

Slaves to work 7 days/week, 16 hours/day, sometimes longer; minimum salary: low, if any. Must be willing to start at the bottom and stay there. Must be willing to relocate at owner’s expense, to communicate to all tribes and nationalities, and to be ready to work at a moment’s notice. Characteristics needed: peace under persecution, quietness under mocking, disowning of all possessions, ability to love enemies, ability to go without food or water (sometimes for as long as forty days and nights). If interested, please apply in person down at the docks Saturday morning at 4:00 a.m.

That might give you an idea of what it takes to be a true minister of the Lord’s Word. And that’s what I wanted to be—a true minister, not just some preacher who had a nice salary and a decent vacation every year, a lot of prestige, and not too much of the Holy Spirit. And, like I said before, that’s not easy. Maybe that’s why a lot of pastors, preachers, and ministers find themselves wearing a religious mask in order to be able to do the job. And I guess that’s what I was doing that Christmas Eve—wearing a mask, pretending I had found something I didn’t feel, just doing a job. We unloaded our speakers and amplifiers, our tapes, and my guitar. We carried it all into the large room where they held services, and we began to set up. As we finished our work, I picked up a lukewarm cup of coffee I had sitting on top of the piano. Just as I took my first sip, a huge hand clamped down on my shoulder. I turned around hiding my irritation and found myself staring at someone’s chest. My head tilted back, back, and finally I was looking into the eyes of a man about six feet, seven inches tall; he had jet black, very curly hair, and I had to admit, he was a handsome fella. And when he spoke, his voice was low and resonant. He looked directly into my eyes and smiled.

I forced a stiff smile to my own lips and said, What can I do for you? The smile stayed on his face. Uncomfortable now, I said, My name is Pastor Mark Martel. I waited for him to introduce himself.

But he dispensed with formalities and said, I was sent by the Lord to do something for you.

I tried to brush him off. My wife and I have to sing right now. Would you mind waiting?

That same serene smile stayed on his face as he turned without a word, went over and sat on a chair, folded his arms, and continued to beam at me.

I began to play my guitar. Patti and I sang for maybe half an hour, and I almost completely forgot about the man by the time we finished. I unstrapped my guitar and rested it against the wall while Patti and I began to put things away. But suddenly I felt that hand on my shoulder again—a hand as big as a baseball glove yet gentle. I turned and snapped, What do you want now?

I’d like for you to write down the name and address of your church, he said, unfazed.

Patti was right beside me packing microphones and getting everything ready to take home, and as I wrote down my church’s address on one of my old cards, the man began to talk to me. He said he had to leave, that they were calling him. I thought that was a little odd, but then everything about this man was odd. And frankly, considering the mood I was still in, I was glad when he stopped talking. He took the card with my address from my hand, and again he smiled.

But then he placed his hand on my head and said quietly yet clearly, The Lord is coming very soon. You must do what he has called you to do. He’s coming very soon.

And with that pronouncement, he turned and walked out the door, leaving me thinking, What a strange, strange man.

We packed and loaded the car and said our good-byes. Then I was again driving through the depressing winter nightscape, alone on the icy freeway thinking about how I was still depressed.

It must have been about two in the morning, and as I was driving, I was talking to the Lord. I was asking about the man and what he meant, wondering in general what my life was all about and where Patti and I were going. I was praying out loud—though under my breath so as not to disturb Patti, who was managing to slumber a bit.

But she was awake at that moment, and she said, What?

I didn’t answer.

What are you doing, Mark? (Patti can be persistent.)

I said, I was just talking to the Lord, asking Him about the big man who came over and talked to me.

What man was that?

That big man talking to me. The one by the piano.

She’d turned full around to stare at me. Who?

That big man. The one with the wavy black hair.

She had a concerned expression on her face now.

At the piano? I heard you talking to yourself, but I thought you were just trying to work something out."

I was talking to the big man, I persisted. The man standing next to me.

Patti said, What big man?

