Divine Appointments

By Vitor Martins

God is able to do miracles to reach out and save all kinds of people anywhere in the world. Jesus' last words in the gospel of Mark are, "Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature" (Mark 16:15).

Divine Appointments is a collection of testimonies that resulted from the many years of Vitor Martins' life in the missionary

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trilogy Christian Publishing
• Release date: Mar 17, 2022
• ISBN: 9781685562618

Book preview

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Divine

appointments

Vitor Martins

Trilogy Christian Publishers

A Wholly Owned Subsidiary of Trinity Broadcasting Network

2442 Michelle Drive

Tustin, CA 92780

Copyright © 2022 by Vitor Martins

All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise noted, taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Scripture quotations marked (KJV) taken from The Holy Bible, King James Version. Cambridge Edition: 1769.

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

For information, address Trilogy Christian Publishing

Rights Department, 2442 Michelle Drive, Tustin, Ca 92780.

Trilogy Christian Publishing/ TBN and colophon are trademarks of Trinity Broadcasting Network.

For information about special discounts for bulk purchases, please contact Trilogy Christian Publishing.

Manufactured in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

ISBN 978-1-68556-260-1

ISBN 978-1-68556-261-8 (ebook)

To God be all the glory.

Acknowledgments

I would like to express my gratitude to all the people who helped me along this journey: my wife, Priscila; Mhairi Archibald; Mario Santos Reikdal. I appreciate your encouragement. May God bless you abundantly!

Foreword

I was honored to share life and ministry with Vitor in Europe. We were both there on a mission, and God, in His great wisdom, crafted our connection and called us to covenant with Him and with each other.

I was a church planter with a strong pastoral call, and Vitor was a kingdom builder with the call and the heart of an evangelist. We knew that our gifts needed to flow together, and we chose to serve God’s purposes to our generation.

As a young man, Vitor surrendered to His call and paid the price to stay true to the mandate that the Lord had given him. The impact of His life has enabled him to serve among the nations, to share the gospel among the peoples of the world, and to stand strong in it all.

His book, like his life, will be a great blessing to you, and I am honored to commend my friend and his book to you.

—Terry Hoggard

Assemblies of God World Missionary

Preface

Since I became a Christian, the desire of my heart has been to dedicate my life to work on God’s kingdom. Many times when I shared a testimony, people would tell me, You should write a book! It happened so many times I started to believe that God wanted me to do it.

The purpose of this book is to show you that God is able to do miracles to reach out and save all kinds of people anywhere in the world, in a palace or in a prison, and also to motivate every Christian to become a testimony of Christ. It can reach places where I am not able to go, be it a country where missionaries are not allowed to enter or a maximum-security prison.

Jesus’ last words in the gospel of Mark are, And he said to them, ‘Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature’ (Mark 16:15).

I am not perfect or better than anyone else, but God has been using me by His mercy. God can use anyone who is available and willing to obey Him and His great commission, which is Go and be my witness.

1.

A Brazilian Missionary

When I was born, my parents named me a Christian and chose a religion I should follow, an Italian religion. This is the way it happens to everyone: we receive traditions from our parents, and we pass our traditions to our children. I have always believed in God, but I grew up living a religion that was restricted to going to church sometimes and following some empty rituals once in a while.

Back then, it was common for parents to go to work and leave their children at home wandering in the streets with no one to take care of them. As a result, my friends and I, all ten-year-olds, started a criminal organization. Our gang had an office in the middle of the overgrown bushes of a large vacant lot. We organized other children and encouraged them to shoplift. Profits were distributed among the members. The boys would bring me goods in exchange for food and protection from the other boys. We even would steal garlic and potatoes when we would visit family members who lived on a farm and sell them. This arrangement lasted about two years until, under pressure from parents and shopkeepers, we had to give up our childish but promising business.

As a teenager, I lived in sin without hope of salvation. Although sometimes the enemy gave me things that felt good to distract me, I wasn’t happy. I began to seek God, asking Him, in my ignorance, what the true religion was. The answer was, I created man, and man created thousands of religions, but the only way to eternal life is through Jesus, and the way to know Him is by reading the Bible. So I read the entire Bible, and on January 1, 1986, I gave my life to Jesus, confessing my sins and accepting Him as my only and sufficient Savior and Lord.

From that moment, the world became more beautiful for me. I would spend hours admiring nature, observing the immensity of the night sky, full of life. Each minute I became more convinced that there was a Creator who wanted to relate to man. So I decided to tell the world the good news of salvation that is in Jesus.

In 1990, I was admitted to a theology course in Curitiba, Brazil, where I graduated. The school required students to take six months of practical evangelistic outreach as part of the training. This practice could take place anywhere in the world. So I decided to invest everything I had in it and go to Europe. I did research on Africa, where it would be easy to live with a small amount of money, and I was aware that there were already thousands of evangelical missionaries there. Upon reflection, I realized that ironically, one of the continents that currently lacked God’s Word the most was Europe itself, which in the past had received the gospel and taken it to the world. But they didn’t watch for just one generation and were manipulated by secularism and socialism, losing the most important thing in life. Being of European descent was one more reason to choose Europe. The modern Europeans must again be blessed with the truth of Christ’s gospel.

At that time, I was studying English. I dreamed of doing missionary work. It all seemed an adventure, but something that was not possible since I could not afford to pay for the expenses. My church couldn’t invest in international missions, as they were building churches everywhere around the city, to the point that in two years, about 200 churches were built.

In late May 1991, I left Brazil for Europe. My good friend