I was getting exasperated. Honey, you were standing right beside us. He must have been nearly seven feet tall.

Mark, I’m sorry, but I didn’t see any man.

Boy, I want to let you know, that was the first time it hit me. I talked to the Lord even more fervently then, asking Him, Lord, could it really have been? Is it even possible?

I drove faster, rushing to get home. About three thirty in the morning, I raced in my front door, grabbed the phone, and called Ron. Ron, I said, did you see the big man there tonight? The one with the wavy black hair who came up to me when I was setting up and then came back again when I was packing the equipment?

There was a long silence on the other end of the line, and then he said, Sorry, Mark, I didn’t see anyone fitting that description at the service tonight. And from the sound of him, I’m sure I would have remembered.

I dropped the phone back into the cradle, a little dazed.

Then I began to pray: "Lord? Could that have really been an angel? Sent to me?

The next Sunday, the people came to services as usual. But I could feel the friction and the undercurrents of the seeds that were being sown all around me. I was getting to the point that I felt guilty because of all the people who wanted to leave their churches and come to mine, and on top of that, I could feel it—trouble, coming from all sides.

I was leading the song service when it happened. A cluster of about fifteen women came into the foyer, looking around as if they were lost.

When the song came to an end, the silence was audibly interrupted by one of the women, who asked a companion, Do you suppose we have the right place? Which one do you think is Pastor Mark?

Since the quarters were so small, the whole church could hear the discussion. And since the song service was over anyway, I went down to them and asked one elderly, well-dressed woman, Where are you from?

They said they were from Worcester, a small town about thirty-five miles away. I welcomed them, introduced myself, and then hid my surprise as they warmly embraced me like we all had been friends for years and chattered happily about how glad they were to have found us.

When some of the excitement had died down, I finally asked them why they had come to my church instead of going to one closer to their homes. (Remember, one of the biggest things that had been bothering me was the cold shoulder I was getting from other ministers in the area and the way the word was being passed around that I was out of step, was uneducated, wasn’t conforming, and was taking too much business away from the longer-established churches.)

This is what had happened.

It seems they had just lost their own pastor and had been voting on a new one, but they were having trouble deciding which man God wanted them to elect. So, stymied, they had all decided to break for lunch. But before they left, they had prayed that God would send them to a church that Sunday where they would feel His blessing and be fed His Word.

And while they had been standing on the sidewalk outside, trying to decide where to go to eat, a tall man had walked up to them, and said—

I stopped them right there. Wait a minute. You say a tall man?

That’s right, Pastor.

How tall?

Tall. About six-foot-seven or more.

What did he look like? I could barely hide my excitement.

Curly, jet-black hair, one woman said.

Another added, And good-looking, and he had the most wonderful voice!

Suddenly it hit me so hard that tears began to stream down my cheeks. I hated myself all my former doubt. God loves me! He loves me so much that He had sent an angel to comfort and advise me! I tried to hide my tears, realizing these poor women had no idea why I was weeping, but they seemed not to be concerned by it. One of them reached into her black leather purse and pulled out a white card, turned it over, and handed to me. Oh yes, he gave us this.

And she handed me the very same card upon which I’d jotted down my church’s address that night at the Holiday Inn.

My depression lifted. If God has seen fit to send an angel to tell me He loves me and would fill his promises to me, I didn’t need to be depressed. Patti was right. God’s ways are never what we expect them to be. They are always far more wonderful!

I knew then that, no matter how difficult, things would always work out for the Lord’s greater glory and that He’d never let me down. He had an angel working for me, guiding me, and protecting me!

And I know for a fact, from the book of facts—the Word of God, Himself—that if God has an angel working for me, He has an angel or angels working for you. For God doesn’t love me one bit more than He loves you.

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CHAPTER 2

Angels

W hat are angels? What do we know about them, anyway? Is it possible that these spiritual beings have really been assigned to guard, guide, and direct us, just as we learned when we were